Episode #61: The Toils Of Becoming An Author, The Pains Of Publishing & Avoiding The Vultures With Kim Sorrelle, Author – Speaker – World Changer

INTRODUCTION:

BIO

Writer, Speaker, World Changer

 

Kim Sorrelle is a writer, speaker, entrepreneur, the director of a humanitarian organization, activist, mother, grandmother, lover of all people, and black licorice.

Kim’s entrepreneurial journey included commercial real estate, a golf course, event facilities, catering, a grocery store, and more. Besides building businesses into multi-million dollar companies, Kim is proud to have weathered the pandemic storm in the food industry, pivoting, keeping staff employed, and seeing the company’s sales grow beyond pre-pandemic numbers.

Kim is the director of Rays of Hope International, a partnering organization working with people in their own country who have a passion, a vision, a mission to help people in their own country and just need someone to walk alongside. Through business plans, fundraising, sustainability planning, supplies, building, Working in countries like Haiti, Dominican Republic, and Burkina Faso, Rays of Hope has enjoyed relationships with hundreds of organizations that are working hard to help the underserved and vulnerable population.

As an athlete and sports fan, Kim coached basketball for 25 years and high school varsity volleyball for 17 and her team was ranked in the top ten in the state for 16 of the 17 years.

Kim met tall, dark, and handsome Steve Sorrelle, the man of her dreams, and proposed ten days later. Two years later, their only daughter, Amanda, arrived full of spunk and sweetness. Three brothers, Paul, Luke, and Noah, quickly followed, A few years later their Dominican son, Cristian, joined the family.  Now all grown with families of their own, Kim is happy to report that they are all gainfully employed, contributing positively to the world, and have the most incredible children who call her “Uma.” (Like Uma Thurman, not Oma like a German grandma, the name given to her by her oldest granddaughter and it stuck.)

In 2009, while battling breast cancer, Kim’s love, Steve, received a pancreatic cancer diagnosis. After six great weeks together, Kim held Steve as he took his last breath. Her first book, Cry Until You Laugh, chronicles that journey through laughter and tears and laughter again.

The back to back cancer diagnosis led her youngest son, Noah, to change trigectories and earn a PHD as a cancer researcher. With a focus on breast cancer, Noah has made significant discoveries that have already helped with other research and continue to move the needle on the survivor rate.

Kim’s second book, Love Is, came from a desire to know the true meaning of love.  Love Is,chronicles her year long quest to discover the true meaning of love, a sometimes funny, sometimes scary, always enlightening journey that led to life-changing discoveries found mostly on the streets of Haiti.

Today, Kim lives in her hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, a regular radio, television, and podcast guest, Kim speaks to audiences all over the world. Inspirational and educational, Kim entertains CEO’s, industry leaders, company staff members, educators, parents, women’s groups, and more.

 

With first hand experience, Kim also speaks for The American Cancer Society and Susan G. Koman. 

A coach is always a coach and Kim is no different. Working with individuals and teams, Kim helps people succeed not only in business and family life but in every aspect of life, leading to greater fulfillment, happiness, while teaching the secrets to working less and playing more.

When she is not writing, broadcasting, coaching, speaking, or serving, Kim enjoys her life-long and newer friendships, hanging out with the grandkids, reading, playing tennis and pickleball, painting (she’s no Bob Ross!), traveling, meeting new people, and an occasional stick of black licorice.

 

 

 

INCLUDED IN THIS EPISODE (But not limited to):

 

·      An Inside Look At Publishing /Authorship 

·      Preachers Regurgitate Sermons Into Books

·      Start Your Book With An Outline

·      Formatting Suggestions 

·      Cover Design: https://www.99Designs.com/

·      Ghostwriter Information

·      Copywriting 

·      “Show, Not Tell”

·      ISBN’S: https://www.Bowker.com + https://bit.ly/3zykLe1

·      Publishing Option (D2D): https://www.Draft2Digital.com

·      Publishing Option (Amazon/KDP): https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/

 

CONNECT WITH KIM:

 

Website & Books: https://www.KimSorrelle.com

YouTube: https://bit.ly/3vRFWXf

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/loveisbykim/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kimsorrelle/?hl=en

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Kim_Sorrelle

LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3tEzK24

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/ksorrelle/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@livelove_outloud

 

 

KIM’S RECOMMENDATIONS:

 

·      All You Need Is Love (The Beatles): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7xMfIp-irg
 

CONNECT WITH DE’VANNON:

 

Website: https://www.SexDrugsAndJesus.com

YouTube: https://bit.ly/3daTqCM

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SexDrugsAndJesus/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sexdrugsandjesuspodcast/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TabooTopix

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/devannon

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.es/SexDrugsAndJesus/_saved/

Email: DeVannon@SexDrugsAndJesus.com

 

 

DE’VANNON’S RECOMMENDATIONS: 

·      Pray Away Documentary (NETFLIX)

https://www.netflix.com/title/81040370

TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk_CqGVfxEs

 

·      OverviewBible

https://overviewbible.com

https://www.youtube.com/c/OverviewBible

 

·      Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed (Documentary)

https://press.discoveryplus.com/lifestyle/discovery-announces-key-participants-featured-in-upcoming-expose-of-the-hillsong-church-controversy-hillsong-a-megachurch-exposed/

 

·      Leaving Hillsong Podcast With Tanya Levin

https://leavinghillsong.podbean.com

 

 

·      Upwork: https://www.upwork.com

·      FreeUp: https://freeup.net

VETERAN’S SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS

 

·      Disabled American Veterans (DAV): https://www.dav.org

·      American Legion: https://www.legion.org

 

·      Black Licorice (consult your doctor): 

https://www.webmd.com/diet/black-licorice-health-benefits#1

 

·      VooDoo Explained: https://bit.ly/36SBA83

·      What The World Needs Now (Dionne Warwick): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfHAs9cdTqg

 

INTERESTED IN PODCASTING OR BEING A GUEST?:

 

·      PodMatch is awesome! This application streamlines the process of finding guests for your show and also helps you find shows to be a guest on. The PodMatch Community is a part of this and that is where you can ask questions and get help from an entire network of people so that you save both money and time on your podcasting journey.

https://podmatch.com/signup/devannon

 

 

TRANSCRIPT:

 

[00:00:00]

You’re listening to the sex drugs and Jesus podcast, where we discuss whatever the fuck we want to! And yes, we can put sex and drugs and Jesus all in the same bed and still be all right at the end of the day. My name is De’Vannon and I’ll be interviewing guests from every corner of this world as we dig into topics that are too risqué for the morning show, as we strive to help you understand what’s really going on in your life.

There is nothing off the table and we’ve got a lot to talk about. So let’s dive right into this episode.

De’Vannon: Hello? Hello? Hello? Are you beautiful souls?

My sister Kim Sorell is back with me for the third time.

And I’m so excited to have her with me and Kim and I thought it would be so great to give back to everyone in the way of sharing our knowledge and experiences from writing books and podcasting so in this episode, we’re gonna take a look inside the world of publishing and authorship. And we’re gonna give you some useful tips on [00:01:00] the book writing process, from the outline to publishing, Listing lots of great websites for you to use and so much more information. And of course you can always reach out to both of us as well.

We love you. God, bless you. Enjoy the show. Hello, my dear sister. And welcome back for the third damn time to the sex drugs in Jesus podcast. Hello? Hello. Hello, Kim.

