This month, Janet joins JP and Crys for another book club, this time reading Wide for the Win by Mark Leslie Lefebvre. They discuss hot takes, useful advice, and how they will incorporate this book’s lessons into their publishing process.
Show Notes
Wide for the Win by Mark Leslie Lefebvre
JP’s new podcast: The Serial Fiction Show
You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Story by Howard Houston
Kristine Kathryn Rusch Kickstarter
How to Write Manga Your Complete Guide to the Secrets of Japanese Comic Book Storytelling by RA Patterson
Transcript
JP: Hello friends. This is episode number 52 of the Write Away Podcast, and it is the 14th of July as we are recording. I’m JP Rindfleisch with my cohost,
Crys: Crys Cain and…
Janet: Janet Kitto, I’m just hear as an extra.
JP: You’re here because of book club. That’s why you’re here.
Janet: That’s why I’m here.
JP: Yeah.
Crys: It’s the summer. And everybody has been dropping like flies.
So it is the extra awesome trio this week.
JP: Indeed.
Crys: We are discussing a Wide for the Win by Mark Leslie Lefebvre. But before we get into that, JP has some exciting news.
JP: I do. Guess what? I started another podcast.
Crys: It’s addictive.
JP: It’s a problem. Yeah. So serialfictionshow.com.
We have two podcasts that play in tandem together. We have the Reader Serial Fiction Show and the Writers Serial Fiction Show, and we are showcasing serials from Kindle Vella. So reader serial fiction show, we play a tidbit of the first episode, and then we interview the author. And then in the writer serial fiction show, we interview them a little bit more to get into the craft.
I highly recommend that you check those out cause I’m in there and you can hear me more.
All right.
Crys: Yeah. Wide for the Win.
JP: What are your initial thoughts, Crys? You’ve never gone first.
Janet: That’s right. You should go first.
Crys: Oh, cause I’m always leading.
There’s a reason for that and it’s mostly just because I’m very loud and opinionated. So I immediately of course connect this with You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Story, very similar topics, talks about mindset, talks about how you look at publishing. But whereas You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Story looked at it from a media, like television movie point of view, more than anything, because that’s where the creator started, Mark looks at things from a book publisher point of view to start.
JP: I totally agree with that. For me, it was a little harder to get into because there was a lot of mindset in part one.
And I think because I surround myself with a lot of people who are talking about going wide, it was to me repetitive. But I feel like for someone who may be questioning whether or not to go wide, that may be useful. But definitely once we started getting into part two, I was just tearing through it.
Janet: And I was really excited to read this book because knowing Mark Leslie Lefebvre and his take on libraries, I really wanted to get deep into the library strategy. And he really laid out a lot of things that I hadn’t thought about before. So, just not even thinking about getting my books in the library but getting to know the different roles of the librarians, and what I need to know about my community, and even the setting of books that I’m writing, the location and setting, just knowing that I should be approaching those libraries. Cause not every library system is going to be the same. And yeah, I really loved the in-depth take that he has on the libraries.
Crys: I was really interested to see at the very back of the book that there’s a reference to a book he has written specifically on libraries. So I’ll be picking that up.
Going back to my comparison between You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Story and Wide for the Win, I think that all nonfiction books are written to answer a specific problem. And You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Story is written to address the issue of one and done films that don’t go deep, that don’t leverage the opportunity that they have to create big worlds, that they can tell multiple stories and inquiry franchises. And I think they did note that not every story has to be a franchise, but that franchises are a very strong way to go.
And what the problem that Mark is addressing is the feeling that many independent authors have that they need to be exclusive in Amazon to succeed. He is saying that is not true.
JP: Yeah. So I want to get into this more to see what you guys do currently, and if this book has changed any of the approaches that you make. But one thing that I kinda like him talking about is like, I don’t know if you’d call it a flip-flopping approach, but how detrimental that can be if you go in and out of using a KDP. And how you can lose an audience in that method.
I just found that, like, I sort of knew it, but it was a good reiteration there to be like, once you pick wide, it’s really hard going back into that KDP.
