Gene Tavernetti: Welcome to Better Teaching, Only Stuff That Works, a
podcast for teachers, instructional coaches, administrators, and anyone else
who supports teachers in the classroom.
This show is a proud member of the BE Podcast Network shows that
help you go beyond education.
Find all our shows@bepodcastnetwork.com.
I am Gene Tavernetti the host for this podcast.
And my goal for this episode, like all episodes, is that you laugh at
least once and that you leave with an actionable idea for better teaching.
A quick reminder, no cliches, no buzzwords.
Only stuff that works.
I am very excited about today's episode, and we are taping this episode on January
3rd, and I think it's appropriate that this is a New Year's episode because so
many people have New Year's resolutions and goals, and I'm sure many of the
people who listen to this podcast have a goal, a wish, to get a book Somebody
has told them at some time during their career, you should write a book,
and you want to, and then you don't.
So today, we're We have a guest who's in the publishing business who'll
be able to talk about how to move from wishing about writing a book to
actually getting a book published.
And so my guest today is Mark Combs.
Mark is in the middle of a lifelong love affair with the written word.
So it's no surprise that his life's work has centered on books.
For decades, he's helped authors bring their ideas to a wider audience by
helping them craft the best book possible.
Mark has worked in all facets of publishing, from sales and marketing
to editorial production, as well as all genres of book publishing.
He's worked for trade publishers, academic publishers, and most recently, K 12
professional development publishers.
And it's here in K 12 publishing that Mark has found a home.
Mark knows that writing a book is a solitary endeavor, but he
also knows that publishing that book is a collaborative venture.
Publishing is an arcane industry, and an author needs a helpful
guide through the process.
Marks works with his authors to peel back the mystery behind the publishing
process so his authors are better armed to promote themselves and their work.
You will recognize many of the books and authors with whom he's
worked at his website, murmur, M U R A T I O N, Authorservices.
com, and that will be in the show notes, as I said, but some
of the authors he's worked with, Doug Lamont, Patrice Bain, Tom
Sherrington, Zach Rochelle, and others.
And Gene Tavernetti.
He helped on both of my books, Teach Fast and Maximizing the
Impact of Coaching Cycles.
So, let's meet Mark.
Good to talk to you this morning, Mark as I said in your introduction, you've been
involved with a lot of authors, a lot of successful authors, a lot of authors that
people will recognize when they go to your website and what was your, one more time,
what was your website again, your new
Mark Combes: It's, yeah, this might spur a conversation here,
but Murmuration Author Services.
So it's M U R M U R.
Oh boy.
Nation, Authorservices.
com.
Gene Tavernetti: And you know what?
I'm glad you did that because that's how I, I cut it out of the introduction.
I'm going to have to edit it out, but we will have it in the show notes.
So people will, we'll get there
Mark Combes: a little long winded.
I probably should have thought of something a little shorter, but there you
Gene Tavernetti: they'll be able to see all the, again, the familiar authors and
familiar books that probably on many, which are on their bookshelves, but kind
of, let's start from the beginning, Mark.
How did you get involved in publishing?
Mark Combes: English Lit major back in, at university, in college, and just
kind of fell into publishing that way.
Just a love of words and the written word, really has just kind of
carried me through my whole life.
I started off with a small trade publisher in the sales department.
And I was their national account manager.
So I'd called on Barnes and Noble and Amazon and Borders back when it
was still around and also called on all the distributors that you may or
may not be aware of, Ingram, Baker Taylor those book distributors that
distribute to the independent bookstores.
I also ran our, export business as well.
So I, we had distribution partners in the UK, South Africa and
Australia, English language countries.
So I worked with them as well as going to some of the international
book fairs and helping out our rights person take overflow meetings
on when we sold international rights to our books at those fairs.
So a little bit of everything.
And that's one of the nice things about working for a smaller publisher.
is that you get to wear a lot of hats and you get exposed
to a lot of different things.
Gene Tavernetti: So, English Lit major, excited, love of books,
and now you're gonna go to, now you're gonna go sell them.
