Former Speech Therapist Revolutionizes Children’s Book Publishing with AI: Meet the CEO Changing the Game!

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[00:00] SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:05] SPEAKER_01: Hello, this is Robert Snigel, founder of Canada's podcast, where we talk to the entrepreneurs who are making it happen here in British Columbia.
[00:13] SPEAKER_01: Today, our guest is Karen Rishard.
[00:15] SPEAKER_01: Karen is a recovering pediatric speech language pathologist, kidlit lover with a nerdy heart and the CEO and co-founder of Made Live.
[00:24] SPEAKER_01: Based on a Vertin VC, Made Live is an AI-assisted end-to-end children's book publishing platform dedicated to simplifying the publishing process for aspiring authors.
[00:36] SPEAKER_01: Transitioning from a career in speech language pathology, where books were pivotal tools for developing language skills.
[00:44] SPEAKER_01: Karen ventured into writing and self-publishing her own work, confronted with the complexities, inefficiencies, and gatekeeping prevalent in the industry.
[00:53] SPEAKER_01: Hi, Karen. Welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:55] SPEAKER_01: And I appreciate you taking the time to share your entrepreneurial journey with all our listeners.
[01:01] SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for having me today.
[01:03] SPEAKER_02: I know speech language pathology is quite the mouthful.
[01:06] SPEAKER_01: Yes, it's a tough one.
[01:08] SPEAKER_02: I trip on it all of the time.
[01:10] SPEAKER_02: And I can't tell you how many times I've said it.
[01:12] SPEAKER_01: I'm sure there's a lot of people that don't know exactly what that is and what you do exactly.
[01:17] SPEAKER_01: So when you tell us a little bit more about yourself, we know you're in Vernon, BC, which is beautiful up there.
[01:21] SPEAKER_01: And to give us a deep dive, a quick deep dive into your business.
[01:25] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so made live, as you said, AI driven and self publishing software.
[01:30] SPEAKER_02: So really as the intro stated, you know, I had really wanted to write a series of children's books.
[01:37] SPEAKER_02: I had a head full of ideas of like 20 plus books that I wanted to write.
[01:41] SPEAKER_02: So time was of the essence and tried finding a solution that would help us do it faster and more efficiently.
[01:48] SPEAKER_02: Self publishing, especially your first book generally takes on average upwards of five years.
[01:53] SPEAKER_02: Because the process is so convoluted.
[01:55] SPEAKER_02: We were looking at wanting to put out about one book every three to six months.
[01:59] SPEAKER_02: And really couldn't find anything that would would help it along.
[02:02] SPEAKER_02: So that's really where everything with made lives started from.
[02:06] SPEAKER_02: And it was just a matter of figuring out what are the barriers and the pitfalls and the steep learning curves that happen and at what points.
[02:13] SPEAKER_02: And how can we utilize software to make that a lot easier.
[02:16] SPEAKER_02: So it was really born out of, you know, the traditional like am my own first client.
[02:21] SPEAKER_02: It was something that we wanted to build for ourselves and then realized that if we needed this, this is probably something other people would would really benefit from as well.
[02:31] SPEAKER_01: Is that when you made the transition?
[02:33] SPEAKER_01: I guess from working for someone else and becoming an entrepreneur was this the made lie that made the transition the segue?
[02:39] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, it was definitely the impetus.
[02:42] SPEAKER_02: It was a tough thing to let go of.
[02:45] SPEAKER_02: I mean, going into speech pathology gets a master's degree.
[02:48] SPEAKER_02: So it's, you know, six years of university.
[02:51] SPEAKER_02: You know, I was working at it for almost 20 years.
[02:53] SPEAKER_02: So being able to step away or having the confidence or the guts to just walk away from something I put so much time into was certainly not something I took too lightly.
[03:04] SPEAKER_02: But it was pretty obvious from the get go that it was not possible for me to work a 40 hour work week.
[03:11] SPEAKER_02: Plus do this and have it, you know, bring it to market within the next 10 years.
