Terry Whalin Reveals How to Get a Book Deal

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In this episode of Conversations with Rich Bennett, publishing expert Terry Whalin reveals the insider secrets to landing a book deal and navigating the complex world of traditional publishing. With decades of experience as an author, editor, and acquisitions professional, Terry debunks common publishing myths, shares the key mistakes aspiring authors make, and provides actionable strategies to increase your chances of getting published. Whether you're a first-time writer or a seasoned author, this episode is packed with invaluable advice you won’t want to miss!

Guests: Terry Whalin

Terry Whalin is a seasoned publishing professional, author, and acquisitions editor with decades of experience in the book industry. Having written over 60 books, including bestsellers that have sold over 100,000 copies, Terry has worked with major traditional publishers and understands the ins and outs of getting a book deal. He has also spent 12 years as an acquisitions editor for top New York publishing houses, helping countless authors navigate the path to publication. As the author of 10 Publishing Myths and Book Proposals That Sell, Terry is passionat

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Chapters

• 0:00 Celebrating 10 Years of the Podcast
• 1:37 Meet Terry Whalin: Publishing Expert & Author
• 3:13 How Terry Got into Publishing
• 7:17 Writing and Publishing Faith-Based Books
• 9:54 What Does an Acquisitions Editor Do?
• 11:01 The Myth of Agents vs. Publishers
• 14:03 The Evolution of Self-Publishing
• 14:55 Why Terry Wrote 10 Publishing Myths
• 16:42 Handling Rejection in the Publishing Industry
• 18:00 Different Paths for Different Types of Books
• 19:46 The Importance of a Book Proposal
• 24:55 The Rise of Audiobooks & AI in Publishing
• 26:21 Terry’s Wake-Up Call on Book Marketing
• 29:25 The Rule of Five: How to Sell More Books
• 32:32 The Myth That Publishers Do All the Marketing
• 38:45 Why You Shouldn't Rely on Social Media Alone
• 42:34 How Writing Magazine Articles Can Boost Your Book Sales
• 42:53 The Myth Buster Action: Applying Publishing Lessons
• 46:51 Why Authors Should Avoid Overusing the Word "Amazon"
• 50:19 The Power of Signed Books & Direct Sales
• 54:41 Making Your Writing Timeless & Evergreen
• 58:28 Investing in Your Book: Overcoming the Cost Barrier
• 1:06:45 What to Do After Finishing Your Manuscript
• 1:09:54 Final Thoughts & Where to Find Terry’s Resources

Transcript

Rich & Wendy 0:00
Hey, everyone is Rich Bennett. Can you believe it? The show is turning ten this year. I am so grateful for each and every one of you who've tuned in, shared an episode, or even joined the conversation over the years. You're the reason that this podcast has grown into what it is today. Together, we shared laughs, tears and moments that truly matter. So I want to thank you for being part of this journey. Let's make the next ten years even better. Coming to you from the Freedom Federal Credit Union Studios. Harford County Living presents conversations with Rich Bennett. 

Today, I'm going to get kind. 

No, no, no. The truth is. 

Rich Bennett 1:00
Thanks for joining the conversation where we explore the stories and experiences that shape our world. I'm your host, Rich Bennett, and today I'm actually joined by Tammy Wingrove, who is co-host of For the First Time. She is. And I know she'll keep me in line as always. So we are excited to welcome a very accomplished guest, Terry Whalen. Terry has decades of experience in publishing in the publishing world, having written over 60 books for traditional publishers with several selling over 100,000 copies. He's also spent 12 years as an acquisitions editor for major New York publishers, helping countless authors navigate the complex world of book publishing. Terry is here to share insights from his book Turn Publishing Myths, which dispels common misconceptions and offers practical advice for aspiring authors. This is going to be fun because now Terry does not know this, but Tammy and I both are. Well, at least I know I am writing a book. Tammy plans on writing a book. So we are really looking forward to this because we know is going to be able to teach us a lot. 

How are you doing, Terry? 

Terry Whalin 2:19
Great. Reggie, I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you. 

Rich Bennett 2:22
Oh, my pleasure. So I want to get first I want to find out more about your background, why the publishing world? Was there something that you always aspired to do? 

Terry Whalin 2:36
Well, you know, that's really a great question. I was a high school English teacher, actually, that noticed something in my writing and encouraged me to join the high school, my high school newspaper. I ultimately became the editor of my school newspaper. I thought I was going to be a big city journalist. So I went to India University, a top ten journalism school, to study study journalism. And I was chasing stories there at Indiana all the time I was there. We blew up our classes. We were writing stories. 

