Accounting for Authors

Money, money, money: it’s always about money. Whether you’re at the beginning of your author journey, in the middle of it or at the other end and you’re selling books like hotcakes, you’ve got to deal with the money. So we are talking money stuff today and thrilled to have with us, Mark Leslie Lefebvre and D.F. Hart – or Deanna Hart. 

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Boni Wagner-Stafford

Introduction (various voices) 00:05

Welcome to the Empowered Author podcast.

Discussion, tips, insights and advice from those who been there, done that, helping you write, publish and market your nonfiction book.

Being an author is something that you’ve got to take seriously.

I’m proud I’ve written a book.

What does the reader need, first? What does the reader need, second?

What happens if you start writing your book before you identify your “why”? What’s the problem with that?

You’re an indie author, you take the risk; you reap the rewards; you are in charge of the decisions. You’re the head of that business. 

Every emotion you’re feeling when you’re writing is felt by every other writer.

The Empowered Author podcast. Your podcast hosts are Boni and John Wagner-Stafford of Ingenium Books.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  00:58

Money, money, money: it’s always about money. Whether you’re at the beginning of your author journey, in the middle of it or at the other end and you’re selling books like hotcakes, you’ve got to deal with the money. So we are talking money stuff today and thrilled to have with us, Mark Leslie Lefebvre and D.F. Hart – or Deanna Hart. Hi, guys. And you guys are doing something kind of exciting: and that is writing a book about accounting for authors. Oh, my God, have we put anybody to sleep yet?

Mark Leslie Lefebvre  01:33

Give us time.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  01:35

That’s right, give us time. So I need to get you to go back to the beginning. Now, I do need to tell people who you are, don’t I? I promised to do that. So Mark Leslie Lefebvre probably needs very little introduction. But first published story appeared back in 1992, which was the same year he began his journey working in the book industry as a bookseller and industry representative. But now he has more than 25 books published under the name Mark Leslie and has also coached and mentored thousands of writers on the business of writing and publishing. And Deanna Hart lives and works in North Texas. Now she is a mystery thriller and contemporary romance author and the mystery thrillers, correct me if I’m wrong, you write that under D.F. Hart, yes? Is that correct? 

D.F. Hart  02:19

Yes. Yes, ma’am. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford  02:20

And then the contemporary romance is under a different pen name.

D.F. Hart  02:26

Faith Hart. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford  02:27

Faith Hart. Thank you. You also hold an MBA with accounting concentration. And you’ve worked in the field of accounting for over 25 years. And I just find it really interesting that you can be both an accountant and a writer at the same time: they just seem like diametrically opposed skill sets.

D.F. Hart  02:47

They’re – yes. One’s very left brain and one’s very right brained. My mother always calls me both brained.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  02:53

Both brained. It’s a gift. So where did the project start? What are the seeds of the forthcoming book, “Accounting for Authors”?

D.F. Hart  03:06

Mark, you want to kick off or you want me to?

Mark Leslie Lefebvre  03:08

It is your brainchild, so I think you need to start. We have to follow the numbers. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford  03:15

Yes, follow the numbers? 

D.F. Hart  03:15

Well, I’m in a number of author groups on Facebook. And one of the common themes that I noticed is that people have a lot of money questions. And while the – especially the tax related ones – can be as varied and complex as the person’s individual situation, there are very basic tenets and concepts in accounting that are universal and evergreen, that I think authors would really benefit from having that knowledge given to them. Accounting and finance topics tend to be the emotional equivalent of Buehler – Buehler? – for a lot of people. And so I thought, well, if I can present the information in a way that’s memorable, that’s entertaining but still useful, I really think the author community – especially the indie author community – could get a lot of mileage out of that information. And so, you know, like you said, I am going on my 26th year of accounting but I do not have the depth and breadth of experience within the book industry itself that Mark does and so I reached out to Mark and said, “Hey, I’ve got this idea. Would you be interested in helping me get this out? Because I think this could be really useful for people.” And luckily for me, he said yes.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  04:30

So turning it over to you, Mark, and your side of the project: you know, being an author is kind of like having a business. It is a business. It’s, you know, you’re getting – you’re either paying to support a professional pursuit or you’re being paid as a consequence of your professional pursuit. So what drove you to say yes to Deanna’s idea about collaborating on the book?