Mark Combes: Now you can go sell them.
Gene Tavernetti: and so, what other roles that you have and kind of other,
the reason, Also wondering about your background is because I know one of the
names that will be familiar to everybody is Tom Sherrington and I was reading
after I had already known you, I go to the last chapter and he gives you your due.
about how you got him to write his first book.
Could you, so what were you doing?
How did
Mark Combes: yeah, so I did the sales thing for a while, but again, part of
that kind of circling back to that, one of the other hats I wore was a member of
the Acquisitions Review Board, and almost all publishers have this to one degree
or another, where there's representatives from a variety of different departments
come together and decide which books they are going to actually acquire and publish.
And I was the sales representative for that.
And that's what really got me started on the whole editorial
side of the publishing business.
The idea of working with ideas again, as opposed to selling them, right?
So I did the sales for about 10 years or so, and then I went and worked
for a higher ed publisher, calling on professors and working with them to write
textbooks, basically, for their course and supplemental text for their courses.
Did that for a few years.
Fast forward to I was approached by a recruiter for a company in South Florida,
who was looking for a publisher to oversee their publishing department in a
professional development services company.
Right, so that's what got me to Florida and got me into professional development,
and it was there that I met Tom Sherrington, kind of circle back to that.
I met him at a conference.
I think some of your listeners will know of ResearchEd.
And I don't know how many years ago that's been now, five years or so I met him at a
conference and went to one of his sessions and he was presenting on Rosenstein's
Principles in practice or in action.
And I thought, boy, that'd make a great little book.
So I pushed him after the conference and said, have you ever thought
about writing a book about this?
And he said, no, not really.
But, you know, he was keen to do that, so we quickly kind
of threw something together.
Basically, he had it all written, because he was already presenting on it, and
thus sprang Rosenstein Principles in Action, and now we've sold hundreds
of thousands copies of the thing.
Gene Tavernetti: So how much is a unicorn, how much of a unicorn is Tom
Sherrington that a publisher approached him and said, I want you to write a book.
And I'm thinking about all these people in the audience who want to write books.
Should they be expecting somebody to knock on their door
and ask them to write a book?
Mark Combes: In this space, it's not uncommon.
In fact, it's where I find most of my authors, is that I either find them via
social media, I follow them, I read their blogs, I listen to their podcasts, I go to
their sessions at conferences, and they've got something interesting to say or
something that's a little bit different.
Right?
And so I would much prefer to find my authors that way by approaching them
as opposed to what we call, you know, manuscripts that come over the transom,
those kind of unsolicited manuscripts that may or may not really fit into what
you're looking for or fit your style.
Right?
Because every publisher has a little bit different View of the world and you want
to make sure that you're presenting the right topic and the right what's the right
word, the right kind of wavelength to that particular publisher, because everybody
has a slightly different take on things.
Gene Tavernetti: Okay.
So, well, I met you because I had written my book, Teach Fast, and I was
looking for a publisher, and people who know me won't be surprised when
I say this, you know, but because I'm so smart, I didn't ask for a lot of
advice, I just did stuff, and then after the fact, they tried to figure it out.
So, when I met you, I had already For the most part written the book
and I thought that's what you did but how should people get started?
And if Mark Holmes doesn't approach them, how did they get, how did
they get started writing the book?
Mark Combes: Yeah, by starting writing the book.
I think people get intimidated by the concept of I've got to
put down 50 to 75, 000 words and how am I ever going to do that?
I've got a full time job and two kids and a dog and the whole thing.
So you just you got to find time to write and you got to write the book.
It doesn't mean that you have to have it finished before you
start approaching a publisher or.
You know, start, for lack of a better word, shopping the manuscript around,
but you want to have a pretty good start on it, and at least have a very good
understanding of what that, that book is going to be about, the structure of it.
That said, you know, I've certainly worked with authors, again, Typically authors
that I've approached that haven't written in it, you know, you thought about writing
a book, Gene, and no, I really haven't.
So we then it's the kind of creation process between you and I.
