The Author Wheel Podcast
The Author Wheel Podcast
Secrets to Author Success with Alessandra Torre of InkersCon
SURPRISE!
We said we were taking a break for the summer—and we are—but we couldn't skip this opportunity to have the fabulous Alessandra Torre on the show to talk about her journey into writing, publishing, and running one of the best writer conferences in the country.
Alessandra (AR) Torre is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of more than 30 novels. In addition to writing, she's the co-founder of Authors AI and Inkers Con.
In this interview, Alessandra shares how a spontaneous tweak in her book description led to massive success, how she's overcome writer's block and the inertia of the messy middle, and why she developed Inkers Con, an online-first conference geared to help writers across all stages find success for their career.
GET $50 OFF YOUR INKERS CON TICKET WITH CODE WHEEL50!*
Inkers Con online Digital Conference is a full-scale indie fiction authors' conference with two weeks of interactive launch events kicking off on July 20th.
Attendees get access to:
✅ 26 motivating and actionable classes, taught by bestselling authors and experts who will share their best insights for crafting compelling books, improving your business, finding your readers, and more.
✅ Dozens of interactive live events including author roundtables, Q&As with bestselling authors, speed networking, virtual happy hour, and more.
✅ Co-working writing sprints so you can focus on getting large chunks of writing done.
Check out their lineup of classes and events here >> www.inkerscon.com
*Note: We are proud affiliates of Inkers Con 2024. By clicking the link or using the code WHEEL50, you will receive $50 off your ticket and we will receive a commission from your purchase, at no extra cost to you.
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Alessandra Torre
Website: www.alessandratorre.com
Inkers Con: www.inkerscon.com
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Greta Boris:
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Megan Haskell:
Website: www.MeganHaskell.com
Facebook & Instagram: @MeganHaskellAuthor
TikTok: @AuthorMeganHaskell
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Hi everyone and welcome to the Author Wheel podcast. I'm Greta Boras, usa Today bestselling mystery thriller author.
Speaker 2:And I'm Megan Haskell, award-winning fantasy adventure author. Together we are the Author Wheel. Today we have a surprise summer bonus episode for you all with Alessandra Torre. So we're still on summer break, so we don't have a regular intro. We don't have an update because I don't know what I'm doing right now as this airs. So we're still on summer break, so we don't have a regular intro. We don't have an update because I don't know what I'm doing right now as this airs, so we're just going to dive around Europe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe, maybe. So we're going to just dive right into the interview. So, in case you don't already know her, alessandra is a New York Times, wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of more than 30 novels. In addition to writing, she's the co-founder of Authors, ai and InkersCon. So welcome, alessandra, we are so excited to have you here today. Thank you, guys. I'm so excited to be here. I love talking shop, so it's great to be able to talk about writing and authoring you guys. Well, good, because we're going to go off on all sorts of different tangents. I can already guarantee it.
Speaker 1:Yes, we are the rabbit trail queens. Yeah yeah. In fact I was thinking about renaming the podcast instead of the author wheel, the rabbit trail queens, but then people might think we were hunting or something terrible like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah it kind of takes away the whole like writing author thing. Yeah, it kind of takes away the whole like writing author thing. Anyway, why don't we get back on track? So, alessandra, why don't you tell us a little bit more about your journey into writing? Absolutely. So I started in 2012. I was 28.
Speaker 2:And I was like in between jobs, I was trying to figure out, kind of what I wanted to do with my life. My husband had sold a company that I worked for, so I didn't have like I was just at this like crossroads where it was like, oh, like, is there anything you ever really wanted to do? Like we were in this kind of rare position where, like I could take some time to figure out what I wanted to do and I did not think about writing. I was thinking about all sorts of other things and but self-publishing was like really catching attention in the media and I read an article that said EL James was making like a million dollars a day off Fifty Shades of Grey. I had read Fifty Shades of Grey and I was like you know, maybe I could like try writing a book, and I wasn't thinking that I would do it for a job, I was thinking it would just be a fun thing, like I could write this book, no one could know about it. I could release it, no one would have to know about it if it flopped, whatever. If it did well, whatever. So I did, I wrote a book in six weeks. It was called Blindfolded Innocence. I read it a few times I was like, yeah, this sounds good. And I published it like no editor. No, I had no training in writing. It was really just like I sat down and kind of vomited out this love story, which was crazy, because I really had expected to write a suspense novel, because that was just what I always read was suspense. So I did not know anything about writing to market. I did not know the rules of romance. Um, I broke a lot of the rules of romance in that book, um, but I self-published it and it sold like three to five copies a day for a while. It slowly worked up, like it started getting reviews. It slowly worked up to like 30 or 40 copies a day. And then, um, and then I went. We had a weekend trip that we were going on, so it as anyone knows who's listening.
Speaker 2:If you're an author, especially a new author, you can get like obsessed with checking your sales, like it's just something I would do. Like every 15 minutes I'd refresh the page to see if someone had bought another book. Um, and so I obsessively checked my, my, my sales all morning and then, right before we got in the car to get on this road trip, I was like you know, I think I'm gonna write a new book description and I just like jotted out a new book description. I didn't put much thought into it. I had never changed my book description before, but I wrote a different book description, you know, refreshed it on KDP, and then we got in the car and we left, and seven hours later we arrived in Memphis and I checked in.
