Maria Riegger with Top Author Tips on Legal Matters

August 7, 2023 Mindy McGinnis

Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see as a guest.

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Mindy: We are here with Maria Riegger who is the author of Legal Issues Authors Must Consider. It is ranked number one in Amazon for copyright law, corporate law, practical guides for law, and entertainment law. So there's a lot of different things that authors really do need to consider in the legal arena when they're moving into a business setting. The first thing that I think is personally interesting and it took me a long time to come around to it, but I finally did. Protecting your assets by forming an LLC, a limited liability company. So I definitely want to talk about that. I finally came around to doing it. It's not that hard. So let's just start with you telling us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be interested specifically in the arena of legal issues for authors.

Maria: And first, thanks so much, Mindy, for having me on today. This is a super exciting topic I have a lot of thoughts about. I'm an attorney. I'm a corporate banking attorney by day, and I've been a self-published author since 2015. And in communicating with a lot of newer self-published authors, there is a lot of misinformation about how to protect themselves legally. What they need to do legally to, for example, secure copyrights for themselves or use copyrighted material. A lot of business related questions about what you just kind of mentioned. How to set up a business. Should I set up a business? And there's so much misinformation I saw publicly that I felt compelled to kind of write out a practical guide for newer self-published authors. It's really hard to include everything that would be legally relevant to self-published authors in one book, and I find that most newer self-published authors are completely overwhelmed with the legal aspect of the business. That they don't even take any steps. So I concentrated on like 3 or 4 main topics and said, "Start with these, and then as you progress in your business, you can hire people out to do other things and then explore other things."

But, as you mentioned, the first basic thing is how do you set up your business? My advice is to set it up as an LLC, as you said. Set up your publishing company as an LLC and publish through the LLC. That way your personal assets are protected. You setting up the corporate entity is not 100% fail safe every time. That depends on the nature of the lawsuit, if a lawsuit is brought against you. But it does offer some protection. In the US, at least, it's easy to do. It's a minimal upfront cost. I think in my state it costs maybe $100 to form the LLC and then $50 a year to just maintain it as an active business. You don't even need an attorney to do that. It's something you can do yourself, and it affords a lot of protection to the business owner.

Mindy: So give us an example of how an LLC is helpful to you. Because my understanding is that if you are sued or a lawsuit is brought against you for some reason that is related to your writing... If someone thinks that you stole their copyrighted work. If someone perhaps takes an action. If you wrote a book about suicide and someone, a reader, kills themselves and their family is like, "Hey, this is your fault." Anything like that. If someone sues you, if you are an LLC and the lawsuit is related to your writing in some way, they can only come after you for assets that are related to your writing business, your writing income. So, for example, they can't take your house, is that correct?

Maria: Correct. Yeah, that's generally correct. All depends on the nature of the lawsuit, but in the ones that you've described, that's generally correct. If it's related to the writing, to the publication of that book, it's going to be really difficult, if not impossible, to kind of get to your personal assets. And that's what you want to do. And I go over the steps you need to separate personal assets from your business assets. Now, I want to say, like in a lawsuit, what usually happens is people... It's like an all guns approach. They're going to sue everybody. They may sue the author. They may sue the publishing company, which is your LLC. What happens is a defendant hires an attorney and gets some stuff thrown out. So you can always sue. I mean, judges are very lax on what they allow to proceed past the very initial stages. Generally speaking, it doesn't prevent them from naming you as the author in a lawsuit. Depending on the nature of the lawsuit, that's not going to get very far.

Mindy: It's scary. Like once you start talking about... I know that a lot of people, as soon as you talk about suits and being sued, a lot of authors in particular, they really just kind of want to stick their head in the sand. Or be like, "Oh, that would never happen to me. I don't steal other people's work." But as you just said, honestly, the truth is that you could not have done anything wrong and still have a suit brought against you.

Maria: Yeah, there's nothing that guarantees you free legal representation for a civil suit. There are groups. I used to do a lot of pro bono work in civil suits like family related law and things like that for people who are low income. But generally you're not guaranteed legal representation for a civil suit, just for criminal. So you're going to have to hire your own attorney, right, to defend that. I've heard of very few lawsuits against kind of newer self-published authors. So I don't want to strike fear in the hearts of people. I'm also kind of a realist. So my advice is for authors to be prepared should something happen.

Mindy: Oh, absolutely. And I think you need to be informed. Unfortunately, due to the world that we live in, the vindictiveness of the human race, it really is just kind of intelligent to cover your ass, quite frankly. I personally just incorporated... Oh gosh, maybe within the last like 3 to 5 years. And my tax person had been telling me repeatedly, she was like, "Mindy, you need to form an LLC." I'm actually an S-Corp, but she's like, "You need to incorporate. You need to do this." And there are a lot of different reasons why. Some of them being tax related and things like that. But she was like also, this is what's going to protect you if something happens. And I was very much of the approach that I was like, Well, that's scary and I don't want to think about it, right? So it was like basically every tax season we would have a conversation that frightened me, and then I would not think about it again until April. And that is not the right response. I will say for people that are listening.

If you are a member of the Authors Guild... I do not want to present this incorrectly, but if you remember the Authors Guild, one of the things that they do provide is legal counsel. I do not remember if it is like completely free or anything like that, but they do have lawyers on retainer that you can just use for a quick Q&A and things like that. I'm certainly not trumpeting that they'll give you a free, awesome lawyer. I'm not sure that that's the case, but I have in the past used my Authors Guild membership in that way. I got a question about this and there's someone that will answer my questions right away that is an entertainment lawyer, and my Authors Guild membership affords me that. So that's just a real quick hey little shout out for the Authors Guild. You were talking about also copyright. And when it comes to copyright, that is something that there is a lot of confusion about. People are just not terribly informed about copyright and how copyright works. So let's start by talking about your own work and copyright and at what point copyright becomes something that you need to be thinking about. How to be best informed about how copyright works in the first place. I remember a long time ago when I was still trying to get an agent, one of the things that people talked about was poor man's copyright, and this was in the day of self-addressed stamped envelopes for querying. But one of the things that people talked about was a way to copyright your work was to print it all out on paper and mail it to yourself and never open it. And because it had passed through the federal system of the USPS Postal Service, it had an official date on it. And your sacred words were then copyrighted by dint of being inside of an envelope that the United States Postal Service had officially stamped.

Maria: Oh wow.

Mindy: I'm pretty sure that's not true.

Maria: Yeah, that's... That's so odd. So copyright law is a creature of federal law. So we were talking about setting up your corporate entity, your LLC, that's under a state law. So you need to go to an authority in your state, either the state corporation commission or an attorney to tell you the procedure like what you need to do to get the limited liability protection and stuff like that. Copyright laws and under the Federal Copyright Act, there's a ton of good information on copyright dot gov. And obviously we're still talking about US copyright law here. So an author has copyright over their work just by virtue of creating the work. You do not need to register your work with a copyright office to assert copyright over your own work, poetry, books, music, anything like that. Okay? Why it's a good idea to register with the copyright office is if somebody infringes on your copyright and you're a newer author, the damages you can sue for are possibly pretty minimal because you're talking about lost earnings. Which if you're a newer author, maybe you aren't that... Isn't that that much yet. But if you have registered your work with the copyright office, then you're eligible to get, should you prevail in the copyright infringement suit, statutory damages. Which can be as much as six figures depending on the nature of the claim. You know if it was willful? Things like that. So that's why it's a good idea, especially for newer authors, to register with the Copyright Office.

