A few months ago, Entrylit’s Kelsey Seymour interviewed me about ghostwriting, working as a writing coach, editing, and getting published for her Perfect Bind podcast, which aims to “demystify the crowded and unclear path new authors must traverse in the hopes of getting a book deal. A must-listen for writers, even if considering self-publishing.”
Here’s the transcription for those of you who prefer to read. The Perfect Bind podcast was automatically transcribed by machines, so please excuse any mistakes.
Kelsey Seymour:
Hi, there, you are listening to Perfect Bind by Entry Lit. I am Kelsey Seymour, founder of Entry Lit and host of Perfect Bind. Today, joining me is Lindon Gross, two-time New York Times bestselling writer, as well as ghostwriter and editor of other bestsellers and writing coach to bestselling writers. Thank you so much for being with me today. Thank you for having me. And, um, normally my cat would be joining us in the background, um, but today we are at your house, so if there’s little dog sounds in the background, just enjoy them. Um, they’re, they’re part of the show too. So I have to ask, because I know so little about ghostwriting, and that’s kind of exciting to me because you have the experience of writing your own books and putting your name on the cover and then writing books and letting someone else’s name go on the cover. Can you tell me a little bit about how those two experiences sort of contrast with each other?
Linden Gross:
Well, it’s interesting from an emotional point of view, the ghostwriting can be a little difficult because either way, you pour yourself into the book, and then it’s a little strange to be in the acknowledgements with the author, quote unquote saying, couldn’t have done it without her. And I’m thinking, well, no, never <laugh>. Yeah. Well, uh, so that, that’s a little difficult. It’s, it’s a, it’s, it’s a little tough. On the other hand, I like helping people tell their stories and how I do that, whether I’m writing the story for them, except that when I’m ghostwriting, basically I’m debriefing somebody. There’s a lot of interviewing that gets, everything gets transcribed. I work from their transcripts. So one of my favorite memories I’ve worked with Vidal Sassoon, the famous hair stylist on a memoir that he decided ultimately he did not want to continue with because it was emotionally very difficult. And he just felt that if it wasn’t going to be a guaranteed bestseller, and there is no such thing that he just didn’t want to turn himself inside out. But one of the things I really remember is the first time I showed him a sample chapter, he said, “Oh my God, it sounds like me.” And I said, “Of course, it sounds like you, it is you. You just better.” And that became my tag. So that’s my tagline for my one Stop Writing Shop. It sounds like you only better, and that works whether I’m working with you as a ghostwriter, whether I’m working with you as a co collaboration, as a co-writer, whether I’m working with you as an editor, or whether I’m working with you as a writing coach, same, same thing. I’m helping you tell your story or make your point, or write your novel.
(02:48):
And we’re going to make sure that it’s in your voice, not mine. And we’re going to make sure that it sounds like you only better.
Kelsey Seymour:
I like that. I was going to ask you actually about voice, but you’ve just answered that because I’m, I’m wondering if I picked up two different books that you had ghostwritten, would they sound anything alike?
Linden Gross:
Hopefully they would have the same sort of flow. Yeah. That, that would, that’s something I try very hard to introduce, but no, that literally, I work from transcripts and I have often described my job as more of a weaver. You sort of take things from one part of the transcript and then something from an interview that you did three weeks later, and you meld them together. You start seeing the patterns. That’s also part of what a ghostwriter does. And I think that’s where the journalism background that I have comes in and learning how to interview people.
It, you are fishing a lot when you’re ghostwriting. Okay. You’re getting somebody to tell their story. You’re asking questions sometimes you’re sharing, which is very much what I do as a writing coach. You’re sharing your own story as a way of potentially eliciting something. You’re brainstorming with people, you’re, you’re, you’re getting stuff at, uh, at one point, um, the second book that I ghostwrote that became a national bestseller was a book called A Perfect Score. And it basically is about a, a couple in Napa Valley, Craig and Kathryn Hall, who created a winery only about 20 years ago and ended up getting a perfect score from Robert Parker. One of, as it turns out now, many. And they have a very prestigious Hall Wines, uh, winery in, in Napa, along with two others.
Kelsey Seymour:
Do you get free wine as a wish part of this deal? <laugh>?
Linden Gross (04:30):
I wish. Cause their wine’s expensive. And what the book does is talk about their history of how they built the winery, but also their backgrounds. But also they have this ginormous art collection. They’re quite wealthy that is all over the world, and I mean, is enormous. And they have sculpture gardens, they have fabulous art in their winery, I mean, in their home. It’s great. And so it’s all about sort of the art and business and soul of starting this winery in their lives. Well, as happens with most couples, they don’t necessarily agree on a lot of stuff. And so part of my job ended up be coming that sort of third party to help meld the two points of view into something that would work in a single book. And I remember we had finished the first book, and I, uh, was in California, met them for lunch, and, uh, they got into a discussion about it.
(05:33):
It was filling a vacancy at the winery mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And as usual, they totally didn’t agree. There were two people and they didn’t agree on who it should be. And they’re very public about their discords, at least around me. Yeah. And finally, Kathryn turns around and looks at me and says, thank goodness our marriage counselor is back <laugh>. And so, so you do sort of get this, you know, every once in a while working as a coach or a ghostwriter or a collaborator, I, I kinda get this sense of, I feel like I’m practicing without a license here now, <laugh>, do they ever, do they ever look at you and say, let the record show <laugh>? No, they don’t <laugh>. So it’s interesting there, I think that that’s a piece of the ghostwriting that has a lot to do with the coaching. Yeah. The processes are quite similar.
(06:23):
And in fact, I’ve started a number of my coaching clients now record our calls because they’re very much like the kinds of calls that we have when I’m working as a ghostwriter.
