Anna David, PARTY GIRL
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[0:41]And a David is the author of Party Girl, A Novel.
[0:43]Anna is the New York Times best-selling author of two novels and six nonfiction books.
[0:48]She's been published in The New York Times, Time, LA Times, Vanity Fair, Playboy, Vice Cosmo,
[0:53]the Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, and Salon, among many others.
[0:56]She's been written about in Forbes, Martha Stewart Living, Entrepreneur, Allure, and Women's Health.
[1:01]And has appeared repeatedly on today, The Talk, Good Morning America, and numerous other programs.
[1:06]She has been a featured speaker at three different TEDx events, and her company, Legacy Launchpad, Rights, and Publishers Books for Thought Leaders.
[1:13]Legacy Launchpad recently relaunched David's first book Party Girl, which is being developed into a movie by an Oscar-winning producing team.
[1:21]Welcome, Anna.
[1:22]Thank you so much for coming on Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Party Girl and your whole career.
[1:28]Thank you so-
[1:29]This is like bucket list level being on your show, and I am not just saying that.
[1:33]I'm so excited to be here.
[1:35]Oh.
[1:36]That's so nice.
[1:37]Well, now I'm worried I'm going to disappoint yours.
[1:39]It's impossible.
[1:40]It's impossible.
[1:41]Why don't we start by you telling listeners what Party Girl is about?
[1:47]So, Party Girl is a novel about a wild and crazy girl who gets a job documenting her wild and crazy life right when she gets sober.
[1:56]So, she has to create this persona based on who she used to be.
[2:01]And it came out in 2007 through HarperCollins.
[2:05]And then I got the rights back, and I re-released it in September of 2020.
[2:10]Myself.
[2:11]Wow.
[2:12]So, what propelled that?
[2:14]Oh, God.
[2:15]It's very complicated.
[2:16]I basically, I did six books traditionally.
[2:19]I was all about traditional publishing.
[2:21]I was a total snob about anybody who didn't do traditional.
[2:26]And then I just had my heart broken over and over again.
[2:30]For instance, Party Girl, the HarperCollins version is published under humorous science fiction on Amazon.
[2:37]Now, I have been called many things, but never been accused of being a science fiction writer.
[2:41]And it's like, I just Party Girl did come out right when Judith Regan was let go from Harper.
[2:48]And so, the whole division erupted and people talk in publishing about how they get orphaned when their editor leaves.
[2:56]I always say it's like I was orphaned and the orphanage was then burned to the ground because there was no one there.
[3:02]And I didn't understand what was happening.
[3:06]And then, so I had a very, there were all these high hopes they paid me a great advance.
[3:11]They were doing all of these things.
[3:13]And then suddenly there was nothing.
[3:15]And there was a lot of, there were a lot of offers for the movie rights, but that's a whole other thing.
[3:20]And then just nothing happened.
[3:22]And then suddenly in the last couple of years, quitlet is this whole thing.
[3:27]And people are being heralded for writing books about addiction and recovery.
[3:33]And I just sort of felt like I want to, I want my book to get the release.
[3:37]I always wanted it to get.
[3:39]And I'm very high standard.
[3:41]So I better do it myself.
[3:43]So how, well, now this is so, I mean, now as a publisher.
[3:46]I'm like super interested in this too.
[3:48]So it's just like keep going.
[3:50]What did you feel you could do, what did you do differently and better yourself?
[3:54]Well, I would say traditional publishing is a little slow to accept how things evolve.
[4:02]And not in the trenches every day, something changes about the best way to do it.
[4:09]And I'm so obsessed with it.
[4:11]I'm actively in there like what actually helps your searchability on Amazon.
[4:16]What is the most effective way to get in bookstores all of these things?
[4:20]And so, you know, I know you know the stories about people who are traditionally published and are very disappointed by what they feel is a lack of support.
[4:31]You know about, you know, that is something that is common among anyone I know who's not a massively best selling author.
[4:40]And most of us are not massively best selling authors.
