Our guest for the 297th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Mary Adkins. Mary is an author and writing coach who helps her clients start and publish a book. She walks through her process to writing her first book and how she’s gone on to publish three. This episode is the journey of getting permission to pursue the passion project that so often gets left on the backburner and to fully embrace where your creativity takes you.
And it goes like…
Tune into the episode or read all about it in the transcription below.
Rob Marsh: Do you want to write a book? We’ve interviewed a couple of book specialists on the podcast over the past couple of years, but in those interviews, we’ve focused on non-fiction books that you could use to grow your business. But a lot of copywriters want to write something a little more creative, something like a short story or a screenplay, or a novel. Today’s guest for the Copywriter Club podcast is best-selling novelist Mary Adkins, who has published three novels and, in addition to writing, helps others figure out how to write and publish their own work. This is a pretty fun discussion that got us thinking about writing something that could be turned into a movie instead of a workshop. If you listen between the lines, there are a lot of good ideas and some good advice that applies to copywriting too.
Kira Hug: But first, this episode of the podcast is sponsored by the Copywriter Accelerator. This is our program designed to give you everything you need to start your copywriting business, to pivot your copywriting business if you’re changing it up, or to grow your copywriting business if you feel like you’ve hit a plateau. We have blueprints, we have structure so you know what to do, or we provide coaching and an incredible community so that you can work through and build your business with your peers and you don’t have to do it alone. We’re kicking it off in August and you can jump on the waitlist if you want to learn more about that program. Just click on the link in our show notes, and you’ll hear more information about it soon. Let’s get into our interview with Mary.
Mary Adkins: I always loved creative writing since I was in 7th grade actually is when my English teacher turned me on to creative writing. I loved it and I always wanted to be a writer, but at some point along the way, I don’t know, I think I lost some confidence and felt like I needed to do something more practical and wound up in law school, which I actually think is a pretty common path for a lot of writers and a lot of creative people. I went to law school. I liked law school, I really enjoyed it. I liked being a student and I liked learning. That was a good experience, but as soon as I actually became a lawyer after law school, it was pretty clear to me immediately that it was not a good fit for me. I wanted to be writing and that’s really what I knew and as soon as I got this job, I don’t want to be doing this. I want to be writing.
I pretty quickly, under a year left law completely, so that I could prioritize launching a writing career. I quit my job and went back to tutoring to pay my bills, which is what I was doing before I went to law school, and moved apartments, moved to a cheaper apartment. I was living in New York City and had to change my lifestyle to afford it. I would tutor in the evenings and I would write during the day. I didn’t know what I wanted to write. I did some freelance copywriting, I did some freelance journalism, I published some personal essays, just got some odd writing jobs here and there. But mostly, I was interested in writing and publishing a book. I knew that that’s ultimately what I wanted to do and ideally, more than one, so I set about taking writing classes to figure out how to do that.
I started with a memoir. That was my first big idea, was that I was going to write a memoir. I learned how to write and publish a memoir, which is at least at the time, which was, this was 2010, the way that you sold a memoir was on proposal, which is largely still the way it’s done. Sometimes it’s a little different depending on the type of book and who you are. I put together this memoir proposal and started sending it out to literary agents, which is how you get a traditional publishing book deal still.
Long story short, I got a lot of nos, I got a lot of rejections and one of them wrote back though and said, he said, “Well, I could have sold the hell out of this in the 900s, but I can’t now, so do you have anything else?” I didn’t have anything else, but I think at this point I had learned that you never say that. You never say you don’t have something else, so I said, “Well, what could you sell now?” He said, “A novel. Do you have a novel idea?” I actually did have a novel idea. I just hadn’t had the confidence to write it yet. I wrote a little paragraph about this novel idea to him and he was the first person I had shared this novel idea with. I wrote it in an email and he wrote back, “Oh, that sounds like, that sounds great. I love this concept, write the novel and then send it to me.”
That is really what launched my career as a novelist because I didn’t realize it at the time, but I didn’t have the confidence to write a novel. I think I just thought, “Well, that’s something that people who are a lot smarter than me do. I don’t know how to do that. I hadn’t even written a short story that I liked, so how could I possibly write a novel, much longer fiction?” Getting that permission slip from that literary agent is why I wrote a novel. That novel became my first novel and I’ve since written and published three, and I think of myself primarily as a novelist. I’m really grateful to him for that because … and he didn’t end up becoming my literary agent, by the way. I did send it to him and once I was finished, he never offered to represent me, but I did find obviously another path to publication through another agent, who is my agent to date and is wonderful.
That’s essentially my story of getting published. In terms of the program I now run, The Book Incubator, I realized after my first book came out that I had had this kind of long and meandering path to publication. That novel, that first novel that I wrote, came out in 2019, and I had started it in early 2012. It was a seven-year process. I didn’t have any regrets about that process, it was my path. It was also, I think, unnecessarily solitary and I learned a lot through trial and error and I hobbled together how to do a lot of things to ultimately write the novel well and get a book deal. I took a lot of classes that were not helpful and that I think actually derailed me for a while, so, I decided to put together what I learned into a writing course. I just started with one course. I’m like, “I’m going to put this course online and I’ll teach people what I wish I had known.”
That first course I put together was just around how to write the novel, how to write the first draft of the novel. People started taking it and they loved it and then they were like, “Well, how do I revise it now?” Then, I put a course together on how to revise the novel, and then they took that and they liked that, and then they were like, “How do I pitch it now? How do I get a book deal?” I put that. Eventually, it grew into this all-inclusive, how-to-write, revise and pitch your book to get a book deal year-long program, which is what I run now, The Book Incubator. Long story short, that’s my six-minute version.
Rob Marsh: Lots of stuff to cover in there. I want to go back to when you were just starting out as a writer and that experimentation phase. I have a lot of questions about this, but you were trying a lot of different things. What was it that kept you going? What was it that made you say, “Okay, I’ll try this, or I’ll try this”? I know you wanted to be a writer, but talk us through that experimentation phase and how you found the path to the thing that you wanted to do. I think a lot of writers get stuck here thinking that, “Well, I want to be a writer, and then maybe I’ll have them end up as copywriters because they just never get past the thing,” and it’s like, “Well, I can make money copywriting,” but yeah, talk about that phase for us.
