Episode 036 - Frugal Tips for Writers with Elizabeth Sims
July 21, 2020
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Elizabeth Sims, author and contributing editor to Writer's Digest magazine, discusses tips on where the frugal writer can save money, and where money-saving should not be the highest priority. We talk about the benefits of writers' groups and conferences; how you can access premium-level resources without paying premium-level fees; and the importance of considering not only financial cost, but karma cost as well.
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Elizabeth Sims is the author of the Rita Farmer Mysteries, the award-winning Lillian Byrd Crime Series, and other fiction. Her work has been published by Macmillan as well as several smaller houses, and she publishes independently under her personal imprint, Spruce Park Press. Elizabeth has also written dozens of feature articles on the craft of writing as a contributing editor with Writer's Digest magazine. She is also the author of You've Got a Book in You: A Stress-Free Guide to Writing the Book of Your Dreams.
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"For instance, I love to write on fine papers, while they're expensive, but they it's such a pleasure to write. And your pen or pencil does track more smoothly over them. And so it literally is less fatiguing, but they do cost. And so you have to figure your priorities." Elizabeth Sims
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Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is Elizabeth Sims. Hey, Elizabeth, how are you doing?
[00:00:06] Elizabeth: I'm great today. How about yourself, Matty?
[00:00:08] Matty: I'm doing great, thank you.
[00:00:10] To give our listeners a little bit of background on you. Elizabeth Sims is the author of the Rita Farmer Mysteries, the award-winning Lillian Byrd Crime Series, and other fiction. Her work has been published by Macmillan as well as several smaller houses, and she publishes independently under her personal imprint, Spruce Park Press.
In addition to having her short fiction work appear in numerous collections and magazines, Elizabeth has also written dozens of feature articles on the craft of writing as a contributing editor with Writer's Digest magazine. She is also the author of You've Got a Book in You: A Stress-Free Guide to Writing the Book of Your Dreams.
Elizabeth has worked as a reporter, photographer, technical writer, bookseller, street busker, ranch hand, corporate executive, certified lifeguard, and symphonic percussionist, and she is a member of Mensa, the high IQ society.
[00:01:02] So with that high powered background, I'm sure that you're all wondering what weighty writing and publishing topic I invited Elizabeth on the podcast to discuss, and I must admit that my invitation was triggered by a specific article in Writer's Digest that tickled my fancy, and that was The Frugal Writer's Guide to Everything. This is a topic I loved reading about, I think our listeners will love hearing about, so Elizabeth, before we dive into the details of a frugal writer's guide to everything, what brought that topic to your attention?
[00:01:34] Elizabeth: This is one that a group of writers recommended to me, actually. I was doing a little teaching seminar at a writing conference and it was a critique group and they were asking me about the experience for writing for the magazine And I said, Hey, yeah, and by the way, are there any articles you'd like me to write? And somebody said, tell us how to do all this stuff we have to do without spending a whole fortune of money. it took some years actually to get that onto the top of the list, but that was actually the trigger.
[00:02:01] Matty: Well, it probably took a while because it's not like you can pack all that personal research into a day or two. I would imagine that over time you just have to be purchasing something and then thinking, Oh, you know what, this would really lend itself to that frugal writer's guide that everybody wanted me to work on.
[00:02:20] Elizabeth: Yeah And then, once I realized I had enough notes to put together an article then I told the folks at Writer's Digest about it. And they were like, yeah, we like this one. Go ahead and write it.
[00:02:30] Matty: It's a very practical and actionable article. And what I wanted to do is just mention some of the topics--we're not going to go through this all exhaustively--but a couple of the things that I really liked, and you started right out with writing materials. So for those who are writing, not on the keyboard but actually writing out by hand, you had a section on pens. Talk about what you found in terms of the frugal writer's guide to pens.
[00:00:06] Elizabeth: I'm great today. How about yourself, Matty?
[00:00:08] Matty: I'm doing great, thank you.
[00:00:10] To give our listeners a little bit of background on you. Elizabeth Sims is the author of the Rita Farmer Mysteries, the award-winning Lillian Byrd Crime Series, and other fiction. Her work has been published by Macmillan as well as several smaller houses, and she publishes independently under her personal imprint, Spruce Park Press.
In addition to having her short fiction work appear in numerous collections and magazines, Elizabeth has also written dozens of feature articles on the craft of writing as a contributing editor with Writer's Digest magazine. She is also the author of You've Got a Book in You: A Stress-Free Guide to Writing the Book of Your Dreams.
Elizabeth has worked as a reporter, photographer, technical writer, bookseller, street busker, ranch hand, corporate executive, certified lifeguard, and symphonic percussionist, and she is a member of Mensa, the high IQ society.
[00:01:02] So with that high powered background, I'm sure that you're all wondering what weighty writing and publishing topic I invited Elizabeth on the podcast to discuss, and I must admit that my invitation was triggered by a specific article in Writer's Digest that tickled my fancy, and that was The Frugal Writer's Guide to Everything. This is a topic I loved reading about, I think our listeners will love hearing about, so Elizabeth, before we dive into the details of a frugal writer's guide to everything, what brought that topic to your attention?
[00:01:34] Elizabeth: This is one that a group of writers recommended to me, actually. I was doing a little teaching seminar at a writing conference and it was a critique group and they were asking me about the experience for writing for the magazine And I said, Hey, yeah, and by the way, are there any articles you'd like me to write? And somebody said, tell us how to do all this stuff we have to do without spending a whole fortune of money. it took some years actually to get that onto the top of the list, but that was actually the trigger.
[00:02:01] Matty: Well, it probably took a while because it's not like you can pack all that personal research into a day or two. I would imagine that over time you just have to be purchasing something and then thinking, Oh, you know what, this would really lend itself to that frugal writer's guide that everybody wanted me to work on.
[00:02:20] Elizabeth: Yeah And then, once I realized I had enough notes to put together an article then I told the folks at Writer's Digest about it. And they were like, yeah, we like this one. Go ahead and write it.
[00:02:30] Matty: It's a very practical and actionable article. And what I wanted to do is just mention some of the topics--we're not going to go through this all exhaustively--but a couple of the things that I really liked, and you started right out with writing materials. So for those who are writing, not on the keyboard but actually writing out by hand, you had a section on pens. Talk about what you found in terms of the frugal writer's guide to pens.
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[00:02:57] Elizabeth: The one that I mentioned in the article, I mentioned a very inexpensive plastic fountain pen. This is my Lamy Safari that I use and I really enjoy. Pretty much, we all started scribbling something on paper -- well, I guess little young children today just mash a keyboard -- but anybody with a little bit of age on them has some experience with pen and paper or pencil.
[00:03:21] And my very first novel, I started writing on yellow pads with pens that I ripped off from my workplace. Cheap BIC sticks, but actually the cheap BIC sticks were so unpleasant to write with, this was, 40 years ago or 34 years ago, they would be sticky, that ink is sticky and thick and cheap. So then I started getting interested in pens, and I'm like, wow, look at these cool pens.
[00:03:45] You can spend a fortune on a fine fountain pen, and I have, but really, mass produced, mass market pen technology these days is great, with the gel pens and smooth writing ballpoints. These PILOT G2s are really good and they're super cheap. Yeah. You get them in great big bubble pack bunches of them for super cheap.