Kelsey Seymour:
Okay. And we can use the, they can use the, they can plop stuff right into their Yeah. Book based on our transcripts. That’s helpful. So yeah. That’s a great tip for, for when you get stuck Yeah. Is talk it out and run a tape recorder, just talk it out with a friend. I’ve started learning the, if I do text to speech on my phone, it’s so much faster than if I’m texting or if I’m writing and I didn’t use to do it. And now that I have a baby girl, I never have my hands anyway, so I can just talk to my phone. Um, it doesn’t grab every word exactly, but if I go back, I know what it was supposed to be.
(07:05):
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t want to talk about ghostwriting for the entire episode. Yes. But I do have one more question about it. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, actually no. Two. I have, I have two more questions. Is it more popular than the public thinks that it is.
Linden Gross:
Actually, it was a great question. So I actually went and researched. I didn’t know. Oh. And um, what I found is according to the New York Times 50% of all the books on the bestseller list, 50%. Yeah. And I’m, I don’t, I believe they’re talking about the nonfiction list, though. Uh, some ghostwriting does happen with fiction as well. There are other articles that say that that’s conservative and it may be as high as 90. That makes sense. Because if you’re an expert in a certain area, you’re not necessarily going to be an expert writer. And so you’re going to hire an expert writer to convey your expertise in whatever area you actually operate in.
(07:54):
And the other thing that happens, and this is what I tell a lot of people in terms of writing coach work, is when you are, especially if you’re writing anything that has to do with yourself. So first of all, writing a book, it’s almost impossible not to lose perspective along the way. It’s such a big undertaking. You get about two thirds of the way through, you now have absolutely no idea if you just written a whole bunch of crap, or if it’s really decent, you, you can’t tell anymore. You have no clue if so, so you, you’ve lost perspective. If you’re writing about yourself, by definition, you’ve lost perspective. So now you’ve hit with a double whammy. And so it helps to have somebody who’s not a friend and not family who’s not going to say, oh, yeah, yeah, it’s great. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, who really wants to, you know, the family and friends are going to want to like it.
(08:44):
Yeah. They’re not trained to look and see, is it working? Could it work better? Did you just make a leap? They know your history. You need somebody who is familiar with your project because they’re closely aligned with it. But who’s that outsider who’s bringing that perspective in? And hopefully bringing some expertise in the writing world as well.
Kelsey Seymour:
Yeah. And that really helped my, my last question about ghostwriting. Yes. Then we’ll move on, um, since it clearly is more popular than we think it is, sounds like there’s a lot of work out there for people who would be interested in doing ghostwriting. Do you have opinions about what makes a good or a bad candidate for becoming a ghostwriter based on personality or expertise? I think you have to be the kind of person who can draw people out who likes people. Yeah.
Linden Gross (09:32):
I think the expertise, I find that it actually helps not to know very much about a certain field. Okay. Assuming that the audience is going to be a lay audience. Right. Because then you have no knowledge to assume you are in the same position as the reader. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So if you’re writing about finances and you’re not very good at finance, then that’s great, because that’s perfect. Uh, now, if you are working with somebody who’s, you know, writing about physics for a, a scientist audience, that’s not going to, you’re going to need an expert. Yeah. But for the rest, I think it’s helpful not to have that level of expertise so that you make people, A lot of experts assume that their readers know a lot more than they do. They assume knowledge. And so if you are that person who doesn’t know anything about the field, you’re in the perfect place to say, wait, wait, wait.
Kelsey Seymour (10:30):
Back up a second. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, can you explain that? I don’t really get that.
Linden Gross:
I think that the biggest thing for a ghostwriter, aside from resilience and persistence and, um, and, and being good with people and, and having a rapport with the specific person Yeah. Who you’re thinking about working with, because it really is, um, sort of like, you know, jumping into marriage before you’ve, you know mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it’s a pretty close relationship. And sometimes you end up knowing more than their spouse nos because you, you, you go there. And so it’s, it gets pretty intimate. And so I think that that’s, that’s a piece of it. But I think that the, the other piece is you, it helps to have a pretty good sense of organization because you’re going to be working from all these transcripts and you have to figure out what the, the message is.
(11:28):
You have to figure out the structure of how to convey that message. So you have to be able to read between the lines. You have to realize that the thing that they talked about three months down the line actually relates to what they talked about during your first, and you have to, they don’t know how the book is shaped. No. They have no idea. No. So a big piece of what you’re doing is figuring out how to approach the material. And, and so that happens before any of the writing mm-hmm. <affirmative> really happens. And so you sort of have to do those initial interviews, um, kind of a high level interview to figure out what is this book and how does it lay out? Yeah. Because then you’re going to interview in depth chapter by chapter. But unless you have a, you know, unless you know your structure before you start into the really deep work Yeah.
(12:21):
Forget about it. Now, there, there are companies who do ghostwriting, especially for business. Okay. People. Yeah. Um, who don’t take this in-depth approach. Okay. They do the top level quickie interview and call it good and write the book and, and turn it around. And it’s very affordable. Okay. Um, I’m not <laugh> because Noted, when I get involved, you want some of that wine people. That’s right. But for me, if I get involved, I’m, I’m talking about a, a pretty intense period of time. Okay. And I, I’ve turned things around quicker, but, you know, you can turn things, a book like this around in three months, your hands will never be the same. Literally, you’ll have overuse issues, which I have because I have done that. Oh boy. You know, it’s just too much typing. Yeah. So, so you’re looking at six months to a year usually to turn a book like this around.
(13:15):
So you’re looking at that kind of paycheck.
No, it’d have to be a huge commitment. Especially if you’re talking about something as intimate as someone’s life. It would be hard without their constant input and fact-checking and just emotional gut checks along the way. Well, and you, you are steering the conversation. They don’t know that they need to tell you the story about, right. Yeah. What happened in London during the war? They have no idea. Nope. Until you start asking and they’re like, oh my God, I gotta talk about that. So, yeah. Wow. Well, let’s, let’s talk about, um, your editing Yeah. Work cuz you operate as an editor. And, and I’m just going to clarify that that’s all types of editing. It’s copy editing. It’s No, no, it’s not. Okay. Educate me. I, I’m, so there are three kinds of editing I do.
