Transcript
Speaker: Hi everyone, a quick heads up ahead of the episode. Unfortunately, it's been brought to my attention that there is a scammer impersonating me. They've been emailing people from a faked account, posing as me, and offering paid packages to come on the podcast. To be clear, there is no payment involved for guests. I do not charge guests to come on the podcast, and obviously that means there are no packages for guests and the like.
Speaker: If you're unsure that you are in communication with me or the scammer, you can check by messaging me on my verified Instagram account at rightandwrongpodcast or through my website, contact page, rightandwrong.co.uk forward slash contact. That's all from me. Stay vigilant and enjoy the episode. Ooh, a spicy question. I love Because the writing is sort of everything, right? Like you can fix plot holes, but if the writer... So some readers love that and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this. So it's kind of, it's kind of a gamble.
Speaker: Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast. On today's episode, I am joined by a bookshop owner, publisher, author, and so much more. It's Zibi Owens. Hello.
Speaker: hi Thanks so much for coming on and chatting with me. um From the research that I've done, i can tell that you must be an incredibly busy person, so i appreciate you making the time.
Speaker: You are doing pretty much everything that I think a person can do within books and publishing, from writing, co-writing, editing, publishing, and even starting your own bookshop.
Speaker: um Before we get into all of that, which I'm very excited to do, ah Let's start with, as I always do on this podcast, your upcoming book, which is out on September 22nd. So it'll be out around the time that this airs.
Speaker: Tell us a little bit about between chapters, how I started over, took some chances and found the plot. Thank you. And yes, I am busy, but it's good because I love books so much. So none of it feels like work. Well, maybe some of it, most of it doesn't feel like work. Between chapters, how I started over and took some chances and found the plot is my seventh book. It's a collection of essays all about a period of time in my life of reinvention when I thought my life was going one way and i decided to make some changes and it went in a totally different direction. It was written over the course of a decade.
Speaker: during which time I got divorced, I got remarried, I went from being stay-at-home running a media company, I moved, my name changed. I mean, literally anything you can think of changed over the course of these 10 years. And along the way, I wrote my way through the funny times, the sad times, which is how I process everything in life. And I have taken the funniest, the saddest, the the most compelling essays from during that time, but also have written a bunch of new ones and collected them all into this book, which marks a new chapter in my life as my kids, my older kids head off to college and i turned 50 and oh my gosh, it was just time to to look back and collect what I'd been through and hopefully it will help other people going through periods of change or
Speaker: times in their life where they could use a laugh or maybe even a cry. Okay. Very cool. And this is you said, like you said, seventh book, this is you've done a few essay collections now, a few and anthologies of things.
Speaker: Correct. So I have edited three anthologies, meaning other, I mean, I'm sure all your listeners know, but anthologies are other people's essays, which I have aggregated. i'm like the you know, like the schoolmaster collecting in everybody's essays and then putting them in ah in a book for everybody to read. This book is my first standalone collection of only my own essays.
Speaker: Although I'm so tempted to aggregate more stories that I've also launched a between chapters substack, which is other people's essays. We have over 100 already of other people writing about what chapters they're in between because I just can't help myself. I really love hearing other people, what other people are up to. So I do have that as a companion, but it is not a book and the book is my own essays.
Speaker: Okay, right. Okay, that makes sense. So this additional substack that you've created between chapters, is that is your goal for that to just be an ongoing thing that will kind of keep going indefinitely?
Speaker: Yes, I'm learning so much from that, to be honest. I mean, I already know what happened to me. i'm I'm excited to share it with everybody else. But I get every day we have a new essay and I get to learn, like, what is it like to go into retirement? What is it like to graduate college now? What is it like to lose a child or something absolutely horrific? So everybody is is sharing these deeply personal moments. And that helps me get through my life, which is really why I love books, because I turn to books and writing, and I'm sure you do too, for all of that you know older sibling kind of advice where you get to read about other people's perspectives and experiences. And i don't know, i feel armed with all of their help from all the books I read. I i get to live my life a little more informed and prepared.
Speaker: Yeah. It's about the finding like empathy, right? Cause sometimes, and I bet you, you've probably found this already with between chapters is like someone will write an experience that you maybe are familiar with, but then because of various different things that happened to them during that time, they kind of reacted differently or felt differently about that situation than you had.
Speaker: Totally. Yes. I think it's really important to understand different perspectives and be able to tolerate different opinions as opposed to just you know putting your own forth as the be all end all. We have to have room for everybody's thoughts and feelings. Otherwise, how do we even...
