Episode 032 - Hybrid Publishing with Julie Mulhern
June 23, 2020
Julie Mulhern discusses her career as a hybrid author and how she went the traditional route first in order to build a platform and traction for later self-publishing. We talk about the tangible and intangible benefits of working with a team, and how book price can impact perceived value.
Julie Mulhern is the USA Today bestselling author of The Country Club Murders and the Poppy Fields Adventures. She is a Kansas City native who grew up on a steady diet of Agatha Christie. She spends her spare time whipping up gourmet meals for her family, working out at the gym and finding new ways to keep her house spotlessly clean--and she's got an active imagination. Truth is she's an expert at calling for take-out, she grumbles about walking the dog and the dust bunnies under the bed have grown into dust lions.
"I do wonder about the value proposition and if some people think that free book can't be good." --Julie Mulhern
Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is Julie Mulhern. Hey, Julie, how are you doing?
[00:00:07] Julie: Hi there. Great. Finally, we have a sunny day here.
[00:00:10] Matty: Ah, well, you're getting our sunny day. We're here outside Philadelphia, not sunny. And you're in Kansas City, correct?
[00:00:16] Julie: I am. It rained all week and the city flooded yesterday, so it's nice to see the sun.
[00:00:20] Matty: Oh my goodness. Well, we may have an opportunity to talk about Kansas City and the Country Club area a little bit more in our conversation, but to give our listeners a little bit of background on you, Julie Mulhern is the USA Today bestselling author of the Country Club Murders and the Poppy Fields Adventures. She's a Kansas City native who grew up on a steady diet of Agatha Christie. She spends her spare time whipping up gourmet meals for her family, working out in the gym, and finding new ways to keep her house spotlessly clean. And she's got an active imagination. The truth is she's an expert at calling for takeout, she grumbles about walking the dog, and the dust bunnies under the bed have grown into dust lions. I enjoyed that bio when I read it.
[00:01:02] And the topic we're going to be talking about is why hybrid, "hybrid" being the term used to describe an author who's following both the traditional publishing and the indy routes. To give our listeners a little bit of context for our discussion, can you describe how you got your first book out into the world for your readers?
[00:01:23] Julie: Sure. Gosh, about 2014, I think, was when I first started selling books and at the time indy was really coming up, but what I knew was that I would be a tiny, tiny drop of water in a giant ocean. And I wanted a platform. I had an agent and I went out on submission and got multiple offers for the Country Club Murders, which was great and wonderful. And I always thought as the newbie that I would be comparing an apple to an apple to an apple and contracts really aren't like that. So I can compare it apples to oranges to pears, and picked a publisher because I really wanted a partner in building a platform.
[00:02:07] Matty: What were some of those considerations? In what way were they apples and pears and oranges? And what was your deciding factor?
[00:00:07] Julie: Hi there. Great. Finally, we have a sunny day here.
[00:00:10] Matty: Ah, well, you're getting our sunny day. We're here outside Philadelphia, not sunny. And you're in Kansas City, correct?
[00:00:16] Julie: I am. It rained all week and the city flooded yesterday, so it's nice to see the sun.
[00:00:20] Matty: Oh my goodness. Well, we may have an opportunity to talk about Kansas City and the Country Club area a little bit more in our conversation, but to give our listeners a little bit of background on you, Julie Mulhern is the USA Today bestselling author of the Country Club Murders and the Poppy Fields Adventures. She's a Kansas City native who grew up on a steady diet of Agatha Christie. She spends her spare time whipping up gourmet meals for her family, working out in the gym, and finding new ways to keep her house spotlessly clean. And she's got an active imagination. The truth is she's an expert at calling for takeout, she grumbles about walking the dog, and the dust bunnies under the bed have grown into dust lions. I enjoyed that bio when I read it.
[00:01:02] And the topic we're going to be talking about is why hybrid, "hybrid" being the term used to describe an author who's following both the traditional publishing and the indy routes. To give our listeners a little bit of context for our discussion, can you describe how you got your first book out into the world for your readers?
[00:01:23] Julie: Sure. Gosh, about 2014, I think, was when I first started selling books and at the time indy was really coming up, but what I knew was that I would be a tiny, tiny drop of water in a giant ocean. And I wanted a platform. I had an agent and I went out on submission and got multiple offers for the Country Club Murders, which was great and wonderful. And I always thought as the newbie that I would be comparing an apple to an apple to an apple and contracts really aren't like that. So I can compare it apples to oranges to pears, and picked a publisher because I really wanted a partner in building a platform.
[00:02:07] Matty: What were some of those considerations? In what way were they apples and pears and oranges? And what was your deciding factor?
read more ...
[00:02:14] Julie: I had an offer from Big Five and I really felt like I was going to be a minnow. I might not be a drop in the ocean, but I was going to be a minnow in a very, very large pond. I was looking at some publishers that just publish mystery, and one of them had a really nice offer. But when I looked at their pricing on Amazon and looked at what they were pricing their first books at, which at the time I think was $12.99 for an ebook, which is expensive for any ebook, and I thought it was egregiously expensive for a first time author, and getting somebody to try any book at $12.99. The other publisher offered me a lot less up front and the first book was marked at $2.99. I think most people would give somebody new a try at $2.99. So I actually chose less money in a publisher whose pricing scheme made sense to me.
