Cait Flanders
SEASON 2, EPISODE 10:
If there's one topic we've been skeptical about this season, it's book publishing. Can you publish a book as a freelancer and still make a living? What do the finances look like? How does the process work? Our last regular-season episode of season 2 answers all of these questions. We searched long and hard for a guest who would be forthcoming about the book publishing process, and that person is Cait Flanders. She’s an author, podcaster and traveler who lives in Canada. She started her career working in the personal finance space, and has since authored two books: The Year of Less and Adventures in Opting Out. Cait talks to Jenni about publishing a book in a pandemic (weird), how much she makes (six figures) and why you might want to write a book in the first place (hint: not for the money). This week, Patreon subscribers get access to several awesome resources from Cait, including a roadmap to book publishing, tips for creating a book proposal, and a journaling exercise to help you decide if you’re ready to pause the hustle and lean into a big project. If you like what you're hearing, please subscribe to TWC on whatever platform you prefer, and leave us a review! We'll be back in April for season 3. (Btw: we have a new offering: If you're just getting started with your freelance business, you'll want to enroll in freelance biz school @ The Writers’ Co-op Academy! We're offering two courses: One that helps you create a business plan (Biz Basics) and one to help you understand media contracts. Check 'em out!)
***
Full Transcript Below:
J- Welcome to the very last regular season episode of The Writers' Co-op, season two.
W- Hello everyone. We are your co-hosts. I'm Wudan Yan.
J- And I am Jenni Gritters.
W- Hey Jenni.
J- Hey Wudan. How's life?
W- If it's fine, I guess I will say, I feel like I'm still struggling a little or a lot with finding motivation to work these days. I wonder if I'm just so burned out from the storm that was 2020, but I'm slowly getting back in the swing of things. What about you?
J- Yeah, I think I'm in the same place. I'm just finding it very much not appealing to be working. I've been moving really slowly. I've really not been pitching. I'm just kind of generally giving myself a breather, especially because we just moved. So I think I was maybe more burned out by 2020 than I realized. And so my brain isn't really ready to kick into super high gear yet. So yeah, I'm just trying to honor that I think, same as you.
W- I hear that. And I will say it is really nice to take things slow. I feel like the pandemic has shown us that and winter in general is a nice time to slow down. Even if the calendar tells us it's a new year and that means it's time to shift things into high gear again.
J- Agreed. Especially with things like your knitting projects.
W- Yeah, exactly. So Jenni, who is our last interviewee for the second season of The Writers' Co-op?
J- Yeah, I'm excited about this one this week. I chatted with Cait Flanders. Cait is an author. She's a podcaster, she's a traveler. She lives in British Columbia right now in Canada. And she started her career as a blogger in the personal finance space. She previously worked in government before she was in writing. And now she's the author of two books, which is what we talked mostly about. I have to say I kind of fan girled around Cait a little bit because I read her first book, which is called The Year of Less,a couple of years ago. I found it super inspiring. She talks about how she basically did this experiment, where she stopped buying things and she also stopped drinking as part of that. So it really made me think about sort of intentional living. I think she was really on this minimalism train before we all knew about Marie Kondo. So before it was cool. But she's really great. It was a fun conversation.
W- I love it. And I feel like I'm on the boat of buying less as my goal this year is to basically make all the clothes I want by knitting them.
J- I love that.
W- What is Cait up to now?
J- Cait just published her second book. I read that one too. It's called Adventures in Opting Out. Again, very aligned with my life right now, since I am opting out and put all our stuff in storage and we're living in a rental house and moving around. So after some time spent traveling in Europe, Cait is actually back in Canada. The book is about her time in Europe. And I think it's definitely a very weird moment in all of our careers. But she talked about that. She talked about releasing a book during a pandemic and what that was like.
W- Yeah. This book stuff is all really interesting.
J- Totally. I will say you and I have been skeptical about the benefits of publishing a book. People have asked us about that and I really think the financial benefits feel a little bit like they might not map out to me and especially for freelancers, it can maybe be a tough decision to dive into book writing.
W- Yeah, I know. And we talked about that a little last episode with Lee van der Voo. And I will say, I also get asked a lot if I'll ever write a book because I feel like that seems to be a natural part of a freelancer's career progression. Especially if you're a journalist. At some point you'll want to be an expert in something and a book is a good way to showcase that, but you're right. I'm also very skeptical. So I'm curious how Cait's thought through all of that.
J- Yeah. We talked to a number of guests before landing on Cait and I think you're all going to find her transparency really interesting. She talks about advances in this conversation, how they work, how much you might earn, what it looks like to earn royalties, how much she makes. She actually does make six figures every year, and what she likes and doesn't like about writing books. With that, here is my interview with Cait.
