How to Be Your Own Developmental Editor

Normally, developmental editors cost thousands of dollars, but what if you could give your book the same quality treatment and improve your storytelling without needing to hire a developmental editor? Okay, maybe that is a little bit of a hyperbolic claim for this episode. Because in all honesty, our guest Stacy Juba today, she's not exactly arguing that you don't need a developmental editor following her advice. But her argument is that if you follow her advice, you're going to a need less rounds of editing. Because it's true that many authors, especially who are early in the writing career, might need or might even pay for multiple rounds of editing from a developmental editor. And let's face it, many of us spending that much money over and over again on multiple rounds is just not worth it. It's not something that we're able to do because we can't afford it. Like, it's not worth it because we can't afford it. Like, we wish we could afford it, but it's just money doesn't grow on trees necessarily. So that's where today's podcast episode comes in. How can you learn to do really good self editing so that whether you work with a copy editor, a proofreader, a line editor, or even of course, a development editor, they're able to take your story to the next level? Because, you know, it's hard to take something that's really rough and make it really good in one pass. But we could take something really good and make it excellent in one pass. We could take something deep it and make it really good in one pass. So that's what we're going to talk about today. And if I'm being honest with you, I could have really used this podcast episode five years ago because I was so focused on getting my work out and thinking even just through, like, more of the copy editing and the proofreading side of things and making it professional there. But the developmental, like, how my story works and how my story flows together was not something that I prioritized the most or even knew how to think about in the revisions process. And I didn't really learn to love editing or to love revising. And I think because of that, I didn't really put in the effort to turn a first draft into a polished final draft as much as I should have. And it's true that some writers write really clean first drafts, but for me, like when I was first getting started, that was anything but true. I think as I continue writing got to eventually 12, 13 fiction novels written, it was like, okay, I'm a bit better at this now. But the tough part is that I still could have used my own form of developmental editing and being more of that for myself. Because as I've talked about before, my read through rate wasn't super high. It could have been a lot higher. And read through rate for those who don't know is how many people buy book one and then go on to buy book two and read future books. So I knew there was an issue. And anyways, this podcast we dive into how you can solve it for yourself in a way that's cost effective because you can use your own time rather than paying for someone else's expertise over and over again. Mind you, no one's saying that you shouldn't use developmental editor. We're just saying that multiple rounds of development editing might not be affordable so you can do this instead. Of course we love our editors. They're super, super important. And in fact, Stacy herself is an editor who's coming on to speak with us today. With all this said, I'm going to share something exciting at the end of this podcast. It's a fun little update on a project going on behind the scenes that's called Reader Meter. So I'll come back to that in the end. But for now, let's hop in this interview with Stacy. Stacy, I am so excited to have you on the pod today and I want to learn about how you've come to being able to help writers with editing and organizing their books and all the things you do. But I actually can't resist just diving in straight up with a question because I have a lot of issues organizing my books. I don't even want to get into it. It stresses me out. Especially like when we think about files for different retailers, different drafts. It's all a mess. It literally is such a mess. Where I mentioned this before we started recording, but I literally can't find my 12. Like my books like are on Amazon. I don't know where they are on my computer if that makes sense. Oh no, it's kind I'm like that bad. But I don't think I'm alone. I think a lot of us are just have all of our ideas and it's kind of chaos. So for someone like me who's like doing a lot of chaos clearly needs some organization. Where do I start? Because the idea of organizing feels good to me, but it also feels very overwhelming just in general. Like I guess you can get the picture put you in my head. It's just chaos all around. All parts of the process Yeah, I.

Think writers are just so creative that the organizing and that's not as much fun and writing. Yeah. So when I created this background for my computer, which I now sell it, it's called the Writer's Digital Desktop Organize Organizer Kit. And it's like a, it's divided, it's like wallpaper, but it's divided into different categories. So you can have a personal section for your books, you can have like for the writing and then you can have a section for marketing and promotion. And then you can have a section for like your software, things like that. So then you know how the icons on your home screen on your, when you turn on your computer, like the background, the icons might be all over the place.

Yeah.

So you drag them, not drag them, but like the way it's set up is that you can put them into the appropriate column. So for. So right there, that's one thing you can do. And you can make these yourself. Also in Canva, if you look up like digital, like wallpaper organizers also.

That'S like brilliant. It's simple. But I really like that because yeah, my, if you look at my. Literally if you look at my desktop homepage right now, it's a high key kind of a hot mess.

Yeah. But now it, it doesn't help if you still have folders all over the place and you never put them in the appropriate category. So you have to maintain it. And then yeah, that I really recommend having like subfolders. So you might have a main folder like for your books. And then within that folder you have a subfolder for like book one, book two, book three, book four. So that all your files relating to that booker in that subfolder. And then you might even break it down even further, you might have in that, what's the name of one of your books?

