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The official podcast from the team at BookFunnel, hosted by Jack Shilkaitis, Kelli Tanzi, and Emma Alisyn, featuring guest interviews, self-publishing industry discussions, and tips for using BookFunnel to build an author business.
Jack Shilkaitis (00:39)
Hey folks, welcome to the Book Funnel podcast where indie authors get real world advice on writing, publishing and growing a career on their own terms. Whether you're just starting out or you're deep into your author journey, we're here to help you build your readership, boost your book sales and connect with your audience. Each episode we aim to bring you insights from authors, experts and industry insiders who have been there, done that.
and then some. My name is Jack. I am our Lead Author Support Specialist here at Book Funnel, and I am joined today, as always, by my co-host, Kelly Tanze.
And our guest for this episode of the podcast, an author and industry expert, Mark Leslie Lefebvre. I said it right? I got it, excellent. ⁓ Good to have you here, sir. No, I'm sorry to make that the first thing that we lead off with, but I'm sure like we... Right, right. But glad to have you here.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (01:22)
You got it. Yeah, you got it, Jack.
It's okay, it's a common thing. ⁓
Jack Shilkaitis (01:36)
I like to start off the podcast with a story. And at this past Author Nation, you and I got the chance to chat, I should say. It was actually at Reader Nation, which is the Friday of that whole week. We were at Reader Nation. Kelly was there too, and Kat was there. Emma was there with us, if I'm not mistaken. And Kat and I, went, you know.
browsing and walking around, we stopped by your booth and chatted with you for I think like 40 minutes or something. But it was a great conversation. And I knew like, okay, we got to have Mark on the podcast because there's just so much we have to talk about. And we're going to talk about a lot today. We're going to talk about going wide, some strategies with that. Some of the things that you like to talk about, patience and persistence in this industry, because it really is.
kind of a marathon and not a sprint. So this is gonna be, I think, very densely packed with lots of good information. So I'm glad we have you on.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (02:32)
Lots of syllables just like in my last name just packed in there.
Kelli Tanzi (02:35)
You
Jack Shilkaitis (02:36)
Yes. So let's kind of let's let's just approach this the subject here for publishing aggressively wide. And specifically this the word the key word there that I'm interested in is the aggressively part because you hear people talk a lot about going wide as an option and it's usually like weighing that against obviously Kindle Unlimited and know KDP Select but the aggressively part.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (02:51)
Yeah.
So yeah, I mean, it's
that old wide versus exclusive to Amazon. And I think that's such a limited conversation because it only thinks about one format and it only thinks about one kind of publishing. I've been in the industry. I mean, I got my first rejection as a writer 42 years ago. got my first short story published in 1992 after years of rejections.
Jack Shilkaitis (03:04)
Yeah.
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (03:23)
My first
book didn't come out until 2004 and it was self published. This was, know, about 10 years before all the, all the cool kids started doing it. And in that era, a typewriter era, by the way, when I was first submitting my stories, there wasn't a lot of choices and options for authors. We have way more choices and options than just Amazon versus the rest of the ebook retailers. And I
Jack Shilkaitis (03:31)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (03:48)
call it aggressively wide because I don't just think about the ebook. I think about the print book and the audiobook and in the various ways we can interact with with readers that we've never been able to before with direct selling book funnel, of course, makes that so much easier than ever before. Not just, you know, giving away that that lead magnet for your newsletter, but all the great ways I can sell ebooks and audiobooks thanks to book funnel. But the other thing is being open to
Jack Shilkaitis (03:57)
you
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (04:14)
the traditional publishing world as well as an author who is both traditionally published and self published. I've recently signed contracts with publishers. I just sold a short story a few weeks ago, just turned in a traditionally published manuscript to a publisher in December. Actually about an hour before we started this recording, I just submitted another short story to a traditional market ⁓ for publishing. And I know for a fact that I'm probably making twice as much money
Jack Shilkaitis (04:17)
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (04:43)
as an author as I would if I were only doing self-publishing or only doing traditional publishing. So for me, that wide, you know, exclusivity on ebooks versus, you know, other retailers is such a small conversation. And that's why I say aggressively wide, because I really think as authors, it's so important that we remember we're the ones in charge.
Jack Shilkaitis (04:49)
Right.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (05:05)
You know, oftentimes in the old traditional publishing world, you would have the authors, it would be like a scene out of Oliver Twist, where they'd be authors clutching their manuscript and it's, please, sir, could you read my manuscript? You know, that sort of pathetic begging, right? Which, but the reality is, hey, you're lucky enough to have access to my brilliance as a writer. And I know that sounds a little cocky and it sounds, you know, a little bit too aggressive, but.
Jack Shilkaitis (05:29)
Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (05:33)
Writers need to remember they're the ones who creating this IP, the intellectual property. They're the ones who decide how to license it, whether they want to lock in with Amazon exclusivity, whether they want to publish that ebook wide in what formats and who they're going to either license it to or take the reins themselves and do it themselves. And I say yes to all, do it all. Not all at the same time, of course, because, you know, it's hard.
Jack Shilkaitis (05:33)
Sure.
Right. I love it. Sure. One thing
Kelli Tanzi (05:55)
you
Jack Shilkaitis (05:59)
at a time, but, yes, I, I love, I love this because the conversation when you're talking wide is generally, it's just comparing it to, to KDP Select, to Kindle Unlimited. And that is such a, that's well, a limited scope, limited way to look at it. Kelly and I actually had the opportunity recently, we went to the San Francisco writers conference.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (06:09)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jack Shilkaitis (06:19)
And I think this this this because that was a very there were a lot of authors there but it's predominantly that it is it is and it's ⁓ it's more trad leaning is what Kelly and I found. Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (06:24)
different conference that you normally not at right? Yeah, you got to see a different part of the industry.
Kelli Tanzi (06:30)
That's why we...
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (06:32)
Yeah.