Speaker: really go ahead as a functioning group of human beings. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we we've obviously established that you love stories and you love books and you love hearing other people's stories. Um, so where did all of that begin for you? When did you decide that you kind of wanted to be a part of publishing and kind of writing and and the bookish world?
Speaker: Well, I fell in love with reading as soon as I could read. And i read Charlotte's Web, I found myself crying in the bathroom at, i think, age eight or something. And I was hooked on reading as soon as I began.
Speaker: And then as soon as I started writing, which really was, I guess, third grade and in school or when I was about eight or nine, um I found I loved that just as much. And because I was so inspired by the books I was reading, it made me want to write as well. My grandparents, when I was 10 years old, published two of my short stories as ah as a miniature book. My grandfather was a miniature book publisher.
Speaker: as like a hobby. He was actually a rabbi. And he published they published 20 of these limited edition, beautiful little books. And I had my name on the spine. There was a little about the author. And I just thought, oh my gosh, this is the coolest thing. This is what I'm going to do. So from age 10, I was dead set on becoming an author. It just took a little longer than i thought it would. Okay.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was kind of reading back through what you've been up to for the past few years. And am I right in thinking that whilst you did always have this dream, this was always something that you were, feels like you were kind of heading towards um ah being a writer and all of that.
Speaker: ah Am I right in thinking that this actually kind of all started with the podcast? Yeah. You are right in a way in that the podcast at the time i started it was a means to an end in, in one instance, but also from a place of deep curiosity and passion for books. i didn't know I would end up starting what I have started now, but I will say I've always been extremely entrepreneurial and from a young age, I was starting businesses. One of my first ones was going door to door and selling 25 cent bookmarks that I had designed myself.
Speaker: In fact, just to tell you how old I am, I was trying to save up to buy myself a record. So yeah, I'm old. um In fact, one family, I went to their door and And the there was a the man of the house or whatever answered and was like, what are you doing here? And said, I'm trying to sell bookmarks. He was like, why? i was like, well i'm I'm trying to save up to buy a record. And he was like, you go on home and have your parents buy you the record. And he shut the door in my face. I couldn't believe it. So anyway, I've had ah early experience with rejection. Let me put it that way. um But I have ive always been interested in in launching businesses. I've worked at many startups and also have that. um
Speaker: compulsion and desire to do so. Went to business school so I could figure out exactly what I was doing. So those two things combined and what I'm doing now. ah ah When I got divorced in as a mom of four, I suddenly had some time every other weekend to go back to reading you know with a vengeance, so to speak, and writing. And after about a year of writing essays and publishing them, um more about the just overwhelm of parenting than anything else. I wanted to try to sell that as a collection of essays and I didn't have a platform. I wasn't on Instagram and a friend suggested that I start a podcast, which I didn't even understand at all. I had never listened to a podcast before. This was 2018, early 2018. And I thought, well, okay, maybe I could just interview these authors who I've loved. And by the way, This was nothing new because when I was 11, I started a pen pal relationship with one of my with an author whose first name was Zibi, also short for Elizabeth. And she lived in Michigan. I wrote her letters for close to a year. And Then she came to New York and took me to tea at the plaza. And I just thought I had died and gone to heaven. I was like, I cannot believe I am sitting here with an actual author. So my love of authors is is not a fad. it is a deep piece of who I am as a person. so And then I did a lot of freelance work for many years and interviewed authors along the way as well.
Speaker: So anyway, all of these things combined, and I decided to start a podcast where I would interview authors similar to you and see where that led me. And i was so unsure about it that at first I was like, well, this is fun. I'm going to make a logo. And at the time I decided to call it, moms don't have time to read books because i was a busy mom. Now it's called totally booked with Zibi. And ah i i started it without, I was like, I won't tell anyone in case it's a total failure.
Speaker: But I found I loved interviewing authors so much. Like I interviewed a girlfriend of mine who had written a novel and I got to know her over the course of that hour. now they're half an hour, but more than I had ever before. And I just fell in love with it. So I've now taken the podcast and it has led to everything else. And I still do my podcast five times a week with authors and I still love it more than anything. And it has changed my life.
Speaker: So you're... When you first started, you you were doing five ninety interviews a week? No, I was not. You built up to that. okay When I first started, i was doing one a week and i was like, someone at one point suggested I do two and I was like, oh no, no, no, no I could never. I mean, i could barely do one. I was you know detailing every question and printing out quotes and I was preparing in in a different way because I was so nervous. And as I've gotten... more used to it. I've done 2300, more than 2300 interviews at this point. Now I don't need to prepare in the same way. I mean, I still prepare. it Let me make that clear. But I don't like type out my questions and send questions ahead to author. I mean, I just, my process is better for multiple podcasts per week. I've optimized it more. But anyway, no, I built my way up to five a week. And at the beginning, I never would have imagined I could have done it, but I do.
