Hello Everyone and welcome back to the Rebel Author Podcast episode 15. Today’s podcast is all about life the universe and everything in between. Specifically, multiple streams of income for authors. I’ll be speaking to Rachael Herron in a moment and you’re in for a treat. We go deep, which is one of the things I love about Rachael, she has this way of digging under the skin and asking questions that force you, or specifically me, to confess things!
This week’s question is:
What do you do for self care?
The book of the week this week is mentioned in the podcast. It’s Chillpreneur by Denise Duffield Thomas. You can grab a copy using my affiliate link below.
Kobo https://www.kobo.com/ebook/chillpreneur
Amazon UK https://amzn.to/2ODpAei
Amazon USA https://amzn.to/2Sz9eEP
Rebel of the week this week is Ireland Gill. If you’d like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com or tweet me @rebelauthorpod
If you’d like to support the show, and get access to all the bonus essays, posts and content, you can support the show by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack
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Multiple Streams of Income for Authors
Find out more about Rachael on her:
Sacha Black
Hello and welcome back to The Rebel Author Podcast. Today I am with Rachael Heron. Rachael is the internationally best selling author of more than two dozen books, including thriller under RH Herron, mainstream fiction, feminist romance memoir and nonfiction about writing. She received her MFA in writing from Mills College, Oakland, and she teaches writing extension workshops at both UC Berkeley and Stanford. She is a proud member of the NaNoWriMo writers board. She’s a New Zealand citizen as well as an American Hello.
Rachael Herron
Hello. And basically, I need you to know that I just want to listen to your voice for the rest of my life. Look perfect. Podcasting voice.
Sacha Black
Oh, thank you. Do you know it’s funny you say that? That is actually why I started podcasting. I had a few people tell me that they could listen to to me all day, it’s just like, but I just waffle bollocks.
Rachael Herron
It doesn’t matter. We just want to hear you do that waffling bollocks.
Sacha Black
All thank you so much. It really does mean a lot to me. Also, I’m a bit of a cheater in that. When I was a teen, I had an agent, and I did voiceover and TV work. So I did some training. So
Rachael Herron
interesting as a kid.
Sacha Black
I bet this is terrible. It’s a terrible story. I shouldn’t say so. Negative. I’m gonna tell you. Have you ever heard of S club? Seven?
Rachael Herron
No.
Sacha Black
Okay, well, they were like a teeny poppy teenage band. And I did all of that like CDroms because that’s how old I am. And and then I did a TV show and I was on like the UK version of what must be. Wait Nope. Like Cartoon Network or something in America. I was the main lead, but then I got bullied really badly, and I never acted again. And that is the end of that story.
Rachael Herron
Voice people were bullies.
Sacha Black
You know, the children back at my school were awful.
Oh, yeah. You were too big for your britches,
Apparently.
Rachael Herron
Oh, that’s terrible. I’m sorry that happened to you.
Sacha Black
Oh well fuck them now. I’m a rebel podcast. Or not. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I get to talk to awesome people. So you know who’s laughing now. Anyway, forgive me. Tell me about you. And I would love to know more about your journey. I know that you’re a hybrid author. You have lots of different income streams. I know you have a really amazing multifaceted business. So tell me about you. How did you get to where you are now?
Rachael Herron
Oh, lots of lots of work. So much work. I think the thing that I always like to remind myself of the most is on a day like this where I’ve kind of been fighting a headache and, and lying around and whining about not getting my words done, I have to remind myself that I spent 10 years 10 full years, writing full time and working at my day job for between 60 and 80 hours a week. So it was just I don’t have kids, you know, so that I just worked all the time. And that makes me so grateful today that I even get to be whiny, you know, but um, but how I got to be a full time writer was typical story I wanted to write from the time I was a reader, yada, yada. And one day I realized that there was a person behind the books that I love so much, and I wanted to be that person. I wanted to be the person who was kind of hiding behind the books, and I still want to be that person. And but I, you know, everybody told me you couldn’t do that. So I went to school for business and I completely forgot about that. For like, you know, seven or eight years, failing miserably in college, trying to be a business major, and then I just changed my major to English and graduated immediately, and went on to get a masters. And then I went on to spend the next seven years after my master’s writing. Just I was trying to write the great American novel and I was not writing any I was like writing a very poor American chapter, you know, 500 pages of it. And then you know, another 300 page novel that went nowhere they were all character sketches. And if I’m not careful, still, that’s what I write, I just write you know, 300 pages of a character sketch and I have to add some plot to it. That is a problem.
Sacha Black
We all have our vices,
Rachael Herron
We do. We do. Some people write, plot and forget to put character development in that is not my problem. But I spent years and years trying to do that and really failing. And then in 2006, my sister told me about NaNo, which is National Novel Writing writers month which just finished and I told her she was a Idiot. And not no real self respecting writer would ever tried to write a book in a month. And I laughed out of the house. And as soon as she left, I’m exaggerating a little bit. As soon as he left, I did Google the site, and I just signed up. I thought, This is stupid. So I must do it. And I can’t do it. And I can’t write a great literary novel in four weeks. So I will write about what I love. And I love love, and I love romance. And I also really, really, really love knitting. So I wrote KnitLit it was not a thing yet. There were no there are no knitting romances out there yet. So I was one of the first on the scene for that.
But that book actually turned out to be terrible. Number one, but when I looked back at it, like six months later, I dragged it out and and actually took it an objective look at it again. And it was really terrible, but there were parts in it that were better than anything else I’d ever written because I was just having fun and I just gotten out of my editors way. And I had been one of those typical writers who thought I had to, you know, get chapters one through three right before I moved on to chapter four. So I never moved much past chapter four or five. And now I’m have the complete conviction that most writers, if they think revising, as they go is their method as I did, that is only true if you’re completing books that you’re proud of. If you think revising as you go is your method but you’re not completing books is that your method you are more of a, you must finish a terrible draft like 99% of the rest of writers, and then make it into something not terrible later.
