RV (00:03): Hey, my, one of my biggest dreams and one of the most important moments of my life as a personal brand was the moment I got assigned by a literary agent. And that took me years to figure out. It took me years to even understand who they were, what they did, how they worked, and then trying to get ahold of them to where I could actually talk to one and understand like how I could possibly build a relationship. And I figured that out. It eventually led to the book deal that became Take The Stairs, which became the New York Times bestselling book that launched my career. Well, today we are going to shave years off of your learning curve because you are about to hear from one of the most successful literary agents in our lifetime. Her name is Lucinda Halper. She has worked with several bestselling authors, several of my friends, Dan Martel, Ron Friedman I’ve known, I’ve known them for years. RV (01:00): So she has signed book deals for authors as a literary agent with Maj, all the major publishers, penguin Random House, Hachette, you know Simon and Schuster McMill and so forth and so on. They have represented several New York Times bestselling books in all different categories. And Lucinda is was never my agent. She would not sign me. I could I actually didn’t know her back then, but she has been a friend and someone that I know is an expert in this space. And she is switched sides to become an author. And she has a new book coming out called Get Signed, find an Agent, land a Book Deal, and Become a published author, which is coming out or came out from hay House. Yeah. earlier this year. And she is we love Hay House. And I was like, man, what an opportunity to learn from somebody. So she agreed to come on and basically teach her knowledge for free. And I was like, this is so perfect. So, Lucinda, welcome to the show. LH (02:04): Thanks so much, Rory. If I had met you with Take the Stairs, I would’ve signed you right away, so don’t worry, . RV (02:10): Well, thank you for saying that. It’s funny because Michael Hyatt is a good friend of ours, and he has someone who works on his team, who was the acquisitions editor at Thomas Nelson, who turned down take the stairs, and now I see him all the time, . And so that’s always a, always a laughter, a little bit of a, of a funny thing, but you and I didn’t know each other, but I’m so excited about what you’re doing. Thank you. I would love for you to just share the transparent, real deal on what does it take to get the attention of an a-list literary agent, and effectively a publisher, a major publisher. So if, if we’re talking traditional publishing, our audience knows that, that we have our own hybrid imprint, you know, Mission-Driven Press, that we can publish books. But usually if someone can get a huge book advance from a major publisher, we’ll tell ’em to go that direction much of the time. But a lot of people don’t understand that game and they don’t understand why you need a literary agent, and most of all, how to get the attention of somebody like you. ’cause I know you have people banging on your door all the time. So can you share a little bit on that? Yeah. LH (03:24): So I’ve simplified this to a very like, easy way to understand it, which are these three keys, right? That every publisher and agent are looking for. ’cause Agents have to think like publishers. We all have to think like the media, and we all have to think like readers. So those three keys are great. Writing a big idea, and an irrefutable platform. What’s interesting for your audience is you really only need two of those three keys. Can you guess which ones they are? Rory, can you guess which they might be? Idea. Idea and platform. RV (03:55): Idea and platform. LH (03:56): So the first thing that an agent, and I’ve quizzed editors on this, we interviewed about 20 New York editors, big five houses, literary agents and bestselling authors on like, what they look for in first time authors. The idea leads and the idea, by what I mean, a big idea has gotta be something that is timely and timeless and feel really of the moment, but like, it’s going to stay, right? So if you’ve got that big idea, which means it’s, it feels a little new and different, but it’s proven ground to be popular. And then you’ve got this platform, which we could spend time talking about. I know your company builds platforms so well. That’s really about an author’s public recognition in their field to their audience. If you’ve got those two things, idea and platform, you should be a slam dunk for any literary agent or publisher. And if any of your authors listening, or your aspiring authors and thought leaders listening are thinking, yeah, but all I’m looking at all these query guidelines and I don’t know how to query these agents and how to get through to them, and that, you know, their guidelines are so confusing, I can assure you that we’re all actually looking for just those two or three things. RV (05:13): Mm-Hmm. . I