Financial Feminist - 145. Want to Write a Book? Here's How (Creator Science Crossover)

Episode Date: March 14, 2024

Today, we’re doing something a little different at Financial Feminist. Tori recently appeared on an episode of the Creator Science podcast to talk about the process of writing her New York Times bestselling book, “Financial Feminist.” From writing the proposal and finding an agent to marketing and selling the book — she breaks it all down in this transparent interview. If you’ve ever considered writing a book and are curious about what the journey looks like, then tune in to this episode. Read transcripts, learn more about our guests and sponsors, and get more resources at https://financialfeministpodcast.com.  Not sure where to start on your financial journey? Take our FREE money personality quiz! https://herfirst100k.com/quiz Financial Feminist book: https://herfirst100k.com/financial-feminist-book Looking for one-on-one coaching with Tori on getting your book launched? Apply for consulting: https://airtable.com/app5HLSQ8w4ufyrfW/shrGoFWWDtau2wYn6 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, Financial Feminist. I'm really excited for today's special exclusive episode. This is from our friends over at Creator Science. My friend Jay does an incredible podcast all about how to be a creator, how to be an online entrepreneur. And it's really, really in depth episodes and a look at how to create an online business, how to stand out on social media. I have been lucky enough to be a guest on his show twice. He's one of the smartest people around entrepreneurship and online businesses and the life of a creator. The first time we talked about just how to build an online business in general. So go check that out. But today's episode is actually an episode we did when my book, Financial Feminist came out about how I got a book deal, about what the book marketing process looks like about what actually writing a book can look like. So if you've ever wanted to be

an author, if you've ever wanted to get a book deal So if you've ever wanted to be an author, if you've ever wanted to get a book deal, if you've ever wanted to be a New York Times bestseller, or at least take on the really daunting task of writing a book, then this episode is for you today. So without further ado, let's go ahead and get into it. But first, a word from our sponsors. Crypto is like the financial system, but different. It doesn't care where you come from, what you look like, your credit score, or your

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what are you doing with your time? The conversations that we've had with our financial advisor is very much building what that framework looks like that helps support those important things. The places where you're investing your time and your resources, your family clearly, and those closest to you. Edward Jones. We do money differently. Visit edwardjones.ca slash different. Hello, my friend. Welcome back to another episode of Creator Science.

I am so excited to share today's episode. It's with a friend of mine, Tory Dunlap, who has been on the show before. Tory was originally on episode number 88 of this show back in January of 2022, and a lot has changed for Tory. Now, Tory is the founder of her first 100K. This is something that she built after saving $100,000 herself by age 25. She quit her corporate job in marketing

and founded this company to fight financial inequality by giving women actionable resources to better their money. Now, Tori started on TikTok, or at least that's where she first had her breakthrough. She has two and a half million followers on TikTok. She has almost a million followers on Instagram, but here's why Tori is back here today. Not only has Tori launched a podcast called

Financial Feminist since being on the show and is one of the top business shows out there, but she has also launched a book by the same name, Financial Feminist, and that is a New York Times bestseller. We ended up being number four on the New York Times bestseller list. I think on a normal week, we could have been at number two,

maybe number one. So I reconnected with Tori because I saw her writing on LinkedIn about the process of writing this New York Times bestseller. Not only will we talk about why she thinks she could have been number one on a normal week, but she's very, very honest about the timeline, the process, the things that met her expectations, the things that were outside of her expectations. Here's a preview.

I personally thought I could get this book done in nine months. And that was the most naive bullshit ever. The hardest thing I've ever done professionally is trying to write and market this book period. Second sentence while also trying to run a business. Awful. We get really, really specific in this episode. We talk about her entire process from writing the proposal,

finding a literary agent, selling the book, writing the book, marketing the book, including the timeline for all the things I just mentioned. Not including the book proposal. I started writing when I landed the book deal officially in like April, May of 2021. We got a final, final draft probably late summer of 2022. This is one of the longer episodes

that have aired here on the show, but I had a really hard time cutting it down because literally up into the last minutes of the show, Tori is saying things like this. If you are for whatever reason, like tuning me out and like kind of half listening to this episode and you want to write a book, I need you to like pull your car over

and I need you to stop and I need you to listen to this because this is single-handedly I think one of the smartest things we did. Really really excited for you to listen to this. Tori was super generous and transparent in everything she shares here. So if you are writing a book or considering writing a book, I think this is a must listen to episode. It really goes in depth into the entire process from proposal to publish and even marketing post publish. So let's get into it. Let's talk with Tori Dunlap from her first 100K. New York Times bestselling author, Tori Dunlap,

back on the show. How does it feel for me to introduce you that way? I was just going to say it. I never will get sick and tired of hearing of it. It's lovely. It's the thing I wanted professionally, probably more than anything, especially in the last year or two.

So the fact that it happened, I love hearing it. I'm like, yeah, bring it on. Let's do it again. Let's run it again. Amazing. Well, I want to talk all about the process today. I want to talk about the timeline and everything. So let's talk, let's start with, when did writing a book even come on your radar?

Is this something that you always wanted to do? Yeah. So if you follow me, you probably know this because it became kind of the part of the marketing. But I mean, I'm recording this in front of my bookshelf. Like I was a voracious reader growing up. That was what I love to do. I wouldn't go anywhere without a book. There's so many times that my parents remember,

driving, my mom would drive to the grocery store with me in the back seat and it was a 10 minute drive and I would still have a book in the back. And so I actually wrote down, because I was this kind of kid, when I was seven or eight years old, one of my bucket list items, I will write a book. Now did I think it was gonna be a personal finance book?