Crys: I found authors who’ve done that, and the problem I’ve seen is not so much– so this is the difference though, like a beginning author, who’s trying to build up their business will run a larger risk of losing trust because they haven’t built trust between the flip-flop. But particularly, I have known successful authors who have been like, well, I’m going to try the wide thing and see what it does. And they’ve moved a series wide for a little bit and then freaked out because of the immediate loss of income they face. And said, this is not worth it for me. I don’t care if in the long run wide might be more important for me. The choice that they have made is that the immediate income is more important. And I flip flop on when immediate income is more important and when long-term is more important all the time, because cash in hand, pretty powerful.
You can leverage that to make more money pretty quickly. But there is that leaving your day job and going full-time writing, if that’s your goal, there’s a really awkward phase where it’s not going to do well because you’re starting something new. And you have to know whether the eventual long-term payoff that you’re building towards is worth more than the immediate income right now. Sometimes it’s not, that this is absolutely on a case-by-case basis.
Janet: Well, and something else that he addressed too, was our loyalty. Like that the retailers, the distributors, like they’re paying attention to every time we’re going in and out. And so you’re going to be offered better deals when you show your loyalty, basically,
Crys: I get grumpy anytime someone started talking about loyalty to a corporation, and granted in Mark’s viewpoint, it’s he still looks at a lot of the distributors and the other storefronts as kind of like small communities because they have been for so long. But you have to also remember that the people that you have relationships with work for a company, they don’t work for themselves. And you might have a great relationship with a representative, but they may not have their job for forever. And that’s not going to count for much when the corporation is then in charge. So I think you still need to look out for number one, whatever.
Yeah. I’m still like, not for flip-flopping, but I also just want to caution anyone against loyalty to corporations. Anti-capitalism over here from the person who makes all their money via capitalism.
JP: I really liked that he brought up some examples, including Lindsay Broker, who her primary mode, I guess, would be that she has a Patreon in which she offers her eBooks for a wider audience that isn’t in KU for a short period of time.
And then she goes into KU and that shows an example of someone who is successful in doing this method. And I think that that is the mindset that I really liked getting out of this book, because it almost makes the concept of wide and KDP less of a black and white and more of a, there is a myriad of options. And when you find the right option for you, it will work for you. because Lindsay Broker is theoretically, not even theoretically, she is wide using Patreon to reach those wider people, but then she is drilling into her KU to reap the benefits there.
Crys: If you want to point out however, to anyone who’s like, oh, I want to do that too. Lindsey was wide first before there was KU. She was out there before there was KU. So she had an existing audience that she did not want to upset when she decided to start experimenting and launching into KU. Which is how her Patreon came to be. If you wanted to follow along in these footsteps, you would have to build up the audience wide first before you launch into exclusivity with Amazon and lean on other methods for your fans to get your books.
JP: Yeah, I mean it’s basically, if you want to go with the whole fishing for, I don’t know, whatever the whole fishing analogy is, KU and KDP and going wide are not even like two different parts of an ocean, they’re just two separate oceans of their own. And so you’re not going to get that cross through that you think that you would get, at least that’s how I understand it.
And so you almost have to view like, if you are going to put things over here, you are basically starting from zero in gaining audience over here, and you have to reconcile with that and figure out what your pain point is and when you are willing to stick with it or go back to the other mode.
Crys: One of the patterns that I really appreciated that he brought up and that I’ve only known one person who’s done this, and I had lost contact with them so I don’t know what their current status is in publishing, but they launched wide first. I think they might’ve only launched on Kobo first. And this was Mark’s reasoning on that, instead of launching into KDP Select, which a lot of people do, and then moving wide, they launched into Kobo or a different wide platform, which is one of the smaller buckets. And you’re not going to earn a bunch there. But they learned how to launch wide. They built up a wide mentality before they got sucked into like the Amazon churn. And then once they have several books out, a whole series out, then they utilize everything they learned launching into these smaller buckets to quick release on Amazon and take advantage of all the knowledge that they’ve gathered and the algorithms on Amazon side, which I think is a great idea.
And I think a lot of people decide not to do that because they’re hoping to get that easy, quick, early money from doing KDP. Which is not guaranteed.
JP: Right.