Control Freak.

Okay, so you can have like, you have a folder for Control Freak. And then within that you might have like your ebook versions. You could just call it like a subleter called ebook versions. And then you'd have like your Kindle and all your different versions in there. Then you might have one on control free graphics and you have like ebook cover. And if you have a print book and ebooks, you could have the covers there. And then you might have a subfolder for marketing where you have like press releases and marketing graphics. Put all your marketing graphics like in one subfolder. So that way whenever you click on that Control Freak, you'll find everything. You'll find your manuscript, you'll find Your covers, your marketing and copy. And then obviously if you're not that. If it's not published yet, you can just. You just have one folder. Keep it simple. One folder dedicated to your book. And I like writing it. I know I've had some of my clients have one. Have written their books. Like, each chapter is a separate folder. But I think that's complicated. I prefer to do it just in one file, like one word file, so that all your chapters are in one file. But you might have an older version and then you rewrite it. So you might want to keep like your older version just for reference. But then. So you make a copy of it and then you do your edits and another version sees if you have that all, just mark clearly so you know where everything is. And Google Drive is another thing. If you work on Google Drive, that can be a hot mess. Also trying to find things there.

I feel like Google Drive search is not very good, which is funny.

Yeah. But it's again, the same thing where you try to have. I have it split up. Like, I have projects. I have a projects folder for, like, projects I'm working on. And then you click on that and. And I might have 10 different folders within that for different projects. And then each of those projects, like, if you go down even further, like, if I'm working on creating a course, I'd have. I'd have a working title for the course. That would be the name of the folder. Then you open it, and then there'd be subfolders. So that would be like, there'd be a subfolder on lessons and, like, subfolder on the module graphics for the thumbnails, and then a subfolder on emails, like onboarding emails for my students, and then a subfolder for, like, promotional emails and promotional graphics. So that it's. You have to create all these subfolders. But the plus side is that you know where everything is. So I think that's the easiest way of like, avoiding the files scattered everywhere is just really work on that one master folder and then subfolder, subfolder, sub folder.

Okay. Yeah, no, that makes sense. With file organization, I'm. I'm with you and I. That's like a very helpful framework for people to get started. And I think. Yeah, it sounds like if you're like me, I try and do regular cleanup, but I get behind a lot. Like you. You probably want to make it like a schedule. Because I know for me how it ends up happening is like, I end up creating a lot of things. I'm not keeping up with organizing. It's almost like cleaning your house and then you get behind in it. You're like, oh, I need some computer cleaning. So have you found, like, there's a. Is it like weekly monthly schedule or do you think. Nope, don't do that. Stay up to date with it constantly. I don't know if you have any advice in terms of. Feels like there's a computer cleaning schedule here.

I think whatever works best for you. Like, for example, right now I'm working on a bunch of different projects on like, deadlines. So even though I have that desktop organizer, I've been downloading all these photos, images from Canva and then downloading stuff from Google Drive, and I don't want to stop what I'm doing to go organize it. So right now I do have a bunch of stuff just that has to be either deleted or moved into a folder. Yeah. So I don't want that to get out of control. So probably like, for me, like once a week I just go clean it up before it gets, like, too overwhelming. But during a slower week where I'm not working on all these huge projects where it might be like just working on one project and I don't. I'm not downloading as much crazy downloading frenzy, then I might, you know, do it as I go. It's a lot easier than if you're just working on one thing where you can just you download something and then put it where it goes. So I think it depends what you're working on. For now, I'm just like, I'm just juggling a bunch of projects at once and I just trying to get them all under a deadline. I'm trying to get them all on my email scheduled, on my social media post scheduled. So I'm more concerned with that. But once it's all caught up, then I gotta clean up this mess.

Yeah, no, that makes. Makes so much sense. Okay. No. Amazing. So then let's back up a little bit. Obviously before you wrote all these books and you started on page one at a time, and I know even before you started at page one writing fiction, you were journalists for a very long time. So I'm curious, like, what kind of your arc was from journalist to then diving into writing? And what kind of was the eminence for you, really diving deep into learning about editing? Because what's funny is I love that you know so much about editing, and I can't wait to talk all about editing. But it's also something I really don't like, which I think is part of why I, like, I need to learn it more, but also part of why I'm like, oh, wow. A writer who, like, dove deep into editing. That's not for me. All the other parts of the process are where I get excited about. So I. I again, I love, love that you're doing this, but I'd love to have you walk me through, like, how did you go from journalist to writing fiction to then now being, like, an amazing fiction editor?

