The Art of Self-Publishing with Rodney Miles | Rodney Miles

And started writing for a penny a word, but I knew enough at that point to not make some critical mistakes. Like I knew, hey, I think I really like this. It's worth learning. It's worth doing badly at first. It's worth treating every job and not taking any shortcuts because I'd found when you do that, you ruin the relationship with whatever it is you're talking about.

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Welcome to another episode of The Profitable Creative, the only place on the interweb where you will learn how to turn your passion Into Profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. Special shout out to our one listener in Fishers, Indiana. I have no idea where that is, but thank you for listening. Joining us today, Rodney Miles. Welcome, Rodney.

Thank you very much. Thanks very much for having me. Hello to Fisher, Indiana. Yes, yes.

I, I find it fascinating how many, you know, you go through the stats and you see the downloads and it's like all these little one-offs and all around the world really, but, uh, some of these towns are, are just fascinating because I've never heard of them. So, right, so for the audience, why don't you tell us a little bit about Rodney Miles, who he is, what he does, how he got here?

Yeah, you know, I think that's relevant too for creatives because I grew up not with parents— and my parents were creative actually, they were artists, but that's not what they did for business or vocation. So, right, for whatever reason, I formed the idea that the only way to go was some sort of business. Career and nonetheless, you know, love the arts. So it's been a journey. It's been kind of a circle ending up where I probably should have been in the first place in an art-oriented career. As far as my most recent and my forever career, which is what I do now, which is being an author, being a self-publishing consultant. I just turned 55 and I started that when I was 12. Congratulations. Thank you very much. So host the benefits at 55 and started over at 40, actually went back to college and started from zero, writing it for a penny a word as a ghostwriter. And it's been fabulous. It's been fantastic. So you can do it. And if you don't— well, I also believe there's probably a reason why this was my journey. Everything has led to this. Everything contributes to it now. But yeah, yeah, we end up— it's good when we end up where we feel like we should be.

Yes, purpose-driven.

Absolutely.

So before you did Rodney 2.0, were you in a creative business before, a creative industry?

Not so much. I, in college, I jumped around, uh, from majors, and that'll, that'll hurt you a lot because it'll draw it out. And I got to where I got into writing, actually creative writing, and had a little bit of an unfortunate— I wrote my heart out into this one assignment in a class I had fought and petitioned to get into with a fairly famous author who taught it. And he destroyed me one day on an assignment on a paper I'd written. And I didn't know what was happening. I based it on a book of his that I'd read. Maybe that's what pissed him off. I don't know. But one of the final straws where I realized there's really nothing for me here. What I really want to do at that point was just own my own business, just be an entrepreneur. I didn't see any reason why I couldn't do that. And I didn't see how college was going to teach me that. College teaches you how to be an employee or a manager, you know, in a corporation. But there was really nothing for entrepreneurs, at least then. So I went out on my own and I grabbed onto the first available opportunity after a couple of little jobs, which was sales, of course. Sales is usually there offering independence and a dash of creativity. And it was also mind over matter. It was a very— everything that I was kind of looking for. It took me until— took me decades to figure out I was a horrible salesperson. But I had been kind of administering my way through sales and through business and got along with people. But I went from there, still in the entrepreneurial mindset. I flipped houses for a few years. I had one collapse, and that kind of spun that career a little out of control. So I became a handyman, right? And people would call and say, can you help me with my soffit? I'd say, yeah, I'll be there Tuesday. And then I'd find out what a soffit was. Yes. Real seat of your pants. It was great. You know, you look back, you really, I really wouldn't change anything. That led to being a real estate agent, which is probably one of my most enjoyable, rewarding little professional periods. I ended up managing a small brokerage. And really, really loved it, so much so that I neglected my million-dollar clients and stuff, which was on paper very stupid. But then I went through the whole real estate boom. Now, when the real estate boom happened, some of these things— people recount their sexes, their, uh, successes, or their sexes, or their sexes. Yeah, both. Yes, sometimes combined. But it's, it's funny, it's the bigger failures that really stand out. It's the bigger— in fact, one day I'll write a book called The Joy of Failure because without those crises, you might not change. For example, we lost a home after the real estate boom. I'd leveraged my house to open a couple of real estate offices and I had one of those adjustable rates back in 2007. So my payment was going to go from like $1,000 to $3,000. And back then, right when I was losing my businesses, so we lost everything. It was the best thing in the world though, because we downsized our home, we sold off 80% of our crap. And it was just, there was an Alan Watts lecture on this morning about clutter and getting rid of stuff. That was one of the best things that ever could have happened to us. But when that went bust, I was at zero anyway. You know, it was kind of a rare opportunity, not that people seek that out. No. I had to decide, I'm going to go back into real estate or I'm going to go into anything else because I'm back at zero. And my dad was kind of nudging me to write. He had discovered a website called Elance. Yes. Which some of us graybeards will remember from 15 years ago. Now it's Upwork.