Kelli Tanzi (06:34)
Yeah, we were hoping to get into it, you in front of people that we wouldn't have in other conferences that we've gone to. it worked. mean, in that case, we did see some really amazing authors who really didn't know who BookFunnel was. They didn't really know a lot about self-publishing. It was a different sort of thing. And it's really interesting that you were bringing up that whole dichotomy of doing both of both.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (06:49)
Right?
Jack Shilkaitis (06:49)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Kelli Tanzi (07:00)
very
legitimate and you can strategically do both. And I think that's really important because a lot of there are still a lot of people who are very much trad focused only and that's the only way to go and they're gonna wait forever and you know it was interesting to get in front of some people and say well even if you are trad you know how are you building your business that is still your business. Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (07:18)
Yeah, like your newsletter. You still need a newsletter. when you think, I think
Jack Shilkaitis (07:19)
Right.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (07:23)
about the origin of Book Funnel and I think about the, how are we going to efficiently deliver that short story or that free novella or book or whatever to someone who signs up for my newsletter. Traditional authors, traditionally published authors need that too, because the publisher's not going to give them a list of their customers. They need to contact them directly, right?
Jack Shilkaitis (07:23)
Yeah.
Right. Yeah,
exactly.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (07:42)
That
would be a huge eye-opening experience that you probably provided for a bunch of attendees who went, whoa, what's this?
Jack Shilkaitis (07:49)
There were some who were maybe a little, and Kelly, you can probably speak to this too, but what I noticed a lot of was just like even hesitance at that idea. And I think it was because it was a new idea to them. think some of them might've.
might have been approaching it like, well, I'm going to get a deal and the publisher is going to take care of everything. But I think a lot of them just hadn't thought about it, hadn't even considered it. And so it was the first time they were sit like a newsletter, like a reader magnet. What's a reader magnet? We were having to explain some of the basics to an audience of foot, which was great. Great to have the opportunity to do that. but, but yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (08:21)
Yeah.
Jack Shilkaitis (08:26)
I think a similar conversation maybe needs to happen with some indie authors too that like, don't be afraid.
to look at trad, maybe it's a certain, especially once you've written enough and you have enough IP that you've created, you might have a series that's perfect for Kindle Unlimited and you leave it in there and you have another series that does really well wide and you have another series that honestly could go to a publisher and you could go the trad route and you can do all of them. You're not limited in that respect.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (08:52)
No, you're not.
You're limiting yourself if you don't pay attention to the possibilities that exist. mean, for example, you know, I've worked with ⁓ probably four or five different, not the big five publishers, but, you know, smaller mid-sized publishers over the years. And in most of the cases, the books I've licensed to them are the books that probably sell better in print. And I'll be honest with you, most of these publishers couldn't sell an ebook to save their lives. As a matter of fact,
Jack Shilkaitis (09:05)
Mm-hmm.
Mmm.
Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (09:20)
while we're speaking today, I will have sold more ebooks because you know, passive income, probably in this hour, then one of my publishers will sell all year of my, you know, half a dozen books that they have, only because they're not in the business of selling ebooks. They're in the process, I jokingly say, of shipping dead trees around from warehouse to bookstore and stuff like that. Like that's their business.
Jack Shilkaitis (09:26)
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
I'm not the only one
who uses that dead tree line.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (09:45)
But they're really good at it. I can walk into, and I have, I've walked into Barnes and Nobles in cities across the states and independent bookstores, and I will occasionally find one of my traditionally published books in the store. And I jokingly say, well, that's vanity publishing. Why? Two copies of my book are in the store. If they sell, I will get $2 a year later with 30 % withholding against returns.
Jack Shilkaitis (09:48)
Yeah.
Right.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (10:11)
So that's more vanity. walk in and see my book on the shelf than it's going to make me rich. I make a lot more money on my eBooks, self-published and even my self-published books that I sell in person. Right. And I can sell the print books in person. can use, you know, I've got my little card that has the little eBook thingy on it and I've got the book funnel code on the back so I can sign this. And now, of course, with the new technology now, I can even sign the eBook thanks to book funnel.
Jack Shilkaitis (10:19)
Right.
yes.
Yep.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (10:37)
on those books that I've sold directly. I mean, I want to take advantage of all of it because I figure I have no shortage of ideas. I have no shortage of things I want to do. There's going to be things I'm to want to take the reins and just do it myself. And then there's other times where I want to work collaboratively with a publishing partner. Now I was talking to Kevin Anderson ⁓ yesterday on the Self Publishing Insiders podcast with Draft2Digital. was the guest host because Jim was
Jack Shilkaitis (10:37)
Right.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (11:04)
doing other things that day. And Kevin reminded me of one thing is like, he's doing all these things, right? know, Kevin's doing all the things. He would rather go back to the days when all he had to do was turn a book into a publisher and they would take care of it for him. And he could live on the advances from a publisher. Well, that's not the reality we live in right now. So even if you are with a publisher, I still, when I, my publisher usually has a publicist who's assigned to my book.
Jack Shilkaitis (11:06)
Sure.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (11:31)
for the month before it comes out and maybe a month in and that's it. But I just had a book, for example, a traditionally published book that was published 14 years ago. It was selected for one of those One Book One Community programs last year. So was 13 years later. It was picked by a local library. Well, the publisher publicist isn't going to care. It's a backlist title. So my publicist, the one that I hired directly, was the one who sent the press releases out and got me in the media.
Jack Shilkaitis (11:36)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (11:58)
Because again, the publisher is only going to work on usually a front-list title. Maybe with the exception of a title that gets picked up for a TV series or something, then maybe they'll put some work into it, have the movie tie-in cover, that kind of stuff. But for the most part, it's just an afterthought for them because they're always worried about the front-list. Whereas the indie author community really has embraced a mantra that I learned from a used bookstore in Sudbury, Ontario.
Jack Shilkaitis (12:07)
share.
Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (12:23)
Bay used books used to have a stamp in the front of the books and I bought a ton of used books from them when I was a kid. And it said, a book you've never read is a new book. And that's the mantra of the backlist that indie authors have really adopted. And I know, because I just released a new book this week, and guess what? Every time I release a new book in the series, that backlist picks up and starts, gets that little increase in sales that is a nice boost that you always see.
Jack Shilkaitis (12:32)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Kelli Tanzi (12:50)
I was going to say it's really interesting because we've talked a lot of different authors here on the podcast and then just in conferences and it's really hard for creatives I think sometimes to think of their work as IP in the sense of a business asset, right? This is an asset that you have created that you can will to your children. Like this is something that will go beyond you. And if you build
something off that one piece of IP and then you build another one and another one and if you write in a series like those kinds of things that backlist comes back and it becomes more valuable every time you add to it and I think it's really interesting that because we're creatives that was the old way of doing it was you hand it to the publisher then you go back to writing and that's what a lot of people believe to be true and maybe that was once true before I got into it but
Now, you you have to be an active participant in your career because you're right, they're going to they're not going to be interested in a book that was written 13 years ago that even if it has something very cool that it needs to be, you know, advertised or marketed. So I think that's one of the big conversations we've had a lot is treating it like a business. And how does that look like? What does that look like for real?
Jack Shilkaitis (13:55)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (13:57)
Yeah.
Yeah, 100%. I think that's one of the important aspects. it seems scary at first when you think about it. But you have to remember, we are creators, whether we're writing fiction or nonfiction or whatever, we have these solid imaginations and the ability to string words together in these magnificent ways and tell stories and inform and inspire people. You can apply the same creativity.
to your business. It doesn't have to be all spreadsheets and scariness. Even doing the math to figure out if you've made your money back, I think is very important. We forget that, right? It's like, yeah, I made $100,000 this month. It's like, yeah, well, you spent $95,000 on ads. know, I mean, which is great. You still made $5,000, but you still need to incorporate all of that math because guess what? The $95,000 you spent, you owe the credit card company now or you've paid out of pocket now.
Jack Shilkaitis (14:43)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (15:01)
And you're going to get that in 60, 90 days, right? You're not going to have the money right away. So the cashflow is something we need to understand. I mean, and let's be honest, we need to also understand and be very realistic with authors. And I don't say this to crush hearts or crush spirits. But the reality is, I mean, I just sold a short story for $500 to a traditional market and the book's going to be coming out in the next nine months or so.
Jack Shilkaitis (15:04)
Yeah.
Right.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (15:27)
Most books published will never make $500 in total. And I'm not saying that to be mean or mean-spirited or whatever, but I think a lot of indie authors have this unrealistic expectation that all you have to do is publish a book and you're going to be instantly rich. Or that you're going to make X amount of money per book. Cause the reality, cause I can see this from my experience from seeing the sales at Kobo and seeing the sales that get distributed through Draft2Digital, I can see that.
Jack Shilkaitis (15:31)
you
Mm-hmm.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (15:54)
You know, there's a very small percentage of authors who are making five, six and seven figures a year. And again, not saying that to be negative, but just to have a more realistic expectation of what you're more likely to experience. It's not going to be all sunshine rain, rainbows and gumdrops and all the, all the lovely things. There's going to be a lot of, which Jack, you mentioned this earlier. There's a lot of patience and a lot of persistence. mean,
Jack Shilkaitis (15:59)
Right. Right.
Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (16:20)
Let's go back to Hugh Howey for a second. know, silo, amazing series. What season is it in on Apple? And that was Hugh Howey's 10th book. What if he gave up after the first couple of books didn't really do that well? Right? He kept going. That was book 10. And it didn't hit right away. You know, it got picked up. It got picked up. I think it was, did it get picked up by a publisher, took the print rights to it.
Jack Shilkaitis (16:20)
Red.
Mmm.
Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (16:44)
But they took the print rights to it because Ridley Scott originally optioned it. Ridley Scott never made it. But he had the option and that got a publisher interested in it. He was smart enough with his agent, Kristen Nelson, who again, very dynamic agent from New York who understands, you know, the digital world as well, kept his ebook rights, which has helped him make more money. And then it was another option later on where Apple's finally made it into this phenomenal TV series. But again,
Jack Shilkaitis (16:44)
I think so, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Right.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (17:11)
You think about an actor, an author like that, and you think, what if he'd given up? And that's why I say, you may not see the money right away. It could take a long time. I mean, I finally started to make enough money as a writer. It was 2017. And my very first story was published in 1992. It did not happen overnight. It was a long, slow build over time. And I think that's a more realistic look than
Jack Shilkaitis (17:20)
Yeah.
Yeah, right, right.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (17:37)
look, I published a book and now I can retire.
Jack Shilkaitis (17:39)
Right, right. No, I think there's a lot of hard work involved, no matter which route you take. even Hugh Howey is a great example, but even understanding that that might never happen to you in your business. You can still find a way.
Kelli Tanzi (17:40)
Yeah.
Jack Shilkaitis (17:58)
to make money, you can still find a way to even make a full-time income at some point without the TV show deals and the, you know, however you patchwork this thing together, because that's really kind of what it has to be. When you talk to a lot of authors who are making a full-time income, they have multiple income streams they're pulling it in from. It's not just one home run that they knocked out of the park. That happens. You hear those stories because they're the outliers. So of course you hear about those, but
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (18:10)
Mm-hmm.
Jack Shilkaitis (18:26)
You can't, those are hard to fabricate. You know what I mean? You can't, you can't.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (18:28)
No, that's true. And
you can't. But what you said is so true about the multiple income streams. Because, and that's one of the reasons why I'm aggressively wide, because Amazon is a good revenue stream for me. It's often up to 50 % of my monthly income from my self-published titles. But it's not all my income. I'm getting income through Draft2Digital, through Kobo, through Google.
Jack Shilkaitis (18:35)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (18:53)
through my audiobook sales, from various channels, from my direct sales, getting my author copies and selling them in person at various events. And I mean, I have these numerous streams. None of them are gigantic. But when I add them all together, I go, look, I can survive on this. My wife and I did an experiment last year to see, admittedly, she makes a lot more than I do. But we wanted to see if we could live on
Jack Shilkaitis (19:01)
Yep.