But the whole trick is getting the words on the page, which is what nano just really ripped off, ripped open for me to see. And I revised that book and make it sound so easy, but it wasn’t I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. And then I say in the same manner, I found an agent. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. queried for a long time, got a lot of rejections stacked up. And then suddenly I had two agents interested at the same time. So I got to kind of, you know, pick the one I loved and I’m still with her. That was 11 years ago. And she sold that book at auction to Harper Collins in a three book deal. And so that was kind of the the fairy tale come true, right? It did. It really happened. And I liked it. You might know from listening to my show, but I like to talk about real numbers. Because no one knows in this industry, what we’re talking about, like what is it? What is an auction book deal? So it went for six figures 110,000. So that was like $37,000 per book, which after taxes and everything I was bringing home around, around 20,000 of that, per book, each book, there was a book a year so I couldn’t quit the day job on $20,000 you know, a year and those books completely bombed.
So the first book sold the best at all It almost earned out. The second book came out the week the Borders closed so it came out to crickets and no sales for anyone that in those few months and the third book did even worse. Interestingly, they had been bought by Harper Collins in the in the States but Random House and Australia New Zealand and I became a Southern Cross bestseller there. People really liked my voice there, and Australia, New Zealand. And so they kept the the series continuing because Harper Collins wouldn’t you know would have pushed me into the dark alley that I came out of. and rightfully so I wasn’t selling for them. Random House wanted me to keep going. So I kept writing. I wrote two more books in that series and novella and that’s how I became hybrid is my I my my name was mud in America. My name Could not sell those other romances, especially that they were books four and five and a series and Harper Collins while they couldn’t sell one through three, and they weren’t going to sell us the rights back the rights back, or anything like that. So nobody wanted those books. And this was right around. It would have been right around 2011 or so that I wrote those and just self publish them myself because I could I had the rights to all territories except for Australia, New Zealand. And I learned everything about self publishing through that venture. And I learned that I’m good at it, and I really like it. I really, really enjoy the process of being self published.
So now, I think I’m working on book 26. And I did the numbers the other day, I think 14 of them are traditionally published, and the others are all self published. So I’m pretty, pretty even even out last year, I made exactly the same amount of money for trad pub that I did on self pub. I am I’m a six figure author for the last two years, which is crazy to me, but I would say that, you know, usually it’s not more than 40 or $50,000 of that is book money. It’s, it’s the other half is all hustle, it’s coaching and teaching and Patreon and like you said, all of those different methods of income and I really, I am just so happy when when one stream of income gives me you know, $50 it’s like Yes, $50 You know, that’s going to go towards this and that’s how we make this, this writing life work. But about four years ago, I was able almost four years ago now, I was close enough to bringing in just the bare minimum from writing that I could quit my job and still make up my half of the of the mortgage and all of our our stuff my wife, she has the insurance for us. So that’s great in America, I could not have quit if she if she hadn’t had that insurance. And then my mother in law got sick. A few months before I was going to leave and so I left a little bit early. I was like, why am I spending time saving up a little bit more money where I when I could, you know, leave the state and go be with my beloved mother in law. So that’s how I made the leap. And for the last, you know, a little bit more than three and a half years, I have been terrified every single month that I’m going to end up living under a bridge. So far, we are still in the house, like I make a lot more writing now than I did when I quit. And I was just thinking about that today driving home. Because when I quit, I knew that I needed to make I think I can’t remember if it was 36 or $42,000 a year. That’s what I needed to make to make my half of the bills and pay everything that was bare minimum. And it’s only gone up since then it’s kind of every year by at least 17%. And then it jumped into into the success.
Sacha Black
That gives me a lot of hope. There are so many things I want to come back to you on this and before we before we before we delve into the millions of questions that I want to ask you NaNoWriMo So tell me, so you talked a little bit there about vomiting, the first draft versus revising as you go, and that you couldn’t get past three or four, chapter three or four because you are editing. So, excuse me. Tell me about your process. Now. Do you still write linearly? Or do you write all over the place? How does that work?
Rachael Herron
I wish I could write all over the place. I am such a boring linear person that I write the book from beginning to end. And what that usually means is I write all of the scenes in the car when they were moving from a to b and then I write the toothbrushing scene because I don’t know maybe it’ll mean something. So I write these incredibly boring scenes that are later axed so I’m an over writer. And I and you know, it’s like a curly hair versus straight hair, you always want when you are not, you know, and I would love to be an underwriter so that then I could go in and and in second draft Make everything you know more beautiful and bigger and everything instead of always just trying to, you know, trim the weeds. And I still do the vomit draft, I still write a draft as fast as I possibly can. And it’s only this year that I have. I’ve been thinking a lot about just, you know, bigger things entering middle age, you start to think about you really start thinking about, you know, who you are and who you’ve been and why you’ve been that way. And I’m learning how much of a control freak I am and how I would like to run the world and I can’t run anything, even myself much of the time. And I realized that that is why I’ve had such a hard time with first drafts for the last 11 years. 12 years, is that when you’re first drafting for me anyway, I feel very out of control. I am not a good outline, or my best ideas come to me while I’m writing and I know that and I do have to write an outline. Nowadays, especially like for the book I just sold it needed to be completely outlined out with a full synopsis, which was agony to me. But that feeling of loss of control now that I’ve named it, it’s gotten a lot easier now I know Oh, you hate this because you you are you have no control over this process. You’re vomiting terrible words out that you can’t control. And it’s fine. That’s just the way it goes. And later in revision, which I love, I will I will have fun again. But just knowing that it’s about loss of control has made first drafting for me again.
Sacha Black
I find that so fascinating because I used to vomit and and i would vomit hard and fast again and I would get to the end of the book. And I have not published in nearly a year. So I am having I’ve had… now there are many causes for why I have not published first I’ve transitioned so I’ve left my full time employment to being full time by myself.Yeah, second is just a number of burnouts over the course of the last year. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it really is. And also, then, excuse me loads of just all that mental bullshit that writers give themselves like, you know, imposter syndrome fear because now I’m not on the first book anymore. And, you know, also I write nonfiction. I teach other writers. So, you know, I’m like, what, what if I’m not good enough? You know, and so I just can’t seem to finish. But also, I think I may have had an epiphany here this evening, because I have started to edit as I write, so I, so I’m still I’m still very much a vomiter. But I will vomit, sort of 20,000 words. And then, but I don’t write in order. So I write completely out of sequence. So I just, I just No, no, no, no, no, it’s awful.