Speaker 2:This is 2012. So I didn't have like internet on my phone. I mean, I had some sort of smartphone, but anyways, by the time I got settled and checked my sales, I had sold like 130 copies like during that that ride, and I was convinced like something had broken in the system. Right, like any moment I'm going to get an email from Amazon. They're like never mind, that was a mistake. But then by the time I went to bed, I sold like 500 copies, and it was. And then the next day I sold 1000 copies, and then the next day I sold 2000 copies and before I knew it, like I had sold 30,000 copies.
Speaker 1:Chimney Christmas.
Speaker 2:That's great. Yeah, wow, yeah, and it was all because I changed my book description and it was that one thing. It was like it. I had at the time a really clickbaity cover. Like the cover definitely like grabbed your attention. It was I had the distinct honor of being the first band cover. They didn't even know what to do. This is again. This is 2012.
Speaker 2:This was like early days and my book was suddenly like in the top 10 of Amazon and it was very scandalous and I think Amazon was like what do we do? Like we can't have you know, like visitors and children coming to this page and seeing this like sexy cover, but they didn't, like they didn't have processes in place, like it took three weeks and suddenly my book just disappeared. Like we couldn't find it unless you had the direct URL. It didn't work, didn't come up and search and it took another two weeks from at the time. Then I had an agent by that time and then we actually like we were going to auction and we sold that book to a publisher and all this like my book book got banned like three days before the auction.
Speaker 2:It was an exciting time, but it was basically that moment where it was like, oh my gosh, like this is my new career, like I wasn't expecting it. It didn't happen, but it goes to show the power of literally. I didn't spend a dollar, I just changed my book description and it showed me how many people had been clicking on my cover and then reading the book description and be like, yeah, you know, and I was selling, despite myself that, 15 to 30 sales a day, um, and once I changed that book description, it was like the missing piece and my and literally like birthed my entire career. Um, because at that point in time it was like, okay, this is my new job. I sold that book for multiple six figures to a publisher. Um, and it was like, okay, now I have this like bucket of money, like I don't need to go back to work.
Speaker 2:I literally made enough for eight years of salary. And then I just wrote books from then on and continued self-publishing. I continued to occasionally sell those books after release to publishers. That doesn't work anymore, but back then they were buying it. You know, if it was successful, they would buy it after the fact.
Speaker 2:Wow, well, that is quite a story, so I'm sure everybody listening, including me, wants to know what's the secret sauce on the book description yeah, yeah, I get asked that all the time and went like you know the time when I was doing it wasn't like I was like this is the moment that's gonna change my entire career in my life. You know, like I didn't, I didn't even know I was doing anything like, so I never saved the original book description before I changed it. Like five or six years ago I sat down with like the Goodreads library and I was like please, like I know that y'all have historically somewhere like the first blurb there was for this book and she dug around and I think we found like the first and the second and the difference was the second was much, much like it leaned much heavier on the sexual relationship between the couple.
Speaker 2:And again this was this was like a super, like scandalous cover and so I think people were clicking on this super sexy cover and then they're reading this description. That was like tame and like the two things didn't fit. So when we changed that book description to match the cover, when we, when I changed that book description to match the cover, then it was, you know, all lights green. You know there wasn't that disconnect and that was what it took. So it sounds to me like it was first off, you know, finding your niche right, like you knew you were romance, you had the sexy cover, then bringing it all into alignment and once you had all of that together, it worked together. Yeah, I mean, I guess I mean that seems so obvious when you say it out loud. It was a brilliant analysis, yeah.
Speaker 1:But the thing is is that all of us, I think we're very close to our work and so it is very difficult. I mean, there's a lot of fabulous writers who can write an 80,000 word book and then, you know, just want to pull out their eyebrows when it comes to writing a book description. They're just like.
Speaker 1:I can't do this. So it does make a kind of sense that that, and maybe because you had published it and stepped away yeah Well, you hadn't actually stepped away, you were impulsively or compulsively refreshing your Amazon page, but it's still. You know you'd stepped away from the story, so to speak. It was easier for you to come in with a new blurb, so maybe that's.
Speaker 2:And I'd also read reviews. It really wasn't an intelligent process but I think, despite myself, I had read every review there had ever been for my book you know what I mean Like three times. So I knew like that people really liked like the main character, you know the main hero or the hero. So that I played a lot up in my blurb and and I think about the cavalierness that I published the book, like I, without any editing, without any like real knowledge on how to write a book. I had just read, I had read my whole life. I knew like what I liked in a story, how a story should be told. But I'm pretty sure I wrote that first book description with very little thought, like I think I was just like, oh, you know, I didn't have any experience writing book descriptions. So by the time I wrote the second one, which was like six weeks in eight weeks in, I had I had written more because I've been writing more at that point in time in the sequel and I was just a little bit more marketing savvy than I was initially and I think there was just a little more like care that went into that. So now having I mean, you've worked with traditional publishers they bought. You know at least a few of your books. Do you find that like? Do the traditional publishers come in and make changes to that description? Do you find that that teamwork, having that extra pair of eyes, is actually helpful, or are they still at this point, you know, mostly relying on what you put together yourself first? So every publisher I've worked with has been different.