Let's see how we can kind of formulate this idea into a coherent
book and how should we structure it.
And those are the kinds of books I really like working on.
Gene Tavernetti: So how does that work?
I know that Again, when I was looking for a publisher for my book, there were, I
would see the publisher's guidelines, and this is the guideline for a proposal and
gosh it, for me, it seemed pretty daunting because I didn't have a a protocol for it.
I had no outline to do that.
How important is that if you're shopping If you're shopping a manuscript.
Mark Combes: Having an interesting idea that doesn't have to be 100 percent
unique, right, it could be A side idea to something but yeah, you have to have
some sort of hook, some sort of idea.
That said, the writing is important as well, and that's going to
vary a little bit by publisher.
Some publishers are a little bit more forgiving on how clean the writing
has to be, and some will want it to be absolutely perfect because they
don't want to do anything with it.
They want to come in and do a little light copy editing and then publish it.
So it's a little bit of both, but if you want to weigh the scale and you
got to have a decent idea because the writing can oftentimes be cleaned up.
But again, that said, again, the writing has to be at least passable, right?
So that the publisher doesn't have to do too much work and invest too much time
and energy into cleaning up the writing.
Gene Tavernetti: Alright, so, if you were, if someone wanted to start a
book, your suggestion is that they start writing, um, how much structure is.
Well, let me back up a little bit here.
Many of the proposals that we see, say they wanna know, where's your table
of contents, what's in every chapter.
And is that's, is that pretty standard?
Mark Combes: That's fairly standard.
Gene Tavernetti: should know?
Mark Combes: Yes.
It may feel like I'm kind of equivocating here because Every publisher is a
little bit different, and that's part of the problem with publishing.
It can be very arcane and, you know, what one publisher does, another doesn't,
you know, my acquisition process is significantly different, I think, than
most traditional publishers, where you do send in that 13 page proposal
with competent comp titles and your marketing plan and the whole rigmarole.
My approach is much more interactive.
I want to talk to you.
I want to find out about who you are.
Can I work with you?
Because I like to work with my authors and develop the ideas that they come up with.
And are you open to editorial suggestions?
So it's more of a relationship building kind of a thing, as opposed to a
transactional type of situation, which would find in a traditional publisher.
I'm not sure if I answered your question there.
Gene Tavernetti: Well, I'm going to, I'm going to expand on what
you said that you'd like to you know, develop a relationship.
And that's why I liked working with you.
And because the relationship goes both ways.
It's, I have to, you know, when I send you something that I've
worked on and you have it edited.
I have to respect you.
You know, I'm not going to argue about everything.
And a little anecdote when my book finally did get Beyond You, which
was I don't know if you knew this but our editor Anders, who we worked
with, he always complimented you.
He says, when I get a book from Mark it's in pretty good shape.
So that means we, we had a chance to develop a relationship
and do a lot of work.
But the other thing that was so interesting when I did get the book to
the publisher, there were, or to the editor there were a couple of things
that had been really problematic.
for me that I didn't know how to figure out.
And when my first call with the publisher within the first like three
minutes, he said, I hope you don't mind.
I switched, you know, I switched your introduction to chapter one because
it just and that was the exact problem that I didn't know how to figure out.
And that experience just got it done.
And I didn't have to worry about it anymore.
So, I agree.
I think that relationship is very important.
I have always respected, you know, when people have given me feedback
do you ever, have you ever been sorry that you accepted a book and then
you started to work with somebody?
And,
Mark Combes: Yeah.
I mean, we've all had those kind of first dates that go really well.
And then you go out to dinner and you go, I'm not sure what I saw in her
when we had coffee because it will happen, but not very often though.
And then you can usually work through it in a kind of a professional manner.
It's just, it's a little bit work than you thought it was going to be.
Yeah.
And then sometimes life intervenes too.
I mean, yeah, one of the questions, or one of the things we'll talk about
early in the process is, do you, are you dedicated to doing this?
Because writing a book takes time, and it's, as I often tell my authors, it's
butt in the seat, fingers on the keyboard.