Right.
You
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (19:17)
my income alone. And we were comfortable. mean, fortunately, the house is now paid for. It wasn't at the time, but we were looking at can we live on just what I make and her benefits, of course, because she had the benefits. And we're Canadian too, so we have this benefit of our health care. Yes, we pay for it in taxes, but we have a...
Jack Shilkaitis (19:18)
Great.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (19:38)
You don't break a leg and suddenly go bankrupt, right? That kind of stuff doesn't happen here. So we're very fortunate, but you know, that means though that income isn't all coming from one source. If one of those sources dries up, it could hurt, but it wouldn't hurt as much as if it was my only source, which is why I really am nervous about letting any one entity have control over my, my income source.
Jack Shilkaitis (19:39)
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Well, and if you're used to this multiple income stream kind of lifestyle almost, if one of them does dry up, it's not the end of the world. You're used to pivoting and you're used to like
using that those creative faculties to be like, okay, I'm gonna we've got room here where I can shift my attention to this one or here's a new income stream that we can start exploring and probably always experimenting with some new things to see if they're gonna catch fire or not. You've you've go ahead. Sorry.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (20:29)
for sure. And
no, no, no, I was going to say, and then one of the other things I've always paid attention to, and this is something I learned from traditional publishing is rights splitting is by default, we, when we publish self-publish, we publish globally, but you can split your rights. And I've got a lot of good friends who have sold print rights to just this market in just this country or just this territory.
Jack Shilkaitis (20:46)
Mmm.
Right.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (20:52)
and retain the audiobook rights because they got a deal with Audible or whatever and then they kept the ebook rights. So you can split your rights and I even done that with Haunted Hamilton, a book of mine that was traditionally published. the publisher had and I wanted to keep the audiobook rights because they've never made an audiobook but they refused to change that clause. They did change 10 out of the 12 clauses I asked for so that worked.
in a lot of cases, but they kept the audiobook rights. But when I was approached by VoiceMap, a GPS enabled company that does, know, GPS enabled voice tours of various locations in the world. And they said, we'd love to do a haunted walk of one of the places you've written about. And I was like, wow, I sold the audiobook rights. I sold the audiobook rights. I did not sell all the rights to all of the research I did to write the stories.
Jack Shilkaitis (21:15)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm. Yeah.
Hahaha
Right,
right.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (21:41)
So if you
open up voicemap and you search Hamilton, you'll find the opening, can listen to it for free anywhere in the world. It says, hi, this is Mark Leslie,
You're listening to Hamilton downtown Hamilton locations Some of these are based on stories you might have read in my book haunted Hamilton and other ones I had in my notes and wasn't able to incorporate into a chapter, you know, you should be standing on King Street north
with the Hamilton Armories on your left hand side. I'm going to tell you some stories there and then we're going to walk south to the Tivoli Theater. And then this guided walking tour. And fortunately, the cool thing about that was I released it just prior to, wait for it, March 2020, where you couldn't gather in person. And so people couldn't even go on ghost walk tours because you weren't allowed to gather, you you had to be in this isolation bubble.
Jack Shilkaitis (22:14)
Right.
Okay.
Okay.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (22:32)
And so people could go on a guided walking tour with their headphones on by themselves and I could guide them through. And it was a perfect example of, of going back to the intellectual property and saying, I did all this research for this book. One form was this book that I've signed with a publisher. The other form is me as a storyteller telling the same story, but not in book format, not in a, not chapter by chapter, but in a new dynamic way.
Jack Shilkaitis (22:46)
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (23:00)
So again, I'm a huge fan of leveraging your own creativity so you can see how you can adapt that as a writer and exploit your own IP to your own benefit.
Jack Shilkaitis (23:01)
Right.
That's brilliant.
Yes.
I was going to ask you about bookstores and then stuff like that and pivot to that conversation. that's like a total, see, that's a revenue stream and an income stream that wouldn't have even crossed my mind. Maybe it's because I'm a sci-fi author and everything I write about is made up. So a walking tour is not really possible. But that doesn't exist. Right. Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (23:15)
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah, it's not going to work for you because you can't walk on this planet that's, you know, light years away. Yeah, or doesn't exist. Yeah. Fair enough. Fair
enough. That is true. Although I do want to do a walking tour of Manhattan based on my Canadian werewolf series, which is fictional. And as the walking tour, will be here are some of the locations from my books I'm going to share with you. You know, this is where Michael encountered this creature or this monster or this bad guy. And this is where
Jack Shilkaitis (23:39)
Right.
Right.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (23:58)
this happened. think that could be an interesting adaptation of fiction, but again, that's because it's set in a real place.
Jack Shilkaitis (23:59)
Mm-hmm.
Exactly, Right, But let's do have that bookstore conversation. And you have some strategies for partnering, especially with local bookstores, which is a topic I love.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (24:09)
Yes, let's.
I do. I do.
Yeah, and this goes back to aggressively wide. I've long joked that authors who decide that they don't want to be exclusive to Amazon, they publish wide but shallow, meaning they take their books wide and they just put them up and do nothing. Whereas they put all their energy into only focusing on Amazon. And then they go, it's not selling anywhere else. And like, well, what have you done for it?
Jack Shilkaitis (24:32)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (24:38)
You know, what have you done for me lately? And so when it comes to online bookstores, you need to go to Apple and Barnes and Noble Nook and Kobo and Google and see, well, Google is like Amazon where the inmates run the asylum, right? It's all automated mostly. Apple and Barnes and Noble and Kobo have book merchandisers just like physical bookstores. Most of them were born out of
Jack Shilkaitis (24:38)
Yeah.
Okay.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (25:05)
people who worked in the book industry. And so they actually, yes, they have algorithms and recommendation engines that work in the background, but a significant amount of their merchandising is done by human curators. And if you don't go and check these places out as a consumer, you have no idea that it's different. And you- really interesting point about the human element in book Okay, Google, stop.