Rich Bennett 3:10
Oh, God. 

Terry Whalin 3:11
Important back then, you know, And I. I joined. I joined an active social fraternity there. And, you know, I kind of got lost in. 

Rich Bennett 3:23
Yeah. 

Terry Whalin 3:23
Why isn't a campus of 30,000 people? And we produced a full sized newspaper at Indiana six days a week there, about 100 of us on the writing staff. So I was I was sitting there with about 30 other people sitting there on my old royal typewriter. This is in the pre-computer days, and I could not get my fingers on the right keys. Rich and. 

Rich Bennett 3:45
Wow. 

Terry Whalin 3:46
Then when you made a mistake, you backed up an doubt. And I mean, I knew my copy was going to look terrible. My editor would be complaining with me. And so every time I made a mistake, I said to myself, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ. And this little blonde haired girl sitting next to me. She turned to me and she said, Oh, Terry, don't say that. Because one of these days when you really need Jesus, you'll call out for him and he won't be there. 

Rich Bennett 4:16
Wow. 

Terry Whalin 4:16
thought, What is this? I'm a Christian. I go to church when I'm at home. I read the Bible in church when I'm at home. Hey, I knew nothing about Christianity. Looking back, but she encouraged me to go to a little bookstore a couple of blocks off the Indiana campus. They had pretty cards and posters, and maybe I'd find a book that interested me. So I wandered down there a couple of days later, and I bought this book called Jesus the Revolutionary. I thought, How in the world could Jesus be a revolutionary? And so I took that book back to my room, and I read that book, and it showed me a different side of Jesus than I'd ever seen before. And about that time, somebody invited me to a Jesus people gathering in downtown Bloomington, Indiana. And these people were all sitting on scraps of carpets with little candles lit. And those people had something that I didn't have. And so I've got a Bible and I've been going the Jesus Trail ever since. And so I'm in book publishing, basically, because books change people's lives. 

Rich Bennett 5:20
Right. 

Terry Whalin 5:20
And I know that firsthand because I read a book that changed my life. And so instead of being a newspaper reporter, which is what I thought I was going to do at the Indianapolis Star or the Chicago Tribune or one of those places, I joined a group called Wycliffe Bible Translators, and I 

Rich Bennett 5:38
What? 

Terry Whalin 5:38
spent 17 years of my life with them, ten years in linguistics. It was actually a New Testament on my bookshelf here from the Southwest culture language in Guatemala that wouldn't have existed if I hadn't have made those kind of choices. So I took a whole different path in my life, and I wandered back to my writing and started writing for magazines and had my first book published in 1992. And I don't know, this is this is kind of my world. This is what I do. 

Rich Bennett 6:12
I saw that book. You say it was Jesus the revolutionary. 

Terry Whalin 6:16
Yeah, that's 

Rich Bennett 6:16
Do 

Terry Whalin 6:16
right. 

Rich Bennett 6:16
you remember the author of that book by chance? 

Terry Whalin 6:20
HMS Vigo or something. I've got it on my shelf. It's an old yellowed, out-of-print book that. 

Rich Bennett 6:28
I got. I got to find that now. I have to find a copy of that. So when it comes to your publishing and your writing, is it all faith based? 

Terry Whalin 6:40
lot of it is. A lot of it is. My my first book was a little children's book that I did when I was with Wickliffe called When I grew up, I can go anywhere for Jesus. I was I was at a writers conference and an editor told me she had a problem. And I always listen when these editors tell me they have a problem. And she said, Look, I'm with David C Kirk. Our mission is to tell kids about Jesus in the world, and we don't have a single book in our whole line of books that talks about this. can ideas you have? Well, my my kids were little at the time, and I was reading a lot of children's books, and I knew that Steve Law had Steven Law head is is. Adult 

Rich Bennett 7:26
Right? 

Terry Whalin 7:26
in the uses. But Steve Law had had this series of books that had real pictures combined with a little cartoon character. Howard had a spaceship. Howard had a hot air balloon. Those were titles like that. And so 

Rich Bennett 7:40
Yeah. 

Terry Whalin 7:40
I said to Zander, What if we combine real pictures from Wicklow with a little cartoon character to show kids they could go anywhere? And she said, That's a good idea. Write that up and send that to me. And so I did. I went home. I wrote up. I sent it to her. And I mean, we went through a lot of gyrations here. But ultimately, that became my my first book that was published at the. 

Rich Bennett 8:05
A children's book. 

Terry Whalin 8:06
A children's book. Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 8:07
While it is still available. 