That's how books get written.
And it's not some muse that's going to, you know, like a lightning bolt strike you
in the head and you're just going to be able to crank out this book in a weekend.
It's going to take some concerted effort on your part to get it done.
Do you have the passion for the project in order to get it done?
Yeah
Gene Tavernetti: that people Always wonder about you know, they always
hear in the movies, you know, I've got a deadline, but I got a publisher,
a deadline from my publisher.
Well, are those hard and fast?
Or the story on those?
Mark Combes: I'm going to be a little wishy washy and I, and if any of the
listeners take anything away from this is that Publishing is a morass, and
every publisher is slightly different in how they approach these things.
Some are going to be extremely tight on those deadlines.
I've worked for publishers that have slots.
Your book is going to be June 2025.
If you miss June 2025, it could be another six months before we
have another slot for you, right?
So you got to get it done.
Some are, most are a little bit more flexible than that.
You know, they'll publish seven books in June instead of five or whatever, right?
And then they can make it work, but always be respectful of that
deadline because the publishers has got a forward vision, right?
They're starting to line things up based on that due date.
They're starting to schedule their copy editors, their design people
to start working on the cover, all based on that due date, because that's
kind of the trigger for all of that.
So, nobody's going to come to your house and, you know, repossess your car if you
don't get your book in on time, probably.
But be respectful of that deadline.
And be up front.
That's something that when you initially sign with a publisher, make
sure you have a good understanding of that and be honest with them.
You know, I'm going to take a sabbatical for six months and I can get this done,
or no, you know, I'm, it's going to take me 18 months to get this done.
Be honest about that time schedule for yourself.
Gene Tavernetti: one of the things that I remember you telling me is
the publishing is, Hurry up and wait.
Hurry up and wait.
I know I've talked to I've talked to a friend of mine who just finished a rewrite
of one of his books, and he said, Yeah, it should be coming out in mid 2026.
You know that how.
It's not immediate is what I'm, is what I'm trying to say.
So, so what's a general, if, again, this might be wishy-washy, but what's a general
timeline for getting a book written?
You talk to somebody and they say, yeah, I'd like to write a book.
What would be a good rule?
Mark Combes: Yeah, I would say within a year of the manuscript being submitted,
a clean manuscript being submitted.
So now it's in the process, right?
Now it's in the pipeline, in the production pipeline.
I think a year is probably pretty reasonable for most publishers.
Yeah.
The ones I've worked for turn around much quicker than that, much faster than
that, usually within five or six months of that clean manuscript coming in.
But again, it really does vary.
They will, if it's a book they really want, and it's timely, what's called
in the business as a trend book, a book that's, you know, Talks about
a topic that's super hot right now.
They might move it up a little bit faster, too.
Gene Tavernetti: but it's just a little bit faster.
I mean,
Mark Combes: Yeah, there's only so much they can do, right?
Yeah, but yeah, they can maybe get in a couple months if they really
put the pedal to the metal, but
Gene Tavernetti: I think that's one of the biggest surprises I think for new
authors is that just how long it takes.
And then there was an additional, I don't know if you remember this Mark, but there
was an additional issue with my book.
It came out, it was being worked on during COVID and then we had the
supply chain issue and the books were coming from Great Britain and it took
forever and you never knew when it was going to arrive or where it was.
It was crazy.
So, so it always takes longer than you think, I guess,
Mark Combes: It always does.
Yeah.
Yeah, the distribution pipeline always catches a lot of first time authors.
You know, the publication date is when the book is released to the public.
It's not necessarily when it's gonna be on the bookshore.
Bookshelf or in Amazon's warehouses, right?
Now, we are now shipping it out to Amazon's warehouses.
That takes a week.
It takes them a week to receive it.
It takes them another four or five days to fulfill the order, whatever, right?
So, we're talking some time here before the pipeline gets filled up,
and people are anxious because they pre ordered their book, and, you
know, they're wondering, where is it?
You know, the publication date was two weeks ago.
How come I haven't got my book yet?