Mark Leslie Lefebvre  05:00

Well, partially, I almost didn’t because Deanna brings such depth of experience in accounting. And I’m thinking, “Okay, so she’s going to do most of the work here,” which is like a walk in the park for me but I thought, “Well, I’m not really going to be bringing much to it.” But then when we started to talk about it, I kept thinking about, “Okay, she’s got this in-depth experience,” and even the samples that she sent me of how she was approaching it, it’s not dry. When you think about accounting, it’s like, “Oh my God, that’s boring,” and whatever. But no, she makes it fun. She uses her own author experience into it. So the voice spoke to me. But then the other thing that spoke to me is, I’m an idiot when it comes to math and accounting and stuff like that. I do. I’ve long wanted to help writers understand the business of writing and publishing. And so I know the importance of accounting; I know the importance of getting the fundamentals right: because if you don’t have the fundamentals right, everything you build upon that is going to collapse. And so looking at Deanna’s experience and how she’s written it and then figuring out, “Okay, how can we work together where I can then approach it as the novice guy who doesn’t know as much?” So I can ask the dumb questions; I can ask the questions that I think a lot of other authors would have, that Deanna can’t see anymore because she knows this so well. Just like there are things about the industry I don’t see any more because I’ve been in it for so long. So I really think it’s very complementary, the way that we can play off each other. And I think if we both approach a project where we both think we’re getting the better end of the deal, that’s probably a good deal for both of us. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford  06:41

It probably is. Well, I think it sounds fascinating. So one of the things that intrigued me – and why we’re here talking together today – is I saw a Facebook post in, I think it was the Wide for the Win group where you were soliciting questions and input from authors. I want to tap into now, some of those questions that you’ve been getting. And tell me whether there was anything surprising. Maybe I’ll go to you, Deanna. What were some of the questions that have come in? Some more common? And did anything surprise you?

D.F. Hart  07:20

The thing that surprised me the most, I think, was that about – at least feedback in that post, on that post – I would say was 80 to 85 percent fairly complicated tax-related questions, which, it surprised me but it shouldn’t have. Yeah, and I think a lot of the issue with that is people automatically equate accounting with taxes. And you shouldn’t. That’s like saying, “My college calculus professor can go down the – or can go two buildings over and teach a 14th century Italian literature class.” It’s not the case. Just because they’re both professors does not mean that the calculus guy is going to be able to help somebody through Dante’s “Inferno”, right? So that’s a very common misconception that just because somebody has got an accounting background, that they’re going to be able to solve and answer all your tax questions and that’s just simply not true.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  08:19

So I want to dig into that a little bit more, if we can, because we go to our accountant when we’re about to file our taxes. So I think that makes sense that that’s where people make that connection. But tell me why you can’t make the connection all the time. Tell me why that’s incorrect.

D.F. Hart  08:35

Because the laws just even within the United States vary so much from state to state and it is not static. They’re constantly changing and developing. So you’d go from – even within the United States, there’s not consistency, to a large degree. And then you try to go into US versus Canada or Australia or New Zealand or India: all these different places have all these different rules and regulations and little nuances that no one person is – you’re, you’d always be learning. And your book, if you’re trying to write a book on that stuff, your book would never be finished. I liken the whole tax world to standing on the corner or standing in the center of Times Square in New York during rush hour with a slingshot and attempting to take out the left taillight of every taxicab around you at rush hour. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford  09:33 

Oh, that’s a good analogy. 

Mark Leslie Lefebvre  09:34

I’ve tried it. It is not easy.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  09:39

Did you get arrested?

Mark Leslie Lefebvre  09:40

Yeah. Yeah, that’s easy.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  09:42

Yeah, that’s easy.

D.F. Hart  09:43

But my point is that the stuff that I’m going to teach and that we’re going to teach and show people is stuff that is evergreen and it hasn’t changed. The concepts I’m going to share have not changed since accounting came into being, whereas tax stuff is constantly in motion. It’s like firing a bullet in a speeding train.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  10:00

So what is it then?

D.F. Hart  10:05

What is what?

Boni Wagner-Stafford  10:07

What is “Accounting for Authors”? We’re not going to talk about taxes. What are we going to talk about? And why do authors need to know it?