I've been writing my whole life. So I wrote my first story in, like, third grade. And I wrote a novel in high school called Face Off, a young adult hockey novel. And I entered it in a competition for teenage writers sponsored by Avon Books. And I found out I'd won when I was a freshman in college. So I won a publishing contract. So that was my first introduction to working with an editor. And he was very overwhelming, but he sent me long editorial letters of all the things they wanted me to change. And I was doing the rewrites, like, in my dorm room and had a few, like, fearful moments. Oh, my gosh, how am I gonna get out as a son? And then that book came out, and it was very successful. But I still had four years of college, basically. And I had the benefit of working with an editor on that book. But for all the other books I was working on that were in my drawer, I didn't. So I still had to learn by paying my dues like everyone else. I had a lot of rejections before I found an agent. And then I became a journalist, which is ironic because I used to have no interest in journalism. And I didn't like the idea of anyone telling me what to write. I wanted to write what I wanted to write. But then when I got out of college, I saw an ad for in my local paper looking for an editorial assistant. And I just felt really drawn to it. So I started out as an ovit writer and eventually became a reporter. I met my husband there. He was a sports writer. And I got an idea for my first mystery novel there. Because when I started, one of my responsibilities was looking through the microfilm, and I had to find interesting, uplifting anecdotes, like from 25 and 50 years ago today. There's this daily column, like, 25 years ago today on this date or 50 years ago today, and I came across an unsolved murder, which I wound up writing an article about it and interviewing the family. And then that just gave me the idea for Fiction Story had Nothing to do with that original article I wrote or anything, but it gave me the idea for a novel about what if there was like a editorial assistant who one of her responsibilities was doing the 25 years ago today column, and then she came across this unsolved murder and what if she was driven to solve it because she had some, like, demons in her own past? And so that Inspired my book 25 years ago today, which I had published with a mystery publisher. And then that was just followed by another mystery novel, Sink or Swim, and young adult novel. I brought back Face off, which had been out of print, and I brought that back as an ebook, print book and audiobook, and then took a sequel, this unpublished sequel, out of my jar, totally rewrote it, and then published that 25 years after the original. Those are actually my two best selling books because geared toward hockey fans and so not a ton of fiction out there for young adult hockey fans. Sports novels. And then I wrote a couple of chick lit books set at a theme park because I love theme parks. So I kind of write whatever this inspired me. I actually recommend, like writing a series and my clients are writing in like one genre, but I didn't follow that. I just always wrote when I was drawn to writing. And then I'd always done freelance. Right after I had my kids, my daughters, I'd always. I wasn't working full time anymore, so I did a lot of freelance writing. And by this time I had several books published and I decided to try editing to see if I liked it. And I found that I was really good at it. And it got a lot of positive back from the writers I work with. And I really enjoyed working with them. But there's like a limit to how much, how many clients I could take on because I really put everything I have into it during developmental editing and line editing. So there's only so much, so many clients I could take on, like in a month without burning out.

Yeah, especially developmental editing.

Yeah, it's very intense. And the other thing was I was seeing patterns in my clients where they were all making the same mistakes. And I was. Even though I would definitely personalize every letter to their story, there were parts of their editorial letters I was copying and pasting from a master file because they were having problems with things like show, don't tell or using passive words and that kind of thing. So editing is expensive. And like, I started out with really low rates because I was new and had to build up testimonials. But over time I realized, wow, it's really intense and takes a lot of. It takes a lot of my time. So I had to increase my rates to what the standard rates are. And a lot of writers don't know that one round of editing could cost you like $1,400. And they often think, oh, one round of editing, then I'll be ready to take the next step, publish it or submit it to agents. But most of my clients need multiple rounds. And I'd say all of my clients would need multiple rounds of editing. And the beginners might ideally could use like six, seven, eight rounds. And then some of the more advanced writers who have been published and work with editors before, maybe two to three rounds. And then that's just like developmental editing. I can do more line combined development on line editing, but if there's like a beginner writer who they're going to have to do a ton of rewrites, it doesn't make sense for me to do a lot of line editing. I'll use them as examples. This is how you make a sentence more active, and this is how you vary your word choice or that kind of thing. But it really can't do a lot of line editing until the structure is solid.

Yeah.