(14:01):
Two of them. Okay. There’s developmental editing, which is big picture, sort of what we were talking about. Structure, uh, basic flow is the, is the idea there is that working, you have line editing, which is a language, also transitions, are you making your point? Uh, it, and then you have copy editing, which is grammar, punctuation, spelling. Got it. The minutia. Yeah. She said Sni <laugh> copy editing is not for me. I am thrilled that I know really good copy editors that I can mm-hmm. <affirmative> send manuscripts to including my own. Yep. Because we don’t want to be submitting anything these days that gives anybody an excuse to turn it away and say, oh, this is not professional. This hasn’t been copy edited. I’m not going to even look at it. Yeah. So I pretty much run my stuff by copy editors all the time before it goes anywhere.
(14:59):
And I make sure my clients do the same. Yeah. I’m not going to be that person besides, I don’t believe that a copy editor, you need fresh eyes to copy edit. I, I don’t, I don’t, I’m not a horrible copy editor. I’m just not top of the game copy editor. Yeah. And especially if I’ve been involved in something, I can no longer see it clearly. Right. I fill in words, my brain fills in words that are missing. Everybody’s does that. Yeah. So, um, so those are the kinds of editing that I do. I tend to edit. Uh, I, I think the biggest thing that probably makes me different from a lot of editors is I won’t just take on a line edit. If somebody comes to me and says, I’ll give you a good example. Um, and, and this actually ties into another question that you have.
(15:45):
Okay. So have a, um, there’s a woman named Barb Hinske who came to me number of years ago. She had been referred to me by somebody I had met and said, I need a copy of. I said, okay, well, that, that’s not my thing, but I know a good one. Yep. I’ll send it a lot. So, sent it to one of my copy editors who shot it back pretty quickly saying, this has not been professionally edited, I’m not going to touch it. Okay. So I shot back an email saying, I’m so sorry. She’s not going to touch. It needs a professional edit. So the woman said, would you be willing to do that? And I said, well, here’s how I work. Having worked as a writing coach for a long time and dealt with a bunch of people who have gone through editors, I know that editing is like writing.
(16:38):
It’s subjective. There are lots of ways to write, there are lots of ways to edit from my perspective. You need to make sure that you’re on the same page. So I insist that people hire me to do a critique of their book. Okay. And most of the time, what I’m going to find is developmental stuff. It’s that. So when Barb, so I said to Barb, you know, I would need to do a critique. She said, fine, do the critique. So I read the manuscript, and usually the memos are pretty long. They’re, you know, like 10 page memos that they’re pretty long. And one of the things that I found was that she, she had written a novel, the novel opened with this bad guy who’s defrauding an entire town. Okay. Who stops on a highway in the rain because there’s a dog on the side of the road.
(17:31):
He gets the dog in his car and he takes it to the shelter that he has started. Okay. So I of course, love dogs. Right. And instantly, I, I love characters who are neither all good or all bad. Yeah. And the idea of a really bad guy mm-hmm. <affirmative>, who’s doing really bad things and hurting people who saves dogs, I found very intriguing. Yeah. That was the last of that part of the storyline. No, it hit on the first page and he barely showed up again in the book.
Kelsey Seymour:
Come on. Exactly.
Linden Gross:
So she ended up rewriting the book, which I ended up editing. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, we have now worked together on, it’s either 13 or 14 books. She quit her job as an attorney. She now writes full-time. Okay. She’s super good at marketing. She also pumps out these books. She’s got that turned into a series.
(18:26):
I can’t remember if we’re on eight, nine on that series. Wow. She has started another series that, that centers around a woman who loses her eyesight on her honeymoon. And, and there’s a, a guide dog in it who starts out as a puppy, and then they end up together and it’s just great. And you get the voice, both of her and the dog. Yeah. Which is super fun. Oh, those are, those are great. Yeah. Yeah. Super fun. Okay. And so, but then she’s done a bunch of other books and it’s just a blast. So that’s an incredibly long way of answering your question.
Kelsey Seymour:
That’s beautiful though. That’s a great example. And I, I think maybe the question you were referring to was, was the one about expectations about what misplaced expectations do writers often walk in with when they hire you as an editor? Yeah.
Linden Gross (19:15):
Is that that I’m just going to say, no problem. <laugh> I’ll, I’ll edit it. And the fact is, I, I outsource to plenty of line editors who will do that. Yeah. That just, you know, sure. I’ll look at the language. Why not? I just feel like, what’s the point of cleaning up the language if you have integral problems. And your book is not as good as it could be. And so, you know, I mean, as opposed if somebody insisted they just wanted a line edit, I’d be like, all right. But I have yet to do that because I tend to edit either the books of my writing coaches, my writing coach books. Yeah. By then I’m super familiar. And then I’ll just go through and clean up the language or, um, or I do critiques Yeah. And end up usually with writing coach clients, I doing that <laugh>, it would be like coming into your kitchen with a recipe that has some ingredients that haven’t even been tested yet.
(20:07):
And it’s like, will this even work together? I don’t know, but I’m going to cook the meal anyway. Like, what a waste of time and ingredients. Or at least you gotta try it, test it, have a couple people. Yeah, yeah. Taste it and say, you know, kinda boring. <laugh> <laugh>. Not that interesting. So you have a background in journalism. How does your experience as a professional journalist and editor give you an advantage in getting your first few books published? The ones with your name on them? Well, I think there were the two very different. So, so the, there haven’t been a ton of books with just my name. I wrote the stalking book. So I wrote a book that turned out to be the first book ever written about the stalking of ordinary people that directly came from my freelancing for Cosmo, at least when I was freelancing for them, which was quite a while ago.