Speaker 2:I will say that my first I used to say when I give like webinars or classes, or I would introduce myself, I would say that I am hybrid. I'm traditionally published and independently published, but I've always found my biggest success was self-publishing. Every time I pick up the New York Times list, it was with a self-published book. My traditionally published books typically flopped. They all did really, really poorly. I've never earned out Well. I used to say that I've never earned out in advance like on my traditionally published books. That all changed when I signed with Amazon. So Amazon has been my published. So I also write under AR Tori. Those are my suspense books.
Speaker 2:I haven't written a romance book in years and Amazon's imprint, thomas and Mercer's their mystery thriller imprint, and they have published my last five books. It's a completely different animal Like they are. It's just their process. They are very much more of almost a self-publishing mindset in terms of like nimble, being nimble and really watching the market. So with my, with Hachette and with Harlequin, with all three I've never written a blurb that I had.
Speaker 2:When they came in and purchased it, they jumped and they wrote their own. With Amazon, they write a book description and then they send it to me for feedback and edits. The other publishers did not ask for my feedback and edits, but Amazon does. So we'll go back and forth with both long taglines, short taglines and the book description and I can be pretty aggressive in those edits and they'll typically, unless they really strongly disagree. But I also trust their judgment and I know how much market research and different things that they know and are aware of. So it's a good relationship. But that's the only one where I've had creative input into the book description and the title.
Speaker 1:So writing with Amazon is, is it safe to say is, like your best experience with a traditional publisher.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hachette was also a fantastic experience in terms of editorially. I worked with such fantastic editors and I grew like my writing skill really elevated during that time. Here it was. Also, I was coming to them very fresh, like I'd only written three or four books so I was still kind of trying to figure out like my voice and my process and their editorial team was fantastic and I really learned a lot from that. They also did a really big push for my books.
Speaker 2:But with that book and that series that I sold to them it was the girl in 60. It was an erotic thriller. It didn't have like a bookshelf in the store, like it was this. Like booksellers just didn't know what to do with it. Like do we put this in romance? Do we put it in thrillers? Like it has a sexy cover but it's suspenseful, like I don you say right to market it. Like created its own market and it was a market that was hard to find. So I don't so other than that.
Speaker 2:But I would say that Amazon is a fantastic. I interviewed Dean Kuntz and Dean has has published with a lot of major publishers and had long relationships with them and he's a big dog. So you know when he says something. It's going to be like a different experience him working with a publisher, than it is like, you know, a baby author, a newer author and he's and he is now with Amazon and me and him were talking offline and he was raving about them and he said it's the best experience he's ever had. So I really, if there's any author that's thinking about them, they are a fantastic publisher to work with and for a self-published author, they really kind of get us and get our you know kind of opinions and things like that and listen to them a lot more than some of the other traditional publishers.
Speaker 1:I did notice that Dean Kuntz was working with Amazon recently and I thought, oh, that would be an interesting conversation Because, like you said, I mean he's kind of come up through the traditional publishing, when that was all there was, and through that, through the mill, so to speak, and he's been with so many people, so that's very interesting that he's really having a good experience there. So is that? What you're writing now, then, primarily is suspense. I have your first suspense book with Amazon. It's terrific. Anybody interested should go look at it. It's great. I love that. I love that genre anyway.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I write domestic for those listening. I write domestic suspense under AR Torrey and yeah, that's been my world kind of for five, five, maybe six years. Now I'm on my sixth book with them and it's due in four weeks. Wow, I just finished the writing session right before I got on with you guys.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks for taking the time. Yeah, great, great. So, transitioning a little bit, because you do have a history of helping lots of authors and we do want to talk a little bit about Inkerskahn, but before we get into that, I just like to ask you the question we ask most of our guests, which is what is the greatest roadblock that you personally have either experienced or that you see in the writers you teach and the writers you work with? The most common, the biggest roadblock that writers have to overcome to move towards success?
Speaker 2:I would say that there are two. One is a more craft roadblock, and that roadblock at least it's one I've dealt with and it's one that I, that a lot of authors that I work with, deal with, and that is just until you have written a certain number of books. It is hard for you to understand, like your own process, and it's hard for you to know like what's normal for you, but also what's normal like for everyone and for me. What I've learned is two things. It's that I am deadline motivated. If I do not have a deadline, I just won't write the book, like it's just not gonna happen, like it will eventually come out, but it's gonna take a year and a half, two years where I have to have someone that is waiting for this book that I'm going to let down if I don't deliver at a certain time. And no matter what, no matter how much time I'm given or whatever else, I'm always going to be down to the wire and I'm always going to be writing until three or four in the morning and, like you know, the last three days I'm going to be like pulling 16 hour days writing, and that's just. That's just how. What I now know that I need in order to be productive, and that's okay. Like I've forgiven myself for for that. There was like a long time where I was like beating myself up over that, um.