Terry Whalin 8:11
It's long out of print. I have a few copies. You could maybe track it down, but it's. It's out there still. Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 8:19
Good. Good. I just saw something about children's books that I don't know what it is, but adults can learn a lot from them as well. I've always believed that at least a good children's book. You can. 

Terry Whalin 8:31
They can. They can. And I've worked with a lot of children's authors over the years. I've written more than a dozen children's books myself. I've written biographies on people like Billy Graham, Chuck Colson, 

Rich Bennett 8:42
Oh. 

Terry Whalin 8:43
John Perkins, Billy Sunday, Lewis Blount. 

Rich Bennett 8:48
Wow. 

Terry Whalin 8:48
A number of number of people like that. I, I did a book with the net of flowers. The first African-American ever to win a gold medal in the Winter Olympics. I wrote her book called Running on Ice. She would she won in the 2002 bobsled in Salt Lake City. So, yeah. 

Rich Bennett 9:10
I shoot an author editor, right? 

Terry Whalin 9:14
Right. 

Rich Bennett 9:15
Publisher, right? 

Terry Whalin 9:17
I work for a publisher? Yes. 

Rich Bennett 9:18
You work for a publisher. Okay, so what is it? Which do you like to do the best? 

Terry Whalin 9:24
I like to do all of it know as. 

Rich Bennett 9:26
Right. 

Terry Whalin 9:26
I, I enjoy that. I enjoy the publishing part. You know, I'm working for a New York publishing house. We do about 200 books a year. 

Rich Bennett 9:38
Wow. 

Terry Whalin 9:38
There's a lot going on in the publishing house. And I had another author sign their son, their contract this week. A couple other authors. Their books launch this week. So, yeah, we have a lot a lot going in the in the publishing house side of things. 

Rich Bennett 9:57
I need you to clear something up for me, because I've had a couple authors tell me this as a Jew. Your first book was released in the nineties. I'm sure it's changed a lot, but had a lot of authors tell me that they cannot find a publisher because publishers want them to have an agent, but yet agents want the authors to have a publisher. Is Is all this true or is it just is that a mistake? One of the big mistakes. Okay. 

Terry Whalin 10:24
It really is true. I was a literary agent for a while. I had a little literary agency. And so I and I've worked with agents for years. Agents are often the gatekeepers. In other words, you have to find an agent who shops your your proposal to two publishers. 

Rich Bennett 10:43
Oh, 

Terry Whalin 10:43
Only 

Rich Bennett 10:43
wow. 

Terry Whalin 10:43
about 30% of our authors at Morgan James have an agent. So I do work with agents. But they're not. They're not the main the main way that I work with people, we work with a lot of a lot of first time authors. But the whole the whole hitch is is finding the right, the right hitch, the right 

Rich Bennett 11:01
Right. 

Terry Whalin 11:02
publisher for you. And it's it's hard. I mean, it's hard for everyone to to do that. You have to kind of learn what the system is. You have to meet the right person. All those all those kinds of things have to kind of line up for you. I mean, even everybody people I have people who send me their books say they're the next Harry Potter, for example, you know. 

Rich Bennett 11:23
Right. 

Terry Whalin 11:24
What they don't realize is the struggle that even somebody like J.K. Rowling went through to get her first book published. I mean, she was a single mom over there in the U.K., didn't have any money, went to the local library, looked at lists of agents, and she looked at this list and she said, oh, Christopher Little, that sounds like a children's agent. I'll send my material to him. So she sent her stuff in this black binder. And Chris Little wasn't a children's agent. He was somebody that sold thrillers. You know what he. The movie Man on Fire that. Denzel Washington wasn't. That was based on a book. And that's the book. That's one of the books that Chris Little, you know, shot. That was the thing he was doing. He actually told his assistant to just just reject all the children's stuff. There's no money in children's books, you know, all that kind 

Rich Bennett 12:24
Wow. 

Terry Whalin 12:24
of. So this but this assistant was intrigued with this manuscript that was in a like a big black binder, you know, that she 

Rich Bennett 12:33
Yeah. 

Terry Whalin 12:33
set with. This isn't the way you send a thing anyway. And so he she took it home, read it, and she said, Hey, I think you ought to do something with this. And so he did. He sold it to it to a English UK publisher for like $1,000 advance. They in turn sold it to Scholastic for a much larger advance, and the rest is history. I mean, Chris Little has been spending years, you know, on children's books. 

Rich Bennett 13:02
Wow. 

Terry Whalin 13:03
That. 

