Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see as a guest.
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Mindy: We're here with Stacy Ennis, who is an author and an entrepreneur, who describes herself as a location independent entrepreneur - meaning that she has moved her business and worked as a freelancer independently in four different countries at this point. So she's gonna talk to us a little bit today about different things that authors can do to find success. Everything from branding to marketing, to all different kinds of avenues of success for authors. So why don't we just start out by you telling us a little bit about what you do and what it means to be location independent.
Stacy: First of all, I am super excited about our conversation 'cause I don't get to talk shop very often. So I've been really looking forward to this. I've been in business for 13 years. I started my business back when I lived in the Dominican Republic. I was a teacher. I taught high school Language Arts, and then continued building that business when we moved to Vietnam and then to Ohio where I got my master's in writing. And then to Idaho where I'm from, and then to Thailand, and now we're in Portugal. Nobody's story is linear. As writers, we're trying to find a path that will let us do the thing that we love most in the world, and we have to be really creative with that. So my first business iteration was called Freelance Expat. I had this brilliant idea that I was going to go around to all the restaurants and businesses and help them have better signs and menus. Turns out that nobody wanted to hire me. I worked in the magazine world for a long time. As we do, we try different things until we find something that sticks, and eventually I got into ghostwriting and I worked in the magazine world for a while - ran Sam's Club's magazine, Healthy Living Made Simple. And then I worked with a Nobel Prize winner for four years as a ghostwriter, and that was so educational, so interesting. And I think both of those things were really catalyst for what I do now, which is I have a team of writers, editors, just phenomenal people that help bring ideas into the world via books. So I get to be like a book sherpa in some ways. So it's pretty cool.
Mindy: You're so right about how we find our way to what we do through circuitous routes sometimes. They never know what is gonna come up next, and it's something that people that work in jobs that are a little more traditional or a little more focused... Sometimes when I talk about my career, how I operate... Like right now, for example, I've been on the road for a little over two weeks. I drove from Ohio to Kansas two weeks ago with my car, probably un-safely loaded with books. And I have a series of school visits out here across Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas. So I have just been living out of my car and living in hotels for two weeks, and I got another week left. Obviously, I had these school visits planned. I have no idea how many books I'm going to sell, how lucrative it may or may not be on that end. And I just put every single book I owned of my own into the car, and I drove out here and I'm like, "Well, I hope I make some money." When I talk about that and how I operate as a freelancer - you don't know how much money you're gonna make year to year. And as a writer, you don't know if you're gonna get the next idea. If your editor is gonna like the idea. If your publishing house will buy the idea. You don't know. And there's just not a lot of security, obviously. No insurance. No... I have insurance, but I have to pay for it. They don't have retirement. I don't have a 401K. And when I talk about these things, all of my friends that have a traditional job just like break out in hives.
Stacy: Sure. Yeah, 'cause it's scary, right? Having an unknown path, unknown destiny, but it's also thrilling at the same time. 'Cause there's so much adventure ahead of you.
Mindy: Absolutely. I enjoy taking risks and try my best to curve my expenses when I'm on the road. And I was telling my friend last night, when you're traveling like this you end up with these weird windows of not having anywhere to go. So it's like, I gotta check out of this hotel in about 45 minutes and I can't get into my next one until 4 o'clock. And I just kinda got six hours to knock around in my car, and my next hotel is only 20 minutes away. And so it's like, "What shall I do with myself today?" It can wear you down, but generally, I just enjoy being a little bit more free, a little bit unstructured. So talk to me a little bit about someone who wants to be a writer who might be scared of that kind of approach to life.
Stacy: I would say that I have less of an appetite for the uncertainty. I love risk. I'm actually a big risk-taker, but I also have a family that I support. My husband's a stay-at-home dad, and so actually a big focus of mine has been on stabilizing my business and ensuring that I'm growing year over year. Also, we've made some location decisions that take off some of the burden that we had in the US. You mentioned healthcare, right?
Mindy: Yes.
Stacy: So that's one of the great things about the lifestyle that we built is that you actually can make decisions that are supportive of the life and the business that you want, that can also lend some of that stability, but also adventure and fun. So I fell in love, probably like many of the listeners did, with books when I was very young, and at age 7, I knew I wanted to be a writer. What's interesting is that going into that career field, I felt like I always had this message that I was just gonna be like a starving artist. And that was the only path that was available to me. And it was a really limiting mindset, and then I went into teaching just as a post bachelor's "I don't know what to do, but I wanna travel," and quickly realized that working 80 hours a week and making what I was making just was not gonna fly in my life long term. And I read this book, The Well-Fed Writer, by Peter Bowerman. It's gotta be like 2006. It's gotta be really old by now. Really important mindset shift for me. So, the whole point of this book is to make $60,000 a year as a writer. That's the goal that he sets forward for you. You know, to me, that was a crazy amount of money 'cause I was a teacher at the time, and that just seemed like, "Wow, if I could do that, I have arrived."