(20:57):
You would go in, if they decided that you were worthy, you would go in and you would look through. They had a, a sp, not a spiral notebook, but a, you know, like a binder. A binder Okay. Of story ideas. And you would just slip through the story ideas and find whatever one appealed to you. And you would take it and you would write it up. Yeah. No other magazine that I’ve ever worked for does it this way. And then if they liked it, they would run it. And if not, you’d get a poultry kie and you’d just go away. So the first story or story that I did for them, one of the first stories that I did for them was a story about, um, celebrity stalking. Mm. Okay. Fine. Um, then I had, I had moved to Northern California and there was a story about, uh, a, a, a woman named Laura Black, who had been, she was a Silicon Valley employee who had been stalked by a guy for a very long time, who ended up shooting her multiple times, not killing her amazingly enough.
(22:03):
But I remember the trial was going on when I was living up in Oakland. And I remember thinking and kind of an, almost a callous way. Like, this has all the ingredients. Cosmo would like obsession. Right. Drama being objective about it. Yeah. Big trial Silicon Valley. So I pitched it to them and they said yes. So I did a lot of reporting about that case. And then also a lot of reporting about stalking ordinary people in general. Because at that point there just wasn’t a lot of news about like, the stalking of normal people. Right. And I kind of realized that it was, it was a, a thing. And I actually ended up trying to work with a friend on a TV series based on stalking. Cuz I thought, okay, this is sort of like LA law meets any cop series. Right. Meets any hospital series, you know, meets any soap opera.
(23:00):
This has all the elements. This could be a great, wow. So we started, we came up with our charact and we’d meet over Pina coladas, you know, uh oh yeah. On Gladstones in LA on the beach. It was, you know, <laugh> It was, it was super fun. But we got to the place where we started talking about potential storylines, and I’d say, well, there’s this issue, so you want a storyline that does this, and there’s this issue. And he finally looked at me, he said, he said, why aren’t you writing a book? You know so much about this. And I thought, huh. A block <laugh>, what a novel idea. <laugh>. But because I had the background and then done all the reporting, I was able to put together a proposal fairly quickly. Yeah. That’s solve it. Okay. So that’s how book number one came into play. Book number two was the Legacy of Luna ghostwriting book.
(23:46):
Yeah. And that happened through, my mother had gotten sick. I had moved to San Francisco, my oldest friend was an editor at San Francisco, Harper Collins, I think that’s what it was called. Okay. She wanted to help me. She’s like, I can’t go see your mom in the hospital for a lot of her own personal reasons. Yeah. But let’s have lunch. You need some work. Because I literally just uprooted everything to move. I, and I certainly didn’t have time. I’d been working as a magazine freelancer, and that’s a hell of a way to make a living. You do, you know, for every 10 pitches that you slave over, maybe one gets picked up. It’s just that sounds, you know, when you’re caretaking eight hours a day, that that was a no go. Yeah. That was just not going to work. And so we met and we were going to talk about just me doing some marketing copy or anything.
(24:35):
Yeah. And she looked at me, she said, what would you charge me for a rewrite? And I said, what are you talking about? And she told me about this woman named Julia Butterfly Hill, who had been living at that point for probably about a year in a redwood tree, doing a tree set to keep it from being cut down. I had never heard of Julia. And, um, she said, yeah, the first 50 pages of the manuscript have come in. And I said, well, I, I would need to see that, see what we’re talking about. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So she had the messenger over that night, and I read them that night and I picked up the phone and called her and said, you don’t need to rewrite, you have nothing here.
Kelsey Seymour:
Oh dear. And she said, oh, that’s hard. I’m aft Oh, okay. <laugh>. Which she heard you.
Linden Gross (25:22):
The book was due in 10 weeks. And, and that’s nothing. I got the job. I got the job because yes, I had written one other book, but in great part because I knew how to interview. Because I had a reporting background. And I had a writing feature, a feature writing background in magazine. And so she figured that I could do the job. And so, you know, I had a lot of conversations with me and my mother’s hospital room and her up in a tree. Like, it was crazy. But we got the book done.
Kelsey Seymour:
That sounds like it could be a book in itself. Just the experience of ghost writing that story based on what’s happening for you. Oh my goodness. It was crazy.
Linden Gross:
That’s kind of where the coaching started, because neither one of us had time to be on the phone doing long interviews mm-hmm. <affirmative>.
(26:12):
And so I would coach her on, I figured out what the book looked like, ran it by my editor, who was like, yes, this is what we need. And so at the beginning of each chapter, I would say, okay, this is what I need from you. You can need to talk about this. We’re going to want to know this. I, this is, and she would lie in her sleeping bag at night and dictate into a tape recorder. And then at the time, the where she was was, um, secured by the lumber company security guards, and they were trying to prevent anybody from coming up. Yeah. And so people would sneak in to get her food and take her waste out and that kind of thing. Yeah. And so they would sneak the tapes back out to get them transcribed. My, and then as that’s being trans transcribed before I start writing, I would coach her on the next chapter so she could be dictating.
(27:04):
And so that’s how we got it done.
Kelsey Seymour:
Oh my goodness. Yeah.
Linden Gross:
The reporting and the interviewing experience directly helped getting that job. Yeah. You, you had to be organized because you only had so much time and you weren’t going to have that FaceTime with her. Yeah. You had to be very, very conscious and intentional.
Kelsey Seymour:
Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Wow. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. I want to talk a little bit about the trade publishing industry that is what the, the Perfect Bind is all about. As authors who want to come into the trade publishing experience, um, in your coaching career, what are the books you most often see proceed into trade publishing versus self-publishing? What sets them apart?
Linden Gross:
You know, a lot, most of the people I work with end up self-publish. It’s just so darn hard to break into traditional publishing.
