Ep 317 The Business of Being an Author with Neil Plakcy

Welcome to Pencils and Lipstick. This is a podcast for indie authors. I'm Cat Caldwell, novelist, short story writer, and book coach. Here on Pencils and Lipstick, we're obsessed with bold things story, and it is my goal to bring you the writing tips that you need to make your novel come to life. Happy Independence Day to all the American listeners out there.

This is Pencils and Lipstick Episode three seventeen and it is week, the week of June 29. But this coming Saturday, July 4, America turns two fifty years old, which doesn't seem like a lot to some people out there, but our first constitution is two fifty years old. So when you put it in that context to all my European listeners out there, that's when you start thinking, okay, maybe their buildings aren't as old, but we have a very old constitution

that

we have not, completely changed. We amend it. We get to amend it, but, we don't have different constitutions at all. So yay to two hundred and fifty years of constitutional America. Lots of freedom over here to do fireworks.

We love our fireworks. In fact, I I saw yesterday that a fireworks stand in Oklahoma caught fire, and so there was, like, a you know, all these fireworks going off, which was kinda funny, especially when you think, like, nobody got hurt. And fireworks stands are usually very far away from any other building just, you know, because, obviously, we're gonna need to keep those far away. But we sure do love our explosions over here in America. So exploding on the scene this week is Neil Placci.

He and I are talking about being a man, writing romance and mystery, the difference between romance and gay romance, gay fiction. And he has some of his books translated, so we're going to talk about that. And as usual, covers and how he got into it. He, is a retired college professor, so it was really, really fun to speak with Neil. Everyone has a different perspective on everything, and Neil was very, very honest in his journey and, what he's doing for his books and how well they're going and, you know, whether translation is worth it or not and all all these things.

So I really appreciate it. In fact, he has a formula one romance, which I have not seen a whole lot of. Maybe that's just because it's not on my my feed. I do have a prediction that we'll be seeing a lot of soccer romance coming up with the World Cup and everyone going kinda crazy. Americans just love to live their big sports, you know.

So hockey has has has had it run its run. So I wonder if soccer will be next. We will see. I'm not gonna put any money down on it because whatever people can do whatever they want, but but I would not be surprised. I will say that.

So as we head into July, I actually have a pretty full July. If you are a Virginia writer or reader, I have two things to tell you. So if you're a reader, I will be in Richmond at the SAS, Desirable Decades event on July 25. I will be there, signing and selling my books. This is a romance event, so I will only have my romance books there.

But it's going to be really fun and tickets are pretty cheap. I think they're like 40 to $50 depending on if you want, like, the VIP or whatever. There's a brunch the next day, the twenty sixth, with the authors, which might be kind of fun. I got to go to one of those back in Texas, and it was really fun. I didn't know anybody, but it was really fun to be there and, like, meet people and meet readers and meet other authors.

And, anyway, that was before I even published. I was just, like, having a lot of fun trying to dip my toes in the literary world. And then for writers, if you are part of the Virginia Writing club, I will be speaking at the symposium. There's a lot of classes that you can take at the symposium. I will be teaching one of the classes.

I'm obviously not the, like, the head speaker. The head speaker is Chris Spizak or Spizak. So that should be fun. It's just a one day event, but I will also be able to sell some books there as well. I'll have my writing books, my journals.

That'll be fun to have out there. And then I am looking into some more events in the fall and I highly encourage you guys to look into some events. I know that they cost money, they cost time, but I really think that you are going to be able to nail down your ideal reader a lot more and you're going to be able to talk to authors and talk to to readers and just get more ideas and really feel like part of the community. I think that you should check out the bookstore, see how you can get involved, check out the libraries. If you write nonfiction, you should definitely be checking out library, see if you can do like a little talk.

If you write fiction, you should be talking to your independent bookstores. Usually, they have a form to fill out, so look in into that and, you know, network with other writers. Join the the state writing club or the the city writing club, you know, be able to network with people. I know the Virginia writing club, gets together every year and tries to buy up a bunch of tables at different outdoor events. And some of them are great and some of them are not so great.

So, unfortunately, I didn't get in on that because we weren't supposed to be here this summer, and then our plans change. And we are here this summer, and it was too late by the time I told my plans had changed. But anyway, maybe next summer. So, be on the lookout for those two events. As of now, the all that I am doing is just trying to get some writing done, thinking a lot about my stories, honestly, trying to keep up with some marketing.

And I am back into retaking the Facebook course for ads because I think I will be doing that starting in the fall as well. So I would love to hear from you guys. If you're on my writer's newsletter, you can just hit reply to that. Otherwise you can DM me on TikTok or Instagram. The links are always in the show notes below.

I would love to hear from you. Love to hear who you want on the show. If you want to be on the show, you can send me in your proposal for the show, what, what you want to chat about. Please know that you have to have three books published so that you have experience in, in this whole book world. Right?

So I hope that you guys are enjoying yourselves and staying cool, especially you Europeans. There's a huge heat wave hitting. So I hope that you like drink a lot of water, You know, don't push yourself too hard if it's too hot where you are, because you can also just be thinking a lot about your stories. That is actually a very good thing to be doing. Please, before we get into the interview, like, you know, subscribe, review the podcast.

It really helps. All of these spaces, these, like, content spaces are getting really, really full, and it's getting harder and harder to sort of get through the noise. So reviewing and subscribing, you know, just like following, I guess, is what it's called because it doesn't cost you anything. Always helps the podcast. If you know other writers sharing the podcast would be fabulous.