[4:44]And my friend Jennifer Armstrong talks about it like she did have a book hit the New York Times list.
[4:50]And she's described it as, you know, the publishers like, oh, we're doing all of these things and we're doing it.
[4:55]And then this inner sanctum opens up when you actually hit the New York Times list.
[5:00]And you're like, okay, now I'm having the real meetings where they're really behind me.
[5:05]And it's not that publishers are terrible people or don't want to encourage people.
[5:10]It's a business and they've got to put their resources behind those things they know are hits.
[5:16]The problem is it's creative.
[5:18]So we all get our hopes up and think it's going to be different for us and we're going to get all that support.
[5:24]But, you know, publishers have limited resources, right?
[5:29]Yeah.
[5:30]So go back because I feel like we're lacking the context for all of this because you've written many books and done such cool stuff.
[5:37]So go back to the beginning for a minute.
[5:39]Like, where did you grow up?
[5:40]Like, where did we get here?
[5:42]Give me the whole background on you.
[5:45]We got here.
[5:46]So I'm from Marin County in Northern California.
[5:49]And I went to college and I majored in in literary writing.
[5:55]They called it.
[5:56]And I did it because I was kind of a scrub and it sounded really easy and there were no exams.
[6:01]But, but like, I also writing is all I ever knew how to do well or that's how I felt.
[6:09]And I loved writing fiction and I loved reading.
[6:15]And people kind of explained to me that there was no real career in this, but I didn't really listen.
[6:22]and, and back then this was the 90s.
[6:25]So magazines were, you know, you could absolutely make a great living writing for magazines.
[6:30]And so I just dove into that.
[6:33]And I worked at a bunch of magazines first in New York, then in San Francisco, then in LA.
[6:38]And they were entertainment magazines.
[6:40]It was people and premier and us weekly.
[6:44]And basically what happened is I literally, I was sitting in someone's office and he point, he pulled a book off his shelf and he said, so and so wrote this book a person I knew.
[6:55]And I thought this is so obnoxious.
[6:58]I'm smarter than her.
[6:59]So she can do this.
[7:01]I can do this.
[7:02]It had never really crossed my mind that my life would be any bigger than like doing right around pieces on JLo.
[7:08]Like that's what I thought I was going to do.
[7:11]And so I thought I could do this.
[7:13]And what happens to me is after this lifetime of being a party girl, I got sober and I got hired at premier magazine to do a column called party girl.
[7:24]And I was going to premieres and the Oscars and all of these things acting this part of this party girl.
[7:30]And so I thought that is a really funny, great concept for a novel.
[7:35]And I chose to do a novel and not memoir, which is a decision that part of me really regrets because when people talk about recovery quit lit all this stuff, it never really gets included because it doesn't seem like that.
[7:52]But my whole thing is with recovery memoirs, I love them when there are a complete screw up and then they get sober and they get really bored.
[8:01]And one of the great discoveries I made in recovery is how fun and funny it is.
[8:09]And I wanted a book that showed that that didn't make the recovery part boring.
[8:15]And so yeah, so I did that. And then I continued to get book deals with Harper.
[8:21]They sort of they felt badly that that I had gotten very neglected and my book had gotten very like it was it was released under this sort of fake imprint that that Harper made up.
[8:33]And then it's listed under something else I mean it's the total disaster. And so I just book after book I did four books with them.
[8:41]And in every time I would get my hopes up and I would be like I'm going to be the lead title.
[8:47]And I liken it to it's like you wrote and produced and starred in and directed a movie and you have the studio behind you.
[8:56]The movie comes out like no one's returning your calls and you're like, but I thought we were doing this to get you fun in this. And and that's sort of what it felt like over and over.
[9:07]So what were all the other books about.
[9:11]So I did another novel what happened is when my agent and I were going into meet with Regan books and the story of it's selling is kind of great because I have been working on it.
[9:21]I didn't have an agent and I was writing a lot for magazines and in this so I get this email from this guy and he's like I'm an agent.
[9:30]I think your writing is really funny.