Yes. The predecessor to Upwork.

Yes. And started writing for a penny a word, but I knew enough at that point to not make some critical mistakes. Like I knew, hey, I think I really like this. It's worth learning. It's worth doing badly at first. It's worth treating every job and not taking any shortcuts because I'd found when you do that, you ruin the relationship with whatever it is you're talking about. Right. And treat every client, you know, build a portfolio. There's two ways to enter the freelance business as far as I could see back then. One was to start cheap, work with excellence and build up a portfolio and then just systematically raise your rates through your time. The other was to enter with a big splash with a lot of credentials 'Cause I remember back then, some of my competition, they'd get on Elance after having been a speechwriter for the mayor. Right. Or, you know, and I didn't have those credentials. I came from unrelated fields, but I was always writing. So like, for example, in real estate, I wrote an article for a local paper. It was interesting. I always found myself writing in one way or another. And then the last 15 years have been just fabulous. In fact, I only really feel like in the last few years I've kind of completed the— it'll never be complete, but really completed the publishing cycle. Because you can make a living on one little action in the publishing cycle. For example, you can be a cover designer. Right. And do that, be very happy the rest of your life. But I've really enjoyed the comprehensive, you know, all the activities.

Hey listeners, are you ready to turn your passion into profit? Then grab a copy of Profit First for Creatives. Click the link in the show notes to purchase a copy. And if you're not ready to make that full commitment, you can download a free copy of the first chapter. Check it out right now. So there are a couple of things I want to go back to, but to clarify, so now do you, you essentially help authors self-publish, that whole process, uh, you know, the editing, the COVID design, the layout. Is that what you do?

Yes.

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Yeah, I would divide it into 3 stages, the whole self-publishing process, which has developed out of traditional publishing best practices and things self-publishers— it's very neat when you really look at what self— what successful self-publishers do. A lot of, uh, actions and stages and tactics are modeled or derive from, for example, in old well, any traditional publishing house, they'll generally have a developmental editor, for example, who will work with your manuscript. So if you're a self-publisher, you don't have that, right? Well, you can hire one, right? Or you can get your book to a full draft and then engage a handful of beta readers, right? And achieve some of the same things that they do in the publishing houses with a developmental editor. So Lot of these things have been modified. The self-publisher, in addition to this— the reason I love it so much, in addition to being in the creative arts, in books, you are independent and entrepreneurial. So very cool. So I would just add the full process would be what I call— I've got generic terms for it, which is product, platform, publicity. Mhm. Or more specifically with books, is your book, your platform, and— or you could say your book, your organic growth by way of your platform, and then strategic growth of which publicity is just one tactic.