D.F. Hart  10:14

We are going to talk about the accounting equation – assets equals liabilities plus equity. We’re going to break that down into plain English and give you some real world examples. We’re going to talk about what a balance sheet is, what an income statement is, what net return is, what return on investment is, calculating your gross income, calculating your net income. And eventually, at the end of the – by the end of the book, I’m going to walk people through building your own balance sheet and income statement. Because if you build those documents, you can see at a glance where you’re at. And it helps you identify some things that maybe you need to drill down into and look a little bit further at. We’re also going to talk about not only cost per click but costs per subscriber. Marketing: we’re going to talk about the different types of marketing and the pros and cons of each. This is not going to be an advocate for you should be exclusive to one retailer or you should be wide or you should be trad: what we’re going to cover applies to everybody. But the examples that we’re going to specifically give are geared to being an author. There’s not very many industries where you do not get paid for 30 to 90 days. And there’s not very many industries where they do not take income taxes out. So the one caveat that I will say – and I do say in the book – is, when you get to a certain point, the moment you make your first sale, I personally recommend that within 30 days, you begin to set aside 22 to 30 percent of what you’ve made: set it aside; you’re going to need it for taxes. But beyond that, you really need to talk to somebody who is steeped in tax, steeped in that specialty.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  11:52

In your jurisdiction.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre  11:53

Right. And I think that balance sheets and all of the fundamentals are going to help people with their taxes. The – and I made that mistake as well: not putting enough aside for income tax and then going, “Oh, ouch.” But the one thing I do remember, when Deanna approached me with this idea, is I had interviewed her for my podcast about a book launch she had done recently, in the last couple years: I can’t even remember because the last 18 months have been like a decade in some ways.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  12:23

Yeah. 

D.F. Hart  12:24

It was the first week of January when we spoke.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre  12:27

2020? Or was it this year? 

D.F. Hart  12:29

This year.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre  12:30

Okay. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford  12:32

It wasn’t even 18 months ago, yeah.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre  12:33

The pandemic timelines have just been so weird. But one of the things that just stuck with me – and it’s one of the things I like to share with folks on my podcast – is honing in on some of the things I’ve learned. And I looked at, she shared a spreadsheet with me that, per book, she knew exactly what the book cost; she knew what everything cost. There was a wonderful statement. And then she knew what she spent on the marketing. So when she was looking at it, it wasn’t just, “Oh, look at how much money I made.” She already knew, “This is how much money I brought in. But here are my expenses. And here’s my cost of sales. Therefore, this is what I actually made.” So if you don’t pay attention to those things, you can really misrepresent and confuse yourself as to whether or not what you’re doing makes fiscal sense. And can you do that for the long term? Because obviously, operating in the red is not a long-term thing. You have to make some money at some point, right?

Boni Wagner-Stafford  13:35

Yeah, exactly. So Mark, what about, in your experience – so you you’ve been publishing for a long time; in the book industry for a long time – specific to your own books: when did you first start to go, “Oh, I need to do something different about the money,” and when was that? Was it just 18 months ago – no, nine months ago when you tried to – 11 months ago? When was January? Good? 

Mark Leslie Lefebvre  14:02

I can’t do that. I can’t do the math. I’d need to take my socks off. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford  14:03

Nevermind. Yeah, exactly. 

Mark Leslie Lefebvre  14:07

Honestly, every year, right? I mean, when I first started, I was tracking pen and paper, how much I was spending on stamps to mail manuscripts to publishers, how much the cost of the envelopes were costing me. And so for decades, I have actually been keeping track of my expenses and then keeping track of – well, early on before self-publishing, it was like, you know, a check here and there from a publisher. It wasn’t like a regular, monthly thing from multiple sources. So I’ve slowly migrated and every year I’ve learned something different. I only started to hire an accountant to do my taxes for me about five years ago, when it started getting to a point where I need someone to take better care of this than me. I’ve got the shoebox full of receipts kind of thing. But I’m constantly learning and even in just the early drafts of the book we’ve been looking at, as I’m reading Deanna’s work, I’m going, “Oh, cool, I need to switch this.” And so, I mean, it’s constantly learning. So I think even that, you know, I’ve been tracking my expenses for years but maybe not in the most efficient way. So I still think there’s the new learnings that I know I, by the time we finish, I’ll probably be able to add at least a dozen new tricks to my quiver.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  15:26

Yeah, well, that’s fantastic. Is there one or two things that you think would be most helpful – and I’m throwing this open to either of you or both – that you think most authors don’t do, that they should and if they did, would make a huge difference to either their mindset or their results?