Kim: Hello. I’m so happy to be back for the third time to the greatest podcast. I love it.

De’Vannon: Thank you so much. Now, Kim sore is the author of two books. One is called love is, and the other one is cry until you laugh. sometimes you just gotta get a good laugh in and in the Hebrew Bible, it says that a laughter, you know, it’s good for the soul. [00:02:00] You know, it’s a medicine that you can administer to yourself.

Energetically speaking. It raises your vibration. Although I don’t really need to add anything to what Jesus said. I’m just saying that to help people understand that a little laughter goes a long way.

Kim: Mm-hmm yes, for sure. For sure. Yeah. It’s. It is healing for the soul, for sure. For sure.

De’Vannon: Now Kim’s an entrepreneur. She speaks, she has a deep love in our heart for the people of Haiti. And she also has a deep love in our heart for black liquorish. Now, in our previous episodes, we’ve talked about the health benefits of black liquorish, what it was like when she lived and worked in Haiti with her.

Non-profit we talked about voodoo and witchcraft and cast and spells and all of that stuff. And she, we also talked about how this woman was able to survive cancer. And I think your nonprofit is raised of hope international.

Kim: It is. Yes.

De’Vannon: Yeah. And so all of that [00:03:00] information will again be in the showy notes as it always is.

And so this is a very diverse and dynamic woman here, and I’m just thrilled to have, hadn’t met her in my lifetime.

Kim: Well right back at you. I feel like we are kindred spirits. We are connected forever and I, I love it. I love it.

De’Vannon: Endeavor you stay in my heart and oh, really love you.

Kim: And that’s right.

De’Vannon: So today’s conversation will be like, kind of off the cuff. You know, Kim’s written two books, I’m just getting wrapped up with my first one. And I have to say the process is a bitch. It’s it is bittersweet. And I find that it is a masochistic thing to want to be an author. It sounds glamorous and all glorious.

And we do give people who have successfully written books, a lot of prompts in society. Now I know why [00:04:00] this is some painful shit to put yourself through, but if you’ve really got something worth saying that, I also want to say it’s worth doing so you wanna be talking about book publishing and just kind of giving an inside look to what it means to be an author.

So what you got to say about a girl.

Kim: Yeah, you are so spot on. You know, I think there are so many people that talk about writing a book. Everybody has a story to tell, you know, everybody’s got a book in ’em I think, but getting it on paper is a painful process. It is not all sugars and cream and black licorice. It is you know, some, I don’t know, whatever trash and garbage and craziness that goes into actually getting it down for sure.

De’Vannon: Right. And then I think the main thing to do is to be praying about whether or not you should just like with podcasting, a lot of people get [00:05:00] into it because it looks glamorous and it looks easy, but you have to, you have to be called to that thing. Excuse me. You’ve got to You gotta, that’s gotta really, really be like a part of your purpose in life.

You can’t do it for money cuz you don’t know how long it’s gonna take the money to follow this sort of thing. You can’t do it for, you have to do it because it, you know, you wanna help people, you know, for something other than yourself. And so I think that that’s, I think that that’s the beginning of it is to do some real soul searching and some meditation and to find out the why, you know, why are you doing this?

Why are you here? And that’s what you’re gonna be able to pull on in those long nights when you’re uplifting at the manuscript for the 15th time and you’re still finding fucking mistakes, you know, you wanna pull your hair out, so you’re gonna remember why you’re doing it and that’s, what’s going to motivate you to finally get it fucking done.

Kim: Yeah. You know, I think that’s so true. And I think that you hit it right on [00:06:00] about motivation, because if you’re in it for the money you are in it for the wrong reason. There are very few authors that actually make any money on a book of all the books that are written. There are only so many Stephen Kings out there.

There are only so many John Grham, you know, people that are making good money with books. It is so much more work than you realize nobody is gonna publicize it for you. You’ve gotta be your own publicist. You’ve gotta be your own feet. You, you have to go after it. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a traditional publisher or you’re self-publishing, it is on you.

Every, everything is on you and the average. That sells, I think less than a hundred copies. And so nobody makes money on a hundred copies. So it’s you, you gotta know that you can’t be in it for the money. It’s gotta be a different motivation.

De’Vannon: So, but if someone’s done this soul searching and this praying and everything like [00:07:00] that, and they decided they wanna write it, I’m gonna add to this timing too. Not just if you should, but when you should, years and years ago, maybe like 10, 15 years ago, when I first started thinking, you’re not sure what, like to write a book.

I don’t think my motives were right. You know, at this time I was, you know, attending churches, you know, like, you know, churches and shit. And you know, every, every damn, every damn pastor is a, is a, is a, is an author, you know? And so I was around a whole lot of. Preachers writing books and they made it look really good.

And every time they write, wrote a book, it’s a huge thing. And so that affected me. And I was like, I wanna be like that. I don’t, I wanna be one of those glamorous people who writes books and I didn’t get past like page one because there was really nothing for me to say now that you know, but in that time I never thought in a million years I’d be going to jail, getting HIV or being homeless, you know?

So now I actually [00:08:00] have some shit to talk about. And now that I’ve paid my dues, I have, I have like a justifiable reason to say the things I can say and do the things that I can do now, as opposed to before, where I just wanted it for the glitz and the GL, you see.

Kim: Yeah, I think, I think you’re, you’re spot on with that too. I mean, if, if I think you did have something to say 10 or 15 years ago, because I’ve been reading your book and your home life wasn’t necessarily all what everybody else experiences. Like you’ve got plenty to share and relationships growing up and whatever, but certainly the longer you live, the more you have to share, but You, you do need to do it for the right reasons and the right timing.

And you kind of know when the timing is right. If you’re gonna actually do it.

De’Vannon: Mm-hmm now having said that when it comes to breaking the law. So all of my felonies I got in the year 2012 and about year [00:09:00] 2013, I started taking notes on the book. I was ready to release it within like that year, but it never worked out that way. I couldn’t get my thoughts so organized and I didn’t really have anyone to help me with it until about two years ago.

What I also found out there’s this little thing called statute of limitations, where, you know, if I don’t want criminal fucking make myself, you know, criminalize myself. You know, confess the guilt that they can prosecute me with. I have to, you have to wait a certain amount of years after the crime has been done before you Blab about it in a book.

So I didn’t know that back when I was trying to force the thing to happen a year or two, after my fall felonies, I needed more time. So see everything happens when it’s supposed to. And so it’s been about 10 years since all the shit went down. And so we’re well past the statutes of limitations. I can talk about all the drugs I sold.[00:10:00]

Can we consider the legal implications too?

Kim: I guess so, you know, I don’t write about any felonies, so that never occurred to me. But there you are sharing some great wisdom. I’m sure with a lot of people, so that’s awesome.

De’Vannon: And so I wanna throw some shade at the, at the preachers that I was just talking about, who write all these books. Okay. Usually from my experience, they’re a bunch of regurgitated sermons because preachers, these days tend to write out their sermons each Sunday. So each Sunday they’re writing a little mini book and then what they do each year is they go back and they compile all their sermons into a new book, give it a new cover and a new title, throw in a few little weak ass, personal stories, and then put a different name to it.

And then all the people are going to eat it up. Usually those books are not very complex. They’re not, they’re about surface level, but [00:11:00] Christians are an easy sell and church people are gonna buy any fucking thing. And I can say that because I used to be one of those church, people at the conferences buying all the tapes and the books and the CDs and every fucking thing, because I was starstruck by who was writing them.