Speaker 2:And the second thing is that I truly hate my book. Um, from like 30 to 55 percent of the book, like like I'm happy at the beginning, right, like it's a love story like me and it. Or like, yeah, we're like doing this thing. And then, um, and then I get like 30, 35% in. And that's when I'm like God, this book is like boring. And then I'm like, oh, my God, I hate this. And then I'm like no one's going to want to read this. And I'm writing in the scenes are just like dragging out of me and I'm like this is I just need to go write this other like Chinese idea that's over here, you know, and and it initially like, thank God, that didn't happen my first two or three books. But it happened on book like four through 30. And at that, and it just took me a couple books to realize like that's a normal part of my process, like it is normal for me to fall out of love with my story 30%. And. And now, when it happens, I'm just like, oh, hey, like I'm at that point, you know what I mean. And then um, and then I just keep trudging through.
Speaker 2:And that was another thing Dean said. Dean said the same thing. Like like halfway through he's like this book's horrible. No one wants to read this. This is stupid. And I was so glad he said that because his books are like brilliant works of art, you know. Um, but, but it's so anyway.
Speaker 2:So that's something I always, because a lot of times I talk to authors and they're like I'm like you know, I've gotten 100 pages into four different books and then, you know, I realized how bad they are.
Speaker 2:And then I go write something else and it's like, no, like that's part of the process, like it's not part of every author's process, but a large number of us, like you just got to get through, you got to get past the 50% point, start to be where you're building up to the climax, and then you can fix everything and rewrite. So like maybe it is really draggy during that part, but that's fine. Like, if you're hating a scene, just write, finish the scene later and move to the next one. And so it just took me. I think we lose a lot of new authors that think because, like, this book isn't a masterful work of art, they love every scene of as they're writing it that they're broken or this book's broken and they need to do something else, and it's just like communicating that. That's like a normal part of the process, at least for me and for a lot of the authors that I interact with.
Speaker 1:It's so funny that you say that, because I think both Megan and I have said this on the podcast a hundred times.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm about a third of the way in, and so I now know this is the stupidest book in the history of the playmate, and that's. You know what I mean. And you just feel that way in. Yeah, I've even gotten to the point where I don't even try. I mean, I always know the end of a book, or sort of the end of a book and the opening, but when I get to about 30%, often I just stop and then replot to a degree, like I rework what I thought was going to happen, because I now realize those characters are not going to do that or that's just lame or whatever the thing is. You know. So, but to hear that you do that and Dean Kunst does that, that just makes me feel like a validated human being.
Speaker 2:Well, and I'm actually curious too. So I mean, I've written, I think 10 novels now at this point and the one that I'm working on right now I've gotten kind of stuck and I realized I'm kind of stuck at that like 50% mark and I keep trudging through like I know it'll. You know I hate the book but I'm going to get through it. You know it's just the way it is. But but the thing I've discovered is that each book has a slightly different problem at that point. Sometimes it's that I don't know where it's going. Sometimes it's that I have too many options, sometimes it's that I just feel like it's really boring and I need to just skip ahead because I'm writing oh, they're all walking and talking and that's nobody cares about that, right, like. So every book has a slightly different problem. But now I've written far fewer books than you have. So I'm curious is that also true? Or have you noticed that in your own process that each book you have the same hiccup point but that it's a different hiccup, or is it totally the same? I would say no, I agree with you. It's not like every single book is a new, brand new issue, but 100% like. That's the other great thing about like the more and more you write is because it doesn't for me.
Speaker 2:For me, normally, the 50 to 30 to 50% problem is a boredom problem. It's like a me being like God. The deadline at this point is so far out, like so far out, you know, and so I'd much rather do like this other thing, or read this book or play this app on my phone or whatever else, and it's like huh, I really don't want to go write this book right now and I don't have that pressure of the deadline yet because I'm not that close to it yet. So for me it's more of a boredom thing. But in every book almost almost every book I'll run into a craft hiccup like that, and a lot of times it's I don't know my characters well enough, like they're just not like real people in my head yet. So it's hard when, like, they get into an argument or something else, like I just don't really know how they're going to react. And I'm trying to figure that out as I go. So a lot of times I'll just kind of I'll have times where I'm just sitting like thinking about, like trying to find a mental muse for this person or trying to kind of figure out. Like, who is this person Like? What kind of clothes do they wear? Like you know, are they bitchy or, you know, are they grouchy or are they something else you know? So it's just trying to understand them more and so that's so. That's like my craft issue, my.
Speaker 2:The other side that is a major roadblock for me and my character and a lot of authors, is that I am successful like despite myself. I, in terms of I wrote from the first 25 books that I wrote, I wrote whatever I felt like writing and it was like you know, it was like an enemies to lovers, seeming romance, and then it was like a slow burn, you know, friends to lovers, and then I wrote like a romantic suspense. Then I wrote a dark romance and then I wrote. It was like readers less them like, followed me and continued to buy my books, but it helped that I was publishing four books a year but I had no brand to speak of, like my. You could not put me in any sort of a bucket with any consistency whatsoever, because every book other than all being sexy romances or sexy with an element of romance, I was also writing like sexy thrillers where I was like killing off the hero. So like there just wasn't any consistency, which meant every time I was starting a new book, like my readers didn't know what to expect.
