The Josh Bolton Show
The Josh Bolton Show
Thriving in Publishing: A Conversation with Charles on Innovation, Challenges, and Resilience
Ever wondered what it takes to thrive in the publishing world? In this episode, we sit down with Charles, a seasoned writer and publisher, to explore the ins and outs of the industry. I kick things off with a story about how a quirky movie continually grows on me, setting the stage for a fun yet insightful conversation. My own journey into podcasting began after a brush with death during the COVID-19 pandemic, which led me to pursue my passions fearlessly. Charles shares his motivations for starting his publishing company, influenced by his mother's artistic challenges and his extensive experience in writing and ghostwriting.
Charles and I delve into the complexities of the book editing and publishing industry, likening it to hiring a contractor for home renovations. We discuss the importance of effective communication and clear expectations, sharing personal anecdotes about how rigid industry norms can stifle creativity. Charles explains how his company, Book Puma, fosters innovation through transparency and personalized feedback. We also touch on the hectic nature of managing multiple projects, including Charles’s experience running 11 Jimmy John's franchises, and how this influences our business and communication strategies. A standout practice we reveal is providing audio feedback to clients to bridge information gaps and promote growth.
The episode takes an intriguing turn as we navigate the delicate terrain of controversial writing. Our concierge service supports authors through every stage of their publishing journey, whether dealing with smaller government contracts or publishing children's books. We highlight the importance of well-written, thoughtful content when tackling sensitive topics, sharing examples of both successes and rejections in the industry. The importance of feedback and growth is underscored through examples from the music industry, illustrating the subjectivity of success and the power of perseverance in the publishing world. Tune in for a vibrant and inspiring conversation that champions the value of passion and resilience in the literary landscape.
https://www.Bookpumaedit.com
https://www.Bluehandlepublishing.com
if you enjoyed the show be sure to check out my info:
https://app.wingcard.io/ROB3SA64
Hello, hello everybody, how are you all doing today? So I had a wonderful chat with Charles. We kind of just started the Zoom call and we were just chatting like old friends and I couldn't find a proper place to start the recording so I just kind of hit it halfway through him explaining this one movie. So that's where it's a little out of context for the introduction. Other than that, where it's a little out of context for the introduction, other than that we go into a lot of information really good. Um, I want to talk to him in the future about how he runs his 11 franchises franchise companies plus his publishing and editing company. Like how does he have the mindset for that? We were more just talking about, um, his publishing and editing company specifically and, uh, other than that, it's a great one. If you're especially wanting to understand things about the publishing industry, let us begin somewhat slower, but kind of funny it was.
Speaker 2:It was awesome cool I had to watch it about two, three times to get half the jokes. Like I'll sometimes put movies on in the background I'm doing work and the more I watched it, the funnier it got. But I can understand why most people were like what?
Speaker 1:is it?
Speaker 2:you either have to be kind of drunk, or so, uh, drunk or high to kind of get the jokes or just not really paying attention, like if I think if you sit there you're like all right, let's get into this movie. You're going to be like a little disappointed.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:How'd you get into podcasting?
Speaker 1:Why did I get into podcasting?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I got COVID back in 2020 when, whatever variant came out, that was actually killing people, and I was having a seizure on the floor and I was debating literally the day before with a coworker. I'm like, oh, I'm going to do a podcast. Then it's like, oh, what about Twitter, mobs and this and that? And he's like, just fucking, do it, you're small anyways, no one cares about you, they're not going to get any clout trying to kill you, and I think, so that's where. Then I had COVID on the floor seizing like a dog. So once I blacked out for like two days and in that blackout I remember saying to myself fuck this, if I'm going to be getting myself in trouble, it's for what I want.
Speaker 2:So started once I was able to move right so that's what started then.
Speaker 1:it was just easy for me to like talk to business guys. Like I found a website to message people. I'm like hey, can you get on my show? And they're like, no, this is not. But all the business guys are down totally and I just kind of talked to all of them and that's how I just grew. Now I talk to everyone.
Speaker 2:The crazy thing is, I mean people just like talking about themselves. Let's be honest.
Speaker 1:You want to talk about yourself for 40 minutes. Yes, Of course. So what inspired you to do? Your publishing company.
Speaker 2:Well, a little bit of everything. My mom, before she passed away, was digging into the arts. She was an artist, um, and then her health kind of took her ability to do art. I tried to get her to get to it. She couldn't find center. She was a painter and she had had strokes and nerve disorders and I was like, man, that might make your art even better.