Well, that's one of the reasons why,
Gene Tavernetti: You know, the one of the big surprises for me was, well,
I always had a goal to write a book.
I always said, oh, you got a book.
I write the book.
Oh, isn't this great?
And then, holy cow, I got to sell it.
How what's that process like?
How, what advice would you have for people with regards to marketing or
just, how does that work these days?
Mark Combes: I'll confine this to the professional development space, seeing
as that's what we're talking about here, and it's what I've been doing for the
past 10 years or so, is that unless this is really a passionate project and you
something that you really want to do, you probably should have some sort of platform
in order to kind of promote yourself and your work by that, I mean, you're doing
whatever you're writing the book about, you're probably We're already presenting
in schools or maybe this is something that you oversee within your school.
You're the special education teacher at your particular school and you've
come up with an idea on how to some sort of pedagogical approach that
you think would work well elsewhere.
So you have some sort of platform that people can gravitate to and that you
can kind of self promote yourself.
That helps a great deal.
Certainly in the professional development space.
Gene Tavernetti: So, what should they expect from a, well, there's, I was going
to say, what should they expect from a publisher, but there's another option.
Now I think that a lot of people are doing and I think that's a space that you're
involved in is self publishing, supporting authors who want to self publish or
just supporting authors in general.
So what's your thoughts about self publishing these days
Mark Combes: Yeah, self publishing has changed quite a bit since it
first kind of came on the scene, I don't know, 10, 15, 20 years ago.
The options for an author are quite good now, but you do have to understand
that self publishing means exactly that.
You are now publishing the book yourself.
You're doing all the things that a publisher would normally do, or
you're contracting with someone to help you with that, right?
Editing, layout, cover design.
Finding out how you're going to distribute the book, how you're
going to market the book yourself.
All of those things are going to fall on your shoulders now.
It's not insurmountable by any means, again, because the systems
are much better than they used to be.
It's certainly doable, and of course your compensation is going to be considerably
higher because it's only your mouth that you're feeding now, as opposed to a
big publisher who's got a lot of money.
A lot of departments to kind of keep moving.
So it's certainly doable, but you have to be willing to take a little bit more work.
And so you'd probably want to partner with somebody who can at least
get you most of the way to that.
And the biggest hurdle typically is getting a good quality
book published that's copy edited, that's laid out, right.
That, that's formatted well.
So it, the quality of the book really does matter the most, more than.
Anything else I think,
Gene Tavernetti: when I talk to people who are thinking about,
you know, self publishing and everything that we've talked about?
I always emphasize the support.
That I received in the editing, the copy editing, the whole,
that, that whole piece.
I mean, I was to the point where is, you know, I'm going back and forth.
I've rewritten written paragraphs so many times.
There's one word that I can't decide on and I'm driving myself crazy.
You know, I need somebody to help and I think that would be, if I were to self
publish a book, you know, I think that would be the biggest thing that I would be
looking for people that are competent and that had experience in doing that work.
Mark Combes: And knows the space, that professional development space or whatever
space you're publishing in if you're writing a romance novel, you're going
to want to find an editor who's worked on romance novels in the past and who
understands the marketplace and what the marketplace is looking for can also help
you with You're stuck on some sort of thing and that, that editor's probably
read a research paper about that and can maybe kind of point you toward that and
kind of if you're thinking about something a little bit different or something like
that can be an aid to you in your writing.
So I would be very leery if you're an education writer.
You want to write an education book going with some of those kind of
mainstream trade self publishing firms who aren't going to have a very
good understanding of the content.
Gene Tavernetti: And then after that's done, then you're still stuck with the
marketing of the book, whether you had it self published or you had a publisher,
Mark Combes: And that's where having that platform comes in, right?
You know, if you're, you can, it sounds a little capitalistic or whatever, I'm
sure what the word would be, but you can think of your book as a marketing piece.
Right.
In some ways, it's kind of your calling card.
This is what I do.
This is what I talk about.
And it doesn't mean that's the only thing you do, but you probably are going to find
a slot that you're going to fill, right?