[00:03:11] Matty: And did that pan out for you?
[00:03:13] Julie: I wouldn't do anything different. I really, really wouldn't. I think that $2.99 for somebody who's wide and obviously traditionally published, I was wide, is a good value proposition. It's a good way to get people started on a series and introduce characters and then hopefully get them engaged and falling in love with the characters and the mysteries. There's not a price to overcome, I don't think.
[00:03:38] Matty: It was very interesting to me to hear that your plan was to start out with traditional to build that background and to build the platform. Can you describe a little bit more about what you were looking to accomplish in that area?
[00:03:50] Julie: Well, I wanted to build a readership that I could carry with me when I did end up going indy and I succeeded. I think I did. I think a lot of my Country Club Murder readers have crossed over and become Poppy Fields readers also, which is what I wanted. I didn't want to have to start from scratch. And thousands of people who've enjoyed Ellison now enjoy Poppy and I didn't have to go out and just start over again, as it were.
[00:04:19] Matty: So that we understand that crossover aspect, can you just give a little description of the main characters in each of your books and the general setting and premise for them?
[00:04:29] Julie: Absolutely. The Country Club Murders are set in the 1970s, which is great fun for me. I get to walk down memory lane a lot, and there's lots of nostalgia. When I do research for that, it's about things that were happening in the seventies and not CSI-type stuff, which I kind of love and adore. The main character is a gal named Ellison Russell, and in the first book she is at her country club for a morning swim before the club opens and she swims into a body and that sort of sets off the whole series with "my morning swim doesn't usually involve corpses," and she goes from there. she's got a crazy, somewhat dysfunctional family and crazy friends. I think that the books are great, great fun while still being about murder.
[00:05:19] Poppy Fields, a little bit different. Poppy is a Hollywood It girl who, in the first book, is abducted by a Mexican drug cartel and has to develop some skills to get out of being held captive in Mexico and ends up becoming a super spy so that she gets to travel the world to exotic places and my readers get to go with her. We started in Mexico and then Paris and New Orleans and London, and most recently Egypt, and she's off to the Caymans next.
[00:05:53] Matty: Nice. It's a little virtual travel for people who are maybe not traveling so much right now.
[00:05:58] Julie: It really is. And I do a lot of location research. I lived in Paris for a while, so that was easy and helpful. And New Orleans is one of my favorite cities, so that wasn't too far of a stretch, but I've never been to Egypt. I did lots of YouTube videos of people cruising the Nile and the hotel pools and the souk in Cairo and whatnot. I've learned a lot too. It's been fun.
[00:06:22] Matty: It was interesting to me to see that your Country Club Murders were set around the country club because my grandmother used to live on Country Club Plaza. I probably was last there around 1970. She lived in, I think the building was called the Bartleston and it was right next to Macy's. And I remember when I was little watching the Macy's Day Parade and being confused that I didn't recognize anything because I thought that was the only Macy's and that that must be where the parade was taking place.
[00:06:51] And those apartment buildings were just the pinnacle of elegance from my point of view, and for some reason, a year or so ago, I got curious and I was trying to do my own research to see when those buildings came down and see if I could find any pictures of them. I wasn't very successful, but it was a really fun place to visit, at least as a little kid. It's kind of like making a trip to some Mediterranean town because of the way the architecture is.
[00:07:17] Julie: Kansas City's sister city is Seville, Spain, and when JC Nichols was designing the Plaza, he designed it to look Spanish, which really does feel Mediterranean.
[00:07:27] Matty: Yeah. Yeah, it was a fun place. So What platforms did your traditional publisher offer in terms of finding readership that would have been more difficult for you to find as an indy author?
[00:07:41] Julie: I think that they were marketing me to their existing readership. And one of the things that they were very good about was putting teasers in the back of their established authors' books for my book, which was fabulous and great. So if you liked a Gretchen Archer book or a Susan Boyer book or a Wendy Tyson book, and you saw something about The Deep End, which is the first Country Club Murder, it might be interesting and you might click on through.
[00:08:10] That I think was very helpful. Also the publisher, which is Henery Press, made a commitment to the idea "if you like one, you'll like them all." If people were Henery Press fans, they kind of knew what they were getting. They knew that they were probably in most cases getting a light mystery with some humor. And I think that that really worked for them.
[00:08:33] Matty: That's something I've never heard an indy author pursuing, but I suppose if you can come up with an agreement with a fellow author, there's no reason that two indy authors couldn't get together who had similar books, same genre ...
[00:08:45] Julie: I've seen romance authors, and I will say this: kudos to them. Romance authors lead the way for indy, and I have lately been seeing romance authors teasing chapters in the back of each other's books. I think it was this winter, maybe February, a whole bunch of gals who write paranormal romance all wrote midlife crisis books--paranormal midlife crisis second chance books--and they released all at the same time and they are promoting each other, they're promoting the, a whole series of these. I think it's brilliant.
[00:09:25] Matty: That's fantastic. How about author events? Were there author events that you got through your publisher that would have been difficult for you to get as an indy?
[00:09:33] Julie: Well, one of the things about conferences, particularly mystery conferences, I think, is that you don't get put on panels unless you're traditionally published. And it wasn't something I was thinking about or realizing. When I was brand spanking new, but I went to several conferences that first year, and I got on wonderful panels and mediated panels. And that is something that would not have happened for me if I had started out indy.
