Book Journeys Author Interview – April 25, 2013
Dr. Angela Lauria with Dr. Charles Rawlings, Doctor, Lawyer, and author of It Really Is That Complicated
“80% of the work may be writing, but believe me, another 50% is you marketing. ” – Dr. Charles Rawlings
Angela:
Well, hello everybody, and welcome to Book Journeys Radio! My name is Dr. Angela Lauria, I am the founder of the Author Incubator and creator of the Difference Process for writing a book that matters. Each week on Book Journeys, we talk to an author about their experience writing, publishing, and marketing a book.
Today on the show, we’ve got Dr Charles Rawlings, he is the author of It Really Is That Complicated, and if you want to follow along, go ahead and head over to itreallyisthatcomplicatedbook.com, itreallyisthatcomplicatedbook. Dr Rawlings, welcome to the show!
Charles:
Well, thank you, Angela, it’s a pleasure to be here!
Angela:
Great to have you. Why don’t you tell us—let’s just start by telling us a little bit about the book, what it’s about, and why you decided to write it.
Charles:
Okay. The book is…more or less about…your listeners. The readers. It’s about everyday folks, men and women, and the relationships in which they find themselves—be it first date, long-term dating, a committed relationship, a live-in relationship, a marriage—it’s about that type of relationships. It’s a book written by me, a mature male, from his viewpoint, but I can tell you that every person that has read the book, and has come back to me and said, “You know, I see something in there, either about myself, about my significant other, or about the relationship that I’m in.”
The problems are there; it’s a very truthful book, it doesn’t pull any punches, and people come back and say, you know, I see some solutions to some of our problems.
Angela:
Well, I just like—I feel validated by that title, because it really does feel that complicated, so, I like someone acknowledging that for me. [chuckles.] It really is that complicated.
Charles:
Yeah, that’s the first truism. I mean, the title is the first truism. People these days, they’re used to Facebook, YouTube, sound bites, you know, go in, go out, just set up a relationship. It’s not that easy. It really is that complicated.
Angela:
Huh. So what made you wanna write this? This is your first book, correct?
Charles:
Actually, this is my second book. My first book is entitled “Living Shells”. I’m also an underwater photographer, among other things, and I did a coffee table book of underwater photography. That one’s actually won a fair number of national and international awards, so this is my second book.
Angela:
Wow! So this is a long way from pretty seashells. [Charles: This is a very long way from pretty seashells.] How did you—by the way, just because I was curious, in case anyone else is, I just went to livingshells.com, and I’m seeing many pictures of very beautiful seashells. Oh my goodness, these pictures are amazing! Go there too, but we’re gonna talk about It Really Is That Complicated.
How did you come to write that book? How did you go from Living Shells, which is more of a photography-based book, to this book, which is, probably 50,000 words about relationships. And I know, we’ve mentioned that you were a doctor, but we didn’t tell everybody that you were actually an attorney, a neurosurgeon, and an accomplished, award-winning underwater photographer, so you’re really a Renaissance man, but none of those really qualify you as a relationship expert, so why that book?
Charles:
Okay, so I would probably disagree a little bit about the “relationship expert” as anyone can ever be called a quote, expert, but—yeah, we’ll get into that.
Why did I write it? Because I have this outlook on life, this sort of honest, truthful outlook on life, and after I was divorced, I started going into sort of the dating field. I was just astonished and amazed about how really difficult and really complicated that is. I was talking to many of my friends, many of whom are actually women, and they’re like, instead of talking about it– this is important stuff, this is solutions to a lot of people’s problems—write a book. Make it readable, make it quick, they can pick it up, they’ve got sort of like sound bites, ten chapters, write it and they will read it. They’ll have some solutions to their problems.
That’s really why I wrote it. It’s like a counterpart to that book, that was out—I don’t know, a while ago…
Angela:
What is it, the Rules, the Rules one? That book?
Charles:
It’s not the Rules one, it’s the one “He’s Really Not That Into You.”
Angela:
He’s Not That Into You. Okay, yup.
Charles:
Yeah, exactly. That’s for sort of the twenty-year-olds, and the twenty-somethings; this is more for the mature folks, you know, little bit older who are in relationships, who are married, are committed, or are just having these problems. It ranges all the way from trips, home ownership, sexual boredom, all the way to what you can do about them.