And, but I’m reading through it. And I like, I know they say at this, in one of those services before, it’s the same shit. And so I’m not mad at the, I’m not mad at the preachers. You know, they, they play in the game very well, but you know it, but I have observed that these mainstream preachers do not talk a lot about themselves.

Now. I haven’t read everyone’s books, but the, the ones that I did, their personal stories, don’t go into like gritty, painful detail about the shit they’ve been through about all I’ve ever gotten from like a preacher. They might get a little upset from time to time or what do they say, or, or they’ll generalize it like, you know, sometimes I just don’t live [00:12:00] up to my best.

They’re not gonna tell me about that time. They were sucking Dick in the alley for cocaine and crack, you know, or, or when they slap the bitch across the face or got into a fight on the golf course, they don’t, they don’t really put themselves out there like that. And I don’t really appreciate.

Kim: you know, I think you’re so right. You know, there’s something that we said for transparency and, and vulnerability. Right. And the, the best books that I’ve written and, or read, not written, but read you see those things, you know, when, when people dive a little bit deeper and expose themselves, and then you can relate, cuz how do you relate to somebody who the worst thing that they ever do is get a little angry sometimes that, you know, holy cow, if that’s the worst thing you’ve ever done, you can skip, you don’t have to go to confession.

You don’t have to do anything. You can just whatever, go straight to heaven and enjoy your life. I guess. I [00:13:00] don’t know what, what, what that kind of life is like, because I think we all live a little bit deeper than that. So it’s, but I’ll tell you too, that the reason those preachers do well with their books is they’ve got a built in.

So they’ve, they’ve got their platform, they’ve got their following and everybody’s gonna buy their book. And that’s why they can sell a book after book, after book. And even though they’re not big differences, one book from the next they’ll sell ’em all because they’ve got their base of people that will all buy them.

De’Vannon: Yeah, I, I would dare say the people have been brainwashed into it. I was once one of those people, and I’m not necessarily saying that’s a negative thing. If you’ve got some pastor who who’s ass, you kiss, like I used to kiss them, you know before I was pulled out of the matrix you know what, that’s where you’re at right now, then.

Great. And if you were [00:14:00] some, I mean, if somebody listening to this is my, a light bulb may go on, they’re like, Hey, I could go in there and sell shit to those fucking Christian folk they’ll buy anything. You would be right. you would be right. it, it still, it felt kind of clickish to me, cuz like when I would, when I would be like at Lakewood and shit like that, and you know, Joe’s writing a different book a year.

 Then his wife wrote run. I really enjoyed her book, you know? And now I think she has several, and I noticed like other members of like the een family that were not that, that, that were not necessarily at Lakewood also wrote books. And I was like, wait a minute. Seems like they’ve got a formula for this.

Like a, a plan, a process. A ghost writer might be lurking in the back somewhere because okay. If people are not just naturally gifted authors, okay. Maybe your family just happens to be that everyone can write a, write a book. No bitch. You have a formula in place from the sermons on down. Some sort of sequence is being [00:15:00] followed so that you can, that all of y’all can stay on a writing schedule like this.

And I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but I’m just saying, I wish that they would share that with everyone else too.

Kim: Yeah, well, it’s that? You’re at. On and, and their name, you know, you put Olstein on a book and it’s going to attract attention right away. You know, you put Crell on a book, you know, if somebody’s not heard of SRE before, you know, no, one’s gonna take a second look necessarily. You gotta come up with a way to get somebody to take a second look, but forget the name.

It sure helps.

De’Vannon: And there are ways to do it. And I feel like you were way more transparent in your book than any preacher I’ve ever heard. So, you know, in both of your books and everything like that, you know, I remember sitting in church, listening to those people, thinking like, wow, I, and this is pretty much any church I’ve been in.

Like, you know, I really cannot relate with the people who are preaching to me yet. I’m listening to them and taking. I’m like, it doesn’t sound like they’ve been [00:16:00] through, even before my felonies and everything, you know, it doesn’t sound like they’ve been through half the shit I’ve been through in terms of the darker side of living.

Why the fuck am I even listening to this person? Like what gives them the right to tell me anything? And so if you don’t have een behind your name or some other big name, preacher out there, then here’s what you can do. And this should not discourage you. Cause one thing I do know is that successes of the Lord and the Bible says the Hebrew Bible says that he will crown our efforts with success.

And since you’re writing this book, not for yourself, but other people, it should be enough if only a handful of people get a hold of it because that’s somebody’s life you help to change. And so if it sells a million copies all the better, but if it doesn’t well, then you, you should be fulfilled because your reasons were right. And so you should not feel cheated. So we’re not trying to be like. You know anybody, but who God wants us to [00:17:00] be or whatever it is you believe in or whatever it is, your spiritual angle is at this, or or, or your, your spiritual motivation is a better way to phrase that. But we don’t self-publishing is a huge thing.

Now, not, you know, being published is not like you don’t have to be published to sell books or to be well known. I don’t think that girl who wrote 50 shades of gray, I think she was self-published when she started. And then look at how long it took JK rolling to get to where she is. So publishing houses, don’t always pin people accurately.

Sometimes they get it wrong. So it’s not all about knocking on publishing house. You don’t really have to do that anymore. You can, if you want to, but some people have had really bad experiences with publishers.

Kim: For sure, for sure. And self-publishing is bigger and bigger and bigger all the time. And and you can actually make more money self-publishing because you make more money per book. So there’s pros [00:18:00] and cons to both to publishing and self-publishing, but Amazon in particular has made it so easy to self-publish and they’re the biggest book seller in the world.

And so to self-publish through Amazon and just follow their program is is really a great way to go. And it’s a way a lot of authors get out there.

De’Vannon: So we’ll, we’ll start at the beginning and Amazon is good for those of you who are anti Amazon, you think they’re the devil and you don’t wanna fuck with them. There are other ways, the, the people who I use was called draft to digital, and this is gonna be in the show notes, but that’s a draft D R a F T the number two, and then digital.com.

And what happens is you can upload your electronic book through them, and then they will distribute it to like a shitload of places, maybe like eight or 10 places you can select Amazon or not. And my audio book is also. May being made available [00:19:00] through them to about like 30 or 40 different places, including Amazon and audible.

 Some people don’t like the complexity of like the audiobook world when it comes to like audibles and their ACX standards. But there’s different ways. So you can go directly through Amazon Kindle, direct publishing. And all of that, like with Kim is talking about, or you can use like draft digital.

There used to be a company called smash words, which also was a conglomerate place to publish, but draft to digital just bought out smash words. So we’re just gonna focus on draft digital. So when you wanna start writing a book, the first thing you always want that you have something to say at that point

Kim: No, no, but you’re absolutely right. There are so many companies, there are companies that, that it is strictly self-publishing that they get it into the format for you. Help you get your ISBN number. They, you know, do the things that fill the blanks for you and, and how to get your book put together in a digital form.

And then they, you know, get it to [00:20:00] whatever distributors there’s hybrid places that actually do some editing and do some stuff. But aren’t a full on publisher that don’t do everything for you that a publisher would do. And that usually costs you money to have done. So there’s options, lots of options.

De’Vannon: Okay. So when we get started, we always wanna start our book with an outline. This is no different than writing a research paper, turn paper, whatever the fuck you want to call it. Those annoying ass fucking shits that they made us do in high school and in college. And if you never went to high school or in college, well, then we’re gonna explain.