So it's just, it just helps everybody. The last this last week, actually today as the podcast goes out, I my talk for the Book Finisher Summit is going out. That was a great one to be part of. I will be part of another summit in July that is online, so I'll let you guys know about that as well. But without further ado, let's get into the interview with Neil Placci.

If you want more information about him, of course, the links are in the show notes below, but his, website is called mahubooks, mahubooks.com. But, of course, the links will be in the show notes below. Please click them, subscribe to his Substack, follow him, all the things, find his books. And I thank you guys again for always listening and for your continued support of the show. Alright.

I am here with Neil Plaksey. I got it right. Right? Hi, Neil. How are you doing?

I'm very well. How are you?

I'm great. We've already been chatting, so we're gonna try to record this so that people can listen in on our conversation because you have quite an extensive knowledge about writing and publishing and using AI ethically, so it's a lot. Now somebody in the audience is like, oh. So how did how did you come into writing? You've been in it for a while now.

Always as a kid, first of all, reading a lot, writing my own little stories. And then in tenth grade, we had to read a separate piece by John Knowles, which is a story about two boys at a private school during World War II. And we had an assignment, which was to rewrite the book, you know, essentially as a story from, you know, from the other character's point of view.

What a great exercise.

It was a great exercise. It really opened up something in me that said, oh, I can express myself this way. Yeah. I have an undergraduate degree in English with a concentration in creative writing.

You were allowed to do that? Most of our parents wouldn't let us.

My parents thought I was gonna go to law school. So Okay.

They were like, you can do whatever you want.

Right. So but then I went on to get an MBA and go work for a while. And, I'm living in South Florida. And I discovered that my local university had was just about to start a master of fine arts in creative writing program.

Okay. Okay.

And I they were very open to part time students. I could do it evenings while I was working. And that really kind of jump started my career. I graduated with a book. And then, and then it took me several more years to get my first published book Sure.

Publishable book ready.

Sure. Of course. And you're working full time.

In 2010.

Yeah. Yeah.

2010 was when that first book came out.

Did you go traditional at that point?

Yes. Because there wasn't anything else to do. Yeah. And I was picked up by a a very, an academic press that had a very small fiction line.

Oh, that's nice. Actually, I'm that's a good way to go.

Actually, no. No.

Okay. Never mind. Because

well, because first of all, they didn't know anything about how to sell, you know, fiction.

They just they just sort of wanted it on their side.

And they didn't know how to price things because textbooks get priced by how thick they are, not by what the market will bear. So they wanted my, you know, first mystery novel by an unknown author, they wanted to sell it for $23.95 in paperback. And I was like, wow. And this was, you know, $20.10. I was like, wow, that's just like way more than the market will bear.

Yeah. And I got them down to $19.95 and still, you know, didn't sell very much. And then

so funny because that's not a book price. You know what I mean? Like, when you go into a bookstore, you don't see anything for $19.99. It's, like, $18.95. It's a weird thing about the book market.

Right?

Yeah. And they just didn't really understand that. And the guy who owned the press was an elderly gentleman who eventually sold that academic press, And the new buyers didn't want the fiction line.

Oh, did you get your rights back? Yep. Okay.

Got the rights back. We're all orphaned, you know, one book and that's not very good sales. And then we're done.

There's nothing to go to another publishing house with.

I was very fortunate that, I had a friend who knew somebody. We did a project together for this publisher called Allison Books, which was at that time the largest publisher of gay and lesbian books.

Oh, okay.

And had a really good reputation. Yep. And because I did this nonfiction book with them, they got to know me, and they agreed to pick up the second book in my series and then eventually the first book and the third and fourth. And then they went under. So

maybe Alice is okay. I didn't know that they went under.

Well, you know, what happened was a a a larger company bought them with this idea that they were going to be everything for the LGBT market. You know, they had an they had a book publishing arm. They had a magazine. They had a tour company, you know, they were going to do all of these things. And eventually they realized that books are too complicated and they sold off.

They, they just closed it down.

Really? That's so sad because, I mean, like, there's a whole market. Like, there in really, especially in '20 what? Early twenty teens. Like Yeah.

If you just marketed it correctly, there weren't enough books for people who were looking for LGBT plus.

And, you know, I think they I think the editor had a different view. You know, she was trying to move into more mainstream books, but that wasn't what the press was known for.

Right. You so she just, like, left the readers behind and

Yeah. Basically. And it was, you know, it it was a tough time too because it was kind of right before the Kindle or right at the debut of the Kindle, and so they didn't really

If they had understood the Kindle, man, they could have, like, dominated that market.

Isn't that funny? And the Kindle was really the thing that jumped that gave me a second jump start

Right.

Because I had written, I had written a cozy mystery Yeah. With a guy and his dog solving crimes in their small town. And I had an agent and I sent it the book to him and he said, mainstream publishers don't want male protagonists in a cozy mystery. And I looked at a couple of their lists and sure enough most almost all of them were female protagonists or maybe there were a male female couple like a nun and a priest. Okay.

And he said, if you wanna make your protagonist gay, then I can sell it to a small press, you know, that's done your other gay mysteries.

Okay.

And I said, I really want some kind of a mainstream success here. Okay. So I'm gonna keep him the way he is. And the Kindle had just come out. A friend of mine who lived on a boat bought one because he couldn't keep all of his

My prayer about one. Yeah.

Card covers with him. My husband said, it's a good way for us to get rid of all the books

in our house and buy

you a Kindle.

Little did he know.

Little did he know. But we have reduced the number of print books around the house.

Oh, that was so sad.

And so I just took my mystery, in Dog We Trust was the first of the Golden Retriever Mysteries. That. And I put it up on Amazon with a crappy cover. Didn't really know

Yeah. Because nobody looked at them back then.