Speaker: Wow. I mean, ah obviously I understand a lot of what you're saying because i do a similar thing, but i'm still I'm still out here on one a week. It does feel like a daunting thing to suddenly go, maybe I should do more than that, but see. You know, if it's working, just keep it. Honestly, the reason I went up to five was COVID lockdown. And sure i wasn't planning on going up to five, but at that time i was like, my mission right now as we're all at home is to help authors as much as possible because at that time I had been getting to know authors for two years. I had launched a c salon series, event series. i had interviewed hundreds of authors and I was nimble enough because it was just basically me and one other person to really dedicate my time when I wasn't with my kids, which was the other, you know, 20, 23 hours of the day. um it was my own sort of emotional outlet too. So during that time I went to five a week. I also launched an Instagram live show where I was doing four ah short interviews every day for an hour. i
Speaker: launched one essay a week, original essay by an author. I started an online book club. And basically, i just was like, how can I help? This is what I think I can do. So I don't know. Had that not happened, I'm not sure I would have ever gone to five a week. But once I did, i didn't want to go back.
Speaker: sure yeah yeah i can only imagine just the it's the the logistics of scheduling five interviews ah to fit in every week is is uh is a huge huge workload but obviously you've made it work and you've made it work very successfully thank you um so the podcast ended up growing and becoming a you know a very big part of your life But 2018, I think you you you said you started it.
Speaker: Am I right in thinking that you didn't publish your first book until 2021? Unfortunately, you are right. Not for lack of trying. The first time I tried to sell a book I had written was after business school. I wrote a book. Well, I wrote it as a novel twice. I wrote it as a memoir twice and eventually got an agent and tried to sell that book, which was loosely based on my time during business school, which happened over nine eleven i lost my best friend and college roommate that day and felt really compelled to get that story out. um
Speaker: It was called Off Balance. And ultimately, that novel did not sell. And I was absolutely devastated and did not try to write fiction again for probably 15 years because I was so mortified by that failure, which felt so public because at the time I had told literally everybody I knew I was writing a novel and I was going to sell. and um So yeah, that didn't go as well. I did. it did end up connecting me with two other women who needed a ghostwriter. So I ghost wrote a book in which came out in 2007. And then I had twins and stayed home with them and my other kids for 11 years writing on the side, but not trying to publish.
Speaker: In 20, you know, I had that collection of parenting essays, as I mentioned, and it ultimately did not sell. Although i will say, i kind of feel like that's what this new book is, even though that was that was so many years ago, because there is one essay in this collection that I wrote back in those days. The rest are are far more recent, but in in some way it it took this long to to come out. um I also along the way tried to sell another book called 40 Love. a novel, which also didn't sell because i I sent it out on submission literally in March of 2020. And then it was completely irrelevant. ah And there have been many other attempts, but ultimately those essays that I mentioned, the essays I mentioned that I was releasing during COVID became an anthology and then a second anthology.
Speaker: And then eventually i sold ah the memoir, which was called Bookends, a memoir of love, loss, and literature that did come out in 2021, think, 2022, which did finally share the story of losing my friend Stacy and also linked it to all the many books that I had read in my life with a huge reading list at the end. And yes, I was i think I was...
Speaker: about 40 something. And so, yes, it took longer than when I, than when I set out to do it at age 11, but I got there. Yeah. But you got there in the end and that's the important thing. The, the book that came out in 2021, was that named after the podcast? Was that Mums Don't Have, Have Time To?
Speaker: Yes. So those were a collection of essays that I didn't mean to collect as as essays. Like similar to what I was saying about my new sub stack, I just have this instinct to get people to write things. So during COVID, a bunch of authors had been publishing on my platforms and on my website and everything. And after about five months, I put them all into one document. I was like, I wonder how many words all of these have all together. And I put it into a doc and did the word count. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is a book. So I ended up selling that book and donating the profits of that to... help find a COVID vaccine. That's how long ago this was.
Speaker: and then um And then because that was really fun to compile, I thought, well, why don't I try to do one of these on purpose? So the first one was called Moms Don't Have Time To. The second one was Moms Don't Have Time To Have Kids. And in that instance, I went out and asked people for essays and then collected them and then published it. So those two came out first and then it was bookends. um And then i I had a children's book deal fall into my lap. So I wrote a children's book called Princess Charming, which came out from Penguin Random House. That was really fun.
Speaker: So it's been a windy road. Yes, for sure. But my experience is that publishing always is. There's no, like very few people just have a simple straight line path. It's often here, there, everywhere. takes many years to become an overnight success.
