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Episode 68: Founders' Series: Korie Herold, The Weekend Type
149 Plays5 years ago
Today’s episode features author, artist, and founder of The Weekend Type, Korie Herold. Korie recently released her third book, "Our Christmas Story", a book designed for families to record their Christmas traditions, memories, photos, and even things like recipes to preserve for future generations. A very timely episode with Thanksgiving tomorrow.
As I mentioned, she’s actually the author of two other books as well: "As You Grow" and "As We Grow". And has another being released next year. In today’s episode, we chat about her journey in becoming an author, the steps she’s taken to market her books, and discuss her latest endeavor, The Weekend Type, which is both a community for artists and marketplace where one can purchase art for their home.
For the show notes, go to https://daveyandkrista.com/btb-korie-herold-episode-68/
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Transcript
Discovering a Book at Barnes & Noble
00:00:05
Speaker
I took myself to Barnes and Noble, looked at some books, you know, still didn't see any out there that I liked. And I finally found a book that I liked the binding on and I opened it up. And on the copyright page, there was an email. I emailed them and they wrote me back and they were like, Hey, yeah, we'd love to chat with you. Like, okay, cool. And I thought that's just how it went. I didn't know.
00:00:34
Speaker
anything that I know now about publishing.
Introduction to Kori Harold
00:00:40
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands at Book Show, where we help creative service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
00:00:51
Speaker
Today's episode features author, artist, and founder of the weekend type, Kori Harold. Kori recently released her third book, Our Christmas Story, a book designed for families to record their Christmas traditions, memories, photos, even things like recipes to preserve for future generations. It's a very timely episode with Thanksgiving tomorrow. As I mentioned, she's actually the author of two other books as well, As You Grow and As We Grow.
00:01:16
Speaker
and she has another book being released next
Kori's Creative Journey
00:01:19
Speaker
year. In today's episode, we chat about her journey in becoming an author, the steps she's taken to market her books, and discuss her latest endeavor, The Weekend Type, which is both a community for artists and a marketplace where one can purchase art for their home.
00:01:34
Speaker
Before we get to the episode, I have a request. If you've enjoyed the Rancid Book Podcast, would you take a minute to rate and review the podcast on iTunes? Doing so will help this podcast get more visibility, and it means a lot to me. Be sure to check out the show notes at davianchrista.com for the resources we mentioned during the episode. And like I said, I want to hear from you. Let me know what kind of content you'd like to see on the Rancid Book Podcast as we move forward. To leave your feedback, head on over to the Davian Christa Facebook page and send us a message. You can also DM us on Instagram at davianchrista.
00:02:04
Speaker
Now, onto the episode.
Early Creative Pursuits
00:02:11
Speaker
And we are back with another episode of the Brands That Book Show, our last episode before Thanksgiving. So if you're listening to this during the week of Thanksgiving, remember our Black Friday Thanksgiving Cyber Monday sale is going on right now. So head on over to the Davey and Krista website, daveyandchrista.com forward slash shop.
00:02:30
Speaker
to check out our sale on all of our templates. Now, we're not here to talk about that. We're here to talk about Corey, author, artist, founder of The Weekend Type. We're so excited to have you here. Welcome. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. Yeah. Can you give people a little background on who you are, what you do? I feel like you have a few different projects and then one of them in particular, The Weekend Type being relatively new. Give us the story.
00:03:00
Speaker
Yeah. Okay.
Educational Background and Career Choices
00:03:01
Speaker
So I have a lot of different creative hats and, you know, getting ready for this, I just got to go back down memory lane and see where I have gone. And as long as I can remember, I've always loved projects and creating and making. And just as a child, you know, and, you know, once I got into high school, found myself in the yearbook club, did yearbook editing.
00:03:29
Speaker
that and you know my high school job was also um painting pottery like and I did that all the way through college
00:03:38
Speaker
So, those creative things I carried with me into college and that's when you're like, okay, I got to figure out what I'm going to do with my life, right? So much pressure in... So, the painting pottery, is that like one of those places that you show up to and you, you know, can kind of paint a piece and then it goes into whatever that, you know, furnace thing is? Okay, awesome. Just trying to understand. All the handprints and footprints and like the custom lettering. Yeah, we did all of that.
00:04:07
Speaker
Awesome. So you get to college, are you doing more pottery? Yes, like a studio in college. And I before they opened, I walked in and I said, I need to work here. You need to hire me. Let's do this. And she did. She hired me right then. She didn't know my background. It was cool. That's just another creative side that I've just always been working at. And when I studied in college, I did graphic design and interior design.
00:04:37
Speaker
they let me do a blended degree because I, this is pretty typical of me. And so it was awesome. Like the professors work
Shift to Photography
00:04:48
Speaker
together to, you know, line up courses that would complete a full degree. And I got to study both. And that was without like the heavy load of double majoring. It really was a interdisciplinary degree just for me. And one of my favorite courses in there, I took,
00:05:06
Speaker
one-on-one with my professor and we met I think once or twice a week and it was a drawing course. It was just interior design like rendering spaces and she really guided me on different you know techniques and ways to do it better and ways to do it faster and just having her time was really valuable to me.