I had had an editor help me, a developmental editor, but I didn't you know, I was like, I'm an English professor. I can proofread this myself. You know, I didn't and I just slapped it up there, and it started to sell.

Yeah. Because we were desperate for books to read because the traditional publishers were like, no. I mean, it it was slim pickings at one point. I I feel like I read the entire Kindle library.

Well, and that's, you know, that's where I got lucky. I was Yeah. I was teaching at one point, I was teaching a class, an adult education class on, self publishing. And so, I brought up my Kindle screen, my Kindle dashboard at the very beginning of the class. Yeah.

And then we went back to it two hours later after I had gone through everything. And this woman in the audience goes, Wait, you sold two books while we were here.

Yeah. Note note to audience, that's not how it works anymore.

No. No. But, I still think there's if you know your market and now today, if you have the right cover and the right marketing materials and the right promotional aspect, I think you can I think you can make a debut and you can start a career?

Yeah. Of course. So

So Why

why have you kept the mystery? Did is it just sexual orientation is not part of the story, or did you end up making him, like, a gay detective? Or did did you Nope. Nope.

I just I wanted I had an idea of who he was. And part of his story is his backstory was he was married. His wife had a miscarriage. Mhmm. And I had worked with a guy, a young guy, whose wife had miscarried, and I saw the emotional effect it had on him.

And I thought, I don't really see that a lot. You know?

Yeah. Yeah.

You know, obviously it's very emotional for the woman, for the mother.

Right. Right.

But I'd never really seen much about the father. So I thought, well, this is really an interesting thing to play with. And, so she indulged in retail therapy after the miscarriage, ran them into debt. He spent a year working really hard to get them out of debt. And then she got pregnant again, and she miscarried again.

And instead of I realized this later. Instead of talking to her, he had some computer background, and had learned about hacking from, protecting the place where he was working. So he hacked into the three major credit card bureaus credit bureaus and put a red flag on her account saying she shouldn't be able to charge anything.

That's real?

This well, no. This is my Oh,

that's your story. Okay. Okay. I was like, wait a minute.

Story. Okay. But and all again, this was 2015, so it was a lot easier to be a hacker than

could have happened. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No.

But that's an interesting psychological, you know, character development thing.

Yeah. And and that's where I thought, well, I don't wanna give it up.

Yeah. You need to change everything.

I'd have to change a lot. And so he comes back to his hometown with his tail metaphorically between his legs, and his next door neighbor has a golden retriever who is very loud and effusive and wild like mine.

And he's like,

no, no, no. Get away from me. I don't want anything to do with you. And the neighbor gets killed, and he's asked to take care of the dog until the police detective can figure out what to do.

Okay.

And he and the dog bond. They solve the mystery together, and the dog teaches him how to love again is really, you know, the bottom line of it.

Yeah. So

there's a really good question.

Change the story. I mean, then that's one of the things that sometimes people, make suggestions to your story. You think like, somebody made suggestion to one of my stories, and I was like, that would change the entire point of the protagonist. Yep. Like, that is a that that flipping comment would literally change the entire story.

Even even if it's intended to help you market the book better

Right.

It takes away your book. It's not your book anymore.

Literally, it would be complete be completely different. I mean, if yeah. Just trying to think through that.

I'm up to 23 books of

mystery series. In the mystery series with the same guy.

With the same guy and the same dog.

That's so fun.

But he's on an emotional journey. And, you know, he's it's for the first few books, he really wants to hack to help the police detective who's his friend solve the crime.

Okay.

And he's gradually, you know, kind of forcing himself to step back. And, you know, so it's been really fun. It's been fun to work through, the the latest one, which is with my editor now. He's, the crime is there's a 20 year old boy who's been living in his parents' house, you know, stuck in his bedroom playing video games, and the parents are killed. And so Steve, my protagonist, helps this boy use his computer gaming skills to figure out what his father was up to and why he might have been killed.

Right. Right. Wow.

And he's trying to keep the boy from sliding down that slope into hacking.

Okay. Okay. But wait, you know, you're not a hacker. You're not a computer guy. How are you figuring this stuff up?

I, you know, I am a computer guy. I worked, But like,

are you a hacker guy? Like, do you know that?

No. I I can do my research. And a lot of it is fudging the details. Sure. You know, you know just enough

to make your readers, like, like, a feasible means of checking things. Well, you

know, I'll say, you know, I went into the dark web and found the tool that I needed to break the password.

Yeah. Does your husband know anything about this? Is he, like, one of your research subjects? Or

Oh, no. He doesn't do anything.

Because sometimes sometimes our spouses can help us with

He's a Mac user, so he knows nothing about the PC world.

You're being recorded on a Mac. Careful. So you have the detective series, which you have you continued to publish, independently?

Yeah. Eventually, all the publishers, the mainstream publishers that I worked with went out of business.

I know. I

yeah. And it's funny. I have one the only thing I have with a traditional publisher is a series of, I think, six or eight, erotic anthologies that I did. They were all around tropes like hard hats and mountain men and Yeah. You know, gay erotic anthologies.

And those the publisher has been bought out several times. So now my, my royalty checks, which I still get after fifteen years, are now coming from Simon and Schuster, which is kind of fun.

That is kind of fun. I mean, like, you should you should frame one of those. Like, I'm a Simon and Schuster. But, I mean, it is getting like, lots of people talk about monopolies, you know, or, like, JetBlue and Spirit Airlines and all that. And it's kind of gone away, this idea of, like, the publishing industry.