Speaker 2:Come on, let's do this for the modern art trend now I wasn't thinking of it from somebody who could do things I would say easily, but like certain things came from all the work she put in, she could do it right. And then now she was struggling really hard to do something simple like how defeating that was. I was more like, hey, we can some money. Yeah, watch my mom's strugglecom, you know. And I had written two books in my 20s and um threw them in a shelf, I got in a and they just kind of floated around everywhere I moved and right before covid I had reached out to this editor guy I'd done work with for dang it, I'm sorry about this. Uh, come on, come on, there we go for an editor.
Speaker 2:I ghost wrote blogs for years and for banks and all random stuff. I'm really good at just quick write, content writing. And he really brutal. Like I mean. Mean, and I was like you know what? I got these books I'm gonna send them to ben, who's really brutal, because I trust that. Like I know he'll be honest, because a lot of times you know you're sending it out in the world. You're like I'm sure anyone will take my money. You know what I mean. He's like oh, it's great. Yeah, keep sending me more and as I started process I realized how hard it was.
Speaker 2:And I saw a couple agents who liked my writing and they told me they're like if you go to the big five, they're going to make you change the way you write. Kind of the CBS television, if you're like an indie movie producer, indie TV guy, but if you have a following from you know, movie producer, indie tv guy, like, but if you have a following from being self-published, you'll, they're not going to make you change it. And I was like what do you consider a fine? Like, honestly, you're selling like a couple thousand books a year. That's a follow-up. Like publishing is hard, like okay. So the more I looked into it I was like, well, how am I gonna do all this work? I might as well repeat it for other people. Like I like logos, I'm a big fan of logos, I can even get my book Puma hat on my editing platform. And so I created a logo, created a company, and I realized real fast that, like, if you're self-published you can't really apply for a lot of awards, but if you have a publishing company you can look.
Speaker 2:I quickly learned that just being an indie publisher, even for myself, right, and like two people, I met my first two authors this guy, andrew and Jordan and Amarillo opened up a lot of doors and what started as just kind of this small project for myself and maybe a couple of local guys in Amarillo in order to get traction for myself and maybe a couple of local guys in Amarillo in order to get traction and then I met my now vice president, madison, who moved home during COVID from New York. She worked at Workman Publishing, one of the largest publishers in New York, and then my editorial director, who works for newspapers all over the place. He's actually now doing movies. Ricky's amazing. He went from being afraid to do a video on social media to starring in Tyler like having speaking roles in Tyler Perry movies.
Speaker 2:His story is amazing. That's cool. And it just kind of became a group of us just kind of coming together and empowering each other to just make good work and kind of make mistakes together, kind of on my dime, but still, you know. And then we realized we needed more than just the publishing company, cause we're getting a lot of bad manuscripts I don't mean bad, like the story was bad. For example, I had somebody hand me a book they already self published and in the first 10 pages there was four different fonts.
Speaker 2:Like Ooh, yeah, that's not good like there's like there's bad, and then there's like lazy, bad. And then there's like did you forget to take your meds? And I don't mean it, I mean like do you have a handler like like mental health's important? And it's like did somebody tell you to stop? Like it's something like you couldn't have, like hit select all, like per your news, like nothing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, put it all aerial or whatever.
Speaker 2:And I was like man, I am tired of just getting bad work and we're finding people who just don't realize how good they are. So we created a publishing and editing company alongside of it and it's just kind of become trying to solve problems little by little by little, and we can only publish so many people. So the cool part about BookPuma is we can help hundreds, if not thousands, of people get published, whereas with Blue Handle I can only publish four to six people a year because it's expensive. We don't take money at Blue Handle. I invest. So I'll spend 50 to to 100 grand a year investing in authors. Um to whether it's marketing, editing, you just salaries of our employees, and if I make half that back, you know where.
Speaker 2:Book puma helps us kind of keep the lights on, but also helps us kind of reinvest into a lot of authors. We actually had a couple of different people recently do some social media lives. We're like, when you told me what, how affordable it was, I was like how bad's the editing going to be? It's like it's not. We're just, we're trying to make it affordable and not like, you know, take your shirt off your back. We're trying to make, we're trying to make. We're trying to make it more communal based, but it's a better way of, you know, figure, you know, pulling it off. So and that's kind of how we got into it. It's just kind of been one project after another that's cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to say editing, because I've been working on my different stories and I've had a couple other editors on the lowest I've seen for pricing per word is like 4 cents and I'm like that sounds cheap, but that's brutal and some of them are saying like 6 or 8 cents a word.