Fuck no, that was not part of the plan. But I had known for a really long time that I wanted to do this. Then as her first 100K started growing, and of course, we have part one of the podcast talking about that growth, it became clear that this would be another avenue and a natural way to reach more people, to grow the brand.

And I actually got reached out to by my first publisher in 2019. I had this big splashy piece in Market Watch that was like our first press hit that we ever got. It went viral. It got like a million views in like a couple days. They, you know, this publisher, this huge publishing house reached out and was like,

you know, do you, have you ever thought about writing a book? And I was still working a nine to five job. Her first 100K was a side hustle. It was gaining momentum. But I was like, I remember this is, of course, my naivete at that time, too. I was 24 and I was like, I will never get this opportunity again. I have to say yes. But I knew I also I couldn't. I did not have the bandwidth. I did not have the experience. And it like overwhelmed me.

And I, you know, I had a conversation with her and she was really great. And we went back and forth. And then finally I emailed and I was like, I know I don't have the bandwidth to do this, right? But like, I would love to keep in touch with you. And she's like, yeah, of course. And I was like, okay, thank God.

And so then when late 2019, early 2020, when I was a full-time entrepreneur, it was like, okay, it's time to start actually thinking seriously about this. And we can talk about that whole process if you want to. But then it was like, okay, we're actually going to start pursuing this, start thinking about like, what does it actually look like to have this book out into the world? Now, in the beginning, when you first got that outreach in 2019, one, I want to know

like how direct that was. Did it seem like this is the beginning of a very long conversation or was it like, hey, if you say yes, I'll send you a contract and you can sign it, we'll start writing a book tomorrow? Oh, it's never like that. No, and it's like, we're now starting to pitch TV shows and it feels very similar where it's like, oh yeah, we really like you and we like what we do

and we'd love to have an intro conversation with you and then this is like a multi-year process. TV even more intense, I think. It was a, like I think part of the publisher or like part of an editor's job, right, is to like get the new book to edit. Like what is going to be the book that hopefully sells well but at the very least is like a good thing to add to their repertoire, their resume, right? So I think this editor saw me someplace was like, oh, she would probably write a pretty cool book.

Have you ever thought about writing a book? Then it's kind of like, you have a contact, right? You have someone that you can, like I met with her in New York in, yeah, early 2020. I had coffee with her. And then it was actually really funny when I actually sent my book proposal to her, she turned it down and she said very kindly, she was just like, hey, I think you're great.

I think this is great. But publishing in 2020 was having a meltdown, right, because of COVID. And this was before like Book Talk really took off. She was like, I like we just don't have the bandwidth to publish it. And then I got an email after the book came out where she was like, hey, great book. Really sorry we weren't able to work together. So it was like this really interesting, you know, like arc of a relationship as I hit my microphone, I'm sorry. But it was definitely not a like,

I'll send the contract over to you. I'm sure that happens with like celebrities maybe, but like it depends on who you are, right? And again, we can talk about this. Like if you are already some sort of public person, you are typically like putting your book proposal out there and people are like, it goes into an auction. I was less of a public person

when I was writing this book proposal in like mid 2020. And so it was, okay, get a book proposal together, get a lit agent, you know, make contact with some people that would be interested in talking with us and see what goes from there. It was less, less sexy, I think, than some, some other things. Now, of course, if I write a second book, that's probably how it's going to go.

But that first book was more like, hello, I'm writing a book, look at me, than like editor scrambling to publish it. So in the beginning, it sounds like they reached out to you and or your team directly, and you kind of handled that conversation initially. You said in 2020, when you did the proposal, you did get a lit agent.

How do you feel about the timeline and process of that? Do you wish you would have gotten a lit agent sooner or waited a little bit longer? I would have gotten a lit agent sooner or waited a little bit longer? I think having a good lit agent is absolutely critical to this whole process because they have the connections and also, you know, especially one that is very well versed and has worked with authors before. They have standing relationships with publishers already and they have a reputation. And so I think when you're thinking about,

if you were out there listening, and you're like, I want to write a book, the thing that you want to do first is figure out what that book looks like, and you can do this with a potential lit agent. It's kind of like chicken or the egg. Sometimes you need to find the lit agent first and then write the book proposal.

Other times, the book proposal is what helps you get a lit agent, especially if you're like lesser known. But the book proposal is like, it's pretty intense. It's basically a marketing document. And this is what people don't realize. It's, it's about your writing. Yes. You submit a sample chapter, but the rest of the book proposal is like, what is the book about? Who does it appeal to? Why should you write this book? How are you going to market the book? It's much more about like the marketing strength that you're going to bring. It's like a business plan for the book.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's a great way of saying that. Yeah, it's how you're going to sell the book with a little bit of what the book's actually going to look like in the writing of it. And so a lot easier to pitch a book with the outline of it. So that was what my lit agent had recommended to me. We worked on it together and she would send kind of her thoughts or her revisions. And then when we felt like we had a good solid outline of it, then we started sending it to either the relationships we'd already cultivated with publishers that were interested or trying to get it out to other people. And then you start having conversations

that you realize sometimes they aren't right. Like we had one publisher who was interested, who like really wanted to publish our book, but didn't want to publish the kind of book I wanted to write. And then you have a really interesting choice where you're like, didn't want to publish the kind of book I wanted to write. And then you have a really interesting choice, where you're like, OK, do I write the kind of book that they want me to write, or do I write the kind of book

I want to write? And I would always say, pick the one that you want to write. So yeah, we ended up turning that down. It never got to the offer stage. We just had a conversation. It's kind of like dating, right? You get to a certain point where you're like, oh, I want kids, and you don't?

