Empowering Authors Through Sales Data Insights with Publisher David Morris

Join us as David Morris, an independent publisher, shares his insights on the importance of understanding sales data and effectively communicating it to authors. But what happens when an author receives unexpected sales feedback that leaves them questioning their future in the industry? Find out in this episode of The Ingenium Books Podcast.

"In this small publishing environment, you have the opportunity to fix things. You can create a new model. You can work more quickly. I can pass more money on to authors. I can give far more attention to authors." - David Morris

If there is someone who appreciates values in the realm of independent publishing, it has to be David Morris. With a noteworthy career in executive roles in publishing, he brings a unique and broad perspective to the independent publishing landscape. His venture, Lake Drive Books, is a testament to this unique blend of knowledge and experience. David has been dedicated to understanding sales data and distilling it into meaningful insights for his authors, making him an indispensable resource for beginners and seasoned authors alike. .

In this episode you will:

• Uncover truths about the dynamic world of publishing, both its challenges and opportunities.
• Explore why an author's network can amplify an author's reach and impact.
• Understand the merit of long-haul commitment and why it's central to an author's success.
• Unravel how publishing can bridge gaps, forming a knowledgeable and empathetic community.

The resources mentioned in this episode are:

• Visit the website of Lake Drive Books to discover their collection of books that help people heal, grow, and discover: https://www.lakedrivebooks.com/
• Subscribe to the Ingenium Books Books podcast to listen to more conversations with authors, publishers, and changemakers: https://www.ingeniumbookspodcast.com/
• Connect with David Morris on Hyponymous Consulting to learn more about his work as a literary agent and his expertise in helping authors and books that promote personal growth, healing, and discovery: https://www.hyponymous.com/
• Focus on building your online platform as an author, including developing an email list, engaging with your audience on social media, and offering valuable content and insights to attract readers to your books.
• Recognize that establishing an audience and achieving sales success in book publishing takes time and persistence. Avoid magical thinking and embrace the long game approach to building a following and growing your sales.

Transcript

00:00:00 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
The publishing industry is full of hardworking, dedicated people who are passionate about books and the people who write them. And we're celebrating with one of those people today, somebody who, after a long and illustrious career in executive roles in the traditional publishing world, working for an imprint of one of the Big Five, has just marked his first year as publisher of his own indie publishing press. We're talking with David Morris about what he's learned, what he'd like to forget, and what his favorite part of being an indie publisher is. David Morris is publisher of Lake Drive Books, and he's a literary agent at Hipponymous Consulting, two innovative ventures working together to specialize in authors and books that help people grow, heal, and discover. David holds a PhD in Psychology and Religion from Drew University, and we are delighted to have him with us on this episode of Ingenium Books Books.

00:01:40 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
 David, thanks for joining us and welcome back.

00:01:45 - David Morris
Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

00:01:49 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Anytime. And this is really very exciting for us because we don't very often get to talk with other publishers on our podcast who will talk to us about what their experience is like as a publisher. And I know that since the last time we've spoken, you've published your own book. I do want to talk about that a little bit before we're done, but tell me what you would say about this first year running your own publishing house.

00:02:27 - David Morris
Well, I came from large corporate publishing entities through most of my career, even though I started small and worked my way up, at least in terms of the position. And I would say that when you're in a larger entity, you're segmented in terms of the duties that you perform. And in the last year, I've done everything with regard to small business independent publishing. The tough part about it is when you're wearing all these different hats, your brain is like a computer CPU that is running hot all the time, right. And you maybe aren't putting in a ton of hours if you're good about work life balance, but you're still very exhausted at the end of a day or in the end of a week, especially. But on the upside of it is, I just love all the different things that I have almost 30 years in publishing now, and I'm learning, like, I'm back in college and it's so invigorating. I was always a generalist. I love getting into all the different kinds of things. Malcolm Gladwell talks about the 10,000 hours that you learn for specific skills or experiences, and I never had that with editing per se, even though I came up more from the editorial side of things. But I'm at this point now, I'm collecting, like, several sets of 10,000 hours skill sets. It's awesome. And the neat thing about it, too, is that in the corporate publishing that I've been in and we can talk about this, but there's more than a little brokenness to publishing right now.