Speaker 2:I have thousands on my books. My first 6 books, I think I spent like 20-30 thousand dollars on editing. We have monthly memberships at Book Puma as low as 40 bucks. Someone's like what I'm like yeah, we can turn in a couple pages at a time. We have monthly memberships at Book Puma as low as 40 bucks. Someone's like what I'm like yeah, we can turn in a couple pages at a time, because a lot of times you get bad habits in the beginning and you don't realize it's a bad habit and then now you have to fix that.
Speaker 2:Had you caught it in the first 10, 20 pages, you wouldn't have done it the next 200. You know what I mean. So our theory behind that is is well, imagine you could just get a few pages like that. Imagine you could get on the phone with somebody and just get a little bit of coaching so that you can minimize the damage along the way and have somebody like to work with. And more and more people are like, oh, this is a real thing, it is, it's not a scam. I swear I know there's so many out there which is I. I got I wouldn't say scammed, because that's how the industry is I just it's brutal. I always.
Speaker 2:The best way to describe it is it's like hiring a contractor to redo your bathroom. They come over and then they give you the plans and they mark everything off. And then they leave and they charge you and you're like well, I paid, I paid you for everything, like, but it's your bathroom, don't you want to fix it? And you're like but you're the expert, I gave you the money, right, it's like. I was like. I remember one of the first big like editing jobs we did. I told the editor I was like hey, man, you need to do one rough version, right, that has just all the edits, and then you're going to need to do a clean version where you fix all the edits. They're like no, that's like. Yeah, they're like do you know how hard that is? And I said yes, I know exactly how hard that is.
Speaker 2:It's a pain in the butt and not every person who gets into writing knows how to do that number one or wants to do that, knows how to do that number one or wants to do that right. And this lady quit. She quit over it. This is stupid. Two months later we get a call. She goes. I called my last 10 clients. Every single one wanted me to do that. I am so sorry it was. I was like, yeah, they're so used to being like well, this is what we always do. This is what we always do. And I used to have this like chat on my Slack channel with my editorial director, ricky, and it was the question was always is this a real thing, or did Ms Anderson tell you in the seventh grade you have to do this? He's like and he used to kind of get mad at me and over time he's like I'm starting to realize how much stuff we do, cause miss Anderson in the seventh grade told us we had to do it.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of where boom and blue handle came from. I mean, I've got my own books out. I've got four in the Neo Baggio series, one in Marie Perdita, which is a spinoff from Neil Baggio, one, golden Day, which is a really good graduation book like relationships and stuff, kind of college, and then I've got three books I'm working on right now. On top of I run 11 Jimmy John's franchises that I own two kids.
Speaker 1:I actually have a baseball practice. I don't sleep much I was going to say how are you sleeping?
Speaker 2:I just kind of black out on occasion. No, I mean I just go until the battery gives up and then I start all over again. It's kind of how it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's wild. So for um, what are the? Have you gotten a lot of good books like potentials for your company from the editing?
Speaker 2:yeah, we actually got three of our current books that are coming out, uh, the beginning of 2025. Um, we're all book to my clients um that we found early and offer like.
Speaker 2:One person told me like, oh, you're just doing this, you can turn people away and give them editing. I was like, oh, it's the app. I was like it allows me to cherry pick good people before they realize you're good. She's like that's rude. It's like I don't mean in a rude way, I mean like we get a lot of manuscripts sent to us. So I mean, usually we tell them this is what I can offer, feel free. And I'm like I don't want to resist anyone's ability to grow. I just don't Right, I, I we're up front with what we offer, what we can do for them, and if this works for them and that's what they want, because they like how we are and how we communicate them, cool. But if not, hey man, we'll help you any way that we can. And usually just the honesty is what most people love. It's because even at work the right, my restaurants I just had somebody reach out for an application. I was like on monday I can't guarantee a spot will be available, but you can reach out on sunday. And I was like I'm not gonna, you know, not tell you otherwise. I was like plus, this is how I feel about someone with your history. I was like you know, just, we like to communicate clearly, we like to up front, we like to be kind of honest right out the gate. And they were like well, no, even if I don't get the job, I still want to sit down and talk to you. That's really refreshing. Thank you, you're welcome. That's just kind of how we try to approach everything is.