00:05:30
Speaker
Yeah, that's so interesting because already knowing a little bit of your story, but I'm learning a lot here too.
Wedding Photography Challenges
00:05:36
Speaker
You can start connecting the pieces and seeing how one thing leads to the next, even the pottery, but yet the background in doing yearbook in high school, that's Christa's story as a designer as well. It wasn't the yearbook, but it was
00:05:50
Speaker
Um, the school paper and what she really liked about the school paper were the layouts, right? Um, not so much actually writing it, but the layouts and, uh, and you know how that led to her to a, she did graphic design in college, but anyways, not about her, about you. And so I'm interested in hearing a little bit more about this degree and some of the things that it started leading you towards.
00:06:14
Speaker
Yeah, so I got out of college, got married, and my husband, he was saying, well, you could either get some sort of office job, try to find a graphic design job. We had moved to Virginia at this point. I went to school in Texas. But I could either find a job, corporate, whatever, or if you wanted to start something, go for it. And at this point, we were
00:06:45
Speaker
living in my in-laws basement to pay off our student loans and so I don't know it was just this very like pivotal moment of figuring out do I want to go and just work a job that I'm guaranteed you know finances
Career Reflection and Transition
00:07:01
Speaker
from or since we do have the support of living with his parents you know in their basement
00:07:09
Speaker
Should I take the leap? And I did. I ended up doing professional photography from 2009 to 2016. And it was wonderful and great. And it took off. And, you know, it was really, really good for me to learn, you know, business and entrepreneurial skills and, you know, branding and all the things that I learned in college.
00:07:37
Speaker
I really got to apply to this business and watch it grow. And I made a lot of great connections in the wedding industry and other photographers through that season. But once we started having kids and thinking about kids, it was time to shift gears because the schedule just didn't work for us and with kids. And I think that's pretty common. Yeah. So leading up to, you know, being okay with, okay, we're getting ready to have kids.
00:08:06
Speaker
I had started thinking about what I wanted to do next. What is my transition? Was it pushed on through that thought that kids are next, you don't necessarily want to give up weekends? Was it primarily weekends that you were giving up? Yeah, it's a lot of weekends, but my husband works a job that shift work.
00:08:32
Speaker
is off half of those weekends. So it's like a month of weekends and then off a month of weekends. So it's really hit or miss with what the schedule was and finding child care on the weekends always depended upon it was just like it was too much. And then the back work of
00:08:52
Speaker
you know, doing the editing and just everything that goes with wedding photography, you know? Yeah, absolutely. It's just such an interesting trend. And I don't know, you know, I certainly don't regret our time as wedding photographer. So maybe you feel similar. And I think that there's so many great things about being able to work a camera well, right? I mean, other because every business that you ever start, you know, you're going to need good images for your brand, especially true of what you're doing. And we'll get to that I'm sharing a little bit. But
00:09:19
Speaker
you know, when you have some sort of product that you're showing off. I mean, good images can go a long way. I would assume I don't have any experience selling on Amazon, let's say, but selling a product on Amazon. So I don't regret that time at all. But I think, you know, one thing that we see time and time again, is kind of this trend of just getting to a point where you're, I guess it works for a season of life.
00:09:43
Speaker
And there's also another trend where I see people, you know, they want to be working 40 weddings a year. It's like their dream and then they get to 40 weddings a year and they're like, I want nothing to do with 40 weddings a year anymore. So it's really interesting, just kind of.
00:09:59
Speaker
And I don't know what it is. I don't know any statistics on it. And it's probably unfair to call it this, but the burnout rate of photographers, I'd say especially wedding photographers, where it's very much weekend oriented. And it looks like it would be this thing that has all this sort of flexibility and you're really, air quotes for people who are listening, only working on the weekends, right? Which of course we know isn't the case. Yeah.
00:10:26
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, I don't know, does that resonate with you at all? Like this? I mean, do you regret your time as a wedding photographer? Not at all. Yeah, I thought it was great. I think my least favorite was waking up the next day with that like, body fatigue and calling it the wedding hangover, just like being on your feet all day, we'll just do that to you. And carrying all that stress of making sure somebody else's day is, you know, perfect and captured perfect and all the things that you're responsible for, like,
00:10:55
Speaker
That really does take a toll on you. Absolutely. Definitely a good lesson in business though, right? I mean, you deal with people on maybe the most emotional day of their lives or the most emotional day of their lives to date. And so many different members of their family usually who respond to that emotion in different ways. So I think it really is a good crash course in learning how to deal with clients and people.
Calligraphy and The Weekend Type
00:11:21
Speaker
Yes, yes, it definitely is.