Rich Bennett 13:05
Just because the lady said that to the wrong person, but because of the name. 

Terry Whalin 13:09
That's right. 

Rich Bennett 13:10
That's amazing. Wow. So how has when it comes to publishing? Because when you started, there was no such. And correct me if I'm wrong, but there's really no such thing as self-publishing, right? 

Terry Whalin 13:26
Well, there was self-publishing, but it's. 

Rich Bennett 13:29
Not like it is today. 

Terry Whalin 13:30
No, today. Today it's today. It's greatly improved. I mean, there's still some awful places you can get your book self-published and I. 

Rich Bennett 13:39
Yeah. 

Terry Whalin 13:39
Authors spent 

$20,000 on self-publishing their book, which is a huge mistake. 

Rich Bennett 13:46
Wow. 

Terry Whalin 13:48
Yeah. So you even there, you've got to go to the right place at the at the right time with the right stuff. It's, it's a search for all of this really to find that, that right connection. Sometimes 

Rich Bennett 14:00
Right. 

Terry Whalin 14:00
it's right, sometimes it's not some. 

Rich Bennett 14:02
Okay, So with your book, Ten Publishing Myths Met Myths, Myths. God read lips here. What what actually inspired you to write that besides helping other authors out with. 

Terry Whalin 14:18
Yeah, I wrote that book because I really wanted authors to have more realistic expectations 

Rich Bennett 14:25
Mm 

Terry Whalin 14:25
as 

Rich Bennett 14:25
hmm. 

Terry Whalin 14:25
far as what's going to happen with their book and you know, what I've learned from being in publishing all these years is that a lot of the process is really outside of our control as authors of anything we can do. Sure. You know, we can we can do our part. But if, for example, even the whole word of mouth thing, you know, there's 

Rich Bennett 14:48
Yeah. 

Terry Whalin 14:48
they always say that's the best way to sell books. Is one person recommending your book to somebody else? Well, that's cool, but nobody really knows how to you know, how to energize that and use that for their for their needs. At the end of the day, how that how that happens. We're not sure how to tap into that. So it's it's a tough business. You know, at the end of the day, there's there's a lot of stuff coming out and use. So I wanted to help authors know the myths, but also have encouragement to do practical things that they themselves can actually do. 

Rich Bennett 15:30
Which is a good thing because when a lot of authors try seek and find that first publisher, a lot of them get discouraged because of all the news they get. And one of the things I always tell aspiring authors is be ready for the news. You're you're writing a book. It's a business. You're an off, I like to say, an author preneur. And in any business, it takes no's to get to that. Yes. 

Terry Whalin 16:01
It does. 

Rich Bennett 16:02
It doesn't mean you're failing. 

Terry Whalin 16:05
And and people forget. I mean, even the Chicken Soup for the Soul books, which 

Rich Bennett 16:10
Yeah. 

Terry Whalin 16:10
is. most prolific series of books in the English language. Those guys were rejected over 160 times. 

Rich Bennett 16:18
Wow. 

Terry Whalin 16:18
I mean, that's a lot of rejection, 

Rich Bennett 16:21
Yeah. 

Terry Whalin 16:21
you know? And the only way that you can I tell authors this all the time, the only way you can stop the effort to get your book published is if you stop, because you've just got to keep at it. There's there's a persistence sort of stick to itiveness that you have to have to find, find that right place. And what what Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hanson did for each other is whenever they got rejected, they used one word and they looked at each other and they said this word. They said next. And what that is, that's a hopeful word, really. I mean, that means I'm not going to stick this rejection back in my drawer, but I'm going to send it out. I'm going to send it out to the next place. Maybe the next place will be the one that'll take it. 

Rich Bennett 17:11
So with books because there are so many. Matter of fact, because what I'm writing is completely different than what Tammy's going to write. Actually, have you started on it yet, Tammy? 

Tammie Wingrove 17:23
I started putting little outlines together, but I'm really interested to hear, you know, where I should start and where this conversation goes and get the get the tips, because I've started putting some ideas on paper and. 

Rich Bennett 17:38
Which. Yeah, which is one of the things I wanted to bring up to Terry, because with me what I'm working on is like a guide book. What would Terry would Tammy is working on? Well, it's a recipe book, right? 

Tammie Wingrove 17:52
Yeah. A perrins book? Yeah, Kind of like a more of a table side book with photos and pairings of recipes. Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 18:02
So when it comes to publishing, how different can something like that be especially? I mean, you look children's authors, guidebooks, recipe books, novels. Why? Because I'm sure there is a path for everybody that's in those different category. 