You know, like, it's it's very, very small. It's It's like there are not a whole lot

to choose from. And, and, unfortunately, they are in the position because they are all owned by big conglomerates of chasing profits. And so it's easier for them to pick up a debut author and hope that they will make a success than to continue with a midlist author. I mean, if I had, if I had published in Dog We Trust with a mainstream publisher, I might have gotten three books, five books maybe out of the deal.

Yeah.

And this has happened to a lot of my friends. And then publisher decides not to continue, but they have the rights. And so you can't really continue the series because people can't get book one anymore.

No. They don't get their rights back anymore?

It you well, see, here's the deal. It used to be that the contract said if the book goes out of print, you can get your rights back.

Right.

But today, if a book is available online, it's still, quote unquote, in print.

No way.

And so you really have to you have to wait often, you know, seven years. Seven years. Seven years.

It's so long. Yeah.

And then and then you have to go and track down the person who handles I see this all the time in writers groups. You get to track down who's the person in Harlequin that handles rights revisions, reversions? And who can I contact? And this publisher isn't responding to me.

Oh my gosh. That's a that's a real thing to think about if you want, if you think you want to go traditional. And

You know, and I have a friend who's written, I would say, five or six series under different pen names. He gets a two or three book contract. The books are, you know, they do okay, but the publisher says, nope, don't want to continue. And, you know, some cases he gets the rights back, but he doesn't want to advertise and market. He just wants to write books.

Right. So those books are kind of dead and orphaned until somebody wants to do something.

Gosh. That's hard. That's hard. I mean, in the end too, like, if you're traditionally published, you I it's really I say this all the time, so people who listen to the show are probably tired of it, but it's true. You're you have to market.

Like, you there's no way around this. There's no longer we are no longer in those days of I get to just write, and I don't really have to market anymore. It's just not there. We don't.

I live in the Fort Lauderdale area, and the Broward County Library has a author event every year, a very fabulous fundraising event with a, a dinner, a cocktail party dinner. You know, it's like $200 a ticket, blah, blah, blah. And you get a dinner with the author. So there were, so this is the second time I did it. The we went to a restaurant of maybe four tables of 10 each, and the author moved around from course to course.

And by the time we were talking to her, it was dessert. She was tired. You know, she had flown in, done a panel discussion the day before, then been on display at the cocktail party, then come to the dinner. And it was lovely that her publisher paid for this and did this for her, but it was still a lot of stress on her.

Yeah. That's true for an introverted writer.

You know, and and people say, oh, the glamour of the book tour. I that's what I want from my publisher. And and, yeah, sometimes it's not very glamorous.

Yeah. What I want is the, like, nineteen eighties book tours. That's what I want, where they would, like, actually advertise. Remember, we would stand around the the record store to get the new record drop and the new book and I don't But culture is different now. It's just we don't do

that. Yeah. And and I think some publishers are doing more of that. They're looking at, what they can do collaboratively with their authors. I had my last traditional deal was with a publisher called Diversion Books, which still exists.

The first book that came out, was The Next One Will Kill You. It's a FBI thriller. Nice. And the the marketing intern was really enthusiastic and she set up blog tours and interviews and excerpts and all kinds of stuff for me. And and it was terrific.

And the book did well enough for them to wanna continue. She was gone by the next book and hadn't been replaced. The marketing person, I would say, well, you know, this is what you did for me before. And if you can't do it, let me know and I'll do it.

Yeah.

You know, if you can't set up a blog tour for me, let me know and I will. And this marketing director says, oh, I'll take care of all of it. She did nothing. And the book tanked. And I collated all of the emails that I had from her and sent them to the publisher and said, these are all the things that so and so promised me that she did not carry through on.

Yeah. And they fired her. Yeah. And not just because of me.

That's her job.

And not just because of me, but she was slacking off on everybody.

Yeah.

And this gave her the evident, gave them the evidence. Right. And so after that, they said, you know, we're not really gonna do fiction anymore. You can have your rights back. For a small fee, you can buy the cover art.

Oh, yeah. So I was able to have my cover designer just, you know, make some minor changes. So we got a real consistent look on the covers. And after that, I was like

Yeah. It's still worth it.

The guy who was my editor for that book eventually left to freelance. He's now my editor.

Nice. My freelance editor for that book. You have some big connections through the different Yeah. Okay. Alright.

So what's interesting is that you write you write different romances. You write historical romance, contemporary romance, and then you write mystery, but you write it all under one name. Why did you choose to do that?

Because by the time I started, you know, the first book that came out was a gay mystery. It's like, oh, it's my first book. Of course. I'm gonna use my name on it. Mhmm.

Of course. And then, you know, and then I just wasn't aware so much of the market segmentation by the time I started publishing the Cozy Mysteries. And eventually, I just said

It's to my

I have one voice. Yeah. I have one voice. I write in one way across genre. If you're interested, you can follow me from genre to genre.

Yep. Yep.

If I were to choose to say, oh, now I'm gonna write a children's book, then I might use a pen name.

Sure. Sure. Yeah. I think I think it wasn't, I don't know. I it was never a consideration for me.

I didn't think of it until years later. Some people did think of it. But,

it's Sometimes it's the publisher that says or even your agent says, hey, your first book didn't sell very well. But if you choose a different pen name, then I can present you as a new author and you don't you have an open track record.

Like, are there debut authors?

Or even not even a debut, but somebody who doesn't have that bad track record behind you.

That's so funny.

So and, you know, of course, there are women who are you know, as we were talking earlier about romance

Yeah.

