Writing a Bestseller: Myths and Realities Revealed with Terry Whalin
Are you an aspiring author dreaming of seeing your book on bestseller lists? In this eye-opening episode, I sit down with Terry Whalin, a veteran of the publishing industry with over 60 non-fiction books and decades of experience under his belt. Terry pulls back the curtain on the often misunderstood world of book publishing, offering invaluable insights for writers at any stage of their journey.
We explore Terry’s fascinating path from small-town Kentucky to becoming a respected acquisitions editor and author advocate. He shares candid stories about the power of persistence, the importance of research, and the unexpected ways a single book can change a life.
Key Takeaways:
- The reality behind common publishing myths and how to set realistic expectations
- Practical strategies for promoting your book, even with a limited budget
- Why building your own platform is crucial in today’s publishing landscape
- The importance of flexibility and continuous learning for authors
Debunking Publishing Myths
Terry breaks down some of the most pervasive misconceptions in the industry, including:
- The belief that publishing automatically leads to wealth and fame
- Expecting your publisher to handle all marketing and promotion
- Assuming a big advance guarantees success
Learn why understanding these myths is crucial for navigating the publishing world successfully.
Taking Control of Your Author Journey
Discover actionable advice on:
- Creating a solid foundation for your writing career
- Leveraging free and low-cost promotional tools
- Building meaningful connections within the industry
- Maintaining persistence in the face of rejection
This conversation is packed with practical wisdom for writers of all levels. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to breathe new life into your existing work, you’ll find valuable insights to help you on your publishing journey.
Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from Terry’s wealth of experience. Tune in now and start giving a heck about your writing career!
Chapter Summary(Full Transcript at bottom)
00:00:02
Terry Whalin: Prolific Author and Publishing Expert
Terry Whalin, author of over 60 non-fiction books and acquisitions editor at Morgan James Publishing, discusses his extensive experience in the publishing industry. He shares insights on author expectations, the importance of realistic goals, and the value of taking practical action steps to make a book successful.
00:02:34
Terry’s Origin Story: From Journalism to Christian Publishing
Terry recounts his journey from aspiring journalist to Christian author and publisher. He describes how a chance encounter in college led him to explore Christianity, ultimately changing the direction of his life and career. This personal transformation fueled his passion for writing and publishing.
00:31:14
Debunking Publishing Myths: Realistic Expectations for Authors
Terry discusses common misconceptions in publishing, emphasizing the importance of author involvement in marketing. He advises authors to be proactive, build their own platforms, and understand that success often requires personal effort beyond what publishers provide.
Connect with Terry Whalin:
Website: https://terrywhalin.com/
Website: https://terrywhalin.blogspot.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/terrywhalin
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terrywhalin/
X: https://x.com/terrywhalin
10 Publishing Myths for only $10 USD including shipping and $200 of bonuses: http://publishingoffer.com
Connect with Dwight Heck:
Website: https://giveaheck.com (Free Book Offer)
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/give.a.heck
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dwight.heck
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Giveaheck
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@giveaheck
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/dwight-raymond-heck-65a90150/
TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@giveaheck
X: https://x.com/give_a_heck
Full Transcript of Show(Not Edited)
[00:00:02 – 00:01:11]
Good day and welcome to give a hack on today’s show. I welcome Terry Whalin. Terry has written more than 60 non fiction books plus has been published in more than 50 magazines for the last 10 years. Terry is an Acquisitions editor at Morgan James Publishing, a New York based traditional publisher. Terry has been into book publishing for decades and worked with hundreds of authors. Many of these authors have unrealistic expectations about what will happen when their book is published. Much of the publishing process is outside of anything an author can control. Terry wrote 10 publishing myths to give authors realistic expectations and encouragement to take practical action steps to make their book a success. On top of all he has accomplished in the writing world, Terry is one of the top 27 content producers with over 1700 entries in his blog on the writing life in a sea of an estimated 600 million blogs. I’d like to welcome you to the show Terry. Thanks so much for agreeing to come on and share with us some of your life journey.
[00:01:11 – 00:01:17]
Dwight, wonderful to be here with you. I’ve always loved the opportunity. Appreciate it.
[00:01:17 – 00:02:33]
Yes, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity too because we all take each other’s time for granted and when somebody’s willing to invest time with us, you know, no matter what it is, we, we tend to not have great, you know, grateful nature toward and be grat have gratitude and think well man, that person could be doing anything else but be with me right now. So thank you so much for being on so Terry, one of the things I focus on with people is their origin story and not just their back end story from the time they finished, you know, high school, college, university, whatever the case may be their true origin of their good, bad and ugly things that may have transpired in their younger years that led them to go where they are today. That was a catalyst. Some people don’t even realize till we start talking about it that something that happened in their childhood was a catalyst. So share whatever you’d like from your earliest recollections to where you are today. You know, how Terry, you grew up. Maybe, maybe they’ll connect with somebody and make them, you know, be able to resonate and absorb the information you’re going to share throughout the next hour. So I appreciate if you could share your origin story from your earliest recollections to where you are today.