[00:10:02] Matty: Do you feel as if the benefit of being on a panel plays out in sales or are there other benefits, like networking-related or relationship- building or resume-building?
[00:10:13] Julie: I think that it is networking, period. Maybe a handful of sales. I sat next to Charles Finch one day, who I think is amazing, and we were laughing and talking and maybe all the people who came to see Charles Finch, a couple of them might have bought the Country Club Murders because sometimes they put me on the historical panel, but I mean, he's really historical and I'm sort of nostalgia historical, but, I think really it's about networking and getting to interact with other authors in maybe a way that we wouldn't otherwise be able. But I don't know that it sells a whole lot of books.
[00:10:49] Matty: I have been on maybe one or two conference panels that were very specifically aimed at readers, not authors, and those I did sell books, but yeah, I agree that in general the conferences that are mainly writers, you're not going to sell a lot to other writers.
[00:11:05] Julie: I just think that for mystery conferences, anyway, most of the conferences seem to be a mix. And the panels really are for the most part aimed at the readers. But I just don't see it. If you look out and you've got a room of 50 people, which, for most of these things, unless you're a big name author, which I am not, is a really great turnout, and you figure 10% actually go out and buy the book and you have spent however much to go to a conference and the hotel rooms ... it doesn't make financial sense unless you're looking at benefits of networking, which are very real.
[00:11:43] Matty: When you went into traditional publishing, it sounds like you already knew at that point that you wanted that to be a steppingstone to an indy career as well. Is that correct?
[00:11:55] Julie: I will say yes, but I discovered some things about traditional publishing that I really, really like and appreciate. My contract with Henery Press is complete. I wrote nine Country Club Murders for them, and I am self-publishing going forward on that series. That having been said, I've talked to my agent about several ideas, and I think we're going to go out on submission later this year, again to a traditional publisher, because I really do see the value in some of the things that traditional publishing brings. I do think it brings you an audience that's very hard to access as an indy. No matter how good your contract people are, and by that, I mean your cover designers and your editors and your copy editors and your line editors, I think there's something different about a group process that you do sometimes get with a traditional publisher. And I think that that keeps me sharp.
[00:12:54] And I hear tell that traditional publishers can do marketing things that even small niche publishers or certainly indy publishers can't. I'm not turning my back on it, but I knew always that I wanted to control my own destiny and I can do that with indy books, where all I can control with a traditional publisher is the quality of the book. And that's it. I can't control marketing. I can't control price. I can't control whether they run a BookBub. None of that. So I kind of like both.
[00:13:28] Matty: Do you think that an advantage of being with a small traditional press over a large traditional press is that there's any chance of having some influence over those things? Or is it really just the agreement is that's taken out of the author's hands?
[00:13:41] Julie: Henery Press was really wonderful in working with me about marketing ideas. We talked about BookBub and they got me lots of them, which was lovely. And if you're an indy author, you can't do that--I mean, you apply and you apply and you apply and you apply and you get rejected and rejected and rejected. And then maybe one day you get it. You have no idea why that time worked and the others don't. Publishers have a rep at BookBub, and they call and they say, "I want such-and-such on such-and-such date." And that's that experience.
[00:14:13] So I was able to work with a publisher on getting BookBubs, strategically placed BookBubs, which was wonderful. And we had pricing discussions. I think at one point they moved away from first book at $2.99 and moved all their first books to $4.99. I watched it for a couple months and I went back and said, "Here is the difference. Can we go back to $2.99?" We had a long discussion about it, and they very graciously rolled the price back to $2.99 and the sales picked up again. I think that most indy authors who write series certainly know about the importance of read through and getting somebody engaged with the first book. It may be if you're advertising that you're breaking even, or even losing money, but if you can get them reading through a long series, then it makes sense to maybe have a loss leader.
[00:15:09] Matty: How much are your other eBooks selling for?
[00:15:12] Julie: The Country Club Murders Book 1 is $2.99 and I actually got the rights back and kept it at $2.99. The next two books are $4.99, and then Books 4 through 11 are $6.99. It's a three-stepped pricing idea.
[00:15:28] The first Poppy Fields right now is permafree. Anybody can download it on any ereader--Kobo, or iTunes, Amazon, what have you--for free. And then the ensuing books are $4.99. I've got two different pricing schemes going, as it were. I read an interesting article the other day about both of those and the pluses and the minuses for both. I'm more likely to rethink permafree than I am $2.99 at the first book.
[00:16:02] Matty: Do you think you might switch from permafree to $2.99?
[00:16:05] Julie: You know, I might, I'm not doing anything this year. I'm just going to see how this year finishes. But I do think that it sort of makes sense. An action adventure with a female heroine that's not got a serial killer in it is a harder sell. I mean, most thrillers that are written by women have deviant serial killers in them or something. You don't see a whole lot of black widow, just fun action adventure for women. And it's harder to find the audience and that's why I tried it with permafree, and Lord knows I give away a lot of books, and the read through is decent. But I do wonder about the value proposition and if some people think that free book can't be good.
[00:16:50] Matty: I think that there's any evolving opinion about that. And I certainly don't have any strong numbers, but I know that my own experience as a reader is to attach a certain meaning to what the publisher or the author is asking for the book. And I would not rate a free book with the same seriousness that I would a $2.99 book.