Jack Shilkaitis (25:07)
Right.
hahahahah
Kelli Tanzi (25:28)
⁓ you
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (25:29)
I triggered her, she loves talking to me, you know, I'm home alone,
we have good conversations, but I, sorry, I did not want to speak to you. Anyways, I wish there was a different name I could use for that rather than the company name. Any case, ⁓ but the same thing goes for your books available in bookstores. Now, most indie authors, when we make our physical books available to bookstores, the print on demand and the non-returnable, which makes economic sense because trust me,
Jack Shilkaitis (25:35)
Hahaha!
My goodness.
Right. Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (25:56)
I've been thousands of dollars in the hole with returns by making my books returnable. So you have to be very careful. Fortunately, I can afford it, but most authors probably can't. But when I've made my books available that way, I've gone into local bookstores and I've negotiated with them. If I wanted to do a book event is like, could you bring my books in either on consignment or order them from Ingram non-returnable, bring in 50 copies or whatever.
Jack Shilkaitis (26:00)
Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (26:22)
I'm going to do my best to bring physical people into your store, do an event and sell it. When the event is over, I'll buy the stock so you're not stuck with it because bookstores want to be able to return it. They don't want to feel stuck with it because they have very limited. The margin of 40 % is not a lot to pay for staff and rent and all the things that they utilities, all the things they have to pay for. So what I've often done is negotiated
Jack Shilkaitis (26:26)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (26:48)
to buy the stocks that are not stuck with it and have even been able to negotiate getting their staff discount because it's cheaper for them to discount the book and sell it to me than it is for them to pack it up and ship it to send back to a publisher, which they can't do on non-returnable. Other things that I've done and I've seen other authors do, which I think are important is, you know, I'm sorry, but selling physical signed books directly is a pain because you don't have companies like BookFunnel that make it easy.
Jack Shilkaitis (27:02)
Right.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (27:15)
Right? Because making it easy to sign the book and then pack it up and I have under my desk here, I have all these boxes of different sizes and stuffy and a little scale where I can weigh it. And then I gotta go take it to the post office and mail it, et cetera. That's really a pain in the butt and it's expensive to do. But I've done this before and I've had other author friends that do this where they say, if you want to sign copy, go order it from my local indie bookstore in the, in the comment note.
Jack Shilkaitis (27:24)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (27:42)
They'll call me, I'll bring the stock in. If they don't have the stock, they'll take care of processing your order and shipping it. All I have to do is get a call and say, Hey, you got an order for Jack. you come in and sign it? And I swing by sign the book and they take care of it because they already have a shipping and receiving facility. So there's different inventive ways you can work with the bookstore. I know just a couple of weeks ago, Draft2Digital announced the partnership with a bookshop.org.
Jack Shilkaitis (27:48)
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (28:07)
So yes, bookshop.org is they launched in 2020 and they've raised millions of dollars for independent bookstores in the United States. And that's a great way where you can say, Hey, if you want to buy my ebook, you can buy it through bookshop and it actually supports, you know, your local bookstore, which is a great way to demonstrate to that. when, before you approach a local bookstore, a make sure you have some sort of relationship with them, you know,
Jack Shilkaitis (28:27)
All
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (28:35)
Are you a regular customer? Do they only see your face when you have a book and you want to sell them something or are you part of the community? That's an important aspect. And B, when they go to your website, do they see a link just to Amazon or do they see either a books to read universal book link or a book, a funnel universal book link or a book, Bob as well has similar things like that where there's links to all the various places. Do they even see a thing that says
Jack Shilkaitis (28:40)
Great.
Mm-hmm.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (29:02)
Hey, order my books through my favorite local bookshop. Click. Here's a link. You know, that that goes a huge way towards ingratiating yourself with the local bookstore so you can be as an independent author. You can be supporting an independent business that's local to you.
Jack Shilkaitis (29:06)
Right.
Yeah, yeah. I know that we had a conversation with Donovan Shearer about this kind of bookstore angle as well. And the biggest thing that he said was that, yeah, you've got to
In some cases, you know, there's maybe different levels of ingratiating that you have to do, but you have to make it worth their while to have you there. And you kind have to be a go-getter a little bit and go out of your way to make sure that they see that, okay, this person, not just trying to, you know, take advantage of the bookstore here. They actually want to contribute. I like what you said about, like, do they only see your face when you're there with a book?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (29:44)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
do something.
Jack Shilkaitis (30:01)
to sell them, you know. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (30:01)
Yeah, yeah, it's like I only see you when you want something. You know, you want to eat the bread, you don't want to help make the bread, right? Like that sort of thing, right? From that old little red hen story. But there
was a bookstore, I did an event at an independent bookstore in Ottawa, Ontario for my horror story collection that came out in 2024. And they had a really great contract. Their event was, space was so small, they kept the store open.
And they reformatted the store and put chairs in it because it was just like this big hallway. And they did an event after hours. And ⁓ so what it meant is they had to pay staff extra to stay extra. So I signed a contract with them that said, okay, we'll have this space from six to eight PM because the store normally closes at six. They want to see sales of $250. And if they don't, I have to pay the difference.
Jack Shilkaitis (30:31)
Mmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (30:52)
as the person who wanted to do it. Because let's be honest, it takes a lot. I used to manage bookstores. It takes a lot of time and effort to set up an event. Even when you're not keeping the store open, you have to move things around and set up the displays. You have to assign a staff member to it and bring in the stock and all. It costs a lot of effort and time. And that was the coolest thing because I thought this is a win-win situation. So what I did is I made sure, you know, I sent my invite and I invited a bunch of people.
Jack Shilkaitis (30:52)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Right.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (31:20)
I even bought stock from the store to give away his door prizes because it was me supporting the store. was going to have to pay this anyways. I may as well buy some really nice gifts from the store. And it was just a great, mean, it worked out brilliantly. Same thing when I partnered with not a local bookstore, I partnered with a local beer establishment because I had a beer come up with my book, right? And it was a deal where we said they wanted because they, again, they kept it open. was a night they were normally closed.