Janet: So how about the other things that he talks about that I hadn’t even considered that, you know, if you have a small goal with a Kickstarter plan, you can just set it for a hundred dollars. And I love the reference that he puts in there about most books won’t even earn that on these platforms. And so this is just a way to see that earned on Kickstarter. And then you’re connecting with these readers that aren’t just there to read your books, they actually feel like they helped you make that happen. And I feel like that’s kind of an audience that we should be thinking about going wide as well.
Crys: Yeah. I’m super pro Kickstarter. I support a fair few number of projects that are book related every year. And I think that even though Kickstarter is very much like, we are not a retailer, we’re not a retailer. I think that authors can utilize them as a retailer. The person that I would look at most closely for how they do their Kickstarters is Kristine Kathryn Rusch in general, for like kind of the retailer viewpoint. But then there’s another author who is only an author, not a writing teacher as well because Kristine Kathryn Rusch and her husband find opportunities for some of their writing classes in with their fiction Kickstarters.
M.C.A. Hogarth, I believe has been doing Kickstarters for a really long time. Started really small, and now will do a few thousand on each Kickstarter and has been slowly building up a community over there, a fanbase over there, and then goes through the normal launch process with their books. And has those communities and those people that they speak to in a different way. I love that process. I love that idea.
JP: Yeah. I think this book definitely showed me like multiple ways in which I can reach an audience, some of which I hadn’t thought before. And now of course, Crys, you and I have talked about Kickstarter. And basically the whole route I believe that I want to take my writing is to basically be as close as I can be to the reader, to be that personable face that they can reach out to and chat with. And I mean, maybe that’s some crazy pie in the sky dream, but I think that things like Kickstarter and things where people feel empowered in their own right, helping you and lifting you up as kind of a way that I would like to take my fiction.
Crys: Yeah, I definitely personally got a lot more use out of the second half of the book, which is really just a reference and more detailed, like how you do things. That I found more useful for me than the first half, but that’s partly because I’ve been listening to Mark for years. I’ve been listening to Joanna Penn for years. I’ve been listening to Christine Catherine Rush for years. And they’re a community that all believe very similar things about publishing wide and the reasons of doing so. So all of that was very familiar to me. But Mark has a wide breadth of knowledge that he laid out in far more detail in the second half than the first. I’ve been in this community and absorbing this information for years. The second half of these, how tos of things that I have not yet attempted, super exciting.
Janet: Yeah. The more than just books section, what caught my attention was he was talking about food and beverages, and I’m a huge mug cake consumer. So the idea of selling mugs with my logo on them, including ideas for mug cakes, and I am quicker than that microwave can heat my next treat.
I was often thinking about all these ideas that I could serve up at a book club discussion and have my branded merch. So, I mean, they’re not just all recycled ideas that he has in here. Like, I really love the idea of food and beverages, thinking about that to go with my books.
JP: Side note, Janet is very dangerous to talk to in the morning because she convinces you to make mug cakes for breakfast.
Janet: You can make them healthy.
JP: You can. Did I make them healthy? Absolutely not.
Crys: I was like, I make scrambled egg mug cakes, but like vegans can’t do that. I’m pretty sure a fake egg omelet in a cup would be terrible.
JP: That would be, there were no fake eggs.
Crys: Anything else that comes to mind specifically that jumped out.
Janet: How about like all the different affiliate programs. Everyone talks about the Amazon Affiliate Program. Like all the other retailers have them as well.
Crys: Yeah. I know. I have joined all of them at one point or another. And the only one that I’m currently using as well as Amazon is Google Play. I know that somewhere out there I have an Apple and I have a, I don’t know if it’s said, Rakuten or how that’s said, but the company behind Kobo, I have those. They’re very difficult to figure out how to use and were especially difficult to figure out how to use before Books2Read, which is part of Draft2Digital, who Mark currently works for, implemented being able to put your little tag in there. And then they will do the links for you. So as I’ve started, I just moved an entire series wide. And so I’ve started plugging those in and it has made Books2Read the only viable option for me to use as links to my books at this point, because I just can’t fathom trying to gather all those links up and figure out a non-ugly way of sharing my links to all the storefronts.