You're an instructional coach, right?
That's what you do, Gene, right?
So here's the book, and this is how my approaches are, and it's
a good way to kind of introduce yourself as well as a leave behind.
Say you're working with a school that's got 150 teachers or so,
and there's 150 book sales.
Right.
You just kind of work it in with your presentation.
So everybody gets to leave behind with your book.
Gene Tavernetti: And the
Mark Combes: And, you know, to the, and to back up a little bit Again,
the distribution aspect of self publishing has improved greatly in the
past, I would say, five to ten years, where that hurdle via Amazon and some
others, they make it fairly easy for you to kind of upload your book and
make it available to other people.
the general public, somebody who's just kind of browsing on Amazon.
And there's different ways that you can do advertising on Amazon
to kind of promote your book.
And again, working with somebody who knows all that stuff is helpful as well.
But that's something you can learn.
You can get your book out there to just to kind of the general public, as opposed
to just selling it to directly to schools.
Gene Tavernetti: and a more technical question here that
I had thought of before.
So if you self publish a book, and okay, you get all the ISBN, you get
all that technical stuff done, the copyrights taken care of, should
be taken care of by the publisher.
The company that's helping you self publish that
Mark Combes: Correct.
Correct.
Gene Tavernetti: So how does it, where do the books actually go?
You get them printed and now I've got a contract with Amazon or, you know, an
agreement that, that, oh, there's my book, you know, they can buy it through Amazon.
So what happens?
Do I have to continually ship books off to Amazon, or how does that work?
Mark Combes: Yeah.
Again, I'm going to be wishy washy because it can depend.
It depends on what you want to do.
You can take those files, your book files, and go to a printer
and print 3, 000 copies and keep them in your garage if you want.
And you can be your own distribution center.
That's certainly one way to do it.
But then, you know, you've got to have boxes and mailing and etc.
What I would recommend doing is finding a service, and there's several of them, that
do the distribution for you, for a fee.
Right, they're going to take a cut of every book that you sell, but they'll
do probably print on demand, and print on demand has gotten considerably better
in the past decade or so, too, almost in distinguishable form of offset printing.
Offset printing is when you do a big print run.
5, 5, 7, 000 copies on a regular kind of printing press, whereas print on demand
is just done digitally, kind of one at a time and then there won't be any
inventory for you to have to worry about.
You haven't spent 10, 000 to print all these books.
You're printing them as you need them, and they will distribute them for you.
That, that's the route I would go, probably.
Gene Tavernetti: and that's part of the services that you
provide now, is assisting people in making those decisions,
Mark Combes: things to set up.
Yep.
Gene Tavernetti: Yeah.
Because those are the things that, to quote Seinfeld, there's always a guy,
there's always a guy who could do it.
You don't have to do it yourself.
If you think you have to do everything, it becomes too big, I think.
So,
Mark Combes: subject matter expert.
Stick with what you know, right?
My dad always told me that.
Never be afraid to hire a professional, you know, and I'm not.
You know, if I need somebody to work on my car, I find a guy who knows what
he's doing, as opposed to me trying to figure out where the water pump is.
Gene Tavernetti: Yeah, is there and I think you've kind of talked about this
not directly, but you find somebody to write a, wants to write a book or
they, you've talked about it and is there anybody who shouldn't write a
book who says, boy, I want to write a book and can you have you talked to
them and you recognize that right away?
Mark Combes: That's exactly right.
That's why I have, and you remember this, I have what I, termed a
discovery meeting with my authors.
And you can think of it as just a cup of coffee and talking over,
you know, you and I over a cup of coffee talking over your book idea.
This is a guy I can work with.
Is this guy passionate about this project?
Because I often work with first time authors and they're, you know,
you know, I'd like to write a book.
That'd be kind of cool.
And well, no, it's, you're, we're talking seven months of hard
labor here to get this thing done.
Are you passionate about this project?
And you really can only tell that, I think, by talking to somebody.
Are the people that shouldn't write a book.
That's and I often find that in those discovery meetings.