(27:56):
And if you do not, we were talking about this earlier, if we do not, if you do not have a very established, very robust like platform, right. Meaning you already are bringing guaranteed readers to the table Yeah. By people who follow your newsletter, who you do a ton of public speaking, you’re mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you’re a celebrity, you’re in some way, you bring millions of readers with you. Um, it’s pretty difficult to break in for me, the one experience. And I was really happy for her, but sorry, it happened as fast as it did. Oh dear. I started working with this hilarious woman who had gone to law school, worked for about a year as a lawyer in New York, and decided that she really hated it, and that she was going to dump the law and, um, do dog walking instead. And ended up making as much, if not more money being a dog walker.
(28:54):
But she wrote about all these hilarious experiences that she had dog-walking in Brooklyn for very wealthy people. And I mean, she was hilarious. She did not know how to use punctuation. She did not know about paragraphs, but she was hilarious. And three chapters in, she sold the book and she was gone. She had an editor. I was so happy for her, and yet so disappointed because it was so much fun to work with. Oh, <laugh>. It was just, you know, her. She, she was, she was a riot. And it was really neat to help her figure out how to sort of translate this raw funny stuff into something that actually worked on a page.
Kelsey Seymour:
So she was an exception to the platform role?
Linden Gross:
Correct.
Kelsey Seymour:
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So if you’re that entertaining, you do maybe have a chance at working in and, and have that unusual of a story. Yeah. Okay.
Linden Gross:
Unique place become Dog Walker and she’s hysterical. Yeah. Yeah. I would read that. I mean, just that little bit that you’ve given me. That sounds, what’s the name? What’s the name of that? I don’t even know. Oh, dear. All right. You don’t have to find that out later. So in general though, most people are never going to see the inside of a, of a book deal. That’s probably true. Yeah.
(30:19):
And if you decide you have to, you want to go that way. And there’s, there are reasons to to, oh yeah. I mean, there, there are pros and cons to traditional publishing and pros and cons to, to self-publishing. Yeah. To get a traditional publisher, a you have to have one heck of a platform. Yeah. B, you have to be willing to work on a very robust book proposal. You have to have two, three chapters usually as samples. And then you’re going to be looking for not a publisher, you’re going to be looking for an agent. Right. That is almost as hard to find these days as publisher. Yes. So, assuming you can find an agent who’s willing to take you on, which is no guarantee, no, and could take a year or two, then you’re looking at the agent trying to pedal your book, and there’s no guarantee.
(31:19):
And the advances have gotten pretty small as opposed to what they used to be. That’s what I hear. And even if you do get published, there’s no guarantee they’re going to put any money behind the book in terms of marketing. And if they don’t do that, the book’s going nowhere. So it’s you, even when you win, you can lose. My very favorite book that I ever collaborated on or wrote or anything, is a book called Miss Cahill for Congress. Yeah. And I wrote it with a teacher named Tierny Cahill, who ended up running for Congress on a dare from her sixth grade student. It came up as when she was teaching government. And she’s was talking about how ev in the ancient Greeks, Greeks, well, Pericles particular believed that everybody had a responsibility mm-hmm. <affirmative> to participate in, in government. Wow. And one of the little girls said, well, that’s fine for the Greeks, the ancient Greeks, but in this country you have to have a million dollars to run for office.
(32:21):
And Tierney said, you know, a million dollars would be helpful, but, but you don’t have to have a million dollars anybody. And as she said, in hindsight, and I can’t remember if this was fifth or sixth grade, but in hindsight, she said, I should have remembered that, that that age group is notorious for daring each other to eat worms on the playground. And, you know, so of course the little girl said, well, if anybody can run for office, why don’t you run? You’d be great. And as she’s, what an endorsement, trying to backed and a little kid up in the front goes, I knew, I knew she wouldn’t do it. <laugh>. So she went home, pour herself a bourbon or two or three, and talked to her family and talked to the principal and talked to mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and in the end came back the next morning and said, I’ve thought about it and I will run for office if you manage my campaign.
(33:10):
And so that started a two year process because she figured she’d just get creamed in the primary, except she won the primary, and then she had to run for real. Oh dear. And it’s just this wonderful touching, funny, you know, she was not well off. She was a single mom of three who, you know, routinely would have to play camping in the house because the electricity had been turned off for, because there was like, you know, a can of canned weenies and Yeah. <laugh> and no food. You know, she was, yeah. She was sort of scrape and bottom and, and yet she pulled this thing, it, it, it’s a wonderful story. Wow. The problem is, um, and it was potentially going to be made into a movie. Yeah. Uh, sounds perfect for that. Yeah. And there, there was a big star slated, and it was getting news because it was, um, some, a woman of color, it was Halle Berry who was supposed to play it except Tierney is Irish Catholic.
(34:04):
I got it. You know, redhead Yeah. Type. And so that was getting news and the movie didn’t happen. We got a huge advance, which was great part of it, contingent on the movie getting made, but still very healthy advance. And the publishing company held it and held it and held it. And it was right when Obama was running for his first term. Okay. It would’ve been a great story because it was all about grass roots campaigning, of course, with, and it, and they held it until the hard news cycle hit, and that’s when the economy collapsed. And so did any promise of that book getting any attention.
Kelsey Seymour:
Oh man. So it’s a crapshoot, right? And Oh, man. Yeah. So you mentioned advances getting smaller, and I want step off book for just a second and ask a question. You don’t have to have an opinion about it, but the, the current events of Penguin and, um, Simon and Schuster trying to merge right now, or one’s acquiring the other, I apologize, I forget which one.
(35:07):
Right. Um, there’s a, a theory that it will decrease advances even more, and they’re trying to come back and say, no, it won’t. Do you have any insight into that or opinions about that?