OK. So you have to decide, what does that look like, oh, I want kids and you don't, okay. So you have to decide what does that look like? And it is going to be a relationship that you have for years. So again, I think when you are lesser known, it's like, oh my gosh, somebody's talking to me? That's great. But really make sure that it's a person

that you want to work with or an organization you want to work with. I would assume that finding a literary agent is a little bit like dating too, depending on how well you already know somebody. So did you talk to several potential literary agents or did you have a strong referral that you just went with? I probably should have.

I ended up working with one of my friends who is a, she is a financial blogger on the side and then she works in publishing. So she had this really unique understanding of what I was trying to do because she was in the space. And I think that that was where her strength lied for me. But my book was the first book she had ever sold. And so I think, and even she would tell you that like the negotiation was probably less intense than it should have been. So I ended up walking away with a smaller deal

than I think I would have if we were more strategic about that. And so we ended up parting ways about six months ago, very amicably. But it was one of those things where I, it was a perfect collaboration for where I was at the time of, okay, I don't understand this industry very well.

I need somebody who I know I can trust. And I'm trying to flesh out what this book looks like in my head. And she has a very unique understanding of this industry in a way that's another lit agent won't so that she can not only help the book get sold, but also literally like help birth whatever the book actually looks like.

So I think we had a relationship that is pretty unique and that isn't normal. My current agent, it like works at United Talent. She works at UTA, sold, you know, probably at this point, a hundred plus books, like knows the industry in and out is literally calling me and I love her, but calling me being like, OK, when's book number two coming? And so like, it's much more like a traditional, kind of like lit agent relationship. But yeah, I think I really needed the kind of support

that wasn't just like negotiating the deal and navigating publishing, but specifically, like how do I write a book that does, like checks the boxes that I want to check for what this book actually looks like. For folks who haven't gone through this process at all, but have maybe heard of like a creator manager, can you help us understand the model behind a lit agent

and a publisher? Like what are we talking about in terms of numbers to whatever degree you're comfortable sharing? Always willing to be transparent, especially with you. This is like a larger conversation to whatever degree you're comfortable sharing. Always willing to be transparent, especially with you. This is like a larger conversation about just like creators or authors in general and like agencies. So there's a couple different kinds of agencies.

There is the big players, CAA, UTA, that will basically take on a client. Like let's say it's Beyonce, right? They take on Beyonce and they are Beyonce's agent for everything. They're her agent for if she wants to write a book. They're her agent if Oprah calls and wants to do a TV deal with her. They're her agent if she is touring and is trying to figure out like what, like booking venues and that sort of thing. So those agencies are like the all encompassing agencies that cover everything that you do.

Then there's agencies that do just pieces of that. There's just like brand development agencies, right? That are just doing like influencer or brand partnerships. There's speaking agencies that are just, you know, getting you to conferences or colleges. There's yeah, just touring agencies, right? And just like with book publishing, there's just like a lit agent, right? That's their specialty is they're just getting you a book deal.

So you kind of can go in one of two ways, or really it's, I guess it's three. You can get one agency that covers you for everything. And typically you have to be some sort of name. Like I'm repped by UTA for our podcast, for TV, oh, and book obviously. And then we handle the rest of that in-house. So that's option one is like you get somebody who covers everything.

Option two is you just get agencies for every single thing. So you might have six agencies, right? That handle different parts of your business. And then you can kind of do what we've now done, which is kind of like a hybrid, where you have, you know, the big agency for some things, and then you have either a smaller agency or you do in-house for others.

It's kind of like a Venn diagram hybrid. In terms of what percentage you're going to pay them, it's anywhere from about 10 to 20%. Typically with lit agents, you are just paying them, let's say 15% of your advance. Your advance is the amount of money that a publisher is giving you, is basically your salary to go write a book.

And this is gonna sound maybe obvious to people, but I did not know it at the time. This is an advance on your royalties, right? So if you get $100,000 advance, that means that you won't see money, additional money, until you sell $101,001 of your book, right? So they're typically taking the 10 to 20% of that advance number, and that's what you want.

You don't want them taking money beyond that. Oh, I was under the impression that literary agents also took part of the royalty ongoing. I'm sure it's negotiable depending on the agent. Mine didn't and I might be misspeaking from my understanding. I think it's just the percentage of the advance, but I could be wrong. That was how we structured my deal was 15, I think it was 15% of my advance. Yeah, it's probably different agent to agent, relationship to relationship. I'm sure it's one of those things that's more negotiable

than people realize. So it's good to hear that. And I haven't had a conversation with my new agent because I haven't sold another book with her, right? So that might be a conversation where actually she's taking or UTA really is taking a percentage of royalties. But the first deal that I had, I think it was 15% of my advance went to my agent.

After a quick break, Tori and I dived deep into the proposal process, everything that's involved in a proposal. And later we talk about everything Tori did right and what she would change if she was launching a book today. So stick around, we'll be right back. See yourself buying a home one day?

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Visit canon.ca slash Megatank for details. Welcome back to my conversation with Tori Dunlap of her first 100K. Now that we've gotten a high level view of how the entire process went from a numbers perspective, I wanna dive in deeper into the book proposal process itself. So I asked Tori if she went into the typical auction process that we had just spoken about.