Angela:
Wow. This is fascinating to me, because it sounds to me—and tell me where I’m wrong here, but you wrote this book because you wanted to help people, that you had felt like you had figured something out, maybe through trial and error, or some practice of your own, and this is something that you wanted to share with other people beyond your circle of friends?
Charles:
Absolutely. This is—these are solutions and thoughts about problems in modern relationships, as seen from a mature professional who has some insight, and has lived, instead of a twenty-two year old, who’s just dating.
Angela:
Right. Right. Okay, so you decide to write this book, with some advice from friends, you get the idea you’re gonna write the book. Tell us what that process—once you decided to write it, what was that process like for you? How did you write it, how long did you take, did you take time off from work or other pursuits, or did you fit it in, how’d you find the time…tell us about that process.
Charles:
Sure. Well, interestingly enough, I sat down with a group of close female friends, and in about 45 minutes, we had the outline of the book. Just sort of going back and forth with ideas and issues, things that were important to them, things that were important to women, things that were important to men, things that were important in relationships.
We actually had an outline of the book with about ten chapters in about 45 minutes.
Angela:
Okay, I wanna stop you there, cause I think—and then I’d wanna get back to that thread, but I think that’s a really, really important place for people to pay attention.
In the Difference Process that I teach, the first part is to identify a…an ideal reader. The reason we identify that ideal reader, is because we wanna write the book to that, almost as a love letter at that moment, a personal communication, and one of the ways I recommend people do that is by actually going and talking to their ideal reader, so that you are writing the right stuff. The assumptions you make as an author may not be the right ones, this is a perfect way to do it, and accomplish a couple things at the same time, you ended up in 45 minutes having an outline that you knew would speak to your ideal reader, because you are sitting across the table from them.
I just wanted to stop and highlight that, because I think that is a great takeaway from say, a ______ for people. Do not be afraid, and it’s a personal topic, so I don’t know if it is hard or easy, but it’s still, you’re asking them to talk about some pretty intimate stuff, and being brave and asking for that _____led to a much better book that you tried to get.
Charles:
I agree, and all along, during the process, I had several different women and a couple of men actually read the chapters as I wrote them. They would either validate, or just say you know, that doesn’t make sense, that’s not flowing…and not necessarily critiquing on the actual writing style so much, as just the ideas that were in it.
In terms of writing, I didn’t take any time off work; what I basically did was, in the evenings, I would just feel…the urge would come over me. It’s sort of like, now is the time to start writing. I would pick a paragraph, I mean a chapter, and try and finish the chapter within, oh say, three weeks. Give myself three weeks. If it didn’t finish itself in three weeks, then you would say okay, go to the next chapter, and then go to the next chapter. It actually turned out that a very good friend of mine, as she was reading the book, was like, this could be [a] very, very dark book. You’re not giving any people a lot of hope. I’m like, you know, I know a lot of relationships, and you look around, and people who—your listeners are gonna be nodding their heads, there’s some really sad relationships around. And so, she says, why don’t you do this, why don’t you write the last chapter? And put in what you actually feel, how you want to end the book. That way, you can tailor the remainder of the writing to that chapter, and she says like, at least hold out some hope at the end.
Actually, the last chapter I think is probably the best, and it’s probably the most inspiring for people.
Angela:
And it’s the one that you wrote first, or…
Charles:
It’s one of the ones that I wrote first, yeah. Probably, some of the chapters were fairly easy to write. Some of the more emotional ones were more difficult, and about…after chapter—oh, about the fifth chapter, that’s when I went ahead and wrote the last chapter, and threw in where I wanted it to go.
Angela:
That’s excellent. So, how long was that process? From when you got the idea, “I’m gonna write a book” until you had a finished manuscript. How long did that take you?
Charles:
Probably about eight months or so.
Angela:
During that time, were you thinking about publishing options? Did you know how you were gonna publish? How did you make that decision?