Lots of women writing that who choose to use initials or a pen name because To look like

a male writer or what or just to not

have your name attached? Well, I think it's two things. First, it's not have your name attached. I had an editor for a while, who when her in laws came to visit, she had to hide all of the books she had worked on because she didn't and she was using a pen she was using a pen name as an editor, and she didn't want them you know, they would be very disapproving if they saw what she was working on and eventually writing.

Okay. Yeah. There's there's that. There's the I I have heard that story a few times if people don't want their relatives to know what they're writing.

Look at the we just had that Frida, whatever her name is, was big best selling McAdam? Mcfadden, maybe. Mcfadden. Mcfadden. Mcfadden.

Mcfadden. Mcfadden. Mcfadden.

Mcfadden. Mcfadden. Mcf something. Mcfadden. McF something.

And it turns out she's a brain surgeon.

No way. I didn't hear that story.

Oh, yeah. Her real name is Sarah Cohen, and she's a brain surgeon in Boston. And she for a while, she just wanted to keep her writing life separate from her personal life. But then because she was so popular, people were speculating on who is this? Is this an AI?

You know, is this three men writing? That she finally stepped up and said, hi. Here I am. That's who I am.

See, how did she find time to do that if as a brain surgeon?

Yeah. I don't know.

That is a good question. Yeah. It's so crazy that people are thinking it. Well, I wanna ask you about a couple of different things. But you brought up AI because on your website, you say, like, you you offer, classes for on craft and the ethical use of AI.

So what what are are your thoughts on AI as a professor, as a writer? All

Well, for me, personally, as a writer, I use AI a lot in those marketing tasks.

Mhmm.

That, you know, it's very difficult, I think, for an author to look at his or her own book in a non not I don't wanna say nonjudgmental, but in a in a way that a reader would look at it. Yeah.

You

know, it's hard because we know what we what we wrote. We don't necessarily know what the reader wants.

Right. And we know what we think the we want the reader to want. Yes. But not necessarily.

You know, so, for example, one of the things you mentioned, I write across a bunch of genres. I wanted a tagline for myself. I wanted some way to identify me across genres. Yeah. And I asked the AI, what unifies all of these books?

And it was you know, he brought up a few things like found family. You know, either, you know, it could be a gay person finding his place, and finding people around him. It can be a guy and his dog making a family unit. So that idea of found family and then, warmth and, you know, a few other words that the AI came up with that helped me craft a tagline that anybody could look at and say, okay. I see that in You

see that.

The book that I've read.

What did you choose as a tagline? I'm trying to find it on your

Oh, it's on my, it's, let me see if I can pull You're right.

Stories with heart and fur. Is that the tagline?

That's that's one of them. One of them. If I do I because, you know, again, it's oh, I don't have hold on. Let me see if I can find if I can find something really quickly, I will, I'll tell you what it is. But let's see.

Oh, you're writing formula one, m m? That that's freak. I I love formula one.

Oh, good. Here's the one that it really came up with. Neoplaxy creates engaging mysteries and romances with humor and heart, celebrating love, identity, and found family, often with a loyal dog.

Yeah. That's great. And I'm not sure I would have come up with that.

I never Maybe after

a long time. Well, that's the thing. It's a great brainstorming tool because to be, like, very honest, an author's life is mostly I mean, you have your husband, but, like and I have mine, but I don't know. Mine doesn't help me a whole lot with any brainstorming. Yeah.

Like and he he doesn't understand, like, the marketing to reader either. So what do you do? You have, like, writers groups, but a lot of times, they don't know what they're doing.

It it's really hard to find somebody who is about the same place you are

Yeah.

In your That is true.

That is

so true. We were talking earlier about writers conferences and a conference that I went to last year, where I'm gonna see you again Yes. In January

Yeah.

Where you have the opportunity to meet people who are more at your level or in your genre or your niche or whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But they'll be all around The States, but, you know, you'll be together. Yeah.

You know, I, like you were saying, I wrote a Formula One romance, because I was just really intrigued by it. And I thought, you know, this is a good marketing opportunity. Yeah. But also it was something that was you know, kind of in my wheelhouse. And I went online.

I was in some Formula One group. And I saw a woman who, in her tagline, said she had written one. So I messaged her. We got we went back and forth. We've shared promo things.

Yeah. Yeah. That's nice.

I wouldn't have I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't been out there in those groups looking for connections.

Right. So you use it mostly for marketing? I mean, I think, honestly I mean, the listenership of this podcast is writers, but, I think that's what most writers are using it for.

And I'm also using it for, editing to some degree. For example, are you familiar with the the concept of heartbeat moments from Inez Johnson?

Yep. I love Inez.

So the the particular moment of emotional intensity in your book, and she suggests that you slow down and give the reader a chance to experience that. Sometimes I know my in my case, I tend to response those things because I wanna get to the end of the book. And so I'll have the AI say, find read my book and tell me where those moments are. Identify those moments where I can stop and slow down.

And is it doing it well?

Oh, yeah. What what what

do you use? Claude?

I'll use either Claude or chat.

Yeah. They're good. Like, the

the better one for me. Good at this kind of stuff because that's exactly what they're trained at.

I know. Because they took all the books and trained them.

So, you know, and and I had a book where I said, I feel like this book is starting off really slowly. Help help me analyze why. And it come back and say, well, you know, you're doing this, this, and that. Oh, okay. Now I see.

I can go back and, you know, ramp up the tension here or

Right.

Move this, you know, cut this big section of explanation that's

slowing things down. Right. Yeah. It's kind of I mean, it it's kind of it's not even taking anyone's place at that point because it's really just helping you because we just don't have the money to send it to an editor to just read it, to just give us an idea.

