Episode 337 - Story First, Marketing Second with Carlo J. Emanuele
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Carlo J. Emanuele discusses STORY FIRST, MARKETING SECOND, including why authors make the same mistake corporate executives do when they lead with features instead of value, how to move beyond genre labels to find the emotional core of your pitch, why comps should describe an experience rather than a category, why marketing tasks feel productive but often aren’t, and how enthusiasm and vulnerability turn out to be the most effective marketing tools of all.
Carlo J. Emanuele is an award-winning crime novelist and corporate executive from Milwaukee’s South Side. Drawing from personal experience and a deep understanding of family, ambition, and adversity, he writes emotionally charged stories that explore the cost of power and the pursuit of redemption. His debut novel, The Sins We Inherit, has earned multiple national awards and critical acclaim for its gritty realism and heartfelt father-daughter core. The second installment, The Cost We Pay, launches this June. A former collegiate athlete and proud father of two, Carlo builds a cinematic crime saga rooted in legacy, identity, and transformation.
Episode Links
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Summary & Transcript
Carlo J. Emanuele is an award-winning crime novelist and corporate executive from Milwaukee’s South Side. His debut novel, THE SINS WE INHERIT, has earned multiple national awards for its gritty realism and heartfelt father-daughter core, and the second installment in the saga, THE COST WE PAY, launches this June. In this conversation, Carlo drew on his corporate background to make the case that authors who lead with story rather than marketing tactics build stronger books, stronger brands, and stronger long-term careers.
THE CORPORATE MISTAKE AUTHORS KEEP MAKING
Carlo opened with an analogy from the business world. Corporate executives routinely fall into the trap of marketing features and benefits—the specs of a product—rather than stepping back to ask what value the product actually adds to a customer’s life. Authors make the same mistake when they lead with genre labels: “I wrote a mafia book” is a feature. “This is a story about a man getting pulled back into the life while trying to reconnect with his daughter” is a value proposition. The first invites comparison to every other mafia novel on Amazon. The second invites a reader to care.
BEYOND GENRE LABELS
Matty noted that the conversation dovetailed with a recent run of episodes about genre—what it signals to readers, what it costs to violate conventions, and whether it functions more as a marketing marker than a creative driver. Carlo agreed but added that genre is where he initially struggled most. When submitting for awards, he could not decide whether THE SINS WE INHERIT was general fiction, crime fiction, or suspense thriller. His resolution was to stop defining the book by its shelf and start defining it by its emotional core: a father-daughter story set against a gritty Milwaukee backdrop, inspired less by crime novels than by the emotional tension of BREAKING BAD and the intimacy of A BRONX TALE. He noted that Mario Puzo received the same pushback when he wrote THE GODFATHER—mafia stories had been done—and what made that book endure was not the genre but the family dynamics underneath it.
COMPS AS EXPERIENCE, NOT COMPETITION
The conversation turned to comp titles. Carlo offered a reframe that Matty echoed: a comp is not competition, it is comparison. And the most useful comparisons are not genre matches but experience matches—stories that make the reader feel the same way yours does, regardless of format. Carlo’s own comps included television and film as well as novels, because what he was trying to capture on the page was a specific quality of tension and emotional complexity rather than a genre category. Matty added that she found it helpful to stop thinking of comps as “books like mine” and start thinking of them as “if people liked that, they’ll like this.”
BUILDING IP FROM THE START
Carlo described thinking about intellectual property from the very first outline. As someone entrepreneurial by nature, owning the IP and being able to tell his own story was a priority from the beginning. In practical terms, that meant building sustainable character arcs by writing full backstories for every character in the novel—a process that took months but gave him a foundation he could draw on across multiple books. It also meant treating Milwaukee as a character in its own right, creating a sense of place that would carry through the saga. And it meant tactical decisions like securing URLs and framing the series under a single umbrella—THE SINS WE INHERIT saga—rather than marketing each book individually.
WHY MARKETING FEELS SAFE AND WHY IT FAILS
Carlo identified a paradox: marketing tasks feel productive but are often the least effective part of the process. Creating a Canva ad or posting a book cover on Facebook is tangible and satisfying—you can check it off a list. But it is no substitute for the hard strategic work of distilling an 80,000-word novel into a fifteen-second pitch that makes a stranger care. They framed marketing as having three layers—strategy, execution, and tasks—and noted that the tasks are seductive precisely because they are easy. Carlo agreed: the task should be the last thing you do, not the first, because the strategy and the execution will guide it.