[00:04:07] Matty: I was interested to see fountain pens in your article as something that's very ecologically conscious because you're not throwing the pen away obviously. I guess you're not throwing anything away with a fountain pen, except when you're done with a bottle of ink, you're recycling that one assumes. But it is funny, I always hear of fountain pens in the context of very expensive sort of designer pens. I remember I got fascinated with fountain pens reading something that Neil Gaiman had written, Neil Gaiman being a big fountain pen fan.
[00:04:35] Elizabeth: Yeah, that's right, he is.
[00:04:36] Matty: And I had even gone to the Fountain Pen Hospital in New York where he buys his fountain pens were, has his fountain pens maintained. It's like having a car. Yeah, they could go from frugal to completely not frugal.
[00:04:48] Elizabeth: It can be cool to own something of value like that, it's a beautiful thing and it's functional, so I can understand that too. I do have a couple of fine fountain pens, but my main work horse is this little plastic one and it works very well.
[00:05:01] And I might add if you do any writing, well, these days, not many of us are doing writing in cafes, but, I had one of my fine pens with me in a cafe one time and I got up and went to the bathroom and while I was in the bathroom, I'm like, Oh my God, I left that on the table. I'm like, Oh my God, my God. And I ran back to the table. And the guy at the next table was staring at it while I was gone. I snatched it up, but then I didn't take it anymore to a cafe. But if you lose one of these plastic ones that doesn't make you want to cut your throat.
[00:05:30] Matty: That's one of the reasons that I like "frugal" over "cheap" because I think "frugal" suggests that there are things that it's worth investing the money in, but you have to be careful about being conscious about what those things are.
[00:05:42] Elizabeth: Yes. For instance, I love to write on fine papers, while they're expensive, but they it's such a pleasure to write. And your pen or pencil does track more smoothly over them. It literally is less fatiguing, but they do cost. You have to figure your priorities.
[00:05:58] Matty: Do you actually use that paper for drafting your novels and your nonfiction work, or are you using it for a different purpose?
[00:06:07] Elizabeth: I tend to buy some mid-grade papers for drafting purposes or just the real cheap yellow pads, and I just use gel pens, nothing with a tip that I would want to protect because, by the way, a fountain pen's tip, the nib, can be worn down and ruined by rough cheap paper. And it's not that fun to write on rough cheap paper with a fountain pen anyway, and the ink will bleed on cheap paper. When I'm really smoking through some handwritten draft materials, I'll notch it all the way down to the cheapest yellow legal pads that I buy in bulk as well as cheap gel pens.
[00:06:42] It's still a beautiful experience really. I did an article for writer's digest sometime back where I worked with old writing technology. I used a quill pen and a steel pen, the steel dip pen, and pencils. And compared with the older technology, these cheap gel pens are just really super great.
[00:07:04] Matty: Whenever I read about fountain pens in particular, I always think, Oh, I'm going to get one and I'm going to try it out. And then I think carefully about it and I think, my writing muscles like that have just atrophied long ago and I'm afraid that the experience would be more frustrating than it would be satisfying for me. But it is fun to think about.
[00:07:21] Elizabeth: You write primarily with keyboard?
[00:07:23] Matty: Yeah.
[00:07:24] Elizabeth: Yeah. I do go back and forth, more and more I'm doing keyboard, but yet I just keep reverting back to handwriting draft material. And that just seems to give me more satisfaction.
[00:07:35] Matty: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm going to use this as a segue into one of the other topics you talked about, which was electronics and talk a little bit about when you are ready to put your fingers to keyboard, what are your frugal tips about supplying yourself in that area?
[00:07:51] Elizabeth: I have a couple of very good friends who are computer geeks and programmers and from them I learned really what the minimum requirements for me are for electronics, meaning your main expenses, your laptop, your tablet, your keyboard, your thing that you have a keyboard on, your word processor. If I were a gamer or a professional photographer, I would need lots of more supplemental stuff, but I just use my computer for typing manuscripts and doing some self-publishing stuff and searching the web and all that stuff, and storage.
[00:08:23] I had gotten sucked in to buying a sexy little tablet that cost a bunch of money and was really very convenient and it did a lot of stuff, but it was almost too little for when I do editing and so forth. Being not a terribly young person anymore, my eyes really do appreciate a bigger screen.
[00:08:43] So when that one died right after the warranty expired, which I just wanted to shoot it on top of it being dead already, I decided, okay, I'm just going to get one of these bigger ones, cheaper ones. What I'm talking to you now on is a 15-inch laptop with 256 gigabytes of internal storage. And I found that that's really good, and I got it for $450 and I'll give a plug to the American big box firm Costco. That's where I got it at, we're members of Costco. That membership is really great. People sometimes don't think about being a member of a buying club like that for anything but food and paper towels, but electronics, you can save a bundle on really good deals there.
[00:09:25] Technology has made these bigger screen laptops so much thinner and lighter than they ever used to be. You can stow it in your carry on and not have it be a big hassle or onerous to drag this along with you on a trip or out to the cafe, in your briefcase or whatever. So, yeah, it's ever easier to buy good portable stuff.
[00:09:47] Matty: Yeah. For the electronic side of this, I find that I always underestimate what I need to do with it. For example, I'm using a MacBook Air, but next time I am in the market for one, I'm probably going to just bite the bullet and get one of the bigger Pro models because I realized I'm doing audio and video editing for the podcast. I'm doing more graphic things. I know if I had a slightly larger screen that I would never want to go back. So I think that the whole idea of frugality being assessing your needs and then purchasing appropriately is good here too, because I almost earlier this year just went and got a MacBook Pro, even though I have my MacBook Air, because I was tired of waiting for it to do the things I needed it to do. And I think I finally got to the point where I got it sufficiently cleaned up that it's workable. But, yeah, I think that the idea of assessing what you need the equipment or the supplies to do is really important.
[00:10:44] Elizabeth: Yeah. And I might add if people are wondering, and there's no reason that I can't mention the brand name of what I have, it's a Lenovo Idea Pad is what I wound up buying. I've used Dells and it was a Microsoft product, I'm sad to say, that died on me too soon, but I still loved it a lot, and I might even buy another one of those someday, but those are much more pricey and it's just really mostly for miniaturization that you pay that extra. So this has worked out great.
[00:11:10] Matty: Another area I agree that you shouldn't cheap out on is the furniture you're using, especially your chair.
[00:11:17] Elizabeth: Right.
[00:11:18] Matty: Is that something that you've splurged on a little bit?
[00:11:21] Elizabeth: I have intended to splurge on. In the past, I splurged on one of those Aeron chairs, but I actually have a bit of a spinal deformity and that didn't work out for me. And so I gave that chair away and then I've kind of just made do with little things. Like what I'm sitting on now is a super cheap little swivel thing from Ikea that I got some years back and that I have sworn to replace with something really good. We recently moved from one state to another and when we were getting set up, we've only been here for a few weeks, I tried to give this chair away before we moved, but the guy wouldn't take it, who was taking some of our other stuff. He said, "No, I don't want that. Put it in the moving van." It's like, ahhh, now I've got to sit on it for longer. So now I have to try to bite the bullet and get something.