00:04:25 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Yeah.

00:04:27 - David Morris
And you're experiencing this, too, I'm sure. At Ingenium Books, to be in this small publishing, small scale, smaller operation publishing environment, you have the opportunity to fix things. You can create a new model. You can work more quickly. I definitely saw some of the broken parts in publishing, and I still see it today because I do agenting as well. So I see kind of what's going on. There's a lot of good people out there in publishing. Publishing companies, a lot of good publishing companies. But they're struggling with some pretty big stuff. But I can do things differently. I don't have a big CEO salary I need to pay, and I can pass more money on to authors. I can give far more attention to authors. And that's one thing, too, and I'll pause that's one thing about this new setup. And what I've learned in this past year is I just have so much more direct contact with people.

00:05:26 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Right. People outside the walls of your office.

00:05:30 - David Morris
Yeah. And with authors. And I'm into the creative work that they're doing. I'm involved and I'm engaged in what they're doing and their cause. I care about it far more than I ever did in a regular job where you're getting a paycheck, which there's nothing wrong with, but that's what that was. Now, in this situation, I have an opportunity to really this is more of a life passion for me than I ever thought I could have. And I almost don't even care about my paycheck. But that is important, which is a.

00:06:01 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Good thing, because sometimes it's like, what happened to that paycheck?

00:06:04 - David Morris
Yeah, exactly. Well, I'm lucky. I had a really good job in publishing. More than one. I consider myself very fortunate, but I have had to rewire my brain about, well, how much do I really need in life? And that's also been very, even spiritually constructive for me.

00:06:26 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Yeah. So Lake Drive Books is the name of your publishing house. I'm really fascinated to learn about lessons that you took from the traditional publishing side of your career that you brought into Lake Drive Books. Are there a few of those things?

00:06:53 - David Morris
Yeah, probably one thing, like the smaller thing is just being really good about understanding sales data and communicating all that really well with your author. I actually give my authors a monthly update for the first year of their book on how their sales are doing. And if I see a spike and I'm looking at sales numbers every day, pretty much if I see a spike and I know they did something, I say, hey, that worked, that worked. Good job. Do that again. So that's really good hands on stuff and not unrelated to this and in a bigger way, what I really do is I help authors with online platforming. I noticed that especially in my more recent years at Harper, an imprint at a large publishing company, it was the authors who found their audience online who were succeeding. And there's positives and there's negatives there for those who find that exhausting or they don't want to do it all the time. And that is a real thing. There is a lot of the online platforming that doesn't work in book publishing. Like the classic mistake that publishers make is they they pay a big advance to a music artist who has a giant following on Instagram, and they realize later, oh, their fans actually just want more music from them. Not a book necessarily. And that happens a lot. But I think that rule applies in general for online influencers who don't have actual content. They don't have insights like that. They might be a lifestyle and they got insights about how to decorate, or they might know about music, but they don't actually have insights that go into the written medium of a 60,000 word book, not pages. So I think helping authors with their platform is probably the thing that I try to do the most. It's one of the unique things that I try to offer, because I saw that the authors who developed email lists, who engaged their people on social media in a way that works for them, and they did it and they did it in a good way. They did it in sort of the right way, which I would say is more about offering quotes and content than about selfies and product shots.

00:09:28 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Right.

00:09:29 - David Morris
If you can do that, then people start to look to you as somebody with ideas and inspiration and insights, and then they realize, oh, I want to read a 60,000 word book by them too. That's really how it works. So it was the authors who we had some authors where I was working at Harper where they just didn't get it. And then there was others who kept saying, what else should I do? What else should I do? And they're the ones that surprised people. We had a black author in particular, and I won't go into detail, but I don't think people thought very much of what she might be able to accomplish. And she was probably one of the hardest workers, one of the smartest workers that we had, and just completely surprised the executives on our team and surprised us all with how far she went with her first year book sales. And she got a great book deal next time around.