So they just don't change, don't edit the line. Yeah, yeah. A lot of writers just don't realize how many rounds it takes. And then a lot of them also will need to hire a copy editor after. If it's somebody who's really good at grammar and punctuation. I'll do some light copy editing. And between the two of us, they might not. As long as I proofread it and have somebody approve read it, they might not need to hire a copy editor. But the majority of writers probably do need to hire a copy editor because I see a lot of punctuation and mistakes like that. And I recommend software. There is software to help with that, like grammar layer providing aid. But that's not going to catch everything by a long shot. So if you, if that's something you have trouble with, that's like a weakness. Or you need to hire somebody to make sure that book you work so hard on, it's professional enough without mistakes. And so this can cost a lot. And then if you're self publishing, there's cover design formatting, and everybody needs a website and to pay for that. So. Yeah. So I created courses as a way to help authors understand, like just learn those skills and as a stepping stone to hire an editor, especially my course book editing blueprint. That's. That's Very detailed course where I go through. I tell you like exactly how I would edit and I'll tell you everything I'll be looking at. I even have like spreadsheets and 26 page checklists of everything you should be looking at. And I give an overview of what all these things mean. And so the goal is to just lead you through making those, doing those early drafts yourself so that when you finally feel like you've taken as far as you can, then the next step is hire an editor, get them replaced. Hiring an editor. But hopefully you can replace some of those early rounds.

Yeah.

Showing you all the things that are in the class like show, don't tell and passive words. And I can't really edit a book that there's a difference between teaching someone how to write a book and actually editing the book. And I spend a lot of time teaching people writing techniques. I mean that's, it's just more affordable if you can like learn that in the course rather than work one on one with private writing. Writing code.

Yeah, no, that's so interesting because like you're basically is like editing. Learning how to think like an editor is a gateway to learning how to be a good writer. Because if there's less edits that need to be made, obviously that means it's a story that is shaped and is formed better. Now when going from let's say like a first edition of a story to that second edition, like that second round edit where you might, ideally you are just doing one edit on developmental and you're ready for a copy edit or a proofreading, obviously many times more rounds are needed. But if someone was going to like self edit their round and be like, okay, I'm going to look at my own story and I'm going to try and put my own little developmental editor hat on. And maybe I'll go do around from doll until editor later. But let me try first. Going through these revisions myself, what questions should I ask myself as an author? Because I know for me, first of all, there's always that feeling when you first finish a book of just wow, I did it right. Excitement and celebration, which you should enjoy. And maybe you put it away for a little bit, which is what I tend to do. I don't like jump into editing and any sort of revisions immediately. But we all pick up our book and we start reading it and I oftentimes find that I just, there's so much emotion tied to this process, tied to my story. And it's really hard to distance myself from that and ask the right questions. So I'm curious what your advice is on that front.

First, you want to really focus on the main structure. Is it a solid structure? I actually suggest writing your blurb first or writing your blurb either as you're writing the book or before you're writing the book, or definitely by the time you're in the editing stage. Because I see a lot of blurbs from clients that don't match the book necessarily. And the blurb has to really have the main essence of who's it about or what's the journey, and what are the main obstacles or conflict. So a lot of times I'll see blurbs where if they're just so vague, and then I go back and I look at the story, and it's missing. A lot of. It's missing. Like, it's more episodic rather than building in momentum to pivotal plot points. And that's why they had trouble writing the blur, because there wasn't really much pivotal events to write about. Or I might see it where it's just really long and there's all these characters, and then I go look at the book, and it's just on focus. We need. We can have all these supporting characters, but whose story is it and what's the like? Sometimes the subplots tend to take over, and it's great