Mary Adkins: When you said, what kept you going? The first thing that came to mind was glimmers of affirmation. I feel whenever I would get, publishing my first essay, my first personal essay, it was an essay about me in a newspaper, it was the New York Daily News, and it was just so affirmative. I thought, “Okay, well, I can do this.” Even if that meant I had submitted 12 other pieces that all got rejections, that one piece was enough to keep me going. It’s funny because looking back, I’m remembering some of the different kinds of writing gigs I got. They all felt like using different parts of my writing brain in a way that was fun, like exercising different parts of your body.
I got this one gig from an entrepreneur, who is starting an app, and it was going to be like a video messaging app. This is so funny looking back because it’s, I don’t know how much tech and apps have changed since then, but this was 2011, he’s going to start this video messaging app. He wanted these videos. These were going to be scripted videos of actors doing little funny skits and he wanted me to write the skits. I just wrote all these tiny, little comedy bits, which was super fun and not something I also didn’t really feel qualified for but had a lot of fun doing and kind of a fake it till you make it type thing. I think a lot of my early writing was fake it ‘till you make it. Just write, see how people respond, put it out there and try to learn from that.
Kira Hug: It sounds like you’ve really built confidence as you’ve grown your writing career and your business. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Mary Adkins: I do. I think a lot of … I notice it now because I work with … I feel like so many of the writers I work with need permission slips like I did to do it. I don’t know if that’s always confidence or if it’s a combination of confidence and working on their day job or whatever it is. It may not be confidence, but I do feel a lot of us need someone to tell us it’s okay to do this thing. It’s okay for you to try it and to devote time to working on it. I certainly did, yeah, like you noticed. I think there’s also an element here where writing is communication. Writing is a two-way street. It’s not a one-way street.
We know inherently that if we’re doing it well, then the person who’s reading the writing is having an experience and hopefully an experience that we wanted them to have. There’s this mutual understanding. I think it makes sense that sometimes, especially when we’re just starting out, we need someone to say, “You’re going in the right direction,” or, “This is good writing,” or, “You’re doing this well,” or, “Keep going,” because otherwise, it’s just talking and there’s no one to listen to you to tell you if they understand what you’re saying. I think it makes sense that a lot of times, as writers, we need some external both validation and feedback. That said, the part of my story skipped over a moment ago, those seven years of working on my book, the writing classes that I was primarily taking were feedback-based, where we would submit and these were all kinds of writing classes. Essay classes, short story classes, journalism classes, but we would submit our work to the class and get feedback from our peers.
I landed in a place of not, I don’t believe that’s the best model. I actually think it’s too … peer feedback is not an ideal way to help someone become a better writer, especially early on. I don’t teach that way at all. I think there’s a happy medium between getting that little bit of validation we need to keep going, but also not subjecting ourselves to just an onslaught of feedback the second we write something because it’s just so hard to even carry through a vision when you’ve only written part of the thing that you’re writing and you have 14 people each giving you all the reasons why you need to redo it.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Can we talk a little bit more about that? Because it seems to me, at least in my own experience when I’ve written things and I’m thinking, “Oh, maybe this is the book idea or whatever,” and then I come back to it a few days later or a week or two later and I’m like, “Ah, this is garbage. I would be embarrassed to show this to somebody,” but it feels like you need to get feedback that says, “Actually, you’re on the right path here. Keep going.” Why is pure feedback not the right feedback?
Mary Adkins: Yeah. Okay. I love talking about this. The way I like to talk about it is I feel, and this is ridiculous I know, but the analogy I use is, that it’s like if a bunch of people got together in a room to learn how to fly a plane. A bunch of aspiring pilots are in a room and they’re ready to learn how to fly a plane. The teacher comes in and says, “Okay, the way you’re going to learn how to fly a plane is that all of you are going to guess how to fly a plane and then give each other feedback on your guesses.” You’re right.
It would take … maybe they’d eventually figure it out. It felt like that. Peer feedback feels like that, both when I’m giving, back in the day when I was giving it and when I was receiving it, because typically, in these classes, no one would tell us how to give feedback, how to give constructive feedback, how to receive the feedback, do I stop writing right now and incorporate everything everyone’s saying or do I keep going and then come later? How do I filter it? How do I decide whether to take the feedback or not? Who’s right and who isn’t?
When someone just says they don’t like something, does that mean I should change it? It was just such a mess. I think, to your point about going back and reading what you wrote and thinking, “Oh, this is garbage,” I think that happens to a lot of us and why we stop. I feel like I, very often, will start working with someone who has the beginnings of a whole bunch of books, but none of them, all of them were abandoned at some point. I would totally be that person too if I went back and read, which is why I don’t do that. The way I like to encourage writers to tackle a book draft is not to go back and read anything, because you will hate it. For me, it’s just part of the process. You just hate it, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. I think we’re pretty bad at knowing how good something is as we’re writing it or when we’re too close to it, and then, parts of it will be pretty rough, but I like to think of the first draft as just one version of the story.
It’s not necessarily a bad version of the story. There’s the whole crappy first draft idea that I think some people subscribe to because it makes them feel less pressure in writing the first draft. I never liked the idea of a crappy first draft, because I thought, “Well if it’s going to be bad, I don’t want to do it at all.” I like thinking of the first draft as just one version of the story and ultimately, it will have elements of that in it when it’s in its final form after I revise, but there will also be parts that are different. Everything in there is a placeholder and either it will get to stay or it will go, but we have to get that one version of it down first, so that it exists so that it exists at all and there’s something there that can be shaped and polished. Then, it will be something we’re proud of.
That shaping and polishing, for me, never happened until after I had the thing itself down in the first place. I think, when we subject it to feedback right away, people are giving feedback like, “This opening was boring.” Well, it’s like, okay, but that’s because it’s not even a draft yet.” First, we have to figure out what the story is and then we can make the beginning interesting. That could be helpful feedback on the third draft. On the first draft, you can’t worry about whether your opening is boring, because you don’t even know what the story is yet. You have to figure out what that is first.
Kira Hug: Mary, how do we know what topic our book should be about?