You know, I have my regular editor and I pay $850 per book.

That's nice.

And he comes back with a really detailed plot summary. You know, on one book, it was really funny because it was a first person book and he the character never was called by name for the first eight chapters.

Which you probably didn't notice.

I didn't even think of that. But when I'm reading the synopsis, protagonist, blah blah blah blah blah, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And he couldn't give the name because it wasn't in the book.

That's so funny. It's yeah. It's things like that. Yeah.

He has and then he gives me detailed analysis of what's working and what's not working and Yeah. And general advice on how to fix it. If I need specific help, like, my editor says this, and I don't really understand what he means. Mhmm. Yes.

I could go back. I could call him up. I could write him. But I can plop it into chat or Claude, and they'll say, oh, what he really says is this, this, and that.

Yeah. And

so this is what it means. He has told me, my editor has told me that the editing of the books is easier for him

because he figured out the issues.

A lot of the big issues.

And he's still getting paid the right the same amount of money. I mean, this is I think this is the actual best use of it of AI. We cannot change the fact that they trained AI the way that they trained it. Like, we're not responsible for that. We can't change it.

It's not going back into the the genie is not going back in the bottom. It is when

And we're not I'm not replacing my human editor because what I'm getting is kind of junior editorial advice as he the way that he puts it. Like, this is like a junior editor who is saying things like there aren't enough suspects. Go put some more suspects in.

And sometimes it's completely wrong. It has no idea what it's Well,

and yeah. And sometimes it is I'll say, wait. That's not

where this is going. My book.

Well, and and it's also you say, oh, I understand something even because they've said the wrong thing. I see where they were getting the wrong

idea from Oh, that. Yeah.

And that helps me go back and change that.

Okay. Okay. So

so, you know, like, in the editorial process, then later on in the development of marketing materials, the quality of work that the AI can do is so much greater today than it was.

Yeah. You

know, a year ago

Oh my gosh. Yeah.

I had a, a cover issue. My the cover of the book wasn't reading romance enough. Okay. And my editor pointed out, you know, the fact that they're standing a little apart and they're not looking at each other, these are the subtle signals. Well, if I had gone to a human cover designer to say, change his head 20 degrees.

Yeah. That's really hard for a human designer to do, but the AI could do it in a minute.

Yeah. Because they're using stock images and you can only do

some of that. This is, drawn. These were all drawn.

Oh, gosh. Yeah.

Yeah. They do a lot of and I even, you know, driven together this formula one romance. I ended up

Your cover for that is great, though.

Well, I don't know which do you mean the

I'm looking at both of them. Your newest one, I think the cover is excellent. But your Well,

that's the thing. I wasn't this is the kind of thing where we talk about the business of writing. Yeah. That book was not selling as well as I had hoped. Yeah.

And so I went back to the drawing board and said, let me look at other covers of similar books. And, oh, the covers that are on the Amazon bestsellers right now were more cartoony drawn than photo realistic.

Okay.

So I said to chat or Gemini nano banana I use for image creation. Take this concept and give me something that is similar to these, you know, in that cartoony concept.

Oh, okay. I see the difference. I'm looking at I thought it was two different books. I, yeah, I can see how the cartoony concept

So, you know, so, I

And I like how their heads are together. Like, their foreheads are are almost touching. Right?

And that was something that I stole from heated rivalry because I saw some promotional things where the foreheads were touching. Yeah. And it was funny, when I was at the conference we discussed, a young Christian woman, let's say, said she was offended by all of those images of heated rivalry that kept showing up on her TV as ads, where their head where their foreheads are together. I wanted to say so is that a is that something that upsets you? You know, foreheads touching?

It's not like they were kissing or

Whatever.

But I said, if she noticed that signal, the foreheads touching, that's where I wanna go. That kind of thing.

Yeah. That because that's a very romantic thing. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, well.

People are gonna be offended.

That's a nice little weird. Keep people you'll keep the wrong reader from from buying your book,

which is part of the book. Place where I asked the the AI's advice. I said,

okay,

this book is not selling the way I had hoped. What's wrong? And so we looked at the description, and the description had been written three months before, let's say. AI keep learning. And it said, okay.

You know, we could adjust the description here. You know, the the tagline needs to be more romance oriented. You know, because it was like I think one of the the first lines of the description was something like, he's he's got the job of his life, and but then discovers, you know, he has to write about the one who got away. Yeah. That gives it a business perspective, not a romance perspective.

Right. Right. Right. So it's Interesting. He walked on, you know, he walked into the Monaco Grand Prix and saw the man who broke his heart.

Yeah. That's that's very yep. Yeah.

That's more romance y. Right. So it was that kind of fine tuning that the AI can provide a lot of help with. And like you said, if we had writers groups and friends and people in the same genre and people we could rely on to say, take a half an hour and, you know, read my book, read part of my book. And, you know, whereas the AI can read the book and make judgments, all this stuff very quickly.

Yeah. So Well and there's there's no one really that unless they unless they've been in, like, the blurb writing industry or they or they left their job at the traditional publisher, no one really understands blurbs. It's like one of those things you like grandma's chocolate cake. Like, you gotta do it a million times before you're just like, it's just this much salt. You're like, wait.

What? Absolutely.

Absolutely. And fortunately, the AI has written thousands of blurbs and read millions of blurbs. Yeah. And

you can you can have it analyze several blurbs. Yep. Yep. Yep. So did you use AI for your translations?

Yes.

Okay. Uh-huh.

What did

you use?

Okay. So first of all, I hired a woman. I actually so what happened was I had used the AI, scribe shadow maybe Yeah. To do a German translation of in dog we trust.