Well hi Cait. And welcome to The Writers' Co-op
C- Oh my gosh. Thank you for having me.
J- We are super excited to have you today. As I was saying to you, when we were talking on email, I have read both of your books. So I am stoked to be able to talk about both book writing, but also this kind of intentional living that you talk about in your book. So why don't you tell everybody where you're at right now and what you're up to what's what's going on in your pandemic life?
C- Oh my gosh. Okay. So pandemic life, um, very different obviously than what I expected, just in terms more of where I'm living. So I actually gave up my apartment at the end of 2018 so that I could travel full time. And I traveled for like the majority of 2019 and then came home at the end of November. And the plan was sort of to be here for the holidays and then to finish up some stuff for Adventures, for my new book. And then I was going to fly back to Europe and obviously I had to cancel my plans because then everything hit. So actually I have spent the last year in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada at my dad's house with my dad and my sister and our two hounds. At times it's been good in ways, like having company with you, having people around you, whereas of course before I would have been very alone and also challenging because living with your family when you are in your thirties is just challenging.
J- Yeah. It's a big difference. So tell me about your business. Like how does work look right now for you in this pandemic version of our lives?
C- Gosh, I mean, I think the one thing probably a lot of people can relate to her — a lot of writers can relate to — is that every quarter feels different. So where I'm at today is different than where I was, let's say a month ago. So I would say there's been stages of it. Last year 2020, will probably go on record for lots of authors as the worst year to release a book.
J- When did your book come out last year?
C- It came out on September 15th and it was one of those things that we could have pushed it, I guess, although that, that actually didn't end up being really a conversation. There was a lot of talk, of course, that some books they had to be pushed based on the content. It really didn't make sense for some books to come out during certain aspects of last year. But the one piece that my editor and publisher just felt really strongly about, and I don't disagree with, is that there are a lot of people still because we're obviously still in the pandemic who are, I would say those who have not been too significantly impacted by it. For many people this is and has been a very big pause and a pause that has given them time and space to think about what they actually want to be doing when we're allowed to do things again.
J- And your, your book fits really well into that, I would imagine.
C- Yeah and so, you know, there's a piece where I sort of think it's weird to written a book that in a way might actually be more helpful at some point than originally intended. But I guess that is and can be true. And I know that's been true just based on some feedback that I've gotten. But nonetheless, September 15th, I mean I'm Canadian, but I have an American publisher and you know, you guys were less than two months away from a very important election and there was a lot going on then. September, 2020 also went on record I think as more books came out in one month than ever before in history because so many books had been pushed from the spring and summer and fall is already a very busy time for book publishing. It basically set up this perfect storm of not really being able to get any media attention on the book.
J- Yeah. That makes total sense. It's busy.
C- Right? Like so busy, like an already busy with books, but then at the election, then at the fact that media teams were slashed and have been slashed and probably just continue to be slashed. People can't hire contractors or writers as often, or, or as many as they maybe had before. So it was really hard to sort of get attention or get eyes on the book. And so it sort of has had this very soft launch in comparison to my first book. I'm getting better at saying like I'm okay. And it's okay. But of course there were disappointments in that. And I think that most authors that I've talked to about 2020, it's just been like, I guess we'll just keep writing because that can't be the last launch we get to do. It was not the one any of us wanted.
J- Yeah, absolutely. So tell me, are you doing other things besides working on book projects right now, or are books your main bread and butter in terms of your business?
C- So right now, so like for the past two years, books have been it, which is wild to say, and also is something that I've known since the first year that I noticed it was going to happen — I noticed in 2019 I think it's going to be possible that all of my income comes from books. I also knew, and that will not be true forever. Like this is a very weird moment of time, but that is true for me right now. And that is largely based on how well my first book sold. I had a book called The Year of Less come out in January of 2018. And I know we'll probably get into this, but because it was a bit of a smaller advance and then it sold well, I actually started earning royalties that year, which is not that common. And so because of that book doing well, it made it, so that 2019 was fully kind of book royalties plus a portion of my advance for my second book. And then 2020, similarly, it was like the rest of my advance for my second book plus royalties.
J- Yeah. This is fascinating to me. You know, Wudan and I, I guess we've been skeptical about books just from a sort of financial perspective for freelancers, right? Folks are often asking like, do I have to invest a bunch of time upfront, you know, not getting paid and then will I make money afterward? Or what will that look like? So why don't you start us at the beginning of this process, because I think you have so much good stuff to share. So will you tell us how you landed that very first book project and what that sort of setup looked like in terms of an advance? And, you know, I know you were blogging at the time, so how did you juggle both?