Speaker 2:I didn't have consistency in my marketing, I didn't have consistency in my delivery, and that, like I would, I sat down at a lunch, at one at our first Con and with an Amazon rep and he told me. He said the authors that are killing it. They're hitting like their sweet spot. And then in that sweet spot might be like Scottish Highlander romance with a brother's best friend, and they're writing that same book over and over and over again. Like I mean, the story is different but they're hitting that, that market and that niche and that specific like drill down as far as you can. And they're doing it over and over and over again.
Speaker 2:It's not just right, a sweet Christian romance, that's, you know, in a small town. It's like on a ranch with cowboys and everyone needs to be like on a ranch with cowboys. And I was like, oh yeah, and I just completely threw away that advice Like that, you know if I like sat down and but I was this like creative muse that was doing what I want. I was hurting myself so much like AR Tori I'm behaving with. I am writing domestic suspense set in California with wealthy people. That is my niche. You know what I mean and I'm doing it every time and I'm growing that audience and that loyalty and consistency. But I wish that was something I had done 10 years ago and, to be honest, I didn't know what I wanted to write 10 years ago, so I don't think I could have. But the earlier you can find what it is that you love to write, that your readers love to read from you, it's easy for you to write and you can stick there Like that's what you need to do.
Speaker 2:And Melanie Harlow, who's a number one Amazon bestselling author and extremely smart and savvy businesswoman, she talks about it like like writing cake. Like her books are like cake. You know they're light and funny and sweet and you know they just hit the spot. She's like there are days when I wake up and I want to write spaghetti. Like I don't want to write cake. Like I don't feel like writing cake. You know I want to write something else. I want to write tiramisu. She's like, and I don't. I write cake because cake is what is paying my mortgage and cake is what is putting my kids through college, and cake is what my readers want, and it doesn't really matter what Melanie Harlow feels like on that Wednesday, like that's. She needs to write cake and and that's you know, I'm still.
Speaker 1:I'm slowly figuring out like what my cake is series, and one of them is funnier and one of them is less funny. That's being relaunched, but but they all have murders in them. I don't know. It's like I, I think I I at least narrowed myself down to that. But but you're right, like drilling down really into the, the nichier sub sub sub genre, that that is a place to really grow an audience. I think that's really to the niche-ier sub-sub-sub genre, that is a place to really grow an audience. I think that's really.
Speaker 1:It's just hard to do, though, because I think authors get bored like anybody else. Yeah, and writing cake over and over again, it's like I really don't want cake, you know. Like she said, I want dinner, I'm tired of dessert. You know you want to do something else. So that is. That is tricky, so how do you help? So, first of all, before I get to that, I wanted to mention your one about the deadline. So, since you have a lot of or did anyway have a lot of independently published books, how did you get around that deadline thing? Because, as an independently published author, you are your deadline by and large. So what'd you do?
Speaker 2:Well, I, um, I would announce, as soon as I was, 10,000 words into a book where I was like, okay, like, this book has enough legs. Like the idea is like, pretty, I'm a pantser, but the idea is like, pretty well developed. Like I have an idea of like how this book is going to end in these characters. Um, at that point in time, I'm a pantser, but the idea is like, pretty well developed. Like I have an idea of like how this book is going to end in these characters. At that point in time, I would both book an editor, but I'd also set a release date and announce it to my readers.
Speaker 2:And at that time I was publishing four books a year and I had a very active and voracious reader base. That like would have held me accountable not intentionally, but like it was, was like every, every and, and I talked about that book the whole time I was writing it. So it was like, oh, I just had a great scene in this, or I'd give them like a little like paragraph excerpt, sneak peek, you know, and I would talk about like my muses and things like that. So they're constantly asking me like, when is this going to release? When is this going to release, or I just placed my pre order or whatever, and so I had that pressure and also, at the time, publishing four books a year, like I needed to publish that next book so that we could pay our bills.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean it was like. So I knew that if I didn't get this book out, you know, then I, you know it was going to stress me out financially. So, um, so that was what I did when I was indie. Now I only I've only published one book a year because I have so many other businesses that are going on, so my writing time is much more limited. And if, if a book didn't succeed like it's not going to make or break me financially, um, so it's so. Now my public, my publishers though I have those contracts with the publishers and I have my agent breathing down my neck, so I have those deadlines. That way I don't have the financial stress of it. But at the time in which I was in straight indie, I had a lot of those sort of those pressures.
Speaker 1:Well, so that was a good segue into all these other businesses that you mentioned. Why don't you talk a little bit about InkersCon, like what was the brainchild of that con and how did you start it? Why did you start it, all of the things?
Speaker 2:So InkersCon, for anyone listening, is an events company for authors. So we do educational events, we do free webinars, we do new author boot camps and we do an annual conference. That's in Dallas each year but it's also available to attend online. And it started, let's see, when I was about 10 books in, when I started in 2012,. There was no resources for authors. I mean there just wasn't any like. We didn't have like we had KDP forums and like there was one author that had like a blog JA Conrad had a blog and it was like and that was kind of it, but it was like, you know, I mean there just wasn't any resources.