Mine actually didn't go into auction because I was not as big a name as I am now. It was kind of the relationships we had already built. So I spent a couple months putting the proposal together. I think we had a final draft by July of 2020. And the irony again, from our first episode, if you know a bit about my work, we started on TikTok in July of 2020.

So you can, like we had 30,000 followers on Instagram. Like we didn't have a podcast yet. Like we were pretty tiny, you know? So it's really funny to think about that actually, that the book proposal was getting sent when we were the just, you know, her first 100 K was little itty bitty. So we started sending the proposal to the contacts we had already made. And that was typically from these kinds of cold reach outs by publishers, the,

have you ever thought about writing a book? Right. So we started sending those emails to, I think we had two or three people that were on our like contact list of people who had been interested before. Like I said, the first person I ever talked to turned us down very politely, but was like, we just like, we're not doing a lot of new books right now. And, you know, it's hard to remember what that felt like in 2020, but literally like supply chain concerns, like some books were not getting published because they literally didn't have the paper to print them on. It was kind of a rough time. So throughout the end of summer, we were starting to have those conversations with people. So yeah, one turned us down, we turned another one down.

I think there was another person that was in the mix and I don't remember what happened either. It just didn't work out. The funny ironic thing, I'm on LinkedIn in December of 2020. I see randomly a post from someone at Day Street, which is an imprint of Harper Collins. And my mind is flagged because I am the most massive fan of the Try Guys and Day Street did their book.

And I'm like, oh, OK, I know that imprint. I know what they're about. I literally like go to my bookshelf and I start looking and, oh, they've done Amy Poehler's book and they've done a couple of others. Let me just let me just like slide into her LinkedIn DMs. I message her, I'm like, hey, I am, you know, currently pitching my first book. I have this amount of followers. Here's my book proposal.

I get the outline of a deal 10 days later from DayStraight. Like when it happened, it happened incredibly fast. But like it took probably, you know, a year and then of course, years of building the business to be able to support this. And I'm blowing up on TikTok, we're growing actively during that time. And so we had a deal cemented, I could actually, I think tell you the date,

I think it was like January 20th or something like that. And so that was when the deal, like we were meeting with Rosie, who was the person who was going to be my editor at Harper Collins. Like we were starting to like actually, that was taking shape at that time. So when the dominoes did fall, they fell remarkably quickly, but it was literally just pitching somebody, already having the book proposal together, already seeing the kind of traction that we were with everything. And then we actually signed the deal in April.

So it was interesting. We had like kind of settled on the terms of the deal in January and then signed it in April. Twenty twenty one. You mentioned how big this proposal was. Can you tell us, do you know, like how many pages this proposal was to give people a picture of how big of a document it is?

Yeah, I mean, it depends on what kind of book you want to write, because you have to include a sample chapter, right? And a sample chapter is going to look different, right? Some people who are writing short stories or something like that, it's not going to be a very big chapter. Some people who are writing, I don't know, the history of World War II, that's

going to be a huge sample chapter. I would say I could probably look at, that Google Doc was around maybe 40 pages. I would say probably 10 pages to 12 pages of the like other stuff, the like, how am I going to market the book? My bio, the customer persona of who's buying this book, the competing titles,

like other books that are similar to mine. And then the vast majority of it is a sample chapter. I wrote the chapter about debt that is in my book was the sample chapter. A lot of things changed. A lot of things were different. And they expect that they're looking for tone. They're looking for like, how does this book feel when you read it? Right. Is it very like academic or is it like tongue in cheek, very fun, right? How is it formatted? Like for us, we are very intentional and we wanted to bring in other people's stories

and almost do like sidebars. And if you have my book, Financial Feminist, you know that that's how it looks. Is it's like, you have, you know, me talking about something and then you have like, either another expert or somebody coming in to talk about, you know, a different part of that. So my chapter about debt had someone from our community who worked at Victoria's Secret and talked about like having to dish out those credit cards to people

of like, would you like to use your angel card today? And we have a whole, you know, segment with her. My section has, or my chapters have homework. And so we give them homework at the end. So they're really looking for like, how good of a writer are you? What is the tone? You know, the experience of reading the book? How does it feel? And then like, what is the format?

Is it just like straight text? If you also want graphics in there, like, you know, I had a place where I was like, I'm gonna put a chart here. And I didn't even need to like make that chart sexy. It was just like, there's going to be a chart. So they want to, they want more to get a feel for it and an understanding that like you are qualified

and that you are actually going to like not renege on the contracts that we give you. So as far as going from signed contract to published, because I believe you published the very beginning of 2023, correct? It was December 27th of 2022 was our release date. So just tail end like last couple days of 2022. Is that the timeline that you expected and believed would happen from the point of signing the contract or did that change at all?

I personally thought I could get this book done in nine months. And that was the most naive bullshit ever. Here's the thing is most people, most people get a ghostwriter. Most people have a ghostwriter. I am very proud of the fact. I wrote this book. It was me while I was speaking, while I was creating a three TikTok videos a day, while I was on podcasts, while I was doing our own podcasts, like I wrote this book, would I recommend it? No, definitely not.

It was so much work. Now I will write my book, most likely, I will be the person writing my book in the future because just my ego honestly can't take it. I'm like, if I'm gonna have my name on it, I need to write it, but I will not also run the business at the same time. That was the hardest thing I've ever done professionally

is trying to write and market this book, period. Second sentence, while also trying to run a business. Like, awful. In terms of like the actual timeline, typically it's about a year. Like the contract gives you a year to write the book. It takes it like it really took about a year and a half until we got a final, final, final draft.