FEEDBACK LOOPS AND COVERS AS BILLBOARDS
Both Carlo and Matty shared examples of marketing messages that misfired until they solicited feedback. Matty’s tagline using the word “power” made readers think her thriller was a religious book. Carlo’s early cover designs prompted the same question about THE SINS WE INHERIT. In both cases, the feedback loop—testing language and visuals with real people—caught the problem before it calcified. Carlo noted that he hired a professional cover designer rather than attempting his own, and that the hardest lesson was accepting that the cover’s job is not to represent the story’s full complexity but to get someone to stop and open the book. Matty cited Orna Ross’s line: a book cover is not a work of art, it’s a billboard.
ENTHUSIASM AND VULNERABILITY AS MARKETING
Carlo, a self-described private person, found that the most effective marketing he did was simply being honest about where the story came from—a divorce, a fear of losing his family, a journal that became a novel. That vulnerability, paired with genuine enthusiasm for the finished product, connected with potential readers in a way that no Canva ad or genre label ever could. Matty reinforced the point with an example from a previous episode: Todd Fahnestock’s in-person pitch for his fantasy novels was so enthusiastic that Matty—who does not read fantasy—was ready to buy every book he had. The takeaway: if you sat down and wrote 80,000 words, you have permission to be proud of it, and telling people that pride is real is the most authentic marketing you can do.
This transcript was created by Descript and cleaned up by Claude; I don’t review these transcripts in detail, so consider the actual interview to be the authoritative source for this information.
[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to the Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is Carlo Emanuele. Hey, Carlo, how are you doing?
[00:00:05] Carlo: Hey, Matty, how are you? So nice to be on.
[00:00:08] Matty: It is lovely to have you here and to give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you. Carlo J. Emanuele is an award-winning crime novelist and corporate executive from Milwaukee’s South Side, drawing from personal experience and a deep understanding of family ambition and adversity. He writes emotionally charged stories that explore the cost of power and the pursuit of
His debut novel. THE SINS WE INHERIT has earned multiple national awards and critical acclaim for its gritty realism and heartfelt father daughter core. In the second installment, THE COST WE PAY launches this June. And so I invited Carlo on the podcast to talk about building IP from Story first, marketing second, and why most people get this
And, I am always interested, especially as someone who came from the corporate world myself, I am always interested in finding out how people are applying, the lessons they’ve learned from their first career to their, career as an author, and especially Carlo in this case, because IP and marketing that kind of has potential corporate tie
[00:01:08] Matty: Was there something from your corporate life
[00:01:13] Carlo: Yeah, so I would say initially it wasn’t painfully obvious until, you know, I started getting into the editing portions of the, of my first novel, and that’s where I really drew upon my corporate experience and a common challenge that business executives
I’m selling x, y, Z product. Not talking about, and talking about like features and benefits versus just kind of taking a step back and saying what values is actually adding? Who is my audience and what does the story actually mean? they think in terms of marketing tactics as opposed
Why the heck does it actually matter? So the reason I bring that up is. To me, leading with Story first is not, Hey, this is a mafia book. It is. This is a story about a man who’s getting pulled back into the life while trying to reconnect with his daughter Matty. So if you like gritty crime dramas like BREAKING BAD or The Intimacy of A BRONX TALE,
[00:02:21] Matty: So that’s a fundamentally different message opposed to. You know, go buy my book. It’s in the mafia genre. Right. So I hope that answers the question directly, but that’s definitely where it’s helped. Yeah,
I like this idea. I mean, I never thought of it in terms of the downside of features and benefits, like having from. I worked for many years for a company that produced healthcare information systems and then I worked
So it was all features and benefits at QVC, and that is very interesting. I never particularly thought of it in terms of the, benefits of selling a widget using pros and, but the hazards of selling. What I think every reader hopes is kind of the story of your heart using
[00:03:06] Carlo: you know, it was really helpful to me because, you know, even, you know, the mafia genre has been around for what feels like forever. When Mario Puzo wrote THE GODFATHER, the feedback he got was mafia story. That’s been written. That’s been done, you know, and that’s how long ago? It’s 50 years ago, right?