Speaker 2:So first few years I wasted a lot of money on marketing efforts that didn't work and the only way I learned is I would just like plow forward until I hit a wall. It was like I was blind. I would plow forward until I hit a wall and then I would turn and I would just until I could move forward again, and then I would just go forward until I hit another wall. And then that was like how I navigated through things and I was like man if I ever figure this out, like I'm gonna have a writing for dummies, like book, or series or something.
Speaker 2:It's like how to write a book for dummies, how to market a book for dummies, and so, like, maybe in 2015 or 16, I came out with three courses like how to write, how to market, how to publish, and so that was like the initial start and I quickly learned how little I knew. Like it was a great process making those courses because it really caused me to examine my process. Like how do I write a book? Like, how do I come up with a plot, how do I tell a scene and put a scene on paper. But I realized, like I know a lot about what I do, but I want to know, know, like, what XYZ is doing, who's like killing it in audiobook sales you know what I mean. Or like what, like what's up with subscriptions and how does that work. And so initially, the thought I got together with my sister, who's also a project manager and she had been like my business advisor for she's been my business advisor for decades and it was like what, if we like, did a summit? That was the original thought like we'll do a summit, we'll bring together, like all of these top names in different areas and we'll record, because I wanted to have consistency of video. We'll record all of them giving a presentation on a certain topic and then we'll package it together and release it online. So that was the original thought. But then it was like, well, if we're bringing everybody to one spot, like we should at least let some like authors come and watch in the audience. You know what I mean. Like so, and then, before we knew it, like then I was like what if we just did like came three days early and we did something for new authors and it was like a bootcamp, and before we knew it, like we had a full fledged five day event, um and but the focus was always on those online attendees, like from the beginning. So, and then the next year we had COVID and we were ahead of the game of everyone because we'd already gone through an online conference and we already had everything in place. So we already had ticketing and access points and how to do chat and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:So it evolved and expanded to what it is today, which is we do have our live event, but it's very small. We only have max of 200 attendees. It's in Dallas, but we have film and videographer crews that are like 15 people deep that record everything and package it and then we release it to our digital audience. And the digital audience is a two-week long launch that has attendee-led roundtables. We have dozens, if not hundreds, of live video author chats. We have experts come in and do Q&As, we have companies like Amazon and other retailers come in and do Q&As and it's just like two weeks of nonstop events you can attend from anywhere in the world online and you have access to all of the videos and all the presentations for six years. So even if you're like not ready for AMS ads or you're not interested in a Kickstarter right now, but in two or three years, like you're ready to self hub foreign translations, like you can watch that video then. So that was kind of where it started and then what it has grown into and what we have today.
Speaker 2:I think that's actually really interesting that you started with that online focus first, because I mean you hear about the online summits, right, which are online first, I suppose, but to have like a live in-person conference with the quality of experts and speakers that you bring in um, you know normally like that's the big ticket event, that's the thing that you know the organizer is really making the money on making the money on, and so that's what they focus on. But I love that it's more online they focus on, but I love that it's more online geared or online focused, online, you know, geared toward those attendees. So what kind of I guess online community benefits does the con offer? I love that question Because that was I had attended like summits. I had attended During COVID. I attended a lot of online conferences but they were very like disconnected, right. It was like, okay, here's some links and click on some things, and there's some like there's always like a Facebook group or something like that you know, but it's not.
Speaker 2:I mean, what I wanted was I wanted to spark as many of those like moments that you do get at a live conference, where it's like you're on the elevator and you're chatting with somebody you know and it's like, oh, I just made like a new friend, but I also I'm an author. Now I'm very outgoing, but when I came into this business in 2012, I was a very quiet, introverted person and when I went to my first author's conference, it was like terrifying to me, like I didn't know anyone and you still do have those moments. It's one of the reasons why we keep Inkers Con so small is because it can be hard if you're not coming in with a group like to. I'm not someone, I wasn't someone who was going to walk into a room and be like hi, I'm Alessandra. Hi, what do you write? You know, like that just wasn't me, Like I was like I'm just going to sneak away and go up to my room and hide, you know, during these classes. So so it was.
Speaker 2:It was we wanted to create a place where introverts, but also just people who didn't have the means or ability to travel, like you know, you live in New Zealand or you have kids and you have a job and you can't like drop everything and fly somewhere and spend a weekend away from, like your responsibilities. So, to answer your question, because I have not, yet we we have as many, as many interactive events as possible. So an example is we have our meet and greets, which are like kind of speed dating, like we all come into a group and then it's like and then we divide into like smaller breakout rooms of three to 10 authors and it's all by a certain thing. It might be that you're all six figure authors, or you're all sci-fi authors, or you're all debut authors or whatever it is. But we try to pair and break everybody into smaller groups and then they go through like discussion questions Like what's the one thing you really want to focus on this year at the conference that you want to learn about, or what's your number one tip for fellow authors, or something like that. So there's a series of like conversations that they have and we all come back to the main room, shuffle them again and then they go back out. So those are like our meet and greets and then our attendee led roundtables.