Mindy: Right.
Stacy: But one of the things that I thought was so internally shifting for me was this idea of utilizing my craft, of my talent, my love, in a way that actually makes money. Not feeling like guilt for using that to earn my income. I kind of always had this idea that that was bastardizing. You know the craft. If I used my talent and skill to earn money, there was something wrong with that. And so that was a big shift. And interestingly, later on, when I went to grad school at the University of Cincinnati, I was in a professional writing program. We had a creative writing program. I actually got that from one very vocal colleague of mine that gave me a lot of hate pursuing this path that I could actually make a good living. Thankfully, I was steeled enough in this idea that you could be working at Starbucks suffering for your manuscript at night, or you could actually be making decent money as a writer or editor, and also pursuing your craft. Why does that have to be a problem? For me, that was huge because I started to think about "What if I could actually have a really abundant life and actually really like what I do?" That was a really interesting shift for me.
Mindy: I love the conversation because I am very familiar with the feeling. Selling out, right? Are you going to make art and be that character of the starving artist that's talented and amazing and just getting by and dies at the age of 35 of tuberculosis, right? Or are going to farm yourself out and use your skills and ghostwrite or co-write or churn out material for other people or for a company and actually make some damn money. I know. I too, when I was younger, was all "do it for the art and be a pure artist and write what you want and don't force things that you don't like." And now I'm just like, "You'll pay me to write a non-fiction proposal about something that I think is utterly ludicrous? Yes. Tell me how much you pay me. I'll make it work." At the end of the day, we might be creatives, but we're also human beings with bodies. And those bodies need to be fed and they need to be sheltered, and we have to pay the bills somehow. So I'm very familiar with this argument. I've had it with myself multiple times. I have been a starving artist, and I have also found ways to make money. I've mentioned multiple times on the podcast, I also write underneath a pen name. And my pen name is absolutely ridiculous silly, silly fluff. When I started doing it, part of me was just like, "Oh man, is this really something you wanna do with your time?" And it makes money. And it's fun. I'm just churning silliness. And it works. You know, I write dark stuff, hard stuff, difficult things, hard topics. That can really drag me down sometimes, and so I'm writing that under my real name. And then I go and I write ridiculous things under my pen name, and it's a relief and I can make money doing both. And I don't have to have a sense of absolute pride in my creativity in this monument to art that I have produced underneath my pen name. I'm like, "Nope, that pays the bills, and I'm good with it."
Stacy: Yes, yes, yes. And well, there's two points there that I'd love to touch on. One is that mindset shift and also that joy that you get that actually feeds your creativity, and that's so important. But then also to build on our earlier discussion on mindset, there's also another level mindset that I found along my journey, and I'd be curious to know if this is true for you too. So first, I had to come around to this idea that - oh, I could actually make a living using my talent and skill and actually something I really enjoy, and it could be more money than I'm actually making now. And potentially, I could have a more abundant life than I have right now. But then there was, I would say maybe... 'cause I've been in business for 13 years, so I'd say maybe the first five, six years where I kind of accepted that I was still not gonna do that well. I'm doing pretty well and maybe I should just be okay with that. And then there was a point when I kinda lifted my head up and was able to kind of anchor in the value that I bring to the clients that I was working with, and I would say this holds really true today.
You know, you mentioned your proposal. I'll talk about non-fiction ghostwriting. When you bring this skill to another human who has something that is so deeply meaningful to them, and you're able to bring this skill and collaborate with them to bring to fruition that they never could have done on their own. So together, you're making something that neither of you could have created. This is beautiful collaboration. That is so valuable. It's more valuable than X dollars an hour. It's more valuable than like, Oh, I could never charge more than X dollars on this type of project. And so I started to recognize that in myself and the value that I bring in the world, and I actually started to divorce myself from market rates. So I actually don't even look at them anymore. That was a huge shift for me, and I think I would be in a very different place if I had always made my pricing decisions based on what other people were dictating my value as.