00:10:25 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Yeah.

00:10:28 - David Morris
That'S one of the things I do. I try to create an ongoing conversation with all of my authors, focusing on platform, meeting them where they are, helping them take that next best step. What's your website look like? What's your preferred social media platform? How are you using it? Are you collecting emails? Are you doing a substac, perhaps? How are you taking steps every day to build your audience? And one of the things I think I've learned, and you've probably seen this too, is I see this more than ever. And I think it was true even when I was at a big publishing house. But you get that first month of sales on a book, and it works great, really, because you've gone right to your immediate tribe, maybe your family and friends, and you sell a nice batch of books, but then it can just really drop off. And I found that the authors where it's not dropping off are those that are able to continue to grow their online platform, however slow. Now, that's not everything. There's speaking. There's other ways of growing. But that is a known quantity that has a direct correlation to continued sales.

00:11:53 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Yeah. And finding, as you were saying, finding the members of your platform audience who are the consumers of written work.

00:12:05 - David Morris
Yes.

00:12:06 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Unless you're doing an audiobook. Has there been anything that surprised you?

00:12:15 - David Morris
Anything that surprised me? Well, I mentioned just how much I've enjoyed being directly connected to authors and their work. I didn't quite expect that. I did come at this from more of an executive corporate mindset, more than I realized. So I had to kind of shed.

00:12:34 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
That over time and tell me more about that. What exactly happened, and how did it play out for you?

00:12:46 - David Morris
Well, one specific example might not be the one you'd be interested in the most, perhaps, but I expected sales to be a lot easier. I'd built PNL models with bigger numbers in them, and I didn't realize how hard it would be to get to those numbers for the average entry level author.

00:13:06 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Right.

00:13:09 - David Morris
That surprised me. But now I kind of see the dynamic at play and how how it works. And the funny thing is, the hard thing is you go to a writer's conference as a publishing expert, and your biggest task sometimes is to not disillusion and disenfranchise people. But it's hard work. It is. I think one of the things I often say is, and I've just continued to learn this, so maybe it's not a big surprise, but it's something that's really held up in my recent work as an independent publisher, is try to avoid magical thinking. Even a magician knows that they're not really presenting magic to you. They're presenting something else. And they worked really hard to make that work for you, that illusion to work for you. Practice, practice, practice, over and over again. And I think that analogy works pretty good for book publishing. I like to talk about how it takes time to establish an audience and a following. Sometimes that's sheerly by just writing and publishing more books if you can find a way to do it. One of the authors that we worked with at this large publishing company I was at, she had a leg up here and there, but she also didn't have any great sales for her first three or four books. But it was her fifth book that took off finally. And this is all in nonfiction, spiritual growth type books. So as an independent publisher and I'm working with some entry level authors, that's even depressing for me to say to myself, but but, you know, just knowing how much time it will take, it's a long play.

00:15:03 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
It's a long game.

00:15:04 - David Morris
I think I've learned that surprise at a big house. You're bringing on authors who've got big platforms already. You're paying them big advances, and you get right to work and sales start happening. So maybe that's one of the really big surprises for me has just been how long of a play this work is.

00:15:24 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Yeah. I want to ask you about your publishing program, and I know this from our previous conversations. So you've got a PhD in psychology and religion, and you have alluded in this conversation to working with books in the theological space, for lack of a better word. So is Lake Drive Books focusing in that area? Tell me about how you came to develop and articulate your publishing program and how that looks to you now.