Charles:
Obviously I had already published the first book, and had gone through the process of trying to find a publishing company. I can tell you that a large, coffee-table photography book, even back then when the economy was really poor, I spent time marketing that book. I had some idea of how to approach a publishing company. I had heard good things about my publisher AuthorHouse, who had just been bought up by Penguin, and so I approached them, and this was also after I have had the book obviously written, I had my editor, who is a wonderful editor from Australia, her name in Emily Gowor. She goes by the title The Word Artist, and she is just amazing. She looked over the book, and edited it, and I’d had a copy editor look through it, so when I submitted it to AuthorHouse, it had been gone over pretty thoroughly with a fine-toothed comb. I sent in the last chapter, and they were thrilled. They couldn’t wait.
Angela:
For you, that was the only publisher that you talked to; you knew that you didn’t wanna go the traditional…you know, get an agent and find a publisher route. You knew that you didn’t wanna handle the technical and design details of publishing yourself. For you, this sounds like it was a pretty easy decision; did you shop around, did you look at other options?
Charles:
I didn’t even shop around. like I said, I had heard very good things about AuthorHouse, I had my own editor, I had Emily, I had my cover design graphic artist, and so it was, basically, just pitching it to them. I really didn’t even have to pitch it to them, they were like, yeah, we definitely wanna…want to publish it.
Angela:
You had your own designer? ‘Cause I would think publishing…I would think AuthorHouse would provide that as part of their publishing services.
Charles:
They would, they absolutely would, but I had already gotten Jill Shirley to do the cover. She’s a wonderful graphic artist, and she’s very talented, and she and I came up with the ideas for the cover, but yeah, AuthorHouse has definitely one of those in-house.
Angela:
You knew that you were gonna make an investment in this book, ’cause obviously, AuthorHouse is an author-funded publishing option.
A lot of people get confused about terms here, so I’m gonna give my definition, but feel free to tell me how you think of it. When I personally think of self-publishing, I think of a really DIY effort that’s where you hire– like you did in your case, where you hire a designer and you hire someone to do the interior, and your formatting, or you learn how to do it yourself. You register your company as a publishing company, then you can get an ISBN code, and get a LCCN code from the Library of Congress. It’s really– not hard, but many hours of labor that you’re either paying for or doing yourself. But there are some great publishing houses like AuthorHouse or Balboa or Morgan James that are author-funded, so you maintain the copyright, it’s still your book, but you’re not physically self-publishing, meaning you’re not doing those tasks.
When you go that route, the author-funded route, instead of your time, you give them your money.
Yeah, I was just gonna ask you, how did you make that decision to spend the money on this, and was it easy or hard, and what advice would you give people about the tradeoff between doing it yourself, and doing it with an author-funded publisher?
Charles:
I can also say that with the author-funded—I agree totally with your analysis of self-publishing and author-funded. I can tell you that I negotiated a deal with AuthorHouse, which other people may or may not be able to do. I like the idea that I didn’t have to do it all myself; it wasn’t some fly-by-night author endeavor that would end up with ten books stuck somewhere forever and ever.
What I really wanted was the publicity and the media campaign that they presented, along with the publishing options. That’s what really—I wouldn’t say sold me on AuthorHouse, but pushed me over the edge, and that’s essentially what I ended up paying for—was more the publicity campaign than it was everything.
Angela:
Interesting. Your book launch, I think it did over the holidays, end of the year, beginning of January. What kind of publicity have they contributed? What did you pay for? Was it worth it? Would you recommend it to other people?
Charles:
I think it was worth it; they—[Angela: And maybe it’s ongoing still, I’m not really sure.]
It’s somewhat ongoing. They set up a six-to-eight week, twelve-week, or whatever you can negotiate with them, or six months, whatever you feel comfortable with—media campaign. They present it to the traditional print media, radio, they pitch it to some of the Internet agencies, and give you publicity as much as you can.
Obviously, I’m not shy, and I’m pretty outgoing, and so, I’m also, on the side, done my own campaign in terms of local book signings, and readings. Obviously, I have websites that are pretty decent, have Facebook that I always post on, and that people go on to and write their comments…it’s an interesting process.