Rachael Herron
It sounds so creative.
Sacha Black
You have to puzzle this thing together. And then there’s always shit that needs removing and then you have an epiphany. So of course you have to revise the first 30,000 words five fucking times the grass this grass it’s not greener I promise you it is definitely no yeah. And but no i i feel like I need to give myself permission to just just keep vomiting and just fix it later so yeah, thank you
Rachael Herron
Isn’t that where we get our I mean for me that’s where everything comes from is and I can’t even sit down and say wow I’m not creative today but I know as soon as I start typing ideas will start to bubble up the Muse definitely comes and like you know pokes me in the head while I’m working and at no other time I’m not a person who gets incredible ideas in the shower or…
Sacha Black
I am
Rachael Herron
Are you?
Sacha Black
Yeah. Usually when I’m driving and have no ability to write anything down.
Rachael Herron
That does that does stir things up and just this the last few months I’ve been keeping a notebook every single place I am there’s a notebook on my desk. There’s one in my car. Door. There’s one right next to the bed. And there’s one in the kitchen. So and in my in my bag. So there’s always a notebook. And then I, you know, and I’ve actually been using it a little bit. Yeah,
Sacha Black
That is a really good idea. I am actually going to put a notebook in my car tomorrow morning.
Rachael Herron
And the door, the pen is attached to waking it. And you don’t have to look while you drive. And it’s easier for me than my phone when I’m driving. Because I’m just not that. I mean, I do look at my phone to change podcast and stuff, but I don’t want to type. So yeah.
Sacha Black
Amazing. Um, there’s so many things I want. I want to ask, but I fear I will literally take up your entire day. So let me ask one of the questions I’m supposed to be asking. Okay, so we haven’t actually mentioned your podcast yet. So I know you have more than one. The one that I have been binge listening to of late is called the Writers Well, and so for anybody who is listening who hasn’t listened to the right as well stop whatever you’re doing as you know, don’t keep listening. But often have you finished listening. Go listen to the Writers Well. It’s amazing. What I love about your podcast is that it’s so it’s almost philosophical, it’s reflective, it goes deep, it gets under the skin. And I just love that it makes me stop and think about my own journey. And you know, taking those moments out of the busy at just to really reflect and look at where we are. So for anybody who likes that kind of stuff, please go listen, I love it.
Rachael Herron
Thank you.
Sacha Black
The question that I want to ask is around some of the episodes that have cooled to me personally, I have a real interest at the moment about money and debt and being you know, to get to to be able to leave my job I had to pay off 40,000 pounds worth of debt in about three years.
Rachael Herron
So proud of you.
Sacha Black
Thank you. I it was never really intention. I had student loans, then we had fertility treatments, and I had to pay off a car. So it wasn’t, it wasn’t frivolous spending, but it was it, you know, it had to be paid off, because otherwise I was never leaving the job I hated. But one of the things that you and J talk about is multiple streams of income. And I think a lot of listeners would like to leave their jobs and multiple streams of income, in my humble opinion is one of the fastest ways to do that. So could you tell everybody what multiple streams of income are what they look like to you? And yeah,
Rachael Herron
I love this because I just don’t think we talked about money enough. I had a an article come out in the writer magazine, which is an American, I think it’s the oldest writing magazine in America recently about money and about shame and about how we just don’t talk about it with our cubicle mates, you know every and it’s I don’t I don’t know how it is there but here money is for showing off. It’s never for talking about honestly. So I always love to talk about money and I love to talk about debt because I think that I was we were drowning in it at one point we were we paid off $120,000 of debt and that was an old tax bill as well as that my wife’s that caught up with her $40,000 with a credit card debt that we got into when we were trying to save my old condo for from foreclosure. And back in the back in the aughts, which we did not manage to do. I owed 50,000 words, dollars 1000 words that just flew off my $30,000 worth of student debt. And it was just shackling, us and I had these big dreams of leaving this job that I worked 60 to 80 hours a week doing and didn’t you know, I enjoyed parts of it, but most of the time I was pretty miserable and I Just had this realization one day, I could not leave without paying off the debt.
Yeah, there was no, I think that most people unless you have a partner who can take care of you in a way in which I would love to become accustomed to,
Sacha Black
Wouldn’t we all?
Rachael Herron
Wouldn’t we? But we can’t, we cannot become a full time author. Unless that debt is paid, we cannot take that leap without doing it. So I really put all of my back into paying that off, I highly recommend tool called wine app, which is you need a budget. youneedabudget.com. It’s a it’s an online app. And it is it taught me how to use money. At 40 years old, I still did not know how money worked and after using wine app for a while, it’s not really a budgeting tool. It’s more like just it’s just like an eye opener of a tool. It’s like mint or Quicken or any of those other things but it’s different and I am such I proselytize for it everywhere because after you know, a few months of of using it. I told my wife I’m like, did you You know that every single animal we have and I think at that point we had like six or seven costs us $100 a month.
Yeah, so each animal will cost us a cost us $100 a month, which was insane to me. And it just was what and it kept happening to me like we spend that much on car registration a year, we spend that much. And that’s why we were always living month to month, up until this point and having emergencies that would then cripple so wineapp really taught me how to allocate funds to the things that were actually going to happen. And we paid off the debt. And what I really saw happen was were these multiple streams of income. And for me what multiple streams of income looks like to get to your question. I’ve always been wide on all platforms. I am not a proponent of putting all my chips on Amazon and letting the roulette wheel roll. I have a very strong love hate relationship with Amazon. They pay some of my bills. So thank you, Amazon. I’m having groceries delivered this afternoon via Amazon Prime. So that’s amazing. But also they’re so scary they could they could change everything we know, tomorrow with the stroke of the pen.