C- I started blogging in, well, technically in October of 2010. Yeah. That was over 10 years ago now. And at the time I was blogging anonymously because what I was writing about was the fact that I was paying off a ton of consumer debt. And I had a lot of shame around my debt. I was not proud of the situation that I had gotten myself into. And so I blogged anonymously ,essentially just sharing the numbers of my weekly budgets. So what I was spending, how much I was putting towards my debt, like my updates were very boring. It literally would just list like on Monday I spent this on Tuesday, I spent this and you know, down in Friday I spent this plus I got paid. So then I got to put X amount towards my debt. And like, that was it. Those were my updates in the beginning.
C- I wrote that way without much extra wording for probably six months or so. And then as I was paying off my debt, I think I started tapping into a bit more of how I was feeling about the process. And so I started elaborating a little more sharing a little more of my personal life. And I wrote anonymously until I think it was like the spring of 2012, like a year and a half. It was anonymous.But in that time I will say, I mean, things were definitely different back then to where they are now. But back then, there were sort of a few new, personal finance sites that were either comparing products for people or ones that were writing content just for women and their money. And because there were so few back then, and there were also actually, so few of us writing about personal finance, it was sort of very easy to get connected with the companies. And so there was one in Canada that reached out to me because that's where I live and I'm from. And they asked if I would write — it wasn't that many — but it was something like, can you write six articles over the next three months or something? And the pay was like nothing. It was like a hundred dollars an article. And I just said yes, because I was like, Oh my god, someone else wants me to write for them and thinks I'm good enough that they'll pay me something. So I just said, yes. And then I also worked for, I don't even know if the site exists anymore. It certainly does not exist the way it used to, but there was a company called Learnvest that was based in New York City. And I ended up working with them as like a barely paid editorial assistant. Like I wrote maybe 10 or 12 articles when I was there, but did a lot of stuff in the backend of WordPress and finding better pictures for articles and all kinds of little things just to help them with their blog. I worked with them for probably a year or so. And I was doing all of this on the side of, I did have a full-time job.
J- Yeah. I was just going to ask you that. I think I remember from your book. Were you working in a government job at the time, and then doing this on the side?
C- Yeah, I used to work for the provincial government. So I had a full-time job and a full-time income. And then I did all of this on the side where, I mean, in a way I'm like, it's just worth saying I was like 26, 27. I was not partnered. I did not have kids, you know, and this is what I did. Even though I had friends and I could have had a social life. I literally just spent my evenings at home, like writing and working on other things. Yeah.
J- We talked to a lot of folks whose that's their setup, you know, the way they start getting into writing. Tell me what was that moment when I don't want to say that you made it, but when someone approached you and a book deal started to look like an option based on the writing you were doing?
C- I think it was three years maybe into blogging. The first thing that happened was I actually got a full-time job offer from a personal finance site in Toronto. So I moved across the country and I was working full time, like as a writer and editor of their site. And I did that for three years, but in that time just kept adding freelance, like any kind of freelance that came up. I definitely had a pretty strict process for the companies I wouldn't would and would not work for, especially in finance. Like there are so many institutions that I had no interest in ever working.
J- How did you choose? What was that decision? What helped you pick a yes versus a no. Were there red flags?
C- I think again, it was knowing a lot of other freelancers. So we would talk about the companies to each other. We would talk a lot about like what the experiences were like working with them? How much were they paying you? One of the best things I remember about that time was that a lot of us were women and something I loved was that we would always talk about our rates with each other to make sure that everyone was getting paid the same or just being paid better than what their initial offer was. It was so much easier to be like, Oh my god, they only offered you 300. I'm getting five ask for more. I loved that aspect of it. But yeah, it's a lot of like comparing notes and stuff, but then also just knowing the financial institutions, especially in Canada, that just, I wouldn't want to partner with, whether it's something I knew about them or experiences I'd had connecting with them in the past.
At the end of the day, there was only one that I actually did, like kind of the most work with. So I was freelancing quite a bit still on the side of my day job then. And so actually like two things happened at the same time, which is where it got sort of weird and like confusing to figure out how to manage it. Because at the middle of 2015, I actually quit my day job because I had been doing so much freelance on the side. And then I'd been presented with an opportunity to do about six months of full-time freelance work with another company. And a lot of these were now at this point of like, these are companies that I'd worked with for a long time. It wasn't so much all brand new ones coming through, but I really had a rapport with sort of like a handful of ones that I've been working with. So the opportunity was just perfectly there, presented that I could quit and at least try to go full-time freelance. And I was so nervous about it because I had always had sort of steady employment. That was something that was really impressed upon me also. Both my parents worked for the government their entire careers. So I was terrified to do it, but I did have savings for the first time in my life. I had about four/four and a half months of living expenses in the bank, plus six months of full-time work ahead. So it was like, if I only get to do this for six months, it'll be worth it.