00:16:05 - David Morris
Sure. Yeah. Our tagline is Lake Drive Books, books that help you heal, grow, and discover. It is very much more located in a spiritual sort of self help vibe that is meant to help us move on from broken narratives or restrictive ideologies, with stories, with authenticity, with affirming people for who they are. So we're publishing books having to do with gender and sexuality challenges, particularly within religious communities that are marginalizing folks. A couple of black authors I wish I could connect with more and just elevating these experiences of those on the margin with their gritty tales. And it's just very illuminating. But just the idea of there's a big movement away from church right now. No matter how you feel about it, there's a lot of folks who have found themselves untethered to these communities that aren't working for them so well anymore. That's what my book and my psychology religion work was about, was about what happens when you lose your faith and how do you find your way forward. So that kind of very much informs the books that I'm looking for. And I've got a memoir by just a wonderful beginning author. I just liked her book so much. The platforms kind of wish it was a little stronger, but the book was so good. I was just like, okay, I got to do this, because she talked about this tale of her own journey of growing up in a highly committed Christian environment and just realizing that a lot of the things that she was taught don't necessarily hold up as she grew up and as she learned more. And it's just a book that is about the life of the mind. It's about experiencing beauty and awe and wonder in nature. And there's a lot of accountability and reckoning that's going on in some of this literature. But on the other side of that too, there's also like, well, where are we going? What's next? What does this look like for me? Who am I? A really big theme is I am something more than we might think I am or I might think I am.

00:18:47 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Right?

00:18:47 - David Morris
I have an author who is Japanese American and he grew up in a very white evangelical environment and taught at an evangelical college. And he realized more and more as he grew older and worked in this environment that he needed to discover who he was. And that's how he found more spiritual enlightenment than he ever found in the theology or in the rules and the culture.

00:19:16 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Right.

00:19:17 - David Morris
So hopefully that wasn't too long winded.

00:19:19 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Of a no, not at all. And I can hear the passion, just the passion for that stuff dripping off you. So what a privilege, really, to be able to work in a space where not just the publishing space, but yes, true. In a space that has such a connection to your heart. What I wanted to dig just a little further into there is some of what you described I think I would characterize as something that can be deeply personal and meaningful on a deeply personal level about my relationship with myself, for example. But there's also bigger messages. I wonder if you would talk a little bit about whether you've had conversations with yourself or as you've been thinking about your publishing program, about what message might be there for a more writ large space for society, for our institutions. Are there hopes and dreams and plans you have for that?

00:20:40 - David Morris
Well, I'm not totally sure what you mean, so steer me a different direction if I'm going the wrong way here. But I think it's about community and identity. That's something we're all struggling with. We're a much more diversified country in the United States or North America even for that matter, you being from Canada and the way of life that we once knew in North America or in the American dream. It's changing and it has a lot of challenges. One of the big ones is let's just talk really simply and structurally is our digital marketplace. We connect digitally now and some people like to say, well, we're much more fragmented than we ever used to be. I would say we're more segmented than we ever used to be. For me, the analogy has always been I like Americana music and before Napster came along, and the Internet just blew everything up and streaming happened. I was a prisoner of classic rock stations.

00:21:59 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Right.

00:22:00 - David Morris
But now I can go live in this really narrow vertical and hardly even know what's going on in pop music anymore. And I'm sure that must resonate. You probably have your own version of that.

00:22:13 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Exactly.

00:22:14 - David Morris
But I think the challenge there is that we don't have that mass culture that we all buy into as a community as a whole, as a bigger group like I grew up with when I was in the 70s. It's like everybody watched Boni and Marie. I think religious or not, that's a big part of the challenges. And some of the social challenges that we're going through right now is people feel unmoored. And I think you have sort of a reactionary lashing out going on in a lot of our politics right now, depending on how you look at it. Ultimately, I'm trying in my publishing to help bring in a sense of particularity and identity and understanding, and I think that helps insofar as we can better understand ourselves. We do that in conjunction with being in community. You can't have one without the other.

00:23:12 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Yeah. Tell me where you're finding your authors or how are they finding you, if that's the case. Maybe it's a mix of both.