[00:02:34 – 00:07:20]
I, I was born in the railroad hospital in Huntington, West Virginia because my father was, was a railroad executive and that’s what we rode the trains all the time for free when I was a kid and but we actually lived in Northeastern Kentucky is where I, where I spent the first 12 years of my life. A little town called Raceland, Kentucky. That’s in, in the heart of Appalachia there. And my relatives have a long history in, in Kentucky. I actually studied about my great 5 great grandfather in Kentucky, 6th grade Kentucky history class because they named a county in Kentucky after him, Captain James Estell. I, My, my father, because of his occupation, we moved around. So I lived, I lived in Baltimore for a couple years north of Baltimore, Townsend, Maryland. And then we went to Peru, Indiana. Peru is what they call it there. Peru, Indiana, that’s about 75 miles north of Indianapolis. And that’s where I went to high school. And then it was actually in a, in an English class there in high school that my, my English teacher noticed something about my writing and so he encouraged me to join the high school newspaper staff. I started writing sports. I mean I, I’m like a non sports guy so I mean I had to learn all the terms and figure out how in the world to write about that Stu. But I ultimately became the editor of my high school newspaper and I thought I was really hot stuff, you know, the way I could write. But I went to Indiana University in one of the top 10 journalism schools in the country. And we had about 100 on our writing staff. We produced a full size newspaper six days a week. So it was kind of a big deal. We were all blowing off our classes basically and writing stories is what we were doing back then. And I quickly learned that I had a lot to learn because my first story, I think that appeared in the, in the campus newspaper was like three paragraphs. And I think I rewrote that story about three or four times for my editor before they finally signed off on it and left it. But that’s what we were doing. I thought I was going to, you know, be a journalist, work for a big city newspaper somewhere is what I was, what I was training to do. And about halfway through my sophomore year, I was sitting there, my old royal typewriter, this is in the pre computer days and I couldn’t get my fingers on the right keys. And I kept muttering to myself, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ. And this little blonde haired girl that was sitting next to me turned to me and she said, oh Terry, don’t say that about Jesus because one of these days when you really need him, you’ll call out for him and he won’t be there. And I thought, what is this? I’m a Christian, I go to church. When I’m at home, I read The Bible in church when I’m at home. I mean, Dwight, I knew nothing about Christianity back then, really, as I think about it. She encouraged me to go to a little bookstore a couple blocks off the Indiana campus. They had pretty cards and posters, and maybe I’d find a book that interested me. So I wandered down there a couple days later and I bought this book called Jesus the Revolutionary. I thought, how in the world could Jesus be a revolutionary? And so I took that little book back to my fraternity house. I read that book, and it showed me a side of Jesus that I’d never seen before. And about that time, somebody invited me to a Jesus people gathering in downtown Bloomington, Indiana. These people were sitting on little scraps of carpets with little candles lit. And those people had something that I didn’t have. And so I got a Bible, and I’ve been going the Jesus trail ever since. The direction of my life changed. So instead of going to a big city newspaper like the Indianapolis Star, the Chicago Tribune, I joined a group called Wycliffe Bible Translators. And So I spent 10 years of my life in linguistics. I have a Bible actually here on my shelf that’s in southwestern Kachikel, that I worked on. And I wandered away from my writing, but I came back to it. And then that’s when I started writing for magazines and started doing books. And that’s kind of where I’ve been ever since, is doing books.
[00:07:21 – 00:08:57]
Well, you’ve had an interesting journey, though. A lot of people, when you get challenged to do different things, like, you went to the bookstore, you bought that book, you were open and receptive to new knowledge, new information. Skepticism isn’t bad. It’s lack of action that’s bad. It’s lack of driving ourselves forward to accomplish things that people don’t understand. You can be a skeptic, but are you going to let skepticism hold you back and be camped in your life? So good for you. Interesting book that you mentioned. I’ve. I’ve had. I’ve experienced a few myself. Right on that. I’ve had parish priests recommend to me that I’ve. That I’ve read or listened to. And there is so much that we don’t understand, Right. For those that aren’t Christian, that are listening to the show or watching it, everybody’s got their belief system. Everybody’s got whatever they makes them, you know, feel warm and fuzzy. Right. Myself, it is Christianity, so I can appreciate what Terry’s saying. But really, what have you had happen in your life? You have to ask yourself, what have you had happen in your life that has truly changed you or your course. Maybe you need to be open to other people’s views, other people’s ideas. And if you read a book like Terry did about Jesus and it doesn’t resonate with you, at least you’ve tried. At least you’ve done one thing to climb up another rung of the ladder instead of feeling like you’re always sliding down. So we’ll leave that right?
[00:08:57 – 00:09:09]
So I’m. I’m in publishing basically, Dwight, for a simple reason, because books change people’s lives. And I know that because here I read this book years ago that changed the direction of my life.
[00:09:10 – 00:10:51]
Oh, absolutely. Like, I remember since I was a young person and then young dad, because I raised my kid, five kids, as a single dad. And reading to them how they’d appreciate it, every single night it was time for bed. And depending on the age, it would take me a couple hours because there’s an age gap. But why did it take so long? People say, well, why did it take so long? Well, I pray with my kids because that’s what I do. What they do when they’re older is going to be their choice. But this is what I do with them. And then we read. You read with each kid. I said, sometimes, you know, the younger, a couple of them will jump on the bed, they want to be together. Then I’ll get more story time because there’s two of them. But I said absolutely. All the way up till my kids were about 10, 9, 10 years old, right? Sometimes it wasn’t even me reading. It was just laying there with them and, hey, dad, will you make up a story? You’re so good at it. And I just make up stories about whatever. I’d say, well, what do you want me to talk? Like, what do you want? Story? And they throw out different things, right? Ideas. And I do that. And I realized how the. That I always wanted to be as I was growing up. Someday I want to write a book. And I always thought it would be a book on like children’s books. I still would like to do that someday, right? Because my, even my grandkids love when I make up stories. And the written word, though, whether it’s fiction or non fiction, takes us to a place that we didn’t think we could be, right between our six inches. And so I can appreciate the fact of all you’ve done with your writing to make a difference in the world. So. And helping all the authors you’ve helped, like how many authors do you. I Read something about a few hundred authors you’ve helped.
[00:10:52 – 00:11:39]
Yeah, there’d probably be hundreds if I really thought about it, because I’m actually working for a New York publishing house now. We do about 180 to 200 books a year. I’ve been there 12 years. But this is actually the third publisher that I’m working for in this acquisitions area. So I worked at two other publishers. So, yeah, I’ve worked with. I’ve worked with a lot of authors through the years to bring their books into print to tell them about what we do and see if that’s a fit. Some people take it, some people don’t. There’s a lot of rejection in this business. That’s just part of the deal, I guess, with what we’re doing.
[00:11:39 – 00:12:52]
Yeah, because, you know, like, you talk about the article that you wrote, I forget, you said it was a few paragraphs. You rewrote it three times till they accepted it when you were younger. And at the end of the day, your tenacity was what made it happen. Right. You didn’t give up rewrite three times. I know people that can’t handle one rejection. They’re already, you know, I hate to say it, but they’re sucking their thumbs, feeling sorry for themselves instead of just pushing forward. It doesn’t even matter if it’s writing a book. It could be an article or it could be just any idea. It could be a new business venture. They’ll go to their. I see it. Even in business, people will give a boss a good idea. He’ll say no. But instead of, you know, going back, regrouping and then going, go talk to the boss again, maybe represent it in a different way. Because wordsmithing is something that has died in our world. People don’t put enough energy into the power of the word and how we present or what we present. It’s not always visual. Sometimes it’s just how we present as a. As a person. So I can’t imagine you had probably a lot more other adventures so along the way where it was more than three times. Would that be a fair assessment?
[00:12:53 – 00:14:07]
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You’ve. You’ve got to just keep. If you. If you believe in an idea, you’ve got to just keep, keep going. I did a book. What’s. It’s really a book in a sense. It’s a compilation of my blog articles that I wrote called Jumpstart your publishing Dreams. And Mark Victor Hansen, co author on the Chicken Soup for the Soul book, wrote the forward for that book. Well, I mean I really wrote that forward for Mark. And basically in that forward we talk about how those Chicken Soup for the Soul books were rejected over 140 times. People forget that that book was rejected a ton before it finally got published. And now it’s one of the most successful books in the English language. I mean the Bible is, continues to be the best selling book that’s ever been published out there. But Chicken Soup for the Soul is probably, probably in the top 10 of different books that have sold through the years. So it’s amazing that somebody would have that many rejections and still persist to get their book published.