Mark Leslie Lefebvre  15:55

I could start, to give Deanna a chance to come up with …

D.F. Hart  15:58

Go for it. 

Mark Leslie Lefebvre  16:00

One thing I think authors should do is start tracking now. Even if you don’t have a way to do it effectively, whether it’s an Excel spreadsheet, a Google Sheet, some place you can access it, track it now. You mailed the manuscript to a publisher or you purchased a book cover design or whatever: record it somewhere. You can come back and clean up how you’re recording it or where you’re putting it and how you’re identifying it: that can come later. But waiting until the end of a period or the end of the year is going to take you 10 times longer if you don’t start tracking early. Even if you don’t think, “Oh, it’s only $100,” it’s better to start now, because once it accumulates, that’s when it’s going to get more and more difficult for you.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  16:47

Yeah, that makes sense. Deanna, anything on that?

D.F. Hart  16:53

The biggest thing, the biggest single thing I can think of is a mindset change. And that is everything costs something. Just because it does not cost you money does not mean it does not cost you anything: everything’s going to cost money, time, or both. So someone who is – got a background in graphic design, for example, doesn’t need to worry about budgeting money for a cover, right? Because they can probably build their own and do a pretty good job. Whereas somebody like me, who can’t draw their way out of a paper bag, I need to value my time better than that: I don’t have the time or the, quite frankly, the skill set to learn how to eventually be fluent in covers. So for me, it’s a better spend of my time budget to hire somebody to do that for me. But I think a lot of people just say, they just look at dollars and cents and they’d also don’t take the value of their time into account. So everything costs you something: time or money or both. And if you realize that, you’re going to be a lot farther ahead.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  17:53

Right. Sorry to step on you there. How do you suggest people assign a value to their time?

D.F. Hart  18:02

Oh, that can be a tricky one. Because you really, unlike a lot of other industries – you know, you’ve got salary guides that you can pull up for accountants, for example, and you can see for this area of taxes, you know, for an accounting manager that’s got 25 years experience, the median salary is X: we don’t have that in this industry. And it would be very hard to build a guide like that because we do have such varied results: you know, you’ve got people making seven figures as a Trad author; you got people making seven figures as an indie author. So that is something that would have to be, quite frankly, unique to everybody’s situation. If you’re only spending 20 hours a week on your author stuff, obviously, you’re going to have a different time value than somebody that’s putting in 40 to 60 hours a week. You know, I don’t think you need to pay yourself slave wages; I don’t think you need to play pay yourself $2 an hour. But you also need to be realistic that in, unlike another industry where, you know, I may make $50 an hour as an accountant, that’s really not feasible from an author standpoint, right? Because I’d never be able to set my book prices high enough to recoup that offset. So I hate to kind of give a cop-out answer but it really kind of depends on what you got going on.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  19:17

Yeah, that makes sense. So how basic is your book starting with, in the book “Accounting for Authors”? Is it, you know, left column, right column, debits, credits, that sort of thing? How are you starting out?

D.F. Hart  19:38

We start out talking about the three main business structure types in the United States and we give pros and cons of each. And we also recommend that people in the US talk to a professional in their area because those requirements also vary from state to state. And then we mentioned that for folks outside of the US – because this is not a US centric book: want to make sure that’s clear; so this is going to be a global. I think we took five or six countries, Mark, besides US? And I went out and found links for the governing bodies in those countries that govern business structure in those countries. And we’ll be providing those links as resources for people. After that, we get into some, here’s some, the most commonly applicable accounting terms that are going to be – that you’re going to see in your author realm. And here’s what they mean in plain English. And then after that we get into – what did we do for Chapter? – Chapter 3 was the accounting equation: we talk about assets equals liabilities plus equity. We find out what that means – those terms mean – in plain English. But we also rearrange the equation. Because in its current form, it’s not very helpful. What we’re actually – what everybody’s mostly interested in is the equity part, right? So you’ve got to isolate that equity part. So we rearrange the accounting equation in plain English. And then we give real time examples of how people are already actually using that rearranged accounting equation in their everyday life and they probably don’t even know it. And then from there, we jump into, we’re going to calculate our costs. We’re going to see what costs are. Payback period and all sorts of fun things. Tangible assets: what’s a tangible asset? What’s not a tangible asset? Different examples: a couple of different examples of liabilities. Those first chapters are skimming the surface. There’s going to be an entire chapter at the back of the book for people who love homework and who love digging deeper. We’re going to actually talk about deeper things like fixed assets, depreciation, when to capitalize something, when to not.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  21:47

Oh, boy.