I can't tell you the amount of times like you could probably go on my computer and see final. No, this is the real final. No, I was like the final final draft. Like literally you can see like financial feminist final, financial feminist, final one financial feminist feminist the real final fucking thing. Like that that happened multiple times where you think you're done and then it's like oh no we got we got more edits. Oh we think we're done. Oh actually we need to move this. Like I think we finally got a final draft July of 2022.

So I started not including the book proposal, I started writing when I landed the book deal officially in like April, May of 2021. We got a final final draft probably late summer of 2022. So it was actually about a year, but it was like, it didn't feel like it. It felt somehow much longer and also somehow much shorter. If you were writing a book, I don't mean to say that my experience

will be your experience, but I did so much reading about writing during that time, you will get the vast majority of it done in the last three months. Because other shit will happen, you won't be motivated by a deadline. I think my editor, I like to think, like my conspiracy theory is she did this on purpose.

She gave me a final deadline of February 1st. And then she's like, actually the final deadline's like in middle of March. I got so much done the last two weeks of January. I literally, I was like, I didn't leave my house. I got so much done. And then it was like a couple of days before February 1st and I'm panicking and she's like, oh yeah, we have more time.

And I'm like, damn it Rosie, but also thank you. Yeah, so good. Like there was a lot of like, it got done. It got written in these like weeks before what I thought was the final deadline. Had another final deadline mid April that wasn't really the final deadline, but thought it was. And so I was like in a house in LA, just like finishing it.

Yeah, it's typically a year is how long they give you. Depends, you can negotiate that. You can say, nope, I want more time or oh, no, I think I can do it in less time. But I would not advise you to say less time, give yourself more time. Because I thought I could get it done in nine months. And really, I think if I had cracked down maybe,

but like just wasn't worth it in terms of my own bandwidth. If you don't hit the deadline, what are they gonna do? Publish an unfinished book, take away the advance and say it's all dead, like no. Yes. Really? Yes, sometimes. You believe that to be true.

Yeah, but I don't know if they would have done that. They need to see that you've done something. If it's a year later and you've done nothing, yeah, you might get that contract revoked. But it's like, they have to see that you're doing something. It was actually really funny. The first three pages, I literally have my contract in my closet,

I could pull it free if you wanted. The first three pages are the actual information of percentage of royalties and the stuff that's actually useful. I'm not kidding, it's probably a 20 page contract. The last 17 pages are just variations of, if you don't turn this in, if you've done nothing, here's what happens.

And I'm like, I felt like high achieving A plus student. I'm like, do people just not turn this in? And apparently the answer is yes. So yeah, if you have nothing done, they're probably gonna revoke your contract. I would say if it's basically there, yeah, no, you nothing done, they're probably gonna revoke your contract. I would say if it's like basically there, yeah, no, you're right. Like nothing's gonna happen.

And I am weirdly kind of bummed that I now know that the final deadline is not the final deadline because I'm gonna have that in the back of my head as I'm writing the second book being like, yeah, but I have more time. So you get the final manuscript done in July and then this goes live at the tail end of December 2022. So you had about five months after the manuscript is done

to prepare for the launch of this. Did that feel like the right amount of time? Do you wish there was less? Do you wish there was more? I think we announced the pre-order campaign before the final manuscript was even turned in. We announced the pre-order campaign, the final manuscript was even turned in. We announced the pre-order campaign and I know this because it was right after my birthday. I think it was the 13th of July and then I think yeah like late July early August was when we had

a final final draft. That gave us about six months to promote. Here's the thing, if you are an author you're like, cool, I just ran a fucking marathon writing this book. Your marathon is not done, it is just starting. It is a second marathon. It's a pre-marathon and then the marathon. This is the fun part. This is literally, so most publishers work with authors who just want to write. They don't want to market.

They don't want to do press. I am the exact opposite. I am like, writing was painful. I enjoy writing normally. Writing my own book was fucking painful. And now I get to razzle dazzle it. And that's what I'm good at. So I was actually looking forward to this time.

However, this whole process, especially this last six months, is the time that burned me out. It wasn't even the bandwidth issue, wasn't even like the amount of interviews I was doing, it was the pressure I was putting on myself. I wanted New York Times. I wanted that, I wanted this book to make a huge splash,

I wanted it to make a big impact. And I'm going to be honest, this isn't healthy, I'll work through it in therapy at some point, but I literally going to be honest, this isn't healthy. I'll work through it in therapy at some point. But I literally thought to myself, if I don't meet the New York Times list, I will be like profoundly disappointed, which of course is not why you should do this. And it ultimately isn't why I did it,

but I was like, I wanted this thing so badly. Don't do that. Like a book is valuable to people and valuable and a valuable process, regardless of whether you hit a bestseller list or not. And I think that that's the thing that exhausted me more than anything else is I was just chasing this one thing. Truly this book was about like making an impact

and like meeting people where they were and being able to have this legacy of this thing. It was also, especially for the motivation to get me through this six months of really intense promotion where I'm not getting to meet people who have read it, I'm just having to run the race. It was just like, I want the New York Times sticker. In terms of that timeline, I think three to six months is what you want for a pre-order campaign.