love that. So you said it takes three things to get a great book deal, great writing, big idea, irrefutable platform. You said the one that we don’t need is great writing. Yep. And is that because that’s a mon that’s a problem we can solve with money is great writing LH (05:29): . I love the way you put that. Yeah. You only need two of the three to get signed, to get an agent or book deal. So in the case of your nonfiction entrepreneur authors, it’s definitely about big idea and platform. The writer, as you said, can be outsourced or maybe you write well. But I always encourage, you know, my, my thought leaders and entrepreneurs, so many of whom we work with at Usin, the literary, why do you wanna be in a trade where you are not the expert, you’re the expert on presenting your business, beating the drum. You are being hired by a publisher to do exactly what you do so well. So if you know what you don’t know, and I only wanna be in business with people who know what they don’t know, I know what I don’t know, then you hire another expert to do that writing piece for you. There’s just no use in trying to do it all. So, you know, that is a problem to be solved with money. , uhhuh, , I think you’re right. Yeah. RV (06:23): Uhhuh , yeah. No, it’s LH (06:24): Really different for fiction. Right? And, and it’s different ’cause I’m sure you work with memoirs also. People are writing their life story. RV (06:30): Yep, yep. We do some of those. We do No, almost no fiction. We other than a few kids’ books. LH (06:35): Right? So, so there you go. If you’re writing your life story, which many of these like land on my desk as memoirs as their life story, and we transform them into something that’s much bigger. But if your intent on writing your life story, the writing’s gotta be so beautiful. It’s gotta, it’s, you’ve gotta see the movie. Mm-Hmm. . And that’s where that key of writing becomes actually most important. RV (06:58): Hmm. I love that. So yeah, one, one of my favorite quotes is from a guy named Dan Sullivan, and he says, if you have enough money to solve a problem, then you don’t have a problem. And if you get a big enough book deal, then you can hire someone to do the writing and you don’t have a problem. Right? Yeah. So then the, the, so we go, great, one third, we can just cross off right away. And we go, we gotta get a big enough book deal so that we can just pay the writer. And now we’re already a third of the way there, but then the big thing is going okay, in order to get a big book deal. Mm-Hmm. , I need a big idea. So you said the big idea has to be timely, but also timeless. LH (07:37): Yeah. Yeah. RV (07:38): How do we know what, I think we know what ideas are timeless. You look and see which books have been selling for decades, right? Mm-Hmm. . And you go, oh, well, you know John Maxwell’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership is timeless. It’s been, it’s been selling 2000 units a week for like, you know, a couple decades. Right. How do we spot the timely ideas? LH (07:59): Yeah. Well, even just to add to what your friend Dan said, you know, the way I say it is, it’s not a problem, it’s an expense. Right. . That’s what, that’s RV (08:08): Good. I love that. It’s LH (08:09): Not a problem, it’s an expense. And mainly these authors that you and I work with are looking at the book as a calling card, as a tentpole, you know, holds together the other businesses, but is really an investment on what they’re going to be seeing on the backend in terms of their courses and their speaking and everything else. Amen. So the timely, timeless, by the way, I’m the only I’m, I’m the only person that I know of who’s actually identified that equation. And so what, what I want people, when they’re listening to this interview to understand is this is a formula for them to think about it. But it’s not, it’s not as though you need to fill in a sheet to your agent or your pub publisher that you’re aspiring to and say, here’s what’s timely. Here’s what’s timeless. You just wanna be striking those cores. LH (08:56): Yeah. So, ind terms of figuring it out, the timely, easiest way to think about it is the new and the different. If you’re thinking about John Maxwell’s book that’s existed on the shelf and is a bestseller, you have to compete with that now, right? If you’re writing a book in the same category. So instead of saying to an agent, because we love comps, comparative titles, we love to envision what this book has the power to be. Instead of saying, my book is just like John Maxwell’s Law of Leadership, you now need to say it’s like the laws of leadership for millennials or for people who work in Silicon Valley, or with this sort of twist to it. It’s like, it’s adding your different, what we call your differentiator that makes it, that makes it timely. And really paying attention, like doing the data collection of, of what’s selling in the market. The number of people that you and I both, both work with