So 60 years ago. So, you know, it’s really around what makes it unique, what would differentiate it from others in the genre or what transcends genre in general and forcing yourself to think that way. It not only helps from a story standpoint, but it helps from character arcs and how you market it and how you position the novel overall as well.
[00:03:44] Matty: Yeah, there has been an, maybe this was coincidental or maybe it was like, you know, the creative, God’s pulling together on this one. But I’ve had a whole series of episodes where the focus has really been on genre and what that means for reader expectations. So it’s been a combination of. The importance of either meeting reader expectations for a particular genre or if you are violating the conventions and understanding what the pros and cons of
You know, the price you might pay by violating the expectations. there have been conversations about, how genre is more of a marketing marker than it is a creative marker or a creative driver. And I think those are all, very legitimate perspectives. But then I also like layering on this perspective that it’s the human story underneath it that’s even more
[00:04:34] Carlo: That is such a good point. And you know, really for me, the novel for me started as a journal, and so this story’s very personal to me. At the end of the day, it’s a father daughter story. Not a mafia story. So, you know, really where genre came into play more than anything else is, you know, like I said earlier, how do I target
How do I bring the personal elements into this so that you capture the right kind of reader? Because there’s all sorts of different mafia stories, you know, ranging from romance to really gritty, right? So, That’s why I love Dennis Lehane’s books so much, and MYSTIC RIVER and
They’re not crime novels in my mind. They’re, they capture tension so effectively that was really inspired me as I went through this journey.
[00:05:28] Matty: I like hearing that as a reader because I think it is important to factor in genre when you’re writing or when you’re planning your marketing, but I also feel like there aren’t that many readers out there who. Only read mafia fiction or only read Cozy
And I realized that idea of what’s going on, what’s the driver, not the genre of the story, is much more important to me. Like I just recently realized that something that’s important to me is I’m more interested in, speaking of Dennis Lehane, I’m much more interested in. When good people do bad things than I am in, when bad people do bad things.
Like I’m just not interested in bad people doing bad things. but understanding the psychology behind what drives a good person to do a bad thing is much more interesting to me. Which I think is sort of along the lines of what you’re saying, like you’re, in your case, it’s the father daughter dynamic and people across genres could be interested in
[00:06:26] Carlo: That’s right. and truth be told, we all can relate to that versus just a bad person. As a bad person. We’re all human beings. We have our sins and we have our strengths and you know much of the story. The main protagonist is largely. based on me and the things that, in reflecting I. I really like about myself and things like, boy, I wish I could change those.
So that element of it, I totally agree with that. And some of the stories that I’ve always grasped onto the most are the ones, even when they’re at the point of doing terrible things, you kind of understand why they’re doing it. And you’re just, do you have to make that decision, you know? And that’s what really brings readers in, at least
And, you know, I’m, it’s still my first book. I don’t have all the answers, but I do know what feels right to me. And, oh, I didn’t want this to feel like a soap opera, opera soap opera. I want it to feel like a gritty, realistic tale.
[00:07:18] Matty: Yeah, it, this also addresses, I can’t remember what episode it was in, but my guest and I, got into a conversation about, books that are that their authors describe as literary for. And this is something that always, rubs me the wrong way because if I’m, if I hear that as a author, I kind of feel, you know, as the author of genre fiction, I feel like it’s sort of a intended to be a quality
Like there’s genre fiction and then there’s good literary fiction.
[00:07:46] Carlo: It does feel that way. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:07:48] Matty: But as a reader, I also like. I’m never going to say, oh, I have to read that story because I’m like, what does that even tell me? Like what I want to hear is this is a story, about father and daughter relationships, or this is a story about good people doing bad things, which I found much more hooky as a reader than labeling
[00:08:07] Carlo: No, I appreciate you saying that because even when you, you know, right before a release and I’m thinking about, you know, what awards would it be, make sense to submit for. I’m like, I don’t know what category to put this in. Is it general fiction? Is it crime fiction? Is it suspense thriller? but I had the exact same
I’m like, does that mean this is for better writers than me? I didn’t know what it meant, you know, so I appreciate you saying that. It’s
[00:08:33] Matty: Yeah.