J- Yeah, totally. That's always my line for folks when I'm coaching is: it's an experiment, right? You could do this for three months and then go back to the full-time job. That's how, when I jumped into it, I think that's how I thought of it because I couldn't imagine doing it long-term. It was too scary. So to think of it as six months seems like something that is doable and workable.
C- It's also because if you've never had anyone in kind of your immediate circle do this, no one can tell you it's going to work.
J- Totally. And I mean, still I feel like that. No one can really promise me this is going to work the next month or the month after. There's something I love about that and something that's hard. So bring me back to that time. So you're working for yourself for the first time.
C- Truly. And so my last day at work was June... I think it was the 26th, June 26 of 2015. The 12 months leading up to that is the 12 months that I had been doing something I called a shopping ban back then, where I just like was not buying anything unless I absolutely needed it. That is why I had savings in the bank for the first time in my life. And that experiment ended on July 6th of 2015. So 10 days later. I did an interview with a writer from the Forbes website, which I don't know how the Forbes website does these days, but back then it got a lot of traffic. And I did an interview just about the shopping ban, what I learned, how much I had saved and all of that. And the morning it came out, the writer wrote to me and just said, Hey, like, here's the link. Just an FYI, these profiles have a tendency to go viral. And I had no idea what that meant, but within two weeks, basically not everyone, but a ton of media outlets had picked it up all over the world and shared it. And I'd been contacted by six different literary agents, all saying, "do you want to turn this into a book?"
J- Wow. So it's all kind of like one piece. And you're just newly freelancing too. So talk to me about what that process looked like. Right? So you have all these agents reaching out to you. Do you pick one? Do you write a book proposal? Talk me through that process.
C- I had no idea what to do, because after the first email or two you get, you're just so excited and then you get sick and I'm like, I literally don't know what to do with this. And so I fortunately I had one friend in Canada, his name's Chris Bailey. He had written a book and I knew his agent was in New York and that it was a similar thing. Everyone was in New York who had reached out to me. And so I had all kinds of questions even just about being a Canadian. And can you work with someone in the States? Like, what does that look like? How are the finances? What are tax things like? How does all of this work? And I reached out to Chris, like very long story short, Chris ended up connecting me with his agent because she said just simply like, I'd be very happy to answer Cait's questions.
C- She was incredible. She answered all my questions, but she also gave me really amazing advice about getting an agent, which is, she said as a writer, it's so often that is the moment you dream of: get an agent, someone who's going to work on your behalf. But don't just get stuck into like the excitement. You want to pick an agent who is someone that you can imagine working with for a long time. So she was like, imagine you're about to commit to a longterm relationship with someone, someone who you don't want to write just one book. You want to write three books or five books. You want to have a career as a writer. And who is the person that you can imagine talking to for the next 10, 15, 20 years? Like who is that person?
J- Interesting. Yeah, because it is, uh, many of the people I know who've worked with agents have at least a decade under their belt with the same person. So that's great advice. Talk to me about how you picked, did you pick her or did you pick someone else?
C- She said talked to everyone, but treat it like you're interviewing them. So don't just let them kind of sell you. Interview them, ask them some tough questions. I don't really remember what I asked anymore, but it was good advice. And then she said, she did say at the end of the day, if you don't like any of them, I would love to work with you. And I talked to all of them. There was actually one other agent who I felt like it could have worked. It probably could have worked. I don't know about super long term, but maybe two books or something. She seemed really great, but there was something about the way my agent talked to me. She just talked to me like a normal person. And I found a lot of other agents, they used just really big language or they talked in a way that really, for me, went straight over my head.
C- And I just thought, I'm just like a regular person. I need someone who will just tell me how it is. I don't know. I always joke about this, but I'm like, my dad's a sailor. I swear too much. Like it doesn't come across or I don't share that publicly very often in my writing voice. But I just need someone who's going to tell me how it is and not butter me up or not trying to sell me things. I feel very allergic to all of that kind of language. And I just needed someone to tell me how it was. And she was, it. She felt like the best fit. So I ended up working with her.
J- Love it. What is the financial setup with an agent? Like, I'm sure folks are listening to this and thinking like, should I go get an agent? So, you know, is it just for books and what does that relationship look like financially in terms of them, you know, sharing in the profits that you're making?