[00:12:03] But here's a tip about chairs. I have learned about these gaming chairs that gamers who sit for really long periods of time and do all that gaming, they've designed these really cool ergonomic chairs, so I've been looking around online for those. And I think for anyone who has to work sitting with the computer or sitting most of the time, you don't have to sit all the time, I have a standup desk too, but, I think a gaming chair could be a worthwhile thing to look into.
[00:12:30] Matty: Yeah. I'll give another plug for Costco. We're big Costco fans. I think everything in our home is from Costco. And when my husband proposed to me, he actually looked at Costco at engagement rings, and I was like, that would have been so cool if you had gotten my engagement ring at Costco because I would love to be able to tell people that we get our paper towels and our engagement rings from Costco. He didn’t find what he wanted there, but we have plenty of things from there, including my adjustable height desk. I had gotten an adjustable height desk at Costco. I like it a lot, except that the mechanism to make it go up and down is right where I rest my hand to work the mouse. So every once in a while, in the middle of an interview, it'll start going up or down. And unfortunately, because the lights are LED lights that are hooked into the desk, then one of the lights goes out when I do that, so it's maybe not ideal for podcasting. But, yeah, it's very true, there's all sorts of stuff you can find at Costco that you might not think about if you don't look into it.
[00:13:28] Elizabeth: May I add another thing about the writing desk experience? Years and years and years ago, I bought a tabletop slant board I got it from the Levenger catalog a long time ago. It's super nice to be able just to sit and write on a slight slant, especially with pencil. It's so much easier on your neck and even your hands.
[00:13:50] Matty: One of the things I wanted to ask you about, especially because of your editing background is now, we're diving into the services side of what writers need, and my plug as an indy author is that there are three things you need to have done professionally. You need to have your work professionally edited, professionally proofread, and you need a professional cover. And editing is one of those things that can really be all over the board in terms of price. When people are investing in editing services, how do they ensure that they're getting value for the money they're investing in that?
[00:14:24] Elizabeth: Yes, that, that's a very good question. And I say there are a few things you can do, again with the magic of technology and the magic of searching online, one can start searching for editors online. And of course you can stumble upon Joe Blow's Editing Service, "We'll take your money and not do much for you," so what you really should look for, first of all, is credentials, which of course says, look for someone who's a bit established at least in the field.
[00:14:51] You can go far less wrong by getting someone who's been actually doing it and maybe has a website with testimonials, that type of thing. and some of us refer to each other. If we've got too many clients, we send over to somebody else and they'll do the same occasionally, or if a client has something that's a project that we don't feel that we're quite right for, then we can try to shoot it over to somebody else.
[00:15:15] They're also online services, that put together writers and editors, and those can be really good. In fact, one of them approached me recently to see if I'd be interested in doing some work for them. I know that this company is well thought of, because I'm a member of an organization called Novelists, Inc., which is for professional novelists, and we share information back and forth and there's a yearly conference, except for this year. And at the conference, some of these companies come and are represented and Reedsy is one of them. And they do other indy book services as well. So I actually might be doing some editing for clients via Reedsy, because it seems like a pretty good deal.
[00:15:56] You can set your own prices and have your own communication with the clients. There's one that a friend of mine works for called I think it's called New York <Book> Editors and she's excellent. There's a lot of really good editors there and you can just browse online and see what their credentials are and what writing they specialize in. I think they even tell if they've worked on books that have won awards or have been bestsellers. Some of these services can really be very helpful. I mean, I've seen people put ads on Craigslist saying, "I need somebody to edit my book and I can spend $50." You can actually possibly attract some local talent by making a more reasonable ad and see what you get.
[00:16:33] Other avenues where you can find people who might have at least a basic facility for doing some copy editing, which is also a necessary thing, but giving you some story feedback, beyond your local writing group, might be some local university professors. You can approach them possibly for some advice and for referrals. And to really make sure that you're getting someone that you can probably work with, my advice is to ask that prospective editor for a five to 10-page critique for free. Send them your first five to 10 pages and say, "Would you give me a freebie here, and maybe we can do business?" Almost everyone says yes to that. I certainly say yes. My rule is seven pages, your first seven I'll do for free and we can take it from there.
[00:17:17] Matty: And even if they won't do it for free, oftentimes they'll offer a very inexpensive sample edit, which is great because there would be nothing worse than investing in an editor and then finding out that they might be a great editor, but just not right for you.
[00:17:32] Or another thing that I found is that it's not just the editing skill that's important, it's an understanding of the genre. And so one piece of advice I would give, and you can weigh in on whether this is good advice or not, is that if you can get in with even readers who are very familiar with your genre, like let's say you're writing speculative fiction, you're writing horror or you're writing cozy mysteries, whatever it is, if you can find readers who are widely read in and enjoy that genre, then sometimes I would think they would be able to give you very high level advice about, " Normally in books like this, this thing happens" or "You really can't call it a cozy if you have lurid sex scenes" or whatever it is, and that that can give you the high level sense of where to sort of look for further help. Does that make sense?
[00:18:26] Elizabeth: It makes sense up to a point. It's so funny, how many readers are avid readers and are very knowledgeable about a particular genre, but their consciousness of writing technique is it can be like next to zero, and they can say, "Well, I liked this" or "I didn't like that," but why? "Well, maybe because this or that."
[00:18:45] But someone who has done professional work, who's developed a professional eye and who has perhaps been a novelist themselves, a writer themselves--that I think is the best combination, because you've got your own experience, what's worked for you and whether you've had customer feedback, so to speak. I mean, for me, having had two degrees in English and literature and a part of one in composition theory, it really has been very helpful to me because I've read classics. I read books that bowled over the world closely, closely, and written about them and figured out and dissected them to figure out why does this work so beautifully? Here are some reasons why, and here's a few examples why. An avid reader, they definitely can be worthwhile for some insights, up to a point.
[00:19:32] Matty: Maybe you start out there and you see what their reactions are and you adjust before you then make the investment to take the next step.
[00:19:41] Elizabeth: Yeah. That's a good idea. Yes.
[00:19:43] Matty: There was another area that I was curious about. This was not something you covered in your article, but it was the idea of memberships -- writers' group memberships or genre-focused memberships--and some of them can be quite pricey. Do you have any thoughts about how people weigh the cost benefit of investing in a membership like that?
[00:20:05] Elizabeth: That's a great question. Yeah, these costs can add up and everybody says, "Oh yeah, you should join this thing" and "you should join that one." I joined a few different groups that cost money and also some online groups that were just to talk about writing and, see, your time is valuable too. Spending time online, talking about stuff is an expense. You have to sit down, it sounds fairly mercenary and perhaps selfish, but what am I getting out of this? It's nice to be able to give input to other people but is this really helping my career? And if you're looking at things financially, you've got to make some decisions. I did just wind up dropping out of a few organizations, especially one that people were like, "You let your membership to blah blah lapse?"
[00:20:51] I have continued to maintain a membership in Mystery Writers of America, it's a nice credential to have, and Novelists, Inc. is very worthwhile. Of course, that's not for everyone because you have to be a published author and you have to apply and all that, but that is the most helpful group so far that I've ever come across. And I'm glad to pay my money every year to stay with them.