Terry Whalin 18:19
There is. The first thing I always encourage people to do is to to work on a document we call it in the in the business a book proposal. 

Rich Bennett 18:31
Mm 

Terry Whalin 18:31
And that's really your business plan that says what you're going to do, even if you even if you self-publish, you still need this document. And so as a frustrated acquisitions editor, I mean, this is a third publisher I'm working for in the acquisitions area, So I've I've worked with a lot of authors over the years, but I wasn't getting the types of submissions that I really needed in order to be able to get them a book contract years ago. So I wrote a book out of my own frustration that's called Book Proposals that Sell 21 Secrets to Speed Your Success. 

Rich Bennett 19:09
hmm. 

Terry Whalin 19:09
Now this book has over 155 star reviews. People have used it to get an agent, get a $50,000 advance. I mean, all kinds of great things have happened from this book, but publishing has changed a lot since I wrote the book. So a couple of years ago, I did a revised edition of this book, and you can get the revised edition for free for me. If you go to book proposals that W. S for website book proposals, Yes. And then I'll take you to a page where you can download the e-book in whatever version you want for your Kindle, your Nook, your iPad, whatever you have. Now, why in the world would I be giving away a free e-book version of my book? Well, I'd give it away because we've learned at Morgan James that if you start to read my e-book. There's a high probability you're going to turn and buy the print copy of the book. So giving away those free books I read it basically lose nothing as an author. Instead, I'm driving actually print book sales by doing that. I mean. 

Rich Bennett 20:26
Marketing. 

Terry Whalin 20:27
Those of us in publishing years ago. We thought when the eBooks came out, the print books were going to disappear, right? They were going to go away. Well, that's not the case. I mean, Marcus du Hay, who is he just stepped back from being the CEO of Penguin Random House, the largest publisher in the world. I heard him say the other day that statistically worldwide, it's 80% print and 20% e-book. 

Print isn't going away. It's going to be It got to be here forever. 

Rich Bennett 21:00
I agree with you. 110% there. One of the things I found that when my daughter was still in actually even middle school and she's in her early twenties now, our Lions Club, we were trying to collect books to resell. One of the things I found out with her friends and even to this day those kids will not get they rather have their print book than, say, the Kindle or the e-book, and they will not get rid of them. They will read them over and over and over again, which is amazing because, I mean, I bought one of those e-book readers a long time ago. I cannot read a book on a little tablet or even my computer screen. I need there's only two ways I can read a book. It's got to be the actual print or or what my daughter says it's not reading is, and that's audio book. It's like somebody. 

Terry Whalin 21:57
Audio. Audiobooks are great and I, I love those as well. And I know that industrywide audiobooks are exploding. But. 

Rich Bennett 22:07
Oh, yeah. 

Terry Whalin 22:09
Financially. I know at Morgan James that we have a number of our books in audio, but even for the whole company, I mean, we've we've been around over 20 years. We've produced like 6000 titles. So we have a lot of stuff out there. But in their terms, there are audio books. We're probably only making like $4,000 a year. 

Rich Bennett 22:32
Wow. 

Terry Whalin 22:33
Audiobooks. So they're not financially lucrative for us. You know, so that's that's an issue. But I do believe that's something that artificial intelligence, from what I read and from what I hear, is coming forward and going to help us and things like that because. 

Rich Bennett 22:52
Good. 

Terry Whalin 22:53
I understand that Apple is testing some stuff that's really pretty close and pretty great, you know, compared to the the techs taking text and changing it in the audio. 

Rich Bennett 23:06
Yeah. 

Terry Whalin 23:06
And then they're almost ready to give Audible something that they're just going to be able to suck right in into audio in the audio books. So that that will help speed up the the whole audio production process if if if it comes true and it looks like. 

Rich Bennett 23:24
Yeah. 

Terry Whalin 23:24
It's headed down that way. 

Rich Bennett 23:26
Yeah, because when it came to audiobooks, I thought, I mean, I remember two books on tape and then books on CD. Now it's audio books. Quit laughing at me to me. 

Tammie Wingrove 23:35
I love 

Rich Bennett 23:35
But. 

Tammie Wingrove 23:36
a good book on Saturday. 

Rich Bennett 23:37
Yeah, but I mean, now it's then I thought it was just Kindle. I thought audible was the only way that you could listen to books. But apparently a lot of people listen to them on Spotify and Apple too, which I had no idea there were books on Spotify. 

Terry Whalin 23:52
Oh, there are, I, I actually I listen to most of my audio books. I get them at the library. They're free. 