Mindy: Well, and that's the other thing. When you have a skill, and I run into this a lot with other writers too that offer editorial services or ghostwriting services, even writers that are doing Zoom calls and school visits - people don't want to charge what they're worth. But, often also in the area of the literary world that I move in, it is highly populated by women and women often will not ask what they're worth. It's something that I have started to realize that I wasn't charging enough for a school visit, for a Zoom call, for a library visit, for my editorial rates, I wasn't charging enough. Over the course of the past, maybe, three to five years I have started to raise my rates and people will still pay for it because they recognize the value. Now, at the same time, I will add that when it comes to my school visits and my library visits, I try really, really hard to make myself available. 'Cause I grew up in the middle of nowhere, and I try really hard to make myself available to school districts and libraries that don't have the opportunity to bring somebody in. So for example, like I said, right now, I'm on the road, and there was a really tiny community library in Arkansas that wanted to get me, and I gave him a price and they're like, we can't afford that. And I cut it in half and they were like, "Let us talk to our board. We can't give you anything." Well then, another library 15 minutes away from that one was like, "Hey, we heard you're gonna be here. Will you come?" And I was like, "Yeah," and I gave them my rate, and they were like, "Yeah, no problem." So I emailed the first little library back and I was like, "Listen, I'm gonna be right down the road. I'll do this visit for them. They're gonna pay me. I'm in the area. I'll pop over to yours, and I'll do yours for free."
Stacy: I love that.
Mindy: They were so excited, and it was a wonderful visit. Like it was lovely. And so I always try to have that little balance of, if you can afford me, I am going to ask for what I am worth and what you can afford. And if you can't afford me, I am going to work with you. I do try to move through the world aware of one thing - of the privilege that I have now. That people even want to pay me to show up, right? That is a balance of what I'm worth versus what people can afford, and occasionally finding a space in between.
Stacy: Yes. I love that so much. And it's interesting, since I niche in business and leadership, they see books partially as a marketing investment. So they're coming with an expectation to pay. Like you, I look for opportunities to invest my time freely in other places that I can be giving. That is enabled by charging what I'm worth in other settings, right? 'Cause if I wasn't doing that, I would be so frantic looking for the next gig and not have enough time. Really deeply believe that when you charge what you're worth and then add 20%, 'cause it's probably... Especially if you're a female listening, that really allows you to show up with generosity in other communities.
Mindy: Absolutely, I agree with that. Showing up with generosity because I can. Because this library has plenty of money, and they didn't even blink when I gave them my rate, I'll just show up for you for free. And I love that feeling of being able to do that. I get to do both. Like, I get to make money today, and I get to give back. It's a lovely feeling.
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Mindy: So moving on then into talking about writing as a job and writing as a business. Tell me about some ways that writers... Finding little ways that they can try to make some money apart from their own creative endeavors, their own works of the heart.
Stacy: One of my top pieces of advice for anybody that's getting into writing, maybe it's a second career or maybe they're younger and they're getting into this field, is to pick a professional niche. So pick something where people actually have money and they are expecting to spend money with you. This is part of why I find it can be really difficult editing fiction. Brand new fiction authors often have no budget. It's difficult. It's not that you shouldn't follow that calling, if that's where you're feeling called. But I have found that if you really wanna build a business that is consistently bringing in solid cash flow, that's supporting not just an okay lifestyle but a great lifestyle, pick a professional niche. So for a long time, I worked within health and nutrition. And so I mentioned that Healthy Living Made Simple magazine that I worked with. I mentioned the Noble Prize winner I worked with. And then I also worked - actually, my grad degree - I had a funding through working at a research journal. So I worked at a scientific journal during grad school as well. That was a great niche because again, people that wanna work with, at the time I was mostly editing eventually got into ghostwriting, they have budgets. And that's important. You don't wanna have to convince people of the fact that they need to spend money on you. I know early on I used to get a lot of emails that I bet you've gotten Mindy, and lots of people, where people wanna quote unquote "partner with you." They'll share the royalty at the end of the project if only you'll come in and edit the book. And I feel for those authors because the process of writing and publishing a book is like a baby, and I'm not being dismissive of that.
It's just that I also, again, I'm a sole earner of my family. I have things that I have to pay for. That has been one thing that was a really great decision that I made early on, not really understanding that I was making it. I started working with a lot of business and leadership books, and I really enjoyed that because it's like birthing big ideas. A lot of the time you're helping these really intelligent people make their ideas, pull them together, build frameworks around it, and then that book is a launching pad for so many other things for them. So for me, that was just a really fascinating area to get into. Find something that interests you. I'm also still really interested in science and medicine, so that made it in nutrition. So that was fun. I was always learning, and I was getting paid to do the thing that I'm great at within that niche. But it needs to be something where people have money. They're expecting to pay you something.
Mindy: When it comes to putting yourself out there as a writer that will offer those kinds of services, how do you go about building those skills in the first place?
