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111 Julia Boggio | Rom-com Author, Podcaster and Photographer
432 Plays2 years ago
Rom-com author, podcaster, photographer and early 2000s YouTube sensation, Julia Boggio is on the podcast this week telling us all about how she is self-publishing her debut novel, Shooters and the many things involved with self-publishing, good and bad.
Signing up to the Patreon will give you access to the Discord server, where you'll be able to interact directly with Jamie as well as many of the previous agents, authors and editors who have been on the show. You'll also be able to see who the upcoming guests are and put forward questions for Jamie to ask them.
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Transcript
Introduction and New Offerings
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, Jamie here.
00:00:01
Speaker
If you've been enjoying the podcast and want to show your support, I have a brand new Patreon page and signing up will grant you access to the Right and Wrong Discord server where you can interact directly with many of the authors, agents and editors who have been guests on the show.
00:00:14
Speaker
You can also interact with me and see what guests are coming up so you could maybe suggest questions that I could ask them.
00:00:20
Speaker
Thanks again for listening and I really do appreciate any and all support that you guys give me for the podcast.
00:00:25
Speaker
Let's get back to it.
00:00:26
Speaker
So our podcast is called Right and Wrong.
00:00:27
Speaker
Are these your notes?
00:00:29
Speaker
These.
00:00:29
Speaker
Are these your notes about what we're going to say?
00:00:32
Speaker
Anything.
00:00:32
Speaker
Nailed it.
00:00:32
Speaker
It's a short answer.
00:00:34
Speaker
So how many novels did you not finish?
00:00:36
Speaker
Oh my God, so many.
00:00:39
Speaker
It was perfect.
00:00:40
Speaker
What are you talking about?
00:00:41
Speaker
This is not a good one.
00:00:43
Speaker
Ooh, a spicy question.
00:00:45
Speaker
I love it.
00:00:46
Speaker
This is it, guys.
00:00:47
Speaker
The big secret to getting published is you have to write a good book.
00:00:51
Speaker
You had it here first.
00:00:53
Speaker
We're going to see.
Meet Julia Boggio: Her Journey and Debut Novel
00:00:55
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast.
00:00:58
Speaker
On this week's episode, I am joined by author, podcaster, photographer and early 2000s YouTube sensation, Julia Boggio.
00:01:07
Speaker
Hi, welcome to the podcast.
00:01:09
Speaker
I love that intro.
00:01:10
Speaker
Fantastic.
00:01:13
Speaker
I mean, it's a great claim to fame.
00:01:15
Speaker
And then I wasn't familiar with the video.
00:01:17
Speaker
Obviously, I had to look it up.
00:01:18
Speaker
And then I was like, wow, this is old school YouTube right here.
00:01:24
Speaker
I know.
00:01:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:24
Speaker
I mean, we ended up being like one of the first viral videos way back when you used to talk about viral videos around the water cooler.
00:01:33
Speaker
Now they're just a dime a dozen, you know?
00:01:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:36
Speaker
Well, thanks so much for coming on.
00:01:38
Speaker
Before we, before we, we can go down that rabbit hole later on and hear all about how you ended up dancing with Patrick Swayze on Oprah, but let's start with writing, publishing.
00:01:50
Speaker
That's what the podcast is about.
00:01:51
Speaker
You have,
00:01:52
Speaker
your debut novel, Shooters, coming out.
00:01:55
Speaker
It's not out yet, but it will be out when this airs.
00:01:58
Speaker
Tell us all about it.
00:02:00
Speaker
Well, so what Jilly Cooper did for show jumping and riders, Shooters does for wedding photography.
00:02:06
Speaker
That was my pitch line.
00:02:08
Speaker
That's great.
00:02:10
Speaker
So basically it's about a woman named Stella Price and she decides she's going to change careers because she's made some bad life choices, but she has limited funds to survive on.
00:02:20
Speaker
So she needs to start making some money fast or else she's going to end up living back with her parents in Wales.
00:02:26
Speaker
So,
00:02:28
Speaker
But then the one man who can teach her everything that she needs to know is the one man she should avoid, lest she repeat the mistakes of her past.
00:02:36
Speaker
So, yeah, that's it.
00:02:38
Speaker
Great.
00:02:40
Speaker
Amazon describes it as a sassy, sizzling, romantic novel about wedding photographers, which you used to be.
00:02:49
Speaker
Yes, yes.