It simply, cuz you do not have to have a specific education to be an author. You just have to know why you want to talk about what you wanna talk about. But an outline is simply a roadmap. If you’re gonna write anything, you need to have a structure to it. An outline is your skeleton. You gotta hang some meat and muscles on the, on the bounds in a minute, but first you gotta have a direction.

[00:21:00] You know what a, B, C, D. Now the outline for my book ended up being about like 10,000 words. Okay. When it was finalized. But I wrote about two books worth than one book because I didn’t wanna divide the story up. So my book’s about 121,000 words finished. We cut it down from about 130,000 words. But it seems like in the industry people, the 50,000 is the minimum they say from what I’ve come across.

What have you, what have you heard about the minimum word count for books?

Kim: Yeah. 50,000 is kind of on the low end and right, right. You wanna it’s for nonfiction in particular the 200 page mark is, is sort of a special mark in the industry to be right around to 200 pages. So yeah, and, and some are certainly gonna go longer than that. Your story is, is longer than that.

You, you got a lot more content, so [00:22:00] there’s, there’s rules that and guidelines, but they’re all made to be broken.

De’Vannon: Hell yeah. Rules are made to be broken. Fuck. Yes. on a Tuesday morning. Fuck. Yes. So when it comes to what she’s saying, And I encountered this a lot and it really just fucking made my head hurting. I just threw all the fucking rules out of the window. You have these parameters and maybe that might matter more to a publisher, but when you’re, self-publishing, you’re free to do what the fuck you want, which is beautiful.

So when your book is done, you’re gonna have to do with something called formatting. So you’re gonna, you, you’re gonna outline the book, write the bitch, then you gotta format it. Which means getting exactly the sizes, the margins, the fonts, the letters, okay. Then you publish it. So the formatting is where you can play with things like the font size and the page.

Cuz if you notice on Amazon, some books might be like six inches by nine inches. Like my book is another [00:23:00] one might be. Four inches by like, it’s like some small shit. So what you do is you have a lot of content. Like I did, you put it on larger pages to try to make the book not be so many pages. If you don’t have a lot of content, then you want to make the book a smaller format to stretch it out, to make it seem like you have more pages than you do.

Kim: Yeah,

De’Vannon: so and so,

Kim: games you can play for sure. Yeah.

De’Vannon: so, so now a good format will know how to do all of those tricks. If anybody needs a ref reference for a good format, I got you. I got you cuz writing. You know, was my thing, the formatting and all the numbers and shit. I was like, oh, hell no. You know, so I hired a formatter for my book. Now only like $50 to have it.

Four minute 30, $50. We’re not talking about a Garganto and amount of money here. You can certainly save $50. If you think that this is your life’s work. And then [00:24:00] even if you don’t want to go in fool with mashing, the publishing buttons and stuff like that, then people will do that for you too, for a small amount of money.

Kim: Right. Yeah. I love the resource fiber. I don’t know if you’ve used fiber, but you can get anything done on fiber, including book formatting book cover the back of the book, the fine, you know, you can get anything done and prices can start at $10, $15, you know, for somebody in some other country to do the work for you.

And your time is more valuable than that. So , it’s definitely worthwhile to spend the 50 bucks or whatever to get your book formatted.

De’Vannon: And she said fiver, and of course I’m gonna put all this in the showy note, just like I always do. I used a website called 99 designs.com for the cover for my podcast and for all of my books. And I met a guy in Greece who I now use exclusively for all of my design work, because we’re just [00:25:00] so on the same page, but it’s that same sort of concept.

It’s a website that brings a bunch of creatives together with people who need creatives. And then you can just get an all under one roof. So five 99 designs.com and then upwork.com is another one that you can use as well. So we’ve got, so we’re gonna do the outline, you know, our ABC small, a little, a number one all the way over.

You’ll start your outline with broad strokes. You wanna come up with your chapter titles, which you can change them anytime, but you need to kind of know what you’re gonna be talking about. And And then from there, you build it out. Each chapter’s gonna have this and each bullet point can be like really thick.

It could be a paragraph. And then when you go back to write the book, you’re just going to take and really make the story come alive with all the sense and the flavors and the, and all the words and the metaphors and all the nice verbiage to help it become alive to the reader. Now, if you’re not good at this, [00:26:00] then you can hire, what’s called a ghost writer to either write it for you or to help you write it.

And so when I was working with someone at the beginning of, well, during my process, You know, until I decided to take it over for myself because they got on my nerves. You know, we met and did like a zoom meeting, like every day for like two or three weeks for an hour. At least sometimes it was two hours or maybe three.

I did go through since I was doing a memoir. I just went back from the time I was born to the present day and just wrote everything out that I could think of. And it was about 50,000 words when I was done. And then I went and put that into a chronological outline and that’s what I submitted to him.

He didn’t require it. Cuz some ghost writers can just listen to you talk and then turn into a book. But I wanted to be really thorough and detailed. And so I submitted that along with court documents and everything like that because I really wanted my book to come alive. I was extra. You don’t have to do all of that, [00:27:00] but there’s a website called read C.

R E E D S y.com that it’s like dedicated to ghostwriters and the whole writing thing. But you can also find ghostwriters on like Upwork than probably five or two. You have a lot of options. So if you wanna write a book and you’re like, fuck, I don’t know about if I can handle this outline shit, or if I don’t have the time for it.

And you know, I’ve got this story, but I, I don’t wanna write it. Okay. Half the authors with their name on the front book, didn’t write the shit. someone else wrote it for them. So

Kim: Yeah. Yep. That’s so true. That’s so true. And, and if you, if there’s a book that you really like that you’ve really enjoyed that style of writing, find out if a ghost writer has done it, find out you a lot of times it will say like for instance Don Piper’s story, 90 minutes in heaven was written by Cecil McKay.

So it says Don Piper with Cecil McKay. And so if you see that, then, you know, Cecil’s done the writing. [00:28:00] And, and so if you see a book that you really enjoy that style, you think it fits with what you’ve got. You can look into it and see who actually wrote the book. And maybe that’s somebody to tap into.

De’Vannon: Mm-hmm now the high end ones, you know, sometimes they may be hard to reach, you know, so, and then sometimes, you know, they’re gonna cost more, you know, ghost writers. The highest that I came across in my research was around like maybe 70 to 90,000. You. But you know, you have, like, I think on Upwork, I was looking at ’em where they may be charged from like more hourly, like 10 to 50 an hour.

I think I saw was breezing over it briefly before we got on this call this morning. You know, the, the prices are all over the place. It just depends on what you can afford and what you want to pay and how serious you’re taking your story. But more to the point how you connect with the person who’s gonna be writing for you.

Cause you’re getting ready to spill all kinds of tea with this bitch. You gotta feel like you can trust them because you’re gonna tell that ghost writer hell of a lot [00:29:00] more than gets released to the public.

Kim: Yeah, absolutely. And I would say too, interview people. You don’t have to go with somebody just because you go on one of these websites and that’s the name that comes up, interview them. You’re gonna be paying them. So take the time to get to know them, let them get to know you and see if it’s a fit. If it’s not a fit, walk away, you know, no harm and find somebody else.

There’s plenty of people out.

De’Vannon: There are. And, but through, through these websites, also, they monitor the work that’s being done. And so, and you don’t pay them until the work, you know, until portions of the work are done, like with the guy who who’s, who did my audio book formatting through up work, you know, I could go in there and see like his computer screen, what he was doing the time it was taking, like their screenshots and files and stuff like that, you know?