[00:17:12] And this really came home to me because I attended several virtual author events over the last couple of months. And I would buy their books from the bookstore that was hosting their Zoom meeting. And they were always in hard back, so they were $20, sometimes they were $30 by the time the shipping and handling was paid for.
[00:17:29] And when I sat down with those books, it was really an event. I set aside time for it. I was paying attention more, whereas if I pick up my Kindle and I flip open a free book, for whatever reason, the mindset is different. So I really agree that even though permafree was really the going advice for many, many years, I feel like other people must be feeling that too. There's also this recognition that authors deserve some money if they put the time and effort into writing a book.
[00:18:01] Julie: Yeah. It's interesting. I had a BookBub recently and the publisher was very kind and we marked the third book in the Country Club Murders to free for a week or so, and ran a BookBub and you get 50,000 downloads and whatnot, but only a certain percentage of people who download are going to read it. And I'm very surprised at the number of people who start on Book 3 and are like, "Oh my gosh, this was so great," and they go back and read series, and some people are like, "free book." Usually that book is not free.
[00:18:38] Matty: That's funny. Do you have access to numbers that would show you whether, when you gave away Book 3, did you get more or less bump on Books 1 and 2 than if you had given away Book 1 for free, and then you get that bump on 2 and 3 and on?
[00:18:54] Julie: Book one is definitely the way to go. But as I said, I have the rights to Book 1 now, so I have to personally beat on BookBub's door as opposed to having the publisher call and say, "I want you to place ..." It's a different conversation. We did Book 1 free last June and there were a lot more downloads. It was closer to 60,000 downloads and the tail was really strong for two months. We did Book 3 free just recently and the tail is still going, but there weren't as many downloads.
[00:19:30] What I did notice is The Deep End, which is Book 1, had a couple of enormous days, and then it has sort of tapered back off to its normal, decent numbers. But you have to try, it's all about trial and error and that, especially when you're indy, you try this and make sure that you're paying attention to your return on investment. And if it works, you keep going. And if it doesn't, you have to turn around and try something different.
[00:19:58] Matty: Another way that I think indies have an advantage over traditional is in the shorter turnaround time. I was just reading an article about the pros and cons of writing to trend, and the person was saying that's just a bad idea in traditional publishing because in the best possible circumstances where you write the book, it immediately gets picked up, they put it on some fast track for publication, it could be two years before your book sees the light of day. Whereas if you're indy, when you're done with your book, it can be a very short timeframe before it can be available to readers.
[00:20:30] Do you have thoughts about that idea of chasing trends in topics based on either your own experience or experience of other indy or traditional authors that you know?
[00:20:41] Julie: I know that there are folks out there who are really great at writing to market. I'm not sure that I'm one of them. I write mystery series and maybe I get lucky and it hits and maybe I just continue mid-listing my way through life. But the mid-list has been pretty good to me. I'm not complaining.
[00:21:02] Matty: And your topics are a little more timeless. You're obviously not chasing the trends as far as I can see in the topics you're picking.
[00:21:10] Julie: Somebody just this week got shot down on a mystery she had that was centered around something COVID-related and she had tried to sell it traditionally. And, no, because by the time we get it out, it's over. But if she could self-publish it, it would be hot right this minute. So you're right. I don't know that anybody wants to read about COVID anymore. I think we're all to here with it.
[00:21:35] Matty: One of the book events I went to was Emily St. John Mandel, who wrote Station 11, which was about a pandemic, and she was saying she was seeing this huge spike in Station 11 sales. And she said, "I couldn't read it myself, but if it soothes you to read about a pandemic, then go for it." I thought it was funny that she used the word "soothes" in that context.
[00:21:56] Julie: The first few days, I have college-age children and they were home and they were like, "We watched Contagion and all the pandemic movies," and they were like, "Actually we feel better now because this is less scary."
[00:22:10] Matty: Yeah. It's kind of cathartic, I guess, to see it treated fictionally. One of the things I think is really striking about your series is that they're both very elegantly but very differently branded from a visual point of view. Very lovely consistency and presentation but very different. I also think it's very clever that for the Poppy Fields adventures, they're all Fields' Guide to ... and then the picture is a little bit reminiscent of a travel log sort of book. Whereas the Country Club Murders are much more retro-looking to reflect the timeframe. Did you have a hand in both of those branding visual decisions?
[00:22:50] Julie: The very first Country Club Murder, the original cover is still on the audio. They sent it to me, and I was like, that's just amazing. And it's a bird's eye view, which is very different than the usual thing that you see. And we just kept going with that and it was great. The thing that got a little bit more difficult is if you've got a bird's eye view, looking down on a woman, there are only so many ways that you can look down on somebody. They have to be in bed or floating in the pool or so on.
[00:23:22] Henery had me come down to Dallas and do a little mini tour. And I met the cover designer when I was down there and we were talking about the third book--this was five years ago--but I said, “It's called Clouds in my Coffee. I want Ellison in a coffee cup." And so Stephanie, who is just brilliant, designed it. And the editor called me up and she said, "What did you tell Stephanie?" Got it back, and it's my favorite cover to this day.