So I published everywhere I publish wide on all the platforms. I do print for everything. I’m available in libraries. I do audio, of course, for everything. And I have never done a royalty share. I’ve always kept the rights for myself, which means that there are some books that I have, you know, contracted out to audio artists that have never earned out yet. They’ve never never paid themselves, but I believe in having that money there. Let’s see. I teach quite a bit I teach, like you mentioned at Berkeley and Stanford. I regret my MFA in many ways, but I didn’t because it was just a load of money down the drain. And I didn’t learn how to write a book. I learned how to write a book by writing books. And by attending organizations like romance Writers of America. That’s where I really got my education. But I am so grateful to the Masters because that means I can teach in these programs. And I think most life changing for me though, in terms of you know, and then I write articles for magazines and that kind of thing, but most life changing for me was when Patreon came on the scene. And suddenly, there was this way to monetize to basically pay my own royalties. As I’m writing books, I’ve written two full memoirs under Patreon, a chapter a month, and people who support me on Patreon have been paying for those essays. And because I have to produce it every month, I’m on a per thing basis at Patreon. So if I don’t produce a chapter, I do not get paid. And that has made me write two full books. I’m like, you know, I’m working on the third now, of these with people support and these people support and you know, $1 amounts or $5 amounts. And that was on Honestly, the bump that allowed me to leave work, I was so close to be able to be able to leave my job. And then Patreon came out probably six months before I left and I thought, Oh my gosh, here’s this extra 1500 dollars a month that now it feels a little bit safer Patreon could also fold tomorrow, I don’t like to rely on anything over much. And in fact, I was we you know, we’re and we are not rich, we’re always we have we were really trying to save now for retirement and things like that. I need to make more money. But just recently, I actually cut down on some of my patreon work because I was coaching through Patreon at the hundred dollar level, I would read your work and coach you every month. And I had 10 of those people which was fantastic. There’s $1,000 and I just fired them all recently, because I was facing some serious burnout and I had to let something go and so I took that thousand dollars off my plate and my wife is like what you did what
Sacha Black
But been out is so real and I can really attest to, to what burnout is doing to me, I just had to, I’ve taken a three month pause. So I do developmental editing. And I’ve had to take, reduce the number of clients and put a limit on how many clients I take, just because my I’m only 32 and my body is falling apart, like literally falling apart. bits of me are breaking off. I just you know, this should not be happening with a DD or haven’t been well, since September, you know, and that is not okay. For a 32 year old. You should be healthy and in your prime and blah, blah, blah. But yeah, it’s it is it is real. I wanted to ask you two things on the things that you just said. And Firstly, first one, I wanted to delve a little bit more into the shame and why you think people feel shame? Because I totally agree. And you know, in England, we have our stiff upper lip. And you know, we we don’t talk about these things only to judge others on what their job is, you know, that is all we do here. And sorry for any British people listening, I do obviously love you all. But you know, we do like to charge and have a stiff upper lip. And, and the other one is to ask you to question Sorry, I’m so bad. I’m just like, all of the questions. And do you feel like a full time writer? And what does your working week look like? because lots of people say to me, um, you’re not a full time writer. And I’m like, but I am because I’m not in an office anymore. And I can choose what I want to write, you know? So yeah,
Rachael Herron
let’s start there. Let’s start there. Actually, you are a full time writer. I am a full time writer. I realized that Once when I, I did this thing for the first year or so after I left my job, I tracked my hours as if I were a lawyer or something or as if I were going to, you know, pay myself according to every 15 minutes segment that I spent doing things. And I was only writing at max when I’m writing a first draft, I can’t do more than like two hours a day of first drafting and then I just want to kill myself so that was the time I was spending writing, or revising, revising, I can do for longer but but a lot of the days I wasn’t even getting to that and I but every single thing I was doing was contributing to bringing money into to my household using my brain which understands words, so I completely empathize with what he said about editing for the first. I think probably first year I was full time writing, I edited and I now I hate nothing more. There is just this part of my brain that I’m good at it, but I get furious at having to spend my brain cells on someone else’s work and it absolutely was prevented me from working on my own. So that was another hit like the Patreon I just I do not developmental edit at all anymore and I could never copy at it because I can’t catch any typos. I’m just not good enough for that.
But, um, but I was I was rageful when I was doing that and but as long as you are using your brain and your talent with words, to bring in some bucks, you’re a full time writer, congratulations. But while I was tracking my time, I would I would have these very smug days where I would, you know, tell myself and whoever would listen that will you know, I worked you know, so nine and a half hour day to day was a 10 hour day and and finally I really I finally realized like what the hell am I doing? What is this shit I I write full time and if I want to write if I want to work, whatever that looks like for me, six hours a day, more power to me I still have this inordinate amount of guilt though around how hard I should be working. Because like, I hate it like, This morning I went out to write, I was out very early, I was out writing at the library near me. I can’t I didn’t do very many words, because I was not feeling well. So I drove home because I was going to take a nap and my wife’s cars in the driveway. And I was like, oh, god damn it, because I don’t like her to know that I nap. little booty up and gets on the train and commutes, you know, for an hour and a half a day to go work in the city at this web development job. And I’m like, I got you know, well, tired. You know, that’s not okay. And it is okay. That’s the thing. It is okay. I don’t she she helps. She holds no resentment about this. None literally, I’m the one holding the resentment toward myself for you know, have having worked very hard to get to this point where I can do this. But so I think I’m working backwards with your questions. So what the day looks like an ideal day, I start writing pretty early anytime between like 5am and seven am.
Sacha Black
I’m a hardened night owl, I think I just herniated a bit of lung or something.
Rachael Herron
So I’m not a night owl or a morning person, I’m really like I would like to be awake…
Sacha Black
Really 5am?