You do pay a fee per work. It's, I think, like $45, but it's on the copyright dot gov site. You can find it pretty easily. You do pay a small fee per work, but that protection is well worth it. Because most newer authors, if somebody is using their work without permission, that's probably not going to be worth it to bring a claim because you're not going to get much in damages. But if you register with a copyright office, then you do have the potential to get damages. And sometimes when somebody is using your work without permission, sometimes it's enough to have an attorney draft them a cease and desist letter and they'll stop doing it. And that's a pretty... Depending where you're located in the US, that's a fairly minimal cost to do that. Or you could get somebody, you know, like people have asked me to do that, send a cease and desist letter. As an attorney, that sometimes is enough to get them to stop using your work. But that's why it's a good idea to register with the copyright office, but want to make clear that, you know, you have copyright over your own work when you create it by virtue of you creating it. That's your original work, and you have the right to assert your copyright over that work, even in a lawsuit.

Mindy: And that is something that I think a lot of people don't necessarily realize. I still see comments coming up on message boards and Facebook groups and Slacks where people are like, how do I get this copyrighted? And I need to contact the right office and I need to do all these things. And it's like, no, you actually don't. By dint of you creating it, it is copyrighted, and it belongs to you. Also, I should say one of the sponsors for this podcast is Vellum, and Vellum is a software that does all of the formatting for your book and turns it into the file that you use to upload to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, whatever. So Vellum is fantastic, and one of the things that Vellum does automatically when you are generating your book is that it puts in your copyright information. That is, I find, so useful as in the self-published arena, in the indie arena, because it's just kind of taken care of for you. And it's not a terribly like technical thing that you have to put a lot of time or effort into. When you're a traditionally published, your publisher takes care of all of that.

Maria: Right.

Mindy: And you don't have to give it a thought at all. That is an arena where things are a little bit different in the self-publishing versus the trad publishing.

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Mindy: But let's also talk about then other people's copyright. So if you want to reference, say, a lyric from a song. Or if you would like to use a pull quote from a poem that inspired your book and you want to put that in the front matter. Talk about that for a little bit. How does that work?

Maria: Sure. So this is probably the question I get asked the most frequently, because this is such a nebulous area. And one of the things people ask is how much content can I quote from a book, for example, without having to request copyright permission? And the answer is there is no minimum. There is no legal definition for the minimum you can quote from a book or song lyrics without having to request copyright permission. So, I've talked to people who used to work for the Big Five publishing companies and they said, "Well, my in-house attorney told me I could quote up to two lines and not have to request copyright permission." That's not based on the law. That's based on practice. It's possible that that copyright holder just makes a practice of only suing or only caring whether you quote more than two lines or more than five lines or more than ten lines. That's based on practice, not the law. You have to be very careful about that, because an attorney will often give a non-attorney a very cursory answer. Yeah, you can quote two lines with no problems, but that's not a legal answer. That's just based on the practice or their course of dealing with that particular copyright holder, right, if it's another big publishing company or a record producer, for example.

So the general rule is you always have to request permission. For newer authors, that's what I tell them. Just work under the presumption that you always have to request permission as long as it's something obviously identifiable. So that's kind of a nebulous area. So if you're using a pull quote, yes, you need to request permission from the copyright holder. If you're using a quote at the beginning of the chapter, yes, you have to request permission. If you're using song lyrics, yes, you have to request permission. It's a very long process to get permission, especially for song lyrics, which actually go into detail about in my book because I have done that process myself - requesting permission to use song lyrics from copyright holders. So sometimes it's easier just not even to use the copyrighted material because you know, that may possibly delay publication of your book. That's something the author's going to have to consider. But generally speaking, you're always going to need to request permission.

Mindy: This is something I ran into with my very first book, which is called Not a Drop to Drink. Obviously, the title itself is actually taken from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rhyme of The Ancient Mariner. It's a post-apocalyptic survival story, but one of my characters is a former English major. And so they are using quotes from poetry fairly often. And correct me if I'm wrong, copyright is life of the author plus 100 years. Is that correct?

Maria: I think it's life of the author plus 75, but I'd have to... To be 100% sure, I have to look that up.

Mindy: So if the author has been dead for 75 years, you can use their work. So this is why, for example, every press in the world, plus Barnes and Noble, reprints Charles Dickens work all the time because they can produce it for free. They don't have to pay anything. They create this book, and then you buy it. And they only put in the printing cost. So, if you are quoting someone that has been dead for over 75 years, that has passed in the public domain and it is free use. But I had a particular quote that was just like perfect. And I don't remember the poet's name because they're not particularly famous or anything like that, but they had been dead for maybe 50 years. Like we just... We weren't quite there. So there was one line that I was going to have to have permission for, and this was my very first book. And my publisher was Harper Collins, and my editor was like, "We'll take care of this, but if they want money, you know, you have to pay for that." And I was like, "Yes. Yes, of course." And so they ended up handling all the communication, but they were in contact with the poet's descendants and heirs and everything, and they had a lawyer that handled these things. And we were in communication for like six months. And I think I wanted to use maybe 10 or 12 words and also crediting the poet within the book. The person would say, "Yeah, that's so and so."

We went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, and they were throwing, uh, you know, numbers out there for me to pay. And it wasn't particularly egregiously high numbers, but I was just like, "Well, that seems like more than I thought it would be, you know." But also never actually saying "yes, we'll go forward. Yes. We give you permission. Yes. If you pay us this much, we'll do it." It was like, "well, I mean maybe we'd consider it if." And at some point my editor was just like, "Hey, how important is this, really?" And I was like, "You know what? Not that important." So really consider it. I understand having things that you're drawn to, and I understand having elements of a song or a poem or someone else's work that really, really resonates with you. And when you read it, you get goosebumps, and it's the thing that maybe even inspired your work. Cool. But how much does it really matter? My editor was very frank with me, and she was like, "Listen. Who really cares about this? Probably just you." And I was like, "Good point." And she was like, "Do you think you can find a different poet and a different poem that's in the public domain that we could just use for these ten words?" And I was like, "you know what? Yes." This has been just emotionally draining and a lot of work and a lot of time, and it was just, in the end, fairly pointless. So, um, real quick question. How does it work if you want to, quote, say, a historical figure?

Maria: Historical figure. So this is I'm guessing this is a written work, not spoken, right?

Mindy: That's a really good distinction. So actually, tell me both. What is the process?