[9:32]If you ever have a book you want to do.
[9:34]I hope you'll think of me.
[9:36]And I said, I have a book. I just finished it. This is so amazing.
[9:41]And he said great send it to me. I send it to him. He said I want to sign you and I'm going to be in LA.
[9:46]And so I'm literally going to go to lunch with this guy and I get an email from someone else that says I'm an agent in New York.
[9:53]I think your writing is really good.
[9:55]I hope you'll think of me if you have a book I write her back and I say that's so funny.
[9:59]I do.
[10:00]signing with an agent today, literally in an hour.
[10:03]And she said, okay, do me a favor, send me your book.
[10:07]And if I don't like it, you got no issue.
[10:10]If I like it, you need to give me a shot.
[10:12]So don't sign anything today.
[10:15]And so I go and I meet with this guy and I said he bought papers
[10:18]and I'm like, look, I'm not signing.
[10:21]And he was not, he was super weirded out about it.
[10:24]And he's like, I've already shown people your book
[10:25]what you shouldn't have done.
[10:26]And then she, Pilar is her name, caught me in the next day.
[10:29]And she's like, I can tell this.
[10:31]And so I went with her and it was just completely magical
[10:35]experience where she said to me, she was, she's so smart.
[10:38]She's now an agent at UTA.
[10:40]And she said, oh, you do.
[10:41]And she's amazing.
[10:42]Yeah.
[10:43]She is literally a queen.
[10:45]And she said, okay, she goes, I'm going to sell it at auction,
[10:49]which just means I'm going to send it out to everyone.
[10:52]And lie and say you're coming to New York in three days.
[10:56]So they have to read it right now.
[10:58]Or they'll miss the shot to meet with you.
[11:00]And if no one likes it, you don't have to come to New York
[11:02]if you do, you're buying a ticket.
[11:03]And they liked it.
[11:04]So I came to New York and we had meetings that week.
[11:07]Oh my gosh.
[11:08]So you sold it.
[11:09]So it ended up selling it auction.
[11:11]Yes.
[11:12]Well, okay, I'll tell you the reality is only two were
[11:16]interested in the end.
[11:18]And then one offer was so bad that we just,
[11:21]Regan was my first choice.
[11:23]Got it.
[11:23]So I was thrilled.
[11:25]Oh my gosh.
[11:27]Yeah.
[11:27]Wow.
[11:28]What a story.
[11:29]This is crazy.
[11:31]I know.
[11:32]And so like, I don't know.
[11:33]It's like this thing where, you know,
[11:35]I don't know if it's just like having an ego or whatever.
[11:38]But I'm like, oh yeah.
[11:39]This was meant to be.
[11:41]I'm going to have this Cinderella story.
[11:43]And then it's like the ball ended and midnight struck.
[11:48]So, you know, I'm so grateful I had that experience,
[11:51]but it really wasn't in the end what I wanted.
[11:55]But then part of girl came back out again during the pandemic.
[11:59]Yes.
[11:59]And what happened is there's been a lot of development in terms of the movie.
[12:04]And so basically I was starting to realize that I really think the movie is going to happen.
[12:10]And I wanted to own the rights rather than having it be complicated with Harper.
[12:14]And, and so I'm actually still at Inkwell.
[12:17]The agency I was that Pilar was at.
[12:20]And I'm with her mentor, her former mentor is now my agent.
[12:24]It's all very circuitous and great.
[12:27]But yes.
[12:27]So, and it's not like it's sold a million copies.
[12:32]But I got the cover I wanted.
[12:34]I got to launch it how I wanted.
[12:36]And I get to develop the movie.
[12:38]I wrote the screenplay.
[12:39]So, that's my gosh.
[12:41]That is so cool.
[12:42]So you already have what do you have for deduction company and all that?
[12:45]Like, well, you know, like Hollywood is its own monster.
[12:50]What we have, there's a lot of producers attached at this point.
[12:54]And we do have, what we have is the funding to make an offer to an actress.