Rachael Herron
I know I but I worked this work this 911 job for so long. So now I’m used to getting up at any time, but, but it works really well for me if I get it over with and just rip the band aid off and get my writing done. And then I could spend the whole rest of the day. So usually So to answer your question, I write until usually, between 10 and noon, I try to do my writing and try not to look at email or anything else. And and that’s on an ideal day. Usually I got an email and I’m screwed. But the rest of the day is spent doing things like podcasting and writing other things and the marketing that I really should do but don’t. I’ve recently hired an incredible virtual assistant who lives here in open and he’s really been just helping me so much do all of those, like big marketing things that I should have done, like, make this series of box set, which I’d never gotten around to, you know, he’s handling all those kind of things. So that has been fabulous. And then I try not to work in the evenings ever or weekends. I really try to keep bankers hours as much as possible.
Sacha Black
Yeah, I should, I should do that. What do you
Rachael Herron
You know what I would, I would ask you what yours is, but I’ve already decided that I love you. And I want you on my podcast, which is all which is called How do you write and it’s about process. So on that show, I’m going to pick your brains about how you work. Is that okay?
Sacha Black
Okay. Yeah, of course. I’d be honored.
Rachael Herron
And then to your first question, which was about shame and debt. Debt is debt is a shameful thing. Debt debt is something that says I failed, right? I needed to do this or I wanted to do this, and I didn’t have the funds to do it. So I did it anyway. And there are good reasons to do that student loan. You know, like, like you said, IVF treatments. Those are great reasons to spend money that we don’t have, but it feels wrong. So therefore we don’t talk about it. And shame, I know I love Renee Brown, who does not love Renee Brown, and her research on shame, and everything that she has shown that shame exists in secrecy. And as soon as you open it to the light and tell other people your shame, you are met with empathy and the shame disappears. And I’ve seen that happen over and over again my I write right now I’m writing thriller for Penguin and I’m taking a break for romance, which I was self publishing. But my thing that I love to write as memoir, that’s my, that’s my jam. That’s what I teach. That’s what I write in the Patreon essays. And every single time I write an essay, or I think I should not tell anybody this this is the deepest, darkest secret yet. I am met with nothing but love and compassion and empathy and understanding. Yeah, so it’s, it’s, it’s just life changing for me every time it happens, and I will tell you, I think I told you J this once, but it’s not something I advertised. But about two years ago, I was feeling incredibly burned out, like burned out in a way that I’d never been before. And I could not could not write. I had had more than a year since a release. I was doing everything I had to to keep money coming in, like teaching and coaching and stuff, but nothing else nothing extra. And I decided to write a book called replenish and in this book called replenish, it was going to be a monthly essay exploration. I would try something that I thought might refill my well and I would write about it. And it took me about four months doing that to suddenly realized that I was an alcoholic. And they had not seen that coming. I just knew I drank a lot. I didn’t know. I kind of knew that I had never looked at it and And, and that was an incredibly shameful thing to number one realize I didn’t tell anybody for a few months. But I started to peel back that layer and show people that part of addiction. And I was met with nothing but love but the funny part about it is is that my brain said, who you thought you’d written about all the shameful things there’s more.
Sacha Black
There’s always more, there’s always more excuse me, Oh, I just I love every everything you’ve just said. And thank you for sharing that as well. And, and also thank you for you know, bringing up Brene brown it is Bernie isn’t it? I have had daring greatly on my audible I’ve already purchased I just haven’t listened yet. But I was ashamed of the debt. And and, and when I paid it off. I was like, Why? Because none of the things that I done you know, I had to buy a car because we had a child. And the pram wouldn’t fit in my other car. You know, we were told, I was told I couldn’t have I wouldn’t have kids because I’d go through the menopause before I was 30 they got it wrong, and I’m fine. But we didn’t for a long time that Yeah, I know. It’s a whole that’s a whole can of worms. I love my son. It’s fine.
But I was real pissed. Back then. Yeah, but you know, so, you know, we made these decisions and they had all these consequences. And they were all the right decisions. And yet still, I felt shame about them. But yeah, you absolutely.
Rachael Herron
I really like to think about money as energy and is really. It is energy that is all you know. So we none of us know how to control it. It’s it’s really, it’s really energy that is about our labor that then we trade for other people’s labor and because we don’t understand it It is having too much of it is shameful. Having not enough of it is shameful and having just the right amount, nobody knows what that looks like. So there’s, there’s just no understanding about it. And then and the more we talk about it, the more we expose that, you know, the more everybody realizes, oh, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing either. I’m 40 years old and whatever fucking, you know, managed to live more than month a month, you know. And back then my wife and I were making great salary. I was making six figures at my job day job and bringing in you know, 30 or $40,000 from from the writing and still is like, money. We another debate where did it go?
Sacha Black
Yeah, I just sit Yes. All of the against all of that. Um, okay. Right. I’m going to force myself to move on. So I have two Patreon questions. And the first one is, as the industry continues to develop, what do you think are some of the innovative ways authors can maximize that income streams for books beyond the obvious multiple formats for things like ebooks paperback, audio and foreign rights.
Rachael Herron
Those are those are all great. And I I just think that there at especially indie writers, especially indie writers, need to keep in mind that intellectual property is what we’re what is what we own. It is what we sell. We don’t write a book, we write a vehicle to turn into other things. And that is something I’ve always been aware of, but my virtual assistant Ed really pointed that out to me. He’s like, well, we haven’t we haven’t done this with it yet. We haven’t done that. Have you thought about doing, you know, a clothing line for this? You know, these firefighters? You could have the fire shirts, you could have, you know, you could have schwag you can have multiple forms of audio that acted out one’s film rights is it is a great one when you can get it I have I have one perhaps coming through, who knows those are so nebulous. But doing things, I think actually reaching out to the people who love you best, your readers of any kind. And just knowing that they want to support you, I think is one of the things we overlook at the most Patreon directly addresses that.