Jack Shilkaitis (31:25)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Right, I remember this from...
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (31:48)
They opened it for three hours that night and they said, okay, well, I made a deal. They made a special menu. It was all horror themed stuff where they changed the menu and it was in its whole. had my beer on tap along with other beers. And, I, what I ordered is I ordered a bunch of appetizers that were free for everyone to just enjoy. that was me contributing to it. But, uh, one point in time, Javier, the bartender who was working that night, comes over and he goes,
Jack Shilkaitis (31:57)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (32:14)
my God, because we had to hit a certain total in order for to mean not to have to rent the space. And he goes, I thought you'd appreciate this. The number right now is at 666. Perfect for horror theme. And you know, it was great to see that they stayed open and then customers who weren't even part of, came in, didn't come in for me, ended up discovering, ⁓ look, and I was selling the book. And again, the bar got the 40 % that the bookstore would normally get.
Jack Shilkaitis (32:34)
Right.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (32:39)
Right. So they made money off my book sales. made money off alcohol and food sales. And it was a really great thing. But when you think about that, don't just think about what is the bookstore doing for me? Like I like to conjure up a little JFK and say, ask not what your bookstore can do for you. Ask what you can do for your bookstore. And I think if you take that approach, you can find a win-win situation.
Jack Shilkaitis (33:01)
No, the beer thing too. I remember this conversation because it came up at Reader Nation. Give us just a quick ⁓ rundown on that.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (33:05)
Yeah.
Yeah, so my
horror story collection was called One Hand Screaming. And the question is, what's the sound of one hand screaming? It's like one guy who writes horror, right? That kind of thing. And so I collaborated with a local brewer that just celebrated their seventh year in existence. And I was a fan since they opened. I'm a regular there. I know the owner and the brewmaster. And I was sitting down with him one day and I said, you know, this is the 20th anniversary of the very first book I've
Jack Shilkaitis (33:32)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (33:38)
published, it's like this new and explosive edition. I've always wanted to have a beer. Could you do a beer, a very bitter, strong hoppy beer, I want to call it one hop screaming. And so my cover designer, when he designed my cover, he designed the label, the logo for the beer. And we did the beer and the book launch together at the brewery. We launched the beer and the book together and it was limited release. So was only available.
Jack Shilkaitis (33:54)
Right.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (34:03)
for a few months. So only a few restaurants and bars had it. The cans were only what, maybe 300, uh, you know, enough to, and I probably bought about a hundred of them myself because I wanted to give them to friends and stuff. But, um, that was phenomenal. But when I also did, uh, and again, I leverage book funnel for this is I wrote a haunted beer story and I had a QR code that I put on the label of the, of the can. And it was also on coasters that we handed out where you could read a haunted beer story.
Jack Shilkaitis (34:09)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (34:32)
And again, you downloaded it from BookFunnel. Obviously, it just went to the BookFunnel app nice and easy. So while you're drinking your beer, you could read the haunted beer story. I included Graham as one of the characters in it. I included so Ben, who is the manager of the bar I did the other event at, he wanted to be the murderer. He wanted to be the bad guy in the story. And I included names of beer buddies, know, Kevin Anderson and everyone I've enjoyed beers with over the years.
Jack Shilkaitis (34:51)
Hahaha.
Hahaha!
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (34:59)
Easter egg filled story of all of my beer buddies who were just named as different characters in it and it was such a fun, it was such a fun thing to do. It was like a bucket list item for me, truly.
Jack Shilkaitis (35:01)
Yeah, I love it.
Mm-hmm. No, I love that. That's a creative way to use that.
Kelli Tanzi (35:14)
Yeah, so I think that's really a good point of having short stories. I think we were talking earlier about leveraging those short stories. That sounds like such a really creative way to do that, just tying it to the event that you're hosting. So can you talk a little bit more about what short stories, how you use those to really get out there and get in front of people?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (35:33)
Yeah, of course. So yeah,
I'm a fan of reduce, reuse, recycle. And so when I sell a short story, first rights are anywhere between six to eight cents per word US for a short story. And then you get the rights back after it's been published in a anthology or magazine usually. And then you can sell the reprint rights. can make, there's stories that I've resold. Maybe you only get $100 or $50.
with a reprint. But let's be honest, most people in the world have never read one of my stories that I've published eight different times. Most people, you've never, neither one of you have read it. I'm pretty much guaranteed. I mean, unless you read my short story collection, One Hand Screaming, then yes, okay, you read that story, but most people in the world have never read it. So that is, ⁓ but what I've also done with short stories, which I think is important, is making audio books using human narrators is very expensive.
Jack Shilkaitis (36:07)
Mm-hmm.
Hahaha
Kelli Tanzi (36:14)
You
Jack Shilkaitis (36:17)
It's on my list. It's on my list.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (36:28)
You costs, you can get a good rate would be about $250 US per hour. But when you take a short story, that's only 45 minutes, you can get that done for let's say $250. And I learned in the early days, I spent, I think it was $4,000 on my first short novel to get turned into an audio book. And I think I've made $800 on that in 10 years.
Jack Shilkaitis (36:34)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (36:54)
So, know, it's the reality of the money you make. But on some of my short fiction, because I was like, let's do this short thing. That's only 15,000 words or 18,000 words. It didn't cost me as much. And then using the library, the cost per checkout cost per checkout model where you make, you know, 80 cents every time it sells. But every time someone reads it, you make 80 cents. I was starting to make my money back on that investment. So it was a great way to break into audio game saying,
Jack Shilkaitis (36:56)
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (37:21)
I'm just going to do short fiction. And then one of the things I've done, again, leveraging book funnel is I have this little card and a QR code that, you know, I've got my Canadian werewolf series. And so I have the 10,000 word short story this time around, which was the original story that got readapted into the book because someone read it said, well, what happens next? I'm like, nothing. And they're like, no, what about the rest of his day? And I'm like, all right, OK, I'll write it. And thank goodness they asked that question because, you know, book nine's coming out in the fall.