Maria: Right. So if a historical figure from like a speech I don't... This could kind of be a very long winded answer because if the speech is published somewhere. Right? And copyright has not expired and there's a copyright on it, then you're probably going to have to request permission to use it. If they were speaking orally in a speech and somebody overheard them and told it to you, that's not a copyright, right? That's no copyright on that. You see what I'm saying? That's one thing. So we're talking about copyright. Written copyright. So yeah, if it was published somewhere and the copyright has not expired, you'd know it's definitely not in the public domain. Sometimes the copyright holder will place something in the public domain, and that's free to use, right, without permission. But yeah, if it's been published somewhere and there's a copyright holder, you're going to have to request permission from the copyright holder. But if it's just like a speech and somebody's reporting it to you or so-and-so said this or I'm going to use that quote, that's not that's not something you can assert copyright over.

Mindy: And again, anyone that's listening, definitely double check everything. We're not throwing out ironclad answers here so...

Maria: Right. I Mean... Yeah, I mean. That's my general understanding. Yeah. You have to ask, is this copyrighted? Who is the copyright owner? Has the copyright expired? Those are kind of your threshold questions, right.

Mindy: So one of the last things. How can authors protect themselves against defamation? And also quick, what is defamation?

Maria: This usually comes up for obviously nonfiction authors, right? Sometimes memoirs. Sometimes clinical practitioners are writing about cases, things like that. So defamation is when you... Again, this is an issue of state law. So every state is going to have their own definition. It's generally very similar, but you'd have to check with, you know, an attorney in your state to really know what you would need to prove or defend against a defamation claim. So defamation is... It's an oral or written statement. So here we're mostly talking about written statements, right? So authors. A written statement about somebody else that is false, and that is defamatory. So what is defamatory? Well, it's usually something very negative. Like that person has been convicted of a felony. Or that person has some kind of horrible disease. Or that person, you know, cheated on their partner or something like that. The question of what is defamatory, that's been subject to a lot of litigation. So it's really hard to come up with a definition of that. But it's something very negative, right? It's not like, Oh, that person has brown hair. Oh they really have blonde hair. Oh, well. You know, that's not necessarily a defamatory statement, even though it's false.

Now, a statement cannot be defamatory if it's true. So if you're saying something true about somebody, even though it's negative, that's not defamatory. So, often what will happen is a defendant will counter by saying, well, this is a true statement, and here's why it's true. And the claim can't proceed, right? So that's generally what it means. Yeah. But it's got to be something very negative. And in extreme cases, it would be harmful to the point where the subject of the defamatory statement, the plaintiff, would like lose their job or lose income over it because, you know, that's kind of an extreme example. But it's generally it's got to be something very negative. And there are some statutory definitions like felony convictions and other things depending on the state where you're practicing, where you're located. But that's generally what it means.

Mindy: And how do you protect yourself against that?

Maria: If you're writing like nonfiction, and you're writing about real people, what I tell people is you're going to want to obscure the person you're writing about. You know, don't use the real name, obviously. You want to obscure details about them. So to successfully bring a defamation claim, you'd have to show that they could only have been writing about you. So, if you obscure some facts and details about their background, their appearance and things like that, it's going to be really hard for a plaintiff to say, "Oh, they're definitely writing about me. This could not be anybody else." Okay? If you're writing kind of a biography, autobiography, a memoir in first person, one of the things that I recommend is to think about doing a creative nonfiction piece. Like writing in third person as opposed to first person, and then using that together with kind of obscuring details about people to protect yourself. Yeah. And obviously if you're a.... Kind of goes without saying, but if you're like a clinical practitioner writing about, you know, your patients, you're not going to use real names. You're not going to use real details about patients and things like that.

Mindy: Last thing why don't you let listeners know where they can find your book, Legal Issues Authors Must Consider, and where they can find you online.

Maria: Absolutely. So, my book is available on all the major retailers: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, as an audiobook on Audible, and I am at Law School Heretic dot com. And my direct email is Maria at Law School Heretic dot com. And I've got a lot of articles on my blog that give assistance to self-published authors. And yeah, so that's where you can find me. I'm also on, you know, Facebook and Amazon and Goodreads.

Mindy: Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.

Nicholas Erik With Top Tips for Indie Author Marketing

June 5, 2023 Mindy McGinnis

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Mindy: We're here with Nicholas Erik, who offers all kinds of different marketing guides, resources, coaching, and consulting for self-published authors. Today we're going to focus a lot on marketing in particular because that is something that a lot of self-published authors and indie authors really struggle with. So, thank you so much for being here today.

Nicholas: Thank you for having me, Mindy. It's great to be here.

Mindy: When we're talking about self-publishing/indie publishing... Because you do offer general advice. For authors in general, you talk about marketing and blurbs, but all kinds of different arenas. I want to focus on marketing because I do think that that is something that a lot of writers struggle with. Most of us have wandered into this arena because of our creative capabilities and our creative interests, and a lot of the time those aren't necessarily translating into any sort of skill or knowledge of marketing. And also, marketing doesn't just mean social media. What do you think are the top things that self-published or indie authors absolutely must have in order to achieve any degree of success?

Nicholas: I think you need a good book, a marketable book. Something that's in an established genre really helps. Writing in a series helps quite a bit because then you can sell people more than one book. It's a lot easier to sell people book two in the series than a completely new book. And then I'd say, really, the only thing that you absolutely have to have to have is a mailing list. You want a direct communication conduit with your fan base and readership. While you can contact them via other means, like social media, the ground there is constantly changing and you don't own it. So five years from now, ten years from now, the rules could be completely different since you're playing on someone else's turf, and the newsletter is something that you own and is going to be around in 5 to 10 years.

Mindy: I am someone that initially at the beginning of social media was really sold on it. I thought it was wonderful, but social media has changed so much. You were talking about how it isn't necessarily stable ground because you don't own those subscribers. You don't own those likes. If Facebook disappears, you're not going to recover those 10,000 followers for your page because that's not information that you had. It was all linked into that particular platform. And when you have an email list, you have a direct line, as you were saying, of communication with people that have voluntarily said, "Yes. I would like to hear from you." So that is not only something that you will be able to use in perpetuity, but it is also something where it wasn't just a random... "Oh, that's... That's mildly amusing. I'll like that. I'll follow that." These people invited you in. They said, "Here's my email. I want you to email me." Which is a pretty big step and very much more, much more personal, I think, with the email marketing.

Now, you were talking about social media also, as we said, not being terribly stable. This is the truth. Obviously, we've watched Twitter completely fall apart. TikTok may or may not end up banned in the United States. We just... You don't know. And that is why the mailing list is so important. So when we're talking then about marketing in general, one of the things that you offer are a bunch of crash courses for authors generally talking about marketing. And one of the things that you talk about is getting legitimate Amazon reviews for your book. So if you could talk a little bit about the importance of those, particularly on Amazon. Love it or hate it, Amazon is the major retailer that you have to be able to function well with as an author, whether you're trad or self-pub. And something that I had always heard, and I've heard it refuted, and then I've heard it repeated again, is that if you want Amazon to pick you up in their algorithm of books that are recommended - "customers also bought books like this"... If you want your book to show up there, you have to have at least 50 reviews on Amazon. I've heard that stated. I've heard it refuted. But if you could talk, in general, about the importance of those Amazon reviews, that would be fantastic.