But there are times when I have been able to reach out to readers for other kinds of help. And they are there and this is this is a this is an nonsense thing that I wouldn’t you know, I wouldn’t have to do now thank God but but years ago, I had a knitting blog before I ever sold a book. So I already I always had a readership that started in 2002. So I’ve had a readership since then, and one of my cats got really sick and he need to surgery and somebody told me, you know, this is maybe 2004. So somebody said, you should put a PayPal button on your site, and I did and I just Put one post that said, if you’d like to help towards Digit’s surgery because we were living paycheck to paycheck, I didn’t know how we’re going to pay this five grand bill and five grand flooded in ones and fives. And I think that’s the thing to remember about readers as fans is that they are generous to a fault. And that’s why I try to treat them like the the amazing people that they are. And many of them have turned into real, real true friends.
But for Patreon, especially, a lot of people support me, just to support me, they don’t care where the dollar is going. They I had, I was talking to somebody who was a Patreon supporter. And I said, Oh, my, it’s so good. It’s so kind of you. It’s, you know, you really make the difference in my life. I hope that you liked the essays. And she said, What essays. She hadn’t even really opened the emails to see that I sent out an essay every month. You just I had just told everybody at one point that I had a Patreon and she’s like, sure Here’s $1, you know? Um, so I guess my long winded answer is I don’t have something specific that could make us all a lot of money I wish I did. But treating the readers of any kind of have kind of have them broken into two camps. I have my fiction readers and I have the people who follow me about writing stuff, that the writers on my list, treating them like the extraordinary human beings who support me literally support me. So I owe them a debt of my service and of my honesty, and of my time, it’s just this beautiful two way street. And I do this with other writers that I love, you know, I support Patreon. Or, you know, I just buy their book, even though I know I have no time to read it, but I’m going to buy it in hardcover, and I’m going to buy it as someplace that is an Amazon I’m going to buy it at an independent bookstore. Even though I don’t read, I don’t read our covers, but that is how I support them. And you know that so I think that’s a very strange answer to that question.
Sacha Black
No, but I love it. I’m nodding along to so many of the things that you’re saying because I have a Patreon. And I just love that you can give to your patrons exactly what they want. So every single month, I make a point of sending a message to say, what would you like me to talk about or write about this month? And I get to I get to do that, and that is the best thing ever. And this the thing I find scariest about it, though, is that I find I am bearing more of my soul in these post of what I never intended to do, but you have such a close connection, you know, so that last month, I was talking about perfectionism, and I have a long history with perfectionism, and it is just destructive. And I was, you know, just you know, I talked about all of my personal experiences and how I really felt about these things. And I almost, ironically, didn’t press submit, because I was like, this post is not perfect. And it’s on perfectionism. How can I submit that? But you know, I had so many messages back from people saying, you know, thank you. And this really connected more than anything else that I’ve read. And I was like, that means more to me than anything, especially because I bared my soul, but also because it was something that they’d asked for. So I just love I love Patreon.
Rachael Herron
These are these essays that you’re providing, or are they?
Sacha Black
Not? Not what so that was, that was? Yeah, I didn’t I didn’t mean for it to be an essay, but it was essentially an essay. And yeah,
Rachael Herron
so let’s make sure we promote ourselves right now. Where’s your Patreon patreon.com slash? Sacha Black. Okay, and mine is patreon.com slash Rachel R A C H A E L. So that’s out there. And this is another thing I encourage writers to do is sign up for other people’s patrons and see how they’re doing it right and then steal those ideas. how we do it. I follow Amanda Palmer just for that reason because she is so incredible at Patreon. And she’s so incredible. I treating her fans like stars and that is what I want to do too and and follow in that so people should go follow us.
Sacha Black
Absolutely. I have just also funny enough because Amazon the bastard during the Black Friday sale got me with all of the two for one on audio books. I’m like, Amanda. She’s been on my wish list for ages. That is such a good book.
Rachael Herron
Oh, I like her music, but I love her as a conduit for truth more than more than anything else. And she’s a little bit annoying on Instagram, but that’s all right.
Sacha Black
Yeah, we all have I mostly post about lampposts. It’s it’s the whole thing.
Rachael Herron
I post about very expensive animals.
Sacha Black
Exactly, we all have our weird nuances. Okay, so following on from that. And the second Patreon question was how do you choose and manage income streams that work well together without overwhelming or burning yourself out? And I think you’ve probably covered a little bit of that and the choices that you’ve made. But yeah, if there’s anything elaborate on
Rachael Herron
For those kind of things, it’s just getting it wrong. It’s just trying things, getting it wrong. And realizing that in all aspects of our business, we are allowed to change our minds like I used to have a level at which I would, gosh, I would send them a postcard of things, you know, whenever I traveled or something like that, I would send them a postcard. I’m the worst postcard letter mail person in the whole entire world. So I never fulfilled it. It never got done. And then one day, I thought, Oh, I can just change that to something else that I do not have to go to the post office for and I changed it and and that lesson Patreon really taught me that lesson in my writing life that I’m we are constantly trying to adjust. Oh, I have a prescription for you. I read Denise Dillard, I can’t remember her last name. She’s Australian. And this book is called it’s a terrible title. I apologize. It’s called Chillpreneur.
Sacha Black
So, Katie, shout out to Katie. Katie, and she has actually posted me this book and in no way Yeah, it’s on my bedside table ready to read and I just I it is about two books down. But yeah.
Rachael Herron
Just move it to the top. Especially if you’re dealing with any kind of burnout right now because I went on this vacation last month, and I ran and I read it while we were gone. And I realized, Oh, I am hating being tied to this Patreon coaching and my brain said it is $1,000 a month. You absolutely cannot give that up. And my next thought after reading this book was Oh, but I must it’ll, it will just make it work. And I’m I’m making it work. And so yeah, read that book and maybe you’ll make more money now less money like I did. But it’s but it’s a beautiful way to remember that we get to change anything we want at any time. And that’s part of having a small business,
Sacha Black
Giving ourselves permission because I’m one of these people that I’m very, what’s the word? Yin and Yang in that I will rebel against any rule that is placed on me. But at the same time, sometimes I forget to give myself permission and get very stuck during the thing that I think I have to do. Yeah, I just I am just a complete contradiction in terms. But yeah, giving yourself permission to change your mind, I think is just such a valuable lesson in business.
