Passion projects, profit, and why ‘selling out’ is snobby

 John Allsopp: Every month I interview someone who I think has been successful in their own terms. I met Tegan on TikTok, so she was doing TikTok things and I liked, what she was doing and .. we've had conversations but only manually. We've never actually spoken, I don't think. So this is the first time we’ve properly met so what do you do Tegan?

Tegan: I run April Showers Publishing. We are a small independent publisher in Britain, in England. I provide services for authors who are trying to self-publish for the first time and I also publish lots of our own work as well, including not-for-profit zines, which are created by the community.

J: that's interesting, but also I had a very quick look at your LinkedIn.

T: oh, no, I'm afraid

J: honestly, you haven't updated that for

T: No, I have not. No it's never been relevant to my work, to be honest with you. So, no, I haven't updated that for a while. What did you find on my LinkedIn?

J: I found that you do a podcast. Is that right?

T: Oh, that was, that's been defunct for a few years, but yes, we did do the Midnight Quill podcast for maybe it was 2019 to 2021. Something like that, with a variety of co-hosts and we interviewed loads of people. Yeah, it was fantastic, but it ran its course. It was taking more time than it was bringing me things, if that makes sense. We did have a dedicated audience for a while, but I think it was hard to keep up with what people wanted us to do. It was fantastic. I really enjoyed doing it, and I think it made me confident enough to do social media actually, because before that I hadn't really done any social media marketing, any short form videos, nothing like that.

J: Yeah, and I think you have a very, if I may say so, very nice voice.

T: Oh, thank you.

J: So maybe that, maybe that was a beginning of confidence.

T: I think so, because if you listen to the very first episode I was quite aware of my own voice, I think, and quite wooden in the way I was speaking. And I think I've gotten better now at speaking a little bit more conversationally in video form. I think the podcast really was the beginning of that. And it also allowed me to meet lots of really interesting people, lots of other authors who I've stayed in touch with, editors, artists. We had some actors, you know, all sorts of people. So it was really good for that.

J: So my thing about you, and the reason that I wanted to talk to you is that, I do marketing based on values, values based marketing. So I think step one is to identify what you actually stand for, what's most important, and then essentially go for it & find people who share your values (who've got some money so they can buy your art) and then work out a method to reach them using your strengths, which is why I was interested in the podcast and the voice thing. You just seem to be doing whatever the hell you love doing and I think there was a bit in LinkedIn saying you studied some medieval thing and then maybe wrote a book that was informed by that. So how the hell do you get away with this? How are you not working in the Argos warehouse?

T: I love the way you phrased that. And yeah, it is definitely the main thing that I end up discussing with clients is how do you actually earn money from writing books? I'd say the first thing is that most of my public facing stuff is my passion projects. So like Sky of Ancient Fire, which is based on my love of medieval fantasy, I'm not saying that it hasn't turned some profit, but it's not paying the bills. Same with my poetry collections, my zines, et cetera. The real answer is that most of my income comes from eBooks which I write, and I learned all of that from 20 books to 50k which is a Facebook group primarily, but a sort of movement of authors who learn from each other, how to make money from books. The idea is to work out what tropes are popular, work out how to produce a high quality book and covers that appeals to your audience, that signal things to them that mean that they're gonna enjoy it. Learning how to write books that people want to buy and consume. So that really started in 2021 for me, and I had already published my first book by that point The Weight Of Rain, which was financially a disaster, but it taught me everything I needed to know about self-publishing. It made a dramatic loss but up until that point I had never considered self-publishing at all. I was still a university student. I had no idea how to begin to make money from writing and then when I discovered 20 books to 50 K, I started to teach myself what these other people were doing and emulate it. Now I'm able to pay the bills based on that and also have all these passion projects which do support themselves but are not the main earners.

J: That totally answers the question. So .. what would that be like in visual art? It's a bit like creating ..

T: You are producing something that's easily replicable, that, you know, maybe has less time investment. You're not going for high art. You are going for consumable that people enjoy. It doesn't mean it's low quality, it just means that it's fairly easy for you to produce yourself.

J: Yeah. It feels like, prints, you know, so you are painting all the time and some paintings take off in terms of interest and you have those as prints. Have a limited run of a hundred or whatever. And that's a steady income while you are doing your other ..