Mary Adkins: Yeah. I love that question. The way I think about it is, what is the one that you’re burning to write? Because I find that often people, if they have a few ideas, there’s one that’s just really calling to them, at least that’s the case for me. I may have a couple things, but there’s one that’s like, “This is the book that is wanting to be written,” or, “This is the idea that’s wanting me to explore it.” I think what I’ll tell people often is, be really honest with yourself. What is burning one? Which is the one you’re really, “That’s the one,” if I’m really just not trying to think about what’s the most sellable or what other people, what I’m guessing other people would want to read, what’s the one that I most want to write?”
Because it’s such a huge project. It’s about 70,000 words, and of course, all books have different links, but I think of 70,000 words as a good target for a first draft. If you’re going to sit down and write 70,000 words, it’s got to be something that you really care about or you’re going to stop doing it. That’s one thing that I like to suggest.
Then, another thing is that the first thing I do with people when they join my program is find what their big book idea is, and the way we find a big book idea is by articulating it as a question. There’s some big, human, thorny question at the heart of any story. It should be the kind of question that you as the writer truly feel you could spend a whole book addressing and exploring because you’re going to. I really love addressing it or framing it as a question, because I think when we frame it as a question, we come in with the spirit of curiosity and openness rather than thinking like, “Oh, I have a thesis,” or like a theme, which is a statement. Then, it’s just more closed off, if you think of it as, “This is a theme of my book,” or, “This is a thesis statement.”
Often, and especially with those of us writing fiction, we don’t know what theme is yet. Theme is something we could figure out after we’ve written it, but what we can go in with is a big question we want to answer. For example, in my first novel, the first novel opens with this woman who has gotten … she’s 33 and she’s gotten a terminal diagnosis, and so she knows that she’s going to die in six months. she is at a place in her life where she had wanted to start a bakery, but she hasn’t started it. She wanted a family, but she doesn’t have one. This whole time, she felt like her life was, she was waiting for her life to begin, and it was just over the horizon. She was going to start the bakery, she had been saving for it, but she hadn’t yet.
Then, she finds out that what she thought was her, just the warm-up for her life was her entire life. It’s done. She has to come to terms with that somehow. The big question was, how do you accept an unlived life when you don’t have a chance to keep going? That was a question that I not only felt like I could spend a whole book answering, but I felt I needed to. I needed to answer that for myself. That question was tormenting me because I’d recently lost a friend very young and it was just on my mind. It was a really good, powerful engine. I can think of it as an engine for my motivation and for my persistence because it was so sincere and I cared about it really deeply. That’s what I encourage people to do for a big, for something like a book project, where you’re going to have to show up day after day for months. You really want something that’s big and that matters to you, and I like phrasing it as a question.
Rob Marsh: Let’s say that you’ve got that question, you’ve got this idea for the book, and as you write, maybe you hit 25,000 words or 30,000 words and you get to this point where it’s like, “Actually, I’m no longer interested in this question,” or, ‘I don’t have the words,” or, “I actually hate the story that has come out of my fingers.” Or maybe in a copywriter’s world, it’s not a book, but they’ve gone into a niche and it’s, at some point, I don’t want to write another website for a tech company, or I’m so tired of working with these online gurus, they’re primadonnas, whatever, I got to change. How do you address when you’re writing stuff you hate?
Mary Adkins: The way that I do that with a book project, and then we can translate it to the other sphere is, by reminding people or telling people that it’s not you. You are not the problem. It’s not that you’re failing to show up or you’re bad at writing or you had a terrible idea initially. Usually, it’s just that something in your story needs to change. It’s just time for a pivot. It’s time for there to be some new action that shifts the world around for these characters. If you’re bored, if you’re showing up and you’re bored or you’re just like, “Oh, I’m over this,” then the reader probably is too. We got to find a way to bring some excitement in whatever that is. Often, in a single project, if you’re in one project, often that’s bringing something new into the project itself.
If it’s fiction, a new event, or a new character, something that really shakes things up. If it’s fiction or nonfiction, it could be changing up the structure, dropping something in, or suddenly let’s just write a whole email conversation. Let’s write a text message thread. Let’s put in a newspaper article or some drawings or just something to shake up the process so that you can get excited about it again because that energy is coming through the writing. I think, if I try to translate that to the situation you described, where you niched yourself and you don’t, you’re not feeling excited about working with that niche anymore, I think it could be helpful maybe to think about the same thing. Is there a way to change the material itself? If you can’t break out of this niche, that sounds easier said than done, there’s obviously trying to break out of the niche and finding a different niche or drifting, that’s going to come with its own challenges. Then, it’s like, “Can you change up the work itself?” You’re doing it slightly differently and it becomes interesting to you again.
Kira Hug: Mary, it took you around seven years to write the first draft of your book and complete your book.
Mary Adkins: Yes, that’s right.
Kira Hug: Is that typical for writers when they write their first book? Is that something that we should expect when we sit down to write our first book?
Mary Adkins: I think it’s pretty typical for the first book. But honestly, the reason I started my program is so that it wouldn’t take people that long. The thing that took so long was that I didn’t know how to write a novel. I actually Googled it. I remember sitting down and Googling “how long is a novel” and reading 70,000 words and thinking, “Well, I’ll just write that many words. I’ll just write until I hit 70,000 and that will be a novel,” which is what I did. That’s what I did. The first draft really, I shared the big question on my first book a moment ago, but I didn’t go into that with that big question, I figured that out much later. That’s what I do now and that’s what I teach now, but at that time, it was really, it was a lot of throwing spaghetti at the wall and just seeing what stuck, and so there was that. That took a long time. I probably rewrote this novel 12 or 13 times, so that takes time. That was on the creative side.
Then, on the professional pitching side, I also didn’t know how to do that. I didn’t know how to reach out to literary agents in an effective way, how to find the right agents, how to pitch them, so that took some time. Seven years was long and I think it’s long for a lot of us for that reason, for similar reasons, but it doesn’t have to be that long. I do think, that if you can find a mentor or a program like mine that helps you get, I’m not saying that as a sales pitch, I mean this genuinely, that helps you cut through a lot of the trial and error just to figure out how to do it right. You can cut that time down.
It is a long journey. Publishing is not a short process. People are sometimes surprised to hear this, but the typical timeline from when you actually get the book deal to when the book hits shelves is two years, and that’s after you get the book deal. You sign the contract and then two years later, the book is coming out and showing up in Barnes & Noble. That timeline has been true for all of my books and it’s been true or even a little longer for author-friends of mine. It’s pretty typical. That’s for traditional publishing, so that’s if you have a publisher who’s buying the rights to publish your book. Self-publishing can be done much more quickly if people want to go that route.