Rich Bennett 23:58
Well, that too. Yes, I forgot about that. I do yell at me, but I can't even tell you the last time I got a book from the library. Most of the time, if I get something from the library, it's a movie. 

Nowadays. 

Terry Whalin 24:11
You get audio books from them to a look and look into that. 

Rich Bennett 24:14
In the hoopla or whatever. The library uses. 

Terry Whalin 24:18
They have different systems there. 

Rich Bennett 24:20
Oh, God. I just it's interesting how much it has changed and I think now. And you. I'm sure you see it, but do you? I think there's a lot more aspiring authors today than there were, say, even back in the nineties on back. 

Terry Whalin 24:43
Yeah, there's there's a lot of people who want to write a book, but but how you publish that book and what you do with that is, is something that you can, you can control. And that's part of why did this ten publishing this book, my, my wake up moment in this whole area actually happened in in 2007. Mark Victor Hanson, the other co-author on The Chicken Soup for the Soul Books, had this big event out in Los Angeles called Mega Book Marketing University. And like I say, I was running a little literary agency in in Scottsdale, Arizona. And so he invited me to come to this meeting. So I went out there. I took pitches from people during during the meeting, but I also sat there with about 400 people and listened to the different speakers and took notes and all that kind of thing. Now, at that point in my life, I'd written about 50 books for traditional publishers. 

Rich Bennett 25:44
Wow. 

Terry Whalin 25:44
So my publishers were making pretty books. They were getting them in the bookstore. 

Two of my books actually got six figure advances on their books. So. 

Rich Bennett 25:55
No. 

Terry Whalin 25:56
Now. Now I have long stories about what happened to those books and why they. Really successful. But when you write books like that, publishers send you a financial statement, sometimes once a year, sometimes quarterly. That you get from them about how your books are doing and how they're selling. Well, all of my statements were in the minus category that I was getting, and so my books weren't making money and I couldn't figure out what in the world, what in the world was I doing wrong. I must have been doing something wrong. And so they had these different speakers that make a book marketing university. And one of the speakers was Jack Canfield, the other co-author, and Chicken Soup for the Soul and Jack has written this book called The Success Principles. It's really about what does it take to be successful? Well, the very first success principle says that I will take a 100% responsibility for my own success. Now, none of us want to take 100% responsibility. We want somebody else to do it. We want some editors and publishers. A marketing person. Please, somebody other than us. But I decided during that conference that I was going to take a 100% responsibility for my own success, because as I looked at what I was doing. I wasn't doing anything. I had I had a Terry Whalen Incom website, and that's 

Rich Bennett 27:23
Right. 

Terry Whalin 27:23
about all I was doing. And so I changed. I decided to start blogging. I started blogging in 2004, and I continued today. I blog once a week. My blog has over 1700 entries that are in my blog in about a year. I mean, they say there's over 600 million blogs that are out there right? 

Rich Bennett 27:47
Yeah. 

Terry Whalin 27:49
I found an article that had my name in it saying that the top 27 content producers out there would Seth Godin and Ryan Holiday, Jeff Goins and Terry Whalen was one of those 727 people. And it's because of this huge volume of material that I have, and I'm sending it out week after week after week. And even even Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hanson told about with Chicken Soup for the Soul, I mean, they had these 660 rejections. They finally found a little publisher in Florida that was going to publish the Chicken Soup for the Soul Books. They told their publisher back then that they were going to sell a million copies of the book in the first year. The publisher laughed at them. They never sold a million copies. Anything at that point was ridiculous. took them a year and a half to sell their first million book. 

Rich Bennett 28:48
Really? 

Terry Whalin 28:49
But what they did is really what every author ought to do is they practiced what they called the rule of five. So they got up every day and they did five things to be telling people about their book. So they wrote a guest blog post, they did a podcast, they did a radio thing, they did a magazine article, they did a newspaper interview that there's all kinds of things you can do. 

Rich Bennett 29:13
Yeah. 

Terry Whalin 29:14
It did five different things and they did it over and over. And that effort is really what launched them to be able to sell these books that they sold. 

Rich Bennett 29:26
Wow. I didn't realize that. And I think a lot of authors are missing the boat when it comes to that. I mean, it's marketing, It's smart marketing and. 

Tammie Wingrove 29:37
Really for business owners to just. 

Rich Bennett 29:39
Yes. 

Tammie Wingrove 29:40
You own the business of your book or as a business owner, anyone should be applying these this rule of five and just thinking, okay, let me hit my five things for the day. 

Terry Whalin 29:52
And it's and it's hard. You know, I totally understand. A lot of authors were introverts. You know, I. 