00:11:24
Speaker
So anyways, I feel like I got a sidetrack on these reflections on wedding photography. So getting us back on track, you know, you're starting to figure out what's next. So was that when you started when the idea for maybe your first book came to be or what did that look like? No, not yet. So there's even one more thing in there. I decided to try my hand at calligraphy.
00:11:49
Speaker
And, um, you know, I had picked up like a junky little set from hobby lobby, you know, when I was 12, maybe with like the chisel tip, not real, like pointed pen or anything. And I just remember being so disappointed, like, this isn't, this is nothing. This is not how it works. And, uh, I started looking into it and I found.
00:12:11
Speaker
a workshop from somebody that I had just been following on Instagram up in Michigan. It was a two-day calligraphy intensive workshop. It was Molly Jakes. And I flew up there, did the workshop, and it was amazing. And it gave me the push, like, yeah, I could do this. And I probably practiced in our guest bedroom for like three solid months, like all my spare time. Granted, this is before kids.
00:12:41
Speaker
So I had a lot of spare time and I would put, you know, all my practice sheets like on the wall so I could start seeing progress just with calligraphy before I was ready. Like, okay, maybe I could turn this into a business, you know? And, um, I started offering things just here and there. Somebody asked if I would teach a class to a bunch of wedding planners in Charleston and I hadn't been doing this, but for maybe three months at the time, like,
00:13:11
Speaker
Okay, sure, you know, it's like, let's see what happens. And I went and did that. And it just kind of kept going. And I called myself the weekend type at that point, because I thought, Oh, it's such a perfect blend for events that happen on the weekends. And it's me coming out of this weekend thing with photography. And it just made sense.
00:13:33
Speaker
and people love the weekend. So you feel like you can resonate just with that name, you know? Yeah, absolutely. And so it started being more courses or not courses, workshops in town and they were a lot of fun. I teamed up with a florist and we would do like flower ranging and calligraphy and brunch. And it was a, it was an event, you know, it was a experience and it was,
00:14:00
Speaker
awesome at the time. But then it was time to start shifting gears again. Another kid came along the way. So I had to kind of stop for a little bit with those workshops. And then fast forward to when Jonah came. Jonah is our second. He came in the summer of 2016. And at that point, I had him and I had this newborn and it's
00:14:24
Speaker
I don't know, you're kind of like only doing the newborn stuff, right? I'm sure Krista can remember this and it's like, okay, now what? Right? And you're like, okay, am I just mom now or am I still working now or where do I kind of go from here? Did you feel that tension after your first? No, I think because I felt like I could handle it. Like I can handle the balance of one, but then the second came and it was like,
00:14:53
Speaker
Oh, this is a different game and this is okay. What's the separation between the two? Nineteen months. Okay, so not, you know, I mean two under two, right? Yeah, yep. Yeah, so we have at least one friend with two under two and they say it's exciting. It's not exactly the word that they would use but... Yeah, I'll use that word too. It's exciting. It's a lot more manageable now but, you know, they're three and five now.
00:15:21
Speaker
So you I guess with this I mean it's one rock my world so I can't imagine I can't you know, I can't even imagine and that's the other thing too is that people would say oh, Davey just you just don't really get it until you have a kid and they're not you know, I always hated that like I just hated here and I'm like, okay, like all right, whatever, you know, but then of course having a kid it's one of those things where it's like, yeah, I just didn't
00:15:44
Speaker
I just didn't get it. And I don't think anybody really can, you know, until they have that, or until they're, especially if they're working from home, as we are, just kind of that blend of life and work, right? I think that it's so much harder to compartmentalize that, you know, as an entrepreneur, especially if you're working from home. So where did this lead you? Okay, so after I had Jonah, and I'm in this season of like, I don't know, rest, tired, just
00:16:13
Speaker
I don't know. I don't know what else to call that season. Wondering what I'm doing next because I didn't think it was going to be more calligraphy with all these envelopes out and drying and, you know, toddlers running around. And it just didn't make sense in my head. I think now I'd be OK because I could lock the office. We're in a different place now. But the other one, I didn't have a lock on the door. There was no door kind of set up. Yeah.
Publishing the First Baby Book
00:16:40
Speaker
And I had a friend nudge me like,
00:16:43
Speaker
She said, you need one thing. Like, OK, sure. Yeah, one thing. And she just kept putting this bug in my ear. Like, you just need your one thing. Like, what if you did, you know, like a baby book or something? It's like, OK, yeah, sure. You know, and I'm still in this like, yeah, you're crazy.
00:17:06
Speaker
And you're up at 2 a.m. nursing a baby, still chewing on that conversation, right? It's like, okay, so what if I did do a baby book? I never could find one that I liked. And so I started writing just in a blank journal to my kids. And I had already been doing that.