Angela:
So give us some advice. This is the time in the call where I say, publishing is something that tripped up a lot of authors that I’ve worked with. Their belief is, writing a book is 90, 80 to 90% of being an author, and publishing and marketing are for other people and that’s maybe gonna take up 10% of their time. As an author, you know that’s not exactly how it goes when you’re on the other side. So what would you tell people that are stumped on this step—what do I do about a publisher, who publishes this, should I do it myself, should I pay someone, should I wait around and hope to get picked up by an agent or a traditional publisher?
Charles:
My first thought would be to the author and to your listeners is, how much do you believe in the book? How much do you want to get it out there? If you believe in it, and you have…you know, it’s not gonna bankrupt you or anything like that, I’d use the money to go to an author…an author house. I wouldn’t necessarily try and do it yourself.
If you are one of these folks who just want that–
Angela:
Do you believe that the money you’ve invested in AuthorHouse, you will get back in book sales?
Charles:
Yeah, I’m close now. [Angela: Okay, that’s great.] Yeah, absolutely.
Angela:
So you feel like when you let out your time, your money in book sales, that for you, working with somebody and paying them was the right investment in terms of the whole____. [Charles: absolutely. There’s no doubt about that.] even if they get the first four months of sales…you’re not gonna make a dime for four months of sales, it’s all basically going to pay them off, but it’s worth that because you have the time, and you also have their expertise.
Charles:
Right. And I have their contacts.
Angela:
Their contacts! Well, that’s a great point. Can you explain more about that?
Charles:
Well, I mean, they have all of these contacts in terms of email blasts, literary sources, they have contacts for doing free literary reviews on the book, things like that. You can go to my Facebook and my website and see some quotes from the reviews.
Angela:
I just wanna remind people that like, you are obviously not a dumb guy. You’re a neuroscientist, spent years as a doctor, and then, just I guess that you were bored and got a law degree, and now spent years as a practicing attorney, because you know, why not a few books.
I’m just gonna venture a guess that if you wanted to make contact in the literary review world, you could do it. If you wanted to learn how to be a publisher, I’m gonna say you probably got the mental aptitude to cross that off your list. It’s not that it couldn’t be done, but I think this is a really important lesson now. I’m spending some time here, because this is the takeaway: authors get so focused on control, control of their message or their copyright, or the design or whatever, and sometimes they forget to see the upside, both in terms of time, and also the contacts that you’ve mentioned. You could go develop those contacts, you know, that’s something that’s within your skill set, but is that the best use of your energy as an author? Is that the best use—(audio garbled at this point.) check for a few thousand dollars, but when ______everything out, for a lot of authors, (audio garbled at this point.) the better decision becomes the better result.
I just wanted to emphasize that point.
Charles:
Yeah, no, I agree with you. [Angela: Okay!] Yeah, sure. Absolutely.
I will say this: an agent would be interesting. Like I said, I’ve never had an agent, I thought about seeking one out, but I’ve never done that. The other thing you had mentioned about the writers, this was some of what the PR folks were telling me: they think 80% of the work is writing. Well, 80% of the work may be writing, but believe me, another 50% is you marketing. I know it’s over a hundred percent, that’s what I mean. It’s just that much effort.
Because the people there at AuthorHouse in their PR department are like, would you mind doing a radio interview or going to author signing? I’m like, are you kidding me? I’d love to do radios, or radio interviews, or do signings. They’re like, wow. Most of our authors, they don’t want anything to do with radio shows or signings or anything like that. I’m like, man, how do you get out and market your book?
Angela:
Right. So you had…and maybe this is because you had done the show, but you did have an expectation of…that there would be a promotional work. You had an expectation that you would be required to do some marketing for your book.
A lot of authors have that, “if you build it, they will come” mentality, so…
Charles:
I’ve never seen anyone build something and they come. You have to at least get the word out that it’s been built.
Angela:
It’s really too bad, but it’s true. So, yeah, I think that’s the lesson we all learned.
Okay, so you have a strategy for publishing, and then, for promotion, it sounds like you’ve had a two-part strategy: one is to rely on your publishing partners for some of the marketing, and then, you’ve also taken your own initiative and put some promotional programs together without AuthorHouse. If there was somebody out there thinking about how to promote their book, and they knew they weren’t—they didn’t have a publisher, they’re gonna do it on their own, what do you think is the most effective thing that you have done?