to have subplots, but you need to have that master storyline that's driving the book. Even with nonfiction, like I've worked with some memoir clients, it's the same kind of thing where they're not sure that who they're writing it for in the structure of the book is just. It doesn't really have an underlying theme. It's just, this happened and this happened. And so when they go to write the blurb, it's vague or it's just not focused enough. So I think that's one important thing to do, is write the blurb. And if you're having trouble, really narrow look at some really good blurbs. And if you're having trouble writing a blurb, go look at your story. What is it? Are you. Is it. Are you missing, like, these plot points? Are you missing who's your main character and what's their motivation? And. But so what is the story about? So that's the first thing is you want to get all that structure in place if it's fiction, like your character arc, and what happens, the beginning, the middle, the end. And then once you've nailed that down, then you can fill in, like, the rest of it like the dialogue or the description. And make sure every scene has like a setting. So that's why for my course it's like a 26 page checklist. Or I also have a Google Doc where a Google sheet where it's like this one. You can go down the checklist and there's one screen that one tab that's like characters and another. Another tab that's like dialogue. So just so you can go through and look at all the different things relating to characters or dialogue or setting or show don't tell. That an editor would be looking at. And I recommend just doing it it in the beginning. You can do a big. You might have to do like a big rewrite just to get the kids. The structure is the essence of the bulk of the book. But that's not your only rewrite. Then you've got to go and just look at all these other things. Make sure you're going through it and looking at your dialogue and your setting and your description and then that you could go from the big to the small things and then you can do like the line editing and your word choice. Are you using like enough variety in your words and is it more active and passive and getting all the way down to the copy editing? A lot of clients I've worked with don't do a spell check before they send it to an editor. And I definitely recommend doing a spell check because sometimes some editors might charge by the hour and then it's harder to. They might want to clean it up a bit or sometimes it's harder to read. And then for the authors that have trouble with punctuation, I've seen it with no punctuation. That's hard. As the editor, it's hard to read it because no punctuation's different. Yeah, very little. Or there's no punctuation with the dialogue. So you should. You don't have to be an expert at it. When you hire a developmental editor, it's not. They're not a copy editor. They're looking at the developmental stuff or the lighting stuff. So it doesn't have to be perfect, but you should at least run a spell check. And you should know the mechanics of punctuating dialogue. Should try to learn that. And there's software that can help you run some scans just to clean it off. And again it's not going to clean up everything but just to get it so it's more readable for the editor. Yeah. So this is a lot of. There's a lot of things you can do yourself before you hire someone. And if you have an unlimited budget, then maybe you do want to just turn it over somebody like, okay, it's me, your problem now. Let me. I'm going to take a little break from it while you give me your input. But the majority of writers, it's something they're doing on the side. They don't have an unlimited budget to spend on editors. So it makes sense to learn as much as you can on your own, to do as much as you can on your own, to make the manuscript as professional as you can. Without, again, you still need an editor. So it doesn't have to be perfect, but just to take it much further along than you could have if you didn't have all this training and then hire the editor. And then they can. Should be able to do more actual editing rather than just saying, okay, you have a habit of you're using all the same words on every page. And this is all told very passively. You don't have a main point. We're not getting any point of view, characters head, that kind of thing. And those. I think the effect can affect, like, every page of the manuscript. So if you can learn how to really learn how to hone your technique, then the editor can spend more time editing. Like this scene. You could. We could get in the character's head more. This is awkward here. Or maybe, like, just. You could use some more conflict in this scene where they can actually comment more in your book rather than the general things. Like, it's all written passively. Or there's no it. There's no climax.

Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. It's kind of you. If you're using kind of a rough analogy. But it's. Running is a good example. If you're gonna run a race and you're starting and you can run, let's say, like at a slower, medium speed. There's nothing wrong with that. Going and training. Even if you train with someone amazing, they're gonna get you up another level. But it's gonna take a lot of training to. Or maybe in this analogy, many rounds of editing to get to a point where you maybe could win the race. But if you start at a little bit of a better level before you maybe start really training with a group of people or getting a coach or something like that, then you would do better. It's one of those things that you can't just. There's levels to it. And it makes sense that someone can help you get to the next level, but they can't help you ascend from having a very rough manuscript to something that is a Pulitzer Prize winning type of quality in terms of his prose or something. That's Stephen King. That's not going to happen overnight. Now, my one question, all this is, where in your view like is from? Like the editor's view and your own process and process. You work with clients where it is beta editing, beta reading. Excuse me, fit into this beta and alpha reading, because obviously you read it yourself. I want to get feedback from professional. But yeah, where does feedback from readers come in? And then is there ways that we're able to, like, ask readers specific questions that can help them give us more constructive feedback? Because obviously we don't necessarily want beta readers proofreading and they're not necessarily developmental editors. But yeah, I'd love to get a picture of, like, how they fit into this process.

Yeah, I actually had a, like, discussion on that with a couple of my editing clients. We did, like, a bonus video for a book editing blueprint course on, like, how dealing with rewrites and everything. And one of the things that came up was, what do you think of working with beta readers? One of the things that came up was be careful. First, I'll preface it by saying I've had, like, over the years, I've had some great critique partners, like other writers where we would exchange manuscripts or we might like, exchange, like every month. We might kind each other a couple chapters. You kind of have to agree on what you want to do. Do you want to send it your whole manuscript when it's ready, or do you want to send each other something every week or every month? So I found that really helpful. And it's really helpful if it's somebody that's in that genre. Like, if you're writing a mystery novel and your critique write, critique partner, like, writes like literary fiction or science fiction, they might not be the best part. They're like, critique partners. You know, it's not that they could give you some general feedback, but if they start commenting on think there should be a dead body early in the book and they're saying, oh, it should be much later or something, you might not want to listen to that because they're not an expert in that. And the same thing with, like, romance. Like, romance has all these different tropes. And if somebody who's just not a romance reader might think it's like a cliche. And of course you want to put your own spin on it. But readers expect, like, a happy ending. So that's the first Thing is, it can be helpful, but you want to make sure you're. That the readers are in your genre, understand your genre, and then realize that it's subjective. Also, you could have five readers and they all say different things. And which one do you listen to that they're just like. Like a sampling. First of all, are they in your target audience? Are your target demographic? If a few of them saying the same thing or all of them saying, I'm just your hero, I just don't like him. Okay, then that could be valuable feedback because they're more than one person saying that. And you can ask more questions like, what don't you like about him? And that could be useful if one person loves the hero and then another one hates them and the other one like, oh, I don't know, he's okay, but then maybe you want to leave it alone. Then you can also, like, hire beta readers. And I think you may as well just hire an editor, because beta readers sometimes, like, they don't really have the training that an editor does or just the experience, or more like a reader who really loves to read, but they're thinking more in terms of a reader than an editor who's really going to. An editor might. A beta reader might be able to say, yeah, I don't like this or this or when he said this. But an editor, it should be able to help you, give you ideas on how to fix it, like what to do about it, where a beta reader might not have that knowledge of what to do about it. And then I. One of the things that came up in that discussion was like, beta readers, like some like, sites where you can like, pay for like beta reader, like you like the site will you pay like a certain amount of money and then the site will distribute your manuscript to a bunch of beta readers who are really just readers that like reading books and giving feedback on them. One of the issues that came up was a lot of these beta readers don't wind up reading the book. You're spending all spending money. And you might. You might spend like $300 and you get three or four people that will actually give you feedback. And then sometimes the feedback is just doesn't really not that helpful. They've just found that the feedback just really wasn't that helpful or they were nitpicking on these little things. But that wasn't really what they were looking for. They were looking more for. They weren't looking for like this. You have some typos they're looking for. Yeah, it's not a final draft, it's not a final manuscript. I know there's probably some typos. I'm looking for this. What did you think of the characters and the, the plot? And so they just found it wasn't that helpful. So I. My advice is just if you're. If people that you want that certainly you could let them beta read it but take their feedback with a grain of salt, see how much they know about their genre. Probably don't want to spend a lot of money on beta readers because on some they say they're just not that reliable. Years ago, like 2010 when ebooks were first coming out, it was easier to get beta readers. Like on the like you do a giveaway on could read sort of library thing and there weren't all free books everywhere. So a lot. So even then not everybody would do it but you'd get like a good amount that would for them for that wasn't so much beta reading but it was like giving reviews, giving some preliminary yeah art supposed to Amazon and stuff like that. But now there's just so many free books out there like on Kindle and everything that these beta readers, they're just overwhelmed. And yeah they sign up for everything like oh yeah, I'll read that. And then a lot of them just.

Don'T follow best, best of intentions but not always the great follow through. Yeah, okay. No, that's spectacular. And then another slightly selfish question, but I know I'm not the only one who's had this problem. I think this is my 10th book and I finally started I think getting a. Hang on. Okay. Covers and blurbs that would sell and understanding kind of the tropes. I was writing in post apocalyptic survival fiction. And I was able to start to get my book selling maybe around 6 or 7,000 in the store on Amazon. I was in KU and I was very happy with that. I was like, wow. I'm like I'm making it happen. And unfortunately, and it was became obvious to me after months of hoping my read through rate was really low. I was getting like well under 50% roughly the exact number I did the math recently was right around 32% of people who bought book one or read through book one in KU we're moving on and that tends to be low for kind of a benchmark for folks you typically want to be above 50% at least if you're pricing your book at what's quote unquote full price. I was priced at 3.99, which most consider full price. So clearly There was like this big issue in my story. There's something happening, right? And what I did in that moment was felt very defeated, felt like I'm clearly not a good writer. And I gave up on it, seriously. And I got burnt out from the series. I was on book three. I didn't feel any motivation to keep going. It was a really tough moment for me. Now, if I could go back and say something to me, I would say something else. I'd say, don't get burned out and stop going. But what would you say in terms of what to do next? How do you maybe revive a series is the wrong word. But how do you come out with another edition which is clearly going to involve a round of editing? How would you approach it?