The reason we reconnected was I'm doing a series on LinkedIn about how to promote a book, how to get the bestseller lists, and pre-orders are the biggest thing because of many reasons. But one, any pre-orders that happen count as sales at 1201 on release day. So if you sell 10,000 copies before the book actually comes out by 1201 on release day before the book has actually hit shelves, you've already sold 10,000 copies, which is huge, right? It takes the weight off a little bit from having to do so much heavy lifting in that

first week or two. You're using a specific number 10,000 copies there. That's the number I hear oftentimes in book circles. Is that a specific number for a benchmark of some kind? Yeah, great question. So the thing about bestseller lists, I'm going to be kind of weaving in and out between selling campaigns versus bestseller lists, but for some people, they're the same thing. It's almost SEO and Google.

We have a general best practice of what Google likes, but Google does not give us a form of, if you do this, you will rank at this. The New York Times bestseller list is a hackable thing, but they have never published a like, if you do this, we will guarantee this. There's a general idea that if you sell 10 to 15, and I've heard sometimes as high as 20,000 books in that first week, you will most likely be on the bestseller list. Now here's the thing about my launch date. December 27th, weird time to launch a book. One, I went on Good Morning America, which was great.

Everybody else in New York was home asleep in their beds because it was right after Christmas and right before New Year's. I booked a week in New York to do press the couple months before. I can get press like nobody's business. It's usually not a big deal. It was because there was nobody in the office. So I literally did GMA. I went and signed a couple books, not at any official book signing,

but just like went into Barnes and Noble to get some content for us. And then I went home. Like normally when you release a book, especially if you're high profile, you're doing like in New York or in LA, you're doing a day or two at least of press. I could not do that.

The second thing is the pro is you're getting like new year, new you energy with December 27th, right? And you're getting this like time where people are kind of just sitting and doing nothing, which is great. Like that in between time of like Christmas and New Year's where like no time exists at all. The con is that you hopefully do a pre-order campaign that's like buy this for Christmas, buy this for a Christmas gift, but it's not going to be under the tree at Christmas, right? Or Hanukkah, right? So it's almost like, hey, like this for a Christmas gift, but it's not going to be under the tree at Christmas, right, or Hanukkah, right?

So it's almost like, hey, like we did a gift certificate. We were like, hey, you can print this out and give this to your loved one. It's like, this book is coming, I bought it for you. The other huge con, normally we would be competing against some of the like mainstays on the New York Times bestseller list, but really a bunch of new books.

Most books that hit the list leave after a week. They have a big splashy like week release and then they leave. When it's December 27th, you're competing against any book that has new year, new you energy that has been out forever. Now, it would be hard for me to compete

against atomic habits on a good day. Impossible to compete against a book with the word habits in it. And of course, written as well as it is, December 27. So did you choose this date? Impossible. Or was it dictated to you? My publisher chose this date. Because again, like part of me is like, that was really smart, new year, new energy.

But the other part of me is like, ah, I had to compete against a bunch of people. So we ended up being number four on the New York Times bestseller list. I think on a normal week, we could have been at number two, maybe number one. But I can't think that way. I can't do like alternate universe stuff.

Well, I know at month four, you had 70,000 copies sold. How many copies do you have at launch? That first week was 19,700. So that included all of the pre-order books, and then all of the books that were sold during that first week. After one more short break, Tori and I talk about the role that independent bookstores play in the New York Times best-selling list, the things that she did well, and the things that she would change if she was writing another book. So stick around. We'll be right back. At BMO, we know every business is unique. I'm Massimo Lecas. I opened Stellina, an Italian fine dining restaurant, last year. You have unique goals.

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of her first 100K. We just started talking about the process for which New York Times chooses their bestsellers and Tori told me that there's an interesting Insight when it comes to independent bookstores and so I wanted to dive deep into that Okay, we can talk for like three hours about this The other thing that New York Times and other booksellers or excuse me other book bestseller lists look into is It's not just how many books you have sold. I wish it was that easy, but it's also like the diversity of sales. So if you sell 10,000 books on Amazon and in Washington state,

you probably won't get on the list. They're looking for, are you not just in one state? Are you not just selling on the coasts? Are you like a universally applicable book? And are you selling in bookstores that aren't just Amazon, but especially independent bookstores? So a lot of the marketing that we did or a lot of the collaborations we did were with independent bookstores. One, because it's the right fucking moral thing to do. Like we wanted to be able to support these independent bookstores. One, because it's the right fucking moral thing to do. Like we wanted to be able to support these independent bookstores, but two, we were working specifically with

bookstores that we know reported on time. Some bookstores do not report their sales to bestseller lists at all, or they report them weeks late. And if you want to be on that list for the first week, which is the best chance you have, you need to make sure that all of the sales you possibly can are being reported. So that was part of the strategy as well. Man, this seems, this introduces a new wrinkle because I had heard that before, but I hadn't

thought about it in this way, which is from a, from a marketing perspective, creators like you and I seem like we would have a real leg up on writing and publishing a book because we have a built-in audience. We say, go buy it. But from a user experience perspective, we're probably pointing them towards Amazon or whatever like the easy purchasing destination is. So how did you direct your fans, your community

to go and support the book on presale in a diversified way? I'm literally Jay gonna pull for you the last time we got numbers, because this is going to shock you. Okay, so these were my numbers as of the end of April. So this was like when I knew I hit 70,000. That was in four months, right? Book came out late December, let's even call it like almost January, right?