[00:08:52] Matty: And the other thing that this is making me think of is the idea of comp authors and I times. Writers struggle with identifying comp authors because as the person who created the work, you can only see how your work is unique and special. And so someone can say something that’s, you know, if you say, you know, I’m writing the first, Star Wars novel and it’s the, it’s comp is Star Trek. Then the Star Wars person is going to think of all the reasons that it’s not like Star Trek, you know, all the things that set it apart. So I think, maybe that is also a benefit of thinking, not in terms of genre, like what are my genre comps, but what are my underlying story comps?
[00:09:14] Carlo: I think that’s, correct and that’s certainly the way that I attempted to look at this and it was outside of just novelists and my favorite books. It was also how did stories make me feel? How does that come across potentially in the story that,that I created? So, you know, a lot of the comps I looked at were things like, you know, BREAKING BAD and, you know, movies that really visually
The tension, anxiety, and human elements of the story that to me, are more important than any. Gangster shoot up kind of stuff. That’s not how real life works anyways, so, that part was really important to me too, to get some of the comps right. And that’s not to say that the book’s not unique, right?
That just means they’re, what are things that inspired you as you, you’ve gone along your journey. And that’s not something that I’ve,
[00:10:12] Matty: Yeah, it’s helped me when I stopped thinking of comps as books like mine and started thinking of it as books that people, if people like that book, they’ll like my book too, or vice
[00:10:21] Carlo: yeah. A comp doesn’t mean competition, it means comparable, and I think that’s a really important.
[00:10:29] Matty: so I want to now loop back to the topic, which is building IP from story first, marketing second. So talk a little bit about, I mean, we’ve been talking about story and theme and things like that, but you sort of frame this as building ip. So can you talk a little bit about, when you talk about building ip, what specifically are
[00:10:47] Carlo: Yeah, so I think where it started was one of the things, even as I was just simply outlining book one was I’m entrepreneurial by nature. So owning the intellectual property to it, being able to tell my own story was something that was just. On my mind, literally from the gate. So I did a lot of research on how that actually
that’s one. But I would say from a storytelling standpoint, and I don’t know if this is common or not, again, this is my first novel, but this is what I did. sustainable character arcs were really important to me because you can leverage them later. also I created for every character in the novel, I created an entire backstory that took. Months just to get done for everybody. So they felt grounded as human beings, not placeholders or cliche characters or folks that would just kind of take up sta space. So I think that was a big part of it. And then it’s small tactical things like try to wrap a universe around it.
So you know, for me, the story wasn’t only about a man who tries to escape the life. That is now coming after his daughter. It was also around the city of Milwaukee, I felt was unique. It’s not a story that’s been told and that’s a I wanted Milwaukee to feel like a character in the novel. So I might be giving you like a long meandering answer here, but it’s really around being really tight with your
, because you’re not going to have everything plotted out. I knew I wanted several books. But I’d be lying if I said, I know what every character’s going to do for the course of two to three novels, but understanding who they are and what drives them and what their history is, is really, really important. It makes it writing for them easier
understanding some of the ancillary characters like a city was important. And then tactical things like, make sure you own the URLs, things like that. Creates a little bit more to me, power and anchor in,
[00:12:48] Matty: do you actually actively have websites in the name of each of your books, or will you have websites active in the name
[00:12:55] Carlo: Yeah. So what, I have the, SINS WE INHERIT, um. Um, dot com. I likely will with THE COST WE PAY for book two, but really THE SINS WE INHERIT is the anchor. So even the other titles that will come out, it’s part of THE SINS WE INHERIT saga. So
[00:13:09] Matty: I like that. I like the idea of
[00:13:10] Carlo: yeah, so essentially,
[00:13:12] Matty: as opposed to book by book, which would be kind of a, an administrative nightmare I would
[00:13:16] Carlo: administrative nightmare. I don’t have the time for that, nor that do I think it’s overly effective. It’s really the
[00:13:26] Matty: when you had talked about some of the ways that, you thought beyond the single book in terms of long-term ip, understanding the arc, understanding like Milwaukee as a character
[00:13:37] Carlo: it is interesting about the balance of, marketing a series versus marketing a book. And so as an example, one thing I found AI very useful for is feeding it the contents of my book and asking it to write, sales descriptions and. Actually, I probably
[00:13:55] Matty: So, the tools are so much better now. I imagine that it would do a much better job. It was very good at things like, as I’ve mentioned in previous episodes, identifying tropes that I could call out, like for people who love found family stories and things like
But one thing I did notice is that. Even though I was providing the entire book to the AI to base the description on early, you know, a year ago when I did this, there was almost no variety. You know, I could have swapped the descriptions for book one and book two and it kind of
So I had to go back and, and fix that. but I think maybe a pro of that exercise is understanding. The things that you want to plug as the experience, and I think that’s what we’re talking about. Like you want to talk about the experience the reader’s going to get and what’s the experience of the overall series, and then be able to drill down and say, and then what’s the experience of this particular book?