D.F. Hart  21:50

But I’m trying: I am trying my absolute dead level best to not make it sound like Buehler. Buehler.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre  21:56

And we’re not throwing them in headfirst, right? We are easing them into it: getting them comfortable speaking in regular English, not accounting speak, as much as possible. So it’s – and using examples from our own experience, which I think is critical because they can go, “Oh, this specific book, this is this cost. And this is this income. And this is what it resulted in“ So I think a lot of authors can come into it and go, “Ah, okay, now I can see it in a way that I can understand how it applies to me.”

Boni Wagner-Stafford  22:30

You – I’m glad you brought up examples because I was just thinking when you’re, Deanna, when you were explaining that you’re talking about what is a liability and what is an asset. So in the author world, it’s not like we’re a tire manufacturer and we’ve got, you know, this machine over here and we’ve got a stockpile of rubber that we’re going to turn into tires and we owe the delivery guy down the road. So as soon as we start talking about assets, for example, we’re into intellectual property. And then liabilities, you know, in those columns, could be an advance for a traditional publisher, too. So talk to me a little bit about those two concepts and how you deal with those, if you dig into those very much in your book.

D.F. Hart  23:19

Right. Yeah, I do actually. Well, you know, assets, simply in plain English, those are the things we own, that have value. The biggest difference between the two is you’ve got tangible – so in physical form – and intangible – not in physical form. The intangible stuff tends to be your intellectual property: your copyrights, trademarks, slogans, company names, things like that. Tangible assets are typically things that can be converted to cash quickly: that’s the definition, right? So you’ve got cash in your bank account. If I buy 20 books to take to a signing event, that’s inventory. Physical books are considered inventory; that’s considered an asset, okay? But one of the other things that you’ve got that everybody has, is what’s called receivables: we all have royalties that we’ve earned that have not been paid to us yet, right? Those are called receivables. And those are also an asset. Now, you would think that because they’re not in our bank account yet, that they would be considered intangible but because they are a cash equivalent, they go in the tangible assets area. And that’s something that every author will have. So when you get down into liabilities, it’s my cover design costs, my formatting and editing costs, any marketing costs that I have: those things are called payables. Liabilities are quite simply the things that you owe, okay? And then equity is basically what’s left over because if you plug those new, simpler definitions in, you’ve got what you own equals what you owe plus what is left over, right? But what is left over is the part that we’re really interested in. So we spend that equation. So we take that what is left, we move it to the left side of the equal and we take the what is owed – or what is owned, I mean – and move it to the left side. So now you get what is left equals what is owned minus what is owed. And that’s the equation that people already use in their everyday lives and they don’t even realize it. For example, your take-home pay from a job equals the hours you earned minus the taxes taken out, right? Your book royalty equals the selling price of the book minus the store percentage. So those are two real-time examples of the accounting equation rearranged.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  25:49

Right, exactly. I didn’t follow up with my question earlier about what were some of the questions that you received and we went right away down the tax rabbit hole. And I used to work for the Ontario Ministry of Finance so I am familiar with the tax rabbit hole but not as an accountant, of course. But what else were you hearing from authors on this subject matter? On the subject of “Accounting for Authors”?

D.F. Hart  26:22

Budgeting. Forecasting.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre  26:24

Yeah, forecasting.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  26:26

Forecasting, right. 

Mark Leslie Lefebvre  26:27

Yeah, those came up regularly as much as taxes, tax questions. Like a tax question specific to my state, which is like, “Well, we’re going to give you some general stuff.” And that’s been one of the challenges. So I think – and even in marketing, right? We’re not going to say, “Oh, you have to do Amazon ads,” or, “You have to do Facebook ads,” or whatever. We’re going to talk about recognizing how to cost – and this is important and Deanna already talked about it: it’s not just the cost of the ad. It’s the cost of your time plus the cost of the ad and of having to go in, for example, one of the things I always consider: if I have to spend two hours a day juggling keywords in an ad in order to, the only way for it to pay off is I have to invest two hours a day in it, that’s 10 hours a week. I’ve got to calculate what could I be doing with those 10 hours a week that can be creating new assets that I can sell or I’m investing them into advertising. So on top of, I think it’s important to understand not just the monetary cost or the cash costs but the other costs. And time is a big one we always forget. We always assume, “Oh, yeah, I can just do it.” Well, if you do it, that means something else has to get sacrificed.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  27:42

Yeah, yep. Two kind of last questions for me before I ask you guys what I’ve forgotten and what you really want to leave people with. And the first one is, what is it that you want authors who read your book to do, think and feel when they finished reading the book?