Jack Shilkaitis (37:41)
Ha
Hahaha.
So well.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (37:48)
that
10,000 word story, I've got the book funnel, call it the taster pack and you go to a landing page, you know, one of the book funnel splash pages where you can download the audio or the ebook or both if you want. And you can either, again, you can listen to them on whatever device you want, or you've got the book funnel app handy right in your phone. And so that is a way that I've leveraged. And again, that was a short story. I never did sell to a traditional market. I released it.
Jack Shilkaitis (37:55)
Thank
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (38:14)
as a initially a 99 cent story. Now it's a free sale. So it's free on every platform except Amazon that only does it in the U.S. for price matching. So it's 99 cents everywhere else in the world. And then I, but I also use that as my, as my leader into the story. And then at the end of course is, Hey, if you like this, you're going to want to read a Canadian werewolf in New York. Here's the link, you know? And, and so I think being creative with your short fiction is a great way.
Jack Shilkaitis (38:19)
Yeah.
year.
Right, right. I love that.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (38:42)
to test things like audio, which are very expensive, right? Hey, for 300 bucks, sure, no problem. That's easy enough to do as opposed to going, well, I'm going to drop $5,000 or $8,000 initially to see if this works. You know, that can be a big risk for an author.
Jack Shilkaitis (38:46)
Thank you.
Yeah, yeah.
That is a big investment. the short fiction is actually something we recently talked about on one of our webinars. And I've talked about reader magnets a whole lot. so this, even if it's not.
something that you want to do as just like a main part of your business model, having the skill to write a short story or a short novella as that like prequel to your main series. Like even if you love to write 150k, you know, long novels, it's still a great skill to have to be able to like write that 10 to 15,000 word short story and capture people's attention.
Kelli Tanzi (39:32)
Yeah, I have a problem with that. I have a hard time bringing it down to the short story. It's a skill, it
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (39:32)
sure.
Well, I mean, it's-
But it's
Kelli Tanzi (39:39)
definitely is. Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (39:39)
hard, but it teaches you to kill your darlings. It teaches you that critical thing of going. I mean, the short story that I turned in this morning was a flash fiction. So it was a thousand words. And my first few iterations were 1200 and 1300 and 1500 words. that was short enough. And then I was like, no, it's got to be under a thousand in order to qualify. And I had to go in and go, I really like this.
Jack Shilkaitis (39:39)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (40:05)
But I'm gonna have to kill it because I'm gonna have to trim this and trim that.
Jack Shilkaitis (40:07)
Yeah.
Right, right. And for authors who are looking to... A lot of authors find themselves in the position where they've written book one and then that reader magnet is sort of an afterthought. And so for an author who's in that position, what would be your suggestion? How would you have them approach it, provided they're writing in fiction?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (40:28)
So, yeah, usually,
and this happens with almost every book I write, there's a scene, there's a character, there's a moment, there's a thing that my editor and I get in a fight over and I end up relinquishing finally and cutting it. So you probably have these cutting room floor directors pieces that can be included. Or maybe it's as simple as a character sketch. I mean, if you write fantasy, it's relatively easy because
Jack Shilkaitis (40:40)
Hahaha.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (40:54)
you know, maybe there's a map of the world that you get access to, or you get the backstory, or somebody refers to something that happens off screen. I like to think of this. You think of the whole Clone Wars, the animated series from Star Wars, and that was, that whole era came from a throw, not a throwaway line, but in, you know, your father and I, we fought together during the Clone Wars, bam, and that's it, in Star Wars, right? In the original, The Last Hope, which became The Last Hope when...
Jack Shilkaitis (41:03)
Great.
Yep, yep.
Right. Right.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (41:22)
and there was a second movie. But that thing became this epic number of years. There's probably an element in your novel, in your story, in your novella, that someone references something that happens off screen. I think, like Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. I'm a huge fan of Hamlet, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are two characters that they're constantly sending off on these missions and stuff, and then they end up getting murdered. Sorry if it's a spoiler, but it's been around for hundreds of years.
Jack Shilkaitis (41:36)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (41:50)
But Tom
Stopper did the play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, where you get to see the point of view of them when they're off stage. What are they doing when they're not on stage at Hamlet? And so you've got that whole behind the scenes element that you can play with. And not only does it help you with your own universe building, you know, because sometimes you need to know the story in order for it to make sense in the world you're writing, even though you never share it.
Jack Shilkaitis (41:58)
huh. Right.
Right.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (42:15)
But that can be a special thing you share with people who read it and go, I want more. I mean, I'm a big, giant nerd. And on the movies I've loved, you know, planes, trains and automobiles and stuff like that. I will want documentaries. I will watch the behind the scenes. I will watch the, ⁓ the cuts and the takes. I'll read articles and interviews about the making of, because when you really love a book, when you really love a piece of writing, you don't want to lose it. Think about like the Lord of the Rings films.
Jack Shilkaitis (42:25)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (42:42)
the behind the scenes that come on the DVDs are longer than these long films.
Jack Shilkaitis (42:44)
Mm-hmm.
It's the only way,
it's the only correct way to watch those movies is the extended director's cut.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (42:51)
Exactly. But think about that. can spend you
can spend the whole a whole long weekend just watching the just watching the commentary and and it gives it brings you back to a world you love. And so if you can do that for your readers, that's where you can leverage short fiction or character sketches or any of those any of those little goodies that can just give them something special and precious. Think about how
Jack Shilkaitis (43:01)
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (43:18)
You
react to your favorite book or movie or when you get, oh, I get an extra scene. Like, you know what? was all of when, when Plains, Strange and Audible released that there was an extra 15 minutes of footage that they cut from the original. I was all over that, a cheap suit when that came out. Like I was like jumped on it and ordered it online. I had to have it the day it came out. And just the first thing I did when it arrived, was like, that everything else? Nope. You know.