I don’t know if she uses affiliates, but I know that Rachel Amphlets, and the link will be in the show notes for her, and I talk about her a lot because she’s so smart. I love what she does. She has a custom website where she has a lot of links to all her books. You can direct buy from her on her site and she has a very slick site that shows you like all the places you can buy her books. And I know that that cost a pretty penny to put it together. And I am not yet at that point where I want to spend that much money to do it individually. So if you take one thing away from this podcast, other than publishing wide is viable, Books2Read is one of your best tools as an indie author who is going wide.
JP: Yeah, I definitely found the resource section to both be a lot, but also something I will be going back to a lot,, because I feel like you can get a solid launch plan with that at hand and then decide what sort of things can go at the side table, especially when it comes to like print options. Because we are still strongly considering doing KDP first and then see how that goes because of the genre that we’re in.
It’s just very successful in KDP. So we don’t want to lose out on that opportunity and we both feel like doing that smaller thing first, and then determining whether or not we want to go wide is viable for our launch plan, but looking at all these resources, like I can review these and I can look at them and determine whether or not when we go wide or if we go wide, kind of the process, the mode at which I’m going to do each one.
Crys: Yeah, for sure.
Janet: Yeah. He throws in a quote here that I feel is a Canadian thing. So I’ll just put it out there. Cause I’m Canadian. “Your absence from other platforms will guarantee a hundred percent of the time your lack of success on those platforms.” And this is very similar to what Wayne Gretzky, a Canadian hockey player has said, “you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don’t take.” So I think everyone should know who Wayne Gretzky is. He was named the greatest hockey player of all time. And I’m not even a hockey person, even though I’m Canadian. I know who Wayne Gretzky is.
Crys: Same. And this is like writing tangential.
That there’s a note, JP gave me his manuscript. So I’m very excited and there’s a note that I made, he hasn’t seen it yet I don’t think about a specific something. And I’m like, will Gen Z have as strong a memory of what this is as we do. And it’s just one of those things, when you said Wayne Gretzky, I’m like, yeah, absolutely.
But does Gen Z know Wayne Gretzky. I wonder. And this is because I’m obsessed with TikTok probably, and I’m always thinking about Gen Z because they’re fascinating to me. So that’s something to think about as the younger generation is coming up, we have all of these cultural touchpoints that we know. And this is a complete side trail from the main topic, but is it important that our references, first of all, are understood by the generation following us? Is that important? If not, no worry. And if it is, particularly if you’re writing YA, then what teaching do you have to put around it so that they do understand the concept? Or do you just have to find a different concept? Anyways.
Janet: I found a different platform. Like I never heard of Eden books before, and this is mentioned in Wide for the Win, and authors that have stories within romance and women’s fiction, if they want to be on another platform that covers all genders, races, ages, sexual orientation, that was another lesson for me from the book.
Crys: I would say, I don’t think Mark ever said this, but I would say join every platform you can. When you have the brain space. Especially new ones, just to see if they play out. And because a lot of times you get grandfathered in to original, super beneficial pricing. I say this because I joined publish drive very early on when it was like the other distributors that only took a percentage of sales. They moved to a subscription model, but those of us who joined originally and had books that floated got grandfathered into the old model, which means that I don’t have to pay 10, 20, 30, $50 a month to have my book there.
And granted I’ve only made like $50 from that platform in its lifetime, but I got a nice dinner from that platform. And I’ve talked with author friends who are like, oh, darn I didn’t jump on that, and so I missed out on getting grandfathered in. And I did the same thing with Patreon. I didn’t jump in and get an account before Patreon raised their fee structure. But if you were before, you got grandfathered in.
I think that it’s really useful to pay attention to the new things that are coming on the scene, because you never know which one’s going to play out. And it’s nice to have like 2% of an understanding of what’s going on there and the opportunity to be grandfathered in to older, better terms.
Janet: Yes, kids. Be early, be an early adopter.
JP: Early bird gets the worm.
I also liked that he mentioned, I think it was Draft2Digital print. Is that right? Is that the one he was talking about?
Crys: It wasn’t beta. I think it’s live now, but I’m not a hundred percent sure on that.
JP: I just liked that he’s talking about things that are yet to come and still he can only talk about it so much. But just to kind of like sprinkle in those little seeds of things that we as authors can start to look up and potentially join.