[03:16] SPEAKER_02: If I didn't really just just focus on it.
[03:19] SPEAKER_02: So it really was the tipping point I tried for a good chunk of time to do both and it just wasn't, wasn't feasible.
[03:26] SPEAKER_01: Some of the skills that you've learned while you were employing.
[03:28] SPEAKER_01: Did you bring any of those skills sets over to being an entrepreneur?
[03:32] SPEAKER_01: What did you learn along the way?
[03:33] SPEAKER_02: You know, even in speech language pathology, it's a very, you know, science focused evidence based practice.
[03:42] SPEAKER_02: Sort of a field where you don't do something just because you feel like your gut tells you it's the right thing.
[03:47] SPEAKER_02: It's about, you know, what does the research say?
[03:50] SPEAKER_02: What is the evidence show?
[03:52] SPEAKER_02: I think that idea, you know, once your trained as a scientist, it's kind of how your brain continues to work.
[03:57] SPEAKER_02: So a lot of what I still do is very much sort of, you know, show me the data.
[04:01] SPEAKER_02: I want to see the data. I want to make decisions based on data, not just got got falls into there too, but really, you know, aside from everything around children's books and and, you know, what makes a good kids book because I used books for language development all of the time it was, you know, the core ten end of most of the therapies I would do.
[04:20] SPEAKER_02: But really it's just that making sure what you're doing is the best laid plan, not just your best gut feeling has really been something that's carried over and I was always somebody that was constantly trying to learn new things when I was in the field.
[04:38] SPEAKER_02: And I really think that that has carried over, you know, I don't I don't like to be stagnant.
[04:43] SPEAKER_01: Okay, did you need financing to stick with company and how do you make money now?
[04:47] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so, you know, we were very lucky. My co founder is also my partner.
[04:52] SPEAKER_02: So partner times two and had been in startup for a number of years and had had a successful exit a couple of years prior to that.
[05:00] SPEAKER_02: So we've really been able to lean on personal financing, doing all of the things they tell you not to do.
[05:06] SPEAKER_02: You know, use use your own personal, you know, you're good credit or whatever else to to fund the build.
[05:13] SPEAKER_02: That's what we've done, but it's been a very much matter of Stinger very, very lean.
[05:18] SPEAKER_02: You know, we didn't go out and get off his space. We haven't gone out and hired a bunch of people.
[05:21] SPEAKER_02: It's just been known to the grindstone until we get a product.
[05:25] SPEAKER_02: So I'm happy to say we launched an actual product that people can use in November.
[05:30] SPEAKER_02: So we are now in the process of just sort of soft launch, proven product market fit, making sure that we're making iterations to the software that, you know, it's not just what people said that they wanted, but what they actually want when
[05:43] SPEAKER_02: boots at the ground and they and they actually get in there.
[05:47] SPEAKER_02: So we're happy to say we're in revenue.
[05:50] SPEAKER_02: And this is hopefully going to be a really big year where we, you know, really test what works and what people love and and double down on those things too.
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[06:09] SPEAKER_01: Give me a one piece of knowledge or information about your industry that you can share with our, with our listeners.
[06:15] SPEAKER_01: Something that is kind of unique about your industry and one thing I want to go back to your bio and something that really stood out is complexities, inefficiencies and gatekeeping, prevalent industry.
[06:23] SPEAKER_01: So maybe tell us a little bit about the industry. Maybe tell us a little bit about that. And if that does is a factor.
[06:30] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I mean, really it's the benefit of me coming at this from a perspective where I wanted to write the books and I experienced the issues is that I've gone through the same trajectory that a lot of people that our customers will be so often when you think of publishing, but publishing, especially in children's picture books, you think of, you know, the big five, which became the big four, the big publishing houses.
[06:51] SPEAKER_02: And that is often seen as the only legitimate pathway or the only really, you know, good option to go.
[06:59] SPEAKER_02: But what you find out very quickly is that you can't get in there without getting an agent and finding an agent is probably going to take you a number of years, unless you've got, you know, unless you're the unicorn of the publishing world, or you've already got a massive following.