[00:23:51] And then when I started getting books back, I got The Deep End back, and we wanted it to look cohesive but different. We kept Ellison and kept the idea of a bird's eye view but changed it up a little bit.
[00:24:07] Matty: And where did the cover design for the Poppy Fields books come from?
[00:24:11] Julie: I've gone through three different cover designers at this point, and I'm still not certain I've got what's exactly right for it. I really love the cover of the most recent release, which is Fields' Guide to Pharaohs, but it's going to get changed out because three, I mean, four, it's just a mess. I'm trying to find the secret sauce. And that is one of the things that is a benefit of being indy. If you've got what you think is a really good book and it's not selling well, it might be the cover.
[00:24:45] Matty: What were some of the things that when you went from cover designer to cover designer, was it multiple cover designers and the result was one, or with each of those three or four or however many you said, have you had a different cover design for the Poppy Field series?
[00:25:00] Julie: I started out with one cover designer and I think that she designed the first three, and then I switched and I had a different designer do four and five, and then she didn't have time to go back to do one through three. So I went and found another company and said, "I need you to do one through three and then going forward." But then we came up with a different look. I still have to have four and five redone, but I just paid for five in February. I'm not really in the mood to buy another one. Five is Pharaohs, which I really like, and I like Fog, but finding the right covers for that series has been a challenge.
[00:25:44] Matty: Just looking at it from a reader point of view, I thought they were striking, but it will be interesting, when you finally land on what you want the new look to be, to have you back and talk about what the decision process was that went into that.
[00:25:59] Julie: The Country Club murders, they're just home runs. They really are. Those were great. The new ones are great. I love them. Poppy has been more challenging.
[00:26:09] Matty: One of the things that I like about the Country Club Murders covers is that they seem to be a really good representation of you get that sense of it's a mystery, but it's a little bit retro, but also fun. It's not going to be Silence of the Lambs. Excellent job I thought on branding on the Country Club Murders.
[00:26:28] Julie: Yeah, she's she does a phenomenal job. The cover designer does a wonderful, wonderful job. I'm lucky to have her.
[00:26:35] Matty: Well, Julie, thank you so much. I was so happy to be able to set this up because I love speaking with someone who can bring such an informed opinion to both the indy and the traditional sides. And I know we've teased people's curiosity about the covers now. So if people want to find out more about you and your books online, where would you like them to go?
[00:26:54] Julie: JulieMulhernAuthor is the website, and most of the books are up there. And I think that all the current covers are up and correct, knock on wood, but that's probably the best place to find me.
[00:27:07] Matty: Great. Well, Julie, thank you so much for your time.
[00:27:09] Julie: Thank you so much for having me, Matty. It's been a pleasure.
[00:03:11] Matty: And did that pan out for you?
[00:03:13] Julie: I wouldn't do anything different. I really, really wouldn't. I think that $2.99 for somebody who's wide and obviously traditionally published, I was wide, is a good value proposition. It's a good way to get people started on a series and introduce characters and then hopefully get them engaged and falling in love with the characters and the mysteries. There's not a price to overcome, I don't think.
[00:03:38] Matty: It was very interesting to me to hear that your plan was to start out with traditional to build that background and to build the platform. Can you describe a little bit more about what you were looking to accomplish in that area?
[00:03:50] Julie: Well, I wanted to build a readership that I could carry with me when I did end up going indy and I succeeded. I think I did. I think a lot of my Country Club Murder readers have crossed over and become Poppy Fields readers also, which is what I wanted. I didn't want to have to start from scratch. And thousands of people who've enjoyed Ellison now enjoy Poppy and I didn't have to go out and just start over again, as it were.
[00:04:19] Matty: So that we understand that crossover aspect, can you just give a little description of the main characters in each of your books and the general setting and premise for them?
[00:04:29] Julie: Absolutely. The Country Club Murders are set in the 1970s, which is great fun for me. I get to walk down memory lane a lot, and there's lots of nostalgia. When I do research for that, it's about things that were happening in the seventies and not CSI-type stuff, which I kind of love and adore. The main character is a gal named Ellison Russell, and in the first book she is at her country club for a morning swim before the club opens and she swims into a body and that sort of sets off the whole series with "my morning swim doesn't usually involve corpses," and she goes from there. she's got a crazy, somewhat dysfunctional family and crazy friends. I think that the books are great, great fun while still being about murder.
[00:05:19] Poppy Fields, a little bit different. Poppy is a Hollywood It girl who, in the first book, is abducted by a Mexican drug cartel and has to develop some skills to get out of being held captive in Mexico and ends up becoming a super spy so that she gets to travel the world to exotic places and my readers get to go with her. We started in Mexico and then Paris and New Orleans and London, and most recently Egypt, and she's off to the Caymans next.
[00:05:53] Matty: Nice. It's a little virtual travel for people who are maybe not traveling so much right now.
[00:05:58] Julie: It really is. And I do a lot of location research. I lived in Paris for a while, so that was easy and helpful. And New Orleans is one of my favorite cities, so that wasn't too far of a stretch, but I've never been to Egypt. I did lots of YouTube videos of people cruising the Nile and the hotel pools and the souk in Cairo and whatnot. I've learned a lot too. It's been fun.