[00:21:12] Otherwise it is also very nice to be a member and support a local group. I have recently moved from Florida back to my home state of Michigan, and while in Florida, it didn't occur to me to hunt down any writer's groups, but they hunted me down and said, "Hey, would you come and talk to our group?" and I was like, "Oh, well, yeah. Okay." And so I came and talked to their group about a topic, because I have these credentials as a published author and an contributing editor at Writer's Digest magazine, and that's always attractive to groups, and I definitely have some good things to tell them.
[00:21:42] So then I thought, well, I should not only just talk to them, but I should sign up and pay my $40 a year or whatever. It's nice to support a local group. It's good to come and hang out. People are in the same boat. People are trying to figure out their way through this challenging and exhilarating world of being a writer.
[00:22:00] Matty: And some of those local groups, you don't necessarily have to provide a membership. This is obviously going to vary from group to group, and you would need to do the research to find out what was the case for yours, but I know that many of the groups will reserve certain benefits for members. So for example, maybe there's a critique night and you can only submit a work for critique if you're a member, but you're welcome to come to the meetings. You're welcome to come for the dinners. You're welcome to listen to the speakers, all that, for free. And so people can also take a look at that. And if they're really looking for ways to be frugal, assess whether the extra benefits are worth the investment to actually become a member or to enjoy the benefits without membership.
[00:22:43] The reason that memberships is tough is that there's sort of two sides of it. There's the hard to quantify networking benefits, and then there are the very quantifiable benefits, like the Alliance of Independent Authors, which I belong to. If for no other reason I would belong, because if you're a member, you can submit updates to IngramSpark for free, and you can upload revisions for free to IngramSpark if you're a member. Whereas I think it's $25 for an <ebook> upload. It can add up, if you find a typo and you don't want to spend $25 to fix one typo, whereas I would definitely do that on KDP. If I find a typo, I'll just go in and instantly upload something on Amazon. If it's IngramSpark, I tend to queue them up. I mean, I don't anymore because I'm benefiting from the Alliance of Independent Authors membership, but if I was paying each time, then I would tend to queue them up, which means all the things that are being sold through IngramSpark are less high quality than the things that are being sold at Amazon.
I really think they're shooting themselves in the foot by charging for those things, especially because there are so many memberships that people can get that prevent them from having to pay for that. But if you're considering a membership, then definitely go to that organization's benefits page and you can see pretty clearly if the money you're going to be spending for that membership is going to be alleviated in some way by money savings elsewhere that they offer their members.
[00:24:38] One of those other things that is difficult to weigh is the cost of classes. I just had the example of wanting to delve into Facebook ads. And my choice was to spend hundreds of dollars for the marquee name or to get a course on Udemy for $12. For your own use, how do you make the decisions about whether the marquee name with the premium course is 50 times more beneficial than the $12 course?
[00:25:14] Elizabeth: Well, that's a super good question too. A writing friend who is also a published author and who also is a hybrid author doing some self-publishing, as well as having had some stuff published by a legit press. He spent I think $700 for a high-profile name course, I think it was on email marketing, and, I said, "So, how did it go? And was it worth it?" And he says, "Well, it was interesting. It was really good. It was fun and cool. And I got a lot of good information."
[00:25:44] But, jeez, $700? And what I realized was, and though this is just speaking about this one particular very successful authors email program, and he uses a lot of email, I could pretty much just sign up to get the guy's emails.
[00:25:58] There's so many online tutorials, people will share their information about these things at least to an extent online. Very frequently a marketing guru, let's say, will offer some information for free: take this free webinar. And then they'd like you to sign up to learn more, the real secret stuff, then you pay your thousand dollars for the real secret stuff or your $250 or whatever.
[00:26:19] And I have never found that, I shouldn't generalize about this, but I really don't know how worth it the secret sauce is because the thing is, if you take the free information and just give it a go on your own, you're going to learn the secret sauce on your own.
[00:26:34] You'll go by trial and error and you'll make some mistakes. And if you don't invest too much money upfront, if you're going to do Facebook ads, you're going to run some test ads and you're going to have limits on the spending, and you'll learn quite a bit on your own.
[00:26:47] This is why conferences can be good, because you can go into a conference, which is costly, it can be very costly going to a conference whenever they may start up again here in these times of COVID. But conferences like to have experts who will share information like this and get into some depth in a one-hour presentation or whatever about, let's say, Facebook ads or BookBub ads or whatever. And you can learn a whole lot there for the cost of the price of the conference. And if you live near a big town, sometimes these conferences come to your town and then you can stay at home and not have a big hotel bill or airline bill and just go for the day. When I lived in Florida, I could go to the Novelists, Inc. conferences just on a day pass because I live just 20 miles away from where it was.
[00:27:31] Matty: And sometimes those conferences also offer recordings of the presentations for people who can't attend in person but still want the information and that is much less expensive than investing in the travel.
[00:27:42] The other thing that going for the premium course does, and this is a completely impractical, just strictly psychological benefit, but if I've paid $700 to learn something, I'm pretty much going to do it because I need to do that in order to justify my costs. If I've watched a $12 online course, I might do it, I might not do it. And so another intangible you need to factor in is what's all the incentive that comes along with making the investment. If I pay to go to a conference and book the plane fare and the hotel room and go to the conference, I'm totally going to be paying attention to every minute of that time, as opposed to, if I'm sitting at home and I'm playing the video, maybe, maybe not. Each person has to decide if that's worth the extra investment you're paying, but money buys your own attention to this.
[00:28:38] Elizabeth: I understand what you're saying. It can help your motivation. Yeah. "I have invested this much in this, by gosh, I better use this information." Yeah, I hear you.
[00:28:46] Matty: There was one that I really enjoyed in the article -- we're going to go get back to some of the things in your Writer's Digest magazine article -- and that was the author headshot. I totally agree about don't cheap out and take a cell phone selfie. Pay for an actual photographer. But you made some recommendations for other professional things you could get around that. Do you recall what those are?
[00:29:08] Elizabeth: Yes. And I tell audiences this when I do speaking gigs, because if I've got my slides going, there's this really nice looking headshot of me out there and I'll say that did not happen by accident. I thought, I've got to get a new headshot for this new book, You've Got a Book in You, when that came out via Writer's Digest Books at the time. And I had been doing some stringing as a writer for the local newspaper, the Sarasota Herald Tribune, and I made friends with a photographer there and he and I would be sent on the same assignment sometimes. And I thought of him when I thought, "Oh, I need a photographer and he's done beautiful work for the paper."
[00:29:40] So I talked to him and he said, "Yeah, I'll come out. I won't charge anything even." I had my hair done and then makeup done at the beauty college and a little tip, if you're a woman, especially, buy a tube of the same lipstick that the makeup artist uses on you because you'll need to refresh your lips at some point during the day. If your appointments are in the morning and your photo shoot is in the afternoon, you're going to have to stop and have a little lunch or drink a coffee or something, and so you can refresh your lips with the proper color.
[00:30:07] And this guy came to my house and took tons of pictures and he wouldn't take any money, so I made sure that I gave him some heftily loaded gift cards to the local grocery where he shopped.
[00:30:18] He took about 400 digital exposures, from me sitting writing, from me sitting just trying to look beautiful, more close up, at different places in my house. And he had a reflector and a light, minimal equipment, but he did bring some, and he had a professional camera, of course. And I mean, I'm not photogenic, and of those 400 pictures, 398 of them made me look like Norman Bates's mother, but a couple of them came out and I was like, "Wow, I really look good in that."