Rachael Herron
I think that perfectionist of which I am also when it’s even harder, because again, it is admitting, oh, I might have got that wrong. And I like to pretend that I never get anything wrong and
Sacha Black
What do you mean pretend? I don’t ever get anything wrong.
Rachael Herron
I think our wives might talk the same way.
Sacha Black
Yeah. Okay, so you are several years into being full time now. Congratulations. Um, but I have heard a number of people say that year two is the hardest. I am seven months I think through my first year. Nobody died we still have a roof over.
Um, but what what can I do to prepare myself for this? Because fuck me You gave what has been enough of a roller coaster like what am I getting into? And yet here you like? Tell me tell me what I can do to my hair myself.
Rachael Herron
I love This question because year one is made of adrenaline. You’re one is just trying to get to the anniversary to say that you did it. That’s what it felt like to me just treading water, trying to bring in more money trying to bring in different income streams, trying to do things differently trying to do everything year two however, is when I hit that burnout. So I think and alcoholism, which, you know, which I was trying to cure, the burnout with. But I think just being knowledgeable that that is a fact for so many people is, you know, forewarned is forearmed. You, you have to take better care of yourself in year two, because you’re two is when it sinks in that, oh, I might be able to do this. And then it also sinks in, Oh, I might be able to do this. It just it gets easier and scarier at the same time. So if you’re not good at taking breaks, you have to build and taking breaks. If you’re not good at taking care of your body, for example, you have to get better at it. It’s just it’s just not it’s not a question you have to do it or you won’t be able to continue. I am 100% sure you will be able to continue and you have this knowledge so what things what things would you do differently in your to to take care of yourself better?
Sacha Black
Oh, that’s a real question? Oh shit. Um wow geez this is awkward
Rachael Herron
Do you overwork yourself or do you under eat or over eat or not exercise or
Sacha Black
note so well don’t remember the last time I ate lunch. I do exercise. I do Taekwondo. And
Rachael Herron
I see yours.
Sacha Black
Yeah. Just just won the British championships for ladies in my belt.
Yeah, I’m like a total badass. I’m like a secret ninja.
Rachael Herron
Things are also falling off of you. You’re you’re knocking them off.
Sacha Black
Also, yes, that might also have
Rachael Herron
swimming or so
Sacha Black
yeah something less head-kicky. It’s fine I won nine nil it’s fine.
Rachael Herron
amazing. Wow.
Sacha Black
And I meditate so that’s about pretty much the only things I do to look after myself in terms of working yeah all of the hours. I am now I’ve literally today I was like I need to schedule in the evenings when I don’t work. Yeah No I’ve actually put them in the calendar.
Rachael Herron
The only way I can do them is I like it I am such I’m weird. I’m either a workaholic or I have a migraine and I’m down but my my body just knocks my feet out from under me when I need to when I’m working too hard and I have a very hard time turning this off and it’s in our house this is in our house so we can’t really walk away and work is always there and so sometimes now I actually close my computer and I leave my phone in another room and I go and have dinner and you know hang out with my wife and and it just feels so wrong, but we have to. We just have to.
Sacha Black
I’m gonna work on that. Okay, so another going back to money then I am really interested at the moment and I feel like I have a book brewing on money. Although, I don’t know, I don’t know if I’m the right person to write it. I don’t know if I don’t. I don’t know. Anyway, like…
Rachael Herron
If it’s brewing you probably are the right person. And and you know how we learn things in order to write?
Sacha Black
Yeah, well, exactly. And you know, I’ve just come through one end of the journey and now I want to make all the money so I want to do the other end of the journey. Which brings me to my question. I am really interested in how authors level up their business. So what do you think are the key steps you took to take your business from you know 10s to hundreds to hundreds to thousands a month to 10 thousands of month at, you know that thing. What are words? What are words? Yeah, you know, to a six figure business what what are the key things you did that you think had the biggest impact on leveling up your business?
Rachael Herron
That’s a great question. And for me, it was really realizing the limited ability I have to help everyone and thinking about what I do in terms of writing and in assisting other writers. In terms of scalability. I, if you if you if I was helping everyone on a one off basis for half an hour at a time, I’m not very much making that much money and I’m exhausting myself. So making that actual choice to put that time back into writing, which is something that becomes then intellectual property, which is something that I can then harness and do at least five things at the top of my head with you know, out there. It is why I’m currently working on making more courses. I only have one course out there. And it brings me a steady stream of money every month. And it has since I put it out there since before I quit my day job, so probably five years ago, and I just need to do more courses rather than working with people one on one, I’m building courses. I’m just writing more because that’s the part that is scalable.
I’m doing this. I like to think creatively. And I like to challenge myself. And so when I took that thousand dollar hit for Patreon, I thought, well, what can I do? That would be fun for me that might bring in a little bit of money, and it’s scalable. So I’m doing this thing I just started this week. And I have I think 10 people signed up or maybe nine people so far, but they pay me $49 a month. We get together at five goddamn am in the morning on the west coast of the US, and we write together for two hours. So what I’m doing is I’m showing up, we write together in a Zoom Room so we can all see each other and the little Little images, I talk I encourage they get into little groups and talk amongst each other. And then we just right so what is happening now, I am getting paid to encourage people on a scalable basis that could be 4000 people in that room, it doesn’t matter how many there are. I would love to have 4000. But I’m also getting my own writing done during our two writing sessions. I’m just sitting there with the camera on typing on my work, getting words, instead of trying to expand into another coaching or teaching opportunity. I’m trying to look at ways to be scalable, and to make myself happy and get my own work done at the same time.
Sacha Black
I’m having so many epiphanies. So this was the sort this is really the crux of the editing because I absolutely adore. So my, my personal passion is craft. And I have been told I am forensic at times because I deconstruct every book I ever read. And I’m writing a book now called The Anatomy of Prose just because I collect some says I, excuse me, I’ve written blogs for years about, you know how somebody does foreshadowing or how they’ve created characterization down at the sentence level or whatever. Anyway. So that was how I ended up falling into editing. But it’s so time intensive, and you’re only helping one person. And it’s frustrating because I want to help everyone.