[12:59]And then once we have an actress that they know can sell tickets overseas,
[13:03]we can go get the rest of the money.
[13:04]So that's where we're still looking at directors.
[13:08]But I'm so excited.
[13:10]It was, I don't love everything I write.
[13:12]And I love the book.
[13:14]And I love the script.
[13:16]Wait.
[13:16]So whatever happened to the person who wrote the book and you were like,
[13:20]I'm smarter than her.
[13:22]She's always kind of a step ahead of me.
[13:24]I haven't talked to her in a long, long time.
[13:26]But she's super successful.
[13:28]Yes.
[13:28]Oh, my goodness.
[13:30]Yes.
[13:30]I mean, and I'm really grateful to her for showing me, you know,
[13:34]I think a lot of us have that thing where it's like, who am I to think I could write a
[13:39]book?
[13:40]And I'm now always telling people, who are you not to?
[13:44]I didn't understand that I could kind of own that desire.
[13:48]It just sort of seemed like a dream for someone else.
[13:51]And that's why I encourage everyone.
[13:52]I think everyone's got a book in them.
[13:54]I don't think everyone should write the book themselves.
[13:56]But I think everyone's got a book in them.
[13:59]You think they should get ghostwriters?
[14:00]Depends.
[14:01]I, this is what I, you know, a writer to me is someone who writes every day.
[14:08]A lot of the day and has for many years.
[14:11]So what I tell people is if you don't do that, then somebody who does do that is going to do
[14:19]a better job than you.
[14:21]So it's really about do you want the experience of writing a book or do you want the best book
[14:26]you could have?
[14:27]And, you know, people land on different sides of that.
[14:31]Interesting.
[14:32]No, it's true.
[14:32]I mean, the more you practice anything, the better you'll get.
[14:37]Yes.
[14:37]But you can't, no matter how much you work, if you have no talent at writing, it will still be a
[14:44]challenge for you.
[14:46]It's true.
[14:47]But the best writers I know are the ones who do it the most.
[14:51]You know, I have a writing group that I started during the pandemic that's still going.
[14:55]It's called the Inner Circle.
[14:57]And they log on every day at 10 a.m.
[15:00]Pacific time to write one of my team members manages it.
[15:03]And when we started and I started to read their stuff, I was like, you know, it's good
[15:08]they have a dream a year later, a year later, they are really good.
[15:13]They're not getting taught.
[15:15]They're just doing it every day.
[15:18]And it's pretty amazing.
[15:20]Wow.
[15:20]That is amazing.
[15:21]And it's such a good reminder and lesson.
[15:24]Also, chances are the people who are writing every day enjoy it the most.
[15:28]I mean, maybe not.
[15:29]But like, if you find yourself writing every day for years, you probably don't mind it or
[15:36]you have nothing else that you can do at all.
[15:40]Yeah, I think it's really fun for some of us and really hellish for others.
[15:44]And so let's, I would assume, you know, it's not always that like what we're good at, right?
[15:49]We're also, we also love, but it can happen.
[15:54]But oh wait, I want to tell you to you about the movie thing.
[15:57]I have this new side thing.
[16:00]Okay.
[16:01]Is the Hollywood book directory and what I'm doing is I'm connecting indie authors with
[16:08]Hollywood producers.
[16:10]Okay, tell me everything about this.
[16:12]Okay.
[16:12]So, you know, basically, there have never been more TV shows that are being made from books ever.
[16:19]And so everybody wants IP and intellectual property, whatever it is.
[16:24]And so the problem is that they mostly are getting the same material that's like CAA is sending out
[16:32]some number one New York Times by selling book and they're all fighting for it.
[16:37]When books like The Martian and the new Andy Weir book are being adapted and made into huge
[16:43]hit movies, 50 shades of gray.
[16:45]And so I thought indie authors have no way of getting this stuff,
[16:52]you know, getting their material in front of the right people.
[16:55]And Hollywood people have no ability to find these indie authors.