Gene Tavernetti: you know, one of the, and I was so excited when, you
know, I finally signed a contract and like, I was like many authors, you
know, shopped it around a little bit.
And, you know, the first question that people ask me.
Oh, what was your bonus?
What was your signing book?
What's the reality of that situation?
Mark Combes: Those are quite rare, certainly in professional development.
The Douglamovs of the world will get an advance, but also keeping
in mind what an advance is.
An advance is an advance against future royalties.
So they're just prepaying you your royalties.
It's not a bonus.
It's not, although some authors in some other genres might get a
signing bonus, that's extremely rare.
I mean, you were talking James Patterson, JK Rowling kind of things, right?
So I would worry less about an advance and focus more on the royalties
they're going to pay you and go in at that and attack it from that angle.
Look for a graduated royalty scale.
The more books you sell, the higher percentage you should earn from that.
Also look for How that royalty is structured.
Is it on net sales or is it on cover price?
Makes a huge difference, right?
So I would attack it from the royalty standpoint and try to negotiate
as strong a royalty schedule as you can for yourself, as opposed
to saying I need a 5, 000 advance.
Gene Tavernetti: And again, how do you, how does somebody find out about
Mark Combes: That's part of the, that's part of the agreement process.
So if I were to come to you and say, yeah, we want to publish your
book here's our publishing terms.
And that will, and in those terms, the royalty schedule will be laid out.
And as an author, I would come back and say, you know,
I think we can do better here.
I need more than 10%.
You know, I'd like to maybe start at 10%, but if I sell 5, 000 copies, I 15%.
after that sort of thing.
And publishers are kind of coming around to that too.
It's a little bit more of an incentive for the author to help market the book.
So, but again,
Gene Tavernetti: does, go ahead.
Mark Combes: no, I was just gonna say people get hung up on, on advances.
I wouldn't, because again, it's advance against future royalties.
It's not free money.
It's just, When he got early.
Gene Tavernetti: Well, and another thing, as I was looking at, again, at
your website and I had been talking to you about, you know, self publishing
another book with another group that I'm working with, and taking a look at
your, Fee structure to do all that work.
That's something if you're with a publisher, they're just absorbing
Mark Combes: Correct.
Gene Tavernetti: and you don't realize it in, in, in some, another way to look
at that is, I just got a five grand advance because they did all this work so.
In other words, don't get hung up on that.
Mark Combes: Right.
Right.
Gene Tavernetti: Don't expect that big advance.
Mark Combes: And to kind of piggyback on that and maybe even circle back
to that deadline, keep in mind that the publisher is spending all of this
money before they make a dime, right?
They don't make any money until that book is sold.
So they've got to, they've got to pay an editor, a cover designer, an
acquisitions editor, all of those things are front loaded into your book.
Yeah.
Right.
Before they even realize any money.
So it's not like they're taking a bit of a gamble.
Right.
You know, not all books will pan out or sell as well as they hoped.
So, so have a little sympathy for your publisher too.
Gene Tavernetti: Is there something that I should have asked you, or something
that you would like to share with folks who have a goal to write a book
this year, get started writing a book?
Mark Combes: Yeah.
If you're looking to write a book, get going, get started
and set a schedule for yourself.
If it means getting up at 5 in the morning before the kids get up and go to, you
gotta get them off to school and it's only a half an hour, you'd be amazed at
how quickly a half an hour could turn into, ah, I can sneak another 15 minutes
or 45 minutes here or there, right?
But get yourself into a writing schedule, and I think that's the,
the biggest hurdle most authors have.
It's just building that writing discipline there's going to be days where you've
got the flu, but you've got to get a thousand words down, you know, and it's
not all glamorous, but it can be done.
And a lot of people have done it.
Do the work.
Gene Tavernetti: Do the work.
Do you have a question for me, Mark?
Mark Combes: I'm always curious as to how my authors feel about their experience.
They're publishing what sort of thing.
Opened their eyes or was open to them, like, oh, I didn't expect that.