C- Yeah yeah. So I do think this piece is very standard from all the discussions that I've had with at least the author friends that I have. Your agent takes 15% not just of your advance, but also of all your royalties. So any book that they sell, the standard rate seems to be 15%.
J- Okay. That's great to know.
C- So you don't pay them anything upfront. And I mean, I'm sure that there are like, I dunno, things out there that they try to tell you need too, or something, but in my experience, that's not how it should work. They make their money by doing their, their job of selling something that you've pieced together.
J- Yeah. That makes sense. So tell me, tell me what the process was like once you said yes to her, were you building out a proposal? Were you working with her or other folks on the proposal? What did that look like?
C- Yeah, so the first piece of it was just that, because I had committed to this like six month contract to full-time work, I just said to her, and it actually worked out perfectly because she was just about to have her first kid. And so she was going to take like a three or four month maternity leave. And I said, that's actually kind of perfect because I don't really have time to even think about this right now. Like I have to fulfill my obligations of this other contract. So we didn't really do anything actually for about seven or even eight months. I feel like I didn't really start working on the proposal until like February or March of 2016. And then she is very hands-on as an agent and not every agent is, but she was really great at sharing examples of sort of past proposals that she had worked on, including actually my friend Chris' proposal.
So Chris talked to me a bit about how that process looked like for him. I got to read his proposal and go through it kind of dissect what goes into it. Writing nonfiction is so different in the selling process than fiction. With fiction, you're selling not just an idea, but like you're actually providing either the full manuscript or at least half of it, probably you're submitting writing that's already been done. Whereas with nonfiction you're writing a proposal of an idea that you have. You'll probably include a sample chapter or two, which is what I did. So I wrote the introduction to the book. And then I think chapter one or part of chapter one. You're writing like this massive overview essentially of what the book will be about, the overall lessons people will get from it. These things are confusing because it's total proposal writing. You're not writing the book, but you're writing what the book will be about, breaking it up into even chapter summaries. So like in chapter one, I'll write about this and this will be the lesson from it. And here are examples of stories I will tell in it. And so it's a long document. I think both of mine had been between like 40 and 45 pages.
J- Tell me about how you juggled that with your other freelance work. Did you wait until that was truly done and solely focused on this? Or were you working on your proposal in the midst of other projects?
C- Definitely in the midst of other projects. The big one was done. So when I was working for that one company for those six months, I was probably doing at least 30 hours a week with them. 30 hours of actual work, not just when you're sitting around, like in an office, 30 hours. Like actual work. So that was exhausting. So I was done with that project, where I'd maybe pick up 10 hours a week to little bits here and there. But I was freelance writing on the side, I think mostly for one bank, but maybe two.
J- It was busy then. So you were really juggling.
C- I was definitely juggling a lot now, what was interesting these felt like very calculated decisions as they were coming up, but you know, that one client had kind of dropped down and I intentionally decided to not pick anything up in its place. That happened with one other client as well, where like they could only give me half the work, and my normal instinct was to go, okay, I need to replace that income immediately. I need to find something else to replace that $500 or whatever amount it was like, I need to figure something out immediately. And this was the first time where I thought, no, like I've kept saving, but I still had all my savings because I had been working full time for that one company. I essentially had an income, right? Like I had a full-time income plus I had had that four to four and a half months of living expenses. So I was just like, no, it's okay. I'm not going to replace that. I'm going to spend the extra hours on the proposal. And I will just use a little bit of my savings. Like I've never dipped in fully. I've never used it all up or anything, but I will dip into it. That is why it's there. So there were a lot of sort of head games, or like mindset stuff that I had to work through to make it okay that I wasn't going to pick extra work up.
J- Absolutely. As you're saying this, I'm thinking, you know, Wudan and I have had doubts about book writing because it requires a pause, right? It requires this very scary pause that a lot of freelancers struggle with and digging into your savings can feel kind of like really scary. Do you have any tools or tricks that you used to work through that in your brain? I'm thinking of myself. When I say I'm going to turn down work, I have a really hard time doing it unless I sort of have really intentional practices in place. So do have anything that you use to sort of manage that, I guess, slow-down anxiety is maybe what I want to call it.
C- Yeah. No, I think that's good. Things I remember explicitly doing were: so very intentionally, if I knew I was losing, let's say $500, I would literally just right away take the 500 from my savings and put it in my checking account. So it was just then in my budget and I didn't have to then do these calculations of like, well, how much of my savings am I going to use? I'm like, no, nothing changes. Like my spending cannot change. I'm just taking this 500 because I'm not going to get that. And so it's this immediate exchange rather than the question marks or the uncertainty of the dollar amounts.