Rob Marsh: Mary, specifically about your first book, and I think the idea that you were sharing with this unlived life, the way you wrote this book isn’t what I would call a traditional narrative, it’s like in bits and pieces, blog posts, emails, that thing. Do you think that approach helped get your first book accepted? Was it the story? Some combination? Was it an awesome proposal letter? What was it that got you that first in?
Mary Adkins: Yeah, I think that was, and I’m so happy you know that about my first book. I think that really helped, like that it was an unconventional kind of format. But I think, in terms of what could be helpful for others to know about that, I don’t think the takeaway is to find a way of doing it differently. The takeaway for me was to find what I did really well. I kept rewriting this book and kept rewriting this book, and for most of the … I told you I think I wrote it 12 or 13 times, and for 11 of those 12 or 13 times, it was not like that. It was not written in all emails and blog posts and text messages and Domino’s pizza receipts. It had some of those, but it also had a lot of traditional pros, but I never felt great about the traditional pros part.
That part was always a slog. It was always the part that I just didn’t feel that great about, that I would get feedback from agents like wasn’t working as well. I just remember, at some point, and I don’t know how it finally clicked, but thinking, “Okay, well, the parts everybody says are working and the parts that I feel good about are the unconventional parts or like the emails and the blog posts.” That stuff seems fine. No one is complaining about those parts. I like writing those parts. What if I just made the entire book out of that? What if the story were just told through those found documents and virtual communications? That was it. That was what unlocked it for me was doing that, because as soon as I did that, that draft was the next one that landed me my literary agent, and then ultimately, the version of the book that came out was that one. I think it was leaning into what I was hearing from others and what I was sensing myself was my strongest suit.
Rob Marsh: Okay, Kira. Let’s break in here. You and I have talked in the past about possibly writing a screenplay or maybe even a book, I know you’ve had some ideas like that. I have a feeling you’re enjoying this discussion, but what stood out to you from this part of the interview?
Kira Hug: Yeah. I think anytime we talk with an author, a book creator, it just is so inspiring, especially if they have a program where there’s some type of structure and guidance, it feels more achievable and it’s possible for anyone. You and I have talked about this, and so this is something that’s been on my bucket list for a very long time, and talking to Mary definitely gave me some ideas I could use. I think, for me, the book is a long game, and so I realized that I don’t have that burning, how does she put it? The book you’re burning to write. I don’t have that specific book yet and I’m still in the stage where there are a lot of different directions I could go. What I’m doing, because I think it’s really easy to get stuck in that stage where you’re, “Well, I don’t know what to write, and I don’t have that burning desire for a specific book, so I’m not going to do anything.”
I’m experimenting with some ideas around, even a new podcast I could create, where I could test different book ideas, and each episode could be a different topic, so that I could really see what resonates and maybe pull a book idea from that. Because, for me, obviously, with podcasting, it’s so much easier. It doesn’t intimidate me or the way a book intimidates me, so it feels like a more approachable route for someone like me to ultimately get to the end goal of creating a book that I feel great about. That’s how I’m approaching it right now, and I’m making some progress with baby steps. What about you, Rob? I know you’re thinking about different books. Are you pursuing it? Are you still trying to figure out which book to write?
Rob Marsh: Well, before I answer that question because you got me thinking, I’m trying to think, and maybe some or maybe there aren’t any, but did you know of any podcasts that have become books or that have started at? Well, I think I know there’s some non-fiction ones like, This Will Make You Smarter or some stuff that I think have turned episodes into books and some philosophy ones. I’m curious, though, if there’s any that have become fiction and maybe some listeners know of one or two that have. I’d love to know that. I’m not necessarily asking that question, I’m just throwing it out there, because I’m, “Huh, I wonder how that process works?” But I like it as an idea to explore ideas.
Kira Hug: Yeah. I know of a lot of authors who launched the book and then they started the podcast, so I think it could be fun. Again, it’s just easier for me to think about a podcast and content in terms of podcasting than chapters in a book. It’s like, “Ooh, that’s intimidating,” but this is less intimidating.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. I think actually that could be a really effective approach and it’s something I hadn’t considered before. Now, you got my brain spinning a little bit, but if I were writing, I’m a big fan of thrillers and detective novels. Michael Connolly is one of my favorite authors. I love reading Lee Child and Ian Rankin. It’s usually a police procedural or a detective or a spy or something, and so when I think about writing fiction, that’s where my brain goes. I’m not going to be the next Pulitzer winner or somebody that’s going to be celebrated.
Kira Hug: You could be, Rob. Stop.
Rob Marsh: Probably not going to be celebrated by the New York Times, because I think I would write the kinds of stuff that I enjoy reading. My trouble, I think I said this in our interview is that, I’ll sit down and I can write out a scene and I’m, “Oh yeah, this is pretty good,” and then I come back to it later, I’m like, “This is terrible.” That’s my one, and of course, we got some ideas on how to overcome that in this interview. The other thing that I struggle with is plotting. I’ll have an idea, it’s like, “Okay, I’ve got this great idea where we can put this government official in a sticky situation and they’ve got to get out.” Then, maybe I can go two or three scenes and I’m just, “Huh? Where does it even go from there?” That’s where I get stuck. Maybe I’m a short story guy or a non-fiction guy, I don’t know, we’ll see. Some day if-
Kira Hug: This sounds very similar. This sounds similar to the business struggles that we all talk about.
Rob Marsh: Maybe that’s what it is. I’m an idea person. I’m a starter and I need that other person to work with me to finish. It’s still out there. If I end up writing something, someday, who knows?
Kira Hug: If you write a detective novel, can you write me into it and have me be the victim?
Rob Marsh: You want to be murdered. You could be a…
Kira Hug: I want to be murdered, yeah.