Nicholas: The 50 review thing is definitely a myth. There's no set point where Amazon starts recommending your book. I would say that the reviews don't factor directly into the algorithm very much, if at all. It's hard to say because Amazon doesn't publish the entire workings of the algorithm for obvious reasons since it's a trade secret. But I don't think that the reviews have a direct impact in that if you have 3,000 reviews or ratings, it's going to result in your book being recommended. It's just more that if someone hits the page when a book has 3,000 reviews and the star rating is 4.4, 4.5, or there are some really positive reviews that persuade them to pick up the book, then it might help your conversion rate, which is the percentage of people who hit the Amazon page who end up buying.

So I think it's more of an indirect effect there on the algorithms where if you're selling more books from the traffic that you're directing to the page, whether that's from your newsletter, or TikTok, or Facebook ads, or wherever it's coming from, then you have a better shot at getting the algorithms in your corner. I wouldn't worry too much about reviews at this point because Amazon has introduced ratings and that means that people can rate the book without leaving a review. And that's going to be counted toward your overall rating score there at the top of the page that people will see when they hit the Amazon page. That means that the emphasis on reviews, even compared to 3 or 4 years ago, just it's not as important. If anybody is trying to get reviews, then probably the best way is just to ask in the back of the book right after the end. You can ask people to rate or review the book, and that's going to increase the number of people doing so. I think that there are more valuable uses of that back matter real estate where I usually try to sell the next book in the series and also get people to sign up for the newsletter right after the end. But you can certainly put a review request there if that is a primary focus. But they're not super important at this point because people can leave the rating without the review now.

Mindy: And you brought up the algorithm, of course, that is the major factor that everyone is always trying to... Used different little pieces of data to try to figure out how to manipulate the algorithm. In general, I find that to be a very fruitless prospect. As you said, Amazon is not about to share their information with the rest of us. As a person that is just not as interested, this is why I am not a great indie or self-pub author. I'm a trad author. I do not want to crunch numbers. I do not want to sit down with data. I do not want to put that practical and, I guess really honestly applicable, side of my brain to work when it comes to the industry. I really would prefer just to write. And, of course, we all would. We all want that. But if you want to be a successful indie or self-published author, you really do have to apply yourself in that direction. So, what are some tips that you have for good jumping in points? Or maybe some easier elements that self-pub authors can gather some data or things to watch? What are some really first steps the authors can take to help sell their book? Whether it's ads or promotion, marketing, and publicity.

Nicholas: I think the easiest way to probably jump into paid advertising is to use promo sites which are newsletters where you can book a spot in your genre for whatever it costs, and then they give you an ad slot in their email newsletter on the specified day. The most famous of these is BookBub. And of course BookBub is very competitive and difficult to get. It's worth submitting your book for because it can sell a lot of books if you get one. But there are a number of other options there, like Free and Bargain Booksy. Robin Reads. A number of additional options. All that you have to do is fill out a form and if you're accepted, pay the invoice and then you're ready to go. So that's a good stepping stone to more advanced marketing or more involved marketing there. And it can still be an important element overall of your marketing mix even as you become more advanced. Another thing that you can do when you're starting out is join email cross promotions on platforms like BookFunnel or StoryOrigin.

Getting those initial subscribers can be a real grind, and you can be sitting there with one subscriber, two subscribers... You know, you and your friend or whoever else has signed up for a long time. If you're just waiting for people to join from the back of your book or maybe it's before you're even releasing the book, those services are a way that you can jump in and start building your email newsletter, and then start sending out email newsletters to a bigger list and start practicing you're writing there. What resonates with readers in your genre? So I think that those two things, if you're just starting out, are inexpensive ways to get started with the marketing. Otherwise, I would invest money into a professional cover. That's going to make a big difference in how well your book sells. And also spend some time with the blurb, which is the book description. Those are the two main elements that are going to convince people to buy the book when they hit the page. And if those aren't hitting the mark, then people aren't going to buy the book. So study the best selling books in your subgenre there. All that you have to do is Google "Kindle Top 100" and your subgenre. If you write thrillers, then "Kindle top 100 thrillers" and take a look at some of the blurbs, the covers, and try to reverse engineer what's going on and why those books are successful so you can take those principles for your own book in the genre.

Mindy: Yeah, cover in particular is the absolute must do correctly. That is how you're presenting your book to the world. And we all, of course, know that you shouldn't judge a book by the cover, but that's exactly what we do. And that is how we make decisions. Even in a traditional bookstore, like Barnes and Noble, when you're browsing the bookshelf, the thing that you're looking for the most is the cover. I know that cover designers put so much work into not only what the cover looks like, but also what the spine will look like because so few covers get to be front facing, which means that the actual cover is out on the bookshelf at a bookstore. The spine actually is incredibly important when we're talking about print books, because more likely than not, you're not going to be front facing on that bookshelf.

When it comes to eBooks and Kindle books, I have heard, and definitely correct me if I'm wrong, that you need to think particularly about how that cover is going to present itself as a thumbnail, not just as your single cover standing alone on its own home page or its own item listing on Amazon. Because you've got to get them to click over there first and you've got to get them to look at your cover among 40 or 50 or however many returns that you get in a list of covers. And so that's something that I've been told in the indie and self-pub world is that it's very important that the thumbnail of your cover be eye catching as well.

Nicholas: Yeah, you definitely need it to be legible and something that stands out at a small size because that's usually all the real estate you're going to get on Amazon. If it's on a bestseller list or if it's recommended in an email or if you're running Amazon ads, then your cover is going to be appearing at basically postage stamp size. So it has to clearly convey the genre to an interested reader and catch their attention probably in under a second, and that's if we're being generous. Probably more like half a second. It really has to be able to illustrate those key elements and stand out as a book that they would be interested in reading as a reader of that genre. So having an on genre cover is really key. Sometimes people make the mistake of going too far into left field and being clever or depicting a scene from their book or something abstract that doesn't really hit the genre elements. This is something where you want to be very clear about what the book is and what the book is not. Because if you're using the wrong cover, it's like packaging a bunch of starbursts in a Snickers wrapper. It doesn't serve any sort of purpose for either you as the author, you're going to sell fewer books, but also the reader who thought that they were getting something else is going to be unsatisfied with their purchase. So you want to be very clear with the packaging. It's not a piece of art. That's a common mistake that people when they're publishing their first book or second book, they tend to make that error, and it's just strictly a packaging and marketing aspect. You have to convey the genre immediately. Otherwise people are going to scroll by and click on something else that catches their attention.

Mindy: You mentioned too people making the mistake of wanting to illustrate possibly a specific scene in their book, or sometimes they've got an idea in their head of what they want their cover to look like that is perhaps like emotionally tied to something in the book. And that, as you said, isn't necessarily the best thing. Even though you, as the author, may have an attachment to wanting a certain thing, you have to think of your cover as the first marketing tool that you have. And it has to do work not just, as you said, be a piece of art that resonates with you as the writer.