Okay.

Because, again, asking the AI for market advice

Okay.

Which of my books is most likely to be popular in a German market?

Okay.

And the AI said, well, the Germans really love cozy book, cozy mysteries. They love books with animals. So in dog we trust is a good first choice. Okay. A woman who is a translator saw it, emailed me, said, this translation is really bad.

I can do it for you cheaply.

What was cheaply for her?

Well, it was $3,000 which it would have been 5,000. Yep. Yeah. And so I said and she apparently had already read some of my books, in English. So she was all and that's why she as soon as she saw the German translation, she picked it up.

So I thought, okay, this is great. Who, you know, is a known translator who already knows my books. I'm assuming she did a good job.

Yeah. Because what do we know?

What do we know? I did end up doing, the next few books in through Scribe Shadow, I think. And then I took out an ad, a German ad, bookdeals.de is the only one that does kind of what BookBub does Okay. For The US or for English language. And I gave away, you know, 500 copies.

I did it for, you know, free promo. Gave 500, maybe even a thousand copies Mhmm. But no read through at all.

Oh, really?

And I went to the AI and said, what's wrong? And, and the AI said, well, because this is first in series, it has a lot of backstory. It takes a while to get to the you know, the murder happens in the first couple pages, but it takes a while to get the investigation going because it has a lot of backstory. Germans don't like books with a heavy backstory. You're better off going to book I think it said book four of the series because the mystery plot was front and center, and it was had to do with, mercy killings and nursing homes and medicine.

And and this is something that Germans will like. Now I haven't had a chance to try that out yet. Okay. But that's the kind of, let's say, sophisticated advice that you could get that you could really only get if you knew somebody who was a publisher of translated books and who read your book and compared it to the market. Now that could be totally wrong.

But part of this is just trying stuff

too. Yeah. You know? But, obviously, the first book, the cover worked, the blurb worked, people were willing

to download

it for free. It just didn't convert into sales. So that's the kind of thing that the AI can be really helpful for even if it's just reassuring you.

Okay.

Your book is good. You know, the translation is okay.

Be my cheerleader, please.

Yeah. So be my cheerleader.

Why did you choose to try your other ones, your Honolulu detective in Italian?

Oh, a a fan emailed me that he wanted his boyfriend to read the book, and there was and his boyfriend only read Italian, so he translated it.

No way he translated it for free.

He translated the whole book. Now and this was a few years ago, so it was really before AI. So I don't think he could have just plugged it into an AI translator. Today, he could.

Right.

But, so he wrote to me and said, I, you know, I did this, and I'm like, this is awesome. I will put it up for sale. I'll put your name down as the translator and I'll split the proceeds with you. And we did try and market it and he tried and didn't really go anywhere.

That's so nice.

You know, sold a few books. Yeah. Again, because there aren't there aren't the mechanisms for promoting books in these foreign languages that we have here.

Okay. Okay. That to

me is the biggest problem with translation. You know, I know some authors who

are successful. Pay written word media in Italy to promote your book. They don't really have it. And I

know some authors who are successful enough that they have a mailing list in German and a mailing list in Italian or whatever. And so whenever they publish a new book, they already have a list of German speaking fans who maybe discovered them in English.

I wonder how they run that.

They, I somebody. A couple of them, they are a couple of them are multilingual. You know, one friend of mine is Dutch, and she speaks English and French and German. Not enough to translate her own books, but enough to write her own newsletter. Still, that's a lot

of work.

It is a lot of work. But, but, you know, if it's if it's getting If it works for you, you know, obviously, these people couldn't continue to do, you know, translation after translation if it wasn't making money for them.

Yeah. It does cost about I mean, Scripeshadow to to translate your book is about 4 to $400, $304,100, kinda depending on how long it is.

Yeah.

And then I I was talking to some people over at Reedsy, and it is about 3,000 for them to edit it, which it would be I write long ones. It would be 7,000 to translate. So you really have to budget.

Yeah. I've I had the first few of those, autumn the the AI translated books in German, let's say, I had somebody I had a human proofread in Polish. Especially for German. Yeah. Now I've had interesting experiences with asking the AI.

Now it's good enough that I can say I want you to proofread and localize this book, this translation from another AI. And so by using different AI's who that have different skill levels or different skill sets, you can do a better job of proofreading. And, the author self publishing, James

Blatch James Blatch.

He has a translation module that he sells

Interesting.

That explains how to do this.

Yeah.

And I bought it, and I just haven't

Yeah. Right.

Devoted the time

to thought he was it was very risky of him to put up his translations without them being edited.

And but, you know, we didn't know at that point, you know, weeks back then, you know, a couple years ago. Oh, the Yeah.

Back then, it was, like, two years ago.

And what I you know, I was even asking somebody, you know, the books that I had an AI translate, should I have do another pass on

Mhmm.

And, like, go back to Scribe Shadow and say, you know, run this again? Yeah. Because the answer

was better.

Well, the answer was translation was one of the first things that they used AI for.

Actually, what people don't know so I I have my degree in linguistics and translation. Well, AI was first like, large language models were first to for the automation system, especially for the hard of hearing community and the blind community to get that

Yep.

So that it was more emotional, like, and and nicer to listen to. And then translations were right behind that. It was especially to try to get unwritten languages because there are still quite a few Oh, yeah. Like, written. And you have to be able to differentiate these sounds and to they were creating these models for it because so that it's not surprising if you know the background on how good they are on it.