Crys: I’m like, is it available now? I don’t know. I think it is available for the print. Anyways, regardless I could be wrong cause I don’t use it. And another thing as you’re adopting a wide mindset, is to remember that you don’t have to just limit yourself to one way of doing something. Granted, like our first time was like, yeah, publish on all of the platforms, all the distributors with your eBooks, but that also means for your print books. So if you’re going to do print books, you can list it on KDP print for your Amazon sales, but also IngramSpark separately so that it will go to other retail options.
I wouldn’t do just IngramSpark because when you do that, you lose a large percentage of your Amazon income. Whereas if you used KDP print, it would come from Amazon, but that’s my personal preference. That’s one of those few things where I think that the extra time to figure out and upload in two places is super worth it.
I do a similar thing with my audio. I will have it direct on ACX and if it’s a wide book, I will then upload it to Findaway Voices rather than have Findaway Voices manage everything. Because that small percent that I lose, it’s like 5%, is actually really worth it to me because most of the income comes from ACX. So I’d rather have that 5% from them.
JP: This is a dumb newbie author question, but I think I saw it in here in this text, which is why I’m bringing it up. But one of those services offers you a free ISBM, correct?
Crys: Like for print, audio?
JP: For print.
Crys: KDP offers you a free ISBN only for the version you publish with them.
So if you are also publishing on IngramSpark, you need an ISBN there. So if you are going to use the same formatted book for both locations and you are going to do both, you might as well purchase the ISBN or pack of ISBNs, and use it for both books so that you don’t have confusion on the retail sites in having two ISBNs for the same item.
JP: I found it, and it’s part of this whole beta for Draft2Digital print is that they also offer the free ISBN.
Crys: That is only for the Draft2Digital version.
JP: Boo. Okay. That was my question. Thank you.
Crys: Yep. Because when you do that, the way that the ISBNs work is whoever buys them, put themselves as the publisher.
So when Amazon KDP or Draft2Digital gives you an ISBN, they are the publisher. When you post it up on IngramSpark, you can’t say that they’re the publisher because they don’t have anything to do with it. You are the publisher. So that’s kind of the benefit you’re giving them by not paying for an ISBN.
JP: Gotcha. Thank you.
Crys: And we Americans have to pay out the wazoo. I believe Canadians can get free ISBNs. Can you confirm if that is true?
Janet: Yeah, that’s true.
Crys: As do I believe people in the UK.
JP: I’m like so close to the border. Not really, but I could pretend I’m so close to the border. I’m almost Canadian.
Crys: I have researched or attempted to research how to get ISBNs in Costa Rica, because it would be either infinitely cheaper or free, but it’s also so convoluted because you have to go in person to apply for them. Maybe not this year, maybe they figured out a different way, but I just decided that was too much. And I have not yet done it. Maybe I should research again. Maybe things are different now. Thanks COVID.
Janet: Just move here and then you can get the public lending rates too.
Crys: That’s true. You don’t get public lending rates.
Janet: But I don’t get Vella.
Crys: But we would be able to still have Vella if we moved, because then we’d have the US citizenship and banks and all that, you know, there’s so many loopholes. Maybe I just need to start a Canadian company and get my public lending rates through that.
JP: There you go.
Janet: But I’m still gonna listen to a JP’s serial podcast, even though I’m not going to be reading the Vella content, I’m still going to listen to the podcast.
JP: Wonderful. You mean at serialfictionshow.com.
Janet: Exactly.
Crys: Any other thoughts, friends?
JP: So I would recommend this book to anyone, basically. Anyone who is considering going wide, anyone who is just trying to figure out what to do. I think the big thing for me is don’t get overwhelmed by the options, especially if you are not quite ready to decide where you want to publish, but just know that this is a reference for you to go back to at any point.
Crys: Yeah. When I read the first half of the book, I was like, oh, this is a book for beginning authors. Then I get to the second half of the book. I was like, no, this is a book for everybody. So beginning authors, like you will pick and choose the bits that you need from the end, just as the veteran authors will be, as they get in and see, okay, like, this is the thing I haven’t been done yet. This is a thing. Like that backend, that last half is a smorgasbord of delights. And you have a small plate to pick a few things off at a time
Janet: Or mug cake, just throwing that in there.