Speaker 2:One of my favorite phrases is fill the void with information, not someone's imagination and previous experience. You don't know where they came from, what they know, what they don't know. So don't just assume, take a time and just communicate. And that's one of the cool things we do at Book Puma. That most editors don't do, at least I've seen, is when we send back a project, we do an audio note. So the editor will reread the whole cover sheet in audio format and send it with the project.
Speaker 2:The reason being is a lot of us internalize feedback negative, right, so you may read you're struggling with commas, see this all the time. Uh, you've got to get past it. But the editor might read hey, man, you're struggling with commas, you'll get past it, we see this all the time. But the editor might read hey, man, you're struggling with commas, you'll get past it. We see this all the time. There's a huge difference, right, so you may internalize it as you suck. But if the editor is telling you in this really calm, reassuring tone, now all of a sudden you're like, oh okay, I'll get past it then and those little things that maybe take an extra five to 10 minutes for the editor make, I think, all the difference in the world for the person receiving that feedback.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Yeah, it's a big one, as I've like. I had an editor for a while for my podcast and at certain points she started doing the same thing, cause she would send me a critique saying this is absolutely terrible, like why did you do it? And I didn't hear her tone. So I'm thinking, gee, this lady's a bitch and she sent me a voice.
Speaker 2:Could have been laughing the whole time. Right like right yeah, no she was. This is terrible.
Speaker 1:What do you think you're doing?
Speaker 2:yeah, but we hear it is like you're horrible, you should, you should quit now. All right, I'll stop, like I'll do it, and that's kind of why we were trying to. We're trying to break down those, those, those walls. Like even the guy we did our one of our books for last year, ray franz the heights he's the I always mess this up he's the great nephew of al capone's right hand man. So the guy who no one knew essentially ran Al Capone's whole operation. He was like hidden from the world and Al Capone did this on purpose, so that if anything ever happened to Al Capone or somebody, all the businesses would still run and most of the families would be taken care of because no one knew who this guy was. So this guy, ray, has access to all this family history and decided to write this awesome book. Um, but he had, he had to fictionalize it for safety reasons and so he wrote it and we were the only publisher who said it's not done like you ended it, but I feel like you stopped it like five chapters short.
Speaker 1:When it got good.
Speaker 2:He's like well, it's really long and we're like our job is to. I was like, keep writing. If it's super long, we'll turn it into two books. You know, whatever We'll figure it out. So we invested a year, almost a year. It's like nine months of editing and coaching, of helping him finish the book before we even, like, got into the re-editing of the book. It almost became a two year process and remember, he's like that's the reason he had offers from bigger publishers but he's like none of them were going to work with me. They just wanted to slap my name on a book and sell it. He's like I just didn't want to risk my story not being told properly I guess well, that's a big one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a big one for one of my friends there you go.
Speaker 1:I'll see, because one of my friends did that. She she does a hybrid, so she self-publishes a good chunk of her books, but she has contracts with two of the big fives. It took her a while to get there and that's where she said they just literally expect you to pay for everything up front. And then they're like and you have to market everything too. They don't really other than putting you on their little email newsletter. You have to figure out how to get the books to sell.
Speaker 2:Even the big five. I got to meet jt ellison a few times. She's become good friends with ricky and uh, it was one of the big things I took away the first time I met her. She's like I took my first big check, my book deal and bought a pr company, spent every dollar on marketing and she's like without it I wouldn't have gotten a second book deal. And it's like people don't realize how little most publishers do for you other than distribute. They're just distribution companies. That's all they are. That is it. They don't. They're looking for ready-made products, not only books. They're looking for people who know how to market, who know how to function. Like who already have an income or they have like the world's most amazing story you know what I mean like they're already going viral.
Speaker 2:Otherwise they're like they won't touch you in the 10-foot pole and that's the hard part, yeah, so uh, what I was going to say was um, a lot of the people don't realize the amount of money that goes into and how much, how many books just don't sell, right. So for, like every bestseller you see out there, which most a bestseller is 10 000 copies a week for four weeks. That's what a bestseller is. So, and even that, you can do that and still not be a bestseller. There's lots of books that sell tons of books but don't make the bestseller list because they're not with the right publisher, they don't fit into a certain genre they don't like. So the New York times bestselling list is actually a very like closed off list. It's all make-believe. It's like USA today has their own. That's why you know you can sell a million books on Amazon and not make the best selling.
Speaker 1:It's a weird, it's a really weird thing.
