Film Courage: Is being an author your dream job?
Anna David, Publisher, author, speaker, podcast host, and television personality:
All I ever wanted was to be an author the 1976 Guinness Book of World Records showed I was six
and it showed the youngest author was four, Dorothy Straight [How The World Began] and
I cried and said “I can't be the youngest author.” That's how long I've wanted to do it.
It is my dream job. Being an author, selling my books to companies and being traditionally
published was actually a total nightmare. Being able to be an author who publishes
my own books and gets to kind of do it for fun is my dream job, absolutely.
Film Courage: Do you wish you could just be an author and not have to run your own company?
Anna:That's a good question. No, I love doing all of it. It's not that I feel badly for people
who say that they write all day but I think that sounds kind of boring. I love that I get to write,
I get to make podcasts, I get to talk to clients, I get to go do speaking. I need the variety. I
will tell you I had years when I lived in New York and I was just on contract writing books
for Harpercollins and my whole life was sitting in my depressing studio apartment with my two cats,
writing books and to me I know that's a dream for some people, not for me. I approach writing like a
job. I always think that when people talk about writer's block, I'm like Oh does the bricklayer
wake up and go I don't feel inspired? I just don't think I can lay a brick. If you're a writer,
have self-respect to do it every day. When I was writing books, my deal with myself was I
will write three pages a day but I can't write my three pages until I revise my three pages from the
day before. First time authors I don't recommend revising as you go. You should just get your first
draft out but that's how I write books that's not fun. I want to have different things. It's very
isolating to write full time. Well for someone who's an extrovert and I know you said you're
you're an extrovert yeah that that does seem difficult for those who are more introverted
and they it's almost like they dread going to the grocery store do you think that would be a dream
job or even for that type of person it would still get depressing I don't know I can't really get in
someone else's head but I will say the people who tell me oh I just want to I wish I could write
full time they're never the people who do I think everything sounds better than it actually is but I
think I think I think we also need experiences to have things to write about if we're doing
non-fiction it's like you can't just hole up and and have a whole world that you can write about
that's a great point and so when you are busy doing other things you're going to you're
getting material yeah great material if someone came to you and said all I want to do is be an
author that's all I want to do what would you tell them oh it happens to me every day
I say great what's your business and they say oh I don't have a business I just want to be an
author and then I'll say why and they say well I really want to help people with my story and
I say that's amazing go volunteer it's going to be a lot it's a it's a much easier way to
help people if the average book sells 300 copies and you could go out and volunteer
and help more than 300 people in a week that's going to be a more fruitful use of your time
I do not believe the profession of author really exists today even the most successful ones I
mean I guess JK Rowling, Glennon Doyle, Glennon Doyle's doing podcasts, doing speeches, I don't
even think that's a job anymore but for at least 99.999 percent of us it's not a viable job. I like
I said, when I was working on that book I think I made a quarter of a penny a day. I think writers,
I think all creatives should have the self-respect to say I should be compensated appropriately for
what I'm doing. I will have people who say they maybe don't say this to me but they sort of think
it's crass the way I talk about oh you need to have a business and it's like what I'm actually
saying is you should be paid for your work you shouldn't be doing it for and begging for pennies,
you should find a way to be able to live a wonderful life while also being creative.