who wanna write books, write books, but haven’t read books or don’t read in their genre, a lot of ’em. And then how are they gonna know what’s popular with selling? Mm-Hmm. . Right? RV (10:01): So that’s, so you’re saying it’s, it’s like something timeless. Mm-Hmm. . But it’s timely because it, it strikes this differentiation point. And is it, is it like one example of that formula is who it’s written for, like millennials or whatever. What are some other, is it always a who, like is it always the, the who it’s LH (10:26): For? No, it’s not. No, it’s not. And it’s just paying attention to like what’s in the current conversation. So I think of a book I represented as an example that was about I talked to her today, so it’s on my mind, like minimizing consumption, right? So she could have pitched her book, which was ultimately called the Year of Less. It was more, it was like a secret, like the secret for another generation. But riding the wave of this minimalism of van life, of people like, of Marie Kondo, right? Those are the sorts of categories that make her book timely. And so she’s, the, the timeless is always those universal themes. It’s like love and loss and resilience and how to get rich and how to lose weight, , you know, all those things that we’re perennially interested in. But there’s some new appetite in the market. RV (11:18): It jumps One book that’s, that’s selling like crazy, which is a phenomenal book, is called The Psychology of Money. LH (11:25): Yes. Love that. Yeah. RV (11:26): And you go, it’s just a book about money. There’s a bazillion books about money, but it’s the psychology of it. It’s not the, it’s not the empirical, you know, it’s not the analytical or the tactical. It’s more of like the, the emotional parts of money. Yeah. That’s what we tried to do with procrastinating on purpose. My second book was the emotional Side of time management. That’s how we pitched it and got the deal. But it was really about how to multiply time. And my Ted talk went viral ’cause it was called How to Multiply Time. And it’s all about the emotional side of time management. Mm-Hmm. But we didn’t call the book How to Multiply Time. We called it Procrastinate on Purpose. And that’s a fatal, that was the fatal mistake. I talk about why the idea was good, the title was terrible, and that’s what tanked it. But anyways, the psychology of money would be maybe, is that a good example of going, it’s about money, but it’s like a new example, new spin on it. Example, LH (12:16): Although yours is an even better example because Title Aside, had that book been pitched and published today, it would be incredibly timely. ’cause Now there’s so much burgeoning about eq psychology. Mental health is huge. Wellness is everywhere. You know, I was thinking today I am like, if, so if we have another wellness day for someone else in my company, you know, there’s, there’s . Like you’ve gotta be so sensitive to that now. It’s in RV (12:44): Big deal. Yeah. LH (12:46): So mental health, emotionality finding its way new masculinity, Brene Brown, all about vulnerability, right? Like, these things are all coalescing, which means that your book, if it were sold today, would absolutely strike those chords of timely and timeless and may have had a different verdict. RV (13:04): Interesting. Well, maybe you can sell it to my publisher again. Maybe they’ll pay based on the terrible performance. Maybe they’ll pay even, even more money. The second time story. The, the so I think, so one of the things you said here is you, you said something like, pay attention to what’s happening in the go. Go back to that for a second. So LH (13:26): In, in inside I’ve got these it’s right in the intermission, there’s a, there’s a great story in it about our friend Ron there. Four types of writers who get book deals. And they’re the ideator person who has great big ideas, always prolific in their ideas. The data collector, who does the market research, who figures out the comps, those comparative titles that are selling? Well, the everywhere is whose person has a platform very visible. And the and the crusader. And the crusader. That’s who I’m through, through That’s who you are. It’s, it’s usually the type I work with is that combination of idea or crusader that is constantly relentlessly advocating. The problem with the crusader who runs a company is so many people for so many years have said, you gotta write the book. I love your story. You know, you’re surrounded by yes men essentially. LH (14:18): And what they’re not doing is going out into the world, particularly in business books and seeing that this has been said before, dude, it’s been said like 20 times. And, and another issue that most aspiring business authors. ’cause I love business books. I love to represent business books. I can learn some, like any, any book I can learn from is a book I wanna represent. But so many of them come to us as memoirs. It’s like, I just wanna tell my story of founding