[16:59]So since I know both, I've lived in LA since 1996, I figured I could connect them.
[17:05]So I've just created, it's very beta right now.
[17:09]But basically writers, the authors pay a monthly membership.
[17:14]And I have committee members, you know, sort of good Hollywood people with wonderful credits
[17:19]and all of the things who regularly look through it.
[17:23]And look at the material. If they want an introduction, I've got nothing to do.
[17:26]I've got no back-end or anything.
[17:28]It's just simply an introduction service.
[17:30]Wow, fun.
[17:31]It's really interesting.
[17:32]No, because a lot of producers have been asking me for things about the books.
[17:37]And I've actually had some of my things to options, some of the books that I've had on
[17:41]options because I might, anyway, maybe this is a conversation for another time.
[17:45]But anyway, but so I have this whole list because I was asking a bunch of the authors
[17:49]in my Facebook group for authors who have been on my podcast.
[17:52]Like, does anybody have, does anybody still have options available for your books
[17:56]that you'd want me to help with?
[17:57]So I've been like sending out this little packet of all these pitches,
[18:02]essentially, to a couple different places.
[18:03]And each, you know, place would take one and then say,
[18:06]OK, I'm good now. And I don't know. So I've been like kind of casually doing that.
[18:10]Again, no back-end for me either, just like I'm trying to match make, essentially.
[18:14]Exactly. Well, we should talk.
[18:16]We should talk.
[18:17]Yeah.
[18:18]I think, you know, what a gift to help both sides that really could use each other.
[18:23]Totally. And I totally agree with you too, then,
[18:26]some of the best books that make fabulous movies people overlook because they don't know the
[18:31]author or, you know, it didn't do that well or something.
[18:35]But it doesn't matter. Maybe it didn't do well because of timing. Maybe it didn't have the right
[18:38]cover. Maybe, I mean, there are like a million reasons why a book that should have done well
[18:42]didn't particularly do well. But that doesn't mean it makes any less of a good movie.
[18:46]So yeah.
[18:47]And very, you know, books are the most undemocratic publishing you still at like,
[18:52]it's like you either rise to the very top or no one's heard of it.
[18:56]If there's really, there's really not a, you know, so-called middle class in books.
[19:02]The middleist author has really disappeared. I think.
[19:06]Interesting.
[19:07]Did you know I started a publishing company called Divi Books?
[19:09]I did.
[19:10]Oh, I did.
[19:11]And it's part of the big five. It's a division of, no, no, no, I just did it.
[19:20]I'm doing, I just, we are an independent publishing company.
[19:23]So we get to do it however we want.
[19:26]So I basically took all the feedback of all the authors I've had like 950 authors on the show
[19:30]or something. And everybody was saying a lot of the same thing.
[19:33]Similar to some of the things you were saying that I felt like structurally,
[19:36]we're difficult for publishers to address because they're big companies, right?
[19:39]And getting bigger and bigger and aggregating.
[19:41]So finally, I was like, well, maybe I can do some thinking about this.
[19:45]So we have our own little publishing house. And I co-founded it with Lee Newman.
[19:49]And we're working with Anne Massetti from Viking and Anchor who actually found 50 Shades of
[19:54]Gray and launched that whole thing. And we've acquired 11 books. And yeah, it's
[20:00]really awesome and fun.
[20:02]How many are you planning to release a year?
[20:04]We want to do 12 a year, one a month.
[20:07]So we want to get readers like all the books
[20:10]they would need in a year.
[20:11]So we want to vary it up, like not have to.
[20:13]Like we want to have it be like here, read this.
[20:16]Not that we don't want people reading other books.
[20:17]Of course, we're going to read other publisher's books.
[20:19]And we love that.
[20:20]And I love all these other authors,
[20:21]just because I can't buy their books.
[20:23]They're still amazing.
[20:23]But for our list at least, we want a well-rounded year
[20:27]of reading, which is complicated.
[20:29]But anyway, that's what we're shooting for.
[20:31]So I know that you have Shishana.
[20:34]I can't remember the last name.