[07:15] SPEAKER_02: It's an uphill battle to get an agent and you can't get one usually until you've written something and you you kind of know how to sell yourself that way. So a lot of people don't have that background.
[07:26] SPEAKER_02: So if you can't get the agent, you can't get the publisher. So what are you faced with? Well, then you look at self publishing. Now, how do you rate a good book?
[07:33] SPEAKER_02: It's one thing if you're writing, you know, a novel, there's, you know, you can follow certain story arcs, but with children's publishing, your story is half illustrations and half words.
[07:43] SPEAKER_02: So you really should be balancing the images with the text to be able to tell the story and have the reader who's the child and the parent entertained and feel intelligent and and be intrigued.
[07:56] SPEAKER_02: You know, you can't preach at them. There's all these things of what goes into making a really good children's book. So writing it in and of itself is really challenging because you have to figure out what to leave out so that it can be shown in the images or what to strategically leave.
[08:10] SPEAKER_02: It's almost like doing a pitch where it's like, you know, you want to plant the seed of like what question are you asking or, you know, what's my lead into my next slide. How do I get them to turn the page?
[08:19] SPEAKER_02: So really it's that is a challenge in and of itself and what we're finding now is so many people saying I wrote this book. I've been sitting on it for, you know, a couple years, I had one lady, I've been sitting on her story for over 25 years.
[08:33] SPEAKER_02: And it's incredible. And you can see the images come to life in your head, but that's where people get stuck. They've got this idea or this visualization of this is what it looks like, but I'm not an artist. So what do I do?
[08:44] SPEAKER_02: So now you're stuck at how do I illustrate this and how do I do that efficiently and affordably.
[08:50] SPEAKER_02: That's a huge problem. And then of course, once you get all of that put together, then it's the actual layouts and the formatting and where are you going to self publishes that going to be through Amazon Katie is it going to be through in Grim's bar for you going to find a local print shop and sell them at bears and out of the trunk of your car.
[09:06] SPEAKER_02: And you know, like you really have to know where you're going to figure out the past along the way as well. So it is just learning curve after learning curve and, you know, time and money and challenge at every step of the way.
[09:21] SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's talk a little bit about you live in Vernon.
[09:26] SPEAKER_01: What's the long term vision for your company? Do you see your company expanding into other areas beyond BC or even Canada?
[09:33] SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, I mean, there's the did the publishing and self publishing industries are large Canada, though. I mean, it's we're a smaller market, but the lucky thing for us is being a software as a service being a BDC staff.
[09:47] SPEAKER_02: We're not really restricted by, you know, provincial boundaries or even boundaries within the country. So our first market is really going after English speaking.
[09:56] SPEAKER_02: So if we've got people who want to jump in and use it that are in the UK or we've got, you know, some people in beta that were in Sweden.
[10:03] SPEAKER_02: There really is no no barrier to that whatsoever. And in fact, the English speaking industry is the second largest in in terms of the children's picture of markets.
[10:14] SPEAKER_02: So, you know, once we do what we can do within English, it's a matter of looking at getting into the Asian market because they're actually the dominant force and children's picture of publishing.
[10:23] SPEAKER_02: So we don't really see our physical location as any kind of a barrier because we, you know, we don't need people coming into our store. We don't we don't have any barriers in terms of that.
[10:36] SPEAKER_02: So the beauty of being online is is really the, you know, the beauty and the challenges of being online is that we can be anywhere and then we can be anywhere.
[10:47] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly. Okay, how do you define success and how do you celebrate your successes? Do you celebrate by acquiring clients or making a moving the needle in exposure or what would you say would be some big success stories that have kind of given you the idea you were on the right track.
[11:10] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I will say to preface is I feel like I fall into the pitfall of focusing more on the challenges and not enough on the successes. I think a lot of people kind of breeze over they go, oh, that worked. Okay, on to the next thing.