Rachael Herron
Since we need to write more books about how to write better books,
Sacha Black
right, but and that’s the epiphany I just had right now because I’m like, Oh, yeah, that’s a really good point. Like, I just need to stop doing the thing, which is one on one and do the thing, which is one too many. And, and
Rachael Herron
I was just gonna say in terms of intellectual property, every time you write a book, that is another piece of that is another thing to turn into a course. And people don’t buy either the course or the book. They buy both. Because that’s what we do as humans. That’s what I do. When I find somebody whose voice I resonate with. I buy everything. I just want all of the things that they’ve written about right in terms of craft in terms of storytelling and in terms of this business, but I interrupted you gone?
Sacha Black
Oh, no, well, no, I was I was just going to say so. So I’ve, I’ve sort of got three or four course ideas, but I just need to get over myself and the imposter syndrome and the perfectionism. Just get them fucking done. cuz I’ve I’ve started, same number of times that and I just can’t get myself to the finish line. But it’s hard
Rachael Herron
Courses are so much work. I’ve been putting off for a while. They’re just so much work and no one can do them. But us. Yeah, I can’t hear that out to my VA.
Sacha Black
Oh, okay. My favorite question. This is The Rebel Author Podcast. So tell me about a time you unleash your inner rebel.
Rachael Herron
Oh, I looked over your questions, but I like to kind of surprise myself like I like we do on the writers. Well So I didn’t think too deeply about it, but I did. But this is the answer that occurred to me when I looked at them. And it’s occurring to me now and it’s dull. I’m sorry, I’m a boring person A lot of times, but quitting my job was that the biggest fuck you I have ever given to anything because I was raised from a blue collar hard working family, and you went to job and you took your paycheck and you went home and you lived your life. And that is how my you know, Dad retired that that way. And I had, I never lost a job. You know, since I got out of grad school, I had worked continuously, always more than 50 hours a week, no matter which I had three long term jobs after after grad school. all in the same kind of subset of what I was doing, which was 911. And, and to quit, felt like the balls easiest, stupidest, most terrible thing that I had ever done like it was just not acceptable for me as a human being who should be a contributing member of society, and you know, pay, you know, get paid by The Man and take it home to actually say no, I quit and to go out onto this, this high wire and try to balance there. You know, I’m picturing like the wind blowing me and how dare I do that. And the day that I, the day that I went in and told my manager that I was quitting. Number one, she was stunned. Number two, she almost talked me into staying number three, I had to go home from that shift with a migraine. I stressed myself because I was so upset about this, this anathema thing that I was doing my whole goal, my whole adult life had been not to lose a job, like to do everything perfectly, so I would never lose a job. And here I was losing a job on purpose. I know.
How did it go for you when you quit?
Sacha Black
My boss knew I saw I sat down and he and he just it must be has been written all over my face like the haha fuck you I’m going. See you, fuck you bye, you know? Because he was like, oh you’re leaving aren’t you? And I was like YEAAAH
Rachael Herron
but you thought this is such an interesting question the way you ask it to because you are a rebel if you’re looking at it like Gretchen Reubens, four tendencies. I’m sure you’re a rebel. My wife is a rebel, I am an upholder. I uphold everyone’s expectations about myself, including my own. And so to throw a good job into the air like that, I’m still I’m still shaking almost four years later. So that was that was a rebel thing that I did.
Sacha Black
Yeah, no, but it’s it’s just one of the best I love hearing people’s ‘I quit’ stories. Like Yeah, I love it. I am. Yeah, the rebel thing is so funny. I am so rebellious. I will also argue with myself over things. It’s just it’s so it’s infuriating. It’s like deadlines. Like I love my Myers Briggs is it N TJ although I’m E/I borderline so I’m sometimes I’m really I and then sometimes I’m really E but so I really like structure and deadlines but God damn it if I put a deadline on myself I will do everything to rebel against it like it’s just what is wrong with me?
Okay so tell readers where they can find out more about you and your books and your Patreon and your podcasts and all of your things.
Rachael Herron
Everything can be found at RachaelHerron.com and of interest to your listeners might be the for writers tab and I send I have a email which I normally send out a weekly email encouragement which I have been doing recently because I have been just lazing around but there’s that Patreon is patreon.com/rachael I also lead retreats. And that’s a fun one. If you want to sign up for the writers, I’m going to Barcelona in April. And I think I still have a couple slots there. So that’s all available from the for writers page on RachaelHerron.com. Oh, and the podcasts are the writers well, which I co host with Jay Thorne. And we just talked about the experience of being a writer we always bring one of us brings the other question that they don’t know about in advance, and then we have to really talk about it. And we are very honest, they can be very, very deep heart difficult questions. And they can be very light and soft. But luckily, he’s soft balled me yesterday. So that’s, that’s excellent. And then my podcast is just called How do you write and I speak with writers about their processes because I’m always looking for the magic bullet that will make my own process easy, and I haven’t found it yet. So keep the podcast going. And at some point, Sacha Black will be on there too.
Sacha Black
I was drooling. listening to you talk about Venice, by the way. I was like, oh god, I so want to go to Venice. But yeah, that’s sounded amazing.
Rachael Herron
I’ve done that a few times. That’ll be 2021. I’ll be going back there.
Sacha Black
No, I know. I know. That’s why don’t tell me that I have to confront my wife over it. Yeah, yes. Okay, well, thank you very much for your time. And thank you also to all of the patrons supporting the show. If you would like to get early access to all of the episodes as well as exclusive and bonus Patreon only content you can do so by going to www.patreon.com/Sachablack.
Rachael Herron
And she really appreciates that. You guys. Go join.
Sacha Black
I really love you guys. Thank you to everybody listening. Thank you to our wonderful guest today. I’m Sacha Black, you we’re listening to Rachel Heron and this was The Rebel Author Podcast.
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Welcome back to episode 011 of The Rebel Author Podcast, today I’m talking to Zach Bohannon all about authors and money. Specifically how to quit your job and write full-time. 