an amazing company and making millions of dollars. Like that’s not interesting. Let’s, let’s consider how this can be applicable and universal to a wide audience of people. Not just the people who work for you and not just your spouse and your sister-in-Law, but how this can be applicable to a wide audience of people. And how we’re gonna make it timely and stand out in the market. Like what’s its contemporary hook or appeal RV (15:12): Uhhuh . And, and, and to make it, to make it stand out in the market. It’s kind of like you said, like basically like pay attention to what the market is talking about or pay attention to what the hot topics are. You know, pay attention to the news cycle. Is it all that kind of stuff? LH (15:26): A thousand percent. But you know what? Right now, and it is here to stay. Diversity and inclusion is like the order of the day, right? Yeah. So if you are not writing from that perspective, you should be including portraits of others, anecdotes of others from that perspective, right? And so that’s like a small twist that you can be making in your pitch to show that you’re not just like your average. You, you know, I hesitate like how much of this is gonna be edited, but you’re not just like your average person sitting around and writing a book ’cause you feel like it and you feel like you’ve got a message to share. It is going out there and seeing what hasn’t been done. So the number of people come to me, say, I’m writing the next Ben Hardy, or what’s that book that everyone loves to write? Hard thing about hard things. Another Ben good to Great. I’m writing the Next Good to Great. It’s like, fantastic. Those books were are 20 years old easily. So what’s the new book that people are talking about and what is it missing that you can expand on that you can lend your unique vantage point to? RV (16:30): Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. So you’re not just gonna rewrite a version of the same book, you’re gonna write a new angle on a proven a new angle on a proven concept. LH (16:41): Right? But the issue with this crusader type that again, love to work with the crusaders, the ones who run companies, is that they’re not out there. They literally don’t have time to go about searching the market and doing the data collection. They’re just saying their spiel. And people are like, oh, that’s amazing. It should be a book. A keynote’s not a book. Yeah. RV (17:02): Yeah. And I would say it’s, it’s interesting, a lot of who we publish at Mission-Driven Press, they are the crusaders. They’re going, I’m not so concerned about a new idea. I’m concerned about sharing. This is what’s worked for me hardcore tactical. And it’s like, it’s, in many ways, it’s not really new. Mm-Hmm. . And the goal is not new. The goal is like what works. And it’s really about platform, right? They’re just going, well, I can sell it to all my customers. I can sell it to all my people. And that’s dawning on me as you’re talking going, that’s, that’s a perfect fit for that person. But if you want a traditional publisher liter, a-list literary agent, big advance. Yeah. Half the battle here is the big idea. And in order for it to be a big idea, it’s got to somehow be new, different, unique, feel LH (17:50): Radical feel, feel like something we know. You know, it is, it is a Hollywood business. Publishing is a Hollywood business. So a lookalike, what what I mean by that is it’s a lookalike. This is an X meets y. So we wanna feel like there is a po a popularity around this. But you have a new spin. What I like about what you just said about your particular clients is that it is highly how-to imp practical, which is also a trend in the market we see for books by entrepreneurs. Again, veering away from the life story unless you’re like the guy who runs Disney, you know? Yeah. RV (18:22): Unless you’re celebrity, like the life story place, LH (18:24): The life story piece is not what we we’re looking for is the replicable is the useful. And always being oriented toward your reader, which is different from your employee, is, is how I encourage aspiring authors to think. It’s not just like the big advance though for many of our authors. Funny, your, the name of your press is called Mission Driven Press. It’s about impact, mission, legacy. And you just don’t get that. If we were to speak about why even traditionally publish it in the first place, why even work with someone like me? It’s because you’re just not going to get those distribution possibilities, those media opportunities, foreign rights, general word of mouth, unless you’ve got at the moment that pedigree of a traditionally published book. RV (19:11): Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. And that was the, the game all changed for me when we figured out how to get our books distributed through Simon and Schuster. Yes. That was where, when, when, first of all, when we hit the New York Times and when we could get distribution through Simon and