D.F. Hart  28:07

My first goal is to present the information in such a way that it is empowering rather than overwhelming. And that it is given in such a manner that it can be easily applied and put into practice. And that they – I think a lot of people don’t realize that the moment you finish your book baby and you’ve slapped a price on it and you put it out in the world, you’re a business owner, for better or worse. And, you know, love for your book baby aside, you’ve got to run this thing like a business because you’ve just started a business, right? And so you’ve got to keep a finger on the pulse of your business. It avails you nothing to just book promos or run ads or all that stuff if you’re not going to bother to track the results. And one of the main reasons for that is because there are occasions where a book blogger, for example, will pick up your book; they’ll read your book; they like your book and they mention your book: all sudden, you’ve got 300 extra sales and if you don’t know where they’re – if you’re not tracking your stuff, then you’re not going to see those. And you should. You should know about those because that kind of extra ad without your – that somebody else is doing on your behalf – that may adjust the way you can approach your budget so that you can save those budget dollars for another book or another series or another month. But if you’re not tracking your stuff, you’re never going to know about those 300 extra sales and that somebody’s actually doing you a favor. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford  29:36

And you can use it to make better decisions moving forward. 

D.F. Hart  29:39

Yeah.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  29:40

Yeah. Mark, what about you? The be, do, feel: what do you want them to think, do and feel?

Mark Leslie Lefebvre  29:46

I agree with what Deanna said. I just I want authors to be less scared. I want them not to think of it as a foreign language and think of it as a fundamental asset or tool that they’ll be able to add to their utility belt – to their Batman utility belt – to help enable them to be more proficient and less terrified when it comes to talking and thinking about money with your writer business. So I want them – I want them to come away feeling more equipped that, “I’ve got this. Because I don’t have to do anything really fancy; I just need to understand these fundamental things.” And I hope they can walk away going, “Okay. It’s not as terrifying as I thought. I’ve got this.”

Boni Wagner-Stafford  30:30

Cool. Second – and this is kind of my final question: when is it going to be out?

D.F. Hart  30:38

We actually set the release date for March 22 of 2022. And I’m not sure when the preorder’s going up. I know we’re planning on doing preorder; I just don’t – I’m going to turn that part over to Mark.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre  30:53

The preorder’s up already. BookstoRead.com/AccountingforAuthors. It’s not on all the platforms yet. Some of the platforms won’t allow an asset list preorder because obviously, the manuscript is not finished yet. But it is up. If you go to BookstoRead.com/AccountingforAuthors, you’ll be able to track it on the various sites. It’ll be out in paperback and an ebook. And then we’re looking at how to get the audiobook out. But again, we’re going to sit down in front of a spreadsheet and calculate the costs and all those things.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  31:25

Yeah, use your own book to make the decisions on what you’re going to do next. 

Mark Leslie Lefebvre  31:30

Maybe that’s just as an extra resource we slap into the book: how we decided whether or not we’re doing an audiobook. 

Boni Wagner-Stafford  31:36

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Makes perfect sense. So what did I not ask you that you think is really important to say? I’m sure I forgot something.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre  31:51

You stumped me because you asked some brilliant questions.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  31:56

Awesome. That’s fantastic. So we will have the link. I know, Mark, you blurted it out: BookstoRead.com/AccountingforAuthors. I’ll have that in the show notes. And if you guys keep us updated as the book progresses, we’ll keep those links fresh associated with this, the episode and the accompanying blog. Thank you so much for joining us. Really helpful information. I can’t wait to get my hands on the book myself because I think maybe I’m going to change the way I’m doing a few things, by the sounds of it. So Deanna Hart, Mark Leslie Lefebvre, thank you so much for joining us.

D.F. Hart  32:39

Thanks, Boni.

Boni Wagner-Stafford  32:45

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