So they act as a good mediator. So you don’t have to worry about somebody running off with your money, you know,

Kim: Right, right, right. It’s a good thing. [00:30:00] Yes,

De’Vannon: But if you choose to, to go off the, off the grid and not use one of these websites, sometimes people will meet people on these websites and then start paying them separately. That’s fine too, but pay them through PayPal or through some sort of way that you’re paying for goods and services so that some shit goes down.

You still have some insurance,

Kim: mm-hmm right. Great advice. Yes.

De’Vannon: but that’s a, but that’s a super relief. So now, if you feel like you don’t, you can’t do the outline and you can’t really write it, but you’ve got something you wanna say, well, that’s what ghost writers are for. And it happens more often than you think, and you don’t have to put their name on the front cover of your book.

That’s not what their job is. Their job is to write, not to do the face of it, but if you like them and you want to, then you can, that’s up to you. You’re the author. You own the work when it’s all said and done. And so so now you’ve got your, your book. Britain, you can go to 99 [00:31:00] designs that you a cover done.

They they’ll do the inside flaps, the spine, all of that. Or you can go to fiber wherever you may know your own graphic person. These people know that books have to be formatted through certain sizing and everything like that. They got you. You don’t have to try to do this all at once. You will do this one step at a time.

You will not get ahead of yourself. so you won’t worry about how this, you know, how the story ends before it begins. I’ll say it like that, generally speaking, although there can be exceptions. So that depends on how you’re gonna write it. If you’re not doing a memoir, you know, my knowledge is kind of, you know, it’s a little bit different if you’re gonna go like more Scholastic or something like that, but you know, people, you know, can write just about whatever you want.

I say, it’s at least worth looking into once you have the book written. Now we need to get us a copyright. You don’t have to get a copyright. The moment you open up a [00:32:00] document and I don’t know, maybe use something other than Microsoft word. That’s what I use. That, that Microsoft word doesn’t really translate well to formatting, but my formatters we’re able to figure it out, but it’s a bitch.

If you, if you do it in word, don’t go in there and try to fuck with page numbers and the headings and stuff like that. Just let it be a plain fucking document with just the typing. Cause if you try to format it and make it all book, like word is just gonna fuck it up. Just don’t

Kim: Right. That’s.

De’Vannon: a formatter so they can open up them swanky ass apps.

They have that you probably won’t. Cause I don’t have those apps, but my four matters do and they can Shaza me. That shit, you know, like real quick

Kim: Yeah, for sure. For sure. You know, a couple things I’d like to throw in one is. It’s all well and great. Like what you’re saying, an outline is can be everything because it can make writing the actual book so much easier [00:33:00] when you know, this is what your chapter one’s gonna be about. This is what your chapter two’s gonna be about.

When you have the ideas, then you can just put it on paper. But the motivation to actually write can be difficult for people. And so everybody has a different formula for that. You know, some people are early morning writers and will get up in the morning and five days a week, or they’ll commit whatever time and an hour a day or.

Whatever, like, I think it can seem so overwhelming when you’re thinking, oh my gosh, I’m gonna write a 200 page book. How am I gonna do that? It can seem like this great big mountain, but it’s sort of like the analogy of the had eat Eden elephant one bite at a time. Right. And so commit to a half an hour, you know, commit to so many words a day.

 Figure out when your best time to write. Is, are you, are you better at night? Like, is that when things come into focus for you, are you better first thing in the morning? You know, [00:34:00] what is your schedule? Like, what is your time like? And put it on the calendar. If that’s what you need to do and commit to the time, that’s how you’re gonna actually get it from idea to book.

Is is making sure that happens. And there’s a, something that all writers know, all, all authors who are doing this know, but a good thing to know is show not tell. So in a movie script you tell, but in a book you show, you let people see the picture for themselves. You, you don’t have to tell them every intimate detail you describe things.

You know, the, you don’t have to say somebody was nervous. You say something more like and the sweat started, you know, coming on his upper lip and brow and, you know, whatever. And then, you know, he was nervous, right? So it’s show at tell is a big, big thing with books.

De’Vannon: Right. [00:35:00] That was a warning that I came across early in my writing is to not to get caught up on being overly detailed which is why I decided to go with the ghost riders because I was too, at least at first, as I was too attached to my story, you know, I knew I was way too emotional about it to give it a true objective look, you know, I was going@ittryingtogetdowntolikeeverylikelittlepolka.in the room, you know, at really unnecessary.

So I needed, I needed somebody to help me with that. So, so I’m gonna tell you why I had. Well, part of the reason why I had the falling out was my ghost writer. And then I just took over the writing for myself and kind of, you know, finished it because okay. So I had paid him like $40,000 cash to, to do my book.

 I wanted a, a good writer. I didn’t want someone who was just beginning. He wasn’t actually on the highest end. Like I said, I came across 70 to 90,000 out [00:36:00] there. You, he wasn’t on the highest end. He wasn’t on the lowest end, so, okay. Let me go do what I gotta do to make this money. I won’t tell you what I did to come up with that money.

All you need to know is that I acquired it all we gonna say about that.

Kim: That’s that’s.

De’Vannon: after my statues of limitations passed so, but what I didn’t think to do. Now, this person wasn’t very clear. We didn’t really necessarily have an official contract. And, but there was some guidelines laid out. I got upset because we were in about the third revision and he was telling me, well, that’s it that’s as that’s as much for, as your money’s gonna take you.

I’m now gonna charge you. Well, something like the 150 or $200 an hour to continue. I ended up having to revise the book, like maybe two or three more times. But, but from my [00:37:00]perspective, and everyone’s got their own perspective. I’m like, if, if I bitch, if I paid you $40,000, not to mention, I flew this individual down here to Louisiana.

And then we spent like a month traveling to Texas, Mississippi, new Orleans, seeing places and everything like that, all on my dime, you know, you know, You know, so by the time’s done with him, it’s like a good $50,000 project. I think that you should do full service and see the thing through to the end.

Don’t cut me off at two or three revisions cuz anybody who’s written a book knows damn well, you’re gonna have to review that. And I didn’t know this at the beginning, you know, I didn’t, I, I know it now. I didn’t know this at first. You’re going to have to go through that motherfucker time and time and time again.

And you’re still gonna miss shit. So this, so we’ve all read books where we’ve seen a word misspelled or some spacing or a quote missing and great authors too. It could, there comes a point where your head is just going to crack the fuck [00:38:00] open. If you look at that shit again, I think I did mine like 10, 12 times, and I there’s still shit that I find I’m the most detailed person.

I know I could have hired an editor, but I knew that if I hired then paid them, they would miss shit too. And then I would be pissed. So, and then there may be some editors that are that good that they don’t miss anything. But so far, my experience has been with paying people to do a job that they always make mistakes so, so I’m saying all that to say, if you go with a ghost writer or format or anything, be sure that it, it is in the contract that whatever the, the, the rate is includes unlimited revisions until the shit is done.

That way you don’t fall into the trap that I did because cuz now I’m thinking, okay, have you intentionally given me subpar riding on these first three revisions so that you can turn around and charge me $200 an hour because you knew the shit wasn’t really as good as it was supposed to be, you [00:39:00] know?

Kim: Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. And you paid a lot of money. That, that is a lot of money. I know some excellent ghostwriter, excellent ghost riders that are best sellers, you know, that put out best sellers and charge a lot less money than that and, and see the job true till the end. So yes, finding the right one is that’s very important, the right one with the right contract.