[20:35]Yes, yes, yes.
[20:36]Shana, Grace, yeah.
[20:37]Wasn't that your first acquisition?
[20:39]Yeah, one of them.
[20:40]And that's because I'm like, you should write a book.
[20:42]That's like my favorite thing to say.
[20:44]Well, and when you can follow it, let me publish it.
[20:47]It's their favorite thing to hear.
[20:50]Yeah, I have so.
[20:52]I can't say it very much.
[20:53]But yeah, because we're doing fiction and memoir.
[20:56]But anyway, it sounds like we have a lot of the same sort
[20:58]of thoughts and everything.
[20:59]And you're a big proponent of the indie bookstore.
[21:02]That is a big passion of yours.
[21:05]It is.
[21:06]How is 22 in 22 going?
[21:09]Are you getting great?
[21:10]Thank you for asking.
[21:12]I was supposed to be interviewing you.
[21:13]But yes, it's going great.
[21:15]It's actually had, it's yielding more benefits
[21:18]than I even envisioned when I started it.
[21:20]So I randomly had the idea to do this
[21:22]as I was on a team marketing call,
[21:24]it's like out walking the dog.
[21:25]And on the phone, like about to go to school pickup,
[21:28]I was like, hey, what if we did this?
[21:30]And now we have all these bookstores.
[21:32]We're like, we want to partner with you.
[21:34]And it's amazing.
[21:35]And then we give them social media slides and everything.
[21:38]And we're trying to find more ways to partner
[21:40]with the bookstores.
[21:41]And then all these readers are going out.
[21:43]And then they're posting about each one.
[21:46]And now I have just started a Facebook group
[21:49]for the people who are going most regularly.
[21:52]And now that's like the super active Facebook group.
[21:55]And I don't know.
[21:55]It's just very cool to see where this is going to go.
[21:57]I don't know.
[21:58]I'm just like throwing it out into the universe
[21:59]and seeing what happens.
[22:01]It's so good.
[22:02]And we're like, I guess he launched pad
[22:03]my company.
[22:04]Yes, tell me about that.
[22:05]Yes.
[22:06]Well, okay, I'm going to confess.
[22:07]I haven't been to an indie bookstore.
[22:09]And it was January.
[22:10]So I have to make up for you.
[22:12]But what I would like about it is it's so doable.
[22:16]It's not like one of those challenges
[22:18]where it's like if you have to fast for 10 days
[22:22]or something like that.
[22:23]It's like this will bring something delightful to your life.
[22:26]And everybody I think, no matter what city they're in,
[22:29]has a favorite indie bookstore.
[22:32]Minds book soup.
[22:34]I love books.
[22:35]I used to live like right there in West Hollywood.
[22:37]Oh, you did.
[22:38]In the day, yes.
[22:39]I was there after college for a couple of years.
[22:40]So yeah, that was my book story.
[22:42]I was like, walk there all the time.
[22:43]Oh, gosh.
[22:44]Yeah.
[22:45]I also love diesel.
[22:46]I'm not a West Side person.
[22:47]I don't think I've even ever been.
[22:50]But the last bookstore.
[22:51]Never been to the West Side of LA.
[22:53]No, I've never been to the diesel bookstore.
[22:55]Oh, I was like, oh my gosh.
[22:57]That's impressive for somebody who's lived in LA since the 90s.
[23:01]Barely.
[23:02]I mean, I definitely go to indie book stores a lot more often
[23:05]than I go to the West Side.
[23:06]But the last bookstore downtown is epic.
[23:10]That's an experience.
[23:11]Yes, yes.
[23:12]Wait, OK.
[23:13]Tell me more about Legacy Launchpad.
[23:15]So I started it in 2017.
[23:18]What, and so what happened is one of the,
[23:19]so I co-wrote, I ghost wrote a book for this actor.
[23:24]And we got a deal with Simon and Schuster.
[23:26]And that book became a New York Times by seller.
[23:28]And because of that, people kept coming to me
[23:31]and saying, well, you write my story, will you write my book?