00:17:26
Speaker
whenever I got pregnant with Xander, one of the first things I did was pull out of new journal, start writing to him, you know, and I put the date. And I still write in these journals just because that's where it started for me. But this baby book thing, it's like, OK, yeah. So what would it look like if I did? And would somebody even let me? That was, I think, the big thing. Like, how do I go from here? Because it seems like such a daunting endeavor. Yeah.
00:17:57
Speaker
Okay. So I took myself to Barnes and Noble, looked at some books, you know, still didn't see any out there that I liked. And I finally found a book that I liked the binding on and I opened it up. And on the copyright page, there was an email. I emailed them and they wrote me back and they were like, Hey, yeah, we'd love to chat with you. Like, okay, cool. And I thought that's just how it went. I didn't know.
00:18:27
Speaker
anything that I know now about publishing. Yeah. So is this so you know, the publisher of a book that you like the binding of there was just a baby book or was it just the OK, so it was just a book. Yeah. So it was a book with a binding that you liked. And so you just emailed the publisher and they wrote back and were like, hey, yeah, we'll chat. Yeah. And, you know, what did that email look like? I mean, did it was it just like, hey, I like the binding of this book. I want to write a book. Will you publish my book? Basically, I think it was like
00:18:56
Speaker
Hey, I found your email in this book I like. I've got an idea. Can we chat about it? And I think I left it at that. I don't think I even said I want to make a baby book. But they were able to, before a conversation, follow my trail that's been left on social media to research me.
00:19:16
Speaker
Apparently that was a big deal. Like they were able to find my school. They were able to find my photography background. They were able to find the calligraphy, like everything creative. They could pinpoint without me telling them about it. So going into the conversation, they already knew like, okay, she's done some stuff. Cool. Let's see what she's curious about. And, um, I pitched it to them and they liked it and it kind of just rolled from there. Like,
00:19:46
Speaker
They researched it on their end and realized, yeah, you know, let's try the baby market. And they didn't have anything in the baby market at the time.
00:19:55
Speaker
So how much would you? So, you know, I think what's important to start with is just your social media presence or in your presence online certainly played into them being willing to give you a meeting, probably, or at least to take that meeting seriously. So there was definite work you did up front, even if you didn't realize you were doing it to this end that resulted in, you know, eventually meeting with this publisher. And I don't think this is spoiling the story for anybody, but eventually a book. Right.
00:20:26
Speaker
But at the same time, it feels like there's almost this element of luck in there too just because I don't know a ton of people who have published books, but I know a few and the process seems a little bit more like a hustle, like a little bit more of a
00:20:43
Speaker
reaching out to a bunch of publishers, hoping you hear anything back. When you do finally hear something back, hoping you get a meeting, that sort of thing. But that doesn't sound very much like your experience. Not at all. I went in not knowing anything about publishing. I hadn't researched a thing and I didn't know people get book agents. I only learned about that recently. Like, oh, okay, cool.
00:21:10
Speaker
So you go into this publisher media, I guess one of the takeaways too is the value of just starting, right? I think that's because there's probably, and I think I probably fall into this category or used to, I feel like even through listening to or hearing from so many different entrepreneurs that I've gotten much better about this, but I like things to kind of be in place, the research to have been done before I feel like I take action.
00:21:36
Speaker
That's probably not a fair assessment of myself, but I guess there's value what I'm trying to say and just going for it. It certainly worked out. It certainly worked out for you. So what did your pitch look like? Once you got a meeting, did you realize like, oh, wow, this is not normal just to get a meeting like this?
00:21:53
Speaker
Yeah. And I still didn't realize that that wasn't normal at that point. You know, it's just like, Oh, okay, cool. I guess they just like do this conversation, see if you like it. And you know, you can say no, if you don't like it, you know, and that's what they do in my mind. Yeah. The pitch itself, I think it was all after the phone call on the phone. It was, you know, I can't find a baby book that I like. I want to make one, you know, I want to make it like,
Pitching to Publishers
00:22:20
Speaker
gender neutral. I want it to be something I'm proud to pass on to my kids. I just want it to be beautiful and not with, you know, cartoon giraffes. And they're like, okay, you know, I think there's a place for it. But I guess the hard pitch itself, the more detailed one, I pulled in my graphic skills. And so it's pulling back from, you know, studies in
00:22:47
Speaker
I put together the best PDF. I could think of at the time, you know, I made a mood board of what kind of fonts. I wanted to use what kind of imagery. I wanted to use the color palette. They could expect I gave them different prompts that I would want in there.
00:23:04
Speaker
And I even, you know, told them things I don't want in there. Like, I don't want a teeth chart in there in, you know, that's one of the comments that every now and then I'll get back on reviews on Amazon, like, oh, it's got everything except a teeth chart. Okay, but I didn't want a teeth chart in there for a reason, you know? It just didn't seem important in the big scheme. And I really held on to the things that I think would be valuable to know later.