Like, book one is him getting into trouble. Book two is him living with the consequences and finding, a, an intriguing way to pose that to
[00:14:59] Carlo: Yeah, and I think that’s a really good point too that I didn’t bring up and I, you advancements in AI have. For any indie authors out there listening, like leveraging that as a tool is really, really critical. But beyond that, in terms of marketing and commercializing these kind of things, the game is less about, I have a task, please tell me how to do it, and more of what kind of questions
ChatGPT as an example. Meaning I, you can upload the book and they give you a meaningful review. But what I found is I didn’t get a meaningful review of it until I changed my settings and said, be brutally honest with me. Don’t worry about my feelings. You know, all
But secondly, rather than asking, Hey, I want to market my book, what should I do? It’s asking it things like, please describe for me why my novel and story is unique, why it’s not. Who like the likely comps and readers would be. And then you could start getting, you’re getting a broader reach. It’s elevating again, from not marketing to story, and you can leverage that any number of channels, over time.
And, AI is getting so smart that, I don’t know why you’d handcuff it
[00:16:20] Matty: Yeah. One tip I always like to offer people is,never use the prompt, delete it. Like, do you think this is a good idea? And I always say like, tell me the pros and cons of this idea. And I also have to say in, mid-April of 2026, that. I find it heartening that it is both an incredibly useful tool, for me, publishing wise and
And it is also surprisingly bad sometimes. Like I actually, I kind of feel good as a writer that, You know, I’ve never seen anything come out of AI that I was like, oh yeah, that’s great. I’m just going to publish that as it is, and it gets things freakishly wrong. Like it still surprises me that can be so sophisticated about some things and so
Like I was, I’m working on my, My seventh Kiner suspense novel, and it’s about a woman who can communicate with the dead. And so what I was doing is I was feeding each chapter into Claude, and then I was saying, first, give me a dev edit of this. Some of it’s, some of its comments were right on, like, this scene is dragging on too long, or, you know,
And things like that. And then asked it to do a copy, edit and proofread. And the thing I kept having to tell it is it would say, well, when Arthur, the dead guy that Anne is talking with says this, it means that this other person knows too. And I’m like, no, he’s dead. The whole point is that Anne’s the only person who can hear him.
and I had to tell it that over and over again. And I’m like, that’s
[00:17:49] Carlo: It, you know,
[00:17:50] Matty: just not good at some things.
[00:17:51] Carlo: it does. I mean, and you know, it’s a whole that’s, we could do a whole podcast on AI in general, which I’m sure you have. But, you know, it’s the things where it’s a task that it’s really good. Like if you wanted to do, be an analyst, it’s a great analyst, but creative work.
As advanced as it’s come, it’s still, it adds value for sure, but it’s like a human being. It’s very comfortable just making stuff up and guessing and being, you know, so yeah, you, I would not feel comfortable or nor enjoy reading a book that it wrote, at least at this point. Now, 10 years from now, who knows?
[00:18:23] Carlo: it would be very predictable. I think that the very fact of how it’s trained means that it would be very predictable Takes it to the median, right?
[00:18:30] Matty: Yeah, exactly.
[00:18:31] Carlo: by nature, it takes it to the average, so, yeah.
[00:18:35] Matty: When, if, so you’re saying that, sometimes this marketing first versus story first approach feels safer to writers.
[00:18:46] Carlo: Well, I think. So I might be different in this vein, but, so, and you are as well, I’m sure when you come from the corporate world, you’re kind of thinking about marketing. Even if you’re not in a marketing function, it’s departments you’ve worked with,you’ve been engaging in those groups.