De’Vannon: Right. That, that shit pissed me off. Cause at first his name was on the front of my book with me, but that pissed me off so bad. Well actually I had already, he did something else that pissed me off that and I snatched his name off the front cover of my book because of that. I was like, oh hell no, this is not gonna work.

You know, and and so some some people just think a little bit more themselves I think, than they should, you know? And so so yeah, you know, just.

Kim: Yeah, I, I was just gonna say that, and it’s not just working with a ghost writer and self-publishing that you run into [00:40:00] that. My second book love is is traditionally published. And so they hire an editor or they’ll have an editor of like a content editor, you know, not a periods and, you know, punctuation and spelling kind of editor, but a content editor, creative editor they’ll have them in house.

Sometimes they hire them from outside depending on your project and, and who they think you’ll fit with. And the editor that my publisher hired. I picture her in little house on the Prairie. And I think she’s got, you know, six or seven friends that goes to a super small church that saw I picture her.

I don’t know if it’s true, but she wears long skirts with little tiny flower prints. And all of her friends look exactly like her. And so everything that I said that didn’t fit into her little Christian box, she wanted out of my book and she w actually argued with me about my content. [00:41:00] And I got to the point where I was just done with her.

We were a horrible fit. She’s probably really good with some people, not with me at all. I thought, man, my publisher doesn’t even know me if they think that this woman is gonna work with me because it did not work. She made me think about a couple things, but honestly I hope I made her think about a couple things, but in the end I just kind of threw out most of anything she had to say and, and did it myself.

 So it can, it can happen with the publisher or you’re doing it yourself. So make sure, you know, it’s a, it’s okay to let somebody go. If it’s not work and let, ’em go kind of loads.

De’Vannon: And look you Like you don’t, you can publish a book at any time in terms of traditional publishing. Like what Kim is talking about, going through a, a publishing house. You, you could create your own fucking publishing house, which technically is what you have if you self publish, but like [00:42:00] say, okay, so with sex, drugs and jeans is my memoir.

I’m gonna give myself three to five years. Okay. To see how the sales go and what I can do, marketing it myself. If I don’t feel like it has enough momentum, then I’ll start to pitch the book to, to publishers at that time. So you don’t have to, it’s not like you have an ultimatum either self-publish or do traditional the moment you write the book, you can, you can change that later on.

Kim: Mm, right, right. At any time. Yeah, for sure.

De’Vannon: Now, can you go from being published traditionally? Like you are take it from the publisher and go back to self-publishing.

Kim: You kind of can’t cuz you sign a contract with them that, that they kind of own own your book at that point. And so you, you really can’t go back the other way. You’d have to be let outta the contract. A whole lot of things would have to happen. You’d have to change your book a bit to put it out there on your own.

So once you’re with your a publisher, you’re pretty locked in, but like you [00:43:00] said, you can go my first book I went from self-publishing and then I was picked up by a publisher. So you can go the other way, but not, not once you start with a publisher you’re you’re you’re all theirs.

De’Vannon: I want you to say you were picked up by a publisher and I’ve heard other authors say that before that they find you and make you an offer. Did you find them?

Kim: I actually, I was at a writer’s conference and the keynote speaker gave him a copy of my book. And then he contacted me and hooked me up with a publisher cuz. He liked it and thought that it should be out there more. And that that’s the one advantage or, or one there’s several advantages either way.

But one advantage of a publisher is that they have a network. And so they’re getting your book, not out to eight places, but to, you know, a couple hundred places, they can get it into book and mortar stores. It’s hard to get a self-published book into [00:44:00] Barnes, noble, you know, to put on the bookshelf of different bookstores, but a publisher can do that.

A publisher has those connections and they’ve got the network to get your book into every platform and, and everywhere, online and in stores and whatever. So your distribution right away with publisher is gonna be different than with self-publish.

De’Vannon: Okay. So the trade off is you make less per book with the publisher, but you get wider distribution. So that’s the balancing act, as opposed to, as opposed to making more per book with less distribution, doing it on your own.

Kim: That that and money, like when you publish through a publisher, it doesn’t cost you a dime. They pay you money up front for the book. And so you are making money. Whereas if you self-publish, you’re paying for your cover and you’re paying for the formatting, you might be paying for a ghostwriter. You know, you’ve got some [00:45:00] out of pocket money, but in the end it can really pay off for you.

So. And it’s very difficult though, too, to get published by a publisher. It’s not the same book world that it used to be. You have to have a platform. You’ve gotta have so many people on your Facebook. So many people on, on Instagram, you’ve gotta have a, an email list of thousands. You have to, there has to be something about you.

That’s going to be able to get into the hands of people right away that you’ve got connections out there. If you are a movie star, you know, or a singer or, you know, somebody famous publisher’s gonna look at you if you’re. Just a regular person. Like we are, you know, whatever. It’s hard to be noticed by a publisher and hard for publisher to have motivation to because they take a risk cuz it’s, they’re gonna be laying out money right away.

They’re giving you money and then they’re investing in you. They’re paying for the editor, [00:46:00]they’re paying for all that stuff. So they’ve got an investment and they are only gonna take so much risk. They wanna know that you’re gonna sell the number of copies to not just recoup their investment, but make them money.

So it’s it’s not easy to be traditionally published. It’s not easy to find a publish.

De’Vannon: Now that they give you an advance. Cause I know with some people they’ll like, say give them an advance advance of advance of money. So many hundred thousand dollars or millions or whatever. And the thing is the benefit of that for the author is so if they give you a cash advance, however much it is, you do not have to pay that back.

So if. If the book ever sells enough to compensate the publishing house for that or not, you know, they’re taking a risk cuz they can’t come back to you and be like, oh, well you didn’t sell a million dollars worth of books. Can we have the 275,000 left or whatever? No, it doesn’t work that way, but you won’t get any more money until you sell enough books to meet that, that, that threshold to cover the advance.[00:47:00]

So, and how.

Kim: exactly. And a $275,000 advance would be a rare, rare advance. That would be a bill Clinton advance. You know, that would be a somebody advance. An advance can be anywhere from a couple thousand dollars. $20,000 is, is a, a decent advance for somebody. I, I know people that I’ve got a good friend who has, I think, 17 published books and she’s been on the New York times bestseller list.

And, and depending on the book, she will get anywhere from 15 to $30,000 for an advance. And she’s a writer. I mean, this is what she does. And, and she also always for her next book, it’s a struggle to find the right publisher and to get a publisher to say yes, so you can be published and you, can you have your name out there?

And, you know, like we started out with, if you’re not Steven King or John Grham, or, you know, whoever, you know, Joel [00:48:00] Olstein than than getting a big advance and getting publishers is not, not the easiest road.

De’Vannon: Right. And so, like I was talking earlier about like copyrights and stuff like that. copyright.gov is where I go to, to get like all the music I write copyrighted. I, I did get my book copyrighted and everything like that. It’s not necessary. I’ve been told the moment you started working on it. You automatically own the rights to it, but we’re talking about maybe 50 or $60 or something like that, just to have that extra layer protection.

So yeah, I yanked the bitch, you know, I think if you go through a publishing house it’s different. I’m not sure who owns it. It may different, depending on the contract, it may differ. How does that work? Who actually, well, you said you signed the rights to them, so.