00:23:32
Speaker
Sure, sure. So I mean, eventually, I mean, you get this book deal, right? Yeah, through this publisher. What did it look like marketing your book because your book ended up so we're referring to the book as you grow right now.
Marketing Strategies
00:23:46
Speaker
So for those of you who are listening who are interested in purchasing this book, you can it's on Amazon, but it was also in places like Magnolia as well.
00:23:54
Speaker
There is an element to marketing, of course, I think, and that's an understatement, I think, especially when it comes to things like books, you know, unlike weddings, where you're going to shoot, you know, 10 or 20 weddings a year, your publishers hoping that you sell more than 20 books.
00:24:10
Speaker
We don't usually talk a lot about e-commerce on the podcast, but I think these are interesting things to know and there are still things that service-based businesses can learn from this. What are the ways in which you went about marketing your book and getting the visibility that it would be picked up by Magnolia? The Magnolia thing for me, that was the goal from signing the contract from before the book was made. That was
00:24:38
Speaker
like just all I wanted. It's like, I want this thing if I'm going to work this hard on it to be in Magnolia, you know, to make the cut basically. And from that point, I geared that book towards Joanna Gaines. She was my client. She was also pregnant at the time and it was perfect. And I thought, okay, what would she want in a book, you know, and how can I make that happen? And it was such a good, like,
00:25:06
Speaker
branding exercise, but also really targeting one audience, you know, with the thing. And I think that's why it worked, you know, the gender neutral, the plants, the green, you know, the tans just really calm and homey, but it's mature and timeless. And that kind of combination just came out of always going back to thinking about, okay, would she like this? Like, would this fit in with everything else at Magnolia?
00:25:37
Speaker
And once the book was hard copy in my hands, I didn't have all of them. I just had that one hard copy. I took a couple photos of it and then wrapped it up, wrote a note to Joanna and put it in a box and sent it to Magnolia. And, you know, every like two weeks or so, they'll sit her down and she'll get to review all these new products that, you know, hopeful artists and makers send
00:26:07
Speaker
And, you know, she hand selects what goes into the shop. And, you know, I didn't hear anything back for months. I think I sent the book at the end of January of 2017 and we heard back right after the launch. So it was in April. So I had just kind of assumed.
00:26:26
Speaker
Oh, you know, it didn't get picked up. That's fine. It's fine. You know, whatever. So, you know, much to my surprise, she picked it up and they still have it in their stores now. So that's amazing. How did you even find or how did you even know where to send something to Joanna Gaines for her consideration? So there were a couple different avenues that you could go even just like an email to their customer service department and saying like,
00:26:55
Speaker
Hey, I've got this thing. Who can I get in touch with? Somebody is going to point you in the right direction. That's one way about going about it. And I know people who've done that. Me, I know there were two friends I had at the time that used to work for Magnolia. It's like, hey, is there an address I can send this to? And so I got to bypass that other way that I could have gone about it.
00:27:21
Speaker
And then also my publisher has another email connection that they've gotten a different title into Magnolia. So really there were three different avenues. The one that worked best for me was reaching out to old friends from the calligraphy community. So a lot of it really can be like,
00:27:41
Speaker
your past leading up to this and what connections you made along the way. Yeah, absolutely. Buddy Powers was on the podcast early on. I want to say his episode was like 17 or something like that. Do you know the Powers? I do. Yeah, Big Spring Farm. I just asked because of that Virginia connection. But one thing he said, oh, that's awesome. Yeah, such a small world. What's interesting is something he said that what you're saying reminds me of. And I'm pretty sure he said it during the episode. If not, he just said it during a conversation with me.
00:28:11
Speaker
But he was reflecting on advice he got, and it was something along the lines of, everybody has some sort of leg up. And I think leaning back on past experiences and past relationships that you've built is one of the most powerful things that you can do. So it's awesome to hear you say that.
00:28:27
Speaker
It's something that I've been reflecting on a lot, especially as a reflect on a new business that we've recently started in the Facebook ads arena and just how quickly that's grown. And it's largely because of basically going back to relationships that have already been formed and telling them about this new business. So that's really interesting. Do you feel like
00:28:46
Speaker
sending because you could have sent an email. Do you feel like there was value for you specifically in sending the package itself? How much of factor do you think that played into it? Or at least photos of the product? Oh, for sure. I think anything that you can do when you are making a pitch to stand out is everything. It really is. And, you know, I can say more about that with the weekend type too. But whenever you can
00:29:15
Speaker
make yourself look a little bit different than, oh, it's just another email with some pretty pictures. Well, if all you had were pictures, what if you printed them out, sent them in this beautiful box with a handwritten note and show them how much you really want this relationship? There's so much to that part of getting what you're after.
00:29:40
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And I gotta imagine that they receive thousands of emails a month with different pitches on products or whatever that should be included by or promoted by them. So I'm sure that kind of stuff does, it at least separates you from the crowd.