Jack Shilkaitis (43:37)
Ha
Right. Or like
⁓ there are some, I think the Marvel movies that have come out recently have trained a lot of people to like, to stay through the credits just in case there's a scene at the end. I usually though look it up because my wife will be, will be sitting there. We don't go to movies all that often. She's like, well, there might be a scene at the end. And I just Google it and like, Nope, there isn't one. can leave.
Kelli Tanzi (43:46)
was just thinking about the marble. You sit.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (43:49)
Yeah. Watch the credits. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. My son does
that for me. I'm like, should we stay? He's like, yeah, yeah, there's two. There's two end scene credits. Yeah.
Jack Shilkaitis (44:06)
Right. Right.
Exactly. Exactly. Hell of it. Right.
Kelli Tanzi (44:10)
Yeah, sometimes you have to wait to the very, very end. sometimes, yeah, so they give you the... Yeah, that's... You haven't gotten through all the production! Which one?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (44:13)
Yeah, that's the one that a lot of people miss out on. Like, where are you going? It's not over. I mean, Ferris Bueller taught me that. But you remember that Ferris Bueller, Matthew Broderick,
Jack Shilkaitis (44:19)
Right, ⁓
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (44:25)
that very, very first one at the very end of the movie where he comes out in his housecoat and he goes, what are you still doing here? In which Ryan Reynolds ripped off in Deadpool, the end of the first Deadpool, where he comes out in the same housecoat that Ferris Bueller and he does the same thing. And then
Jack Shilkaitis (44:26)
Yep.
Hahaha!
huh.
Hahaha
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (44:39)
As he sticks his head back out, hear, chukka chukka, from that song from the soundtrack from, ⁓ that's ⁓ Yellow? ⁓ yeah? Is that the, sorry, I'm a 80s music nerd.
Jack Shilkaitis (44:46)
Yes. I love it. ⁓ Yeah.
Kelli Tanzi (44:50)
Yeah.
yeah song. Yeah.
Jack Shilkaitis (44:54)
No, you're good, you're good,
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (44:56)
I've said some negative things about the industry as somewhat jokingly and somewhat wanting people to have a realistic view of it. But this goes back to patience and persistence. think authors really need to stick it out to, to write the stories that they're the most passionate about.
Jack Shilkaitis (45:03)
Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (45:13)
And here's the reality that I've come to realize. Most, I mean, I've published close to 40 books now. And not all of them make a lot of money. A lot of them make some money. Some of them make a lot of money. Some of them don't really do much at all. But the one thing I can control is where I spend my time. And I love spending my time on telling the stories that I'm the most passionate about.
Jack Shilkaitis (45:21)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (45:36)
And I've been in the industry long enough to see vampires are in and they're out and then they're in, they're out and they're in, they're out, they're in, they're out. So if you're just chasing a trend, you're going to be chasing dog chasing its tail. You're never going to be, you're never going to be catching it unless you're really, really lucky. But that luck can happen while you're writing the things that you, the stories you really want to write, the stories that resonate with you, that you as a reader just can't get enough of.
Jack Shilkaitis (45:47)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (46:00)
Because when the right readers come along, and it could take a long time before they come along, but when the right reader comes along, you got a fan for life. You got someone who reads it and says, my God, it speaks to me. They either see themselves in it or there's something that resonates deeply with them. And that's one of the most profound things that can happen to you as a writer. So if you have the stories that you want to share and the things you want to put out into the world,
I encourage you to never give up despite the sometimes stark reality of the fact that, it's just one of a million books that got published this year and the right people haven't found it yet. The key word there is yet. There's always the possibility that the right reader is going to encounter your book. And the only thing that'll prevent that from ever happening is you.
Jack Shilkaitis (46:35)
I love you.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (46:48)
withdrawing that book from the public eye or you giving up on yourself. I think the stories you want to share is just way too important. I think you really need to believe in that voice that told you why you wanted to write that story in the first place and don't let that editorial negative mini voice get the best of you too often. I mean, it gets the best of us all the time, but we still have to overcome that.
Jack Shilkaitis (46:53)
Bye.
Right. I couldn't have said it better myself. Mark, thank you for joining us for this episode of the podcast. Before we go here, anything you want to shout out or call people's attention to here before we go?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (47:24)
No, I just want to say, I want to say thank you to BookFunnel because the tools that you guys have created are truly remarkable tools that I could not do many of the things that I do without you for both my traditionally published books and my self published books, right? So it's a fantastic tool. And if you're listening to this and you haven't checked out all the greatness that you can get from BookFunnel, like please do yourself a favor and just check it out.
Jack Shilkaitis (47:37)
Mm-hmm.
Thank you, Mark. And by the way, ⁓ I know I appreciate it. We get that a lot, it means a lot to us, especially from somebody as storied as yourself. So thank you, sir. And I'm glad that it's useful for you. And ⁓ Damon has come up with some great tools and the team has, he's built around it. I can't say anything more than that. It's just excellent.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre (47:50)
I'm not kissing up, I mean that, I mean that, I mean that.
my god, you know, among
the most beautiful book nerds I've ever had the pleasure of getting to know.
Jack Shilkaitis (48:17)
Yes, indeed. Well, thank you again, Mark, for joining us today. And thank you, of course, to Kelly, my co-host.
for this episode of the podcast. And thank you to you, our viewers. If you're watching here on YouTube, make sure you like the video and subscribe to the channel. Also, leave a comment with your number one or two or three takeaways from this episode. Lots of wisdom was handed down in this one. So make sure you leave a comment there to point those things out. It helps people who are just maybe driving by the video to see, they're going to talk about that. It helps the video get found by other authors like yourself. And if you're listening to the podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or anywhere else, please follow us there and leave a review. It really does help. From all of us here at BookFunnel, I want to thank you for watching and listening, and we will see you all in the next one.