J- Yeah. I like that a lot. My therapist would call that an investment in yourself. She always calls it. Yeah. She's always like, you need to think of using that $500 of savings, an investment in, you know, some future project that's going to maybe help your life, take the shape you want it to take. Right? Can we skip a little bit towards that like agent pitching book advance process, and I want to hear about kind of how you manage that mindset wise as well. So what did that look like? Did your agent take the proposal and shop it around for you?
C- She did. Yeah. So she shopped it around. I'm going to say in June of 2016, I remember because we actually sold it on July sixth, 2016, which was one year from the date that article had come out. It was actually the day before my birthday, because my birthday is July 7th.
J- That's crazy.
C- So she would have shopped it then in June. So I think people, I think she probably sends it to like, I dunno, 20 editors. So there's a process where editors will come to you. Like maybe they are interested, but they have some questions for you, the author. And so I remember having a few phone calls with a couple of different editors at different publishing houses. I remember one specifically, I probably botched it a bit because I just, I was so at this place with that project where I really didn't, I think, have the belief in myself that the book would even sell.
J- I can totally see that it's so new. Right? You can't even imagine yourself doing something like that. I think when I talk to people about adding new services or taking on new projects, that to me is maybe the biggest barrier is like trying to sell yourself in an area where you don't know if you can do it yet. Right? It's hard.
C- Yeah and I think I also definitely had imposter stuff in the beginning of thinking like, Oh, I'm just a blogger. And even though you're not recognizing, or I wasn't recognizing things like, okay, I wrote a blog for X, many years. I've also been freelancing for almost that entire time. Like I started freelancing within a year of blogging. And so I'm not just a blogger, but like your brain, your brain, or my brain just saw it that way. And so I just didn't trust that it would work. So at least one of the phone calls I don't think went that well, but then one of them was great and that was with my editor Anne who ended up picking it up with Hay House. And it was very interesting, I will say even for me, because I didn't know what Hay House was.
They're like just massive in sort of the self-help and new age area. But I, first of all, didn't totally see myself as that way. And I remember saying to my agent: what do they want with me? Yes, I'm writing something that's self-helpish, but I'm not in that vein. What do they want me for? But I'm so grateful to have worked with them because I had a great publishing experience with them, I would say. And no publishing experience is perfect, but the hiccups of that one weren't like detrimental. They didn't like ruin the book or anything like that.
J- Yeah. Can you tell me about the finances of all of this? So what it looks like to get an advance and when it pays out and what that means for the rest of the work that you have going on in your freelance docket?
C- A hundred percent. So with The Year of Less, it's sold for 35,000 U.S. in the advance. It's actually weird, the first thing I want to say is there something about that that I was so grateful for and also really bothered by it because I knew male authors who had a smaller following than I did, who were getting advances over 100K, but that's a whole other thing.
J- It feels to me like there are a lot of power politics at play when it comes to advances and selling books and all of that, which we could maybe get to in a moment, but yeah. Will you talk to me about how that was paid out and then how did you use that to either take on more freelance work or not, or determine what you needed to do for the future?
C- Yeah. So the 35,000 was paid in three installments. So you get, I'm trying to remember for that one... I feel like because of the amount they did half upfront. Minus my agent's cut. And then truly, I will say, one of the benefits then to me has been switching dollars from American to Canadian. It always works out better for me. So even examples I've had of, let's say, at some point I've gotten a $20,000 us check that at times can be as much as like 26,000 Canadian. Yeah. So we did half upfront is what I remember. And then, so financially, I mean, that was obviously not enough to live off of for half a year. They gave me six months to finish the book. So at the same time I still was freelancing, but because of the way that my client work was going of those six months, I feel like I spent the next two months kind of wiping out a ton of client work and like taking notes for the book and kind of piecing outlines and some things together. But then I spent four full months working on the book.
J- Okay. That makes sense. Tell me about, you know, obviously there's this advance part. There's also royalties, which you mentioned. So can you tell me what that looks like, especially for that first book that I know did quite well for you, what did that look like in terms of your bank account and your finances and your ability to take more work or work on your second book?