[00:14:08 – 00:14:43]
All about passion. I know that’s one thing that you believe in too, right? You have to have passion for. And I read in one of your question areas where you talked about, you know, what is the author have to have the most passion? Well, to me that really answers itself. If you don’t have, if you don’t have more passion than everybody else, how is anybody going to take you seriously or your book? How are they going to open, crack this, crack open the spine? Well, I guess it wouldn’t be in the spine form yet. It still be in print. Whether it’s an E file or a printout. Are they going to take a passion if you go in and say, hey, read this.
[00:14:44 – 00:14:57]
Well, you’re, you know, you’re the person that has the greatest passion for it. So you have to sort of run with that because you’re going to do more for your own book than, than anybody else will for you.
[00:14:58 – 00:15:49]
Absolutely. I know what I went through was it was trying to get across the idea ideas to the editor that I had and try and explain to them and they, they couldn’t be me, they couldn’t have the same passion or understand. So it got to a point where there were certain things in my book that I just said, well, that’s what it’s going to be. This is what I, this is what I want. Let’s move on. I understand your point of view, but this is my passion. This isn’t about you, this is about your hang ups. Right? I guess that would be hard, wouldn’t it be? As a person that does editing books like you’ve done it for so many years to literally disconnect and just let the author explain themselves the way you want to explain it, whether it’s something you agree or with or not, or are you a person that would be staunch and just say no, it has to be this way?
[00:15:50 – 00:16:16]
I would, it would be a case by case Basis. But I would say the best kind of publishing, from my experience, is something that’s really done in a team group kind of basis rather than just something you do on your own. So I usually listen to people when they give me that other, other point of view and see if it. See if it makes sense, see if the change makes sense and try. If it does, then I try to try to do it.
[00:16:17 – 00:16:51]
Well, that’s good. It’s always good to be open minded. But then again, we already knew you were open minded. You wouldn’t be where you’re at if you weren’t. Right. You wouldn’t have succeeded as much as you had. So, Terry, I find it fascinating. I’m always in awe when people write one book, let alone 60 books. Like, I just, when I read that, I was just like, wow. I actually sat there for a second after I read that on the screen and thought, how can a person write 60 books? Where did your passion really get started to drive you to want to continue to write that many books?
[00:16:52 – 00:20:20]
Well, yeah, that’s. That’s a great question, Dwight. I think, you know, I wrote my first book as actually a little children’s book that came out in 1992. I was at a writers conference. If you’ve never been to a writers conference, I always encourage people to do that because that community of editors and writers and other people is a fantastic place for you as a writer to plug into. But I was at a writer’s conference and an editor was talking to me and she said. She said, terry, I have a problem. And I always listen when somebody tells me that. She said, my problem is that our company, David C. Cook, is supposed to publish books that challenge children that. To go to the world, that there’s. There’s a big world out there that needs. Needs to know about. About Jesus. But we don’t have a single book that has that perspective. What kind of ideas do you have? Well, at that point in my life, I was reading books to my own kids. And I knew that Steve Lawhead, Stephen Lawhead, who writes fantasy, actually had. Had a children’s book series called Howard Head. Howard had a hot air balloon. Howard had a spaceship. And so that book combines real pictures with a cartoon character to help stimulate the imagination. And so I said, hey, what if. What if we took kids and gave them real pictures about life in the world overseas, combined with a cartoon character to tell them they could go anywhere? And she said, oh, that’s a good idea, Terry. Write that up and send that to me. So I did I went home, I wrote it up and I sent it. Now, now what I know from being an editor, going to these conferences now, I will, I’ll tell that kind of thing to a number of people to write that up and send that to me. I know that probably only 10 or 15% of the people that I meet actually do it when they get home. So I was one of the few people that did it and my book didn’t get published. You know, I, I mean I had to go through a number of rewrites in order to get a book, but that was, that became my first book. It’s, it’s called When I Grow Up, I Can Go Anywhere for Jesus. And it came out in 1992. And so I started writing books. I, I started, I did some children’s books, I did adult books. I read a lot of biographies when I was a kid. So I, I’ve written biographies. You know, I, I know that there’s only so many books that I can write from my own perspective. So I just, I decided that there’s an infinite amount of books from other people’s perspectives. And so I started doing co authored books where I write other people’s stories. And so I’ve done a lot of that through the years too. And there’s just the opportunities come in and I, I look at them and see if I can do it. I mean, the way you write 60 books, Dwight’s pretty easy. You just, you write it one book at a time, one, one page at a time. And this has been, been my life and my emphasis of what I, what I’ve done with my, with my writing.
[00:20:21 – 00:20:48]
Been your passion, it all, all goes back to passion because you can say do one book and then you do another book. It’s just one book at a time. But a lot of people get disillusioned. Not necessarily about books, just about anything. Repetition. And they lose their, their focus and drive to do it. So good for you. Is there any one person or persons that continually drove you in the, in the writing industry?
[00:20:49 – 00:24:18]
You know, just, I kind of got into writing profiles is one, one thing that I did where I was writing other people’s stories up and putting that into magazines. And so I’ve interviewed more than 150 bestselling authors. Now I only wrote maybe 500 or 1000, 1500 words about that particular person that I was meeting. But you can imagine I learned incredible things from these different writers and different authors that I’ve met through the years. So that, that drove a lot of it. Another Big experience that I had was in, in 2007, Mark Victor Hansen, the Chicken Soup for the Soul guy again invited me out to Los Angeles. He was having this event called Mega Book Marketing University. Now back then I was a litter agent so I had a little litter agency that obviously doesn’t still exist. So it wasn’t very successful for me. But I went out to Los Angeles, took pictures from people at that event. There were probably 400 people that were sitting there and I, I sat with all those authors to listen to the information and hear, hear the different speakers. At that point in my life I’d probably written about 50 books for traditional publishers. So I’d gotten advances. Pretty books were being made, but all those publishers send you a royalty statement, sometimes quarterly, sometimes once a year. And my statements were all in the negative category that I was getting. They weren, my books weren’t selling. It’s almost partway through that conference is almost like I woke up because I realized how little I was personally doing to sell my own books. I had a little terrywayland.com website back then, but that’s, that’s the only thing I was doing to sell them and tell people about what I was doing. One of the speakers at this conference was the other co author of Chicken Soup for the Soul, Jack Canfield. Now Jack has written this book that is a best selling book called the Success Principles. And the very first success principle says that I will take 100% responsibility for my own success. Now to be really true, none of us want to take 100% responsibility for our own success. We want somebody else to do it for us. We want a publisher, an agent, publicist, somebody other than me. But during that conference I decided that I was, from there on I was going to take 100% responsibility for my own success. So that’s back then is when I started blogging, I started social media came along and I jumped on that and so I started making social media connections. You know, I have over, I have over 19,500 connections on LinkedIn. I have a 175,000 people that follow me on X Twitter. I have a lot of stuff going on that front and it’s just, it’s just because I decided to be proactive and do something rather than nothing. And it’s, it’s changed the trajectory of how my books go and all that kind of thing.