Nicholas: Yeah, exactly. And to be clear, there are many cover artists that are extraordinarily talented and their work is amazing. So it can be artistically appealing while hitting the correct marketing checkboxes. But people reverse the order. It has to first be hitting those marketing check boxes. And then it can be a piece of appealing art. If you reverse those and don't hit the marketing aspects, then you're going to get a very expensive piece of art that does not sell any books, which most people don't want.

Mindy: Talking about sites, promo sites, that you can use. You mentioned BookBub, which is the holy grail of promo sites that you as an author would absolutely love to get a spot on. I know the self-pub side of my world under my pen name... We have been lucky enough to get a BookBub twice for different series, and it really does make an amazing difference. That is the most effective thing that we have ever used, and the tail on it is very long. If you're promoting a series and you're using the first, generally those Bookbub readers are very, very dedicated readers, and if you can hook them with your first in a series, you mentioned before the importance of a series. If you can hook them with the first in your series, a lot of them are going to read through. I mean, obviously not everyone, but those are serious readers. So that BookBub slot is definitely a high market real estate. So do you have any tips for people that are... Because of course, you have to apply. Do you have any tips for how to land those BookBub slots?

Nicholas: The main one is going to be self-evident, but it probably still needs to be said. You have to submit. And the reason that needs to be said is because people give up and get discouraged really quickly. Probably less than 5% of the submissions in the US for BookBub get submitted. It's just extraordinarily competitive, and they have a lot of submissions. It's not a referendum on the quality of your book if you don't get accepted the first time around or the sixth time around. So just whenever you get rejected, make a note on the calendar and then resubmit once you're eligible, and it's really just a volume game. And resubmit the books that are eligible in a rotation. So you could do book one in this series and then book one in your other series. And then if book two can be read alone, then go over to book two and so forth. So the goal ultimately is just to have something in the submission fire at all times. If you don't have a deep backlist, then that's not going to be possible. But the principal there is just submit as often as you can.

One thing you can do is that if you submit at $0.99 and get rejected, you can actually resubmit that same book immediately at free. You don't have to wait the four weeks between submissions and that effectively doubles your submissions there. The free BookBubs, in my experience, are actually more powerful than the paid ones. That's going to vary based on the book and how long your series is. If you have a very short series, then it might not be worth giving away the book for free. If you have, say, two books in the series, there aren't a ton of things for people to buy after they grab the first one for free. So you might want to wait on that a bit. If you have a short series or if you have a standalone, probably doesn't make sense to give it away for free unless you're just trying to build up your readership. But that's a way to again effectively double your overall submissions. BookBub really likes box sets. If you have three books in the series, then you can box up the first three and submit that. Or you could do books one through five. Or the complete series. And if you offer that to BookBub for $0.99, then that can be a good way to get accepted for a series where the individual books may have been rejected in the past.

Finally, they like wide books. Meaning books that are available on all retailers, not just Amazon. So you have Amazon, and then Apple Books, and Google Play, et cetera. If you have a book that's wide, then that is going to increase your chances of acceptance. So if you've had a Kindle Unlimited exclusive book get rejected a number of times then trying it again when that book is wide can result in it being accepted. That being said, there are plenty of Kindle Unlimited books that get BookBubs, and I have gotten a number of BookBubs, both for myself and for clients that I've worked with, for Kindle Unlimited exclusive books. So it's not mandatory by any means, but it does help. The main thing is just submitting. I see people disqualify themselves by just not submitting and giving up. It only takes a couple minutes a month, and the upside is tremendous. It's one of the highest leverage things you can put on your marketing calendar and do. So there's really no reason not to throw some submissions into the BookBub ring every month, and by actually submitting the books, then you're going to massively increase your chances of actually getting one.

Mindy: Very true. You cannot be selected if you don't throw your hat in the ring. One of the many things that you offer from your website, which is Nicholas Erik dot com, and that is Erik - E-R-I-K... You offer a lot of different courses for authors. If you could just give a brief overview of some of the courses that you offer and how they can benefit writers.

Nicholas: Yeah, I offer courses on a wide variety of subjects. I would say for someone just starting out or as a good general resource, I would check out the book, The Ultimate Guide to Book Marketing. It's very comprehensive, and it's going to lay the foundation for probably 80-90% of the marketing stuff that you need to know. It doesn't dive into ad platforms specifically, but the evergreen skills that are still going to be useful and applicable five, ten years from now. That's what that book really focuses on. I have a course that I run with a six figure or seven figure romance author named Lee Savino. People seem to really like that one. It's called Six-Figure Author Strategy, and it's where you distill your entire marketing plan for the year into one page. And that forces you to think through what exactly you want to do and cut down on all the things that you can do into what's going to move the needle, and also organizes everything there for quick reference. Just because in the middle of a book launch or the middle of the year, it's easy for things to go off track or just feel overwhelming, and having that North Star is helpful. So those are probably the two places that I would start if you're just checking out my stuff. But there are a number of other courses as well.

Mindy: The Six-Figure Author course I know multiple people that have taken that and found it to be extremely helpful. Even if you're just a beginner and the idea of setting up your marketing for an entire year sounds really daunting, I know that the course does a great job of breaking it down. And like you said, having that North Star, as you put it, is a wonderful way to keep yourself on track when you get overwhelmed. Because I know as someone that has downtime in certain times of the year and then is working frenetically at other times of the year, it can be really hard to make sure that you're consistently putting something towards the marketing aspect. So having that all set up for yourself ahead of time is absolutely invaluable. Last thing, we mentioned your website, which is Nicholas Erik dot com. I will spell it again so that everybody can get that right. It's N-I-C-H-O-L-A-S E-R-I-K dot com. Is there anywhere else that people can find you online and be exposed to your stuff?

Nicholas: That's pretty much it. If you want to check out the book marketing newsletter that's free, you can join that on the website, and I don't have a set cadence. Sometimes it's weekly, most of the time it is not, and just gets sent out as inspiration strikes. But you can join that on the website. Otherwise, no social media or anything like that for the non-fiction stuff at this point. Just focused on the newsletter and building that since it'll be around in 5 to 10 years.

Vellum Co-Founder On Creating Formatting Software for Indie Authors

May 1, 2023 Mindy McGinnis

Mindy: We are here with Brad Andalman who is one of the creators of Vellum which is a wonderful software. If you're a listener of the podcast, you know that I mention it often. I use it to format my books that I write underneath a pen name. And I also have Kate Karyus Quinn here, who is a fellow author and friend, who actually is the person that led me to Vellum. So Brad, Kate, thank you guys both for being here.

Brad: Thanks for having me.

Kate: Yes, thanks for having me, too. I'm so excited.

Mindy: Kate, since you are the person that actually came across Vellum first and led me to it... you've said before you downloaded it, and it was love at first use. So, why is that?

Kate: It was love at first use because it's just a wonderful program. It's super intuitive. It is incredibly easy to use. I was very concerned with formatting my own book and how I would do that. I know that publishers use an Adobe program that I don't know. I was, at that point, just barely trying to learn Photoshop and feeling super overwhelmed by it. I was nervous about formatting my own book and how I would make that happen. And it was my first indie book that I was publishing, so I was trying to learn all the things, all at once, and it was a bit overwhelming.