Rob Marsh: Okay, deal. Deal. I’m going to make that happen if I ever write a detective novel. A lot of the writing that I do, and I actually get really excited about non-fiction ideas, and a lot of the stuff that Mary was sharing here isn’t just about writing fiction. It’s really applicable to any big project that we’re taking on. Whether it’s a book, whether it’s something like starting a podcast, whether it’s a course, or a new service that we want to offer in our business, the same kinds of hiccups and pitfalls drag us down and keep us from accomplishing the work that we’re meant to do. I think, really, that’s what this interview is all about. Yeah, we’re talking about books, and Mary’s books are great beach reads, and be sure to check them out, but really what we’re talking about here is how do you do that work that you’re meant to do?
Kira Hug: Yeah. A lot of it relates to copywriting businesses and the struggles that we talked about with Mary are similar. It’s Having that confidence to move forward with the craft and with your copywriting business. I know we talked about glimmers of affirmation and how that helped Mary move forward when she did receive some positive feedback or encouragement, sometimes from people she didn’t even know in the industry and how that helped her. I know that’s something that is really important for copywriters who are starting their business, or even if you’re pivoting in your business. At any stage, I know I need that all the time too. I need affirmation.
I think it’s important to surround yourself and put yourself in the right environment, so you can receive those affirmations. We’re not talking about faux affirmations where people are just blowing and smoke, but really setting yourself up, maybe with a community of colleagues who you respect, who could look at what you’re doing and provide solid feedback. It could be mentorship, which we’ve talked about a ton. It could be joining different organizations. It could be reaching out to people you don’t know for feedback. I think that feels really important to me, and I know it’s been important to a lot of the copywriters we’ve worked with.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. You said that really well and I don’t necessarily want to repeat what you’ve shared here. Her analogy about flying the airplane, I think, is really applicable, because we often turn to the wrong people for feedback. Of course, our spouses are going to be telling us, “Yeah, it’s a great idea,” or of course, our friends are going to tell us to pursue these things that maybe they’re not actually that great, because they want to be supportive. They want to tell us that we’re on the right track. To your point, sometimes our spouses are actually the opposite, give it up, get a real job, that thing, which is also not helpful feedback. As you mentioned, the right mentors, the right coaches, surrounding yourself with the right peers, people who have been there before, people who have built the things that you want to build, written the things you want to write, worked with the kinds of clients that you want to work with, those are the people that you want to get feedback from.
Kira Hug: Yeah. People who understand the space and I think that’s where oftentimes, I won’t ever go to family for affirmations or just for that direction or feedback I need, because they just, as much as they want to understand the space that we’re in as online marketers, they just can’t. Understanding where you can go to talk to people who understand it is really important, and I think this could contradict what we’ve said previously on the podcast about not waiting for permission in giving yourself permission. I guess we are contradicting ourselves, but I think it’s important to do both, to tap yourself on the shoulder and say, “I’m going to do this. I’m not going to wait for anyone else to choose me, I’m going to choose myself,” and also put yourself in situations where you can still receive those glimmers of affirmation that will help you continue to choose yourself.
Rob Marsh: Well, I think it’s part of the same process. Mary pointed out she started writing stuff before she felt ready. She was writing some comedy stuff and there is this … it’s not really fake until you make it, but it’s put yourself out there until people start to see how great you are, and then, as you are putting yourself out there, you start to get the right affirmations from the right people, and you can seek that out, you can seek out that feedback, so I think it’s all part of the same process.
Kira Hug: Yes. I just want to mention again that it took Mary seven years to write, I guess it was the first book, and how she was committed and just made it happen and how this is. It is a long journey, and that’s why when I’m thinking about my future book, I guess I should set a deadline, otherwise, I might be 80 by the time I write it. But at the same time, I’m okay knowing that it may take time to get it out there into the world and that’s okay because I’m sold on the process. I guess it’s a balance too, of having some type of urgency, but also being okay with the process. Then, of course, if you don’t want to wait seven years, you join programs like Mary’s and you have support, so you can get there faster.
Rob Marsh: Right. You mentioned you don’t yet have that burning topic, that big idea, and unless you’ve got that, it’s probably a little premature to set a deadline anyway. Speaking of the big idea, this is another one of those things I think relates to copywriting. We, oftentimes, see copy that isn’t based on much of an idea at all, it’s just throwing out the same kinds of things. If you were to think about as copywriters how do you get excited about a project or how do you find that thing that’s going to create that curiosity and keep you going through a project, that big idea is a big part of that. We’ve talked a lot about the big idea in the Underground. There are some resources there that people can check out if they’re interested in learning more.
Kira Hug: Okay. Let’s get back to our interview with Mary and talk about money. I want to shift gears and talk about money, you like to talk about money. I’m sure you get this question all the time, but today, how much can we make from our books realistically? How should we approach it? Is it really, “Yeah, you can launch a couple of books, publish a couple of books, but you really need to keep your copywriting business going.”
Mary Adkins: Yeah.
Kira Hug: Or you need to launch a couple of courses on the side because this is not going to pay your bills most likely. Can you just talk a little bit about the money side?
Mary Adkins: Sure. Okay. I get this question all the time. I got tired of not being able to answer it accurately. The end of last year, the end of 2021, I gathered a whole bunch of data, self-reported data from authors on this question from surveys that others had taken in from surveys I took myself. I ended up with about 1400 responses from authors on what their book advance sizes were.
This is, by the way, when we say book advance, this means an advance on the royalties that you’ll get. If you get a traditional book deal, you, as the author, will get royalties. But when you sign the book deal, you get an advance, and that means, like, the money you get up front that will ultimately come out of your royalties when the book goes on sale. But the good thing about an advance is you don’t have to pay it back. Even if your book doesn’t sell, as well as everyone hopes, and doesn’t earn out all of those royalties, you still get to keep the advanced money. That’s why advances are really, I think, what authors, what we go for, because it’s the guaranteed income, and no one really knows how well a book will sell.
From the data that I gathered, what I found was that the average advance from 2016 to 2021 in the United States was, and this is across genres, fiction, non-fiction, any kind of book, it was $60,000, six zero. That was across types of publishers too, just any kind of publisher who was buying a book from someone, it was $60,000. Now, for smaller publishers, it was $25,000 for not the bigger publishers, so they tend to give smaller advances. But remember too, it’s just advance money. Advance money is what you’re guaranteed, but if your book sells well, then you end up earning, you get royalty checks later.