So yeah, it is interesting. I published my first book last year and learned all of these things that I did not know, like what a developmental editor is. And I used a company that sounds like it's similar to yours in that I paid them a fee and they walked me through the process and provided those services. When I talked to— I interviewed on this podcast Todd Henry, author of The Accidental Creative and several other books, but he's done both the traditional publishing route and his latest book, the name is not coming to me off the top of my head, he self-published. We talked about the benefits, the pros and cons, but I think the thing that drew him to the self-publishing was the flexibility that he had in like how he marketed, how he used the book as opposed to the traditional publishing where your hands are tied in a lot of ways. But one of the things, and I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but for the benefit of the audience, there are so many books that, I mean, the technology has allowed anybody to publish. And with the advent of AI, there are a lot of people that are publishing that shouldn't be publishing. Um, but it's hard to just write, say, a mystery novel and get traction with it and make money with it if you're an unknown, right? But I look at our case where I wasn't looking to sell 100,000 books, uh, or a million books. That wasn't my purpose in writing the book. Self-publishing allows us to achieve our goals of having a tool to use in our business to educate, to promote, to gain credibility, et cetera. And a traditional publisher wouldn't, wouldn't have touched that book. They're like, no, it's too small. Who wants it?

That's a really good point. I don't think I've ever actually, you know, the synapses have connected on that exact point that, uh, a traditional publisher would have no way. I mean, they're in it for the book sales, right? So, which isn't necessarily what, especially early on, a lot of, I did a lot of books early on that were all what I call books of expertise. And along the way, realized there's really two avenues here with your book. One is credibility and the other is book sales. Right. And some people want a hybrid of both. Uh, but every project or author I've worked with, I try to ascertain their goals, assess why they're doing it. The other category would be, in fact, in my book, I talk about, as far as what I've experienced, I've got 4 or 5 types of authors in there. And there's the expert, there's the professional author, somebody who's in it for book sales, wants to be an author. Full-time. And then there's the legacy author, which everyone might want to create a legacy, for example, but, or many people, but I have had clients and they're very enjoyable to work with who are retired or they're getting on and they just want to write a memoir. Right. You know, and they're really fun to work on. And it's a fascinating process too. To go through creating a book. If you're a professional, you'll be better at what you do if you write a book about it. If you're writing a memoir, you will have psychological catharsis as you go through and hammer out and evaluate your life, map it out so that others can— and I always say, imagine if your great-grandfather had written a memoir. How cool would that be to read?

Yeah, yes, it's similar. There's a videographer down in Austin or San Antonio, and he does legacy documentaries, so for the family. And so it's a similar concept, only in a video format. And then, you know, like, they'll, they'll go and interview other family members in conjunction with the principal. But it is, it is. As a matter of fact, when I met this this gentleman I was talking to him about, like, you use the word catharsis. I was like, I could see how that would be very therapeutic for a family to, uh, make that film and have those conversations, because those are conversations that you don't have around the Thanksgiving table normally, or, or, you know, because they're, they're deeper, they're more challenging, and those are not conversations that are going to just organically happen.

Right.

Yeah. I want to go back to the comment you made about the professor that you had and how it knocked you off that path of writing. Right. And then you've come back to make a career in the space and a business out of the space. What did the professor get wrong? What did he not see?

I don't know. Well, that's a good question.

I know. That's why I asked it.