00:29:57
Speaker
So, I think that's great advice. Moving on, you eventually... Should we talk about our Christmas story next? Just because we're on books, does that feel out of order to you if we were to talk about that next? Oh, it's okay. Yeah. Okay, awesome.
Inspiration from Family for Book Creation
00:30:10
Speaker
My books are kind of out of order.
00:30:13
Speaker
Well, I'm really excited to talk about our Christmas story in particular. One, because we're in the holiday season. I get excited by the baby book stuff too, of course, and really enjoyed filling that in over the last 18 months of Jack's life. But I love just the advent season in general, you know? Yeah.
00:30:31
Speaker
And for all sorts of reasons, it's one of my favorite seasons, but I'm really excited to share that with Jack this year. So I'm pumped about your new book and filling that in and recording our family traditions. And even Kristin and I think have been really intentional about this season since we got married. So we already have a lot of traditions. And with Jack last year, there were new traditions with him being around. So how did you come up with the Our Christmas Story book?
00:31:00
Speaker
I think it was from last year, last year's Christmas was the first Christmas with our kids that I felt like I couldn't soak it up enough. You know, they were in this just magical state of wonder and it was just beautiful and we did all the things and ran out of all the energy and just doing, you know, and I really wanted to be able to hold on to it as long as possible.
00:31:26
Speaker
And you know, the writing was on the walls with these other memory books leading the way to this one. It's like, okay, we've got one, you know, this intentional book for babies. We've got this intentional book for, you know, marriage and relationships. What about Christmas? You know, and we followed the same format that we've kind of laid out for the other books with the Christmas book. And it's, it's just everything that I would want to capture with Christmas.
00:31:54
Speaker
And there's lines in there like, what are we grateful for this season? What did we do Christmas morning? Did anybody come to visit us? Did we travel? And there's space for your Christmas cards. There's space for family photos. If you want to do letters to Santa, you can put those in there. A lot of it each year, once you open it up, you realize you can
00:32:21
Speaker
make it fit your family and how you celebrate Christmas. So if you do a lot of pictures and you want to, you know, paste a bunch of pictures in there, you can, but if you would rather use the blank spaces for writing a letter like to your kids while they're, you know, two, three, four, you can do that too. And there's a pocket in the back. We established this like pocket system starting with the baby book and then the marriage book. And now we've got one here in the Christmas book.
00:32:48
Speaker
to hold any other special things that you want to put in there. Maybe you went to some ice skating show and the tickets you want to throw in there because it brings back such good memories. There's a spot for that too.
00:33:02
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. And do you think that just so important too, my mom passed away when I was a senior in high school. So stuff like this, I mean, especially since having Jack, I think more so than ever, there are just so many, I mean, again, not to get all depressing on the podcast, but there's just so many things where I wish that I could go back and ask.
00:33:25
Speaker
questions that I would just never have thought of asking until having a kid, right? And so I just look at these as like really great opportunities to truly like preserve family memories and traditions. And so again, really excited about this book in particular. A few questions. Did you find
00:33:46
Speaker
I guess as you've produced these three books, are there things that you've learned along the way? Is there anything different about this third book or did you do anything differently with this third book that maybe you didn't do with your first or your second book but you learned based on feedback or just being more of a pro in the process? Are you using the same publisher? What does all that look like?
00:34:09
Speaker
Yeah, I probably couldn't say on the Christmas story about learning something new, how to do it better, but I can with the one I just finished. It's called Growing You. It'll be out next year. But that one I handled a lot differently than the past three, just because, you know, the timelines to make a book, they can be pretty tight in the design part, like the creation part.
00:34:35
Speaker
And that's something different that I've done too with my books. Like I'm doing the art in it, but I'm also laying it out and doing the entire design. So it takes quite a while to do everything. Now, when you're in the middle of doing that and launching another one at the same time, things can start to get stressful. And that happened in the springtime this year, whenever we launched the marriage book, I was finishing the Christmas book.
00:35:03
Speaker
And so it was crazy. And I learned I need to take more time off. I'm a better mom, artist, maker, author, everything for it, you know, for like really dividing up my time. Does the publisher set deadlines for all this, I'm assuming? Yeah, they set deadlines, but we're also in with them, like in the discussion. So it's not like
00:35:27
Speaker
These are your hard, fast deadlines that from the beginning, it's like, Hey, I can do it in this amount of time. You know, what about these? You know, in like right now I have two months off because I asked for it from working on books. And that was something that I learned. I needed to ask for this time to just be with my family and enjoy Christmas and not have the pressures of, you know, deadlines for a little bit.
00:35:53
Speaker
So even if they were small, every deadline kind of weighs on you. So beyond seeking out opportunities like the Magnolia one, which was really something that you did. You took the initiative there. What are some other ways that you've promoted your books? Because you're going to have four now. So you have three out. Again, we'll link to all these in the show notes. And before we end here, we can talk about what these three books are for if it's not already been clear to people.