[11:23] SPEAKER_02: So it's it's definitely been a concerted effort to take a step back and say, okay, what are the things that went well and what are the things that are successes, you know, for for me, for on a personal side, stepping away from my profession.
[11:37] SPEAKER_02: So the question was, you know, one of the big first markers, it was I believe in this enough that I'm going to step back and then, you know, fast forward a little while later was actually letting go of all of the registrations and certifications and licensing that I've been holding I've been, you know, holding on to just in case.
[11:55] SPEAKER_02: I see that as a success, you know, a big one for us was, you know, having baby users who are coming in and going, this is incredible, how soon can I use it and, you know, reaching out to us while we were working on improving the software, saying like, is it ready for market, can I can I get in yet.
[12:16] SPEAKER_02: You know, those kinds of encouragement for you know, in terms of exposure, just this past year, we had been part of the total mom pitch, which was a company based out of Toronto and a founder there who had it set up and I don't even remember where I saw it, but it was, you know, submitted video of what you're doing in your business and I think they had almost a thousand women who submitted and we made it in the top 100.
[12:45] SPEAKER_02: And then did another video pitch and made it in the top five and then had this crazy experience and in May of going out to Toronto and meeting a bunch of people and walking a red carpet and pitching on an 80 foot stage in a ball gown, you know, fancy dress pitching, which is something I would have never seen.
[13:05] SPEAKER_02: So you know there it's a combination of external feedback saying like okay this is going well, this is a success and things that are internal it's like you know if somebody else can see the what we're trying to do and the value in it and the know what people are going to get out of it and that is very, very encouraging and and something I see a success.
[13:28] SPEAKER_02: Obviously finally launching the product in November was like our biggest success today and I was just it's in in front of the eyes and in the hands of more and more people this year and you know we've got certain markers and goals that we want to meet kind of each quarter each each year as well.
[13:46] SPEAKER_02: And it's just a matter of you know taking the time stepping back and saying like we did it we did that thing and yes we still have to do the next thing but.
[13:54] SPEAKER_02: You know give yourself a pat on the back and congratulate yourself and congratulate each other for those things as well.
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[14:05] SPEAKER_01: Start listening today Canada's podcast dot com subscribe now so you guys launched November I imagine you've been fairly busy since then obviously how do bounce work I know that you're up in burn and so forth but how do you you know aren't pretty
[14:21] SPEAKER_01: doing your shifts of demanding job we all know that how do you balance life work do you have ways of going for walks exercise any kind of disciplines that kind of read your mind of being constantly immersed in your business.
[14:36] SPEAKER_02: Yeah you know and especially we predominantly work from home so that the challenge and I know I'm not unique in this you know COVID made us all work from home people to at least at some point in time.
[14:50] SPEAKER_02: It's I wish I could say I have this like iron clad amazing routine you know it really varies day by day but I mean my my routine every day is you know wake up get the kid off to school because nothing's happening before that.
[15:07] SPEAKER_02: I have tried being part of the 5 am club you don't want to see me that day like it's not go well.
[15:15] SPEAKER_02: I wish I was that person but I'm just not I you know once I'm focused on something that has my attention and I don't divide my attention well so the morning's got to be you know wake up get ready get the kid up the door get the dog for a walk and that's usually my reset between sort of like home live mom.
[15:34] SPEAKER_02: And work life what are we going to do and then because I work with my partner who happens to my husband.
[15:40] SPEAKER_02: You know we kick off the day of a quick stand up just like a lot of big companies will do of you know what are we going to do today what's your focus what's my focus water potential problems we see do we need each other.
[15:51] SPEAKER_02: And then a quick check at the end of the day of you know how to that go and just continually sort of keeping that in mind I've tried various you know physical space it doesn't work always.
[16:02] SPEAKER_02: As I know I got a late diagnosis of ADHD so there's a certain amount of just I need to find novelty and ways to to stay motivated and sometimes it's don't work from the same location that in the house that you've been working from go you know work from the couch instead of a desk or.