A smaller advance doesn’t mean smaller earnings overall necessarily. It just means a smaller guaranteed income now, and if your book sells well, you could definitely earn more later. The advance size is what a lot of times people want to know about and want to talk about, but it’s just the beginning. A bigger advance means you’re less likely to get royalty checks later, a smaller advance means you’re more likely to get royalty checks later. I also have, by the way, if people want to know more about that, I have a whole blog post and video breaking down how that amount changes for genre. I can’t remember off the top of my head what those numbers were, but I did break it down by genre and whether it’s your debut or not and that thing.
Rob Marsh: That blog post would be really helpful because I was thinking through, okay, does that number include the Stephen Kings of the world, the Harlan Cobens of the world, or is it, first-time publishers, so will definitely link to that post in the show notes, so that people can see that.
Mary Adkins: Yeah, that would be great, because yeah, exactly. I get into all the data, like what were the outliers, who exactly. No, I don’t think Stephen King’s not on the list, but there were a couple of really high earners on the list, but I also included the median so people could see when we don’t factor in those outliers what 50% of people make. Then, the last thing I want to say too, in case it’s helpful, is that the standard way that advances are paid out in North America, at least right now, is in three parts. You get a third of it when you sign the book deal, you get a third of it when the manuscript is completely done and goes off to production to be printed, and then you get a third of it when the book actually hits shelves.
That’s something important to think about too when you’re thinking about the future and what you could afford to do. The overall size of your payment is not something you will get at once. Because of that timeline I talked about for two years, I think it’s wise to expect that you will make that money over two years, three installments over two years.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Okay. Is there an opportunity to negotiate that as a first-time author or do you pretty much just get what you get?
Mary Adkins: No, definitely. Your agent, rather, will negotiate it. The downside of the way that traditional publishing works on one hand is that you have to have a literary agent typically to get your foot in the door. They don’t accept manuscript submissions from authors directly, you have to get a literary agent, and it can be hard to get a literary agent. The upside is, once you do, your literary agent is going to earn 15% commission on the revenue that they generate for you. That’s the standard. You don’t pay the literary agent outright, they just earn commission on their work for you. It’s definitely worth the commission because they will negotiate. They will negotiate the best possible deal for you and go out to multiple publishers.
If multiple publishers are interested, the agent will host an auction where they’ll bid against each other, which will also get your advance size up. This is how advances can grow over time is through this process that is being led by your literary agent.
Rob Marsh: I’m going to shift too because I want to make sure we talk about something I’m geeking out over today, the Enneagram types and how that feeds into the creative process. How does that fit into your creative process or what you’re teaching to your students right now?
Mary Adkins: I’m a huge Enneagram fan. I, for a long time, though I was a seven and have in the last year realized I’m a three-
Rob Marsh: Oh! That’s a big jump.
Mary Adkins: Which was like an existential crisis, I know. It was a big jump. Although I’ve since learned that threes and sevens do often mix themselves up, but I really felt confident I was a seven and then I was actually working with an Enneagram coach who said, “I think you’re a three.” I realized that I actually am. I’m just an untraditional three in some ways. I love the Enneagram as a way to understand ourselves. I’ve seen it. It’s made a big difference in my life. My husband is an eight. It comes up in our conversation a lot, how we are both motivated based on our Enneagram number. I find it helpful, a helpful communication tool in that way.
Anyway, because it made such a difference in my personal life, I brought it into working with writers, because I realized, “Oh, well, this is … since it’s a tool and a way for us to understand our own motivations, and since writing is so much about motivation, we can use the Enneagram to try to make our writing lives better.” That was a really cool thing to unlock because I think we all, in some ways, I think as writers, there are some universal things that we deal with like resistance and writer’s block and insecurity and imposter syndrome and all that stuff. But there’s also … there are different motivations behind those experiences and we all respond differently to solutions for getting around them. Yeah, I love to think of the Enneagram as a way to understand what might work.
For example, if I’m working with a writer and they take the Enneagram test and they find out that they are, say a two, which is the helper, so twos really make … they’re identified by doing for others. Your friend who’s a two is probably the one who remembers everyone’s birthdays and is always up for hosting dinner and is helping out and is there for you. If a writer is a two, then what could be going on, not necessarily because everyone’s different, but what could be going on is, when they struggle to carve out time to write, it’s because they feel they shouldn’t. They feel guilty about it or it’s infringing on time they should be spending, taking care of someone else.
Talking about that, how that feels, and how to find ways to create writing goals that don’t feel like they’re sacrificing, their obligations to others can help them actually get it done, so maybe instead of saying, “I’m going to write every day from 7:00 AM to 8:00 AM or something,” or, “I’m going to write for three hours a day,” not that anyone does that, but I’m going to write for an hour a day, they say, “I’m going to make sure that I get five pages written today, but I don’t know when that will happen. They could happen at any time. We could have a page in the morning. We could have two pages in the middle of the day, and two pages later at night, doesn’t matter when. I’ll just work that around the other stuff I have to do, but I’m going to get the five pages done.”
There are different ways of setting writing goals. You can set a time block, like, “I am going to write from 7:00 AM to 8:00 AM every morning,” or you could say, “I’m going to write for three 25-minute bursts today. I’ll just find where they are, like the Pomodoro method.” Or, “I’m going to write five pages today,” that’s the one I tend to go for is, the page count, because I like to write by hand on a first draft and that’s just an easy way for me to work it in or a word count. A lot of writers use word count, “I’m going to write a thousand words today.”
Then, the last writing goal that I love and that I find works well for a lot of people, particularly people writing novels or fiction is just deciding they’re going to write one scene a day. I’m going to write one scene, and the scene is an amorphous thing. There’s no set definition. You don’t decide, “Oh, it has to be a thousand words or it has to be 2,000 words,” you just say, “I’m going to write the scene at the mall,” and then when that’s done, it’s done. Whether it’s a 300-word scene or a 3000-word scene, whatever it ends up being, you’ve done your thing for the day.
The cool thing about scenes as a goal is that most scenes end up falling somewhere between a thousand and 2,000 words, and so, when you have 35 to 70 of them, you have a book. It’s cool. You can think, “Okay, well, if 50 scenes make a book, then I’m going to write a scene a day for the next 50 days and I’ll have a book.” Anyway, sorry, I got a little bit off from the Enneagram. If those are the types of writing goals that, and I’m sure there are others too, but those are the most typical ones that I talk about, then we can use the Enneagram and then just our own understanding of our own personalities to decide which ones work best in our lives.