So basically January to end of April, I sold 70,000 copies and that's every kind of copy. That's hardcover, that's ebook, that's audiobook. Of the hardcovers, I sold about 50,000 hardcovers. So roughly 20,000 are coming from other mediums. Of those 50,000, 25,000 were Amazon. So half, the other half is Barnes and Noble. I am lucky enough to be sold in Target stores, Target,

Walmart, every independent bookstore that exists in the United States that stocks my book, right? Books a million, which is a thing in some places. I've never been to a Books a million. Yeah, so every Every other source made up half Amazon was the other half. So yeah, you're dealing with this kind of like Like I live in Seattle. I'm not a fan of Amazon. Do I have a prime subscription? I do like that's the majority of sales are happening from an ad to cart and a quick buy on

Amazon. And Amazon typically has the cheapest price, right? Independent bookstores are either selling at a slight discount or they're selling at the, you know, the number on the back of the book. Amazon's cutting that by at least probably 25 to 30%. So the way you incentivize people to buy from independent bookstores, one, we have an audience that is very, very committed to, you know, bettering the world and to supporting local businesses, especially women and BIPOC-owned businesses.

And so that was an easier sell than I think for the average person to just be like, hi, support your local independent bookstore that especially right now is struggling. The second thing we did, if you are, for whatever reason, like tuning me out and like kind of half listening to this episode and you want to write a book, I need you to like pull your car over and I need you to stop and I need you to listen to this because this is single-handedly, I think one of the smartest things we did. Our publisher sourced four independent bookstores that knew we knew we're reporting numbers

on time. And we did signed copies for those four independent bookstores. They also were four independent bookstores who shipped nationwide. So we had one in Seattle. We had one in Colorado. We had one in Chicago, and I think one in Utah. But they shipped nationwide. And what we did is I literally Harper Collins sent me

3,000 book plates. Book plates are like the nice nice little, you know, they're like a square. And then for me, they had like financial feminist in the corner and they're like card stock. They're like fancier paper. I signed 3000 books before the book even went on sale.

Wow. And so what do you mean? Was it signing the book? Or was it signing something that goes in the book? I don't understand. It goes in the book. It's considered a signed copy, right? There's like the signed copies that are actually

literally my signature on a page. For many reasons, I think COVID just like shipping, it's a lot easier now to sign a book plate and have that inserted. It's also more flexible. The person can like do something else with that book plate if they want. It's not like in the book.

So those signed copies like went to those, those independent bookstores. And then on our book page, on our website, we said, hey, here are all the links you can get the book, including Amazon. Here's a separate section that says, if you want to sign copy, buy from one of these four places that ship nationwide

while supplies last. We were told, especially by the one in Seattle, because I literally now have a personal relationship with them, I stop in every couple of months just to check in and say hi. They were like, we've never seen a more successful pre-order campaign. They have sold hundreds of copies of Financial Feminist.

And they literally have told me, this has made a huge impact on our business, which is so fucking cool. New York Times aside, like that was like, like I get a little teary talking about it. Like that was one of the coolest parts is going into Paper Boat Books in Seattle, meeting the husband and wife team

who opened their bookstore mid pandemic and literally like playing numbers games with them and being like, Hey, how many of you sold? And they're like, you know, 180 before the books even out. Like it was just crazy. It was so cool. So one, it makes a huge impact.

And two, it helps you as an author sell more books, but also be more appealing to New York Times, Wall Street journal, USA Today, bestseller lists. That's awesome. For some reason, I just assumed that local bookstores, real bookstores that weren't Amazon, did not do pre-sales. No, they 100% do. Some of them do.

Yeah, and it's a matter of also figuring out, like I said, local bookstores are great, but specifically with pre-order campaigns, especially if you have an audience, you want to make sure they're shipping nationwide. Because if you live in Seattle and you want a copy that's signed, you're like, oh, okay, yeah, I'll order from this, this signed, you know, this place in Seattle. But if I live in, I don't know, Omaha, Nebraska, right, and we didn't work with a bookstore in Omaha, Nebraska, right, you're probably going to whatever is closest. So I imagine like

they're going to the Chicago one or the Utah one. And that's the other thing is it's like, you're getting this bookstore is getting sales from all over the country, not just normally where they're located. And that was really cool. You were just looking at something that was telling you your historic book sales over time.

Is that something that is available to you in real time? Or do you have to get fed that information from like the publisher? My biggest pet peeve, some publishers, because I have talked with other friends, have a portal where they can go in and they can see that. I do not have that portal. I would kill for that portal.

Oh my gosh, that would drive me nuts. I probably annoyed my publisher so much, because every, especially the first couple weeks, every day I was like, I want numbers, I want numbers, I want numbers, because I wanted to know. And I think in a way that like, again, other authors are just like, I wrote the book and like, I don't care how it sells.

I was like, I wrote the book and that was the hard part and now I get to sell it. Like, that's the thing I'm good at. So yeah, I have been obsessively still now tracking numbers. Like, you know, we will get, they've now, they've literally told me, they're like, Tori, we will send it to you once a month at the beginning of the month.

And I'm like, okay, okay, fine, okay. I just like sit and wait with popcorn. Right, right, they're like, why do you care? And I'm like, I still care. But it's because weirdly like, I am motivated by that. I check the like ranking on Amazon for financial feminists daily, still, because that's the number I do have is like, where is it at in the charts?

Sometimes I check it twice a day. When it was like book season, that was like a 10-time. That was probably like my most opened app, was just like, that was the number that was publicly available to me. Yeah, because I know you're the kind of the same cut from the same cloth in that way, where it's just like, it becomes a game.