[00:24:19 – 00:25:20]
For the people listening or watching, proactive is a key word that Terry said. You need to be proactive when you want to move your life forward. You got to be Willing. I know many people don’t like the word because it was overused during the pandemic, but you need to learn to pivot. You need to look at doing different things. It’s 2007, and Terry’s getting into social media. How many people can say that? Right. They just can’t. Right. So you were always willing to stretch your comfort zone because really, at the end of the day, there’s no success inside of our comfort zone. It has to be outside. You have to be willing to take risk and, and have to be willing to be criticized in a positive way, hopefully the people you’re associated with or nurturing you and helping you understand what you need to change and what you need to do. Out of the 60 books that you wrote, can you tell me what would be a couple of your top books that you, you know, wrote or co wrote and why would they be your favorites?
[00:25:20 – 00:27:26]
Yeah, I don’t know the top books are my favorites or not. But one of the books that I wrote, for example, over 20 years ago, I. I wrote a diet book that actually diet books come out in January because everybody makes New Year’s resolutions and they go out and buy, buy a diet book. So this, this was in November. I was contacted by a publisher and they sent me these rough pages and I said, sure, I’d like to write that book. So I signed a contract 1st November that I was going to have a manuscript done by the end of November. But I said I got to go meet my co author. She was inside the First Baptist Church in Houston. It was a big, big ministry that they, they had called First Place. It was a weight loss kind of program, kind of like, kind of like Weight Watchers, except it was a Christian version of it. And so I went down and interviewed her and I told her my agenda was pretty simple going there. I was just coming for the last part of the book. I had the rough part of the first book. And she looked at me when I walked in. She said, she said, nine through 20, what are we talking about here? And I thought, man, I am in deep trouble here because I’m supposed to deliver a book by the end of the month and you don’t even know what the outline is. So thankfully she had transcribed talks and all kinds of things. So I. She sent me home with a suitcase full of stuff. And so I basically did a lot of sitting in my chair, but I. But I wrote over 48,000 words in 17 days. I finished two weeks early. I got two weeks of bonus. Now that’s the last time I’ve been paid for that book because I was a hired gun for the publisher, but my name’s on the COVID of all of them. It’s the foundational book for this ministry and it sold over a hundred thousand copies of that book.
[00:27:26 – 00:27:27]
Wow.
[00:27:27 – 00:28:13]
So, you know, that’s, that’s a book that I’m, I’m very glad that I, that I took the risk and did that book. I’ve written a couple devotional books that I wrote each one in like a month. Lighthouse Psalms and Love Songs. They’re beautiful hardcover, much impressively designed books that have each sold 60, 70,000 copies of those books. And so I’ve been involved in just all different kinds of things over the years that come along and I see the opportunity and I say, yeah, I’ll do that. And so I end up, end up doing these books. It’s, it’s been amazing.
[00:28:14 – 00:29:08]
That’s better. It would be amazing. But at the end of the day, you’re the person that’s going, well, okay, I’ll take it on. I’ll try it. And if it’s good, it’s good. If it’s not, it’s still a. People forget the journey of what they do. So, so the end result isn’t what you expected. Again, it doesn’t have to necessarily just be writing books. It can be anything. People have such high expectations and they don’t. They set themselves up, I guess, like they say, for failure because their expectations are higher, because they really don’t know what they’re getting themselves into. I know for yourself, working with other authors, and I just hear it already, it can be challenging to deal with our own thoughts, let alone the thoughts of other people. What is the most difficult part that you found in working with potential authors?
[00:29:09 – 00:30:21]
Oh, there’s, there’s a lot of, a lot of challenges. You, you really want to make sure that you find authors that are, that are flexible and teachable and willing to work with you in this process. Internally, maybe we say that we don’t want any more knuckleheads, you know, because we have, we have a few of those already in that we’ve published and we don’t want any more of those people. So we’re looking for people that are, that are in that category of teachable, willing to learn, willing to stretch themselves, not in the high maintenance category, I guess, at the end of the day. So, you know, you could tell sometime if somebody’s going to be emailing you over and over or calling you over and over. They’re probably not the type person that you want to work with because they’re going to take that same way of doing that with the next person in the company that you pass them along to. I’ve sort of learned the hard way which people are going to be good and which ones are not.
[00:30:21 – 00:31:14]
Yeah, you see, you develop processes or things even internally to just your six inches that make you aware that this person is going to be a difficult, not worth the effort. Right. Obviously you’re going to have people, I imagine, that are just inquisitive. So that’s another superpower you have to have is to understand whether or not they’re being inquisitive or they’re just being doe heads. Right. Whatever you want to call them. Right. So, so how do you manage the expectations of an author as an editor? So let’s say you pick that you’ve agreed to help this author out, whether it’s to co write with them or whatever. The expectations they have though can be very high. What do you do? How do you communicate with them to help them through that process and not be so high in the clouds so they don’t crash so hard?
[00:31:14 – 00:33:21]
Yeah. When I, when I talk to authors, for example, about, about Morgan James, I always make sure that I, I say the statement that 80% of the marketing is going to be up to them. That’s a statement I always make sure I say so that I try to manage their expectations. I mean, we’re going to, we’re going to sell the book into the bookstore. That’s, that’s kind of what we do and that’s, we’re selling our books into 98% of the bookstores in North America, including the brick and mortar store. So very broad distribution. I mean, we sell@target.com for example. And so we’re broadly getting our books out there. But what I know from being in the book business that it’s, it’s good to have the book in the bookstore, don’t get me wrong. But the way that book moves out of the bookstore into people’s hands is the activity of the author. So you have to be doing something to be telling people about your book, whatever that is. It could be a podcast like this or a radio show or a blog post or whatever you’re doing. Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield talked about how when they published their book, they follow what they call the rule of five. They did five things every day to promote their book. Maybe it was a guest blog post or a newspaper article or A radio interview or something that they were doing to be telling people about their book. And they told their publisher, their first publisher, HCI Communications, they were going to sell a million copies of their book in the first year. And their publisher laughed at him. They’d never sold a million copies, anything at that point in their life. It took him a year and a half to do it because these guys understood the drill and they knew that they had to be doing something as an author to get people to know about their book and for it to sell. And the rest is history. That’s why those books are still out there, selling like crazy.