Schuster, it was like, whoa, this is hybrid. But it’s not really hybrid. It’s really as close to traditional publishing as you can get with just being inside the hybrid line for the reasons that you’re saying. Now, the difference is we don’t pay advances. People have to pay for us to produce the book. Mm-Hmm. . So, hybrid aside for a second. ’cause That’s a, that’s a fun, exciting area to me that’s like, you know, emerging and, you know, has lots of great things and some challenges and all that, but traditional publishing is still here. There’s still big advances. But when you talked about there’s three things you need, you need, you need great writing a big idea in a refutable platform, we don’t necessarily need great writing ’cause we can hire it. And the editors are really good. I mean, that’s another thing of traditional publishing that’s incredible. It’s just like, yes. My, my editor is freaking phenomenal. I mean, I’m absolutely amazing. The big idea, I hear you on it. I go, that’s good. What I have not, you come up with it LH (20:27): Yourself, you gotta come up with it yourself. Right? We’re with a team. Gotta RV (20:30): Come up with it. LH (20:30): It’s not like the publisher gives it to you, or the agent gives it to you. Totally. RV (20:33): And I, and I hear you on the big idea. I’m totally with you in my experience, and you tell me if you have a different experience, if you have a big idea, you need a big idea to get a book deal. But if all you have is a big idea and you don’t have a platform, you not gonna get a very big advance. True. So, so when you start talking about not only getting a book deal, but getting a big advance, the platform, I think is the thing that probably matters the most, is that matters the most. True or false. LH (21:03): True. True, true, true. And also, I, I tried to approach this unscientific business of publishing as a science, and I’ve actually done some of the math on like, oh, they’ve got a hundred thousand email list subscribers. They got a hundred thousand dollars advance, they have 500,000 TikTok artists. They got a $500,000 advance. Like it sometimes is that unfortunately simple? Mm-Hmm, . Incidentally, my, my publisher at Hayas said that only 30% of an email list generally converts to books to book buys. Because if you’re an expert of any kind, it’s not, maybe your audience isn’t long form readers and book buyers, right. So you can’t like, make the assumption that everyone on your list is gonna buy the book. Oh, RV (21:48): And I, I have a secret and I I love Hays. Oh yeah. LH (21:50): Tell me. RV (21:51): There’s no way It’s 30% LH (21:54): You think it’s a higher than you should than no RV (21:56): Way lower. LH (21:58): Yeah. Right. But I mean, is like that they overestimated. Yeah. They, RV (22:01): And that’s a, I mean, 30% is a generous, so if you have a hundred thousand email subscribers and they give you a $30,000 advance thinking, you know, or whatever, based on 30,000, it’s like that’s being super generous. The reality is, if you send a hundred thousand emails, only 3% of those are getting clicked on anyways. Right. So, you know, 20% are getting open, 3% are getting clicked on. You’re talking about you got 3000 people. Like, so email is, I’m not saying email is not important. It’s still to this day, in our opinion, the most, the single most important metric, way more important than TikTok and social media and all that stuff. Mm-Hmm. . ’cause That converts even less. But anyways, that’s fascinating to go. And I think publishers are waking up to this. They’re going, Hey, I have someone who has 5 million Instagram followers. I’m gonna pay them a million dollars. And oh my gosh, they sold 2000 books. Not, you know, and they, they vastly overestimated the impact of social. LH (22:51): Totally. But if we were just to look at, ’cause this is a burning question for all aspiring authors about the way that agents assess platform. RV (23:00): Yes. LH (23:01): Just to give you some like very basic and overlooked secrets, people are gonna Google you the minute we pick up your pitch. If we’re even interested, even if, if you’ve got us with the idea and you’ve indicated that you have some sort of credential to write this thing, the next thing we’re gonna do is Google you. Because why would we want to get into marriage with someone we haven’t Googled? You know, like this is a lifetime relationship. So we Google you and we find, eh, there’s nothing. Well, that’s a bad indication that you have any public recognition around you. So what you’re going to have to tell us in your letter, if you’re not all over social media, is I have this email list of X numbers, I do this amount of speaking year, I have these like five people in my network that could all end endorsements and their, their names you’d probably recognize. And in fact some of them are on your client list. Right. So this is like, those three things alone, network speaking and email list are three things that we can’t