T: doing the stuff that you care about. Yeah. And not to, not to say that I don't care about the other things, of course, but they take much less of myself to produce than the passion projects. I would also say that 20 books to 50 K really taught me how to interpret market and reader desires. So for example my most profitable series is murder mysteries under a pen name that you would have to go looking for. Everything about it is sculpted to appeal to the readers. The covers, the characters, the setting, everything is designed for a particular reader. In my case it's mostly women over 60 who have disposable income and like to read on Kindle. I've gotten a lot better, in the past few years, at making my books appeal to them, and that comes from improving the cover, improving the blurb, you know, making sure that the characters are reflecting things that those readers want to see. You know, mostly it's cosy hobbies like baking and having a dog and going for nice walks and that sort of thing. If you can include that stuff in there, then you can appeal to your target reader. There is a huge skill in doing that, and it's a skill that I'm still learning, entirely from this particular way of doing things on 20 books to 50 K. But, this is not meant to be an advert for them. I mean, they don't make any money. It's not, it's not like a company that earns money from doing it. It's a collective of authors, essentially and it's taught me everything about making money from books.

J: That's awesome. So you are actually a marketing entrepreneur?

T: I'm quite bad at marketing.

J: No, you’re not. You're making an income and you are making products for, for a very specific ..

T: I guess so. I think that what I find frustrating about marketing is that I find it very difficult to market the things that I'm more passionate about. So, my fantasy book, for example, Sky of Ancient Fire, I really gave it a good go at the launch of trying to like, create an audience for it. And, you know, I had readers and I had a few opportunities that came from it. I was featured in a book box and, you know, there were various things that came out of it, but for the most part it's really hard work to try and talk about that versus my more consumable books, which, which is a shame for me. I'm still learning how to do that bit, if that makes sense.

J: Is that because you are, there's more of you in it, so you feel a little bit more

T: potentially

J: or

T: a bit more hesitant? Yeah, I guess so. I think that sometimes when you're producing books slower, that actually makes the marketing harder because, people, especially on social media, want turnover of books. They wanna hear about new books all the time. And if you're talking about the same book over and over again for years they're like, okay, that's, you know, “we've heard about that now”, or, “oh, that came out ages ago”, or, you know, “I haven't heard other people talk about it”. That's another one that I hear a lot is, you know, “I haven't heard anyone on Book Talk talk about your book”, so that must mean it's not as good or whatever, you know? That's the bit that I find frustrating. Definitely.

J: So how do you split your time between the passion projects and the thing that makes the money?

T: Yeah, that's a good question. I would say that my favourite way to work is to have loads of projects all at once. If I am only focusing on one thing, I won't finish it at all because I'll get bored of it. So I like to swap between things constantly and so I would say that it, my time is probably in quarters. The first quarter is all the admin and things that are required for the business. The second quarter is the consumables, the eBooks, the fast sellers. I try and produce about four of those a year for that popular pen name. Then passion projects. The fourth one is working with clients, so proofreading, editing, I do consultations to help people to publish their books. I would say my time is split pretty evenly between those things and it works for me, but it doesn't work for everyone to do it like that. I know.

J: Yeah. I have a similar issue, I like dancing between projects. As you say, I get scared that something's falling away. I could spend a week on something and by that time, you know, the rabbit's dead ...

T: Yeah. I know what you mean. I think that if I didn't have lots of different projects, I never would have produced anything at all. For one of my colleagues, Maisy, incredible poet and a good friend, she's the opposite. She needs to work on just one thing and complete it, otherwise she won't get it done. Whereas I am like, let's have seven projects on the go at once. How many books could I write at once? You know, it's sort of, yeah, it works for me, but it doesn't work for everyone.

(interview continued later .. )

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T: I'm never gonna write something that I don't care about because then it won't be as good as if I was passionate about it. I just find it very pretentious to be like, oh, well this is the real art and this is the selling out. Like, why can't you have a little bit of passion for everything you're doing, even if it's making you money, especially if it's making you money. Right?

J: I think that's fantastic. I totally agree with you. I always think in terms of meeting the people halfway. If you just do something that satisfies yourself, you are just satisfying yourself. The other half of creating art is the communication and what it does in the brain of the receiver.