[00:30:47] And I sent them to my agent, and I said, "Look at these new headshots, I got." And she goes, " Wow, you actually look warm and professional." So yeah, it really goes a long way. I've seen some unbelievably sad author headshots and you've really got to work with the photographer to get a few really good exposures out of whatever bunch they shoot.
[00:31:08] Matty: I also think it's important to think about how long you let it go in between, because there's nothing more discouraging than going to an author event as a reader and not recognizing the author because you only know them through their author headshot, and it's clear that was taken 25 years ago.
[00:31:26] But at the same time, I like to balance the fact that once you get a headshot, you don't want to be switching it all the time, because it does become part of your brand. I think for me, there was a four-year break between when I had my last headshot and then when I finally said, okay, it's really time for a new one. But be willing to make the investment once you've decided that the time has come.
[00:31:47] Elizabeth: Yes. I'm long overdue myself and I'm like, "Oh, I'm so much older, I'm not going to look as good as I did, I'm never going to look better than those pictures." But yeah, it's something you got to bite up and do.
[00:31:59] Matty: Yep. It's important that people be able to recognize you. The other thing I really liked about your story about the photographer is that even though he wasn't going to charge you money, you still found a way to reimburse him for the time he had invested.
[00:32:12] And I think that's maybe a good way to close out the discussion to say that for any of these things, there's the cheapest, cheapest way to do it. But consider what the impact on your fellow members of the writing and publishing community are. You might be able to go to the local writers group meeting and sneak your paper into the critique pile even though you're not a member, you could rush from your photo shoot without ever giving some financial consideration to your photographer, but consider the price you pay for trying to save a couple of bucks by taking advantage of the situation.
[00:32:46] Elizabeth: Yes. There are costs and there are costs. Yes. There's money cost and there's karma costs and there's friendship costs. We buy and sell many things over the course of our lives, whether it's with money or not. So, yes, it's a very wise way to look at things.
[00:33:01] I was part of a professional critique group with college professors in it. Some of them didn't come prepared to critique other people's work, but they were happy enough to have their work critiqued, and that's sort of a way of cheating and the rest of us were resentful and so it was not good karma.
[00:33:16] So, yes, being kind and considerate to all your fellow humans at all times is something that we all of course try to strive for and should strive for and also to realize there are seasons for things. There might be a time when one is a bit needier than another time. And there are things such as paying it forward. You might get a favor from someone and you might not repay that favor to that person, but you might repay it, or you might pay it down the line, do someone else a good turn. So there's lots of ways to think about it, but it should be thought about. And I think that is a lovely, wise set of thoughts.
[00:33:52] Matty: Great. Well, Elizabeth, thank you so much. This has been so great. Why don't you let our listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and your work online.
[00:34:02] Elizabeth: One is my website and that's simply elizabethsims.com. And my author page on Amazon is also a good place. You can get ahold of my work there. You can also, by going to my website and signing up for my periodic newsletter, if you do that, you get a free starter pack of my work and you can cancel out at any time. So that's something that everyone should do. Check it out.
[00:34:29] Matty: A great frugal tip. Well, thank you again, really helpful.
[00:34:33] Elizabeth: It's been an honor to be with you, Matty. Thank you.
[00:03:21] And my very first novel, I started writing on yellow pads with pens that I ripped off from my workplace. Cheap BIC sticks, but actually the cheap BIC sticks were so unpleasant to write with, this was, 40 years ago or 34 years ago, they would be sticky, that ink is sticky and thick and cheap. So then I started getting interested in pens, and I'm like, wow, look at these cool pens.
[00:03:45] You can spend a fortune on a fine fountain pen, and I have, but really, mass produced, mass market pen technology these days is great, with the gel pens and smooth writing ballpoints. These PILOT G2s are really good and they're super cheap. Yeah. You get them in great big bubble pack bunches of them for super cheap.
[00:04:07] Matty: I was interested to see fountain pens in your article as something that's very ecologically conscious because you're not throwing the pen away obviously. I guess you're not throwing anything away with a fountain pen, except when you're done with a bottle of ink, you're recycling that one assumes. But it is funny, I always hear of fountain pens in the context of very expensive sort of designer pens. I remember I got fascinated with fountain pens reading something that Neil Gaiman had written, Neil Gaiman being a big fountain pen fan.
[00:04:35] Elizabeth: Yeah, that's right, he is.
[00:04:36] Matty: And I had even gone to the Fountain Pen Hospital in New York where he buys his fountain pens were, has his fountain pens maintained. It's like having a car. Yeah, they could go from frugal to completely not frugal.
[00:04:48] Elizabeth: It can be cool to own something of value like that, it's a beautiful thing and it's functional, so I can understand that too. I do have a couple of fine fountain pens, but my main work horse is this little plastic one and it works very well.
[00:05:01] And I might add if you do any writing, well, these days, not many of us are doing writing in cafes, but, I had one of my fine pens with me in a cafe one time and I got up and went to the bathroom and while I was in the bathroom, I'm like, Oh my God, I left that on the table. I'm like, Oh my God, my God. And I ran back to the table. And the guy at the next table was staring at it while I was gone. I snatched it up, but then I didn't take it anymore to a cafe. But if you lose one of these plastic ones that doesn't make you want to cut your throat.
[00:05:30] Matty: That's one of the reasons that I like "frugal" over "cheap" because I think "frugal" suggests that there are things that it's worth investing the money in, but you have to be careful about being conscious about what those things are.
[00:05:42] Elizabeth: Yes. For instance, I love to write on fine papers, while they're expensive, but they it's such a pleasure to write. And your pen or pencil does track more smoothly over them. It literally is less fatiguing, but they do cost. You have to figure your priorities.
[00:05:58] Matty: Do you actually use that paper for drafting your novels and your nonfiction work, or are you using it for a different purpose?
[00:06:07] Elizabeth: I tend to buy some mid-grade papers for drafting purposes or just the real cheap yellow pads, and I just use gel pens, nothing with a tip that I would want to protect because, by the way, a fountain pen's tip, the nib, can be worn down and ruined by rough cheap paper. And it's not that fun to write on rough cheap paper with a fountain pen anyway, and the ink will bleed on cheap paper. When I'm really smoking through some handwritten draft materials, I'll notch it all the way down to the cheapest yellow legal pads that I buy in bulk as well as cheap gel pens.
[00:06:42] It's still a beautiful experience really. I did an article for writer's digest sometime back where I worked with old writing technology. I used a quill pen and a steel pen, the steel dip pen, and pencils. And compared with the older technology, these cheap gel pens are just really super great.
[00:07:04] Matty: Whenever I read about fountain pens in particular, I always think, Oh, I'm going to get one and I'm going to try it out. And then I think carefully about it and I think, my writing muscles like that have just atrophied long ago and I'm afraid that the experience would be more frustrating than it would be satisfying for me. But it is fun to think about.
[00:07:21] Elizabeth: You write primarily with keyboard?
[00:07:23] Matty: Yeah.
[00:07:24] Elizabeth: Yeah. I do go back and forth, more and more I'm doing keyboard, but yet I just keep reverting back to handwriting draft material. And that just seems to give me more satisfaction.