I've heard they. I've heard that a series usually doesn't sort of take off till around book four. So I know some writers that will just focus on just writing. They try to ignore the sales numbers and they either. Either they'll release them all at once. They'll just wait and release them like one after another every few months. Or if they want to publish them, like, as they write them, they'll just publish them and do like a launch and everything. But they don't worry too much about the numbers until they. Several books in this series. And then they'll start focusing on spending money on ads to try to. Because you can make more money. Obviously, if somebody buys like the first book you have, you might have a sale on the first book and then maybe even lower the price a little bit on the second book. And so that when you're doing all this advertising, hopefully they'll just be like, oh, I'll just buy the whole series or I'll by the first few. So that's one strategy is just not worrying about it too much until you have four or five books in that series. And just really. Then you just focus on ads and even like Amazon ads. I run Amazon ads, like AMS ads, like for my hockey books, because they're very like niche books and they do well on that. But like for my chick lit and mystery, I don't really do that because I find that this is so competitive. You have to bid like higher on keywords and everything. But if you had like a series of several books than that, because a lot of people will buy. They'll buy my first book, they'll see an ad, and then they'll buy the second book. So I imagine if you have a series with five or six books, if you. If you can it makes the ads more worthwhile in a competitive category like that. Because when they see the ad like the first book, then they're like, oh, is this like a series? So they might buying more of them. So it's like you can do more of that once you have several books. But another thing I would say just like sometimes people like on KU because they just download everything or they download books that in genres they don't even like or they might have seen it somewhere and so the readers who aren't finishing it or are buying the next one, they might not be your target demographic. They could just be like KU readers who are just like, oh, that sounds interesting, I'll try that. But maybe that's. They've never read a book in that genre before or they got distracted by something else that might not necessarily be your book, that there's something wrong with it. It could just be like the reader. And that's a lot an issue too with a lot of like with the free days, like with K, like when you can have like free days free people will download anything for free and then they'll forget they downloaded it and then they'll put like a negative review of something like. And I hate science fiction. I didn't know this was science. I thought this was like a. I thought this was just like a suspense novel. It's a science fiction if you read the blurb and you would know. And then if you have like the 99 cent sales people will just buy things and they might not be your target audience. So they're not going to respond in the same way. So you just have to decide are you in it for the. In it for the long haul rear where you want to write more books in the series and wait it out and then see how it goes. Which is a risk too. You don't know if you can put all that work into it and you don't know if it's going to take off or was that like this was a lot of work? I don't know if I want to do anymore. Either option is fine. But yeah, so I think it would just say don't take it too personally. It's just to be back then if that I think you have to pay to play for when you have like a series that once you have those early books in it, it's the ad, the ads that can really help it take off. Especially you get like bookbub ads and you have a series and.

No, no, it totally makes sense. Totally makes sense. Okay. Yeah, this was great. Stacy, we covered a lot of ground and before we go, I want to make sure folks know where we can find you online and all the things you have in your shortcuts for writers World, I guess website. I'm calling it world. It's a world.

Yeah, yeah. So they can go to shortcuts for writers.com and then that also has a link to my books and the navigation but to my staceyjuba.com website. But if they're writers, I have a free, free five day lighting class. A free books and gazes guide number one overused word I see is look. Some authors like use it like 500 times. Like every page will have look. So that's like a preview of my energize your writing toolkit cheat sheets for character emotions, which is like a directory of like over 4000 non verbal cues and 21 different categories like anger and happiness boredom. So I have many courses like that. My AM transfer writing toolkit. I have one on called inside voices about writing internal dialogue. I have a $9 book blurbs made simple course. Then I have my organized author course which is my signature course on organization. Book editing blueprint is my, my big signature course on organization book editing blueprint. It's my, my big like writing and editing course. So I have something all different small and different price ranges and or depending on what you want to focus on. And I'm also into like holistic things. Also I have a vision board toolkit for writers, Oracle cards course for writers. Tap into your creativity.

Oh cool. I love that.

Yeah, if they go to my website there's like a free tab. They can click on that and get some of my freebies to get an introduction to my style. And then I have a free Facebook group. Also the shortcuts for writers Facebook group.

That's amazing. Okay, I will link that all in the show description. And yeah, Stacy, it was fantastic having you on and yeah, I hope you have an amazing rest of your day.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