necessarily find out about you unless you tell us in the letter. And so the optimistic message of get signed is here all the different ways. And by the way, this is cross genres, this is for fiction, for children’s, for memoir. It’s not just for business RV (24:08): Books. Oh, really? Interesting. I was curious. I was curious about that. Well, LH (24:11): This book is, this book is for any writer, any stage, anything they’re writing. And because I’ve tried to craft the universal rules RV (24:20): For how Yeah. But and and that’s even what you’re saying, like, you know, platform matters even for those non, for even for fiction writers and even for those people. ’cause That doesn’t equate in my mind ’cause that’s not our space. Like most of our space is nonfiction. LH (24:32): Yeah, yeah, it does. I mean, again, with, with moderation, right? So like, if you wanna be a fiction or, or a children’s book writer, it is much more about that timely, timeless idea and the writing itself. So there’s a different weight being placed on two of those three keys. RV (24:48): Ah, that makes sense. LH (24:49): Nonfiction space. But any way you cut it, like you should be working on your public recognition because how else are you, how proving to the first agent who googles you, that someone knows who you are. RV (25:02): So you’re saying if you show up blank on Google, it’s a very uphill, a very uphill battle. It’s LH (25:09): A totally uphill battle. So for my, for the older folks in our community, ’cause we’re, as you know, we do a ton of coaching workshops, live events, and we’ve got a lot of people who are 50 and above writing the books that they always dreamed of writing. And they’re like, I’m not going on Instagram . And, and frankly, even for thought leaders, business people, psychologists, finance professionals, lawyers, they’re not going all over social media. They’re like, who has the time, the interest, the publicity sometimes bad for their business. So what I’m trying to instruct all of these folks to do and get signed is like, here’s some other ways you could prove and build your platform. You gotta be explicit about it in your letter. Mm-Hmm. a lot of people aren’t. RV (25:49): And a, a letter meaning the letter to the agent. Yeah. And then in turn, the book proposal y’all put together that you pitched to a publisher. ’cause They’re gonna go do the same thing and they’re gonna find the same result and be like, who, who you guys sell this to? LH (26:03): So wait, good clarification on that for your audience in terms of what you need to even be at the stage where you’re pitching your book. It can, it’s not just a query letter. And then you get in conversation with someone like me and you pay us to do the book or we develop the book together. That’s not, that’s not how the traditional model works. You have to have that pitch letter. The minute someone like me says, we’re interested, send us your book proposal. You’ve gotta have this 50 page roadmap of what the, it’s basically a sales document of what this book looks like, how it’s gonna be, does it have a plot, , is it interesting? It, does it have a platform? Let’s see more about it. Who are you, what’s the like larger bio? What’s the, you know where’s the sample writing? So you’ve gotta have that whole book proposal already. What you don’t need to have as a nonfiction practical business thought leader author is a full manuscript. And so I don’t wanna make everyone listening to this episode. Please do not write your full manuscript if you’re trying to get an agent. Mm-Hmm. RV (27:03): . Yep. They don’t, they, because they wanna shape the idea. The agent that wants to help you, the publisher, they, part of it is they’re buying the idea, but they want to shape the, the outline of it. That was something that, that I learned, which is another reason why it’s slower. It tends to be a slower process. ’cause It’s like, first I have to sell the agent, then we gotta sell the publisher, then we all gotta collaborate on what the outline is. Then we have to write it, then we have to edit it, then we have to sell it, then we have to, you know, do all this stuff. So it’s a, it’s a slower process, which to your point, it’s like another thing to weigh where you gotta go. You gotta balance. How much am I playing this like, big, big long game with a publisher and an agent? Mm-Hmm. versus like, I just want to tell my story. I just wanna teach my method to get it out there. It’s like a balancing act. LH (27:52): Yeah. But more than ever, I mean, I’m thinking of authors of mine, like Jake Wood, I don’t know if you if you work with him, but he did tours in Afghanistan and Iran. He runs, he used to run a nonprofit called Team Rubicon. You know anything about this? RV (28:04): Heard of Team Rubicon? Yep. Yeah. LH (28:05): So he’s a phenomenal guy. Speaker, author, you know, all of the things. But he was classic in terms of the client I worked with. He’s like, assumed I wanted this book out