Rob Marsh: Do you think there’s an Enneagram type that maybe shouldn’t write a book? Or maybe if you’re an eight, you should self-publish and not work within the industry? Are there any weird oddities like that?
Mary Adkins: I don’t think there’s any type that shouldn’t write a book. Although it’s funny you mentioned eight because since my husband is an eight, I asked him when I was putting together this material on the best writing goals for different Enneagram numbers, I said, “Which of these would work best for you as an eight?” He said, “Oh, as an eight, I would just hire someone else to write the book for me.”
Rob Marsh: Yeah. I feel the same way. I haven’t taken the Enneagram, but knowing what they are, I’m like, “Huh, I might be an eight. Maybe-“
Kira Hug: Yeah. Rob, we’re going to dive deep into this. I want the two of us to figure out what we are and how it impacts our relationship, so we’re going to dive deep soon, don’t you worry.
Mary Adkins: Yes. I’m so glad you’re going to do that. Do you know what you are, Kira? You don’t know yet?
Kira Hug: I’m pretty sure I’m a four.
Mary Adkins: Okay, nice. That’s probably the most common Enneagram number of writers that I work with, it’s four.
Kira Hug: Which makes sense because it’s the artist because it’s very feeling focused and emotional from what I understand.
Mary Adkins: Yeah.
Kira Hug: Is there an Enneagram number that shouldn’t write a book?
Mary Adkins: No, definitely not. I would definitely say no, but I do think there are Enneagram numbers that are going to have a harder time. Like a one, ones are often perfectionists, so I think it can be really tough for a one to keep going. You mentioned a minute ago, Rob, going back and rereading and thinking that was terrible, I feel that’s a big struggle for a one.
I feel like there’s no number that I haven’t worked with, but everybody just has a different problem. For a nine, the struggle can just be showing up and getting it done. For a one, it’s being perfectionistic. For a five, it’s getting bogged down in research. For fours and sixes, it’s wondering if it’s good enough. Sevens, it’s having new ideas, wanting to start something different. I mentioned two already. Threes, this is maybe why I tend to churn out things pretty quickly. I think for threes who are very goal-oriented, getting it done, threes and eights, actually, I think for both threes and eights, getting it done once we decide to do it, usually isn’t the problem. It’s feeling like it’s worth doing in the first place and then committing to it.
Rob Marsh: Okay. My last question is a little bit different, but through the seven years that you went through and of course other authors, writers, even copywriters working with clients, we tend to get a lot of rejection, a lot of nos. Will you give us just one or two secrets for dealing with that and continuing on, knowing that eventually some success, something’s going to happen, but we’ve got to get through the dip or the dips as they come along?
Mary Adkins: Yeah. Okay, yes. I have two thoughts. One is, I always found it really encouraging to look up how many rejections all of the best writers got. Like Harry Potter being rejected 70 times or something. I don’t remember if that’s the exact statistic. Looking those things up just always gave me so much calm. Stephen King got rejected like a whole bunch and was living in his van or something. I think anytime you need encouragement, Google rejections of famous writers and you’ll realize that it’s such a good reminder that it’s part of the process, like you said. It happens to all of us and it’s just part of the process. In that way, it’s not personal, it’s just this is what it takes.
Then, the other thing too is, to go back to what we were talking about at the beginning, I think it can be helpful to really be sure to notice anything positive anyone says, because of course, we focus on the negative, we focus on the rejection. I’m the worst culprit when it comes to this. If I get a hundred reviews of a book on Amazon and 99 of them are great, I’m going to memorize the one that’s like, “This is a terrible book.” I’m going to memorize it, I’m going to talk about it, I’m going to feel sad about it and just ignore all the glowing ones. I think that’s a really normal thing to do. When it comes to rejection, one thing that I’ve noticed is that the people who are typically those who are rejecting, they don’t mince words.
If they say anything positive, they’re not saying it to make you feel good. They’re saying it because they mean it. If it’s like that, and in my case, I work with writers who are pitching literary agents and an agent will say, “Well, this book isn’t for me, but I’m sure you’re going to find representation for it.” If they say that, they mean that, and that says a lot about your writing. If they say, “This isn’t for me, but this is really strong writing.” They mean that. They truly mean that it’s strong writing. They’re not blowing smoke. They wouldn’t say that if it weren’t true if they didn’t really believe it. I think paying attention and bringing awareness to those little bits of affirmation that are coming through no matter how small is important to do.
Also, and finally, one more, which is remembering that it only takes one. You only need one person to accept whatever the pitch is. Whether it’s getting a literary agent or sending something out there, you only need one person to take it. I feel when I think about every publication success I’ve ever had from essays to articles to books, I’ve pretty much … I can think of only one or two times where I had more than one person wanting it. Every other time, it was a lot of rejection followed by one yes, and that yes became why it was published.
Kira Hug: All right, Mary, I know we’re at the end of our time with you. I know we could continue talking and I hope that we do, but for now, can you share where our listeners can go to find out more about your programs to learn more about you, to connect with you?
Mary Adkins: Yes. They can go to MaryAdkinsWriter.com and it’s Adkins with a D like dog, not like T like the diet. MaryAdkinsWriter, like writing, not riding a horse, .com and they can learn about me and my program, The Book Incubator there. Also, I think we’re going to, you said we’ll link to that post on what advance sizes are for authors and what you can make based on genre as well.
Rob Marsh: Of course, your books are available at Amazon and libraries around the world, so check those out too.
Mary Adkins: Yeah. Totally.
Kira Hug: All right. Thank you, Mary. We appreciate it.
Rob Marsh: Thanks, Mary.
Mary Adkins: Thank you. Thank you both, that was fun.
Rob Marsh: That’s the end of our interview with Mary. I’ve made a bunch of notes about the second half of the interview. One of the things, Kira, that interested me the most is we asked Mary or I asked Mary about rejection and she talked about going back and looking at some of the writers, famous writers who have been rejected, and I did that. I looked him up and I’m just going to list off a couple because I think this is pretty amazing. I think she mentioned Stephen King and JK Rowling. Stephen King was rejected 30 times before Carrie was accepted as a book. His advance was pretty small. It was just, I think like $2,500. The paperback rights later sold for like 10 times as much because it was such a hit.