But I think where authors likely struggle is one, they, you know, they write a book , because they love writing a book, not because they want to be great marketers, so they don’t really think about marketing. In total, it’s, I’ll release it. then it’ll sell, which there’s too much
It’s, you know, that’s hard. You know. T
[00:19:20] Carlo: he second thing, what I would say, to answer your question more directly, marketing is comforting. So I’m going to create a flyer, or I’m going to create a cool Facebook post show, the cover of my book and say, Hey, I got a new mafia book, please. Please
You can see it. It’s just not effective. Right. So I, you know, to me that’s where the difference is. The hard work comes in. How do you take an 80,000 word book? You’ve just spent two years writing that’s been painful and rewarding and all those things. And how do you sum it up in
It’s really difficult to do. Authors by nature have a tremendous amount of depth. But your buyer’s looking at something for four seconds. So, you know, that’s the part if you’re not anchored in, you know, either you know your value, why they should care, it’s, you know, it’s hard.
[00:20:12] Matty: Yeah.
[00:20:16] Matty: What you’re saying makes me think of marketing. Is there being kind of, three aspects of marketing that. Usually elicit very different responses from authors. One is marketing strategy, which I don’t think people object to, but find it very difficult for all the reasons we’ve been saying. One is doing the marketing, which I think many people don’t like because it feels like, you know,
But then there’s the marketing tasks, which can be very, Seductive, you know, to go to for exactly the reason you’re saying. It’s like checking items off a list. I’m like, oh, I made three Canva ads today. You know? Yay. and allowing yourself to get sucked into checking off the tasks rather than continuing to engage with potential readers at that
[00:20:58] Carlo: I agree. And also I like the way you framed it
[00:21:04] Matty: Right, right.
[00:21:05] Carlo: The first two will guide the task. Right.
[00:21:08] Carlo: the other part that I think is difficult for authors is I. You are the brand, you created it. And there’s all different styles. Some people want to be in front of the camera.
I like it. Obviously other people are probably have more humility than I do and they’re like, I’m great at writing. I don’t need that. And that’s okay. but that’s a part of the brand too. Right? and I think folks should, as authors think about like, how do I represent the brand
, because I, what I’ve noticed at least. If you sit down and write a book, it’s very personal. Whether it’s fantasy, nonfiction, or fiction, there’s something in it that’s coming from you to, to spend that kind of time on it. and what I have noticed is that’s what really gets people in my mind, interested to, to give it a go.
Especially when you’re first starting, you got five reviews on Amazon, you’re an indie author, like outside of Family and friends. How do you
[00:22:10] Matty: Yeah.
[00:22:22] Matty: I think another thing this is highlighting this idea of the strategy versus the actual marketing versus the tasks is that ideally marketing should be kind of two way. And so if you’re focused on the task, let’s say you’re cranking out the Canva ads and you’re putting them up on Facebook, then you’re never getting the
That you need on any marketing effort. And the example I can think of for me is that when I was trying to think of a tagline for my, Lizzie Ballard thrillers, the tagline I ended up with, I have to say what I ended up with first, or I’m not going to be able to remember the other one. it’s what happens when an extraordinary, ability transforms an
But what I started with was what happens if an extraordinary power rather than ability, an extraordinary power. I. impact an ordinary life. And what I realized was that people who saw that on Facebook thought it was like, a religious book. You know, when they heard extraordinary power, they thought, you know, this,the power I was talking about was God, not the ability to cause strokes and other people, which is the
And if I had just put that out there and not engaged with. with what people were saying about it that might’ve been out there for months before I realized the harm I was doing for myself. Or people would’ve been leaving reviews saying, you know, I didn’t understand, you know,
so the idea of engaging with people, I think that’s got to be a lesson
[00:23:39] Carlo: It, it’s, it’s, it’s huge. And eliciting feedback. I mean, there’s a reason, in Hollywood and Prestige tv, they do screenings because you catch an audience reaction that, or, and or a feeling that you wouldn’t normally get. Like, I almost have the opposite story. I, and I love that you brought that up, is when we were going through cover design. I was enjoying many versions of it, but then, you know, I was getting feedback from people like, , because I would share it without much context on the book. Just So how does this book make you feel? How does this cover make you feel? That’s it. That was all the question was, well, THE SINS WE INHERIT, is that a religious
What, like what is it about? And I’ll just be honest, I don’t like my tagline, but it makes up. It has a function that’s critical, it’s a mafia legacy and blood with, at least without that, it, you know, it’s kind of floating on what the book actually is. So as much as I kind of poo-pooed genres, it does play an important home in, in targeting.