And when I came across indie authors talking about Vellum, I didn't really know what it was. I wasn't sure how hard it would be to use. I saw that there was a free trial, so I thought, "Well, it's totally worth trying it out and seeing how it goes." And it was so easy to use. Upload your eBook from Word, and it makes it look like a book. And it's beautiful, and there's all different things that you can sort of tweak and mess with. But so many of the things that I was nervous about doing... Thinking like, "Oh, I have to remember to do this with the front matter and the back matter." The front matter is your title, your copyright. All of that stuff, they have it all ready to go for you. So I didn't have to look up the copyright language. I just had to click that tab and it added it. It was amazing. And then just add my details into it. Same with the end page matter with acknowledgments. More than easy really, because it guides you and it really helps you make sure that you're getting all this stuff in there that you need.

Brad: We love hearing stories like that. That's one of the things we strive for. We want it to be fun and intuitive. We've been doing this a long time, but I never tire of hearing of those stories. Thanks.

Mindy: I also never get tired of hearing compliments on my own writing. So... Brad, how did you and your fellow Brad who began Vellum... How did you know that this was a need? How did you become aware that there was a market for software to help writers format their own books for self publishing and indie publishing?

Brad: We didn't really know, to be honest. Brad and I worked together before we started working on Vellum. We worked at Pixar for a while, but we knew that we wanted to write something ourselves. We had quit Pixar. We wanted to do something, and we wanted to do something that would help creatives... Basically to create professional software that would help creatives achieve their goals. We didn't know what that was, and there's only two of us who work on Vellum, and I'm named Brad. So is he. And Brad's wife, she was reading a ton of books on her Kindle. One of the books in the series was about to come out, and she was reading the author's blog and totally following the publishing process. And this person was like, "Oh, man. It would be out except for formatting. I've got to hire a formatter." She asked Brad, "What is this formatting thing? Why can't I read the book that I want to read?" And that started both of us down the path of "how hard is it to take your manuscript, make it look like a book, and publish it?" We dug a little bit into it and we're like, "This is actually harder than it should be." People are paying formatters all the time, and if they need to tweak it, they need to pay the formatter again to change their end matter. And it seemed like this was something we knew about.

We both are book lovers and geeks about book design, and so we thought, "Let's try this." And we wrote the first version, and at that point it was only eBooks. We noticed that it was too hard, and we thought we could make something easier. And we gave it a shot. Pretty soon we realized, "Oh, there's a market for this here." But before we released it, we did a little market research. But, you know, you don't know until, you know, really with this kind of thing. And then ever since then, we hear stories like Kate's. People find it. They find it really easy. This part of the process, we don't want authors to have to think about too much. We want it to be more fun than stressful or anxiety inducing. Since then, we've added print and continued to improve it as we go.

Kate: You said you want authors to be able to make changes down the road, and that was one of the things that I was really concerned about. I didn't want to pay somebody to format my book and then find a misspelling or decide I want to change the backmatter and have to pay somebody again. I hate doing that. I want to keep my money to myself. Also, just the hassle of having to reach out to somebody and to ask them, "Can you change this?" And then wait for them to send you the files back. And this just makes it so much easier. I have gone back to books so many times. Readers will send me, "Oh, I found a mistake." Or a lot of times I change my backmatter when I have a new book coming out, and I can't imagine if I had to go to somebody every time I needed to make those changes. It would make me insane.

Brad: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, even if you had the money and it didn't matter. Just the time, the turnaround, and formatters were booked out weeks or months in advance. I just want to update this link in my backmatter. It shouldn't take more than a couple of seconds.

Mindy: And I love that you were led to this space as a reader as well. And a fellow reader was like, "Hey, I don't understand this little corner of the world." Because readers and writers are occasionally, you know, a Venn diagram that cross, but not always. If you move in the traditional world, those readers are often surprised that it can take 18 months to two years for your book to go from a Word document to a book that is on a shelf in a bookstore. Of course, that's a very different process when you are an indie writer. And again, that's one of the reasons why Vellum is so great. Because, like Kate is saying, you can upload your manuscript and Vellum just kind of... I don't know the first thing about software. I am just... It's like a small religious miracle. Every time I upload something and it's just like, "Yep, I know where the chapters are." And it's like, "Yep, this is the title page." And it just... It knows. I'm just always astonished by it, and as Kate has also said, the ease of use. So you started this ten years ago. I'm really curious how many iterations of Vellum have there been?

Brad: I don't know how many iterations there have been. Vellum 1.0. It wouldn't be completely unfamiliar to people today, but it had the same sort of overall structure. But it's gone through so many changes since then, and version numbers are sort of meaningless. But we're at Vellum 3.43 today. Actually Vellum 3.45, sorry. And some of these are just like minor bug fixes, releases, or minor improvements. Sometimes Amazon will change something, and we need to respond quickly. Sometimes Apple will release a new operating system, and we'll need to update Vellum for that. And then other times, like our most recent bigger release, we introduced a lot of fun new features that we were excited about. So things like text messages and written notes. And major releases like Vellum 2.0 is where we introduced the ability to create print books. So generate PDF print interior that you can upload to Amazon or Ingram Spark or wherever you print on demand. And then Vellum 3.0 sort of introduced way more styles.

Kate: Vellum 3.0. All the extras that you added were amazing. I originally downloaded it and used it on a very old Mac, and we had to upgrade the operating system to be able to use Vellum. But eventually we got to the point where it was too old, and we couldn't update it anymore. I mean, this is an old Mac. And so I didn't get to have the upgrades anymore. I've always been a PC person because again, I'm cheap and PCs are cheap. But I had to buy a Mac book so I could get the new version of it. And specifically, I was working on a special edition hardcover for a Kickstarter, and I really wanted those new features. I just love them. It was so fun. Like you said, it's fun, and it's play. And it really is. I love clicking through all the different styles and the little ways you can tweak them. It was really cool to see all the different things that you can now do and all the more ways to customize and really make a book special.

Brad: It's hard because, again, there's only two of us, and we strive to support the last 3 or 4 operating systems that Apple releases. But yeah, we do hear from some people that they're running on an ancient Mac, but it's also also really fun for when those people write us, they're like, "Oh my gosh, I just bought a new Mac book, and it's screaming fast. And I get to use all the new features, and oh, what was I missing?"

Kate: Anyone out there is still using the 2.0 version. Oh my gosh. It is worth giving Apple all your money just to upgrade to three. It really is.

Mindy: One of the things that makes Vellum so easy to use, as Brad was saying... You generate files for every platform out there off of one project within Vellum. So, when you go to produce that file, you just click your boxes and it will spit out... Here's your file for Apple. Here's Kobo. Amazon, of course. And, as you said, Brad, Amazon in particular and I'm sure Apple also, those are constantly changing. As a person that moves outside of the software world but I need to have enough operating knowledge to be able to produce my own versions of those files... It's so wonderful because Vellum just does it. It just does everything. It's so amazing to me that it's that simple on the user end when I'm sure it is incredibly complex on your end.