All right, and that's it for this podcast episode. Super grateful for Stacy coming on and definitely feel free to check out shortcuts for writers. She's doing some great stuff over there. And I'm also going to be doing a blog, a guest blog on Stacy's newsletter and it will be never before seen. So if you're not subscribed to Stacy's newsletter, you'll be getting something special from me over there in the coming weeks. Now I promise something on this note, and I do have something on this note of being your own developmental editor, which is that I don't know about you, but for me, there's so much emotion tied up my work that it makes it really hard for me to actually evaluate my work in a way that's honestly, intellectually and honest to the story. Right? Because we want to make an amazing experience for readers. But there's so much about the story that we just hold close to our hearts. And that's again, we're working with outside professionals can be super helpful. But I never had the money to really afford this, especially multiple rounds of dating like that was never in my budget. So how can we supplement this? And I like to think of scouting. I'm going to be writing an article about this soon in the newsletter, but you're getting a preview of this year. So if you're familiar with Moneyball's really interesting movie, it's a great movie. It's about the Oakland Athletics and how they essentially had this analytics revolution inside of their scouting department. They basically used data to find baseball players that were undervalued. Essentially, they were not rated as highly as they should have been. They weren't being paid like they should have been, and they basically acquired them and got them onto the team for cheap, knowing that they actually were worth more than that. And then because of that, they were able to build this great team of like scrappy, underrated players that were actually able to win right, and win the championship. So what does that look like for writing? What is this similar evolution? I think we can use a lot of data to actually inform our own revision and our own craft. And it's data that we don't typically have. Specifically, what we want to understand is when do readers stop reading our book? At what page are they most engaged or least engaged? What is their binge rate? Like, how are they? How fast are they reading our stories? Which chapters they reading at a time? And this is where Reader Meter comes in. I talked about this project roughly six months ago when I quit my job at Mr. Beast to come back to the industry, and I'm excited to share some updates. That progress behind the scenes is going to pretty well. I'll be sharing some screenshots, I'm sure In the next 30 days or so, and I'm really targeting release before the end of this year. That should be doable. If you're not part of the waitlist yet, go to Reader Meter IO you could join. It's going to be available for a lifetime fee and essentially there's going to be two price points for the early people who join. So if you, like, join, I guess over the next, when I'm in beta, you'll be able to get lifetime access to the platform for just $99. And then the normal price is going to be $199. And think of it as like your ultimate beta reading tool. You upload your book and you can access readers both on the platform, but then you can also bring your own readers in, and we track exactly what they're reading in your story, what page they're stopping on, and enable you to essentially understand where your engagement is, where people are dropping off, and use that data to inform how you can make your story better. Now, here's the kicker. Data is not everything. And Moneyball taught us this because in the wake of Moneyball, all these organizations moved towards being heavy on data analytics. And there was this moment where people thought, is scouting going to die? Is discipline in baseball. But the truth is that scouts are more important than ever because there's more scouts than ever, which is wild. Like, the scouting is a bigger discipline in baseball now. And I think this is a similar analogy to how data is going to play a role in authorship. Data doesn't tell you the answer. Data just gives you a window into thinking differently about your story. And it's ultimately up to you, the creator, to be able to decide, okay, what do I know about the reader experience, about myself and about the genre? The data isn't telling me that I can then use along with this data to make a better story. So data is super powerful. You need both. But what's amazing is that Reader Meter is an empowering tool. It's not going to tell you how to write your book. It's just going to give you windows into how you can make it better. With that said, I hope you join the waitlist. It's ReaderMeeter IO. As y' all know, I've been working on many projects because essentially, for those who haven't kept super close pace, I quit my job, Mr. Beast back in February, came back to the industry and before that I had also worked on a company in the industry that many of leave it unnamed. But pretty big software platform that was built. So after graduating school and doing that, then did Mr. Beast, and then the last six months have been like, in this really fun phase where it started off where I was like, okay, like I'm going to do, you know, reader Meter and author Sidekick. And a second business evolved from that, which is Craterwood. And Craterwood's very serious and candidly Takes up more of my time. But secretly I had done most of the work before Creatorwood even was a thing. Like in the first three months, me being back in the industry to set up the foundations for Author Sidekick and Reader Meter. So now I'm at the stage where it's like Crater woods and I'm getting into a better place where I've kicked the foundations off there. It's not quite done, but the foundations. Obviously there's still a lot more work to be done, but I can start devoting some nights and weekends to pumping out everything I want to do to build out Author Sidekick and actually complete, I think the product experience, because once I get some things out, specifically Reader Meter and then the sort of reader's first course, which is probably going to be change the title, but at least that course, I feel like I will have completed my arc and the experience I want to create to really help authors. So once I do that, that's great. And I think that they'll obviously be maintenance and stuff, but for me, that's something really exciting. And then Craterwood now is like this much bigger thing that I'm working on as well. So it's been a great year for me. If anything, my vision has expanded and there's been way more opportunity. But I'm not leaving y' all hanging with Reader Meter. It's something that is a priority of mine and that it's been really cool to see over the last, really couple weeks, like actual progress made behind the scenes. So I've been very quiet about it, but quiet about it deliberately because I haven't wanted to set too many expectations. But getting to the point now where I feel comfortable in saying that Beta should come out before the end of this year, and I'm excited for it. With that said, everyone has an amazing rest of your day. Thank you so much for listening. If you like this podcast, please share it with friends. We passed 10,000 downloads recently, which is nuts. That's crazy. I want to hit 50,000 next. So let's go. Let's do it. And with all that said, hope you all have an amazing rest of your day. And as always, don't forget, together we are boundless.