[00:06:22] Matty: It was interesting to me to see that your Country Club Murders were set around the country club because my grandmother used to live on Country Club Plaza. I probably was last there around 1970. She lived in, I think the building was called the Bartleston and it was right next to Macy's. And I remember when I was little watching the Macy's Day Parade and being confused that I didn't recognize anything because I thought that was the only Macy's and that that must be where the parade was taking place.
[00:06:51] And those apartment buildings were just the pinnacle of elegance from my point of view, and for some reason, a year or so ago, I got curious and I was trying to do my own research to see when those buildings came down and see if I could find any pictures of them. I wasn't very successful, but it was a really fun place to visit, at least as a little kid. It's kind of like making a trip to some Mediterranean town because of the way the architecture is.
[00:07:17] Julie: Kansas City's sister city is Seville, Spain, and when JC Nichols was designing the Plaza, he designed it to look Spanish, which really does feel Mediterranean.
[00:07:27] Matty: Yeah. Yeah, it was a fun place. So What platforms did your traditional publisher offer in terms of finding readership that would have been more difficult for you to find as an indy author?
[00:07:41] Julie: I think that they were marketing me to their existing readership. And one of the things that they were very good about was putting teasers in the back of their established authors' books for my book, which was fabulous and great. So if you liked a Gretchen Archer book or a Susan Boyer book or a Wendy Tyson book, and you saw something about The Deep End, which is the first Country Club Murder, it might be interesting and you might click on through.
[00:08:10] That I think was very helpful. Also the publisher, which is Henery Press, made a commitment to the idea "if you like one, you'll like them all." If people were Henery Press fans, they kind of knew what they were getting. They knew that they were probably in most cases getting a light mystery with some humor. And I think that that really worked for them.
[00:08:33] Matty: That's something I've never heard an indy author pursuing, but I suppose if you can come up with an agreement with a fellow author, there's no reason that two indy authors couldn't get together who had similar books, same genre ...
[00:08:45] Julie: I've seen romance authors, and I will say this: kudos to them. Romance authors lead the way for indy, and I have lately been seeing romance authors teasing chapters in the back of each other's books. I think it was this winter, maybe February, a whole bunch of gals who write paranormal romance all wrote midlife crisis books--paranormal midlife crisis second chance books--and they released all at the same time and they are promoting each other, they're promoting the, a whole series of these. I think it's brilliant.
[00:09:25] Matty: That's fantastic. How about author events? Were there author events that you got through your publisher that would have been difficult for you to get as an indy?
[00:09:33] Julie: Well, one of the things about conferences, particularly mystery conferences, I think, is that you don't get put on panels unless you're traditionally published. And it wasn't something I was thinking about or realizing. When I was brand spanking new, but I went to several conferences that first year, and I got on wonderful panels and mediated panels. And that is something that would not have happened for me if I had started out indy.
[00:10:02] Matty: Do you feel as if the benefit of being on a panel plays out in sales or are there other benefits, like networking-related or relationship- building or resume-building?
[00:10:13] Julie: I think that it is networking, period. Maybe a handful of sales. I sat next to Charles Finch one day, who I think is amazing, and we were laughing and talking and maybe all the people who came to see Charles Finch, a couple of them might have bought the Country Club Murders because sometimes they put me on the historical panel, but I mean, he's really historical and I'm sort of nostalgia historical, but, I think really it's about networking and getting to interact with other authors in maybe a way that we wouldn't otherwise be able. But I don't know that it sells a whole lot of books.
[00:10:49] Matty: I have been on maybe one or two conference panels that were very specifically aimed at readers, not authors, and those I did sell books, but yeah, I agree that in general the conferences that are mainly writers, you're not going to sell a lot to other writers.
[00:11:05] Julie: I just think that for mystery conferences, anyway, most of the conferences seem to be a mix. And the panels really are for the most part aimed at the readers. But I just don't see it. If you look out and you've got a room of 50 people, which, for most of these things, unless you're a big name author, which I am not, is a really great turnout, and you figure 10% actually go out and buy the book and you have spent however much to go to a conference and the hotel rooms ... it doesn't make financial sense unless you're looking at benefits of networking, which are very real.
[00:11:43] Matty: When you went into traditional publishing, it sounds like you already knew at that point that you wanted that to be a steppingstone to an indy career as well. Is that correct?
[00:11:55] Julie: I will say yes, but I discovered some things about traditional publishing that I really, really like and appreciate. My contract with Henery Press is complete. I wrote nine Country Club Murders for them, and I am self-publishing going forward on that series. That having been said, I've talked to my agent about several ideas, and I think we're going to go out on submission later this year, again to a traditional publisher, because I really do see the value in some of the things that traditional publishing brings. I do think it brings you an audience that's very hard to access as an indy. No matter how good your contract people are, and by that, I mean your cover designers and your editors and your copy editors and your line editors, I think there's something different about a group process that you do sometimes get with a traditional publisher. And I think that that keeps me sharp.
[00:12:54] And I hear tell that traditional publishers can do marketing things that even small niche publishers or certainly indy publishers can't. I'm not turning my back on it, but I knew always that I wanted to control my own destiny and I can do that with indy books, where all I can control with a traditional publisher is the quality of the book. And that's it. I can't control marketing. I can't control price. I can't control whether they run a BookBub. None of that. So I kind of like both.