00:36:20
Speaker
Sure. But you're going to have four books out. I imagine that your publisher at some point would say, no, if things weren't going well, right? Right. So what does promoting these books look like? I know it's selling on Amazon in general. There's sort of a science to it. Is it mostly investing energy into that, like getting reviews, making sure things are prime? What are some of the things that go into it?
The Role of Amazon Reviews
00:36:45
Speaker
So with the Amazon side, the part that I play there is trying to help get reviews. Um, because once you can start getting more reviews, you know, more people can start seeing your book with visibility. And, um, the way we've been getting reviews is offering, you know, something in return because they're taking their time, right? To leave a review for you. And so like with this Christmas book,
00:37:11
Speaker
I've offered to send them a Christmas ornament that goes with the book and it's just, you know, perfect for Christmas. And it's been like a no-brainer for people that are already, you know, into the book, into Christmas to leave a review. Anything beyond that, the publishing team works with Amazon and they do their thing and I'm pretty hands-off for the rest of it.
00:37:33
Speaker
I don't know. Yeah, that's kind of nice that the publishing team takes care of a lot of that. I will say if you buy something, especially from a small business off of Amazon, go back and leave a review because it really does make a difference. I mean, I always tell people it doesn't matter what I'm buying. It could be paper towels.
00:37:49
Speaker
I'm going to sort by two things, Amazon Prime and the reviews. I'm obviously not going to read reviews for paper towels, but I still sort by it because I just want to know that whatever I buy is going to work. And so I just assume by seeing four out of five stars or something closer to five stars, that is a solid product.
00:38:08
Speaker
So, again, especially if you go buy one of Cory's books, make sure you get on there and leave her a good review. And that's great that you have the publishing team to help you with that. Real quick, before we move on, I want to talk about the week in type before we wrap up here, and I know we're on a timeline. So, real quick for the four books, As You Grow, As We Grow, our Christmas story, and then there's the fourth one. You just mentioned the title, but I forget it. Growing You. Growing You. Can we go through each of these real quick and just say who these are for?
00:38:34
Speaker
Sure. So as you grow, it's a modern memory book for baby. So that's babies from pregnancy through
00:38:43
Speaker
They're five years, so right up until kindergarten, that one will cover. What about As We Grow? No, that's it. Yeah. Was that what we just talked about? That's the second one. No, that's As You Grow. So As We Grow, I'm sorry. Sounds similar. Yeah, As We Grow. That one's the marriage book, and you can pick it up anywhere from being engaged to 20, 30 years of being married. It's a really wide gap for that one.
00:39:10
Speaker
Once you open that one up, too, you can realize like, oh, you really can start anywhere. It's just taking the time to document your story for future generations. And I wish Chris and I did that. Yeah, that one came out of a need or want of my own, like wanting to know more about my grandparents story of like, you know, what it was like when they were dating each other. Like, well, what did they do on a Friday night back in the day, you know? And yeah, that's why this one exists.
00:39:41
Speaker
100%. And Krista and I, we've been married for it'll be 10 years this winter. So yeah, but it's, you know, even just in that 10 years, like so much is different. I mean, I feel like I'm almost completely different person than I was in high school when we started dating. I mean, as one would hope, right? Like, I'm sure Chris is grateful that I'm not also I'm not still, you know, high school Davey. So but you know, I do wish that we did that. And then you have our Christmas story, which we just talked about, which is documenting kind of the traditions around Christmas. Yep. Right.
00:40:10
Speaker
And the last one, or not the last one, but the next one, I guess I should say. Yeah. Growing You, it's a pregnancy journal. So as soon as you find out you're pregnant, you can pick this up and document
00:40:26
Speaker
you know, all the months, all the feelings, all the things leading up to baby. It's a place for you to write your birth plan. It's a place for you to write a very exaggerated, well, not exaggerated, lengthy, I guess is the word, story of your, of the birth, you know? Like it doesn't have to be abbreviated in this. It can be as long as you want to, you know, write about. And it goes into like,
00:40:54
Speaker
motherhood, those first days, like, what's it like? Like, what's it like in the middle of the night? Like, how are you feeling kind of thing? It's almost like a self check-in too for mom.
00:41:05
Speaker
Yeah. And again, one of those instances where more so than ever when Krista found out she was pregnant wishing that I could go back to my mom and say, hey, what was this like with you?
Preserving Family Memories Through Books
00:41:16
Speaker
And so I just think that those sorts of things are so valuable. And even if you don't appreciate them, not you of course, but our listeners out there really think about it for future generations because everything I know in particular, I've talked about my mom a lot this episode, but
00:41:32
Speaker
anything that I have from her still, I treasure so much. But let's shift gears a little bit and talk about the weekend type because you don't have enough going on.