Speaker: Very true. Very true. Yeah. um with So with those books then, you mentioned that you did get an agent sometime before. Did that literary agent stay with you that throughout this entire time?
Speaker: No. So the agent I had when when I was in my twenties only does children's books now. Although ironically, she didn't end up helping with my children's books, but that's fine. um No. So that was someone else. um But, and actually did I even have, Oh and no. Then I had a different agent um for the anthologies and that agent, I actually joined Twitter and This was back in 2017 or so, 2018. I joined Twitter. And all of a sudden, one of my first five followers was a literary agent. And I almost fell off my chair. I was at a k craft studio, like painting pottery with my little kids. And I was like, you guys, an agent started following me. So I wrote her back and I was like, how did you find me? And she said she had done a deep dive on my essays and would love to take me to coffee. And I was like, this is amazing. So she was my agent for a while, but then ended up going back um to work on the publisher side.
Speaker: and So I was again, agentless. And then I wrote an essay ah one day, which actually is in the book, this new book between chapters about the time when I was trying to get to parents night at my kid's school and had to run across Central Park and had an asthma attack. Anyway, it was like this funny, ridiculous essay And it turned out that one of the parents in my son's class – no, sorry, my daughter my daughter's class – sat down the hall at her job from a literary agent and introduced me. And that's who my agent now is and still has been for many years. His name is Joe Beltre and he works at Gersh. And we've now sold all these books together. So it ended up working out okay.
Speaker: Wow. My God. Yeah. What a funny sort of serendipity of meeting a lot of agents and then, and then disconnecting with them and then, and then eventually finding, and then obviously like you said, you guys have now had a number of, uh, of book deals sorted and gone out and then published. That's great. Yeah.
Speaker: Am I right thinking that also in, in the same year that your, though that first anthology came out 2021, is that also the year that you started your own publisher and magazine and book club?
Speaker: yeah I know everything kind of happened all at once. so the book club was an, when, before COVID, I had a salon series where I would invite about 40 people into my living room and do a live podcast with an author or two. oh cool.
Speaker: And when COVID happened, friends who would attend that said, why don't you move this online? So I moved it online, but it became a book club. So that started once a week during lockdown and then became once a month. And I still have that going. It's been six years where I pick a book that I think is worthy of discussion or I really enjoyed and we all talk about it online. So that started then. okay The publishing company was something totally different. So after interviewing, and I'm i'm curious about your experience talking to authors, and I know you speak to more than authors, but everybody in the in the you know literary landscape. But i couldn't believe because the how I couldn't believe that authors were finally getting to the finish line that, as we've established, I was also desperately trying to get to, and then having their launch not live up to their expectations. Their publishers weren't touring them or giving them any support, and they were disappointed. And I was like, how could this be? why
Speaker: why aren't you being celebrated? Why is this not going the way you wanted it to And I wanted to do something to change it. as As I've also said, I really like seeing problems and then trying to figure out how to fix them, launching things to help. um And so I started in the back of my head wondering, well, if I were a publisher, what would I do?
Speaker: And then when my that first anthology we discussed came out, Moms Don't Have Time To, i was finally on the other side and could see what it was like as the as the author, even though I was the editor of that anthology, you're essentially the author. And I would go into a bookstore and maybe find one copy of the book on a high shelf and realized very quickly, there is no way to become a bestselling author unless something changes. Like no one's going to discover my book, my one book and spread the word and have it take off. There must be a different rhyme or reason to the system. And I had to get to the bottom of it, which eventually I I did and learned everything I could about publishing and bookstores and and how the whole thing worked. And I started fantasizing, like, what how could i make things better?
Speaker: And in 2021, I started sort of noodling on this and I had a few calls with people to learn more. And then I thought, okay, forget it. Like, how am I how am i going to do this? Well, actually, that was probably in 2020.
Speaker: Anyway, this idea kept coming back to me over and over again of how could I do this? And could I do this? And was this really crazy? But it just wouldn't leave me alone. And so I teamed up with ah a woman, Lee Newman, who had previously started a couple of publishing companies and said, why don't we try this? Like, let's do it. I want to put the authors first and try to make publishing company the way I would want to be published if I were an author.
Speaker: And so we decided to do it in about September of 2021. And our first book called my what if year came by Alicia Fernandez Miranda ended up coming out in early 2023, because you know, publishing takes a while.