Linden Gross:
Well, it seems like there are a lot of publishing companies that really are only, they’re all right. Oh, yeah, no, there’s, there’s the Big four and it’s about to be the big three, and they own everybody. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, we all know what that means. That’s not good for competition. Okay. Um, as a writer, when you have a book that you are trying to sell Yeah. What you want is an auction. Yes. You want several people to want your book mm-hmm. <affirmative> and to bid against each other. Right. I’m not sure how that works, if it’s subsidiaries of the same company. Right. Bidding against each other is, how does that work?
(36:01):
It’s hard to imagine that that favors the author. How, how about that for a politic statement?
Kelsey Seymour:
No, that’s, no, that’s actually very insightful, because it is hard to imagine, and it, it seems as though those two companies being, being one just limits everything. Not just advances, but it would limit Variety.
Linden Gross:
Sure. Or potentially, I mean, not necessarily because they can carve out their own kind of niches. Yes, that’s true. So I’m not so sure about that, but certainly what kind of marketing they’re going to offer, what kind of, what kind of, you know, how they deal with authors, if, does that get standardized? Yeah. There’s, there’s a lot of big question marks if that happens. Yeah.
Kelsey Seymour (36:51):
Hey there, listeners, thank you so much for listening to Perfect Bind. This podcast is hopefully as much a gift to you as it is to me. You may have heard me mention that my full-time job is as an entrepreneur and my project entry lit is made for you. Entry Lit will be like a dating site for authors and agents. Our goal is to make the querying process more effective and less painful for everyone involved. As of now, entry Lit has an active Kickstarter. You can find it between August 9th and September 8th, 2020 22. Just go to Kickstarter and search for getting an agent. Shouldn’t be hard. We’re under the web and publishing categories. Thank you so much for your support. And now we’ll get back to the podcast.
Kelsey Seymour (37:34):
So, um, this kind of touches on that idea of ghostwriting’s a little more popular than we think it is. As a writing coach, do you encounter writers who are in fact talentless and what can you do for them?
Linden Gross:
So my dad, who was a, a well-known journalist who wrote a number of books used to say, I can teach anyone to write. I just can’t teach them to think. Writing is a craft. Anybody can learn to write. The hard part is figuring out what you want to say. And I’ve always had a theory that writer’s Block is actually thinking block more than writer’s block. Yeah, that’s fair. And so I think that there are people who have learning disabilities, there are people who struggle a little bit more, then I have them talking to a tape and work from transcripts. Yeah. It’s all, it’s all manageable. There, there are ways around. The biggest problem tends to be people criticizing themselves into paralysis Yes. Or into some sort of stilted writing that they think Yeah. They’re supposed to sound like that’s the biggest issue that I have to help people get around. Yeah. And there, we, we have ways <laugh> <laugh>
Kelsey Seymour:
Thank goodness, um, I, a few years ago I read Writing Down the Bones mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And that helped me get past that idea of everything I write has to be great. I realized I’m going to throw away 99% of what I write, and I have to be okay with that. Yeah. It’s like, it’s like panning for gold. There’s only a few flex in there. Yeah. Well, and you, you have to.
Linden Gross:
When I was working at the Ladies’ Home Journal, I shared my second or third year, we, I shared an office with two colleagues, and every time we had to come up with a headline, we would just start throwing ideas out and writing every single one down.
(39:25):
Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And some of them were so atrocious that we would just burst out laughing. But that was how you got to a decent headline. That’s the process. And you know, what I, uh, I have my writers do what I call sloppy copy, or sloppy or write sloppy letters to Lindon. And the rules are, you can’t worry about spelling, logic, grammar, continuity, anything good. It’s a brain dump. And for those people who start being resistance, I, I will literally say, you need to purge on the page. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I don’t want clean, I don’t want pretty, I want your thoughts. I want you to be exploring what’s inside. I want you to open up and be vulnerable. I’m sorry. You can’t do that when somebody’s criticizing you, even if that’s somebody is you.
Kelsey Seymour:
Right.
Linden Gross:
So you have to get out of that self-criticism mode. You have to. Or you’re going to write a trite piece of nothing. And that’s, that’s what you really don’t want because it’s meaningless. It is. Yes. Yes. If you’re not being honest, then you’re just going to lose everything. Why, why bother?
Kelsey Seymour:
Yeah. Yeah. Since you’ve done the publishing, actually no. I’m going to, I’m going to back up. I’m going to ask another question about ghost writing really quick. Okay. Just because it, it totally contrasts with this question. How much of the editing process are you, when you are writing the book for someone else?
Linden Gross:
Are you, it, does the editor work directly with you? Or do they work with author? It depends. And this gets sticky. Okay. They often work with the author mm-hmm. <affirmative>, quote unquote air quotes happening in here. Air quotes. Okay. Um, the problem, here’s the biggest problem with ghost writing. You are being paid by the quote-unquote author, but you actually have to make the editor happy, because if the editors not happy book doesn’t get published.
(41:17):
Kelsey Seymour:
Oh boy.
Linden Gross:
The editor is the one who has control. Yeah. And yet you’re going through the author. So I have very weird contracts now because every time I’ve run into a really significant problem, uh, it shows up in my contract to make sure that that won’t happen again. <laugh>, I got involved in a book where I was not allowed to speak with the editor and the author, it turns out, was not translating what the editor was looking for correctly. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so it became an impossible situation that got, um, the, the per the author I was working with was pretty difficult.
Kelsey Seymour:
Was this to conceal the fact they had had hired a ghostwriter? Was that the reason you couldn’t talk to the editor?
Kelsey Seymour:
No, it was a control. It was a control thing. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Um, they ended up bringing in a mediator editor.
(42:07):
Kelsey Seymour:
Oh yeah. What it, it got ugly <laugh>. Okay.
Linden Gross:
And so I now in my contract, specified that I have to have direct access to the editor. Dang. That’s the hardest part of that ghostwriting.