[16:20] SPEAKER_02: Yeah move to which they say you should never do but sometimes just that change of venue is enough to keep me motivated and tuned in so.
[16:29] SPEAKER_02: You know it's I wish I was one of those people that was like this is how I do it.
[16:35] SPEAKER_02: But I just don't and I we do our best when the kiddos back you know from school and around an activities of of being tuned in and you know not being that parent who's on my laptop during you know sports games and whatever else but.
[16:48] SPEAKER_02: It's I heard somebody say at one point it's not about work work life balance it's about work life integration and figuring it integrate the two if you try to balance it's always what's winning what's losing where it is sometimes something has to take over and that's okay.
[17:06] SPEAKER_02: And it would the pendulum will swing back and it's just about how do you merge the two and live your life and that has been something that I pretty consistently remind myself it's not about balance it's about integration.
[17:18] SPEAKER_01: Okay, canclerc and a little bit more about you if you weren't doing what you do now what would you like to do for a profession.
[17:25] SPEAKER_02: Oh that's a good one.
[17:27] SPEAKER_01: It can't be anything in your current field.
[17:30] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, honestly probably like travel writer paint paint me to travel and write it's still writing related which is kind of but you know I still haven't gotten back out and traveled a lot since covid but I when I do travel I really love just taking that step back and you sort of letting all of your senses take in everything that's different around you.
[17:56] SPEAKER_02: And how would you make somebody you know see here touch taste feel what you're experiencing at that particular moment I think that would be really cool.
[18:07] SPEAKER_02: But I would probably end up think some kind of entrepreneurial spin on it just because you know it's it's who I am it's what I come from my parents are like that my grandparents were like that so you know it's I think it's in my blood.
[18:21] SPEAKER_01: Good what to words we did you describe yourself give us two words to describe yourself in the why.
[18:27] SPEAKER_02: I think you need a enthusiastic and wrong thinking I tend to and you know again it may be as part of the ADHD probably is because that's just my brain anything new I attack with gusto and enthusiasm and it's really hard to pull me away from.
[18:57] SPEAKER_02: That the novelty is just so good and broad thinking I tend to I visualize a lot so I i'm very much a visual thinker and and how I do everything so I tend to look at you know this is where I am and I go broad and then I try to figure it where I'm going.
[19:14] SPEAKER_02: So I'm always kind of doing us a sweeping broad take in of whatever it is whether it's you know i'm at an event or i'm reading a book it's i'm not a very you know narrow on the track thinker i'm always kind of divergent me thinking about how this applies to a million other things so yeah.
[19:37] SPEAKER_01: Interesting okay anything keeping you up at night these days are you the kind of the artpreneur that.
[19:43] SPEAKER_01: Can shut it off at night and just start your day fresh or you just it follows you is it follow you it follows it's been.
[19:53] SPEAKER_02: That's honestly been the biggest challenge for me I'd say in the last six months is figuring out what's a girl got a due to turn the brain off at night.
[20:01] SPEAKER_02: The things that keep me up at night are usually you know it's whatever the problem of the day is that I didn't finish I really like to start something and and tie it with the bone be done and move on to the next thing but that's not the way business works so it's you know if I've had to put a pin in whatever I was doing and I know i'm going back to that it's usually the thing that my brain just keeps looping on and it's usually the thing that I have less fun on so I hate spreadsheets I don't know what I'm doing.
[20:30] SPEAKER_02: I don't like wrenching numbers I i'm not an accountant for a very good reason so usually it's anything in terms of budgets and spreadsheets and finance and and those sorts of things are usually the ones that stress me out and keep my attention.
[20:44] SPEAKER_02: But sometimes they keeping me up at night is excitement not to stress so.
[20:47] SPEAKER_01: Oh okay you've been an entrepreneur for some time is there any advice you've received long the way that you can pass on to entrepreneurs throughout cannabis someone said to you anything that is inspired you whether there be a mentor or an entrepreneur that you've met at a networking event whatever that looks like something that resonated with you that you know you could pass on to entrepreneurs that kind of impact on you.