T: Exactly. And when I talk to my clients about this, I always ask them what is it you want out of writing this book? Do you wanna get famous or you want to have some sort of notoriety from it? Are you trying to promote your business through this book? Are you trying to make money, because that's one way we can go? Or are you trying to do this for yourself, for your own gratification, getting a nice review that says “I liked this book” or whatever. Because those are all three really different ways to go. And if you are not clear, if you think you're gonna get all three or you, or you think you're gonna make money, but actually you just want the nice reviews, then you're gonna be disappointed. So you need to know that. You need to have it in mind. If all you want is, you know, for your mum to read your physical book and be like, yay, well done, then that's fine. We can do that. But it's not gonna be the same process as if you're trying to make money. They're not the same thing, and that's okay, but you need to know. If you don't know, that's when people end up being disappointed in my experience.

J: The other thing I really like about you and your approach and the passion projects is that, there's the idea of, well I've got successful and I'm gonna pull the ladder up. And you're absolutely not. You are doing the opposite. You are going, well, I'm okay and now I'm gonna help loads of other people. It's just the most beautiful thing.

T: Yeah. I would like to think that's what I'm doing. Certainly. I don't believe in gatekeeping information about publishing for one thing. That's one reason why we made the Discord server, because as much as I am charging people for consultations (I charge for one-off consultations) if somebody has a minor question about publishing and Google is overwhelming them and everyone's just asking for money all the time. I wanted to feel like people could come and ask a basic question and get an answer, and that's something that we've definitely seen on the Discord. But yeah the zines for me were something that I've wanted to do for a really long time, and I had to wait until I was in a stable enough position with the business, you know, financially, personally and time management wise to be able to do it.

T: My intention with the zines actually is to make them profitable. I would love to have them turn a profit for both me and everyone involved, to be able to pay people who get into the zine. That's something I'm doodling around trying to work out how can I do it. I don't wanna exploit people ever, you know? Artists are already in such a tricky position at the moment, especially with the rise of generative AI. I want everyone to feel like they're getting something out of it. At the moment it's mostly exposure and that's why they're not for profit, because I don't think that people should be, you know, giving it over for me to make a profit. But yeah, I'm interested to know your interpretation of me not pulling the ladder up. Actually, what was it? Was it just the zines that you are sort of specifically talking about there or?

J: I think so. That's how I ‘discovered’ you. It just felt so open. So what happened, just for everybody else's benefit, is you had a zine that was about disability and my partner has me/CFS, but she is artistic. She's doing a lot more art literally now. So she did this thing and you accepted it into the magazine, and that's all fantastic. So that was a boost that actually now she's literally upstairs making art.

T: Oh, that really means a lot to me actually. That's fantastic because I mean it was a standout submission. There was no way it wasn't going to be included. It had nothing to do with sort of knowing who you were or anything like that. I mean, for one thing, the people who judge it are, are not, it's not entirely me. But, you know, you can feel the passion in the work. You can see the frustration. You know I think that, hearing stories like that, like Alison's, where quite a lot of people who come to me are really nervous to put any work out there at all. and so hearing about somebody feeling like they have some confidence to do some more is, yeah, that's amazing.

J: It’s opened a door and that's, I mean, I have a thing called The ArtStepper, which is a monthly magazine, and .. part of it is art news. And I'm trying to get away from .. news about Art Basel and news about this huge gallery to get down to what people are doing. And it's really difficult. So what you’ve got is some ability for somebody to just get something public, be accepted and be heard.

T: That's so great. Yeah, that really has actually made me smile a lot. That's so wonderful. That's exactly what I'm hoping for. And it's a story I've heard from multiple different people who have been in the zines. We've got two, two people, a poet and a photographer who have just, they're just publishing their first book tomorrow. They were in the first zine and then exactly the same thing. They were like, “oh, actually we can do this”. Like, we're good enough. They had one consultation with me where I basically explained everything they needed to do and then they went off and did it. And and that's the same feeling of like, oh, that's fantastic that it's just given somebody that opportunity to think of themselves as an artist or to think of themselves as a photographer or poet and realise that there are actually opportunities in their case to publish and to do it yourself, you know? So that's definitely what I'm hoping for and I'm really pleased to hear that.