[23:33]And it was a very challenging experience,
[23:36]mostly because of the person I was doing it for,
[23:39]not because ghost writing is an unpleasant activity.
[23:41]But it took it out of me.
[23:43]I was just like, you know what?
[23:45]No, I can't.
[23:46]And one person, a sports agent named Darren Prince,
[23:50]was just insistent.
[23:51]He just wouldn't go away.
[23:52]And he's like, I want you to do this.
[23:53]I want you to do this.
[23:55]And I kept saying no.
[23:56]And finally he said, could you edit it?
[23:59]And I'm like, OK, I could ask a friend to write it.
[24:03]And I'll edit it.
[24:03]He goes, as long as you're involved, I'm in.
[24:05]And so I hire somebody to write the book.
[24:08]I edit it.
[24:09]Darren says, I love it.
[24:10]Now you have to publish it.
[24:11]And as you know, piecing these pieces together,
[24:14]I was like, well, I don't know how to do that.
[24:17]And he said, that's OK, I'll pay you to learn.
[24:19]And so I learned.
[24:21]And we published his book.
[24:23]And it, so, and it became a hit, not in book sales.
[24:28]It was a hit for him.
[24:30]He got this like six figure spokesperson deal.
[24:32]He launched this massive speaking career.
[24:34]He optioned the rights to Lionsgate.
[24:36]And it just kind of went on and on.
[24:38]And he got on all the shows.
[24:40]And he's a really good networker.
[24:42]So that's a lot.
[24:44]And so I did that.
[24:45]And then this woman, Emily Lynn Paulson, came along
[24:48]and said, and wanted a book too.
[24:51]I hired the same person to write it.
[24:53]I edited it.
[24:54]And she did the same thing.
[24:56]And now she's like quoted in New York Times.
[24:58]They're both, they both wanted to be recovery advocates.
[25:00]And because I'm sober, you know, so long
[25:03]and have written all these books about recovery,
[25:05]a lot of those people come to me.
[25:07]And she did the same thing.
[25:08]She got this huge coaching business.
[25:10]She's on the Today Show.
[25:12]And I started, they taught me what a book could do for somebody.
[25:16]And I just thought, they're the ones with their life
[25:19]experience.
[25:20]Ghost writing isn't knocking them.
[25:22]It's saying, you don't really have time
[25:24]to learn how to do this and extract your life experience.
[25:27]So I've got professional writers.
[25:29]You write for the New York Times and do all these things.
[25:31]And they can interview you and write the book.
[25:33]And so now we've released about 25 books.
[25:36]And we have, you know, about 20 scheduled to come out.
[25:40]And we never advertise.
[25:42]We've never promoted.
[25:43]It's just been a constant word of mouth thing.
[25:46]I have a really small team where we don't
[25:48]work with everyone who contacts us.
[25:50]Because my thing too is, is it's an expensive.
[25:53]And it's an investment.
[25:55]And if you're not going to earn back, like 10 times,
[25:58]what you pay us, I don't think you're a good client for us.
[26:02]And you're never going to earn it through book sales.
[26:04]You're going to make like a couple thousand through book sales.
[26:06]But through your business that backs it up,
[26:09]it can be the best investment you make.
[26:12]That's amazing.
[26:13]So it's not perfection, of course.
[26:16]Even though, ironically, like Party Girl
[26:19]is the thing that got me on all these TV shows
[26:23]and got me TEDx talks and all of these things.
[26:25]But it's much harder.
[26:27]And it's much harder with a memoir to build a business on it.
[26:31]But Darren Prince and Emily Lynn Paulson both did it.
[26:34]So and plenty of our other clients now.
[26:37]That's so cool.
[26:37]So how many do you do here?
[26:39]That's a great question.
[26:40]It kind of depends.
[26:41]I just keep adding team members because I don't want to say no.
[26:45]We're doing about one and a half a month.
[26:49]So about 15.
[26:51]But it's really hard.