[00:33:22 – 00:34:32]
Yeah. That’s one thing that a lot of people I’ve spoken to in regards to sales of books. You talked about being in the brick and mortar. There’s people that, you know, can’t figure out why their book hasn’t done anything. And even myself, I don’t promote my own book enough. Right. I. I just don’t. And I probably should. It’s. It has nothing to do really with my career. My career is in financial planning. I’ve been doing it for 22 years. It’s just a book about things that I’ve learned from my. My origin, like I do with my podcast. My origin up to where I started my podcast four years ago, started writing the book, and just different things along the way to give people a sense of. Again, the subtitle is how to live life on purpose, not by accident. Right. So it’s something that everybody needs to learn. It’s not hard, right? It’s about 30, 000 words. It’s not very. It’s not too big, it’s not too small. But again, you bring up a lot of valid points. It’s up to me. If it’s to be. It’s up to me. Like they say, right? I need to promote my book more, not even necessarily give it out.
[00:34:32 – 00:35:46]
As you promote your book, you really want to think about what the benefits are of that book, and that’s what you want to promote. It’s not like, buy my book. Nobody cares about that. It’s really emphasizing to others what the benefits of the book are. And that’s, I think, one of the things that happens with social media, because people go, social media doesn’t really sell books. Well, it doesn’t, but yet it does because they’ve pretty much proven that somebody needs to hear about your book at least probably a dozen, maybe 20 times before they actually buy it. So part of what you’re doing in that whole process is Just trying to tell people, hey, hello, I’m out here with my book. I mean there’s over 11,000 new books, Dwight, that are published every day. I mean it’s, it’s a massive amount of material that includes the self published books that go out there into the market. So as every author has to be doing something to sort of wave the flag and say, hey, this book is important and here’s why you need to read this book.
[00:35:47 – 00:37:03]
Yeah, you’ve got to be that person standing on the soapbox and cheering for yourself and making sure you understand what platform are you on? Who are you trying to reach? What’s your message? Because not everybody’s going to want a book on dieting for an example. Not everybody’s going to want a book on how to live purposeful life. They’re happy being on the hamster wheel, going to work, go home, get paid. They don’t really have that drive. And thank goodness we have a society where there’s different pecking orders. I know everybody says be great if we’re all equal. I think that society would be pretty boring for all if everybody’s equal. What is, where’s joy and happiness? Where’s anger? Where’s sadness? Where does it all mix in if we’re all just at the same level playing and we’re all the same and, and, and nobody has their ups and downs. I tell people that all the time when I coach them. I just want to be happy. What are you doing to be happy? Oh, I’m doing this and this and that. You know, I never, I just, I don’t want to have to focus on sadness and anger. I said, well, how would you know you’re happy if you don’t have something sad happen or something bad happen in your life? Like to me there has to be yin and yang, wouldn’t you agree?
[00:37:04 – 00:37:24]
Oh, it is, it’s, it’s a roller coaster that we’re on. Ups and downs, highs and lows. We just have to figure out how to keep going. Whether we’re on the high or whether we’re on the low. That’s that, that persistence, that perseverance is a very important aspect of it, that’s for sure.
[00:37:24 – 00:37:46]
Exactly. So when you’re dealing with authors, does it get to a point where, when you’re telling them that their ideas just terrible or their ideas, okay, come back. Is there a point, is that where it ever gets easier to tell somebody that the story that they’re offering up right now won’t sell?
[00:37:47 – 00:38:46]
Well, we, we try to Be very kind about the way we do that to encourage them to come back with their next book. Maybe this isn’t the right idea. Maybe the next idea, but. But yeah, it’s. It is. You have to be diplomatic, I guess, the way you. The way you give that information to people. But you know, the. The most honest information that you can get often is probably at a. At a writer’s conference from somebody that you’re just sitting with, you know, having a cup of coffee. Ask them for their honest insight about something and maybe they’ll tell it to you. Then where they won’t tell it to you if you send it to them. They’ll just send a polite rejection letter. But one on one is probably a great way for them for you to get that kind of. Kind of insight from the person.
[00:38:47 – 00:39:20]
Well, and not everybody is going to be somebody that shouldn’t write a book. Some of them probably are, but some of them are just needing that hand holding, that listening ability that you have to listen to what they’re saying and maybe help them refocus and come back. I can’t see that all of them are. Would be rejections. There must be authors, though, that you’ve sat down and nurtured and they’ve come back in the past, like in the future with. With a better game plan. Maybe they’ve just never been given the rule book. Yeah, no, that.
[00:39:20 – 00:39:33]
That happened. That happens a lot where, where we encourage. We encourage them and give them a different idea and they go in a little different direction and they come back with something that’s going to work. So yes, that thing happened too.
[00:39:34 – 00:39:41]
Have you ever had a book published by some other publisher that got away that wish. Do you wish you could hit rewind on.
[00:39:46 – 00:43:01]
I mean, there’s a lot of rewind things that I’d like to do with my own books, I guess, that are out. That are out there. I can think of. I wrote a book a number of years ago when Veneta Flowers won the. She was the first African American ever to win a gold medal in the Winter Olympics. She won it in the 2002 bobsleds. That was in Park City, Utah. And they were actually out selling this book in the bookstore before they actually got a manuscript that they could really use. And so they hired me, I came along, I saw the original manuscript, which was terrible. And they hired me to write this book for Veneta in six weeks. And so she was from Birmingham, Alabama. So I flew down to Birmingham, spent a bunch of time with her and her husband, Johnny. Telling their story. I flew to Park City, rode the, Rode the sled. They have a ride in the summertime that you, you can sign the waivers from the Olympic Committee and then ride this ride, this ride. You have a helmet on. And all that kind of stuff scared the daylights out of me. I just wrote it once. But I wrote this book called Running on Ice that got out there, and I, I connected Benetta to Guidepost magazine, one of the top 20 magazines in the country. They did a story about her. But the problem, the publisher had the idea of releasing the book in a non Olympic year, in February of a non Olympic year. And so when I see my African American friends, I say, I always ask them, I said, do you. Do you buy books in February? And they look at me like they’re, like, I’m crazy. And then I say, well, that’s, that’s your month. That’s African American History Month. And so. And they go, no, we don’t buy books in February. And so the book didn’t perform like they wanted it to because they released it in February of a non Olympic year. And so no wonder nobody bought the book. And they didn’t send the netta flowers off to have media training, which is something that every author needs to do, is how in the world do you even talk about your book if you’re in the media at all? The next, the next Olympics. She were in Italy, and she was actually on the Today Show. Katie Couric interviewed her, and she did. I watched it. She said nothing about her book. It was like it didn’t even exist. I’m yelling at my tv. It’s like, what’s going on here? You know? Well, no wonder the book didn’t, you know, missed, because all these factors really make a difference as to whether, whether your book gets out there or not.