What if the flip side of the of the would-be author comes to you and says I want to be famous
I don't care about helping anybody I want my name on all the lists. Oh I think to be
effective and successful as an author and to have it really mean anything you kind of going to have
that combination of having a really something that really matters to you and a desire to share it I
don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to be out there sharing a message I think we live
in the most magical time we live in a terrible time in so many ways and yet we live in the most
magical time in terms of there are no gatekeepers anymore. anybody can treat social media as
their own magazine, TV station, radio station publishing, company and I think so many people
look at it as this albatross oh I've got to steep keep putting content out there what if it's just
how lucky are we that we can sort of be creative put it out there whenever we want and that there's
no one there to say no you're not good enough you're not good enough so we're gonna pick her
I I think it's I think it's amazing so I think that a lot of people I run into sort of say well
who am I to write a book why should the world care about what I have to say and it's like why not you
why not so is it almost good to have a little bit of the of the bravado sort of just shameless
self-promotion mixed with some type of for lack of a better term message absolutely I think I
think that what people need to remember is self-promotion is not about you it's like
if you have a message if you were covered from something and most people who are writing memoirs
or non-fiction books have struggled with something and come out on the other side and then they say
well I'm not that into self-promotion and it's like if there's one person whose life is going
to be saved from your book you owe it to them it's not about you it's actually self-obsessed
to not share it because you think that the the that's self-obsessed or whatever it is
the average author sells how many copies around 300. And this is per year total total okay yeah
I mean there are so many books being put out now and I think people have their their numbers are
they're very confused about the numbers when I and I'm the exact same when I remember being in the
like elevator at Harpercollins and talking about the first print run of party girl and I remember
saying yeah what's it going to be like 68,000 to me when you don't know you don't know how many
that means any book if you sell 10,000 copies of your book your book has done very very very well
if those 10,000 sales happened in a week you're hitting all the best seller lists so I think
people who even just sell 2,000 or 3,000 copies of their books should feel really really really
good about it you think people are reading less now or actually more because they're using Kindle
and different things like that it's it's not as far as I know the statistics on reading haven't
changed it's the volume of books out there when I published my first book in 2007 there's a fraction
of what's available today why do most authors fail most authors fail because they have completely
unrealistic ideas about what being an author means they think they should be able to write a book and
have everybody buy it and see their brilliance that I'm somebody who had to learn this the hard
way I did it six times failing to ask myself who is this book for if I had said that on my first
book my career would be so much different you need to be able to say who is my book for and what do
I want them to do when they finished reading it and if you can do that you're going to be
in better shape than 99.9 percent of authors out there this is for non-fiction fiction's a little
bit different but so I always with one of my books Make Your Mess Your Memoir I pictured one couple
so it's two people I pictured them the whole time every page would they like this would this be too
much for them would this freak them out would they get that and I highly recommend that this
marketing idea is the riches are in the niches or if your book is for everyone it's for no one the
idea with a book is you make it for the smallest group of people possible because what happens is
that small group the people in that small group read the book and feel so seen and feel like
they have a book that's so specifically for them that they go out and they start recommending it
to people now the main reason we each pick books is somebody recommended them unlike movies where
you're scrolling or whatever it is most books are sold because somebody recommended them so
in other words someone recommending your book means a lot more than you recommending your
book so if you convert one niche they become your spokespeople they become your sales people they
go out and sell your book for them so yeah so I thought about one couple thinking if they exist
there's a lot of other people like them a lot of people talk about avatars and figure out what it
what kind of car does he drive and well all these things I don't get I just like to picture one
person or a very small group of people was this like this this metaphorical couple that you saw
out somewhere where you thought what I bet they would be into this no it's actually I'll tell you
the story so it's this couple that I knew from this mastermind group that I'm in and I and we
had talked about them hiring my company to do a book for them and I thought what's the book I
could write that would convince them that I was the right company to hire so I write this book
I get on Good Morning America for it we bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in new business
they don't hire us because I don't even think they read it I run into them maybe a year later and I
tell them the story I go I wrote a book for you I was thinking about you guys on every page and
they said that's hilarious and we were it was at a gifting suite so my book was there and guess who
I'm working with now them they did hire us wow but it really was it was really just an exercise in
I mean my books I'm writing to help build my business I want to be able to be creative and
the way I can be creative and not have to worry about money is if I have a business that it's
bringing people into so I always am looking at it and I think anybody who wants to be strategic and
smart about it looks at it like that what what do I love to do how can I write a book that will
get people to hire me to do it what does a writer need to know if they don't want their book to fail
I think writers need to get very clear about what success and failure means if
you're relying on the whims of the universe it's like saying like how do I not lose at
the lotto like you can't control what other people are going to do I know I have had very
successful book launches and unsuccessful book launches and the success didn't have to do with
how many books sold it had to do with how I went into it if you go into a book lodge and
you're thinking this has to happen and these number of books have to sell and I got to get
this review and like you're setting yourself up for disappointment if you go in and you sort of
have have high expectations but keep them loose and just decide you're going to have fun with it
it's going to be amazing because if you allow whatever the universe is going to bring better
things than you want are going to happen but if you I had such miserable book launches I
remember talking to a friend he said I never feel more sorry for people than the week of their book
launch because everybody thinks you're just having this incredible experience but if you're
traditionally published you're just hearing from your publisher usually it's not going very well
you're feeling like you got to do everything you can and you can't control it so I say when
I compare how the Party Girl launch went in 2007 when Harpercollins released my book and how it
went in 2021 when I re-released it myself it was a world of difference but it was all my attitude.