[00:07:35] Matty: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm going to use this as a segue into one of the other topics you talked about, which was electronics and talk a little bit about when you are ready to put your fingers to keyboard, what are your frugal tips about supplying yourself in that area?
[00:07:51] Elizabeth: I have a couple of very good friends who are computer geeks and programmers and from them I learned really what the minimum requirements for me are for electronics, meaning your main expenses, your laptop, your tablet, your keyboard, your thing that you have a keyboard on, your word processor. If I were a gamer or a professional photographer, I would need lots of more supplemental stuff, but I just use my computer for typing manuscripts and doing some self-publishing stuff and searching the web and all that stuff, and storage.
[00:08:23] I had gotten sucked in to buying a sexy little tablet that cost a bunch of money and was really very convenient and it did a lot of stuff, but it was almost too little for when I do editing and so forth. Being not a terribly young person anymore, my eyes really do appreciate a bigger screen.
[00:08:43] So when that one died right after the warranty expired, which I just wanted to shoot it on top of it being dead already, I decided, okay, I'm just going to get one of these bigger ones, cheaper ones. What I'm talking to you now on is a 15-inch laptop with 256 gigabytes of internal storage. And I found that that's really good, and I got it for $450 and I'll give a plug to the American big box firm Costco. That's where I got it at, we're members of Costco. That membership is really great. People sometimes don't think about being a member of a buying club like that for anything but food and paper towels, but electronics, you can save a bundle on really good deals there.
[00:09:25] Technology has made these bigger screen laptops so much thinner and lighter than they ever used to be. You can stow it in your carry on and not have it be a big hassle or onerous to drag this along with you on a trip or out to the cafe, in your briefcase or whatever. So, yeah, it's ever easier to buy good portable stuff.
[00:09:47] Matty: Yeah. For the electronic side of this, I find that I always underestimate what I need to do with it. For example, I'm using a MacBook Air, but next time I am in the market for one, I'm probably going to just bite the bullet and get one of the bigger Pro models because I realized I'm doing audio and video editing for the podcast. I'm doing more graphic things. I know if I had a slightly larger screen that I would never want to go back. So I think that the whole idea of frugality being assessing your needs and then purchasing appropriately is good here too, because I almost earlier this year just went and got a MacBook Pro, even though I have my MacBook Air, because I was tired of waiting for it to do the things I needed it to do. And I think I finally got to the point where I got it sufficiently cleaned up that it's workable. But, yeah, I think that the idea of assessing what you need the equipment or the supplies to do is really important.
[00:10:44] Elizabeth: Yeah. And I might add if people are wondering, and there's no reason that I can't mention the brand name of what I have, it's a Lenovo Idea Pad is what I wound up buying. I've used Dells and it was a Microsoft product, I'm sad to say, that died on me too soon, but I still loved it a lot, and I might even buy another one of those someday, but those are much more pricey and it's just really mostly for miniaturization that you pay that extra. So this has worked out great.
[00:11:10] Matty: Another area I agree that you shouldn't cheap out on is the furniture you're using, especially your chair.
[00:11:17] Elizabeth: Right.
[00:11:18] Matty: Is that something that you've splurged on a little bit?
[00:11:21] Elizabeth: I have intended to splurge on. In the past, I splurged on one of those Aeron chairs, but I actually have a bit of a spinal deformity and that didn't work out for me. And so I gave that chair away and then I've kind of just made do with little things. Like what I'm sitting on now is a super cheap little swivel thing from Ikea that I got some years back and that I have sworn to replace with something really good. We recently moved from one state to another and when we were getting set up, we've only been here for a few weeks, I tried to give this chair away before we moved, but the guy wouldn't take it, who was taking some of our other stuff. He said, "No, I don't want that. Put it in the moving van." It's like, ahhh, now I've got to sit on it for longer. So now I have to try to bite the bullet and get something.
[00:12:03] But here's a tip about chairs. I have learned about these gaming chairs that gamers who sit for really long periods of time and do all that gaming, they've designed these really cool ergonomic chairs, so I've been looking around online for those. And I think for anyone who has to work sitting with the computer or sitting most of the time, you don't have to sit all the time, I have a standup desk too, but, I think a gaming chair could be a worthwhile thing to look into.
[00:12:30] Matty: Yeah. I'll give another plug for Costco. We're big Costco fans. I think everything in our home is from Costco. And when my husband proposed to me, he actually looked at Costco at engagement rings, and I was like, that would have been so cool if you had gotten my engagement ring at Costco because I would love to be able to tell people that we get our paper towels and our engagement rings from Costco. He didn’t find what he wanted there, but we have plenty of things from there, including my adjustable height desk. I had gotten an adjustable height desk at Costco. I like it a lot, except that the mechanism to make it go up and down is right where I rest my hand to work the mouse. So every once in a while, in the middle of an interview, it'll start going up or down. And unfortunately, because the lights are LED lights that are hooked into the desk, then one of the lights goes out when I do that, so it's maybe not ideal for podcasting. But, yeah, it's very true, there's all sorts of stuff you can find at Costco that you might not think about if you don't look into it.
[00:13:28] Elizabeth: May I add another thing about the writing desk experience? Years and years and years ago, I bought a tabletop slant board I got it from the Levenger catalog a long time ago. It's super nice to be able just to sit and write on a slight slant, especially with pencil. It's so much easier on your neck and even your hands.
[00:13:50] Matty: One of the things I wanted to ask you about, especially because of your editing background is now, we're diving into the services side of what writers need, and my plug as an indy author is that there are three things you need to have done professionally. You need to have your work professionally edited, professionally proofread, and you need a professional cover. And editing is one of those things that can really be all over the board in terms of price. When people are investing in editing services, how do they ensure that they're getting value for the money they're investing in that?
[00:14:24] Elizabeth: Yes, that, that's a very good question. And I say there are a few things you can do, again with the magic of technology and the magic of searching online, one can start searching for editors online. And of course you can stumble upon Joe Blow's Editing Service, "We'll take your money and not do much for you," so what you really should look for, first of all, is credentials, which of course says, look for someone who's a bit established at least in the field.
[00:14:51] You can go far less wrong by getting someone who's been actually doing it and maybe has a website with testimonials, that type of thing. and some of us refer to each other. If we've got too many clients, we send over to somebody else and they'll do the same occasionally, or if a client has something that's a project that we don't feel that we're quite right for, then we can try to shoot it over to somebody else.
[00:15:15] They're also online services, that put together writers and editors, and those can be really good. In fact, one of them approached me recently to see if I'd be interested in doing some work for them. I know that this company is well thought of, because I'm a member of an organization called Novelists, Inc., which is for professional novelists, and we share information back and forth and there's a yearly conference, except for this year. And at the conference, some of these companies come and are represented and Reedsy is one of them. And they do other indy book services as well. So I actually might be doing some editing for clients via Reedsy, because it seems like a pretty good deal.
[00:15:56] You can set your own prices and have your own communication with the clients. There's one that a friend of mine works for called I think it's called New York <Book> Editors and she's excellent. There's a lot of really good editors there and you can just browse online and see what their credentials are and what writing they specialize in. I think they even tell if they've worked on books that have won awards or have been bestsellers. Some of these services can really be very helpful. I mean, I've seen people put ads on Craigslist saying, "I need somebody to edit my book and I can spend $50." You can actually possibly attract some local talent by making a more reasonable ad and see what you get.