Kelsey Seymour:
Mm-hmm. <affirmative> right there. Oh boy. Pleasing many masters.
Linden Gross:
Yes. Some of whom you can talk to and some of whom sometimes don’t, cannot. Right. Because ultimately it is the editor who makes the decision about whether to publish the book. That’s true. Yeah. And yet it is the quote-unquote author who wants to like it. Right. And wants, so yeah. There’s your, that’s complicated.
Kelsey Seymour:
Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So my, my original question was, you know, for the books you’ve authored yourself that have your name on the cover, were you asked to give up a great deal of control over your work, such as cover art or story?
Linden Gross:
Oh, you’re right. You have no control that, so we talked about pros and cons of traditional publishing.
(43:03):
Yep. Yep. You have no control title. No control cover, no control. Final edit, no control. That’s tough. Yeah. That’s tough. That’s a lot of trust. You gotta put place in the, that they know what they’re doing sometimes if you are frank enough and can make your point well enough. Sure. I worked on, uh, and this wasn’t even my book. I worked on a book with Charles Schwab’s daughter, Carrie, Carrie Schwab Pomeranz, and Charles was on the cover, his ghost writer did his thing. So I never even talked to him. But, so it was byline both of there. They, the whole idea behind the book was that we need to have conversations with the people in our lives about money. That, that we, that money is still a taboo topic. It is. And yet you have to talk to your spouse, you have to talk to your kids, you have to talk to your parents, you have to be on the same page.
(44:01):
And the book originally, uh, the editors came back and said, we’ve come up with the greatest title called Home Economics.
Kelsey Seymour:
You’re joking. That’s a textbook title.
Linden Gross:
Exactly. Who can you say dead fish? I could say Dead Fish. Oh dear Har. Oh, it took a lot of fighting to get the title finally to be It Paces to Talk. See, that makes, wow. But I’ll tell you what, had Charles Schwab’s name not been on that book mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I’m guessing there’s no way they would’ve changed that title. It would’ve gone on as home economics to Good Classic Exam and somebody thought they were being super clever cuz it was the economics of the Yeah, no, I see it. But it, but no, the meaning is totally lost on the reader who’s looking at that in the bookstore. Exactly. And so that’s tough. You know, I’ve, I’ve had the, the book cover, you know, the, the other thing is the with book covers, there’s a strange art between fitting in your genre and yet not looking so much like everything else that you just blend.
Kelsey Seymour (45:10):
So you want to stand out within, so you want to stand.
Linden Gross:
Yes. Okay. But here’s the other thing that most people do not think about and I didn’t know to ask about how they classify your book is everything. So, for example, the first book that I, I, the book I wrote about stalking has been published three times. Same book Revised. But yeah. First book was called To Have or to Harm. Second book was, was just a revised version when that book that was sold as a mass paper back mm-hmm. <affirmative>, here’s the problem. They put it in the true crime section. Where is the last place that a stalking victim is going to go to look for help about stalking? What is the last thing they want to think about?
Kelsey Seymour:
Right. Cause it’s an, it’s an informational book. It’s not like a kind podcast where you’re, you’re actually like diving into real events.
Linden Gross (46:00):
You’re trying to teach people what to do when they, they were real events, but yes, it was, that was the point. Exactly. And the last place that somebody who is fearing for her life is going to go is a place that has lots of glory books about true crime.
Kelsey Seymour:
Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, isn’t that going to happen?
Linden Gross:
No, I didn’t have any idea that that’s how they had classified it. That means that’s where it shows up in the bookstore. That means that’s how it shows up in didn’t feel obligated to tell you. No writer thinks to ask that question. Well now anyway. Well, it does. You wouldn’t. But that’s one of the things you, if you’re going to go traditional publishing, you better ask, oh my God, how are we classifying this book? Because it’s a make or break.
Kelsey Seymour:
Intellectual property is so funny that way because it is something that can be bought and sold.
(46:46):
It is something that can be given away and given complete control to somebody else. And that’s why we call it intellectual property because we, we sell it like real estate and people can build whatever they want to on it.
Linden Gross:
The biggest deal with, with traditional publishing is that it used to be it gave you way more credibility now. Yeah. Those lines have softened. Yeah. There’s still a little bit more credibility, but lines have definitely softened used to be that there’d be a marketing budget behind your book. Yeah. Not so much anymore. Used to be you got really quality editing. Yeah. Hit and miss on that. Maybe you get lucky and get a really good editor who’s going to really help you. Maybe you get somebody who just shelfs it off through.
Kelsey Seymour:
Oh boy. So yeah. That becomes a problem. Problem. No kidding. I have, um, two quick questions.
(47:32):
Yes. And then we need to wrap up. Um, this is a question I ask all my guests. From the public’s perspective, what is the most misunderstood part of publishing?
Linden Gross:
For me, there’s two answers. It starts with, I, I think a lot of people think that writing’s just super easy.
Kelsey Seymour:
Have they tried it? Exactly. <laugh>.
Linden Gross:
Exactly. Yeah. No, the answer is no, they not <laugh>. I’m just going to write my book. Yeah, sure. And I want to have it done in, you know, by the end of the year. Oh. And I’ll look and say, okay, so let’s do the math on this. How many weeks are there until the end of the year? So, alright. So are you willing to turn around a chapter every week so that we have time for editing? Yeah. Suddenly. So that’s that piece of it Yeah. Is how much work is involved with writing mm-hmm. <affirmative>.
(48:16):
Uh, and I think a lot of people just do not understand how manuscripts get sold. They just don’t have any clue of just how the sales process, if you will, works. So that, that to me would be the biggest, the two biggest pieces.
Kelsey Seymour:
I hope to dive into that more in a future episode. Cause I do think that’s a very interesting process of actually selling and pitching.
Linden Gross:
Well, and, and just, you know, people don’t know that they don’t just admit to a publisher. Right? Yes. There is that misconception. They don’t understand the role that agents play. They don’t understand why it would be helpful to have an agent.