Rich Bennett 29:58
Yeah. 

Terry Whalin 29:59
I put myself in this category, I would just as soon be over in the corner, read my book, then standing in front of people talking. But by the same token, it's it's what we have to do 

Rich Bennett 30:10
Yeah. 

Terry Whalin 30:10
in order to get the word out about our book. It's just part of part of the process. 

Rich Bennett 30:15
And how hard is it to block? How hard is it to write up a press release and send it to the papers? How hard is it to do? I know you could answer this one, Dari, but I mean, even Tami, how hard is it to get on podcast or even a radio show? Yeah, a lot. And I think I also do think a lot of authors are missing the boat there because those, especially local authors, they'll stick to their local area. And I tell them this all the time, get on podcasts. How much did it cost you to come on my podcast? 

Terry Whalin 30:57
Didn't cost Didn't cost. The thing cost. 

Rich Bennett 30:59
Exactly. 

Terry Whalin 31:00
But even even when you're on a podcast like like, for example, this ten publishing miss book here. I want people to go to publishing, offer income, publishing, offer income. Now, if they go there, they're going to be able to get my book for only $10. And that includes the shipping, along with over $200 worth of bonuses. 

Rich Bennett 31:25
Wow. 

Terry Whalin 31:25
Publishing offer account. And so. See, I've. I've set that up so that I want people to get the book directly from me 

Rich Bennett 31:36
Right. 

Terry Whalin 31:36
and have that have that material. So you have to be even. Just being on podcast is good. Don't get me wrong. But you've also. 

Rich Bennett 31:46
You got to do more. 

Terry Whalin 31:46
Take it a step further and you've got to you've got to have a game plan. 

Rich Bennett 31:50
Yes. 

Terry Whalin 31:51
Sending these people when they come on, when you come on a podcast. 

Rich Bennett 31:55
Where should that game plan be? Should now also be inside your business plan? 

Terry Whalin 32:00
It should be it should be a part of that book proposal that we're talking about. But a lot of authors just just don't put that kind of energy into. 

Rich Bennett 32:08
Yeah. 

Terry Whalin 32:09
It takes a lot of it takes a lot of energy to write a book proposal. I mean, it does, but that's basically your blueprint to tell you what you're going to do when the when, how when the book comes out and how you're going to succeed. 

Rich Bennett 32:25
You're listening in on the conversations with Rich Bennett. We'll be right back. 

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4404120. So I don't want to I don't want you to give away too much of the bulk because otherwise people won't buy it. You know, I don't want to give something for free. But what are a couple of the the big myths out there? 

Terry Whalin 33:52
Well, probably one of the biggest myths that I started with is that every author believes that they're going to make a lot of money with their book. No matter how they publish, they think they're going to make money. And it's it's almost I almost compare it to that, you know, that field of dreams movie that 

Rich Bennett 34:12
Yes. 

Terry Whalin 34:13
if you build it they will come. That's what they believe. Well, it's not really true. You have to be doing something as an author to be telling people about your book. Take that responsibility that is talking about and and really publish with the right publisher at the end of the day. I always encourage people, whatever publisher that they publish with, to take that publisher name, write that in Google along with the word scam or complain. To see what comes up. I mean, we have some at Morgan James and every publisher has people that don't like them or say say things that are out there forever, even if they're not true. But if you do that and find pages and pages of people that are complaining about somebody, that that should be a red flag for you. 

Rich Bennett 35:08
Yes. 

Terry Whalin 35:09
Not to publish with those people. You know, do do your own homework to actually make sure that you're you're going to the right place at the right time. Talk to the authors. Look at the books. Are are the books good? Are they are they something you'd be proud to have your name on? Some of these I wouldn't. I wouldn't want. 

Rich Bennett 35:28
Yeah. 

Terry Whalin 35:28
Those people. 

Rich Bennett 35:30
It seems like more people will put more research into their book writing the book. But, you know, if they finally get that, yes, from a publisher, they jump on it right away and do not do their research. And need to there's there is nothing wrong with saying, you know, don't mad at me for saying this, Terry, But there's nothing wrong with saying no to a publisher. 

Terry Whalin 35:52
Oh, no, I. I have people even what I do at Morgan James, I send contracts to authors and. You know, they'll come back and say, well, it's not not the right fit and 

Rich Bennett 36:04
Yeah. 

Terry Whalin 36:04
I'm a girl. I wish you all the best. I hope we can work together in the future. And you know, by golly, sometimes they do come back in a couple of years and say, Hey, kid, can I do that book? And I say, Yeah, let's do that book. 