because otherwise, to your point, using social media to elicit feedback, now you got to be comfortable, you know, taking some hits on, and it’s really important. it’s a tool. that author should use, especially early on. That’s why, having an ARC team and things like that were super
[00:24:56] Matty: Yeah. And if you don’t feel comfortable exposing yourself in that way on, social media, I think it’s a good plug for, starting an email list right away. Because even if you have an email list of seven, you can still send those seven people your potential cover and say, what do you think about this?
And this is good for me to hear because I’m just in the process of, thinking about a redesign for one of my. Series and I am just terrible at falling into the, trap of I love how this cover looks. I’m going to use it regardless, and at least I do it knowing that I am sacrificing sales
I mean, I think some people do it thinking that the cover that they love is going to be the best, the cover that everybody loves. But I’m like, no, I really have to do more market, market solicitation on, the new design.
[00:25:42] Carlo: I struggled with the very same thing , because I’m like, how do I get the father daughter element into it? How do I get this? And it’s just like, you know what the cover is much like, you know, your elevator pitch that, often gets talked about, right? Is you
How do they know to just stop and give it a quick. Preview. And, again, I mean, you know this , because you just said it like, as an author, you spend so much time on it. You want people to appreciate all the complexity that went into your story. but no one’s going to appreciate it if you don’t anchor things in a way where it’s interesting enough for them to read it, you know?
So. Yeah. And that’s hard. Really hard. I struggle with it too.
[00:26:20] Matty: Yeah, I think that, interestingly, I have a friend who writes a series for a, one of the big five, publishers and her covers are very, in fact, this whole imprints covers are all very consistent and all very instantly recognizable on thumbnails and even she will say. What the cover shows rarely has anything to do with
and, but that’s fine. Like nobody is complaining about our covers because the important thing is they glance at that cover in a set of thumbnails and they say, this is going to tell a story that I’m going to love. And they don’t care that there’s a boat on the front when there
I, yeah, I think that one of the real hallmarks of, self-made covers is being way too literal,
[00:27:01] Carlo: Yeah. which is why I didn’t self made make mine, because I knew I’d fall into that trap. I hired a professional to do it and it was a hard. Pill to swallow at first. , because the story’s still personal to me. And I wanted all these great elements and they,
[00:27:16] Matty: Right, right.
[00:27:17] Carlo: It’s supposed to get people to open it
[00:27:19] Matty: Yes,
[00:27:19] Carlo: stop and buy. And, that, that’s one of the decisions that begrudgingly I made. And boy I’ll, I, now everybody’s different. Some people might have that skill. I certainly don’t. but leveraging creatives for creative work visually was really important to
[00:27:35] Matty: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that this is one where now you do have to kind of, As Orna Ross, the Alliance of Independent Author says, the book cover image is not a work of art. It’s a
[00:27:47] Carlo: It’s true. It’s so true.
[00:27:50] Matty: you don’t have to, you do have to kind of now
because you have to make sure that if you think your book is going to sit on the, mafia fiction shelf, that it kind of looks. Identify not the same as but identifiable as the same family as the other books on that
[00:28:08] Carlo: Totally agree. Totally agree. Yeah.
[00:28:11] Matty: So what are, what are some signs that an author might have gotten the order wrong, that they’re thinking about
[00:28:22] Carlo: to me the biggest sign is, and you can practice this in the mirror, you can do whatever is just challenge yourself. If you’re sitting at a bar, grabbing a beer after work and somebody says. Oh, I heard you wrote a novel. What is it about if you’re starting with genre and I wrote it and go buy it, like you probably got it wrong.
I would say that is one, like, can you sum up the essence of the story in seven seconds? So like, and I spent a lot of time on, I noticed like when we started, I didn’t say I wrote a mafia book. I wrote a book about a man Constantino who escaped the life and now it’s come after
If you like X, Y, and ZI think you’ll like this story. And I think that’s a sign that if you can’t do that, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It just means you haven’t spent enough time thinking about it. So I would say that’s one. I would also say, and this is what the business world has taught me, is do you have a plan? Now, that doesn’t mean you need to have, some people are different than others, right? Some people have a calendar with every single tactic they want to do over the course of the, of nine months. I don’t operate that way. I operate in terms of themes. So there, here’s the things leading me up to launch and or things that need to be accomplished to get the story out to resonate, with readers.