[00:43:01 – 00:44:05]
Yeah, it’s. It’s a lot more integral than people realize. And I myself have had people talk and we’ll have communications. I was in Europe last year with a bunch of business people, and one of my business friends that lives in Hawaii was there, and these people are talking to me about my life and asking me about my, my give a heck brand and stuff. And he goes, oh, by the way, my buddy wrote a book, and I’d already been talking to him for about an hour. I hadn’t even thought of bringing it up myself. And the reason I bring that up is, you’re right. Sometimes we don’t have enough faith in the product that we have. Right. That ability to have that calling Card, really, that book is a great calling card for our message, for our platform, whatever. So I could see that. But to be on a national televised show and be interviewed and not bring up your book. Oh my goodness. I gotta make sure that if that ever happens to me that I’m gonna have to be well versed in how to communicate about my book.
[00:44:05 – 00:44:59]
Yeah, it happens. I mean, I had another author that had a real dramatic story that was, that was published and she was, she was on Dr. Oz’s show. And I was all excited, you know, to see my author on Dr. Oz’s show. Now I don’t know what, what they cut out of the interview with these particular authors, but it was like they didn’t have a book, Dwight. I mean, they, they mentioned nothing about the book when it was on the Dr. Oz Show. So it didn’t really help them as authors to be on Dr. Oz because they didn’t say anything about their book. I mean, it didn’t get mentioned anything at all. Now maybe they, they signed that away that they wouldn’t do that or I, I don’t know what restrictions Dr. Oz had, but it just was odd to me that nothing happened there.
[00:44:59 – 00:45:39]
Oh yeah, exactly. Beyond. I can remember when my book come out and then I went. It was a year later, I was down the US And I was on stage and I was speaking and stuff. And now when I think about it, when I left the stage, I didn’t even bring up my. Even if I just brought up one thing about my book. Book, right. If you want to reach out to me, you know, thank you so much. If you want to reach out to me, go to giveaheck.com you can find my book on there. Check it out on Amazon. You know, if you’re a person that enjoyed my talk and you want to live a purposeful life, I suggest you pick it up. Right. Something simple. And I didn’t even do it right when I, It’s.
[00:45:39 – 00:46:09]
Well, I don’t want to neglect, I don’t want to neglect my 10 publishing this book because I, I want people to go to publishing offer.com and if you do that, you’ll get this book for $10, including the shipping, along with $200 of bonuses. Just go to publishingoffer.com and it’s a great way, great way to get your book. I, I also have an 11th myth in your. Dwight.
[00:46:09 – 00:46:11]
Yeah, I wrote that in my notes.
[00:46:11 – 00:47:07]
When I was, when I, I got the endorsements for the book. Alice Kreider, who was an acquisitions editor, told Me. She said, terry, you’re missing the 11th myth. I’m like, okay, Alice, I’m game. What’s the 11th myth? She said, well, the 11th myth should be that if I send my book to Oprah, she’ll book me on her show. And I’m like, well, yeah, that’s. That’s a pretty big myth that’s gonna happen. So what I decided to do, Dwight, is I actually wrote that ch chapter when I wrote my book, and we designed it so it looks exactly like the book. And people can get that for free for me if they go to terrylinks.com forward/, 11th myth, 11th myth. That’ll take you to a page where you can put your name and your email address in. You can get that. That little chapter from me for free.
[00:47:08 – 00:47:58]
Wait, we’ll make sure that that goes into the show notes. People can find that@giveaheck.com Go to the top to the pod podcast part of the website, and you’ll see Terry’s picture, and you’ll be able to find in the show notes those links that he mentioned. I’ll make sure they’re in there. So you wrote that 10 publishing myths, which you just showed for the people that are watching either got to see your book insights. Every author needs to succeed to give authors the realistic expectations and encouragement to take the practical steps to make their book a success. Imagine, like most working in this industry that is so vast that the patterns of what goes right or wrong are consistent. Was this a driver for you writing the book to stop the cycle and help potential authors with the do’s and don’ts?
[00:47:59 – 00:50:11]
Yeah, that was. That was part of my motivation. What I know from. From writing all these books that I’ve written and being in the publishing business so long is that there’s so much of the publishing process that’s totally outside of our control as an author. I mean, just one little detail, if it doesn’t happen, can really make a big difference on your book. And so. And you. You often don’t have control over those details. So what I did in 10 publishing myths is I tried to show people practical things that every author can do. Whether you self publish or whether you’ve been. You’re with a traditional publisher, there are practical actions that you can actually take. And I. I called each of those an MBA myth buster action that I have at the end of every chapter. And the practical things, like, for example, there are rented platforms that are out there so I could get kicked off X or Twitter tomorrow or Facebook or LinkedIn. I do something that violates their terms, I’m off. I, I don’t own those platforms. I, they’re rented platform. But my own website, my own blog, my own newsletter list, those are all things that I personally control. So I encourage authors to take control of what they can actually do themselves and there’s no risk to it. I mean, I talk to authors and they say, well, my whole thing I built on Facebook, well, that’s cool, but Facebook could kick you off of there tomorrow if they wanted to. And so what then what happens to all that stuff that you built would just disappears. So build your foundation on something that you can control personally and you know that no matter what happens, it’s going to be around.
[00:50:13 – 00:50:30]
That’s great advice. So throughout the process of writing this book, obviously throughout your many years of experience, those myths, did they come to you easily or had you been documenting them throughout your, throughout your publishing life?
[00:50:32 – 00:50:58]
No, I didn’t really document them. I actually just thought about 10. 10 was a good round number. So I was going for 10. And so that’s, that’s how I ended up writing 10 chapters. And it’s a little, it’s a little short book that people can get through it, you know, in a couple of nights and hopefully find a lot of practical information that they can use for their own, Their own book and their own writing life.
[00:50:58 – 00:51:15]
Well, that’s awesome. And length of the book doesn’t always mean it’s better. Sometimes, sometimes it’s just, you know, I’ve had books where they’re just too long and then other books that I wish were longer, but I’d rather have somebody wish for more than wish for less.