Stacy: All through even high school, I took extra classes. I was submitting for publication even in high school, and then got a Bachelor's in writing and a Master's in writing and editing. And so I feel like I went this path that most people don't take and that is a long journey. But I've seen some of my colleagues... And actually there's a woman that I worked with for over 10 years now on various projects, and she went a little bit of a different path. And she started with an editing certification which I thought was such a smart way to go about getting also some validity so you can go to potential clients and have this certification. But then, I imagine we'll agree on this one too Mindy, is read. Read. Be a student of the genre that you wanna work in. Absorb what's out there. It doesn't have to be books. I started with articles, and I had really consistent work writing 8 to 12 articles a month for a certain client and doing other content for them too. So I create their social. I would create content strategy. So if maybe going to write books like I'm talking about is freaking somebody out right now, there's other things that you can do. I would also think about, "how do I make that very stable?" Let's say that you work to develop that skill set. You're reading within that genre. You're also ordering other books that you can study from on craft, on developing your writing. Going in a writing, short form content can be very unstable. So I'm always encouraging people to look for when they get a potential client that comes in, getting them on a 6 to 12 month contract versus doing an hourly rate or a per article because that's just a really quick route to being cash poor and stressed out.
Mindy: I remember trying to find ways to freelance and make money and looking at those little jobs, those little content production, getting paid per article and seeing how small they were and realizing how much work I would have to put into writing those and just little throw away things. It was difficult, but it did also help me build some skills, learn how to put myself out there, approach clients, and learn how to do some of that content writing. So I do think that, yes, like getting those larger projects and landing those people that are more likely to pay you is a step towards that financial stability. Having those little jobs, those little gigs, that can be really hard. But they do add up. One of the things that I do on the side, obviously, I run this podcast, and I have the blog of the same name. And the blog's been going for like gosh, 12 years now, the podcast for maybe four or five, and they do make a little money. They don't make a ton, but they make a little bit of money, and so it's something that... It's just, I keep moving forward with it because I have other ideas, things that I'm going to build off of it. And so I started a blog in 2010 and then that turned into a podcast, and now my next step is going to be starting online classes and downloadable courses that people can buy and use and interact with me as a coach or a mentor or an editor, or however they wanna look at it. Sometimes you take that first step a long time ago. That first step was that I started a blog, and now it's a podcast. And hopefully it'll also become an income source for teaching courses, and so those things can build. And as the world changes, you don't know what's gonna come out of it. So obviously when I started the blog, everyone was blogging. Everybody cared about blogs. And now everyone has a podcast, and so it's like, "Okay, I will start a podcast and build off of this." And next I'm gonna do courses, and I don't know what comes after that. You have to stay nimble, I think.
Stacy: Yeah, you're building a foundation. And what's cool is you have so many possibilities ahead of you. I think you make such a great point, just about the building. You triggered this memory. When I was building my business, I went through different phases where I was just like grasping at anything trying to figure out how do I make this work. And I took this gig at a travel company, which by the way, is the worst niche. Don't try to make money travel writing. I tried that. I tried really hard, and nobody wants to pay you. The woman who was essentially functioning as my boss... My Spanish was not great, and I still remember she wanted me to make all these phone calls in Spanish to gather information for some things that I needed to write. And I was just fumbling, a hot mess on all of these calls. My, again, Spanish was very poor at that point. And I remember her being really angry with me and telling me I wasn't trying hard enough to speak Spanish. And then after that, I remember leaving and being like, "Wow, this is not what I was trying to sign up for." I set a goal of sending out 30 query letters to 30 publications in 30 days, which I'm sure you know is a huge undertaking. It was like three to four hours a day of work, and finally, one, one, replied to me. A publisher. And they gave me part of a book for a course at a university, and then that turned into my first book. You just have to keep moving forward until something starts to click and the doors start to open, and you get to build amazing things like you're building.
Mindy: Absolutely. I agree with that completely. Last thing, let listeners know where they can find you online and where they can look at your services that you offer.
Stacy: Sure. So I'm at Stacy Ennis dot com. I also have a podcast, it's called Beyond Better, and I have a blog that I've been running for a long time, just like you, Mindy. I'm on Instagram at Stacy Ennis. I'm on LinkedIn as Stacy Ennis. Those are the places I show up the most frequently. And then I also have a program for aspiring non-fiction authors. It's called Nonfiction Book School, and you can find that at nonfiction book school dot com. I also have a self-study version I just released. So, I feel like you and I are working in tandem on a lot of stuff, Mindy, on putting more things out into the world. The self-study version of this is nonfiction book school dot com slash self study.
Mindy: Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.