00:02:50
Speaker
I used to be a wedding photographer.
00:02:51
Speaker
So there is a lot of, well, they say your first book is the most autobiographical.
00:02:57
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's true.
00:02:58
Speaker
And, you know, my character may have started out as a medical copywriter and then turned into a photographer, but she has red hair.
00:03:07
Speaker
So it's definitely not me because I'm a brunette.
00:03:09
Speaker
She'll become an author soon as well, I imagine.
00:03:13
Speaker
That's in book three.
00:03:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:17
Speaker
I'm always curious about stuff like this where it's obviously inspired by, and people always say, write what you know.
00:03:22
Speaker
So you know it's a good thing to do.
Real Experiences and Career Transition
00:03:25
Speaker
With you being a wedding photographer, are there bits in shooters that are sort of very close to things that you actually sort of saw or experienced at weddings where you were the photographer?
00:03:37
Speaker
Yes, there's definitely a few touches in there.
00:03:41
Speaker
So there's this one wedding that she goes to shoot and she gets there and she's wearing a white blouse and the wedding planner says, no, you can't wear white.
00:03:50
Speaker
The bride has said no one's allowed to wear white.
00:03:52
Speaker
And I had that at a wedding.
00:03:54
Speaker
The bride forbade anybody from wearing white at the wedding except for her.
00:03:58
Speaker
So like even just a little bit.
00:04:00
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:04:00
Speaker
So I thought that was a fun detail.
00:04:03
Speaker
Stick that in there.
00:04:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:05
Speaker
Those are the little things that people are like, that would never happen.
00:04:08
Speaker
It's like, well, yeah, exactly.
00:04:10
Speaker
It did happen.
00:04:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:14
Speaker
Your photography career has gone far beyond, beyond just, just weddings.
00:04:18
Speaker
You were creative director at a studio in London.
00:04:21
Speaker
You wrote a column for photo pro magazine.
00:04:23
Speaker
You won the SWPP's children's photographer of the year twice in a row.
00:04:28
Speaker
What made you decide to change lanes and move into, into writing?
00:04:35
Speaker
Well, I've always wanted to be a writer.
00:04:37
Speaker
So ever since I was a little kid, I've written.
00:04:41
Speaker
But I think that, you know, I go back and I look at the stories that I wrote when I was younger, and I just, I felt like I needed more life experience before I took that route.
00:04:54
Speaker
So it's been sizzling in the back.
00:04:55
Speaker
I mean, I was a copywriter, as I said, out of university.
00:04:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:59
Speaker
And that was kind of getting my writing yaw yaws out.
00:05:02
Speaker
But I was a medical copywriter, which wasn't exactly, you know, the madman sort of vision that I had had.
00:05:08
Speaker
So then I discovered photography while I was traveling through South America.
00:05:13
Speaker
And I came back from that trip.
00:05:16
Speaker
and I retrained and I made the leap and I was a photographer for 15 years.
00:05:21
Speaker
And, you know, by the end of my career, I was working with a very high end client.
00:05:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:26
Speaker
I worked with, you know, foreign royalty and, and the Chelsea and Mayfair set and all that kind of stuff.
00:05:33
Speaker
And I think I, I, I just, it wore me down after a little while.
00:05:39
Speaker
It just wore me, it gave me great material though.
00:05:41
Speaker
Great material.
00:05:42
Speaker
I had,
00:05:43
Speaker
I had that experience I was looking for.
00:05:46
Speaker
And I just, I was sitting, funnily enough, at the SWPP conference where I am launching the book as well.
00:05:52
Speaker
And I was sitting there with a friend and I told her, you know, I really think, I think I want to start writing writing
00:05:58
Speaker
romance stories about photographers.
00:06:00
Speaker
And she said, Oh, you want to be the Jilly Cooper of photography?
00:06:03
Speaker
And I was like, yes.
00:06:04
Speaker
And in that second, literally the, the title, the story, the characters popped into my head and I was off and that was it.
00:06:13
Speaker
And photography was forgotten.
00:06:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:15
Speaker
That was through the cameras in the bin.
00:06:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:17
Speaker
I got the laptop.
00:06:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:21
Speaker
I'm sure Julie will be over the moon that she's been used as a reference point here.
00:06:26
Speaker
Yes, yeah, yeah.
00:06:29
Speaker
And so you mentioned that you had written stuff before shooters.