00:23:23 - David Morris
Yeah, it is both. I'm always on the lookout for the right author. I work within a certain sort of vibe and stream of people. I think the network really does matter. I'll have some authors I like that come along, but I'm like, well, but we don't know the same people. We don't know any of the same people. There's no Ven diagram here. And maybe we shouldn't necessarily work together. I've had to learn that too. I think networking is so important, even as an author, so I'm always on the lookout. I really would love to work more with authors who have more established platforms, because I feel like the model that I offer is going to give them more than they realize and more than they would even get from a conventional publishing environment. I mean, I have 30 years of experience at major publishers. I know what needs to happen. And for anything as an indie publisher or a one person operation might lack, I more than make up for it in certain other ways, particularly pay royalties. Right. And I think if authors realize and this is getting into another speech, that there's opportunity working with indie publishers that they might not get from a broad market, from a larger house, if we could figure that out, how to tell them that, then that's there. But I do get referrals, and I definitely live off of that. I love that when other authors refer people to me. I mean, there's always a vetting process. There's always a dance that you do to find out if we're the right match for each other. I love that part. That part is really fun. I meet some amazing people. I've had probably hundreds of conversations by now, even though I only publish eight or ten people. On the publishing side, I have 15 authors signed right now.

00:25:25 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Well, congratulations. That's great.

00:25:30 - David Morris
Yeah. How about you?

00:25:33 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Oh, yeah.

00:25:34 - David Morris
Well, how are you finding?

00:25:36 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
We do very much the same. Yeah, we're finding all the same things. I would say, actually, this past year, 2023 was not as active for us as 2022. I think coming out of the COVID Lockdowns, we had lots. I think we were the Beneficiaries publishing.

00:25:59 - David Morris
Really enjoyed the pandemic.

00:26:02 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Yeah. So we had quite a surge of submissions, and there was more reading going.

00:26:09 - David Morris
On, more book buying, too.

00:26:11 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Yeah, all of that. And so we were kind of kicking up our heels, doing a little happy dance at the end of 2022. And 2023 has not been the same, which I think there's a lot of that going around, but it's just everybody's flying to Europe. Yes, that's right. Exactly. Traveling. But we are still every day we talk about how grateful we are to be in a passion space, being creative and working with people with their own passions for being creative and with important stories to tell. And I don't think we would do it any other way.

00:27:05 - David Morris
There you go. Yeah.

00:27:11 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Before we go too far away from that, I was curious about what your submissions process is like. So you're having conversations. I'm not trying to push you to tell secrets out of school, but what do you ask your potential authors to go through in terms of talking about their book? Is it all feel and fit? What does that look for you?

00:27:37 - David Morris
Yeah, I will often start things off with an informal conversation, block out an hour and talk to someone if I feel like there's enough connection there. Usually, though, before that even, I try to learn a little bit more. I often will say to authors, can you send me an introductory chapter and table of contents? I don't always expect a book proposal because I think that that can get overwhelming. I have a template, but I will send especially to those I'm not sure the queries I get where I'm not sure it's a really good fit. I'll say we'll start with the proposal template. If you can really work that well and it looks right for me, let's talk. But yeah, usually I like to see some sample writing, and it's not so much to know that you can write, but that you've worked on your idea, you've spent time on it, and you know what it is. Again, I kind of look at the platform, too. First. I look at the social media following, I find out about the email list. I get a sense of things of the website, like, how savvy is this author at presenting themselves to people and putting themselves in front of people. And it's different for everybody, but that's part of it. But the process would be a series of chats and two or three before I get to a deal memo and a contract. That makes sense.

00:29:21 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Yes, makes perfect sense. Are you noticing any difference, synergy between opposing forces with your publishing house versus your literary agent activities?