Speaker 2:Any attendee who's attending the conference can create a roundtable on a certain topic. So an example might be like Kindle unlimited marketing strategies and they're like I want to get together with other authors and talk about this. And so Tuesday at seven o'clock we're going to meet and we have Zoom rooms that they can use and any attendee can sign up. They can read the descriptions, they can sign up and those like we started them this first year expecting like I don't know someone to participate and they've just gone gangbusters, like some years we have 200 of them. One year they had one.
Speaker 2:Ask the guys where. It was like four guys. It was like ask us any questions that you want and it lasted for two and a half hours, wow, and it was like like I was getting so many messages. They're like have you gone into ask the guys that's seen the conversations? They were the most respectful, best group of guys that could possibly have done that conversation, but they were sharing everything. I mean, like it was a lot of romance authors asking them very personal questions and they were. They understood that it, like it was. It was just a great. It was a great experience.
Speaker 2:Um, but we have everything. Sometimes it's just like I want to meet fellow authors in Australia, you know, or I'm attending an international book Digital Con is. We do regular writing sprints every day. You can come and join. We also have like business meetings and plannings, accountability sessions, things like that. So it's just, it is a full pack two weeks where if you don't meet people and make some connections, like it's hard. It's hard not to. It's as much if you want to participate or as much as you don't. Some attendees they just buy it, they watch the classes and we don't ever see them, but some attend, you know, wow, everything that's great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that really is. It's a very different perspective and a very different approach and I really like it. And, like you said, what time you know you have had very good timing in your life. There must be somebody smiling down on you, alessandra, because you know, with writing that steamy book right after Fifty Shades and having that thing take off, and then with this like planning this digital conference right before COVID, it was like almost as if something in you knew.
Speaker 2:Like I know, covid was a blessing and a curse. I mean, it was obviously a curse in a lot of ways, like for everyone. But in terms of our business, it went from us being kind of like the only full scale online conference in town to being like every conference suddenly was like okay, we have these tickets sold. Okay, we have these tickets sold. How do we pivot to digital? You know what I mean. And so that first year I mean and, and the subsequent years and also people got Zoom fatigue, you know. So, like, by the time we're in our third year after COVID, like we really saw a dip in numbers, because I think people were at that point like I need to get out of the house, like I don't want a third Zoom meeting if my life cannot. Yeah, now we've even backed out. Like we're okay with, you know, with retreating back inside and getting online. But it was a really interesting ride and but it helped that, yeah, we didn't have that learning curve that first year when everything was just going crazy with COVID.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, have that learning curve, that first year when everything was just going crazy with COVID, yeah, yeah, well, now, actually, I'm kind of tangential question here too Did you find that because of COVID, the tools and the systems that you had available to you improved dramatically? Or, like you know the leaps and bounds in technology, like I hate to put it in this way, but in war, right, they always say that that's when you have the biggest technological advances. I feel like COVID was maybe kind of the same, but also, I don't run conferences, so I don't really know. You think so, but like Zoom ended up like the second year, or we had all of these like crazy new things that come and then we would try them, and then we'd just go back to zoom, like it was like, and then, like um, we looked at an all-in-one platform and we tried it for two months and it was like, so glitchy, it was like we just went back to our like squarespace site.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, um, we still use the same membership program. Now we've switched, but we use the same membership program for four years, even after covid. So, yeah, I. But what did help, I think, is where people's like familiarity, like before, like with our very first year, which was pre COVID. Like a lot of people didn't have Zoom accounts like unless they worked in a business setting, like that wasn't just. Like there were a lot of people that had never used Zoom before. Where post COVID it was, you know, it was much more commonplace.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, everybody yeah.
Speaker 2:Or they had kids used it for school and they were like I'll, I'll help you out. Yeah Well, so we do have some exciting news for our listeners. Why don't you tell them a little bit about the offer for the AuthorWheel community? Absolutely so, if you're interested in attending CurseConseCon online. Our digital launch is mid-July and currently prices are $249 for that ticket. But if you are an AuthorWheel community member, you can save $50, which will drop it down to $199.
Speaker 2:And the coupon code for that, I have it right here, is WHEEL50. So if, at checkout, you'll just go, you'll have to create a username and password, I believe, and then at the checkout just put WHEEL, all caps 50, no spaces, and that'll save you $50. And you can use that either on the payment plan we do have a payment plan that breaks it into two payments or you can do it just in the single pay. Either way, you'll get instant access, and I say instant access. If you want to sign up before launch, then you can have full access to those two weeks of live events. But if you're listening to an older version of this or you're listening to this after the fact, you can jump in after the launch and you'll just immediately unlock all of the round table recordings and all of the presentations.
Speaker 2:And it's important to say that IngressCon is for fiction authors that write in adult genres. I don't mean steamy adult, I mean like not children's books. So adult fiction genres, and that's really our core focus. And our four pillars are marketing, business, advertising, classes and writing. So those are the craft, so those are the four major areas that our content covers.
Speaker 1:Do you have a?