That's why you're the host. That's right. I think as I sat there, I couldn't understand. That's a really good question. What was he missing? And that's what bewildered me. He completely missed my intention, which was the same, I assume, as the intention he had with one of the books he wrote about his childhood. And I just thought, I just assumed, oh boy, when he sees this, he's going to— there's going to be this camaraderie. He's going to recognize, yeah, this kid's trying to do what I did with this book. And he just tore it apart. He just— he just— I mean, he, he had like a negative visceral reaction to my— I guess it was a short story, you know, 20 pages or whatever it was. I loved it, by the way. I still— it's one of the— I don't keep a lot of stuff, right? But, uh, a folder somewhere, I've got that story. I called it Stars and Stones. It was a story about being a kid when my parents were breaking up and there was an upset. My aunt and uncle came over and cheered us up and distracted us, and it's really a precious little story. I tried to use some detail like the Hemingway modern novel, write about periphery, immerse people in detail. And I wasn't as sophisticated with it, you know, when I was 18, 19, but I knew enough to write about the little rock wall and things. So it was, I was, I think I was excited to get to class that day. And it was one of those moments that completely backfired. I didn't take it completely personal. I should mention that I didn't internally, I didn't back down from what I felt about what I'd written. Mm-hmm. Sure. Maybe I made some major mistakes and so on, but that's why I'm the student here, you know? Right. But it was such a bashing. I had a, uh, there was a fellow next to me, older fellow. He must've been 40 in that class, which is funny because years later I'd be the 40-year-old dude. Right. And he turned to me and he said, I get what you were trying to do with that, man, you know? And that's kind of all I needed. And even if he hadn't said that, I still like what I wrote, which is interesting too, because you're really, as a creative, you got to do it for yourself. Mm-hmm. You've got to be happy with it. That's one thing I try to inject into every project. And I talk about a lot that people will tell you with a good cover, for example, it's got to have contrast, it's got to have technical expertise, it's got to meet your genre. Well, the other factor is you have to love it. And I mean love, like affinity, and you want it close and you're excited to look at it. If you don't love your cover, I mean, you can get by, but if you love your cover and you love your book, you'll, first of all, you'll enjoy it the rest of your life. And the The stops are gone as far as promoting it. You'll share it and so on. So there's that human element as well that can kind of get lost, can kind of get lost in the process with all the steps you're supposed to take and so on. But you should enjoy the process. Many people write one book their whole life. And I've always felt like anyone who comes to me, even if it's a business book or specifically to raise their rates or get them on stage, it's a special experience, maybe more special after the fact. Very often I'll enjoy a vacation more when I'm home. Yes. And you bask in that memory of walking down the little parkway, or man, you know, and I'm even cognizant of that, of when we're on a vacation or something like, wow, this is fabulous. I'm going to enjoy it even more when I'm home and remember it.

So did you ever publish the short story?

No, no. That's interesting. Yeah, that's an interesting idea. That is some of my poems.

You might clean it up and put it out there.

Yeah, yeah, I will dedicate it to my teacher.

Yeah, there you go. Well, you've mentioned some interesting ideas, and, and one of which is, is the passion behind it. And if you're not passionate about it, and I've experienced this in my own entrepreneurial journey, if you're not passionate about it, for me, it's really hard to sustain. Todd Henry, in his book The Accidental Creative, he talks about the Greek word for passion, which I don't remember, is parrhikios or something like that, but it means, its literal translation means to suffer. And his statement about like, if you're not willing to suffer for what love, then you, you don't truly love it. Like, you won't be able to sustain it or bring it to its fruition if you're not willing to sacrifice for it and, or suffer for it. Not to say that you will suffer, but, you know, in, in your case, I'm thinking like you had this passion for writing, but it didn't come to its fruition, its fullness, until decades later. And that's because you had a passion for it. If you didn't have a passion for it, you would have just moved on to something else. You would have maybe gone back to real estate.

Yeah, it's true.

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It's true. You make me think of— I just saw another, uh, a little video by a little snippet of a lecture by Alan Watts, and he's— it's called Don't Force Anything. And he talks about the definition of wu-wei in, uh, Taoist thinking is, uh, disputed. Some people think it means do nothing, and he contends that's not what it means. It means basically means flow. But in the video, in his talk, there's one metaphor he gives which just really explains the whole thing. And the name of the video is, uh, Don't Force Anything. And he points out an artist, an athlete, you can tell if they're forcing it and if they're just flowing with it. It's like the, uh, I think figure skater, maybe figure ice skating, is one of the easiest analogies for this because when they have the— you can tell when they're— I mean, I watch that and I think you could kill yourself, right? Yeah, I would, right? I would. Yes, there's some— it's a Saturday Night Live skit, I think, where Horatio Sands is ice skating, ice figure skating. When the— you can tell if they're still kind of have some degree of attention on the technicality of what they're doing so they don't die or they're trying to be perfect. And then the other is that milestone was passed a while ago. They've got the technical down and they're flowing with the art of it. And those are the ones that really stand out. And I thought, what a great analogy. I've never applied that to a book process. If you're having a book done and you've hired a company and they're shuffling you from department to department and you're getting lackluster results and it's more about deadlines and it's forced and it's— Right. Could end up all right, but it's not a good experience when, if done right, even the experience of doing it is going to be a valuable, enriching, memorable, enjoyable, yada, yada, yada.