Brad: Yeah. There's a lot behind the scenes that goes on to make it so simple. But yeah, as you mentioned, one of the guiding tenets of when we started was we didn't just want this to be a Amazon e-book creator or a Amazon print generator kind of thing. We did want to be able to support people who are both focused on Amazon but also who went wide. Because we also think that for indie authors that decision can change over time. We hear from authors who sell mostly to Amazon, but we also hear from authors who have a huge market share in Apple or Barnes and Noble or things like that. And we wanted to make sure that Vellum could be used by all of those people. All of those authors.

But you're right, behind the scenes, there's a lot that goes on in order to make sure that these books look good where readers read them. And for instance, Amazon applies this thing called enhanced typesetting, where they sort of take the epub that Vellum generates. They apply their own stuff to it, and so we need to account for that, you know. Apple's process is a little bit more straightforward, but again, they have different rendering display issues than Barnes and Noble. So one of the things that Vellum can do from this one, as you said, from this one Vellum file... When it generates something for Barnes and Noble, and Apple, and Amazon, those things are all subtly different. So they look the same when readers read them. When they purchase them through the app and they read them through the Apple books or on a Kindle, things like that. Staying on top of that is tricky. It's not like Amazon writes us and lets us know that these things are happening. So we're constantly testing and we always appreciate when authors reach out and let us know, "Hey, like this new thing happened," and we try to get on it as soon as we can.

Kate: Have you had a Sunday night where you're just, like, chilling at home, enjoying your weekend, and suddenly you realize something big has gone wrong and you have to rush over and start programming?

Brad: There has only been one time in ten years where we actually sort of had to pull an all nighter, and it thankfully it was not related to an Amazon change. We try to think a little bit ahead. So if we think that something's going to happen, we'll try to code in options so that it makes it easy for us to switch gears. If we think that Amazon is going this direction, we'll try to prepare for that in earlier versions of Vellum so that we can say, "Okay, you're hitting this? Try this." It's actually truly a nerdy story about why we had to spend up all night. It was basically the server that we use to host purchasing actually got cyber attacked. So we had to move all of our purchasing stuff overnight so that people could actually buy Vellum. One of the things, Kate, that you mentioned is that Vellum is free to use to try to format your book. We thought that was crucially important. We're also software users, and we hate having to buy something just to figure out if it's going to work for me. And so we like making Vellum free to use to format your book. Now, yes, you have to pay when it comes to generate the final files. We have a lot of users who just use Vellum, and some people even write their books in Vellum, and you can do all of that for free. But then when people are like, "okay, I've got to publish this weekend." If they couldn't actually purchase a license to generate, that was a problem. So we had to stay up all night to fix that.

Kate: That's good. So Amazon has not yet tried to ruin your life?

Brad: Oh, well, let's not get crazy.

Mindy: We all move in those circles. I'm sure we've all been hit on the head with a club by Amazon once or twice.

Kate: So, obviously you and Brad Two are often meeting and discussing what's coming down the road and thinking about troubleshooting. But, it's got to be more fun thinking about what new features you're going to add like we talked about for the new 3.0 release and all of those fun things. Is that the fun part, and how do you decide what you're going to do? Is it reader feedback? Do you talk to Brad Two's wife?

Brad: Features are really fun, and I think both of us really enjoy doing that the most. At the same time, your idea of a feature and our idea of a feature might be slightly different. For instance, workflow. Just improving those points. We strive for it to be very easy to use, but there are still things... We're like, Oh, doing this operation takes a little bit too many clicks. Or doing it like this could be improved. And that might not be as quote unquote feature-like as, you know, adding new text messages or things like that. But there's still a satisfaction to that that we both really enjoy. Even cleaning up some code so that it's going to be faster in the future to add new features is something we both take great pride in.

We talk constantly. We think about where we want to go for the year, for over five years, things like that. And obviously we have to be super flexible because again, Amazon can come in and change our immediate plans. We talk to one another about the state of the software. And we also keep track of everyone who writes us, and we log those requests in our database. And absolutely, if we get a ton of authors requesting these features, we're like, oh, that's going to move to the top of the list. I think the thing that I struggle with the most is I would rather improve Vellum than I would work on ads. And I'm sure for authors it's the same thing. Maybe writing your first draft is the most fun or maybe editing is the most fun. Rarely do I come across an author who is like, "I love promoting my book and spending time looking at AdWords." That's important to sell your book just as it's important for Vellum to get out there. But that's the hard time. We have to balance our desire to make Vellum better versus also our desire for Vellum to be used by as many people as who want to use it.

Mindy: Yeah, that is definitely a struggle. I think Kate and I can both say that when it comes to ads period, it is just such a mind bender to try to figure out what works, what doesn't work, what is sucking the money right out of your pocket? I also despise trying to figure out ads and how to get my material in front of people so that they even know it exists because Kate moves in the indie world more than I do. But I wasn't aware that Vellum was a thing. And then Kate was like, "Oh no, this is a thing, and you need to be aware of it." And as soon as I was, as you were saying, I downloaded the free aspects and I was using it. And I was like, "okay. This is a no brainer." And I went in and I immediately bought that version and man, I was so glad I did. And continue to be. I think it's so cool that if someone emails Vellum, they're emailing you. I mean, you spoke earlier about working with Amazon because they are so far flung, and Kate and I both have also had numerous headaches working with Amazon and just being transferred to 5 to 7 different people or departments on a single phone call. So it is really cool that you yourself as an individual and then one other individual... If you've got five, ten, 18, 20 authors that reach out to you and say, "Hey, we would love to be able to put text messages formatting into our books," you know that and you don't have to go share that at a department meeting.

Brad: We don't have to lobby for that. The marketing department doesn't have to lobby. The engineering department doesn't have to... You know, doesn't have to, like, talk with the advertising department. No, we were like, "hey, text messages. It's going to be a thing, and let's just do it." And we did. There's some really, really nice things about being a small, fast company. And it's fun for us too, because there's that personal aspect we get with answering all the emails. It's both staying in touch with our authors, but also, even though most people are writing because they don't know how to do something or they have a problem, still, it's really great to like make that connection. And people are truly appreciative of the help.

Kate: I'm curious. How did you guys come up with the designs for the 3.0? Because you have so many options, and it's so clear that there was a lot of thought that went into making sure that there were choices that looked good for sci fi authors that maybe leaned a little more paranormal. Others that felt literary or classic. Do you go to the bookstore and flip through books for ideas? Or did you consult with someone?

Brad: Well, thank you for that. Yeah. Brad did basically all of the design for all of those styles. We get the inspiration in a variety of places. A lot of going to the bookstore. Going to the library. As I mentioned earlier, we're both avid readers. A lot of people ask, "Oh, are you writers?" It's like, "No, actually. We don't have pen names or secretly publishing books."