I document that all out and I check it weekly and I see if I’m making progress against it and or not. And then you can make adjustments too. So I would think the two big things, one is your elevator pitch, like really, really tight. And second, you put pen to paper to do a hundred thousand words. Did you put pen to paper on how you’re going to
I would say those are the two. If you don’t have those, if you’re capable of writing a book, you’re capable of doing those two things. I would say if you don’t have ’em though, that’s a sign you’re not getting it right. I would also say, I don’t have all the answers to
[00:30:17] Matty: As are we all.
[00:30:18] Carlo: doing better.
Right. So I definitely don’t want it to make it seem like, you know, I’m still on my journey with this stuff. But, those are certainly the things I learned as I, you know, kind of created this thing from scratch. I don’t come from the writing world. I tried to leverage my
[00:30:34] Matty: Yeah.
[00:30:36] Matty: Well, and I think that, the other thing I was thinking is, the, in addition to, making your elevator pitch tight, I think the other. Element that I’m realizing is the importance of enthusiasm. You’re obviously very enthusiastic about your series.
You’re, representing that, the way you describe it, and I realize that what’s missing from the, uh, I have a, a book by it. Um. No, it is no enthusiasm. And I see this even in in-person events. Like the people who are actually enthusiastic about their own book are the ones that attract
Like the perfect example is I. I did an, episode with Todd Fahnestock about selling in person and he was talking about how you can tailor your pitch depending on the response of the person who comes to your table. And I said, well, you know, Todd, give us your pitch. I want to hear what your pitch is. And by the time his pitch was done, I don’t read fantasy, but
He was so excited about them and he was so excited about sharing the experience with you. And I think that the extent of which we can step away from the transactional, I have a book, buy it, and into the sharing the experience of the story, is ideally what we want to do in person, what we want to do on social media, what we want to do when we’re pitching agents who, whatever that exchange might be.
[00:32:00] Carlo: It is that is such a good point and. The thing that I would say is not everybody has to have this like gregarious. I know I’m southern Italian guy, gregarious person. Not everybody has to have that to capture it. What I would say for me was an adjustment but has been effective is I was a very private person before I, I did all
I also struggled a tremendous amount, was showing any level of vulnerability and. What I’ve noticed has been most healthy for me just from a mental health standpoint, but also just getting the word out on the book is just saying, you know what? This came from a very personal
I was worried about losing my family, and it started as a journal. And you know what? I got through all of it. I have a wonderful ex-wife, beautiful kids, and I’m just really proud of the project and just. Verbalizing, you know what? You’re proud of it. That doesn’t mean you’re bragging about it, you’re not saying it’s the best thing in the world, or, you know, it’s, you know, better than a tale of two
But it, it is okay to say, I would just be hard pressed on anybody’s sat down between 60,000, a hundred thousand words, 30 whatever. You have to be proud of it. And there’s nothing about just telling people, you know what, this is personal to me and I’m really proud of it.
[00:33:22] Matty: I love that. I love that as foundational, the experience of sharing their book with other
[00:33:31] Carlo: Yeah.
[00:33:35] Matty: Well, Carlo, thank you so much for, for sharing that perspective. congratulations on the, SINS WE INHERIT, and, congratulations on the upcoming, THE COST WE PAY.
And please let everyone know where they can go to find out more about
[00:33:46] Carlo: Yeah. thank you Matty. So, I would drive most people to my website. It’s THE SINS WE INHERIT.com. It has information about. Obviously the first novel as well as the second one, dropping in June. And then you can follow me on, I’ve had to learn all the social media stuff. So I’m on fa search Sins We Inherit, or my name on
Instagram, TikTok. And then, I have a YouTube channel as well, which gives a lot of like behind the scenes backstory, some of the personal things we discussed today. So if you’re interested in learning more, please check it out. And obviously the novels on Amazon as well as
[00:34:21] Matty: Great. Thank you so much.
[00:34:22] Carlo: Thank you, Matty.