Well, that was certainly my experience. I mean, when I started to write the book, I set out to raise my credibility in my target market and visibility. But, you know, early on I decided that I didn't want the book to just be a business card. I didn't want it to, you know, so many business books I see out there is they just really kind of make you aware of the problem with the intent of selling the solution. Which is fine, but I wanted my book to have value in itself. Like if they picked it up, read it, and implemented it, it would be of value to them whether they ever contacted me or, or CORE. That was what I wanted. And through the process of interviewing clients and reflecting on my own entrepreneurial journey as I wrote this, I had some very deep insights for myself, clarifying insights that really propelled me forward that had I not written the book, I don't know that I would have come to those conclusions.

Yeah, it's a great observation. It sounds like you had a great experience.

Oh, the editors killed me. I felt like I was back in 8th grade English class with the red pencil And it was like, are these edits ever going to be done? And it was a challenging process. And it was— now looking back on it, I completely understand why the editors were so hard on me because they wanted me to have what I wanted, which was a good book. And I didn't know how to write a good book.

So yeah, that particular area, editing, is wide open to discussion, philosophy, good editors, bad editors. And I think that's very important when you look for an editor to find someone who will at least explain it, explain their philosophy to you. The editor you choose, as one example, should match your purpose for the book. So if you're writing for a lay audience, that's different than writing a white paper if you're writing for a professional audience, you know, if you're a physician writing for other physicians, that's one thing. Most of my experience, if not all of it, has been someone with an expertise, and I almost become a translator to where their message needs to reach a lay audience, you know, popular trade audience. So that's a certain editorial approach. And Further with that, I always tell, explain to clients as soon as possible that everything I do, everything I suggest, everything I point out is a suggestion. You can do whatever, you know, you have final cut on your book, but I'll explain, like, if there's a change here, why it needs to be changed and so on. And it's a profession, editing, certainly, obviously, but it's also subject to, you know, different approaches.

Well, sure. Yeah, I, I think the thing that was most helpful to me was the developmental editor, where in some ways she was the target reader that I was writing for, which kind of helped. But, you know, it was, it was all about from the reader's perspective, and did what I was trying to communicate make sense? Was it— and as a professional, I, I think that's That was the hardest part was I don't want to call it dumbing it down, but it's like what you know in your head that you start from point F and go on and realize that nobody knows A through G or A through E, right? And so they're lost and having to go back and fill in the gaps to give them the foundation to understand what you're talking about. And then I don't know how many times she just had a comment of like, why? And I'm like, well, I thought it was self-evident. Like, to me it's clear, but like to her it wasn't. So that process was, was difficult, but it, it produced a better book.

Yeah. She sounds like a good editor actually.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So tell me how people find you to learn more about working with you if they're interested in publishing a book?

Sure, uh, RodneyMiles.com. Boom. In fact, my book The Modern Author is available as a free PDF, uh, there in the bookstore as well.

Perfect. Well, Rodney, I really appreciate you coming on the show and sharing your experiences. Listeners, if you like what you heard, please rate the show, share the show, Subscribe to the show. If you don't like what you heard, shoot us a message and I'll replace Rodney. Until then, ta-ta for now.

And that's a wrap for today's episode of The Profitable Creative. Until next time, you money lovers. And don't forget, Profit First for Creatives is live via Amazon. Link below.