When we first released Vellum, we had sort of eight styles that we thought covered a wide range, and some that we thought were more flexible, and some that we thought were more specific genre wise. But when we released 3.0, we really spent a long time, like you said, trying to think about what genres did we want to cover. At the same time, we didn't want them to be so specific they could only be used by that genre. What we would do is we'd push a design to a certain place and then we'd sort of scale it back to make it a little bit more wide ranging. We think that book design is really, really important. It's one of the reasons why Vellum is structured the way it is. It's like we have specific designs that people can choose from. Within those designs, you can further configure. You can change your heading style. Or you can change your first paragraph style. But these are like really buttoned down designs too, because if you go too far afield from some of these things, it starts not to look good. And one of the things we want is we want Vellum books to look great. And we also want to take that design burden off of the author and put it onto us. We do a lot of research, and then we do a lot of playing in the app to scale it back so that we think it can apply not just to one specific book about a fantasy book that's about dragons, but we could pull it back to something that maybe applies more generally to fantasy or more generally to paranormal.

Kate: Professional is absolutely the word. Especially as an indie author, you really want your books to be taken seriously and not to be seen as amateur. And especially the earlier version of Vellum that I used at the beginning... I put in my manuscript, and it just gave me these books that were so clean and so professional. And that was with me really not doing a whole lot except making sure that my chapters were there and making sure I had my backmatter... Definitely toggle through the headings and things just to play with them, but it was really simple and that sort of clean design aesthetic is so important.

Mindy: Yeah, I agree. I actually had a very emotional moment with Vellum. I had written a manuscript a long time ago. I think I was in college when I started writing it. So I was maybe 20 years old, and I wrote this book that as a published author in the traditional world does not fit my brand at all. Never has. Never will. Kate had said to me, "Just publish it underneath your pen name. There's no reason not to." And I was thinking to myself, "Well, yes. She's correct. So I'm going to do that." And I had this manuscript that I had updated and rewritten and worked with for actually 20 years at that point.

And it's interesting, you were talking about upgrading your software all the time. Funny story. The characters in my manuscript were initially having big conversations, and a large part of the plot came about through a conversation over AOL Instant Messenger. That needs changed. So I had just been constantly going in and updating it - technology, slang, all the different things - for over 20 years and kept thinking maybe someday. This book. Kate said, "You really need to just self publish it under your pen name." I had been working with Kate on other things, and we had been working together using Vellum. And I had never used it for my own stuff specifically. I uploaded that book into Vellum. Chose all of my fonts and the styles. I looked at the front page and there's my title. And it has my pen name, but it says by someone kind of like you. Chapter one. And there's my first line that I wrote 20 years ago, and it was just like emotional for me because it actually got to be a book. And honestly, I would have never taken that step. I would have never done that if I didn't have Vellum, because now I have an e-book version. I have a print version. And, you know, I had it printed, and I sent my author copies to myself. And I actually was more, I think, moved by that than I have been over receiving some of my traditional books. Just because that manuscript had been set aside for so long. And to actually just be like, "You know what? All I have to do is upload this Word document, and it's a book."

Brad: I mean, that's a great story. I love that, that this thing had been sort of in the back of your mind for 20 years. We often hear that when people first look in the preview pane and see the drop cap and see the style applied, that it is emotional. It stops being a manuscript, and it becomes a book. And I'll be honest, I don't think that when we wrote Vellum, we thought that that would be the case. It was just like, Well, of course we have to have a preview. Like, how else are you going to see what it looks like? Make the editing pane the editing pane, and the preview can change according to the device or the font size. The very, very first time that people sort of like can envision it being an actual book as opposed to just an idea on the blank Word page.

Kate: I actually have a request for a tweak to the preview on my wish list.

Brad: Uh huh.

Kate: I was making a hardcover meant to be a special edition, and I really wanted to see the preview with both pages side by side. Even when you output it as a PDF, you see them stacked on top of each other. And so I actually ended up screenshotting the two separate pages and then cutting them out and pasting them into Photoshop so I could see them side by side. But before I did that I was clicking every button I could. And is there a way to do this? And I just can't figure it out. But I decided there wasn't.

Brad: So in Vellum, there is not a way to see it side by side yet. We've gotten that sug a few times. It's something we're definitely considering. It would make vellum fairly wide. There's some stuff to think about there, and you probably only want it for maybe the first page of the chapter. Who knows? Anyhow. There's a lot of stuff to think about there. However, what we usually recommend, which I think will be way easier than what you described is... We just recommend generating your PDF, and then opening it in your max preview app and going into two pages mode. And that will show it side by side.

Kate: I'm not surprised that I took the long way around to get there. Making easy things difficult.

Brad: When you don't know that it exists.

Kate: I just saw this in an ebook I was reading, and I thought it was so cool. I read The Scholomance series by Naomi Novik. It's an amazing series. It's a trilogy. It's so good. And I think it was book two that I was reading. I was noticing when I flipped to the beginning of a chapter, for the chapter header, they had some sort of design, and it would flash and change colors. And it was so cool. I think I even took a picture for my Instagram because I was like, "What is this magic? And how are they doing this?"

Brad: That's interesting. We do know that there are some times where Amazon works with authors who are selling a lot to allow a sort of a fancier version that they might not allow for just the rest of us.

Kate: This is a best selling series. So it's... Big deal.

Brad: There are things that are fairly frustrating. Uploading the epub to Amazon. They still don't support transparent images, let alone animated images. The technology has been around for years and years and years. They just don't support it through their self publisher network. So as soon as Amazon supports that kind of stuff, we're happy to jump on it. I'll dig into it. I've pulled up her books.

Mindy: So Kate has her wish list. Brad, you know, because we exchanged emails that I had been really looking for the text message exchanges, and that was introduced in 2022.

Brad: Yeah, we've gotten a lot of good response to text messages. There's been a lot of fun. It's such an important part of how we communicate these days that it just makes sense.

Mindy: And some of the things that you introduced or adapted in 2022, Kate already mentioned. The heading backgrounds. Introducing new headings for all kinds of different genres. Easier box set construction, which is actually really important to both Kate and I. Creating a box set file can make you a little bit nauseous.

Brad: Yeah.

Mindy: Custom headers and footers so that the chapter and the page number can look however the author is looking for. You can export it back out of Vellum and into Word if you would like to. So those are all the different things that you guys brought about in 2022. What are you looking for and what can people expect? New elements that you're planning on or that might be coming up?

Brad: We tend to be fairly tight lipped. You know, we don't love to give specific answers, super specific answers. Because as we mentioned earlier, things can change, and we don't want to say things are coming in April 7th and then Amazon or Apple does something and we were delayed. But one of the things that we're focused on right now, in the short term, we're focused a little bit more on workflow. Even though it's been lovely to hear that like, "Oh, it's vellum. It's so easy to use." There are a few pain points, a few things that we want to do that we think we can make even easier. So we've got a few things coming down the pipeline soon-ish that we hope will make authors, the time they spend in vellum, even more fun. Even more efficient.

Mindy: Last thing. Brad, why don't you let listeners know where they can find Vellum and download that free trial?

Brad: Thank you. You can go to vellum.pub and if you have a Mac you can download Vellum. And like we said before, you can use it totally for free until it comes time to publish your files. And at that point you purchase a Vellum license and within seconds you can generate all the files that you need to publish your ebook or print edition.

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