J: It's such a high quality zine as well. The answer to “how the hell do you manage to make it such good quality?” is in that history of all of the making of marketable work. So that actually answers that. See, I would do it from a complete bootstrapping point of view. I would just go, well, I'm just going to hand write it and send it out on scrappy pieces of paper and improve it next week. Improve it from the very basic. But you have a quality standard. It's obviously well printed and well presented and well designed.

T: Yeah, I guess so. I had never thought of it like that. I mean, you know, the printers that we work with are another ethical choice. They're a small British printer. Everything they do is on recycled materials, recycled paper, and for the large part is recyclable again at the other end, which I really like. We get all our packaging from them, our prints, our maps, anything that we produce that's sort of an accessory to books, and obviously the zines. I mean, quality wise, I'll be honest, I made it up as I went along. I designed the zines myself in Canva, which is free software (I do pay for the pro version) but I don't really know what I'm doing when it comes to design.

I'm not a graphic designer. But I knew that because they were gonna be not-for-profit, that it was basically my own time was the only thing that I was gonna be able to put into this. I'm really happy with how they've turned out, but I'm very pleased and surprised to hear you say that you think that they look good quality.

I think that we also have been extremely lucky with the submissions we've had, especially when we first went viral with the first one back in December. Before then I had only really less than a thousand views on TikTok regularly, and then suddenly that first video advertising, the first zine, asking for submissions for this first zine. It's now up to sixty thousand views, which I had never had happen before. We really reached a lot of people who then submitted, and it meant we had the pick of some really great stuff and especially some of the artists, visual artists that submitted. It's just incredible quality. And people that we've gone on to work with in other capacities as well, actually because we sort of found them and thought, wow, this is amazing. So it is luck in that way, I don't think that my marketing ability is what made that go viral. I don't know what made it go viral. I think people were bored in the Christmas holidays. The TikTok algorithm was kind to me. I don't know. But, you know, it's, it is not all about me. It's sometimes luck.

J: But the same thing applies, the TikToks that you put out are very well done. Again, it's there, there's a quality level which I don't adhere to myself. I'll just go and walk the dog, my hair's off in different directions and it's raining and, you know, I don't have that same standard that you clearly do.

T: I mean, I like that about your content though, and most of the content that I consume on a personal level is like yours. It's people just being authentic, just going for a walk and talking. I think that mine are a little bit more manicured because I tend to ramble and I mean, if you watched any of the bookshelf tours that I've been doing recently. I just talk and talk and talk. So I do have to give myself a script and try and reign it in and try and get b-roll and do a voiceover, because otherwise all of my videos would be an hour long of me just rambling on, nonsense. So I've definitely tried to emulate other people that I like. I try to go for a cosy vibe, you know, an open and friendly vibe and, you know, that's entirely influenced by other people. I didn't come up with that.

J: Yeah, you always seem very smiley and welcoming and that's always lovely to see. I’ve just got one other thing that I wanted to talk about briefly .. I have no knowledge of Discord at all. I have opened the server and I think I have joined your thing. I've seen another artist talk about .. they managed to get community within Discord. Obviously, I think Discord has its roots in gaming and I don't do gaming.

T: I am no expert on Discord, that's for sure. Like you say, it really started out with gamers and that was my first experience of it as well as, you know, probably 10 years ago, gaming friends, that kind of thing. We would meet up on Discord and discuss what games we were playing. You can play games together, that sort of thing. Since then I've been the member of a few discords created by other people. So there's a board game YouTuber that I really love watching. I joined his Discord which was via his Patreon page. So you pay a very small amount per month to be part of the Discord group. So I did that.

Then there's a book creator, like a book YouTuber, who I'm also in her Patreon Discord group. You can have all these separate channels where people can discuss different things. So they can be text-based, they can be voice-based, and people can pop in and out, ask questions. And you can also be anonymous on there. You don't have to have your real picture, you don't have to have your real name. People on there are very respectful of identities. They're very respectful of other people and their anonymity so it allows people who are maybe a bit more nervous to come in and ask questions. And so we've got a few people on there who are completely anonymous, but they still come in the voice chats and ask questions and there are a few people there who are working towards publishing their first book.