[00:51:17 – 00:51:17]
Absolutely.
[00:51:18 – 00:51:57]
When it comes to publishing. So you, you, since you mentioned it, because I wrote this down further down in my notes about your mba, your Mythbuster action. You know, I’ve seen it in many books. Specific authors put in things for people to ponder right at the end of the chapter. Sometimes even at the beginning, they’ll have something for people to think about when they’re reading through it. Maybe there’s a quiz, right? Maybe there’s a little section of a few lines to write your thoughts. Do you feel it’s important to always have that action at the, in your book to make people be more engaged with it?
[00:51:58 – 00:52:49]
Not always, but that is, that is something that you can do to encourage people to take action in the book. I know when I was at an acquisitions editor, David C. Cook, the very first publisher that I worked for, we decided at one point to put a study guide into every single book that we published, whether it was fiction or nonfiction. Because if it did have that, those study guide questions in the back, then individuals or even small groups could use that book to gain some more information. So that’s, that’s another tool that people can think about with their book and add that in there as a, as a resource to engage people in a better way.
[00:52:50 – 00:53:26]
That’s great though. So it’s all dependent, it’s not a requirement. Right. Based on what you’re, you’re trying to get out there. So I appreciate that insight. Again, back to what the expectations of what authors expect. You know, we talk about some of your myths. The first one, you know, I believe 99% of the world believes my book will make lots of money. We touched on that a little bit. They really don’t understand that it can be a negative. Like you talked about earlier. Can you, can you highlight that myth and any others that you find would be great for the listeners to hear about? Yeah.
[00:53:27 – 00:57:24]
You know, the story that I tell in that book is that some, somebody came to me and they said that their book was going to, to make a lot of money and it was going to be a bestselling book. And I said, okay, who, who published your book? Who’s going to publish your book? And the name that they gave me was for a publishing company that, whether I’ll say the name of the publishing company is, the parent company is Author Solutions. Now these guys publish, you know, 20, 30,000 copies of books every year. They have a really great sales team. They, you know, they push the daylights out of you to get you to sign up for them. What they don’t tell you is that they’re not really based in Bloomington, Indiana. I mean, their, their actual production team is in the Philippines and their old books are all online. I have met authors, Dwight, who have spent over $20,000 with these, this, these companies in order to publish their book. I mean, they take all the upsells and the extra packages. They take the script writing thing to get a movie script out of it. All these kinds of upsells that they do. There’s no way they’re going to make $20,000 back from their book. So they just don’t, they went with the wrong foundation right there, right from the start. And so, you know, they just, they didn’t understand. They got sucked into something that they didn’t investigate. I always encourage people, no matter who publishes your book, go to Google and type in the name of that publisher and the word complaints or scam and see what comes up. If you do that simple step, you’re going to save yourself a lot of grief because you’re going to get a company like that. You’re going to get pages and pages of information. There are people that are upset with these guys. So just do your own simple research. Talk to their authors, make, you know, do your homework before you sign up with these people. Because you really want to be successful with your book out there, you’ve got to do that kind of basic research. Like at Morgan James, where I work, where I’ve been for the last 12 years, we’ve been in business over 20 years. You know, our books are in 98% of the bookstores in North America. We’ve, we’ve published 25 million books over the last 20 years. You know, we’ve got a track record of what we’re doing, and we’re happy that. We’re happy to talk about it. You can’t get on the New York Times list 29 different times, the Wall Street Journal list, over 100 tons, if you’re not selling books in the bookstore. And we are, and we’ve got, we’ve got the track record to, to show that. So look at those kind of details with whoever it is that you’re talking to. I mean, I talked to authors all the time that had been published with other publishers, and sure, they went with these guys. They signed up, the publisher promised them that their book would be everywhere. Well, actually, when the book got published, it was on Amazon and the publisher’s website. Nowhere else. It wasn’t on Goodreads, it wasn’t on Barnesandnobles.com Books of Maine, chapters, Indigo, Target. It wasn’t in those places. So find out from these people if, if they have integrity, if they’re actually going to do what they say they’re going to do at the end of the day, find out, want that kind of information ahead of time rather than sign up and feel regret about where you published.
[00:57:26 – 00:57:34]
Great advice. So what other out of the 10 myths, what would be one that you would want to discuss?
[00:57:35 – 00:59:35]
Well, there’s another myth that says that my publisher will, will promote and market my book. Everybody assumes that the publisher is going to do that, but. And they are, to a degree. But back like we were talking before, you’re the one that has the greatest passion and greatest concern about your book. So you’re the best promoter for your book, no matter what, whether you hire somebody else or anybody else does it. So you have to figure out how to conserve your time. I mean all of us only have so much, so many, so many hours to spend in the day. So where can you get the greatest bang for, for your efforts? If Your book sells 5,000 copies, Dwight, that’s, that’s kind of a big deal in the publishing business because a lot of books don’t ever, don’t ever get to that point. The average self published book sells 100 or 200 copies during the lifetime of the book. So if Your book sells 5,000 copies, that’s great. What I encourage people to do is to think about writing articles for print magazines because with a print magazine it’s very easy to reach a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, half a million people with your article. Articles are short. They’re like 500 words, a thousand words, 1500 words. You can reach many more people doing that and tell them at the bottom of the article that you’re the author of give a heck. And that’ll send people to your book much more than some of these other things that you can do. So figure out, figure out what you can do that’ll be a really good use of your, of your time, energy and effort because all of us only have so much of that that we can do.
[00:59:36 – 01:60:42]
Agreed. Good advice though. Yeah. Writing articles. I’ve got, I’ve been writing articles and stuff in regards to just sometimes it’s finance, sometimes it’s stuff on just dreams and goal setting. And if you have, you’ve thought about where you want to go in life. Right. And without some, some actual planning, you’re always going to stay stuck. Right. So at the end of those articles I’m gonna. Because I have somebody that’s been publishing them and doing all this SEO stuff to make sure people know where you’re located. Because the Internet has gotten so convoluted and complicated to make sure people know you exist. Right. If you don’t have the right words, you don’t have the right this. But to put something as simple as the bottom of that article would be powerful because I never, I haven’t been doing it. I just assume people are going to go check out Dwight Heck or check out Gibaheck. But it’s important, it’s. It’s important that we actually put the effort in to sell ourselves at any point in time that we have that ability. Right?
[01:60:43 – 01:60:51]
Yeah. It doesn’t have to be real complicated. It can just be a simple sentence that’s at the bottom. Bottom of it.