Speaker 2:Yes, now, that being said, the average book is sells less than 100 copies a year average. This is a legit thing. They do these numbers every couple of years. They double check, for For every million dollar seller million books, you have thousands of authors that sell less than 10 copies a year. That's the realist. That's them, including the big five. They will. They will sign author after author after author that will literally die like their. They will, like their book will just sit on a shelf for two months and then end up in a warehouse and never get sold. Yeah, right, it's always better to self-publish or find an indie, because then at least you have some control. Right, like right. If it takes you five years, it takes you five years. I mean, malcolm gladwell talks about it took him like six years to get turning point off the ground. He literally like went around the country talking about it non-stop until it finally took off, like it wasn't an overnight success, like yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:So I'm curious for you, for your publishing company are there any specifics or genres that you're looking for, Any topics that may be off the table because it's just too controversial?
Speaker 2:I would say controversial topics are because I'm the one investing money, right. So, like, we'll work with you, like through Bookuma, which we've had a couple of come to us that are pretty controversial I'm like not touching that with a 10-foot pole but we were able to work with them, get them the right services they need through our Bookuma platform. We do like a concierge service where it's not hybrid, where we own it. We literally will do everything for you, almost like if you've ever hired a web developer, where they'll create like a generic email address that you share on Google. Like you know Chad and Brad's podcast, add Gmail. You know what I mean. Like and then we'll create everything. We'll literally go into an Amazon account. We'll create everything. We'll share it with you and get you on Amazon, get you an IngramSpark account, get you an ISBN, get you everywhere you need to be. We'll get it all taken care of. And when we're working with controversial people, um, we have this concierge, not just with any, but with any person. We have a concierge service, but we will work with them and we will set everything up so that they will access themselves and then, once we're done, they we can wash our hands of it like here's, here's your logins, here's everything.
Speaker 2:Now we actually have two government like smaller government contracts that we're working with, like one's like a vfw, like a small military um guy. Him and his buddies put together this book and they wanted us to help us, like keep tabs on it. So like every month they keep us on this like small stipend. I think we're charging 20 a month like it's not much. You just keep tabs on it, make sure there's no issues. Like it's literally I even feel bad charging 20 a month. They're like we gotta, we gotta charge you something. You I'm like okay, so we go in, make selling. It's on all the platforms. We answer emails from Ingram or Amazon, you know like hey, your book has an error in this corner, that kind of stuff, right.
Speaker 2:And so we have those kind of services that we originally weren't trying to do but so many people have asked for them. We just started doing it. Fair enough, and that has been kind of one of my more favorite ones because it's just kind of been organic. We actually kept fighting it and not wanting to do it, but so many people kept asking for it, we were like all right, I guess we're going to do it, and so if you, let's say, you're self-published or you want to be self-published but you're like I don't even know where to start, we could literally sit down with you and go all right, here's the list of things to do. If you're really busy and you're like I don't have time to write and I can work on this, I don't have time for this stuff, cool, we can do this for you and we can go, because we know what to do.
Speaker 2:20 minutes, not three hours, right right and it allows us to just kind of and we're not putting somebody at 60 dollars and putting somebody at 10 bucks. We're not charging you you know absurd amount of money to knock this stuff out. We'll set it up for you, you know, walk you through how to maintain it. And then again, because book puma, we have these monthly memberships. We can just keep someone in the platform. So if they have a question that called me, I came, came in, can you help me with this? Yeah, what do you need? And it just becomes again. It's like having a buddy. We came in, can you help me with this? Yeah, what do you need? As opposed to being this like earth shattering cost. And that's the biggest thing we've been trying to do when year, because they're kind of a pain to publish, but it's gotten a little better.
Speaker 2:The problem with children's books is everybody's got an idea for a children's book but they're never executed. It's like I got this idea. It's like, well, do you have art, do you have this? Well, no, then you have an idea, you don't have a book. So we tried to stay away from those and, honestly, the only issue I run into is a lot of them aren't written.
Speaker 2:If it was written well, I'd be more open to it. So it's like sometimes I feel like the idea is controversial but the writing is crap. Like yeah, or it's a there's no depth to it, right, it's just anger. We had like one story some guy sent us that was like Like right, yeah, or it's a there's no depth to it, right, it's just anger. We had like one story that some guy sent us that was like essentially just talking about how the world was better when women were in their place, and it was that it was a story, but there was essentially the whole, the whole theme, and it was like, okay, so what was the girl's name that broke up with you? Like, oh my God.