00:06:34
Speaker
Was it all romance or did you kind of experiment with different stuff?
00:06:38
Speaker
I actually wrote mostly fantasy.
00:06:40
Speaker
Okay.
00:06:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:41
Speaker
Yeah, because that's sort of my other genre that I really love.
00:06:44
Speaker
And I will probably visit at some point throughout my writing career.
Writing Passionately and Promotion Efforts
00:06:49
Speaker
God, though, I remember I was writing this story in university about these water goddesses and whatnot.
00:06:56
Speaker
And I let some of my friends read it.
00:06:59
Speaker
And I actually wrote the line, she clammed up like an oyster.
00:07:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:06
Speaker
So like I said, I needed some time to season.
00:07:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:13
Speaker
I think all authors do in a way.
00:07:14
Speaker
I think that's one of the big, why most authors are
00:07:18
Speaker
are older is so much of it because it is just life experience.
00:07:22
Speaker
It's not necessarily the skill.
00:07:24
Speaker
So many come to it in their 40s, 50s, even 60s, 70s.
00:07:27
Speaker
But I have actually another funny story.
00:07:31
Speaker
So when I was in university, I was taking this creative writing class and I wanted to take another class with the same teacher, but I wasn't technically allowed, so I had to get his permission.
00:07:40
Speaker
And I went to him to fill in my form and he said to me, I had written some stories in the past class about this wizarding school.
00:07:51
Speaker
And I went to him for the permission form and he looked at me and he said, you know, Julia, I think you're going to write the great American novel one day, but please no more of those wizarding stories.
00:08:00
Speaker
He signed my form.
00:08:02
Speaker
Harry Potter came out the following year.
00:08:05
Speaker
It really taught me, you know, you really need to just write what you want to write.
00:08:09
Speaker
That's it.
00:08:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:11
Speaker
Because I've talked about this lots of times in the podcast.
00:08:14
Speaker
If you try and chase the trends, especially now, because I feel like now more than ever, the trends pass so quickly.
00:08:22
Speaker
They change on a dime, you know, just in and out.
00:08:25
Speaker
You'll never, and the speed of publishing, you'll never have finished that book.
00:08:31
Speaker
submitted it to agents or probably publishers in time for it to come out within like that cycle yeah exactly yeah then you missed it and then and then you're washed out before you even got started exactly exactly you gotta write go right what you want to write and then that always comes through on the page as well if you're excited about the thing you're writing it'll come through in the words and then the phrasing and stuff yeah exactly
00:08:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:56
Speaker
Well, I will say it's funny that you, so your romance writer, um, this first book shooters is a, is a rom-com, uh, but you also fantasy from what I've heard, um, from various people in publishing, including agents is, uh, romanticy is very big up and coming trends.
00:09:13
Speaker
So it's not even up and coming.
00:09:15
Speaker
It's, it's already arrived.
00:09:17
Speaker
It's arrived.
00:09:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:18
Speaker
I mean, anyone on Tik TOK knows that is definitely, yeah, it's, it's here.
00:09:24
Speaker
It's here.
00:09:24
Speaker
Amazing.
00:09:25
Speaker
Are you very active on, are you an active TikToker?
00:09:28
Speaker
I am working on it.
00:09:30
Speaker
I got really into it.
00:09:32
Speaker
So yeah, I started getting into it last year and it's quite intense.
00:09:38
Speaker
Yes.
00:09:39
Speaker
TikTok, you know, and I joined all these Facebook groups about how to, you know, get more followers and how to TikTok, you know, for authors and
00:09:47
Speaker
and just the advice coming at you was one person would say one thing, the next person would say the other thing.
00:09:52
Speaker
And, you know, and it was just so much information.
00:09:56
Speaker
And I just had to take a break.
00:09:59
Speaker
I had to take a mental health break from it.
00:10:01
Speaker
But I'm getting back into it now.
00:10:03
Speaker
In fact, I've just been using TikTok to get loads of arc readers for shooters.
00:10:10
Speaker
So that's great.
00:10:11
Speaker
So yeah, I got about I got about 30 arc readers through that.
00:10:14
Speaker
So I
00:10:14
Speaker
But I don't even know how many ARC readers are a good number of ARC readers.
00:10:18
Speaker
I have no idea.
00:10:21
Speaker
I would imagine it's one of those things that probably varies wildly from book to book.
00:10:27
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:10:28
Speaker
And, you know, people don't know what an ARC reader is.