Kim: Right. We’re right. But there’s the ISB N number. So every book is assigned an ISB N number. And I think you do want that for sure. If you’re gonna write a book, get one. And like you said, they’re 50 bucks or whatever. You can buy packages of them. Like you can get [00:49:00] 10 numbers for a hundred and dollars or I, and out exactly how much, but they’re easy to get.

And then the book automatically goes into the library of Congress. It is forever your name on the book. Nobody can steal your content. It is it makes it an official book. It makes it a real book. And so that’s something you wanna do is get that number.

De’Vannon: And I think boer.com I’ll research it before I put, put it in the showy notes, but BW K E r.com I think is where I went to get my ISBNs and, and they have like book ISBNs. Now I use, I had used like a different website when I designed my underwear line for down under apparel to get like clothing. But this Bo one seems to be like, let’s say like the draft.

Website recognizes. So, so, so we gotta be careful where we get our ISBs from there. There’s a lot of shit being sold in this world. And I don’t think you can just get random mass ISBs and [00:50:00] just slap ’em on whatever it has to be specific from what I’m from, what I’m learning so far. Seems like it’s kind of specific to what you’re trying to sell.

Kim: Exactly. Exactly. You do need one for a book for sure. Yep. Yeah.

De’Vannon: So, oh, go ahead where you wanna say something, dear?

Kim: Nope. You go right ahead.

De’Vannon: So we’ve talked about outlining the book writing. It could be any sort of book, how to get help for that. If you’re not good with that sort of thing, the websites you can go to. So we’ve established the fact that you’re not really some lonely alone author sitting somewhere in front of a laptop, trying to figure it out.

You got all the fucking help you need. And of course you can email Kim or me, and then we’ll be happy to tell you what we can, you are so not alone. So once you have this book out, and even if you are a pub publish through a publishing house, that doesn’t mean that you have to set back and let them do all the work.

You can still pub, you know, market yourself if you want to. So most of what I’m [00:51:00] saying, or pretty much all of what I’m saying has to do with self-publishing because I ain’t selling my shit to nobody until I have a chance, you know, to do with myself. If I could sell drugs and sell the military as a recruiter, I’m gonna see what I can do with my own book first, before I let somebody buy my shit.

And so. So, so now we’re gonna talk about how can we get the word out or your social media making like a Facebook author page I’ve been told is a really good idea. I didn’t do that because I have a podcast page on Facebook and the book is the same name as the podcast. So it was kind of like a redundant thing for me, at least at this point, , you know, you know, now once I release my next two books this year, the Navy I’ll set up an author page, but I ain’t got time to work with all that shit.

I need to hire an assistant to do that. I’m running too many businesses, like I’m at my breaking point, but,

Kim: that’s another thing you can use five or in places like that for is some of that kind of stuff that, that is sort of [00:52:00] the, the busy work of, of marketing that you can get somebody to do it for you for not a ton of money. So you don’t have to stay up at night. Wondering why haven’t I gotten it done or, you know, feeling overwhelmed with stuff.

There are people out there, there are sources that you can tap into that will help you with stuff like that, too.

De’Vannon: Yeah. So that’s a good idea. So maybe once I so I’m working on a book called don’t call me a Christian, which is gonna be a free book, but still it’s a book. There’s gonna be a free ebook on my website. And then I’m writing a book of poetry too. That will not be a free book, but so then I might go on five or somewhere like that and be like, Hey, I need someone to just run this author page on Facebook post.

And cause I look at your author page on Facebook and you’ve got all the pictures going on and you’re engaging with the audience and everything like that. And I’m all like that is such a great idea. Who has the time is

Kim: Oh, my gosh, I hear you. It is it, yeah, I, I get [00:53:00] overwhelmed. You know, my, my book was my latest book. Love is, was published on December 7th. And I have to keep telling myself it is a marathon, not a sprint. Like I want the book to sell thousands today. I want it in people’s hands. I believe in the message, just like you do your book, but you gotta realize it’s one person at a time.

And then hopefully that person will tell somebody, you gotta buy this book. It’s a great book. And I think statistically too, every one book that’s actually out there, five people or seven people will read that book because people will share a book. And so, you know, the numbers that you sell aren’t necessarily the numbers of people that are reading it.

And if you really wanna monetize things, you’ve gotta figure out ways to do it. Like I think you do such a great job of like I love your book. Cover is amazing and would be, and makes an amazing t-shirt makes an amazing. Journal [00:54:00] cover, right? Makes an amazing, a lot of other things that then you can use Shopify or whoever to print full, you know, to do those things for you and you don’t even have to touch it, but figuring out other ways to monetize your product, not just the book itself, but what else can you do with that?

What other programs can you do? Is there coaching that you can do along with it? Is there you know, webinars that you can hold or whatever that you can help promote the book, but, but also monetize it in another way.

De’Vannon: that’s pretty badass. I had not thought of that.

Kim: Well, that’s why we’re friends cuz what I don’t think of you do and what you don’t think of. I do.

De’Vannon: Yeah. I thought that sister, so and so in terms of marketing, also, there is a website called pod match.com and podcasting is huge. I have heard it said that it’s a good idea. If [00:55:00]someone’s gonna be an author, if they feel like they have the skill and they would care to do it. And if they feel called to it to start a podcast, because the two can balance, the two can benefit each other.

And so that was, that was, that was why the idea first came to my, came to me to start a podcast because people were telling me, Hey, start a podcast. If you’re gonna write a book, so you can start to get that audience building up. And so that’s something to think about. So if you ever think you wanna start a podcast, I recommend pod match.com.

My affiliate link will be in the show notes. You can sign up and so I can get paid. But it’s a way that makes podcasting easy. You can go on. This is website. It’s like Tinder. But for podcasting and you can be a podcast, host a podcast guest on this website. You can sign up to find people to come on your show, or if you have a book and you don’t wanna do a podcast, or you can use other people’s podcasts and their Audi audiences, as they’ve already established to market your book for [00:56:00] you, you don’t have to pay to go on someone’s podcast.

Now through pod match, it’s a free service. If you wanna upgrade like me and pay the $39 a month, then you can have more access. But when it comes to to, to, to book promotions going on people’s podcast is a huge thing that’s trending right now in podcasts. The industry is just growing and growing and growing and you don’t even have to pay for that.

That’s free fucking money, you know, it’s, it’s just free. And so now, so we wanna avoid way websites out there who are gonna try to charge you ridiculous amounts of money, like hundreds of dollars to go on. Like people shows saying this person’s this great. They’ve got all this going on, but there are no guarantees.

You know, you may spend all that money and not get shit from that interview. And cuz you’re gonna have to grow your skills as a podcast guest and everything like that. And so through pod matches either free or you can pay 39 a month for more access to it. But it’s a good service either way. There’s just too many vultures [00:57:00] out there looking to take advantage of artists and people who are just trying to express themselves.

Kim: Yeah, it’s so true. It’s so true. There’s you, you do have to be on the lookout, just like you do with everything else. You’ve gotta be, be aware and, and be careful. And if something looks too good to be true, you gotta know that it is too good to be true. Somebody promises you that they’re gonna sell so many of your books.

It’s not gonna happen. Like, unless they’re personally gonna buy a thousand books, you, there is no guarantee that that a thousand books are gonna be sold. So you gotta ignore those things and do the hard work yourself.

De’Vannon: Yeah. Cause before I fired the production team that I had previously, who I met through the same person who was the ghost writer, who I also fired they were charging me like a hundred dollars per person to find someone to come on my show for me to interview.