Speaker 1:And it was only like 30,000 words.
Speaker 2:It was like a short story, essentially, yeah, and it was like and we kept saying what's the plot of the story Like? He's like you don't understand. He kept saying you don't, there's no plot. The main character is just mad. It's the plot. He's like no, that's motivation, that's not a plot, right? So the only downside I would say to a lot of the controversial stuff is that a lot of them lack depth. I feel like if you have more depth understanding and, you know, thought out stuff, you may have a controversial idea or two and the topic may be controversial, right, like dan brown, when he came out was, quote-unquote, controversial. But in the thick of things, when you read the book, the book itself wasn't controversial. Right, there was a few themes that were controversial it became controversial because of a couple of topics in the book.
Speaker 2:Right, the book itself wasn't that controversial, right? So, like, see what I'm saying. Like, so in that aspect, yes, now, if somebody were to just be like, you know, like jesus got kids, they're okay. But what's the idea behind it? Okay, but what's the? You know what I mean. Like you got to figure it out. So I'm not against anything I will say no to. I've never said no to anything that's well written. I would at least read it. But the problem is most of them kind of struggle.
Speaker 2:I mean, technically, black bear lake, which is a really good uh seller of ours, uh, by an award-winning playwright. It technically is a story about two cousins that kind of fall for each other in the summer, like over a summer, and you know, know, explore more than they should, and it's kind of based on a true story. That's kind of, I mean, that's pretty controversial in the grand scheme of things. I mean now it's not saying, oh, you go, go explore yourself with your cousin, but you know, so we're not like, oh, everything's got to be CVS vanilla. If the writing is done well, I'll let things slide.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's good. Yeah, because I'm gonna say one of my friends he's working on a story and there's a lot he does a lot of, um, political divisiveness you're making like one villain looks like they're doing this and our villain's doing this. When I think I told my dude, people don't think that complex, they're going to think you're being divisive with feminism and divisive with Christianity.
Speaker 2:He does intertwine it If it's done well, though if the writing is done well, you should upset some people, but that's okay. West Wing is one of my favorite shows. People used to call Aaron Sork aaron sorkin. You know the biggest left wing nut job if you go back and watch that show. He constantly poked fun at his own party all the time, but because he bloviated against the right a decent amount, nobody even noticed. So it's like people have a tendency to only see what they want to see. You know what I mean right that's why I said so.
Speaker 2:If the writing's done well, you can make any, you know. I mean, you can make anything work okay, cool.
Speaker 1:I was saying we're starting to get up on the uh, the limit for the zoom call, and it looks like you got other stuff to do. Is there anything specific you want to talk about or share with the people?
Speaker 2:I would say, when it comes to writing, just be upfront with yourself and honest and realize everything you will write today will feel like crap tomorrow, because you get better with reps. In anything you do. Every author's favorite book is the last thing they wrote. Every page they wrote today is crap compared to the one they're going to write in 10 years. Reps do make you better. So, that being said, do not fall in love with what you wrote today. Be open to the idea that you wrote something amazing, but it's going to take some work to make it better.
Speaker 2:I've gone through it. Every writer's gone through it and know that if you want a 90,000 word story, you're's going to take some work to make it better. I've gone through it. Every writer's gone through it and know that if you want a 90,000 word story, you're probably going to have to write 120 and you're going to have to edit it down to 85 and then fill it back up to nine. Like it's going to take some work. Um, to think that it's not, then you're not ready, which is okay. And then I always try to tell people that's okay, it's okay to not be ready, it's okay to struggle.
Speaker 2:I used to always say I get mad, then I get mad, then I get mad and then I fix it. I'm not so angry at the world. At one point I created my own publishing company. I was like I'm not going to just be self-published, I'm going to take work. That not everyone's going to see what you see, which is okay. Some people hate the Beatles, some people hated Aerosmith, some people, so somehow everyone hated Nickelback, yet they made millions. You know, people still talk smack about Hootie and the Blowfish, yet they sold 22 million albums in like 18 months. You know, so somebody bought it. You know, at the end of the day it's going to take work. There's going to take some feedback, but you'll get better because of it. If you're looking for really good feedback, affordable feedback, reach out to book puma. If you think you're ready, reach out the blue handle. We're here for you. If you're looking for a good read, perfect, look up charles domico. I've got plenty of books out.
Speaker 1:Alright, definitely will. Thank you. This has been really good and informative.