00:10:30
Speaker
It's somebody who reads an advanced copy of your book.
00:10:32
Speaker
And then the idea is that they will go and leave a review for you somewhere like Amazon, Goodreads, those sorts of places.
00:10:40
Speaker
I guess in theory, the more the better, right?
00:10:42
Speaker
Yeah, the more the better.
00:10:43
Speaker
But I don't want to have too few.
00:10:45
Speaker
I think that's just my fear, you know, too few.
00:10:48
Speaker
I'm just trying to rack them up.
00:10:51
Speaker
Anyway, I've got 16 so far on Goodreads.
00:10:54
Speaker
Okay, that sounds good.
00:10:55
Speaker
That sounds like a good number.
00:10:57
Speaker
I've seen lots of books with fewer reviews than that on Goodreads.
00:11:00
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:11:01
Speaker
Good, okay.
00:11:01
Speaker
If those are just the ARC reviews, then when the proper ones come out, then you'll be fine.
00:11:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:11:08
Speaker
That's the hope, anyway.
00:11:09
Speaker
That's the hope, definitely.
00:11:11
Speaker
So you are using TikTok a bit.
00:11:12
Speaker
Let's get back onto actual publishing stuff.
00:11:16
Speaker
You'd written bits and bobs, but had you written fantasy?
00:11:20
Speaker
Sorry, you'd written fantasy.
00:11:21
Speaker
Had you written much romance before Shooters?
00:11:23
Speaker
Or was Shooters your first, like, I'm going to write romance?
00:11:26
Speaker
Well, so I read a lot of romance as a teenager and I did try my hand at writing some sex scenes.
00:11:35
Speaker
And I wrote them out and then I stuck the pages into an atlas in my bedroom.
00:11:42
Speaker
and forgot about it.
00:11:44
Speaker
And then I went traveling in Italy over the summer to see my relatives.
00:11:48
Speaker
And my stepmother had this urge to know exactly where in Italy I was.
00:11:53
Speaker
So up she went to my room, and she got the atlas out, and she found my pages, and she read them to my father as he was shaving.
00:12:02
Speaker
Oh, gosh.
00:12:04
Speaker
I think we're all lucky he's still alive.
00:12:08
Speaker
So that was my earliest foray into writing romance.
00:12:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:12
Speaker
But you've come a long way since then.
00:12:17
Speaker
I've come a long way.
00:12:18
Speaker
I've learned not to use the word phallus in writing sex scenes at all.
00:12:23
Speaker
It's a bad, bad word to use.
00:12:25
Speaker
That's a bad habit you picked up from the medical copywriting.
00:12:27
Speaker
Obviously.
00:12:28
Speaker
Yes.
00:12:28
Speaker
Yes.
00:12:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:29
Speaker
Too technical.
00:12:30
Speaker
That's the, that's the trick with that.
00:12:31
Speaker
You can't be too technical.
00:12:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:34
Speaker
So is Shooters the, you're signed with Katie Greenstreet at Paper Literary.
00:12:41
Speaker
Is Shooters the book that you submitted and signed with?
00:12:47
Speaker
Well, there's a story there.
Navigating the Publishing World: Traditional vs Self-Publishing
00:12:51
Speaker
So yes, Katie was a fantastic agent and she was so enthusiastic about the book and she sent it out to all the publishers that we wanted to work with.
00:13:01
Speaker
And they all came back going, yeah, we love it.
00:13:04
Speaker
This is great, but we're not going to take it.
00:13:07
Speaker
And the reasons that I got, there were two really.
00:13:11
Speaker
One was, oh, we already have a wedding themed book on our list.
00:13:15
Speaker
So I guess it's like the Highlander.
00:13:17
Speaker
There can only be one.
00:13:20
Speaker
And then the other one that I got was that in the rom-com space, they were only looking to sign younger writers with a better chance of going viral on TikTok.
00:13:31
Speaker
wow, that is ageist.
00:13:34
Speaker
It is completely ageist.
00:13:35
Speaker
I'm 48 years old, you know, and yeah, and I mean, I did look into it.
00:13:40
Speaker
I looked at, you know, all the other romance authors that have gone viral and they are all under 45 and mostly under 40.
00:13:50
Speaker
I think the problem in publishing is, I was interviewing Joanne Harris once and she said something that has really stuck with me.
00:13:58
Speaker
It was that publishing doesn't know what they want until they have it and they don't know what will sell until it's sold.