And it's really fun. It's like, oh, cool. How much, how many can we sell? What can we do? Like the other hack for like pre-orders is like get compensated with book buys. So normally, you know, I might charge like $20,000 for a keynote speech somewhere,

but I will trade it. I will say, oh, pay me half of that and then the other half in a book buy, right? Or for a limited amount of time, especially if you're like, you know, an author who doesn't come in to $20,000 speaking fee is just say, I'll speak for free if you pay for a hundred books, right? Or 50 books. And that way you can actually control where those books are ordered from too.

So when we did a speaking engagement at Morningstar in Chicago, who did I call? The independent bookstore we already had a relationship with in Chicago. And your publisher should help set this up of saying like, they will get a book by discount, they will be able to order from this independent store,

again, supports the indie store, but also helps you in terms of your numbers. You can book these out in advance too. My friend, Tiffany Aliche, who wrote Get Good With Money, her moniker is The Budgenista. She has another episode on her podcast where she breaks all of this down. She was the most helpful, sat down with me and had very transparent conversations, kind of like this, of like, here's how to do this. Here's pre-order campaigns. So she was so great. And one of the things she said to me was like, you don't have to book these speaking engagements

for two weeks after you release the book, right? It can be a virtual speaking engagement three months in advance. Typically these things get scheduled like that because your bandwidth is gonna be so tight, right? But book it now, do it later, right? Get the book by now and say, okay, I'll accept that as payment, period,

or I'll accept that as payment, and then the other half of it I'll get upon completion. But be able to do that so you can increase your pre-orders, but also have a good understanding of your bandwidth and your schedule. So helpful. Well, with a little bit of time that we have left, I just want to give any more space for anything

where you feel like this is something we definitely did well, or this is something that I would not do a second time. I hired a publicist in a PR agency for the first time. I will not do that again. It was not worth the money. I would say if you're not great at getting PR, it's probably worth the money. I am my best hype woman.

I have gone on Good Morning America, The Today Show, Forbes, CNN, CNBC, BBC, New York Times, like you name it. I have done it without a publicist. And we thought, okay, we need a publicist because this is sexy and fun. And they got us a couple like big things. I think they were really instrumental

in getting me on Forbes 30 under 30. I think they had some contacts there. I had submitted an application. It was obviously very strong. And I think they nudged it a little bit. Other than that, and a couple other like, you know, kind of minor things, I don't think it was worth it for us.

Yeah, it was like 7K a month, which is pretty cheap, honestly, as far as like publicists or like PR agencies go. Yeah, we got on GMA that was actually through HarperCollins. A lot of the other press we did was just our own hustle. So, if, you know, with my business and with our capability to get PR, I would not do that again. The thing I would not do that again. The thing I would spend more time doing, which is something, again, I want to acknowledge

that Tiffany and I had many conversations with about, and she was so good at doing is some sort of like launch group of dedicated fans who are just excited about the book and are willing to promote it in exchange for exclusive access to you, merch, a exclusive like ebook copy of the book a month before anybody else. I'm trying to remember what we called it. And of course I can't remember off the top of my head,

but like getting a couple hundred people from your audience together who are going to be excited, who are going to talk about it. Tiffany actually told me that she, I think she had, I'm trying to remember her number, a couple hundred. She goes, they didn't just buy one copy. On average, they bought five. Wow. Like the individuals bought five copies themselves. Right.

Right. And so you can kind of, you can do the math on that of just like that dedicated group of people. So we did that too late. We kind of started and launched that. I want to say, was it like two months or six weeks before? Wasn't enough time. The actual launch of that is probably the time was right,

but we planned it for probably a week before and then launched it, you need a way more like logistical planning. I would start that process three to four months out, launch it about six weeks to eight weeks out. weeks to eight weeks out. Thank you so much to Jay Klaus for having me on his podcast, Creator Science. If you want more episodes like this, we have an entire Spotify playlist of all of the times I've been on other people's podcasts.

So if you are a financial feminist super fan and you've listened to every episode we have maybe more than once and you're like, I want more content. Well, we will link down below in the description all of the times that I have been a guest on other shows so you can get even more good content. But we appreciate Jay and this interview and you can subscribe to Creator Science wherever you're listening right now. And after all of this conversation about me talking about how hard it was writing a book, if you want to support me and other authors,

financialfeministbook.com is where you go to purchase my book. You can get it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, your local independent bookstore. We also have signed copies at that link, financialfeministbook.com. Would love to see your reactions to the book, get your feedback.

It's available as a hardcover ebook and also audiobook. And a reminder that if you like someone who's about to come out with a book, the best thing you can do is buy that book on pre-order, support your favorite authors and want to be authors, and also buy it from an independent bookstore because they could really use your business. Thank you as always Financial Feminist for being here. If you like these kind of episodes we would love to hear from you. And I hope you have a kick-ass week. We'll talk to you later.

Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First 100K podcast. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap, produced by Kristen Fields, associate producer Tameisha Grant, research by Ariel Johnson, audio and video engineering by Alyssa Medcalf, marketing and operations by Carina Patel, Amanda LeFeu, Elizabeth McCumber, Masha Bakhmakiyeva, Taylor Cho, Kaylin Sprinkle, Sasha Bonar, Claire Karonen, Daryl Ann Engman, and Janelle Reisner. Promotional graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolf, and theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound. A huge thanks to the entire Her First 100k team and community for supporting this show. For more information about Financial Feminist,

Her First 100k, our guests, and episode show notes, visit financialfeministpodcast.com.