[00:13:28] Matty: Do you think that an advantage of being with a small traditional press over a large traditional press is that there's any chance of having some influence over those things? Or is it really just the agreement is that's taken out of the author's hands?
[00:13:41] Julie: Henery Press was really wonderful in working with me about marketing ideas. We talked about BookBub and they got me lots of them, which was lovely. And if you're an indy author, you can't do that--I mean, you apply and you apply and you apply and you apply and you get rejected and rejected and rejected. And then maybe one day you get it. You have no idea why that time worked and the others don't. Publishers have a rep at BookBub, and they call and they say, "I want such-and-such on such-and-such date." And that's that experience.
[00:14:13] So I was able to work with a publisher on getting BookBubs, strategically placed BookBubs, which was wonderful. And we had pricing discussions. I think at one point they moved away from first book at $2.99 and moved all their first books to $4.99. I watched it for a couple months and I went back and said, "Here is the difference. Can we go back to $2.99?" We had a long discussion about it, and they very graciously rolled the price back to $2.99 and the sales picked up again. I think that most indy authors who write series certainly know about the importance of read through and getting somebody engaged with the first book. It may be if you're advertising that you're breaking even, or even losing money, but if you can get them reading through a long series, then it makes sense to maybe have a loss leader.
[00:15:09] Matty: How much are your other eBooks selling for?
[00:15:12] Julie: The Country Club Murders Book 1 is $2.99 and I actually got the rights back and kept it at $2.99. The next two books are $4.99, and then Books 4 through 11 are $6.99. It's a three-stepped pricing idea.
[00:15:28] The first Poppy Fields right now is permafree. Anybody can download it on any ereader--Kobo, or iTunes, Amazon, what have you--for free. And then the ensuing books are $4.99. I've got two different pricing schemes going, as it were. I read an interesting article the other day about both of those and the pluses and the minuses for both. I'm more likely to rethink permafree than I am $2.99 at the first book.
[00:16:02] Matty: Do you think you might switch from permafree to $2.99?
[00:16:05] Julie: You know, I might, I'm not doing anything this year. I'm just going to see how this year finishes. But I do think that it sort of makes sense. An action adventure with a female heroine that's not got a serial killer in it is a harder sell. I mean, most thrillers that are written by women have deviant serial killers in them or something. You don't see a whole lot of black widow, just fun action adventure for women. And it's harder to find the audience and that's why I tried it with permafree, and Lord knows I give away a lot of books, and the read through is decent. But I do wonder about the value proposition and if some people think that free book can't be good.
[00:16:50] Matty: I think that there's any evolving opinion about that. And I certainly don't have any strong numbers, but I know that my own experience as a reader is to attach a certain meaning to what the publisher or the author is asking for the book. And I would not rate a free book with the same seriousness that I would a $2.99 book.
[00:17:12] And this really came home to me because I attended several virtual author events over the last couple of months. And I would buy their books from the bookstore that was hosting their Zoom meeting. And they were always in hard back, so they were $20, sometimes they were $30 by the time the shipping and handling was paid for.
[00:17:29] And when I sat down with those books, it was really an event. I set aside time for it. I was paying attention more, whereas if I pick up my Kindle and I flip open a free book, for whatever reason, the mindset is different. So I really agree that even though permafree was really the going advice for many, many years, I feel like other people must be feeling that too. There's also this recognition that authors deserve some money if they put the time and effort into writing a book.
[00:18:01] Julie: Yeah. It's interesting. I had a BookBub recently and the publisher was very kind and we marked the third book in the Country Club Murders to free for a week or so, and ran a BookBub and you get 50,000 downloads and whatnot, but only a certain percentage of people who download are going to read it. And I'm very surprised at the number of people who start on Book 3 and are like, "Oh my gosh, this was so great," and they go back and read series, and some people are like, "free book." Usually that book is not free.
[00:18:38] Matty: That's funny. Do you have access to numbers that would show you whether, when you gave away Book 3, did you get more or less bump on Books 1 and 2 than if you had given away Book 1 for free, and then you get that bump on 2 and 3 and on?
[00:18:54] Julie: Book one is definitely the way to go. But as I said, I have the rights to Book 1 now, so I have to personally beat on BookBub's door as opposed to having the publisher call and say, "I want you to place ..." It's a different conversation. We did Book 1 free last June and there were a lot more downloads. It was closer to 60,000 downloads and the tail was really strong for two months. We did Book 3 free just recently and the tail is still going, but there weren't as many downloads.
[00:19:30] What I did notice is The Deep End, which is Book 1, had a couple of enormous days, and then it has sort of tapered back off to its normal, decent numbers. But you have to try, it's all about trial and error and that, especially when you're indy, you try this and make sure that you're paying attention to your return on investment. And if it works, you keep going. And if it doesn't, you have to turn around and try something different.
[00:19:58] Matty: Another way that I think indies have an advantage over traditional is in the shorter turnaround time. I was just reading an article about the pros and cons of writing to trend, and the person was saying that's just a bad idea in traditional publishing because in the best possible circumstances where you write the book, it immediately gets picked up, they put it on some fast track for publication, it could be two years before your book sees the light of day. Whereas if you're indy, when you're done with your book, it can be a very short timeframe before it can be available to readers.
[00:20:30] Do you have thoughts about that idea of chasing trends in topics based on either your own experience or experience of other indy or traditional authors that you know?