Kim: Oh, my word.

De’Vannon: Now, these are people that they already knew usually.

So it’s not like they [00:58:00] had to do any kind of work, but send a few emails. And so, but that’s, this sort of thing is common. It happens through pod match. I was able to stop paying them like $1,500 a month to, to work with my show and everything. And I learned how to do this shit myself. It’s easy. I don’t even have to actually go and look for people because they find me on pod match and ask me to come on my show.

So I don’t even have to. So I went from paying a hundred dollars a person to have someone come on my show to $39 a month to have unlimited amounts of people, you know, trying to come on my show.

Kim: Right, right. Well, and they do have a free choice too. So you can even just do it for free. You’re not gonna necessarily get as many matches, but but there are free things that you can do as well, but definitely worth it with pod match to pay the $39 a month. Absolutely.

De’Vannon: But it’s also a community. Kim. I learned Alex and FETO is the genius that is behind what is pod [00:59:00] match? They have like over 20,000, 25,000 people on pod match now, and it’s always growing and they’ve bought out other pod, other similar companies before, because nobody’s doing it better than they are. I learned where to get the, the equipment set up for my podcast and everything through pod match.

You know, you have a community there, so you’re not alone. Cause a lot of people wanna start a podcast and they’re sitting there alone in their room. Like where the fuck do I begin? And then you go on the internet and you have all these people trying to sell you all this bullshit that you don’t need. But through pod, through, through the pod match community, which is a different website, but you access it through pod match.com.

You can post a question. Hey, where do I start? You can just message Alex and Filippo the found it directly. Then he will tell you I would just throw it out there. I currently use a road eroded mic and a NGO camera. They just plug into my mic and they just plug into my MacBook. There’s no switchboards and switchy that needs to happen.

You know, some people like to get complex with it. [01:00:00] That’s fine if you wanna hold mixing sound board, but I just plug this bitch in and go. And I use the same mic to record my audio book. And so and I learned about these things through talking to people on pod match, you know, through researching and stuff like that.

There’s classes you can take and stuff like that. But the bottom line is that you’re not by yourself. And when you’re trying to be an author or podcaster, it can get lonely because how many people do you know that are authors and podcasters? you.

Kim: right, right. Yeah. It’s so important with anything that you do in life to connect, to, to know that you’re not alone in it. I mean, that’s part of the reason I wrote my books. And part of the reason you wrote your book is because you can relate to people and it’s good for people to know. They’re not the only one going through the things that they’re going through.

And so the same thing with being an author or a podcaster, so important to connect with the community.

De’Vannon: Yeah. And I’m just gonna give pot [01:01:00] match a little bit more of a plug. You know, the, the website is so well designed. Basically each person’s profile is a media kit already, and you have access to the photos. You can use their history biography, some questions they’d like to talk about and everything like that.

Oh, social media. You know, pod match has done a great job of putting everything you need in front of you. The old production team that I had, they used to have to email each person that I was going to be interviewing to get the photos, find out the social media, get the biographies. Now you gotta wait for their assistant to get back to my people.

And then it’s a whole thing with pod match. It’s all right there at the moment you log the fuck in my life was made so much easier by this fucking website. And it saved me a shit ton of money. And it brought me into a community of people who I could trust, who were not, who were not just trying to get more money from me.

Kim: Yeah, so true. So true. It is. It’s a, it’s the best tool you introduce me to it. And it’s the best tool [01:02:00] I’ve seen out there for sure.

De’Vannon: Yeah, I found, I found Kim on matchmaker.fm, which is a similar website and I just have a profile on there and I don’t go on there at all. I just kind of leave it out there. And I said, whoever’s meant to come to me through this. Will I just left it? And Kim found me on there, but I was like, oh no girl, you’re too good for matchmaker.

You’ve got to step your pussy up time for you to upgrade. Upgrade you, upgrade you are better, is like.

Kim: It’s true. It’s true. I know. Yeah. I’m forever in your debt for that, for sure.

De’Vannon: Okay. So we’ve taken the people from, should I be an author? Hell, this point, should I be a podcaster? Where the fuck do I begin? We’ve given them websites and tools to start. They have access to both of us. And [01:03:00] then, so we’ll just see if this helps someone. So with that, you can just say anything you wanna say and have a last word.

I think we’ve done a good job.

Kim: Yeah. Yeah, you’ve done a great job of explaining. I mean, there’s so much more, right. There’s always so much more that you can talk about, but looking for writer’s conferences, that that’s a good thing too, to attend a writer’s conference, you learn so much, there’s always workshops on self-publishing and workshops on publishers.

Sometimes you can even meet publishers but looking for different ways to connect like that are a good thing to do as well and read, you know, I think it’s so important that if you’re gonna be a writer, you need to be a reader and see what it is that you like and, and learn how to hone your craft.

De’Vannon: Yeah. And when it comes to reading. So, so a friend of mine who read in my book, I sent him over a copy. He was like, yeah, this is the first thing I’ve read in years. He was like, he couldn’t put it down. The thing is he was reading [01:04:00] something he was interested in. So to be a good reader doesn’t mean that you can just pick up every fucking book in the world and just zoom through it.

You have to actually give a damn about what you’re reading. And as simple as it sounds, it’s something that I’ve recently discovered about myself, you know, cuz reading the books that they made us in high school, fucking Canterbury tales and shit like boring ass books, you know, I was thinking maybe I don’t like to read books, you know?

No, the problem was I wasn’t reading shit that I was interested in.

Kim: Mm-hmm

De’Vannon: that once I actually found the sort of shit that I liked to read, you know, now I’m one of those speed readers who I’ve envied and looked at like, oh my God, how can you read a whole 200 page book in a day? You know, or, or a hell even in a week, you know, it would take me like months to just read like a fucking 200 page book because you know what I thought it was boring.

So you gotta find books that you like. Yeah,

Kim: Yeah. And I’ll tell you a book that [01:05:00] people are gonna love is yours. You are a great writer. You’re a great storyteller. And there’s no better book in my mind to read than a book of that is by a great storyteller because you’ve put people in the moment with you. You do a great job of setting the scene and letting people feel how you feel.

And it’s, it is a book that is awfully hard to put down. So yes, people are gonna wanna buy your book. Everyone listening, make sure as soon as that book is available out there, get your hands on it. You’re gonna want.

De’Vannon: appreciate that. I feel the same way about yours and your book gonna be found@kimsorell.com. And of course, that will go in the showy notes as it does as it always does. And So, yeah. Well, thank you for coming on the show. Kim CRE author lover of black licorice cancer survivor. Her bookstore love is and cry until you laugh and they are available on [01:06:00] N dot

Kim: And lots of other places, if you’re an Amazon hater

De’Vannon: that’s all through your website, though. They can find on all the places through your website.

Kim: Right, right. Yeah. Thank you for having me. It’s always so fun to be with you.

De’Vannon: Absolutely. Till next time. My idea.

Kim: All righty.

De’Vannon: Thank you all so much for taking time to listen to the sex drugs in Jesus podcast. It really means everything to me. Look, if you love the show, you can find more information and resources at SexDrugsAndJesus.com or wherever you listen to your podcast. Feel free to reach out to me directly at DeVannon@SexDrugsAndJesus.com and on Twitter and Facebook as well.

My name is De’Vannon and it’s been wonderful being your host today and just remember that everything is gonna be right.

 

Leave a Comment

Scroll to Top
Scroll to Top