Evolution of The Weekend Type
00:41:42
Speaker
So you started the weekend type. And for those of you listening, of course, these links will be in the show notes. But let's wrap up just by talking about what the weekend type is and how it came to be. Yeah. So as we talked about earlier, the weekend type started as my calligraphy business.
00:42:00
Speaker
then morphed into, you know, just this creative place that I was using to paint, learn watercolor, and start doing my books. And I, you know, I had this idea this summer, and it was something I needed to just say
00:42:17
Speaker
creative artistic community. Like there's a lot of different communities available, but I needed a one for the arts for myself. And I just decided I wanted to make it, you know, and it just kind of rolled from there. I don't know. I don't know how else to explain it. Changing the name was something I could have done, but I felt like the name fit so well.
00:42:43
Speaker
And it was a business or at least a name that had grown with me already. And I wanted to keep that. And so part of me also wanted to go against like the norms of, oh, no, you got to change the name. You've got to do this. You've got to do that. And I kind of wanted to be like, no, I don't. I can do it the way I want to. Like, this is my ship. You go back to your ship, you know? Sure. Yeah. So the weekend type got started and everything
00:43:13
Speaker
that it's going to be is just creative. It's a community. It's a place that houses artists. Some of the artists in here, they don't offer prints. And we do the printing for them. So this is a very hands-off additional revenue stream for them, which if I were in that boat, that's awesome. I would love that. But of course, we started it, so we're doing it.
00:43:41
Speaker
So great to be able to offer that to them and be a stress reliever for other artists and the different things that we have coming down the pipes.
00:43:50
Speaker
are really exciting and we're releasing them kind of one by one as we go on. We just had our first guest curator come in and that's an influencer that does interior design, decorating, they're known for that kind of thing. And we let them come into the shop, curate their own gallery collection and then show us how they decorate their homes with it.
00:44:14
Speaker
So it's the way of taking what the artists are doing and putting it into a setting, showing people like, this is how we would do it. Because I think there's so much uncertainty for a lot of people. It's like, I don't know how to pick out art. I don't know how to hang it on my wall. I don't know how big to get. And we're trying to be this bridge between artists and people that want to decorate their home with it.
00:44:40
Speaker
So first of all, I guess just the weekend type name. I wasn't aware of the calligraphy business right before because I think we had met Krista and I connect or Krista connected me with you and it was through the As We Grow book. I think initially, right? So I wasn't aware of the calligraphy backstory, but the weekend type name just fits so well with I think what you're currently doing with it.
00:45:06
Speaker
So it's interesting that it came from something else, but I think it is, like you said, sort of the perfect fit for this curated collection of art that people can buy. Also interesting just how it kind of taps into that interior design background that you have and kind of your love of what you fill spaces with. I would say that it's like a, I don't know what the right word is. I don't want to like completely like put down something like minted, but like a classy minted. Classy is not the right word, but
00:45:35
Speaker
I don't know what the right word is. But if you go, maybe you can look at it and you can then send me an email and tell me, for those of you listening, what that right word is. But I think you'll recognize it right away. So for that, if people are artists and they're listening, can they contribute or can they apply to attribute work to this? There is an artist nomination form in the footer of the website.
00:46:00
Speaker
And you just go there and you fill out the form and then we're able to see who's being submitted. And we've had people, you know, be submitted by their husbands, by friends, and even like nominate themselves, which is totally cool. Like, you know, you don't have to have somebody else. If you want to be in here, send us an email. We want to look at your stuff.
00:46:20
Speaker
Yeah, awesome. So we'll definitely include that link in the show notes as well. Well, thank you for sharing all of that with us.
Books as Holiday Gifts and Social Media Presence
00:46:28
Speaker
You know, this interview is kind of thrown together last minute because I wanted to make sure that it got out before the holiday season here really excited about the our Christmas story book. And if you're listening right now, and you're looking for a great gift for
00:46:42
Speaker
your family or a family that you know, this is something that you're going to want to check out, I think. All of Cory's books are available on Amazon, so I'll be sure to link directly to those for you to check them out. But I would also encourage you to check out the weekend type. Again, and that's not a seasonal thing, that's an all year round thing.
00:47:02
Speaker
where if you're looking for curated art that can fill different spots in your home, you're going to want to check out the weekend type. Of course, Corey still has her own website as well. Corey, what other places can people follow along? Instagram is my favorite. That's probably where I spend the most amount of time. I'm on Pinterest.
00:47:22
Speaker
I only do Facebook personally. I don't know. I spend most of my time on Instagram. Yeah, I feel like no businesses, unless you're running ads. But even then, we run ads, but we don't spend a ton of time on our Facebook page. I don't know. I feel like that's not a place where business owners are hanging out.
00:47:41
Speaker
It's where I go to learn about our neighborhood HOA. Exactly. No, it's like to be part of these random groups. That's so funny. Anyways, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Thanks for tuning in to the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to dvandchrista.com.
00:48:16
Speaker
you