00:14:06
Speaker
And I feel like, you know, you've got a bunch of people kind of feeling their way and guessing, you know, I've spoken to a lot of people in publishing, people who sit around that table where the decisions are made.
00:14:20
Speaker
And I've told them this story and they said, yep, I've heard that one before.
00:14:24
Speaker
So it came as a surprise to absolutely nobody.
00:14:27
Speaker
And, you know, they said the reasons that really good books get turned away are just ridiculous.
00:14:35
Speaker
But there you have it.
00:14:37
Speaker
And I guess there's only so many books that can be published, but thank God for self-publishing.
00:14:42
Speaker
So that's what I'm doing.
00:14:44
Speaker
I'm really actually glad that I've gone the self-publishing route because I have a degree in marketing.
00:14:56
Speaker
I ran my own business for 15 years.
00:15:00
Speaker
I like having control over how my brand is sort of put out there.
00:15:04
Speaker
And self-publishing gives me that control.
00:15:08
Speaker
And having spoken with a lot of friends of mine who are traditionally published, there's a lot of frustration that I've heard from them about like, oh, I've put this book out there, but then they don't put any marketing spend before it.
00:15:18
Speaker
So their book is just out there with nobody buying it.
00:15:21
Speaker
And they don't feel like they themselves have the power to market it, you know, without checking things with the department or whatnot.
00:15:30
Speaker
So yeah.
00:15:33
Speaker
So I think that doing it myself is just giving me that freedom.
00:15:36
Speaker
I think I would have gotten frustrated with publishing house marketing teams because, I mean, I can't talk about everything I'm doing, but I've got some amazing things coming up for the launch of this book.
00:15:48
Speaker
And I just probably wouldn't have been able to do any of them if I were signed under a traditional contract.
00:15:55
Speaker
Yes.
00:15:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:56
Speaker
Because you'd have to sort of run things up the chain of command and get sign off.
00:16:02
Speaker
And one reason I work for myself is because I make a very bad employee.
00:16:08
Speaker
So, yeah, I like being in control of that.
00:16:11
Speaker
But the marketing is intense.
00:16:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:14
Speaker
It's basically full time, right?
00:16:16
Speaker
You're becoming a marketer for yourself.
00:16:18
Speaker
Oh, you are completely.
00:16:19
Speaker
You know, I wake up at 5 a.m.
00:16:20
Speaker
to write.
00:16:22
Speaker
And then it's because I know that that's the only time that I will have in the day to sit down and put pen to paper, so to speak.
00:16:29
Speaker
And then because I've got two young children as well, six and 11 and yada, yada, yada.
00:16:34
Speaker
And then the marketing for this and the podcast as well.
00:16:37
Speaker
You know, I mean, I've got I've just I have a lot on my plate.
00:16:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:40
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:16:43
Speaker
Was there a lot of sort of pre kind of prep learning stuff that you needed to do, that you wanted to do, I guess, going into self-publishing?
00:16:52
Speaker
Well, God, I feel like I've done a degree.
00:16:55
Speaker
You know, there's just so many decisions you have to make.
00:16:59
Speaker
You know, do I go wide?
00:17:00
Speaker
Do I go exclusive with KU?
00:17:03
Speaker
All kinds of things that you need to decide for yourself.
00:17:06
Speaker
But, you know, you come up with a strategy.
00:17:08
Speaker
I wrote a marketing plan.
00:17:10
Speaker
I'm a big believer in marketing plans.
00:17:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:13
Speaker
And, you know, yeah, just slowly, I'm doing what I can do.
00:17:18
Speaker
You know, there's only so much that I can do.
00:17:21
Speaker
And I've had to accept that myself.
00:17:24
Speaker
But yeah, no, it's, it is intense.
00:17:28
Speaker
What would you say to someone who was thinking about self-publishing and sort of from a very starting point say, you know, where should I begin?
00:17:39
Speaker
What's the first thing that I need to figure out, understand and self-publishing?
00:17:43
Speaker
Well, definitely the first thing you need to decide is where you're going to publish it.
00:17:48
Speaker
So there's two ways.
00:17:49
Speaker
There's wide and there's narrow, I guess let's call it.
00:17:53
Speaker
Wide is when you allow loads of different publishers to have it like Kobo, Apple, Google, you know, blah, blah, blah.
00:18:00
Speaker
And narrow is when you would just go through Amazon.