C- Yeah, yeah. Six months in, or like when you deliver your manuscript, I then got another quarter of the advance and then the book came out, gosh, not for an entire year after that, the book didn't come out until January of 2018. So it sat for quite a while. And so I didn't get the third piece, so the other twenty-five percent, until then. Until January of 2018. So 2017 included a lot of freelance still because I mean, yeah, I couldn't have lived off of 25% of that advance. So there was a lot of freelance still in 2017. And then essentially what ended up happening in 2018 when the book came out was the launch was just so much bigger and more time consuming than I had ever anticipated. So I sort of thought, like, I remember going into it thinking I will still blog, even if it's just every two to three weeks, like I'll still maintain my blog. I'll still work on other things, maybe do a little bit of freelance. And it just had a life of its own in a way. Like I remember the Canadian distributor calling me a week before the book came out and saying, well, we've seen how many pre-orders there are. And so we've made it one of our lead titles, which means we're going to do like PR for you. And those were the week before. And I'm just thinking, I don't know what that means. Like, I don't know what any of this means. And essentially what it meant was that I was doing, depending on the week, anywhere from 10 to 30 interviews a week about the book.
J- Wow. Yeah. I was going to ask you about the marketing and I know it can be a pretty hefty amount of time for folks if they're going on book tour or doing interviews.
C- Yeah. And so then I'm like fast forward 2020. It was very different. But it was very busy. And so I honestly, I'd have to go back and actually look at my budgets, but I don't think I did really any freelance for about three months.
J- Yeah. There probably wasn't time. I can imagine. How do royalties work? Are you getting monthly checks and your agent's getting a cut or I think that's what people imagine. So tell me what it looks like in your day to day.
C- Yeah. So royalties, every deal can look a little bit different and like every publisher is a little bit different, but this is where I will say like traditional book publishing is incredibly old school in its processes. So I get like for The Year of Less, two different things happened actually. For some reason, Hay House didn't buy the audio rights. So that was a separate deal. So if I push that aside, all my sales for the physical book and the ebook, I only get two paychecks a year. So they are for six months of sales and even the pay is incredibly delayed. So the way it works, and this is like what I've been getting for the past couple of years, is that in May kind of like the end of May, I will get a check for the sales from July to December the year before.
J- Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. Can you tell us what your annual income kind of looks like when you're thinking about this whole picture book writing, maybe like 2020 and 2019, you know, once you were kind of both feet into this, what you were making or ballpark at least.
C- Yeah. Yeah. So Canadian, so it'd be a bit, a bit less the U.S. But for 2019 and 2020, both years in Canadian, I made about $110,000.
J- See, this is a case for doing this. You're convincing me Cait, maybe.
C- Well, maybe because I will say again, like a huge chunk of that is The Year of Less. And so I sometimes have a very strange relationship with that book. I don't know. I mean, I do know why — I've done enough therapy on it to figure pieces of it out. The reality is I just don't think I liked myself back then. So while I'm grateful that that book exists, when I look at it, I see sort of a little version of myself that I didn't like back then.
J- Yeah. And to have that book be the one that carries through, I can imagine it's like stuck to you. Right. I can imagine it feels like it's just sort of stuck to your forehead. We're closing out on time, but I have two final questions for you. The first is what are the benefits to writing books kind of beyond the finances. For you, are there pieces of this that you love in terms of workflow or recognition or, you know, other projects, things like that, that you want to call out that you think people should consider?
C- Oh, I mean, if I can say anything about books, is that in a way you sort of have to do it not for the money. I think that we write books because we have ideas or stories that we really want to share. That we really want to put on paper. And if it's nonfiction that you think even a sentence of it might help somebody. Yeah. Because when I do reflect specifically on the year of less, like that book, technically it was about a year where I didn't buy anything. But the best thing that has come from that is any person who has told me that they stopped drinking as a result. Like that is the best thing, because I talk about my relationship with alcohol as well in that book. And the book itself isn't about that money piece or that, I don't know, what it's going to do for you next. That's been the best thing for that book for me. I remember getting to the end of just the first draft of The Year of Less and knowing there were things that needed to be fixed and knowing it was not perfect. So there's two lessons in it: I think there was learning to submit imperfection, like that you're never going to get it perfectly right. And any book you publish is never going to be perfectly right. There are always going to be things that you're going to want to change, but the most important piece is that you can at least read it and say, there's nothing in here I would want to remove. That's a huge lesson for me. And the second one when I submitted it, I remember thinking that was a huge creative project. And I did it.
J- Yeah, I can totally see that. Right. The, it takes so long and you're putting so much of yourself into it that to see it out in the world must good. Complicated, but good.
C- And just this sense of like, it gave me this weird sense of confidence that I can take on a massive creative project. Wow. Like that in my childhood would have been a thing I would have thought was so cool. And I actually did it. And then finishing Adventures again: 2019 was actually a pretty hard year for me. And the fact that I finished a book during it. It wasn't in the moment, but like months later, like more into this year was I able to reflect and go: wow I actually wrote a second book. Okay. I can write big things. What is next?
J- I love that. Okay. Last quick question for you is the best business decision that you've ever made. So any advice you'd give to other folks.