[01:60:51 – 01:61:23]
Exactly. So one of the things that the last things that I wanted to talk about, about your book is if a person was going to utilize your book from start to finish in a very concise way, what do you think they’ll, what do you think they’ll get out of it? Like, yes, the title, Self Explanatory 10 Myths About Publishing. But what is it, what is it going to do for their mindset? How do you believe it’s going to shift it?
[01:61:23 – 01:62:07]
I think it’s going to shift it because they’re going to see that there are practical things that each of us can do to succeed with our book, whether your publisher does it, whether your marketing person does it or whatever. But something that you can actually do. That’s the mind shift that I’m really going for there is to encourage people to actually take their own, their own action every day. And it doesn’t have to be a big action, but just as long as you’re moving forward, I think that’s, that’s important.
[01:62:07 – 01:62:28]
So help them take charge of their lives and quit being on that hamster wheel. And if it’s something that they really want, give them some direction and focus. It’s either going to be a yes or no when they’re done at the book, hopefully, or maybe there’ll be some indecision and some focus and they’ll reach out, you know, a little bit of focus and they’ll reach out to you, right?
[01:62:28 – 01:63:11]
Yeah. And I do want people to reach out to me. I mean, that’s, that’s why my, my personal email address is in my profile on, on X or Twitter. I mean, people wondered why in the world I did that years ago because I want people to be able to reach out to me. They say that I’m one of the most accessible people in the publishing community. A lot of these editors and agents, you can’t even get them to respond to you. But I try to be available because I know that when I correspond with people and engage with them, that’s, that’s where we can, we can do something together or they can at least learn something from me in that process.
[01:63:12 – 01:64:40]
Well, that’s good. It’s, it’s very low, the percentage of people that are easily accessible in any industry. So congratulations to you for that, for wanting to be vulnerable about, you know, what you’ve experienced and what you’ve gone through and how you’ve helped others. I encourage people because I hear from people all the time. I want to write a book. I want to do this, I want to do that. And sometimes you just need a little Bit of encouragement. And that can start with the written word of reading your book, reaching out to you or whoever. But just start, start somewhere. People just sitting in going, oh, I want to do this. How many people in their later years, my senior clients that are in their 80s, that have regrets and talk about, you know, I always said I was going to do this, I always said I was going to do that, and now I didn’t. You know what I mean? So if you’re listening or watching and you’re ever been interested in writing a book, right, buy Terry’s book. Like, there you go. Move your life forward. I’ll make sure again that it’s in the show notes, all the ways that people can reach out to you, including the extra website stuff. I believe you have that on the site as well. I’ll make sure all those links are in there. But one last thing, Terry. If you had to give our listeners one last closing message, what would you tell them in regards to giving a heck and never giving up?
[01:64:43 – 01:66:07]
Yeah, I would tell them there’s, there’s a ton of rejection that we get in this business. We get ghosted. People don’t answer us, we get rejected. But the reality is something different that’s happening out there, Dwight. I mean, I’ve been in some of the top literary agencies and publishers in this country. So when I go to New York, I go off and see those people. And whenever I go there, they’re always asking me, where’s the next Joel Osteen? Where’s the next, you know, Purpose Driven Lifebook? Where’s the next Left Behind? They’re all looking for that diamond in the Rough, the next bestseller they’re reading. They may ghost you, they may not respond to you at all, but they’re reading their email pitches, they’re reading their physical mail that comes in. They’re looking for this. So even though they may be telling you publicly no, they are actually looking. And so that’s, that’s the message that I would encourage people that get out there. Because you never know what, what message you’re going to be able to get out there and then people will give a heck at the end of the day.
[01:66:07 – 01:66:57]
That’s true. Like I tell people, no isn’t a bad thing. It’s one step closer to a yes. Right? Just keep on pushing and keep on pushing. I’ve heard from people over the years that they’ll open up an email from somebody and think, oh, not this person again. But that person presented in a different light than they did every other time and a light bulb went off for them and next thing you know they’re communicating with that person. And what was the secret? That person never gave up. Right. As long as you’re kind, you’re humble or you’re not abusive, like hey, why aren’t you responding to me? Just keep it, keep that person that’s sitting there wanting that communication. Might add about day where there’s, they’re going to go through more emails or actually look at emails when they wouldn’t. Oh, you never know.
[01:66:58 – 01:67:37]
It’s amazing to me. I mean I, I have an article in Publishers Weekly for example, about a year ago that I’m still promoting. Not every week, but at least often at least once a week. And just here in the last couple of days somebody, somebody wrote me back on Social. What a great publication that you got in. Good for you. You know. Well, that article has been out for a long time here. You know, they finally saw my little post about it. So that’s what you have to do is not give up and just keep, keep telling people because eventually they’re going to open it up and look at it.
[01:67:37 – 01:68:03]
Yeah, persistency is a good thing. So you’ve already reached, given us how we can reach, how people can reach out to by a couple different links for other aspects of the publishing. What would be the best way though? What would be one way for somebody that’s driving right now, what would be the best way for them to reach out to a website or an email address? Obviously I’ll make sure it goes in the shop show notes too.
[01:68:03 – 01:68:37]
Yeah, the best, the best way would be probably to go to my, my X profile. Just, just put my name in Terry Whalin. You know, W H A L I N it’s going to pull up a bunch of stuff and I’m on, on there all the time. I post, you know, 12, 15 times a day on there. So I, I have a lot of, a lot of content that I do on there. But my, my regular email terrier whalin.com is, is in that, that profile. So that’s, that’s a great way for people to reach me.
[01:68:37 – 01:69:26]
Right on. And just to reiterate to the people that are new to the GiveAHack podcast, whether you’re watching or listening, just go to giveaheck.com again, go to the top, go to podcast. You will see a picture of Terry and the show notes and you’ll be able to find the information that we’ve discussed in regards to the links for the different sites as well as I’LL make sure his X link is up there so you can get to Twitter X whatever you want to call it. And yeah, you’ll be able to further your life and continue to move forward, especially if you’ve gone that far to go to the show. Notes you’re somebody that is really intrigued about the publishing industry and I highly suggest you dive in and take it all in. Start with the book. So any final last thoughts before I wrap up the show?
[01:69:26 – 01:69:44]
Terry no Dwight, I just really appreciate this opportunity to talk about this. And you know, like I said earlier, I do this every day because books change people’s lives and I know that personally because the book changed my life years ago.
[01:69:45 – 01:70:03]
Yeah, well it’s probably the same for many people if they’re willing to admit it. But thank you for that. So thanks so much for being on Give a Heck. Terry. I appreciate your time and sharing some of your experiences so that others too can learn. It is never too late to Give a Heck.