[21:13] SPEAKER_02: Yeah you know I I fairly recently was working with an advisor and.
[21:21] SPEAKER_02: I would say more of a non traditional advisor in that his take on things like fundraising was non traditional in that you know that you especially as a startup founder you you pick up book or you attend sessions or whatever and there's.
[21:39] SPEAKER_02: It there was trying to sell you on a playbook or like this is how to do it but often the really interesting stories are the people who didn't do it that way and it's like that yeah that can work but that's not always the way it has to happen so the advice was around the fact that you know you're you're not failing if you're not fundraising that you don't there's always this mentality that you always have to be fundraising and you always have to be putting yourself out there.
[22:09] SPEAKER_02: But what if you just channeled that energy and effort into building an incredible product and getting to revenue and making your customers happy and you know addressing that later.
[22:20] SPEAKER_02: You know it and essentially that has blood into just because that's what works for somebody else or that's what you know the messaging that you're getting from the masses it doesn't necessarily mean that that's what applies to you in your business.
[22:35] SPEAKER_02: You know for us software as a service ass is typically B2B so a lot of the sass supports and information and whatnot is about selling to businesses and their their strategy and their process is completely different than if you're direct to consumer or B2C so it's been a matter of just being able to apply that and say okay here's the advice but now what of that do I want to take out of it and I don't have to be trying to shove myself out of it.
[23:05] SPEAKER_02: So I'm going to put myself into these rules what I'm going to quote you know there's a certain amount of setting your own that's encouraged and allowed and I think more people would would do well if they just did that.
[23:20] SPEAKER_02: And go to your own evidence it's not the evidence of this is what worked for this other company but you know you know your company so is that the right choice for you or is it just generic advice that you're maybe to paying too much mind.
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[23:43] SPEAKER_01: Would you do anything differently since you started made light and you guys are continued on and since the beginning is there if you could go back say a year ago you know what I probably would have done this differently.
[23:57] SPEAKER_02: Back a year probably not if I had to go back further it would probably be to go full on sooner.
[24:10] SPEAKER_02: Get in and tell might like you know that if I had to tell myself something you know me a few years ago I would say get you a really amazing mentor as soon as you can and a consistent one.
[24:23] SPEAKER_02: Mentorship was not something that's necessarily baked into my previous career you know you've got management but not necessarily mentorship so you know I feel very lucky to have a couple really great advisors and mentors now.
[24:40] SPEAKER_02: And they've really come out of the last say you 12 to 14 months so it would just be to do that and build those relationships sooner which is.
[24:50] SPEAKER_02: Hard to say because a lot of them naturally came out of things that I was doing along the way so you know had I set out to try to find one sooner i'm not sure how one does that but.
[25:00] SPEAKER_02: Mentorship has been really really incredible for us.
[25:03] SPEAKER_01: Okay so you'd recommend that to any entrepreneur that is yeah well especially you you really get stuck in your own space.
[25:12] SPEAKER_02: And in your own your own thought process so having you know fresh eyes fresh opinions and sometimes just words of encouragement of like why not you or you know you're you're really smart you can do this.
[25:25] SPEAKER_02: Just it's not just telling you what to do obviously but it's it's just that encouragement of like no you're on the right path and you're doing the right things or maybe have you considered this it's it's just been absolutely monumental for me specifically in the last year.
[25:40] SPEAKER_01: Okay we're going to wrap things up here Karen how can our listeners get whole of you is there anything you'd like to add before you leave us today.
[25:48] SPEAKER_02: Yeah if they want to reach out to me all of our made like socials are all at go made live on all of the big ones if anybody wants to email me personally just Karen and made dot live.
[26:01] SPEAKER_02: And you know it's so far a lot of the the input we've received and and you know the people that we've interacted with have been it's it's always I want to do this or my neighbor wants to do it or my mom wants to do it in terms of self publishing a children's book and if they want to and they're feeling stuck or they're not sure if or for them.