Crys: Make a mug cake with the ingredients that he has provided you.
Okay. So the last thing we have to discuss about this book, I am super uncomfortable about because this has to do with race references and I am extremely white and I have been attempting to listen about race issues and be very aware of them and very conscientious of them. But it’s not anything I have lived.
And on this panel, we are also all white. But as we were starting to read this book, a friend came to me and said, Hey, there’s a reference to Black Lives Matter in here that feels really out of place to me. And I was like, oh, I haven’t reached that point yet. I will definitely give it a close look. And they sent it to me, like the excerpt, and as I read it I could immediately see what they were saying, even though I’m pretty sure if I had read it, I would have glossed over it because I’m white. I don’t have this lived experience. And I’m going to read this section just for context.
So here it is: “because I’m critical of some things that Amazon does, like forcing authors to choose between exclusivity to them versus wide publishing, people often assume that I hate Amazon. I suppose in the divisive world we have created, one often assumes that standing up for something means that you have to hate something else. It’s that kind of simplistic thinking that leads people to reflexively reply ‘All Lives Matter’ in response to the desperate reminder that Black Lives Matter. Of course all lives matter. That’s a given. But those who take offense to the urgent plea from a demographic of Western civilization that continues to suffer from systemic racism are missing the point. The reason why that has to be clearly stated in the first place. So, because it seems to be the default to think of sides rather than nuances, many people believe that I have a hate on for Amazon. It’s simply not true.”
So what is wrong with this? This is my understanding, and I am being fully transparent in telling you that I am super uncomfortable talking about this because I’m terrified I’m going to get something wrong.
But as I have said to JP recently is, I’ve been uncomfortable for a lot of stupid reasons. So I’m accepting being uncomfortable about things that I think actually matter. And the problem with this reference is that it creates a false equivalency between two subjects with vastly different weights and levels of importance.
The systemic racism that is referenced is hundreds of years of weight and lives at stake and deaths and torture. And Amazon versus wide question is simply, you know, how do you make the most of your business? And those two, perhaps the best place to discuss Black Lives Matter and the weight of that is not an equivalent statement, which I don’t think it was intended, but it is the unintentional equivalent stated here. But that’s not the appropriate place to make that equivalent. And it’s also not necessarily appropriate place to discuss something so weighty. The subject matters are vastly different and one is current and present danger to living people.
So that was something that I would have felt also very uncomfortable glossing over once it was made aware, once I sat with it, and it was something I felt that it was important that we mentioned in this podcast.
JP: 100% agree with you, Crys. When you brought it up to me and I saw it, I know that I had those blinders on when. And so then when I went over it, I tried to kind of read it from a different perspective and I could totally see exactly what you were talking about and what our friend had mentioned. And I think it’s fair to make the statement that we’re not bashing Mark for doing this.
I think that it’s just, we are just calling out something that we see we just want to make that statement because we feel like it is appropriate.
Crys: It’s something that I have no doubt that I have perpetuated in some way, shape or form because of my lack of knowledge. And something that it’s one of those, see it, learn it, do better. That’s what we’re hoping to gain by mentioning it.
JP: 100%.
Janet: Yeah, definitely. I’m glad that this friend brought that awareness up for us.
Crys: Rather than do my normal spiel about our Patreon, I do just want to reference once again, JP’s new podcast, The Serial Fiction. I forgot that URL, you’ll have to say it.
JP: Another shameless plug for the serialfictionshow.com.
Crys: All right. Thank you so much for joining us this week, everyone. We will be back next week. My summer of chaos has fully begun. And so you will get to hear about my new van next week when we do our weekly updates.
Janet is going to announce our book for next weeks, because we’re slightly incompetent. Janet was nimble with her fingers and was able to pull up our next month’s book choice. Janet, will you share the full title? It’s a lot of words.
Janet: I will. It’s going to be How to Write Manga: Your Complete Guide to the Secrets of Japanese Comic Book Storytelling by RA Patterson.
Crys: And that was chosen by our Patreon members. Hopefully, you will join us next month for this reading. I look forward to reading that this month.
JP: See ya later!
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