Speaker 2:couple of the keynote or maybe headliner presentations that you can kind of share, like what you've already planned so far. Absolutely so, and I should have said to find out more, you can go to incursconcom and you can see our full lineup there, but in terms of speakers this year. So again, we have four major areas writing, marketing, craft and business. And so we have speakers like Angel Lawson she's the number one Amazon bestseller. She's doing a presentation on how to build super fans. Becca Smythe if you've ever heard Becca speak, she is a fantastic mental coach and she's talking about ways that you can overcome being overwhelmed, feelings of overwhelmed, which is really fantastic. Gina Darlene, who is a number also huge bestseller. She's talking about secrets of successful world building. She's also on our vault, which is like six bestselling authors like LT Ryan that are sharing, kind of answering attendee questions and sharing just all of the different aspects that lead to success but also that can hurt your career. So and then we have, like Cadence Snow, another big bestseller Laura Hidalgo, who's a cover designer, who's talking about data driven cover design. Facebook ads with Matthew J Holmes. That's a really fantastic presentation, whether you're a newbie to Facebook ads or more experienced career.
Speaker 2:Perrier Jonte. He's a seven figure annual earner and he talks all about direct sales. Yeah, so just and on and on. Well, that's, that's fabulous. We've had Becca Seim and Matthew J Holmes on the podcast in the past. So to any listeners, just go back and search through the archives because you can get a sneak peek at you know some of the things they might be talking about. And then I guarantee, if you go listen to them, you're going to be like, okay, I need to take the course.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in fact, the first place that I ever heard Matthew was on an Inkers Con. It was a mini con that I went to it was mini con. Yeah, I went to the mini con and I heard him and I was like, oh, I think I could do this.
Speaker 2:He's like a dream, like he's just a dream to work with. He's so, um, he's attending. I'm really excited to meet him in Dallas. Um, he's attending with his wife and um, just a really great guy. Um. But yeah, breaks it down and it's really interesting. I won't give away like the secrets of his presentation. Well, one I haven't seen it yet, but just in our conversations. Like he's teaching a very like hands off approach that's only going to take you like five to 10 minutes a day to maintain and it's going to be well worth seeing, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I will say that I bought his class after we interviewed him on our podcast and I mean he literally transformed my income.
Speaker 1:I mean I went from making very low numbers and it's not like I'm a seven figure author now, but my goal was consistent money. And then I figured, once I had consistent money I could figure out how to scale it. And I have had consistent money and consistently edging up money. And then I figured, once I had consistent money I could figure out how to scale it. And I have had consistent money and consistently edging up money. And I do credit Matt's class, even with the Metapocalypse that's happening right now. I mean it's like it's a wild world right now.
Speaker 2:It is a wild world, but he and his yeah anyway.
Speaker 1:And Becca, I mean, she's just, she's just the bomb.
Speaker 2:Yeah, becca's like an angel. I mean she is, she's. So I can't say enough nice things about her. I mean I really just can't. She's fantastic and she's such a she's just like a great person, like you know. I mean just like she has such a great aura and yeah, and she's brilliant, she's absolutely brilliant.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and just listening to her is like taking a yoga class. That's me.
Speaker 2:You're like, I'm in good hands, everything will be okay.
Speaker 1:It's very zen. She's very zen, yeah, she's like she's the bomb, so that is really great. Well, that sounds like it's going to be a fantastic conference and I hope all you people in the listening audience take advantage of it. And remember we'll have the link in the show notes. It is wheel, all uppercase letters, 50, no spaces, and we will have all of the links that Alessandra gives us in the show notes. Is there any last tidbits of amazing wisdom you want to like throw out there at our audience before we?
Speaker 2:I would just say that it's a constantly changing industry and that can be good and bad. It could change, you know, in a week like to your favor, and it could change, you know, in a way that that can hurt you. But what's important is just like that we remember why we're in this and for some of us, like you, may have gotten in it to become rich and famous, but for most of us it's because, like you, love stories and you love reading stories and you love telling stories and we can. That's one thing we can control, like we can control that. And as long as we're having a good time and not putting too much pressure on our books and that's that's our job on the other aspects of our life, right, like keeping keeping that pressure off of our books then you can be in it for a long time and it can really be just such a fantastic part like of your life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. That's really good and, I also think, being always open to continuing to educate yourself. Yeah, because, as you said, things are always changing, so and a great way to do that would be to just go ahead and sign up for InkersCon. Little commercial there.
Speaker 2:It is true that the more you know, the easier everything is Like it's. That's just the way it is Like the more you know, the easier and the more you can learn from fellow authors, because and that's why it's so great to have like a small group, like if you can find a small group of authors that are in the same place in their career and kind of like ideally in the same genre, and you guys can grow together because even their failures, like you can learn from that. And it's also great to know that you're not like the only one facing these sort of things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's me and Dean Coons that we don't like. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, well, that was. This was so inspiring and so great. So, to all you listeners out there, I just want to remind you of something Alessandra said, which when she was talking about how she wished she'd known that she needed to create her brand and that she wished she'd known that she needed to peck her thing and just do it. If you're struggling with that, we do have a free course on our website. It's called Seven Steps to Clarity Uncover your Author Purpose, and it will lead you in. Every day you'll get a new lesson and it will lead you through some questions to ask yourself some different ways to think about things, to help you come up with a basic author mission statement and then even take that mission statement and distill it into a tagline. It's kind of fun and, as I said, it's free. So hop on over to authorwheelcom and sign up and, until next time, keep your stories rolling.
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