Yeah. So that the answer was no, you don't need to retranslate it, but you might need to local edit it and polish it. Yeah. Interestingly, what you said, my last book in the Mahu series, which is my Hawaiian, gay police detective in Honolulu, the one that came out last year is called Blood Code, and it's about a tech bro who sets up his own AI company to translate medical information into underserved Hawaiian and Pacific Islander languages.

Oh, cool. Yeah.

I mean, I don't think it exists. I made it

up. Should. But Yeah.

It sounds, you know, it sounded reasonable enough for Yeah. Absolutely. For a plot.

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So are you gonna continue to try to do some translations? Do you think that is an untapped market if you can figure it out?

One thing I wanna do is I want to play with James Blatch's translation system Yeah. And see if I can make the books better quality Yeah. So that when the marketing opportunities come up, I'm ready. Yeah. That makes sense.

You know? You know? So that, you know, right now, the only thing in German, for example, is book deals.de. There may be other people in Germany coming up. There, you know, there's a market for somebody to do that kind of written word media in other languages.

Anybody listening who has that will I mean, it and it's interesting because Germans are actually quite literary. They like to read. I have my husband is Spanish, and so you would think that that would be the first language I would translate to, but they sure love their free books. Like, they are not buyers at all.

And, also, there's so many different I live in South Florida, so I know a lot about people who speak different dialects of Spanish.

Oh, no. But you translate into Castilian.

You know, the Castilian and then, you know, the even Brazilian Portuguese versus regular Portuguese.

Well, people are getting mad about it. Traditionally, you you translate into Portugal, Portuguese, and Castilian Spanish. And now people want different, but that will complicate it a lot.

And I was involved with BabbleCube for a while. Do you know that one? Where it was a market for, edit for authors to hook up with translators.

Okay.

And, BabbleCube had the same kind of contract restrictions that Audible had. You know, you and the narrator can, share royalties for seven years. You and the translator share royalties for seven years Yeah. For BabbleCube. Unfortunately, the translators there were often people who were willing to do something essentially for free because they wanted the credentials.

Okay. I wanna be I wanna have I wanna get a job. You know, I just graduated with my degree in linguistics. I wanna get a job as a translator. I wanna have a book under my belt to show.

Right. Right. Right. Right.

So they weren't people who knew the book market, who knew how to sell books. And so that's how come I have a Brazilian Portuguese and a Spanish and an Italian because I had those done by these individuals

Yeah.

Who didn't really know anything about marketing. And so And they just it

sort of linked in.

How to market.

Right.

So Right.

Right. That is a that is a tricky part of this. There's I think it is an untapped market, but there's it it's gonna take a lot more thought process and strategy than I think most of us writers Oh, yeah. Like to do.

You know, I you know, if you look back, how did a company like BookBub get started? You know, they probably just started posting things on social media. Hey. Wanna get free and discounted books? Sign up for our newsletter.

Right. And now the world is totally different.

You have to do that in German now. You'd have to, you know, go into German Facebook and German social media and say, hey. Want this? So

Yeah. Basically, pay somebody to be your German assistant without you you know, it's all these different things if you if you have the money or if you save the money and you have a strategy, but it's still a risk. It's still a risk. We there's no guarantee. Right?

So

Absolutely.

So where can people find you? All of your books. I assume are you only on Kindle or are you everywhere?

Most of my books these days are on Kindle unlimited because that's where the money is, unfortunately.

I know. I wish that Barnes and Noble would figure something out.

Well, I went wide for quite a while, and I discovered a real drop in my income. Yeah. So I pulled back. But, the first book I ever published is called Mahu, m a h u. So my website is mahoobooks.com.

Oh, I love that. I love that. But I

also own the domain neoplaxi.com, and it just sends over there.

Sends you over there. Alright.

But pretty much under my real name, you can find me at any social media place.

You're on all the social medias?

I'm on a lot of them.

A lot

of I

know there's still many.

I'm finding a lot of traction these days on Substack

Okay.

And LinkedIn. Okay.

So are you on okay. Really?

So I have well, I have a Substack newsletter that comes out every week. Okay. And I didn't want it to just be buy my book, buy my book, buy my book. K.

So

I thought about what can I say?

Yeah.

And because I have an MBA and an MFA, my stuff is the intersection between business and creativity. So it's kind of a behind the scenes look at things, and then and I try and make it as relevant to anybody who is marketing. So that way I I'll cross post my Substack to LinkedIn, and I get a lot of readership there.

Yeah. Because they gotta read. I hope they read.

They also are interested in the marketing or the business side, and then hopefully some of them are readers too.

Sure. Hopefully, you'll find somebody who's like, I can do all your marketing for you in Germany.

Yeah.

That's the dream. That's the dream. Well, we will have the links in the show notes. I mean, honestly, your website's great because people can start reading right away. You'll have a couple, short

stories. Reader reader magnets Yeah. Magnets that people can, you know, get. And anybody who signs up for my newsletter, which is just plexi.substack.com, gets a welcome email that has attached to it the links for all of my freebies.

Okay. Wow.

And I, you know, and I regularly post new free stuff. I wrote a story, for example, for an anthology. Didn't get accepted. Put it up as a freebie for my readers.

Right. Right. That's a good idea. I mean, we have to keep like, you have to have all these different things. Well well, maybe we'll have to have you back to talk just exclusively about freebies and and all the prologues and things that we should be writing and people don't wanna hear about.

Lots of writers are like, no. I don't want to. Alright. Well, thank you so much, Neil, for coming on. And we we didn't hit everything, but we'll just have to have you on again.

Alright. Well, thank you very much. I really appreciate the chance to chat with you, and I look forward to seeing you in person in January.

Yes. Absolutely.

That'll be fun.

Yes.