C- Tell you very specifically, but a larger meaning or message of it. Very specifically, it is every time I have said no to working with companies that didn't align with me or a huge thing for me was that I never made money from my blog. I turned down every single opportunity to do an ad or a paid link or sponsored content. I turned everything down because for me, my readers and my respect for my readers attention was always more important. Where I think that has been benefited me is that I've built a very trusting community in that process. And so if you're, at least if you're blogging or just doing things on the internet, like remember that there are real people that you could be influencing and taking that very seriously. I think it's very easy to sort of, in the content creation space, to see followers as numbers. I was like, no, there's actual human beings who are reading and consuming your content and what you say matters and will affect them. Just being very, very cognizant of that. Like it's a responsibility to take care of them as much as it is to write good content.
J- I hear you on that. Very much. The people who are listening know that my 2021 word is impact, right? Just sort of understanding what I'm doing and how it's impacting people on the other side of the computer screen. That matters to me very much. So I love that. Okay. Well, we are all out of time, but Cait, thank you so much for all your generosity and candidness and good information. I think folks will find it super useful.
C- I'm so glad. Anything that helps, I'm so glad. So thank you.
J- See, on the internet.
W- That was a really fascinating look into books. And I think Cait's wisdom about writing a book for more than just the money makes a lot of sense.
J- Yeah. It jives with what we've always thought about this. And I think what Lee said last episode, too, right? That like it's an investment. It's sort of a long-term thing. And I do think Cait actually makes more though than I assumed you could make from books and without freelance work on the side as well, it's kind of impressive.
W- Yeah I think it comes down to the team that you work with, the agent you choose and how popular your book is.
J- Yeah. It made me feel sort of, I think, both slightly more amenable to writing a book as a career pause moment, but then also very clear on the pros and cons. I think it's definitely not for everyone. It's definitely not for every moment in your career and you probably need some savings and side clients to make it work. At least based on what Cait told me. I think actually it really jives with a lot of what Lee said about sort of knowing that you're in it for more than the financial gain.
W- It's funny to hear you say that a book can be done at a moment where your career is on pause because I just listened to Longform with Ed Yong and Ed, who has been covering the pandemic for the last year, extensively was like, I'm going back on book leave. And it's going to be a vacation for me to write the rest of a book. So that's fascinating to me. Jenni, do we have resources this week?
J- Yeah, we do. So Cait made us a book publishing roadmap, which is awesome. It walks you kind of step-by-step through the process of what it might look like if you want to create a book proposal and work with an agent, all that. And then she did give us a list of journaling questions, things to think through if you want to decide to pause and invest in a book project like Ed Young said. He called it, I think, like a spa weekend. He's like, it's like a spa trip to go work on my book. But she did a really nice job of working through some questions that we can all think through if we are deciding to sort of set some client work to the side and focus on a big project like this, how do you get yourself in a space where you can do that without totally freaking out as your income slows down?
W- I love it. I love planning. This all sounds great.
J- It is. And then we do have one more episode for you in the works. It's just for our Patreon members though, right Wudan?
W- Yes. And I'm really looking forward to this last one. It builds off of a lot of stuff we yell about on Twitter. It will be about how to switch from scarcity to abundance when you're building your freelance business mindset and how these mindsets govern how you work.
J- Yeah. I'm stoked about this one. I think it be really useful for a lot of us.
W- Definitely. So with that, we are officially closing out season two, but if you're a co-op member and yes, you can just join for $3 a month on Patreon, keep an eye out for that last secret episode in your inbox.
J- You definitely won't want to miss it. I think last season's secret episode is my favorite one.
W- It's quite good. And then we are going to be back for a third season in April.
J- Yep. That's right. We are doing a third season. Hurrah. It Is actually going to feature interviews with you: our listeners. Our freelancers. It's called the business edit and we are actually going to do live coaching with freelancers to help them figure out where they're getting stuck in a rut to provide tools for getting out of that rut. I think it's going to be good.
W- It's going to be great. I'm excited.
J- Yeah. And in the meantime between now and April, we are still going to be offering events and we'll be sending out our Ask TWC column. We're going to feature some interviews with freelancers about the way they work. So we got lots of good stuff for you between seasons and then we will see you back here in April.
W- All right. Everyone stay tuned.
J- And with that, I will see you online soon, Wudan.
W- All right, bye Jenni.
J- Bye!
W- Season two of The Writers' Co-op is made possible by a grant from the International Women's Media Foundation. Susan Vallot is our editor and Jen Monnier handles research, admin and more as our producer. The Writers' Co-op is hosted by me, Wudan Yan and Jenni Gritters.