yesterday. We’re not waiting three years to get this out on shelves. Well, pub day arrives and you’re like, wait a second, this is way too soon. I’m not nearly as lined up as I want things to be. Right. Because, you know, it takes so much groundwork, it takes such a village and you’re never really ready when it comes out. But more than that, the people who contact me and say, this book has gotta be out tomorrow, immediately my antenna goes up because I’m thinking if this can’t be successful in five years, it’s not a book I want on my list because it doesn’t have that timeless appeal. Publishers love the New York Times bestseller list. Like we love the New York Times bestseller list, but what they really want end of day is the long tail. RV (28:56): Yep. LH (28:57): The book that sells on the long tail. RV (28:59): Yep. And the other thing is, if you, if you tell an agent or a publisher like, I want this out tomorrow, that means you better have your whole marketing and sales plan not planned. It better be done. Like it, it takes six months, Tori, just do a proper marketing and sales plan. And so it’s like if you’re trying to advance faster than that, you better have the thing on lockstep. Yeah. Before you go, I know we have to wrap up soon. Yeah. I wanna ask you about advances because I never like to ask authors what their specific advance was. I don’t like to ask publishers what their specific advance was, but in general terms, I feel like literary agents can talk. You are more educated than anyone. I’m like, what’s realistic Lucinda? Like, if I’m a first time author with 20,000 email addresses, you know, can, what, what am I talking about? Like, realistically, I know the range depends on how big the idea is and, and obviously stuff like that. But like, do do authors get more than a half a million for an advance? Do they get more than a million for an advance? Like what are the, what are the ranges and the quick, you know, factors on that? Yeah, it LH (30:08): Was super rare. I mean, I would say that I remember looking back at like Todd Herman Steel and it’s widely advertised, so it’s, you know, I’m not sharing anything I shouldn’t share, but I think he was like the last in the space that I’d seen as a new author to get a million dollar advance in the space. We’re talking about pre pandemic, right? So it’s like, if you’re James, I don’t know what James Clear got paid to begin. I’m guessing it was a handsome advance because he built that list way past 20,000. You know, so he had, he had it all on lock. So I, I’m taking a roundabout way of answering your question. The six figure to half a million is very much the sweet spot for authors that are first timers, but have a robust platform, a great idea, and then if they hire a writer and do a great proposal, like that’s also gonna help. Right? so that’s sort of like where we’re, where we’re focused RV (31:02): And what’s robust platform LH (31:05): Robust would be more in the range of like 50 or even past a hundred. But it’s a composite, right? RV (31:12): Like a hundred thousand email addresses. LH (31:14): Yeah. But I’m ta I’m talking about not just that data point alone, but they’re doing speaking, they’ve got 20 people they’re connected to are gonna have ’em on their podcasts or blurb the book or do X, y, Z for them, right? It’s this composite. So it’s network, it’s speaking, it’s email lists, it’s social, it’s media that you’ve obtained. Like how widely recognized are you by the media? How often are you on the media circuit? So to qualify the advance based on just an email list. Like, I don’t, it’s not enough anymore, right? It’s all of these things that can lead to a six to seven figure advance. But we’re seeing the seven figure advances, mainly not with the first time authors at this point, but with the proven track record they’ve had like , even RV (31:58): If they’re like a celebrity, like a reality TV star LH (32:00): Oh sure. If it’s Oh, a thousand. Yes. A re I’m, I’m talking more in our spot of like business books, thought leaders but celebrities. Absolutely. You you would be looking at that. Yeah. Mm-Hmm. RV (32:10): . Yeah. That, that is it. Lucinda, this has been so good as y’all, you could see this is why I wanted to have her on the book is out right now. Get signed, find an agent, land a book deal, become a published author Lucinda Halper and is who we’re talking to. You know, make sure you go, go check out this book and you know, this is the real deal on, on what it takes. You want to go traditional publishing. You want to get an a-list agent that’s in there. Or if, regardless of that, if you just want to go, how do I spot my big idea? How do I write the book and what do I need to be thinking about? If I’m going a different route, I still need to write a great book that’s in there too. So Lucinda, this has been amazing. I’m so grateful for you and my friend. We just wish you all the best. LH (32:57): Thanks so much, Rory. Love it. Thank you. Appreciate it.