00:18:05
Speaker
Okay.
00:18:05
Speaker
What's the benefit of just going through Amazon?
00:18:08
Speaker
Well, you don't have an audience yet.
00:18:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:11
Speaker
So you're trying to build an audience.
00:18:13
Speaker
And if you go into Kindle Unlimited, then, you know, you get paid on how many pages people read in Kindle Unlimited.
00:18:22
Speaker
So it's an income, you know, that's first and foremost.
00:18:25
Speaker
But also, you know, you're just getting it out to a wider audience.
00:18:29
Speaker
However, the downfall of that is that you're not in control of that audience.
00:18:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:34
Speaker
So Amazon, you know, they have all the details.
00:18:37
Speaker
You don't get any of those.
00:18:37
Speaker
You don't know who's buying your book and you can't really communicate with them.
00:18:41
Speaker
So moving forward off, you know, onto the second book, that's when I'm going to go wide because then you have a lot more control over where your book is and you can, you know, people can interact with you more and you can get your newsletter list going and, you know,
00:18:57
Speaker
and et cetera, et cetera.
00:18:58
Speaker
So that's kind of my, that's, that's my strategy anyway.
00:19:02
Speaker
I'm sure that there are people who stick with Kindle Unlimited through their whole career and, you know, do Facebook ads and Amazon ads and, and just run their career through that.
00:19:12
Speaker
But, you know, you're kind of, you're kind of at the, at the mercy of Amazon then.
00:19:19
Speaker
And I don't know that something about that doesn't sit a hundred percent right with me.
00:19:24
Speaker
Yeah, no, I know exactly what you mean.
00:19:27
Speaker
Because, yeah, they could just change a single policy and then that could... Exactly, they could change your royalty percentages, anything, you know, and...
00:19:37
Speaker
And, you know, and then, and then that's that, but, uh, I've actually written, um, so I've been documenting all the marketing that I've been doing on my blog, on my website so that other debut authors can look and just see, I mean, even traditionally published authors, you know, go and have a look at all the stuff I've been doing because, um, you know, there's a lot and you can pick and choose the things that you actually want to do for your
The Rise of Self-Publishing and Community Resources
00:19:59
Speaker
book.
00:19:59
Speaker
So.
00:20:00
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's really interesting.
00:20:01
Speaker
And it's interesting to see with self-publishing sort of becoming a much more prevalent thing in the publishing landscape, I think.
00:20:11
Speaker
I mean, if you look at the, I don't know if anyone paid attention to this, but Penguin were trying to buy, trying to merge with Simon & Schuster and that got blocked.
00:20:21
Speaker
I think we were all paying attention to that.
00:20:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:24
Speaker
But they made a lot of reference to self-publishing and Kickstarters, talking about Brandon Sanderson getting the biggest Kickstarter of all time.
00:20:31
Speaker
And that was a huge sort of in defense of, oh, you need to let big publishing merge and get a monopolies and stuff.
00:20:39
Speaker
So that kind of just tells you how big self-publishing is becoming.
00:20:44
Speaker
It's huge.
00:20:44
Speaker
And then there's all these sort of...
00:20:46
Speaker
these more disruptive sort of pseudo-traditional publishers like Bookature and stuff.
00:20:52
Speaker
They're doing things which is like, it's kind of like traditional, but it's also kind of not also traditional.
00:20:59
Speaker
It's exciting.
00:20:59
Speaker
I think there's some cool new stuff coming out in publishing.
00:21:03
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot of flux right now.
00:21:05
Speaker
And I think it is a good time to self-publish.
00:21:08
Speaker
I've actually gotten involved with the Alliance of Independent Authors.
00:21:11
Speaker
I'm an ambassador for them.
00:21:14
Speaker
And the figures that they've sent me from studies that have been done, there really is, like if you look at the ratings of traditional and self-published books online, there's like the tiniest of differences, both at the high end and at the low end.
00:21:31
Speaker
That's true.
00:21:32
Speaker
So, you know, and there is definitely a snobbery out there about self-publishing.
00:21:38
Speaker
You know, I've heard, oh God, this is the thing being on Twitter, you know, you hear, you hear, not Twitter, sorry, TikTok.
00:21:45
Speaker
You hear a lot of stories, you know, they, there was one lady who said she went into a talk with a traditional, traditionally published author.
00:21:53
Speaker
And he said that if you're self-published, you're not published, you're just in print.