[00:20:41] Julie: I know that there are folks out there who are really great at writing to market. I'm not sure that I'm one of them. I write mystery series and maybe I get lucky and it hits and maybe I just continue mid-listing my way through life. But the mid-list has been pretty good to me. I'm not complaining.
[00:21:02] Matty: And your topics are a little more timeless. You're obviously not chasing the trends as far as I can see in the topics you're picking.
[00:21:10] Julie: Somebody just this week got shot down on a mystery she had that was centered around something COVID-related and she had tried to sell it traditionally. And, no, because by the time we get it out, it's over. But if she could self-publish it, it would be hot right this minute. So you're right. I don't know that anybody wants to read about COVID anymore. I think we're all to here with it.
[00:21:35] Matty: One of the book events I went to was Emily St. John Mandel, who wrote Station 11, which was about a pandemic, and she was saying she was seeing this huge spike in Station 11 sales. And she said, "I couldn't read it myself, but if it soothes you to read about a pandemic, then go for it." I thought it was funny that she used the word "soothes" in that context.
[00:21:56] Julie: The first few days, I have college-age children and they were home and they were like, "We watched Contagion and all the pandemic movies," and they were like, "Actually we feel better now because this is less scary."
[00:22:10] Matty: Yeah. It's kind of cathartic, I guess, to see it treated fictionally. One of the things I think is really striking about your series is that they're both very elegantly but very differently branded from a visual point of view. Very lovely consistency and presentation but very different. I also think it's very clever that for the Poppy Fields adventures, they're all Fields' Guide to ... and then the picture is a little bit reminiscent of a travel log sort of book. Whereas the Country Club Murders are much more retro-looking to reflect the timeframe. Did you have a hand in both of those branding visual decisions?
[00:22:50] Julie: The very first Country Club Murder, the original cover is still on the audio. They sent it to me, and I was like, that's just amazing. And it's a bird's eye view, which is very different than the usual thing that you see. And we just kept going with that and it was great. The thing that got a little bit more difficult is if you've got a bird's eye view, looking down on a woman, there are only so many ways that you can look down on somebody. They have to be in bed or floating in the pool or so on.
[00:23:22] Henery had me come down to Dallas and do a little mini tour. And I met the cover designer when I was down there and we were talking about the third book--this was five years ago--but I said, “It's called Clouds in my Coffee. I want Ellison in a coffee cup." And so Stephanie, who is just brilliant, designed it. And the editor called me up and she said, "What did you tell Stephanie?" Got it back, and it's my favorite cover to this day.
[00:23:51] And then when I started getting books back, I got The Deep End back, and we wanted it to look cohesive but different. We kept Ellison and kept the idea of a bird's eye view but changed it up a little bit.
[00:24:07] Matty: And where did the cover design for the Poppy Fields books come from?
[00:24:11] Julie: I've gone through three different cover designers at this point, and I'm still not certain I've got what's exactly right for it. I really love the cover of the most recent release, which is Fields' Guide to Pharaohs, but it's going to get changed out because three, I mean, four, it's just a mess. I'm trying to find the secret sauce. And that is one of the things that is a benefit of being indy. If you've got what you think is a really good book and it's not selling well, it might be the cover.
[00:24:45] Matty: What were some of the things that when you went from cover designer to cover designer, was it multiple cover designers and the result was one, or with each of those three or four or however many you said, have you had a different cover design for the Poppy Field series?
[00:25:00] Julie: I started out with one cover designer and I think that she designed the first three, and then I switched and I had a different designer do four and five, and then she didn't have time to go back to do one through three. So I went and found another company and said, "I need you to do one through three and then going forward." But then we came up with a different look. I still have to have four and five redone, but I just paid for five in February. I'm not really in the mood to buy another one. Five is Pharaohs, which I really like, and I like Fog, but finding the right covers for that series has been a challenge.
[00:25:44] Matty: Just looking at it from a reader point of view, I thought they were striking, but it will be interesting, when you finally land on what you want the new look to be, to have you back and talk about what the decision process was that went into that.
[00:25:59] Julie: The Country Club murders, they're just home runs. They really are. Those were great. The new ones are great. I love them. Poppy has been more challenging.
[00:26:09] Matty: One of the things that I like about the Country Club Murders covers is that they seem to be a really good representation of you get that sense of it's a mystery, but it's a little bit retro, but also fun. It's not going to be Silence of the Lambs. Excellent job I thought on branding on the Country Club Murders.
[00:26:28] Julie: Yeah, she's she does a phenomenal job. The cover designer does a wonderful, wonderful job. I'm lucky to have her.
[00:26:35] Matty: Well, Julie, thank you so much. I was so happy to be able to set this up because I love speaking with someone who can bring such an informed opinion to both the indy and the traditional sides. And I know we've teased people's curiosity about the covers now. So if people want to find out more about you and your books online, where would you like them to go?
[00:26:54] Julie: JulieMulhernAuthor is the website, and most of the books are up there. And I think that all the current covers are up and correct, knock on wood, but that's probably the best place to find me.
[00:27:07] Matty: Great. Well, Julie, thank you so much for your time.
[00:27:09] Julie: Thank you so much for having me, Matty. It's been a pleasure.
Links
Check out Julie's website at JulieMulhernAuthor
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