00:29:36 - David Morris
Yeah, I mean, to me it's been nothing but goodness. One side of the work is learning from the other side of the work. And I think I'm a better agent because I do the indie publishing and I think I'm a better indie publisher because I do the agenting and I have no problem. I thought about that and I thought there might be a perception, and there maybe there is at times that isn't at a conflict, hasn't been, especially when you're keeping things on. Kind of very narrow area, subject area too. It just makes me better networked. And I've gotten indie publishing authors through the network of my agenting authors and maybe even vice versa. And that's just good for the authors and that's good for the readers and it's good for the publishers. I try to operate with a philosophy of abundance rather than scarcity or competitiveness. I was trained on the scarcity and competitiveness model, but I actually don't believe that. I'm not sure I ever really did believe it. I had a boss once tell me to not talk to a colleague and a friend at another publishing house, and I just found that so puzzling because we're kind of all in this together, no matter what we do. And if you're prioritizing what's best for the author and the reader, it'll all shake out the way that it needs to shake out. Now, does that mean I don't get down some days when I find out an author has gone to another publishing house?

00:31:10 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Right. Exactly.

00:31:11 - David Morris
Oh man, I wish they had listened to me and signed with me. I try to tell myself that no philosophy of abundance.

00:31:22 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Yes. And it's one of the both blessings and curses of the state of the publishing industry, which is that authors have a lot of choice. They have choice of routes of publishing, they have choices of which publishers to choose once they decide on a route. And that's abundance at work.

00:31:47 - David Morris
Yeah, really.

00:31:50 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
I'm running a little overtime, but I wanted to ask one more question as we celebrate your publishing birthday.

00:32:00 - David Morris
Thank you.

00:32:01 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
If you cast your mind forward to your second birthday, what do you envision might be different in another year? If anything?

00:32:15 - David Morris
I think I would just like to actualize some stronger sales and revenue because that would give me more opportunity to grow and build. I feel like the model has a lot to offer authors and if I had just a fraction of the resources of some of the big houses, I think there's a lot I think I could do with that. I really do believe in it. I believe that the model that can pay authors better, that can give them stronger involvement, stronger coaching. Publishers really rely on author platforms these days, but they don't want to admit it.

00:32:53 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Right.

00:32:53 - David Morris
And it's just changed so fast, too, so it's hard for everybody to catch up. There's a publisher I know right now is trying to update their website, and it's like, okay, I heard that from you about a year ago. I built mine by myself in a month or two. So, yeah, I'd like to do more, but I'd also like to find some authors who are really willing to be entrepreneurs and do something unconventional. I have an author I know we're at Time here who did a GoFundMe campaign, and his contract even incentivized him that if he contributed more toward the upfront production costs of a book, he'll get a stronger royalty, and it's not a very big fees getting charged compared to other hybrid publishers right in the first place. And he just went for it, and his audience just came right along, and he raised quite a sum of money. And I think that's an awesome model. Even if you can't raise as much as he did, you can raise something. And it's also a marketing tool.

00:34:03 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Exactly.

00:34:04 - David Morris
Yeah. It seeds your audience as to what's coming, and it gets them involved and engaged and interested and excited. And that, to me, was just like brilliant publishing. And in this case, a little bit of justice publishing too.

00:34:18 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Yeah. And that entrepreneurial spirit that you were just talking about, well, that's fantastic. I always love our conversations, and I'm going to just say that we're going to be having you back again, because there were several things that I was like, oh, we can dig deeper into that. So as long as you don't mind entertaining us for another invitation to come back at some point in the future.

00:34:42 - David Morris
Oh, this is a nice different thing to do in my day.

00:34:46 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Excellent.

00:34:47 - David Morris
Gives a sense of yes, exactly.

00:34:50 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Exactly. Okay. David Morris, publisher of Lake Drive Books. As of this interview, he's been running his publishing house for one whole year, august of 2023. So we'll see what happens in August of 2024. And here's to more sales for you.

00:35:06 - David Morris
David, and for you too. Thank you.

00:35:09 - Boni Wagner-Stafford
Thank you. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode of Ingenium Books Books, please, like, share and subscribe subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, but also consider subscribing to our YouTube channel, where you can see these episodes in addition to hearing them close.