[26:19] SPEAKER_02: You know reach out send me an email i'm happy to jump on a call i'm happy to send emails and chat and and help out if if we're not the health that they need you know i've got a pretty solid understanding of the the industry as it goes and have offered a lot of advice there too so if anybody's got any questions for me i'm happy to chat with them as well.
[26:40] SPEAKER_01: Is that a big market do you get approached a lot by a lot of people i mentioned it was like I have an idea do you get that a lot.
[26:46] SPEAKER_02: Oh constantly when people find out what we do yeah i wrote a book and i haven't done anything with it my mom died my sister did my cousin did you know it's just.
[26:56] SPEAKER_02: The it's always like one degree of separation of somebody who wants to do it so you know it really is because and i think it's any any industry that has a lot of gatekeeping it's people have dreams and they maybe haven't prioritized it they don't know how to do it.
[27:14] SPEAKER_02: So the idea of like oh if this got easier would you.
[27:18] SPEAKER_01: So yeah yeah what i find interesting to is that you know when you look at the history of the some of the biggest published books that we see whether be Harry Potter where they were turned down a lot like.
[27:31] SPEAKER_01: My question is is that you've got this senior executive head of publishing years of experience etc.
[27:38] SPEAKER_01: Accenture the the credentials go on forever and they flat out tell these people know it will never work.
[27:44] SPEAKER_01: How does that happen.
[27:46] SPEAKER_02: Well i mean it's because it's one mind it's one opinion i mean you know what they say about opinions are like everybody's got one.
[27:54] SPEAKER_02: It is it is one opinion and they're a business they are.
[27:59] SPEAKER_02: Very similar to VC like the the the parallels are uncanny so you know it's the people with the money at the top who are trying to decide what the next big thing is going to be or which thing is going to sell 100,000 plus copies but.
[28:15] SPEAKER_02: That's their goal is to make all of this money because they're you know they're very people heavy in that industry you know you've got to pay for your.
[28:23] SPEAKER_02: The agents bring them in and then you've got your at different levels of editing and you've got your illustrators and you've got your copy raiders and you've got all of these formatting people in various levels all the way across so it's a very expensive thing for them to publish a book.
[28:37] SPEAKER_02: So you know it's they they have to feel like it's the smart business play.
[28:41] SPEAKER_02: Which is why you know your Britney Spears of course we're going to publish your book your Madonna you write a children's book yes of course and she will sell just because she's got the name behind her.
[28:51] SPEAKER_02: But you know the series of books I wanted to do which was around language development strategies within the book and help for parents who are stuck on wait list because I had you know two three year long wait lists of parents were like my kids not talking I'd like some help they didn't know what to do.
[29:08] SPEAKER_02: My ideas were all considered to niche and I was like wait so parents who want their children to develop good language skills as a niche okay.
[29:16] SPEAKER_02: Yes that's a tough sell for you but maybe not so much for for me if I do it directly and can certainly make you know make more than the sliver that I would make if I published traditionally so you know it's it's you've got just a few key decision makers and it's the parallels between that industry and startup and tech and fundraising and finance it's it's yeah they have to rely on what they know and they have to make their smart business decisions for what they think is going to make them the most money and they miss.
[29:45] SPEAKER_02: You know every VCs got a story about the thing that they missed that they would.
[29:52] SPEAKER_01: Yeah so it looks like that's a dumb idea and next thing you know it's like oh my god how did I miss that yeah.
[29:59] SPEAKER_02: Well and it's defining success too because you know for the publishing house to make really great money they want to sell 100,000 copies of a book but if I self publish and I'm making far more than the royalties I would get through a traditional publisher I don't need to sell 100,000.
[30:13] SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
[30:14] SPEAKER_02: They have a lot of money so you know it's it works I don't think that industry is going to die it has it has its place.
[30:22] SPEAKER_01: But the self publishing industry is booming there's a reason for that yeah okay okay Karen thanks for coming on the show I've learned a lot about you and sure our listeners have as well we'll see you next time.
[30:35] SPEAKER_01: Awesome thanks much.