Dr. Seuss, he was rejected 27 times before his first book was published. Jack Canfield, who wrote The Chicken Soup For the Soul books, rejected 144 times before those got made into books, and they’ve been, I think, bestsellers for the 30 years since they were published. They’ve literally sold hundreds of millions of copies. A few others, Robert Pirsig, Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, 121 rejections. Elmore Leonard’s first book, The Big Bounce was rejected 84 times and has since been published and also been made into a movie twice, two different movies. The Help by Kathryn Stockett was rejected 60 times. James Patterson, the best-selling novelist of all time. His first book was rejected 31 times. There’s a theme here and that is that book publishers don’t always recognize what everybody else wants, and we can take this also to copywriting. Pitching and so many of the things that we put out there, we face rejection too, and I think the takeaway here is to keep going because it’s not until you get through the rejections that you actually find success.
Kira Hug: Well said, I like that. I’m not going to add to that, but I’m going to shift and talk about, I’m going to shift gears and talk about the Enneagram because I am obsessed with it.
Rob Marsh: Yes you are.
Kira Hug: We will have an episode where we just talk about that soon. We’re going to work on that. I found it interesting, I do find it interesting to just think about which number you are and how that could play into your creative process. Using tools like the Enneagram to think about how you may move forward with the book or how you may work with others, how Rob and I work together. We recently found out that Rob is a five, right? You’re a five?
Rob Marsh: No, I think I’m a four. Wait, no,
Kira Hug: You’re a five.
Rob Marsh: I’m a five. You’re right, I am a five. I’m a five, although if I had answered one question differently, I could have been an eight, so I guessed, I guess really close to that.
Kira Hug: No, no. You’re a five. I listen to it and I am very clear that you’re a five,
Rob Marsh: I’m a five-eight. I’m going to insist on this. Okay, fine.
Kira Hug: Why do you want to be an eight? I don’t know eight well.
Rob Marsh: I am a five, but I will sometimes identify as an eight. How about that?
Kira Hug: Okay. We’ll revisit all of this and maybe Linda will come over and tell you that you’re a five.
Rob Marsh: We’ll have somebody take us apart on the Enneagram, yeah.
Kira Hug: Yes. I think that’s the fun that we just touched on that briefly with Mary and thinking through how we can rethink our process based on how we operate and how we move through this world and our strengths and weaknesses.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. I think tests, personality tests like Enneagram are fun because you learn something about yourself in the process, but knowing that people approach things in different ways can actually help in working with other people, especially when you’re in a partnership like where we are. Me understanding your approach to work and how I need to talk with you or work with you in different ways than I might with somebody else on our team. It’s fun like that, but it can be eye-opening. I think the message though that Mary when I asked if there is a type that shouldn’t write a book is no, we can all do it. Personality type isn’t one of those things that would keep us from writing, but it might affect the way we approach the process.
Kira Hug: Yeah. Rob, I’m self-absorbed and melancholic, and I need to be the special one, so I’m not sure how fives.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, you and I are probably the worst mixes of possibilities there.
Kira Hug: At least we both are melancholic and self-absorbed. Only one of us can be that way.
Rob Marsh: That’s true.
Kira Hug: That’s good. That’s a win.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. That is true.
Kira Hug: Anything else before we wrap?
Rob Marsh: One other thing that I would say is going back to the beginning of the interview and that is right before you feel you’re ready and then getting feedback on what it is that you’re writing. That applies if you’re writing a book, that applies if you’re writing copy, that applies if you are starting some kind of a project in your business. Start before you feel ready and get help from the people that can help you. I think that really is the big takeaway for me, and then just keep at it. Whatever that project is, keep at it. Power through the rejection and eventually you’re going to succeed.
Kira Hug: Yeah, and it could be as simple as just writing to your list if you aren’t doing that currently and just testing different ideas. Maybe that’s how you test different book ideas. It’s putting different topics out there, seeing what resonates, what sticks, sending that to your list twice a month and you can gather data that way too. All right. Well, if you are listening and you want to connect with Mary, we will leave her information in the show notes, so you can reach out to her directly. If you want to join the waitlist for the Copywriter Accelerator and build your business with us or pivot or start to really scale it, you can jump into the wait list in our show notes, we’ll drop the link in there.
Rob Marsh: This week’s review shout-out is from listener Ethan Forrest Ross, and I’m just going to read the whole thing. It’s a little long, but we appreciate the feedback. It says, and it’s a five-star review, so thank you for that, Ethan.
“The Copywriter Club podcast is my anthem for what copywriting is and should be Kira and Rob’s credible yet humble approach.” Wow, I’m patting myself on the back right now, Ethan. “Approach is accessible for copywriters at all levels. Each week, the guests on the podcasts are excellent and the questions and discussion from the host is poignant. I have learned the value of systems and automation tips on the art of cold pitching and the importance of consistent follow-up, because it’s never a no until the person says so. Most importantly, I now understand that a copywriter is someone who solves problems and that there is great value in maturing beyond the role of a mere wordsmith into the strategist consultant and business owner in my own right.” This is maybe the only drawback of this review. “The only problem is Kira and Rob have ruined other podcasts for me.“
We’re sorry about that, Ethan, yeah, but thank you for your review. Thank you for listening, we do appreciate that. If you want us to mention you like we just did with Ethan on a future podcast, head over to Apple Podcast and leave a review. It just takes a couple of minutes and we actually are interested in your feedback. Of course, we love it when you say nice things, but if there’s something that we can improve on, we want to know about that also.
Kira Hug: I don’t want to know about that. Just send that to Rob.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Send that to me.
Kira Hug: I want positive reviews, like the one from Ethan, because this keeps me going. I live off of these positive affirmations, so keep them coming. If you have negative feedback, just again, send that to Rob, I don’t want to see that.
Rob Marsh: Send that to me, I can take it.
Kira Hug: That’s the end of this episode of the Copywriter Club podcast. The intro music was composed by copywriter and songwriter, Addison Rice. The outro was composed by copywriter and songwriter, David Muntner. If you liked what you’ve heard, you could share a screenshot of this episode and post your favorite takeaway. What was your favorite takeaway from this episode and tag us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter. We’ll see you next week.