00:21:58
Speaker
Wow.
00:21:58
Speaker
The thing is, I think where it comes from, I think, and I know it used to be very frowned upon to be self-published, but I think it's because people, I guess people imagine it's like when you self-publish, they're thinking, oh, you're just writing a first draft.
00:22:15
Speaker
You haven't got a clue what it is and you literally just put it straight on Amazon.
00:22:18
Speaker
but so like what they're kind of not realizing is yes that can happen but also there's nowadays you can you can pay you know you can have an editor that you know a professional editor who's worked at lots of different publishing houses you can have like you can pay a freelance artist to do an incredible cover piece you can get all the copywriters you can get you know what all the stuff that a publishing house has and like does to for the actual i'm just talking about the book itself you know the quality of the book
00:22:48
Speaker
You can do all of that very like freelance on an individual like basis.
00:22:53
Speaker
And there's also companies that will that provide that whole service to you.
00:22:58
Speaker
Completely, completely.
00:22:58
Speaker
And I mean, if anyone out there is thinking of being self-published, definitely go along to the Alliance of Independent Authors website because the amount of support and information that is in there is, you know, you don't need anything else.
00:23:13
Speaker
And there's a Facebook group.
00:23:15
Speaker
If I have a question, I go in and I ask it and somebody who's published, you know,
00:23:20
Speaker
100 books.
00:23:21
Speaker
I don't know.
00:23:21
Speaker
They'll come on and they'll answer it for me.
00:23:23
Speaker
So it's great.
00:23:25
Speaker
And also, I mean, I'm also a member of the Romantic Novelist Association, which again is, you know, if you're whatever genre you're writing and trying to join an association that is related to it, because there's lots of support and help in there as well.
Future Projects and Genre Exploration
00:23:40
Speaker
Yeah, the RNA are great.
00:23:41
Speaker
I've done lots of interviews with members of the RNA and worked with them through some of their award shows and stuff.
00:23:48
Speaker
And they are one of the sort of best, most supportive genre-based associations, I guess.
00:23:55
Speaker
Yeah, no, exactly.
00:23:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:56
Speaker
So, I mean, speaking of RNA, romance, you're writing romance, you're working on, you've just confessed that you're working on something new, which you're going to go wide instead of tall.
00:24:07
Speaker
Is it going to be more romance, a similar kind of theme?
00:24:10
Speaker
Well, yeah, it's actually a trilogy.
00:24:12
Speaker
So, so yeah, so shooters is book one.
00:24:15
Speaker
And the second one is called F stop, uh, which is another photography, photography phrase, but it also kind of has another, I bet you would say, um, and, and then the last one is called exposure.
00:24:25
Speaker
Well, working title is exposure, uh, but that's great.
00:24:29
Speaker
So, um, so yeah, I'll get those three sort of out of the way and published.
00:24:33
Speaker
And then I've got some, I've got some other ideas that still take place in that same universe.
00:24:38
Speaker
Um,
00:24:39
Speaker
But then I've got other ideas as well that I am keen to explore.
00:24:43
Speaker
So we'll see.
00:24:45
Speaker
It sounds like your fantasy roots are kind of showing their heads with the way that you've structured this romance trilogy universe.
00:24:54
Speaker
Yeah, my universe.
00:24:56
Speaker
Yes, exactly.
00:24:59
Speaker
Marvel universe better watch out.
00:25:01
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:25:01
Speaker
Shooters is coming for you.
00:25:05
Speaker
Would you, I mean, we did touch on it earlier, but once you finish with this trilogy, which is rom-com, do you think you'll ever go back to something like fantasy, maybe a different genre, maybe a different age group?
00:25:17
Speaker
Oh, definitely.
00:25:19
Speaker
I don't know about age group, but definitely different genres.
00:25:23
Speaker
I just think, yeah, I mean, it's difficult because when you're building a career, a self-published career, you kind of need to give the audience what they're expecting from you.
00:25:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:32
Speaker
But by that same token, I mean, romance readers are some of the most widely read readers out there.
00:25:38
Speaker
And, you know, if I write something that it's a little bit more women's fiction or literary fiction, I think that there'll still be an audience.
00:25:45
Speaker
You know, my audience will still read that.
00:25:48
Speaker
So we'll, you know, we'll give it a go.
00:25:51
Speaker
We'll see where I land.