[00:16:33] Other avenues where you can find people who might have at least a basic facility for doing some copy editing, which is also a necessary thing, but giving you some story feedback, beyond your local writing group, might be some local university professors. You can approach them possibly for some advice and for referrals. And to really make sure that you're getting someone that you can probably work with, my advice is to ask that prospective editor for a five to 10-page critique for free. Send them your first five to 10 pages and say, "Would you give me a freebie here, and maybe we can do business?" Almost everyone says yes to that. I certainly say yes. My rule is seven pages, your first seven I'll do for free and we can take it from there.
[00:17:17] Matty: And even if they won't do it for free, oftentimes they'll offer a very inexpensive sample edit, which is great because there would be nothing worse than investing in an editor and then finding out that they might be a great editor, but just not right for you.
[00:17:32] Or another thing that I found is that it's not just the editing skill that's important, it's an understanding of the genre. And so one piece of advice I would give, and you can weigh in on whether this is good advice or not, is that if you can get in with even readers who are very familiar with your genre, like let's say you're writing speculative fiction, you're writing horror or you're writing cozy mysteries, whatever it is, if you can find readers who are widely read in and enjoy that genre, then sometimes I would think they would be able to give you very high level advice about, " Normally in books like this, this thing happens" or "You really can't call it a cozy if you have lurid sex scenes" or whatever it is, and that that can give you the high level sense of where to sort of look for further help. Does that make sense?
[00:18:26] Elizabeth: It makes sense up to a point. It's so funny, how many readers are avid readers and are very knowledgeable about a particular genre, but their consciousness of writing technique is it can be like next to zero, and they can say, "Well, I liked this" or "I didn't like that," but why? "Well, maybe because this or that."
[00:18:45] But someone who has done professional work, who's developed a professional eye and who has perhaps been a novelist themselves, a writer themselves--that I think is the best combination, because you've got your own experience, what's worked for you and whether you've had customer feedback, so to speak. I mean, for me, having had two degrees in English and literature and a part of one in composition theory, it really has been very helpful to me because I've read classics. I read books that bowled over the world closely, closely, and written about them and figured out and dissected them to figure out why does this work so beautifully? Here are some reasons why, and here's a few examples why. An avid reader, they definitely can be worthwhile for some insights, up to a point.
[00:19:32] Matty: Maybe you start out there and you see what their reactions are and you adjust before you then make the investment to take the next step.
[00:19:41] Elizabeth: Yeah. That's a good idea. Yes.
[00:19:43] Matty: There was another area that I was curious about. This was not something you covered in your article, but it was the idea of memberships -- writers' group memberships or genre-focused memberships--and some of them can be quite pricey. Do you have any thoughts about how people weigh the cost benefit of investing in a membership like that?
[00:20:05] Elizabeth: That's a great question. Yeah, these costs can add up and everybody says, "Oh yeah, you should join this thing" and "you should join that one." I joined a few different groups that cost money and also some online groups that were just to talk about writing and, see, your time is valuable too. Spending time online, talking about stuff is an expense. You have to sit down, it sounds fairly mercenary and perhaps selfish, but what am I getting out of this? It's nice to be able to give input to other people but is this really helping my career? And if you're looking at things financially, you've got to make some decisions. I did just wind up dropping out of a few organizations, especially one that people were like, "You let your membership to blah blah lapse?"
[00:20:51] I have continued to maintain a membership in Mystery Writers of America, it's a nice credential to have, and Novelists, Inc. is very worthwhile. Of course, that's not for everyone because you have to be a published author and you have to apply and all that, but that is the most helpful group so far that I've ever come across. And I'm glad to pay my money every year to stay with them.
[00:21:12] Otherwise it is also very nice to be a member and support a local group. I have recently moved from Florida back to my home state of Michigan, and while in Florida, it didn't occur to me to hunt down any writer's groups, but they hunted me down and said, "Hey, would you come and talk to our group?" and I was like, "Oh, well, yeah. Okay." And so I came and talked to their group about a topic, because I have these credentials as a published author and an contributing editor at Writer's Digest magazine, and that's always attractive to groups, and I definitely have some good things to tell them.
[00:21:42] So then I thought, well, I should not only just talk to them, but I should sign up and pay my $40 a year or whatever. It's nice to support a local group. It's good to come and hang out. People are in the same boat. People are trying to figure out their way through this challenging and exhilarating world of being a writer.
[00:22:00] Matty: And some of those local groups, you don't necessarily have to provide a membership. This is obviously going to vary from group to group, and you would need to do the research to find out what was the case for yours, but I know that many of the groups will reserve certain benefits for members. So for example, maybe there's a critique night and you can only submit a work for critique if you're a member, but you're welcome to come to the meetings. You're welcome to come for the dinners. You're welcome to listen to the speakers, all that, for free. And so people can also take a look at that. And if they're really looking for ways to be frugal, assess whether the extra benefits are worth the investment to actually become a member or to enjoy the benefits without membership.
[00:22:43] The reason that memberships is tough is that there's sort of two sides of it. There's the hard to quantify networking benefits, and then there are the very quantifiable benefits, like the Alliance of Independent Authors, which I belong to. If for no other reason I would belong, because if you're a member, you can submit updates to IngramSpark for free, and you can upload revisions for free to IngramSpark if you're a member. Whereas I think it's $25 for an <ebook> upload. It can add up, if you find a typo and you don't want to spend $25 to fix one typo, whereas I would definitely do that on KDP. If I find a typo, I'll just go in and instantly upload something on Amazon. If it's IngramSpark, I tend to queue them up. I mean, I don't anymore because I'm benefiting from the Alliance of Independent Authors membership, but if I was paying each time, then I would tend to queue them up, which means all the things that are being sold through IngramSpark are less high quality than the things that are being sold at Amazon.
I really think they're shooting themselves in the foot by charging for those things, especially because there are so many memberships that people can get that prevent them from having to pay for that. But if you're considering a membership, then definitely go to that organization's benefits page and you can see pretty clearly if the money you're going to be spending for that membership is going to be alleviated in some way by money savings elsewhere that they offer their members.
[00:24:38] One of those other things that is difficult to weigh is the cost of classes. I just had the example of wanting to delve into Facebook ads. And my choice was to spend hundreds of dollars for the marquee name or to get a course on Udemy for $12. For your own use, how do you make the decisions about whether the marquee name with the premium course is 50 times more beneficial than the $12 course?
[00:25:14] Elizabeth: Well, that's a super good question too. A writing friend who is also a published author and who also is a hybrid author doing some self-publishing, as well as having had some stuff published by a legit press. He spent I think $700 for a high-profile name course, I think it was on email marketing, and, I said, "So, how did it go? And was it worth it?" And he says, "Well, it was interesting. It was really good. It was fun and cool. And I got a lot of good information."
[00:25:44] But, jeez, $700? And what I realized was, and though this is just speaking about this one particular very successful authors email program, and he uses a lot of email, I could pretty much just sign up to get the guy's emails.
[00:25:58] There's so many online tutorials, people will share their information about these things at least to an extent online. Very frequently a marketing guru, let's say, will offer some information for free: take this free webinar. And then they'd like you to sign up to learn more, the real secret stuff, then you pay your thousand dollars for the real secret stuff or your $250 or whatever.