Speaker: And that's the same time I opened my bookstore in Santa Monica. So everything has been just like, I wish I could, I'm sure this is frustrating for listeners. I wish I had had a straight line and, uh,
Speaker: I didn't though. It just all sort of piled on and I kept trying new things and testing things out and launching new things. And and then by the way, a lot of things i I started, I decided after a while, like weren't working well enough or that I didn't get enough joy out of or whatever the the metrics were, launched and stopped like a classes platform and a podcast network. So I've done a lot different things, but here we are.
Speaker: Here we are. Yeah. I mean, I think that's what life is about. That's like, you've got to try something you'll never, you'll never know, or you'll always have that in the back of your mind being like, I wonder if that thing would have worked and you'll never know until you, you try, even if it turns out to be a mistake.
Speaker: How did you, how did you start your podcast? I started this podcast because I had gotten into a situation where think a lot of a lot of people do when, you know, writing a novel is not something that you need to like go anywhere to do. You can just do it at home. And I think a lot of people write their first books or novels or whatever it might be at home.
Speaker: without kind of knowing how any of the industry works. So I'd written this novel and then I sort of started going on the internet and being like, okay, well, what do I do now? You know, what's the next step? And so I joined a few like societies and and met lots of people and realized that lots of people had this same kind of thing where this sort of weirdly opaque industry that is publishing, it's not...
Speaker: immediately obvious to everyone how it works. You know, if if you're a writer and you speak to people and it's like, oh, I've written this novel. The first thing anyone asks you is, oh, where can I buy it? Like, I assume it's published. And you're like, no, there's there's about a million steps between me having written a novel and it being published. and So I thought, you know, this is something that I wanted to learn about.
Speaker: i happen to have the kind of microphone and the equipment and the the know-how to create a podcast. So I thought, Firstly, that if I told people I had a podcast, I'd be more likely to be able to speak to people who actually knew what they were talking about. And then secondly, I was like, well, if I'm going to speak to these people and learn stuff, I could just record it and then put it online. And then other people in the same situation as me could also benefit from the things that I'm learning.
Speaker: Amazing. So that was the kind of origin of it. Love it. um But we're here to talk about me. So ah we are going to get into your kind of expansion, the creation of your your empire in a little bit. But right now we're at the point in the episode where I ask Zibi, if you were snowed in at a cozy woodland cabin in the middle of nowhere, which book would you hope to have with you?
Speaker: So as I mentioned, I have four kids and my youngest is... I'm sure going to be an author one day. he wrote and illustrated a little book called Stephen the Sushi, which we printed 20 copies of. And that is the book that I would bring with me into the woods.
Speaker: What dare I ask is Stephen the Sushi about? It's about a piece of sushi that is about to be eaten and decides he doesn't want to be eaten. So somehow jumps off the table and ends up going on all these adventures with another piece of sushi.
Speaker: Okay. Okay. It's actually quite charming. Okay. So I'd imagine your son is a big fan of ah sushi then as well as writing. Yes. Okay. Great. He's a Japan-o-phile or whatever. Okay. Okay, great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, well, that that is lovely. I think that is a first on the podcast for someone having ah a book written by one of their children. So very well done. Thanks. So like I said, we're going to pick up right where we left off. um So we're talking about the the publisher and how it got started.
Speaker: That was very exciting. Oh, I should also say this next part is going to be in the extended episode, which everyone can find at patreon.com forward slash right and wrong. Be a curious, kind, literary citizen. you know Get out there, make friendships, you know be be part of the the ecosystem, learn as much as you can, and then write the best thing you possibly can and go after it and don't be afraid of hard things.
Speaker: Yes, perfect. Lots of great advice there for for people listening to to take on board with their writing journeys. And that brings us to the end of the episode. Thank you so much, Zibi, for coming on and chatting with me and telling us all about your your incredible kind of like writing and publishing journey and everything that you've been up to, including the the new book, which is going to be out around the time this airs, Between Chapters, How I Started Over, Took Some Chances and Found the Plot. That's out September 22nd. Thank you so much, Zibi. It's been so fun chatting with you.
Speaker: Thank you. You are an amazing interviewer. you have best You have the best podcast voice ever. And thank you for doing all this research. I know how much time it takes. So thank you for being just so well informed and leading such a ah fabulous conversation. I really appreciate it.
Speaker: Well, it's been my pleasure. And for anyone listening, if you want to keep up with what Zibby is doing, you can find her on Instagram at Zibby Owens, or you can head over to ZibbyOwens.com for her sub stack. And if you want to learn more about the the company and all the media stuff she's doing, the website for that is ZibbyMedia.com.
Speaker: So to support this podcast, like, follow, and subscribe, join the Patreon for ad-free extended episodes, and check out my other podcasts, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes. Thanks again, Zibby, and thanks to everyone listening. We will catch you on the next episode.