[26:54]And I know you get this to scale and keep quality.
[26:58]Like how do you do that?
[26:59]Yeah.
[27:00]So that's something we have competitors
[27:03]who are just real book factories and follow a formula
[27:07]and don't care that much about quality.
[27:09]And I do.
[27:11]So who are some of your main competitors?
[27:14]There's a company called Scribe out of Austin, Texas.
[27:18]And they're not really a competitor because they dwarf us.
[27:21]Like they are, they've released thousands of books.
[27:24]There are, every day I hear about somebody else
[27:28]or another company.
[27:29]And that just tells me I'm in a really good business
[27:32]that there are so many companies popping up that do this.
[27:35]That's amazing.
[27:36]I absolutely love this.
[27:37]So cool.
[27:38]Amazing.
[27:39]And your legacy lunchbed, your whole thing is like,
[27:41]give us 20 hours and look at your site.
[27:43]Give us 20 hours of your time.
[27:44]And we'll give you a book that's indistinguishable
[27:46]from a traditionally published
[27:47]and your time is bestseller.
[27:48]So how do you do that?
[27:51]Well, a lot of my team just like me comes
[27:54]from the traditional publishing world.
[27:57]And I just, I think, I use the best cover designers,
[28:02]the best editors, the best layout people.
[28:06]And it is indistinguishable.
[28:08]And the thing is, a lot of people will say
[28:12]that they want to sell a book traditionally
[28:14]because they want mainstream media
[28:16]and they want to get in bookstores.
[28:17]And I know that I really wanted to get on Good Morning America
[28:20]for all six of my traditionally published books
[28:23]and they weren't interested.
[28:24]And with the one I published myself,
[28:26]I went on and had a five minute segment.
[28:29]And nobody cares about the publisher.
[28:32]It's different.
[28:33]You're imprinted different because people
[28:35]know who you are and you're this book person.
[28:37]So of course it will be different.
[28:38]And it's not like it's the monolithic,
[28:42]you know, some division of Harvard cons that no one's heard of.
[28:46]It's, you know, I interviewed James Don,
[28:48]the CEO of Barnes and Noble last two weeks ago.
[28:51]And he said no one cares about who the publisher is.
[28:55]And Barnes and Noble used to be all paid for play.
[28:59]Like all the books were publishers paid for them.
[29:01]And now they are locally curated.
[29:04]The people in Nebraska who work there decide.
[29:07]And I've gotten my books in Barnes and Noble
[29:10]by just walking in and asking.
[29:12]And so I have a lot of my clients.
[29:13]It's, it whereas my traditionally published books
[29:16]are not there, you know, interesting.
[29:19]Changing tide.
[29:20]Well, this is like barely a podcast.
[29:21]I feel like we just like talk shop for like the whole time
[29:24]which I loved.
[29:24]So I hope people listening think this is fascinating
[29:27]as I do.
[29:28]But it's so cool.
[29:29]I mean, you're, I don't know, it's just very cool
[29:32]how you did this and how you came at it.
[29:34]And yeah, and the novel too,
[29:36]which we barely talked about was fabulous.
[29:38]And especially the like submitting bottom moment
[29:41]and, you know, ending up in the whole thing.
[29:43]Anyway, so thank you so much for coming on.
[29:45]I hope we continue this conversation.
[29:48]And me time.
[29:48]Thank you so much for having me.
[29:50]And yeah, if you want to talk about the bridging Hollywood
[29:53]and publishing, yeah, that would be cool thing.
[29:55]Yeah, I would love it.
[29:56]So yeah, this is truly an honor.
[29:58]So thank you.
[29:59]We're in LA a lot.
[30:00]All meet up. I would love it with Murphy. We have a virtual press. Yes. Okay. Thank you,
[30:05]Sammy. Thank you so much. Okay. Thank you. Bye. Bye.
[30:09]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't
[30:13]forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[30:18]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots
[30:23]of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound for
[30:27]the Sound Editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this
[30:31]fantastic intro and outro music.