[00:26:19] And I have never found that, I shouldn't generalize about this, but I really don't know how worth it the secret sauce is because the thing is, if you take the free information and just give it a go on your own, you're going to learn the secret sauce on your own.
[00:26:34] You'll go by trial and error and you'll make some mistakes. And if you don't invest too much money upfront, if you're going to do Facebook ads, you're going to run some test ads and you're going to have limits on the spending, and you'll learn quite a bit on your own.
[00:26:47] This is why conferences can be good, because you can go into a conference, which is costly, it can be very costly going to a conference whenever they may start up again here in these times of COVID. But conferences like to have experts who will share information like this and get into some depth in a one-hour presentation or whatever about, let's say, Facebook ads or BookBub ads or whatever. And you can learn a whole lot there for the cost of the price of the conference. And if you live near a big town, sometimes these conferences come to your town and then you can stay at home and not have a big hotel bill or airline bill and just go for the day. When I lived in Florida, I could go to the Novelists, Inc. conferences just on a day pass because I live just 20 miles away from where it was.
[00:27:31] Matty: And sometimes those conferences also offer recordings of the presentations for people who can't attend in person but still want the information and that is much less expensive than investing in the travel.
[00:27:42] The other thing that going for the premium course does, and this is a completely impractical, just strictly psychological benefit, but if I've paid $700 to learn something, I'm pretty much going to do it because I need to do that in order to justify my costs. If I've watched a $12 online course, I might do it, I might not do it. And so another intangible you need to factor in is what's all the incentive that comes along with making the investment. If I pay to go to a conference and book the plane fare and the hotel room and go to the conference, I'm totally going to be paying attention to every minute of that time, as opposed to, if I'm sitting at home and I'm playing the video, maybe, maybe not. Each person has to decide if that's worth the extra investment you're paying, but money buys your own attention to this.
[00:28:38] Elizabeth: I understand what you're saying. It can help your motivation. Yeah. "I have invested this much in this, by gosh, I better use this information." Yeah, I hear you.
[00:28:46] Matty: There was one that I really enjoyed in the article -- we're going to go get back to some of the things in your Writer's Digest magazine article -- and that was the author headshot. I totally agree about don't cheap out and take a cell phone selfie. Pay for an actual photographer. But you made some recommendations for other professional things you could get around that. Do you recall what those are?
[00:29:08] Elizabeth: Yes. And I tell audiences this when I do speaking gigs, because if I've got my slides going, there's this really nice looking headshot of me out there and I'll say that did not happen by accident. I thought, I've got to get a new headshot for this new book, You've Got a Book in You, when that came out via Writer's Digest Books at the time. And I had been doing some stringing as a writer for the local newspaper, the Sarasota Herald Tribune, and I made friends with a photographer there and he and I would be sent on the same assignment sometimes. And I thought of him when I thought, "Oh, I need a photographer and he's done beautiful work for the paper."
[00:29:40] So I talked to him and he said, "Yeah, I'll come out. I won't charge anything even." I had my hair done and then makeup done at the beauty college and a little tip, if you're a woman, especially, buy a tube of the same lipstick that the makeup artist uses on you because you'll need to refresh your lips at some point during the day. If your appointments are in the morning and your photo shoot is in the afternoon, you're going to have to stop and have a little lunch or drink a coffee or something, and so you can refresh your lips with the proper color.
[00:30:07] And this guy came to my house and took tons of pictures and he wouldn't take any money, so I made sure that I gave him some heftily loaded gift cards to the local grocery where he shopped.
[00:30:18] He took about 400 digital exposures, from me sitting writing, from me sitting just trying to look beautiful, more close up, at different places in my house. And he had a reflector and a light, minimal equipment, but he did bring some, and he had a professional camera, of course. And I mean, I'm not photogenic, and of those 400 pictures, 398 of them made me look like Norman Bates's mother, but a couple of them came out and I was like, "Wow, I really look good in that."
[00:30:47] And I sent them to my agent, and I said, "Look at these new headshots, I got." And she goes, " Wow, you actually look warm and professional." So yeah, it really goes a long way. I've seen some unbelievably sad author headshots and you've really got to work with the photographer to get a few really good exposures out of whatever bunch they shoot.
[00:31:08] Matty: I also think it's important to think about how long you let it go in between, because there's nothing more discouraging than going to an author event as a reader and not recognizing the author because you only know them through their author headshot, and it's clear that was taken 25 years ago.
[00:31:26] But at the same time, I like to balance the fact that once you get a headshot, you don't want to be switching it all the time, because it does become part of your brand. I think for me, there was a four-year break between when I had my last headshot and then when I finally said, okay, it's really time for a new one. But be willing to make the investment once you've decided that the time has come.
[00:31:47] Elizabeth: Yes. I'm long overdue myself and I'm like, "Oh, I'm so much older, I'm not going to look as good as I did, I'm never going to look better than those pictures." But yeah, it's something you got to bite up and do.
[00:31:59] Matty: Yep. It's important that people be able to recognize you. The other thing I really liked about your story about the photographer is that even though he wasn't going to charge you money, you still found a way to reimburse him for the time he had invested.
[00:32:12] And I think that's maybe a good way to close out the discussion to say that for any of these things, there's the cheapest, cheapest way to do it. But consider what the impact on your fellow members of the writing and publishing community are. You might be able to go to the local writers group meeting and sneak your paper into the critique pile even though you're not a member, you could rush from your photo shoot without ever giving some financial consideration to your photographer, but consider the price you pay for trying to save a couple of bucks by taking advantage of the situation.
[00:32:46] Elizabeth: Yes. There are costs and there are costs. Yes. There's money cost and there's karma costs and there's friendship costs. We buy and sell many things over the course of our lives, whether it's with money or not. So, yes, it's a very wise way to look at things.
[00:33:01] I was part of a professional critique group with college professors in it. Some of them didn't come prepared to critique other people's work, but they were happy enough to have their work critiqued, and that's sort of a way of cheating and the rest of us were resentful and so it was not good karma.
[00:33:16] So, yes, being kind and considerate to all your fellow humans at all times is something that we all of course try to strive for and should strive for and also to realize there are seasons for things. There might be a time when one is a bit needier than another time. And there are things such as paying it forward. You might get a favor from someone and you might not repay that favor to that person, but you might repay it, or you might pay it down the line, do someone else a good turn. So there's lots of ways to think about it, but it should be thought about. And I think that is a lovely, wise set of thoughts.
[00:33:52] Matty: Great. Well, Elizabeth, thank you so much. This has been so great. Why don't you let our listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and your work online.
[00:34:02] Elizabeth: One is my website and that's simply elizabethsims.com. And my author page on Amazon is also a good place. You can get ahold of my work there. You can also, by going to my website and signing up for my periodic newsletter, if you do that, you get a free starter pack of my work and you can cancel out at any time. So that's something that everyone should do. Check it out.
[00:34:29] Matty: A great frugal tip. Well, thank you again, really helpful.
[00:34:33] Elizabeth: It's been an honor to be with you, Matty. Thank you.
What frugal tips do you have for your fellow authors? Leave a comment below to let us know!
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