Gene Tavernetti: Well, I've talked about a couple of things, but before I
do that, Talk any, you know, talk about specifically and answer your question.
I want to give you one more pat on the back and I would recommend that if anybody
is going to in this new year think about writing a book get to your website,
which will be murmurationauthorsservice.
com And and have a cup of coffee with mark a virtual cup of coffee because
Don't be out there by yourself.
If you don't know how to do it, you don't know how to do
it and talk to a professional
Mark Combes: appreciate that, Jane, and to emphasize that,
I love talk and book ideas.
So yeah, even if it's kind of, in its infancy, your ideas in its infancy with
this chat, it doesn't cost us anything other than 50 or 20 minutes of your
Gene Tavernetti: And that really gets something out of it.
So, so for me experience, you know, again I had two paths.
Going one when I was doing the work and I was also learning about
the business at the same time and I tried to, um, offload all the
learning about the business to you.
Again, it had to be somebody that I trusted that it was going to,
that I was going to move along.
But as we talked about during this, during our chat here, had the goal.
You know, I want to write a book.
I want to write a book.
Then here comes your book.
And now I want to sell the book.
I want to sell the book.
And then now it's not enough, you know.
So, so that, that was my experience.
So my experience was wonderful up until the time it got published and I
wasn't even thinking about marketing.
before that.
And I think it was too, my experience, I don't want to say it was too late,
but I think my sales haven't been what I would wanted them to be because I
didn't think about the marketing side.
And now I see, you know, some of the, some of my some of my friends and
acquaintances, you know, they're doing what I should have been doing, you know,
their book coming out at six months and I, they're promoting it every day.
Okay.
And and working.
So that would be the, that would be the thing that I learned in this experience,
which gets me to think about, you know, if I were to do another book, because
I'm always thinking about writing another book, you know, would I go
self publish a route given given what I know now, and given that I am not J.
K.
Rowling, so I'm not one of these guys, you know, I'm not going to be
selling a gazillion books and how do I navigate this mid level existence?
Mark Combes: exactly.
Yeah, again, having a little sympathy for the publishers, right?
There's, they publish a lot of books, and they only have so many resources,
financial resources, in order to promote those books, and all books get promoted.
Don't think that, ah, we're not going to do anything with this book at all, but
everybody's budget is going to be slightly different based on, you know, What their
expectations for that particular book are.
And of course, just the way the curve works, right?
There's going to be 20 percent of the books that do really well, and
they're probably going to get a little bit more marketing support
than those mid list authors.
who are probably going to have to make, kind of have to plow
their own field in a lot of ways.
They'll get marketing support, but they probably won't get as much as.
I've never met an author that said, boy, they just, they keep throwing money at me.
You know, they're over marketing me, you know, and that's even
the top tier authors, right?
You know, no, no author ever thinks they're over promoted.
Gene Tavernetti: And that's funny, I was surprised, I met somebody
recently, and that's, and we were talking about this, and I was very
surprised to hear that from this author.
I thought, my goodness, you?
You know, they're, so, but it's everybody.
Mark, it's always a pleasure talking to you, and I always
wanted to spend more time with you.
When we
Mark Combes: Yeah, this has been great.
Gene Tavernetti: And to chat.
But the problem was it was all business before.
Now it's, now we just had a chance to chat.
So, so thanks Mark.
And I think you, this was a good service for a lot of folks.
Mark Combes: I hope so.
Gene Tavernetti: All right.
Mark Combes: always appreciate talking with you.
Always a blast.
Gene Tavernetti: If you're enjoying these podcasts, tell a friend.
Also, please leave a 5 star rating on Apple Podcasts,
Spotify, or wherever you listen.
You can follow me on BlueSky at gTabernetti, on Twitter, x at gTabernetti,
and you can learn more about me and the work I do at my website, BlueSky.
Tesscg.
com, that's T E S S C G dot com, where you will also find information about
ordering my books, Teach Fast, Focus Adaptable Structure Teaching, and
Maximizing the Impact of Coaching Cycles.
Talk to you soon!