Charles:
Websites and Facebook. I think that’s probably the two most effective things. In fact, I’d say Facebook is probably better than the website, because it’s more interactive, and it’s more fluid.
Angela:
And did you do a Facebook… did you do a Facebook…Facebook Ads or just a Facebook page or—
Charles:
It’s a Facebook page and some of the posts are being promoted. Go look it up if–[Angela: it’s easier to promote posts, yup?] Yeah, it really is that complicated. You can go see the Facebook now.
Angela:
That’s awesome. If people wanna check that out on Facebook, they should go to “It Really Is That Complicated” Facebook…is there a link on the It Really Is That Complicated page, or should they just go to Facebook?
Charles:
No, there’s links all on the websites. You can link between all my websites, and between my Facebook pages.
Angela:
Awesome. And that’s where you feel like you;ve gotten the most response for your effort has been through finding fans on Facebook.
Charles:
I would say so, yes.
Angela:
Is that something you knew, or did you find a Facebook marketer to work with, and is that somebody you would recommend?
Charles:
That’s something I pretty much knew. [Angela: There you go. Awesome.] Yes.
Angela:
Okay, well that’s terrific. So, we’ve only got a few minutes left, but one of the things I’d like to talk about, I always like images in diet books, how they show the before and after pictures. I always ask people, before and after you were an author, because that moment you are holding your book in your hands for the first time is one of the pivotal life moments that you can never come back from. You’re always an author, that always gets added to your bio, or your self-description of yourself as an author.
What are some of the things, both ________ and from this book, what are some of the things that have happened to you that wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t an author. Opportunities you’ve had, or people you’ve met, give me some before and after stories.
Charles:
Sure, it’s—so many things come to mind. I mean, I can take, for instance, with this book. It Really Is That Complicated, every time I read a comment on Facebook, where someone goes and likes the book, I know that I am touching a reader. I am having someone come in and say, you know, I like this. Here’s my comment. Or I don’t like it; I mean, there’s certainly controversial subjects in the book. But at least, I am at least getting them to think about it. Every time I do a radio show, which the book has opened those up tremendously, I am discussing it with the readers and the listeners about some of the very important points about relationships.
It’s really also, from a photography standpoint, and—move back to the first book, it’s very gratifying to see me winning the London Book Festival in Art and Photography. [Angela: Wow, that’s pretty amazing.] Yeah, see, wow, I’m like wow, they do like my photography. It’s like Sally Field’s getting up there going, “you really do like me”.
Angela:
So what would you say to somebody who, and it sounds like you have no problem in your life with motivation in general, but a lot of people want to write a book, and they’re just not able to finish it. Whether they self-sabotage or talk themselves out of it, or they—procrastination, or whatever their reasons are. There are a lot of people that want very much to finish their book and they’re some way stuck. Do you have any advice [for them]?
Charles:
Yeah, they’re stuck like most people are in life; they’re scared. They have some fear about something, some fear of failure, some fear that they won’t finish it, some fear that it won’t be good, you gotta get over the fear. There’s an entire chapter in my book about fearing, and why fear is bad. It’s very negative. You’ve gotta get over the fear, you gotta just go out and write, it doesn’t matter, you’re not gonna fail, it’s something you’re doing, and there’s absolutely nothing to be scared of. It’s gonna be good, it’s whatever you write, it’s your own words.
Angela:
Do you get scared? What do you do when you get scared?
Charles:
I’m past that. There’s very—[Angela: What did you do?] Huh? [Angela: What did you do, if you can remember back.] I looked at the very worst possible occurrence, and when you look at it like that, it’s like, well, that’s not really very scary.
Angela:
I think that’s great advice. I think that’s great to end on, and as an author, you run into an obstacle, and you can look at the worst-case scenario in real life. You can probably handle that, and you’ve probably handled worse, whether you wanted to or not.
Dr. Rawlings, I so appreciate your time today. Dr. Rawlings has two books out; if you are a shell aficionado, I recommend checking out livingshells.com. He is also the author of It Really Is That Complicated, which you can find at itreallyisthatcomplicatedbook.com and on Amazon. So thanks for being with us today.
Charles:
Well thank you, Angela, I really appreciate it. It’s a pleasure.
Angela:
And we’ll be back next week changing the world one book at a time.