I think the real answer of why did I create the Discord was because I felt, after that initial TikTok that did really well, the 60 something thousand views, it was then really hard to gather those same people back up because TikTok is very elusive and it will show your video to whoever it feels like showing it to, and not necessarily those people who had been interested the first time. I thought, here's a way to try and get anyone who's actually interested and might accidentally miss my TikToks or doesn't want to sign up to an email newsletter, to come into the Discord and all talk together and it has been really fantastic.

I definitely need to utilise it a little bit more. I've been a bit too busy. We moved house to an entirely different county, so I've been a bit too busy to do what I wanna do with it, but eventually, I want it to be a really good space for people to discuss with each other and me what they're doing, and yeah, encourage each other.

J: Fantastic. I shall give it a little bit more time.

T: Yeah. Come and join us. I think, once you've got over the learning curve of how to actually use Discord, you'll find that it's a relatively approachable, interface. Really. There's lots of different ways to interact with Discord. You can be a silent participant as well. You can just read what other people are writing. You can join our voice chats and just sit there and listen. You don't have to talk. You know, it's, yeah. Lots of ways to, to be part of it.

J: Super, well. I knew this was gonna be a good idea. And yeah, it's proved to be what a fantastic chat, super informative and thank you very much

T: Thank you. Thank you very much for having me. Like I say, it's been really wonderful to meet people through TikTok, through social media in general, and meet people who are doing similar things to me, but in different ways. And I definitely find your videos really helpful. I definitely find the messages you send me really helpful, to think about things I hadn't thought about. You know, like when you said to me about the music, I really hadn't thought about it at all. [J: I just said, you’re an indy publisher, use indy musicians] I was just clicking whatever was trending that roughly aligned with the vibe I was going for. But now I actually do go through and pick musicians that I like and smaller musicians and you know, so you are, you've got a very good brain for thinking about marketing and it's very different to the way I think about it. So I feel very lucky to have connected with you and to talk about these things.

J: That's the sweetest thing. Thank you very much.

T: It's very true. It's very true. I wouldn't say it if it wasn't.

J: Alright. Fantastic. Well I have honestly no idea how to end these things professionally. Actually there was one other thing that, if I may, it was just the importance of .. because of that not pulling the ladder up thing, helping other people and you loved the fact that Ali's doing art and all that. What's the importance? Why does it matter that, that there's creativity or there's art, you know, in the world?

T: Oh what a big question.

J: Come on. You've done so well. You can do this.

T: I mean, I guess the importance of creativity is, in my opinion, it's one of the best things about being a human is that we are all so creative. Art is intrinsic to the human experience, you can't be a human without some art occurring, even if you don't think you're doing it. I had a conversation with a friend, actually, we went for a walk last week, and she said that she wasn't a creative person. Oh, it came up because we were talking about her poetry and I thought that was so interesting that she, in her mind, the poetry had just sort of happened. She had just sort of written it and it wasn't a creative process. And I said to her, but if you write, you are a writer. There's no, like, there's no other barrier to it. That is it. But it is like this internal thing that people don't see with these labels. They think that you have to get medals or something. I don't know.

The answer to why is it so important to me to not bring the ladder up is because of how my journey went. If other people had pulled the ladder up, I never would've learned how to self-publish. There was one author in particular who, I won't share her name because I haven't asked her permission, but she just was like, yeah, here's all the information you need, and she took the time to help me get there. I just thought that was so wonderful because, at the moment in the industry, you really do have to spend money to get information.

Now people want you to sign up to a course or buy their book about how to do it, or, in the case of vanity publishers, which are a scam, really, if we're being completely honest, vanity publishing is taking people's money in the guise of self-publishing for them. When I see these kinds of things happening, I think if that had been my experience, I never would've done what I'm doing now, and I think that's very unfair and everyone should have that opportunity. So, yeah. Hope that answered it. That was a big question, John.

J: I saw somebody say that the business advice and marketing advice world online is just a series of dopamine hits. That really resonated for me.

T: I want to do more things in person as well, because I think that social media is quite inauthentic, and like you say, it revolves around dopamine hits and clicks and baiting people into interacting with you and I don't like it. I'm not very good at it because I find it very difficult to do that whole inauthentic thing that people do that makes them so much money. I just can't make myself do it. It's too cringey

J: And that's all to the good.

T: I hope so. I think so.

J: Alright. Super duper. Thank you very much. It's been fantastic.

T: Yeah, thank you for having me.