00:25:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:54
Speaker
I mean, that's also the beauty of romance.
00:25:56
Speaker
And I know romance isn't often frowned upon genre, which is totally unjustified, because I feel like I write fantasy, I'm writing fantasy right now.
00:26:05
Speaker
That's the current manuscript I'm working on.
00:26:07
Speaker
But just like there's a big romance plot, like subplot that runs through the whole thing.
00:26:12
Speaker
That's great.
00:26:12
Speaker
Like romance is in so many stories that people just kind of overlook and then they sort of look down the nose and be like, oh, you're just reading romance?
00:26:21
Speaker
Are you writing romance?
00:26:22
Speaker
Well, often, you know, it's that romantic thread that is the one that really hooks the reader.
00:26:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:28
Speaker
And keeps them turning the pages.
00:26:30
Speaker
So, yeah, romance is everywhere.
00:26:32
Speaker
I don't understand the snobbery towards that.
00:26:35
Speaker
No, it doesn't make sense.
00:26:37
Speaker
But people, they like to feel superior about something.
00:26:40
Speaker
So, you know, whatever.
00:26:44
Speaker
It is what it is.
00:26:45
Speaker
Exactly.
Fun Finale and Podcast Wrap-Up
00:26:46
Speaker
And with that, I think that brings us to what is always the final question, which is one that I'm sure that you have asked and thought about many, many times on your own podcast to Lit Chicks.
00:26:59
Speaker
And that is, Julia, if you were stranded on a desert island with a single book, which book would you take with you?
00:27:06
Speaker
Now, I think that you're probably going to tell me this isn't allowed, but I looked it up on Amazon and you can get this as a single volume.
00:27:14
Speaker
But I was going to say Lord of the Rings.
00:27:17
Speaker
You can get it as a single volume?
00:27:18
Speaker
You can get it as a single volume.
00:27:21
Speaker
I mean, I'm so lucky that when the ship went down, I happened to have that with me.
00:27:25
Speaker
And when I washed up on the island, I was clutching it as a flotation device.
00:27:31
Speaker
But yeah, so yeah, I think Lord of the Rings.
00:27:34
Speaker
How many pages is that?
00:27:35
Speaker
That's a lot of pages.
00:27:37
Speaker
That's a lot of pages.
00:27:39
Speaker
I could probably also kill food with that.
00:27:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:27:42
Speaker
You could hunt with it.
00:27:43
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:27:44
Speaker
You could make traps.
00:27:45
Speaker
So it's a very practical choice as well.
00:27:49
Speaker
That's great.
00:27:50
Speaker
And I am fascinated to see how big that book is.
00:27:53
Speaker
I'm going to look it up when we're done.
00:27:56
Speaker
I mean, Lord of the Rings, always a classic.
00:27:58
Speaker
The grandfather of fantasy in many, many ways.
00:28:01
Speaker
Nice to see you going for your fantasy routes there.
00:28:04
Speaker
Yeah, well, you know, it gets the imagination going.
00:28:07
Speaker
Yes, of course it does.
00:28:08
Speaker
Of course it does.
00:28:09
Speaker
Well, thank you so much, Julia, for coming on the podcast and talking about your new book and the things that you've been doing and just sharing your experience.
00:28:17
Speaker
It's been really great chatting with you.
00:28:19
Speaker
Great.
00:28:19
Speaker
Thank you for having me on.
00:28:21
Speaker
And for anyone wanting to keep up with what Julia is doing, you can follow her on Instagram and Twitter at Julia Boggio or on TikTok at Julia Boggio writer.
00:28:32
Speaker
Shooters is out and available for you to buy as of this going live.
00:28:36
Speaker
So what are you waiting for?
00:28:38
Speaker
Go get it.
00:28:39
Speaker
Of course, check out Julia's podcast, Two Lit Chicks, where Julia and Edward interview authors about the books that changed their lives.
00:28:46
Speaker
It's really interesting stuff.
00:28:48
Speaker
And I definitely recommend it.
00:28:50
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss an episode of this podcast, follow along on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.
00:28:54
Speaker
For ad-free episodes and some exclusive benefits, head over to the Patreon.
00:28:57
Speaker
And for more bookish discussion, check out my other podcasts, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes.
00:29:02
Speaker
Thanks again to Julia for coming on the show.
00:29:04
Speaker
And thanks to everyone for listening.
00:29:05
Speaker
We'll catch you in the next episode.