Kelsey Seymour:
Right. Yeah. I see a lot of writers out there on social media saying, why do I need this? Like, what, what is this extra middle man? Right. When in fact, that’s your, that’s your advocate.
(49:02):
That’s your person who’s going to fight for you and who knows everybody with all the connections.
Linden Gross:
Well, there it is. Yeah. So that’s the person who’s going to know which publishing house has it might be interested and which agent within that publishing house maybe has a mother who had cancer and you’re writing about, you know, that’s their job is to know the players and know where your best bet is.
Kelsey Seymour:
All right. Last question. Is there a personality type that is ideal for writers who are entering trade publishing?
Linden Gross:
You know, I, I think it’s determination and resilience. It’s a tough slog.
Kelsey Seymour:
That’s a great answer. It doesn’t, doesn’t need anything else. Tell me a little bit about you. What’s going on with you? What kind of clients you’re looking for right now? You know, talk, talk about yourself for a minute.
Linden Gross
Tawlk about yourself. <laugh>.
(49:50):
So I, um, have been working a lot as a writing coach. I just love it. I started out wanting to teach and write on the side. That didn’t really work. I ended up flipping that. Okay. But then it sort of came full circle. So now I, I do the writing and the editing and, and the teaching and the coaching. And that’s very much works with my personality. And it’s just fun. I just love it. I get an opportunity to be part of so many people’s stories. One moment I’m learning about aviation. The next moment I’m talking about some, you know, make believe town, you know, or, or a blind woman in her dog or, you know. So that’s really fun and really exciting. And it’s really neat to see people figure out how to write better and how to write more powerfully and to rewrite scenes and realize that they work better and that they’ve come alive.
(50:49):
And that’s just fun. So I love that. Um, the other thing that I’m, I’m also, uh, just about to edit in a week a manuscript that is by somebody who I helped publish a memoir, called The Actual Dance of, which was, uh, um, his, his story of experiencing his wife’s breast cancer, which was a stage four. And she was not expected to live Stage three. Stage three. And she was not expected to live and did. And it’s a wonderful, beautiful story.
Kelsey Seymour:
Oh my goodness.
Linden Gross:
And, and so he was originally, he was one of the original guys who worked with Nader. And so the, he and, and the other original folks are writing essays about working in the public interest arena, specifically for Nader and what happened to their careers and why people, young people these days might want to consider passing on the corporate gravy train and, and opting for public interest.
(51:50):
So you see, it’s, it’s just cool. You know, I get I this front row seat to all these crazy different things. Yeah. So that’s super fun. I’ve also been working with a number of people who are using books to promote their businesses. Yeah. And so I have started developing, um, an e-course that [launched last] fall. Oh, exciting. Uh, the URL is authors incubator.com. Great. And the e-course will basically take people from, I want to boost my business with a book and I have no idea of what to do. Yeah. Um, to a detailed outline that is so detailed, it’ll be really just kind of color between, and it’s, the approach is based on, I worked with a financial planner who wanted a promotional book about financial planning yaw, and then he started telling me about the fact that for 10 and a half years in his late teen years through his twenties mm-hmm. <affirmative>,
(52:51):
He had, uh, a seasonal business. And so when the seasonal business would shut down, he spent the other six months of the year spending a month in all these different countries. So every year he would spend a month in six different countries. So in 10 and a half years he had lived in, spent a month in 65 different countries, and he had all these stories. And I’m thinking to myself, this is so much more interesting, <laugh>. And I started thinking, is there a way to meld these really cool stories about living in all these crazy different countries with the financial lessons? Right. And it worked great. And it That’s awesome. It not only did the book work great, but what’s happened is that people show up at his door prospects. Oh. And he says, “Hey, I’m David, nice to meet you. Let me tell you about myself.”
(53:40):
And they say, “Nevermind. We read the book.” And he says, “Well, let me tell you a little bit about my investing philosophy.” And they say, “Nevermind. We read the book.” And he says, “So you’re here to sign up?” They’re like, “Yep, that’s what we’re here for.”
Kelsey Seymour:
Oh my goodness.
Linden Gross:
So he no longer promotes his business. He just markets his book.
Kelsey Seymour:
Oh, sure. Yeah.
Linden Gross:
So I use that idea of taking part of it. The reason it works is he’s got some cool stories. We all have cool stories. Maybe they’re not living in all these different countries, but we all have cool stories that are revealing. They give a sense of who we are. And that’s the other thing is that from his book, you, you know who David is by the time he finished reading this book. Yeah. You just know. And so that’s the idea is melding like the stories, the client stories, the lessons with the authenticity so that people come out whether, I don’t care if it’s, you know, you have a company that does hair replacement, or you’re a financial planner, or you’re a therapist.
(54:40):
You put that together so that somebody gets through your book, has a good time reading it and comes away with information that’s useful. But also people remember stories. That’s, that’s what they respond to. That’s what they remember. So, so the e-course is going to be super fun.
Kelsey Seymour:
That sounds like fun. Yeah. Well Thank you so much again for, for part the show. For having me over to your house. I get to meet your dogs. This has been so much fun
Linden Gross:
And they were actually quiet.
Kelsey Seymour:
They were. To support the entry lit Kickstarter, visit our website@entrylit.com. That’s E N T R Y L I t.com. Or go to Kickstarter under the web category and search for getting an agent. Shouldn’t be hard Pledge as little as the cost of a new book to be part of the publishing solution. Follow entry lit on social media. For new episode announcements. Find us at entry lit on Twitter and Instagram to follow me. Your host. Find me at kas Writes on Twitter and k Seymour writes on Instagram. This is Kelsey Seymour bringing you the perfect find limited series podcast. Thank you for listening. I wish you strength for today and Bright hope for tomorrow.
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