Tammie Wingrove 36:17
It's an interview on both sides, right. 

Terry Whalin 36:20
That's right. That's right. We're interviewing him on both sides because we're we're we're looking for the right author and the right book in order to be able to publish that book. 

Rich Bennett 36:32
So what? I don't even want to. You already gave me the one. So what's another big myth? 

Terry Whalin 36:39
Well, another big myth is that my publisher will market and sell. 

Rich Bennett 36:45
Yes I've heard that. Mhm. 

Terry Whalin 36:48
Sure. 

Rich Bennett 36:49
Right. 

Terry Whalin 36:49
I mean, as publishers, we're we're definitely going to do our work. We're going to get the book out there. We're going to market the book to the bookstore. But I always tell every author that it's going to be 80% of the year to sell books because our interest and our passion is really divided. I mean, look at Morgan James. I mean, we're doing 200 books a year. So there's only so much energy we can put towards each of those books. Were you as the author? Hey, this is this is your book, Your baby. So you're the one actually, that should be out there leading the troops, telling people about your book. You know, use use social media, use YouTube, use all these different things. Really be wise about it, though, because, know, I talk to authors all the time, Rich, and they'll tell me that my group is over on Facebook or Instagram or whatever. Well, that's that's a problem because. I don't own Instagram or Facebook or YouTube. Matter of fact, I could knowingly or unknowingly, knowingly violate their terms. I get kicked off of there tomorrow and it's like. 

Rich Bennett 38:07
Uh huh. 

Terry Whalin 38:08
All that disappears. So don't build your life over on Facebook. Sure. Use those. Use those tools, but build your self over on your own website, 

Rich Bennett 38:20
Yes. 

Terry Whalin 38:20
your own blogs. Something you can control, your own newsletter that you send out. You know, you can you can handle that stuff. I don't know what what's going to happen with X or Twitter or. LinkedIn or any of these things. I mean, I use them, don't get me wrong, but I don't count on those things happening. 

Rich Bennett 38:44
I mean, with social media, how many times has whether it be Facebook or whatever, frozen frozen or just it was it was dead there. There was nothing there. And I think I see too many businesses. They will use that as their website. It's like, no. Get your own website. And I know there are publishing companies out there that will that'll have have a website for an author, but it will be like the publishing company's name, dot, author, dot com or whatever. author should still have their own publish or their own website no matter what, because you never know what can happen. And how many times do you see authors go to different publishing companies? Yes. 

Terry Whalin 39:33
They do and publishers go out of business 

Rich Bennett 39:35
Yes. 

Terry Whalin 39:35
and all kinds of crazy things happen. That's that's outside of your control. But if you're taking charge of it, then then you'll be you. You'll be okay at the end of 

Rich Bennett 39:46
Yeah. 

Terry Whalin 39:46
the. 

Rich Bennett 39:47
All right. So, Terry, one of the things I love to hear is the feel good stories. So can you share a personal experience where you encountered an author that was struggling with one of the myths from your book and how they overcame it? 

Terry Whalin 40:05
Yeah. I mean, I'm I'm thinking of, 

for 

example, a lot of a lot of authors will tell me that they they don't feel like their book is really getting 

gaining enough traction, you know, not not reaching enough people. And so I'll ask them, have they ever thought about writing a magazine article? And they'll go, No, I never have thought about doing that. Well, do you read magazines? Sure. Read magazines? Well. 

If you sell 5000 copies of your book in the lifetime of the book, that's a that's a good number for us in publishing in the magazine world. It's very common to reach 100,000, 200,000 and half a million people with your magazine article. And you can write a shorter magazine article. Magazine articles are ideas. You learn how to write for a particular audience. You learn how to write a headline, how to write it, a good opening, a good metal, a good ending. And you're dealing with something that's, you know, 1000 to 1500 words as opposed to a book, a 50,000 word to 100,000 word book is a whole lot harder to deal with than to deal with this short little piece of writing. And at the end of your magazine article, you can always have a sentence that says, you know, Terry Whalen, the author of a biography, Billy Graham, a biography of America's Greatest Evangelist. You know, it has my my website there. That's that's a really effective tool if you use it that way. 

Rich Bennett 41:57
Yeah. Yeah. While, again, people are missing the boat with that. They're missing the boat big time. All right. So one of the things I want to ask you, too, because I didn't know about this, but you have the myth buster action in each chapter of your book. What is that? 

Terry Whalin 42:16
Yeah, that's that's the practical application that's at the end of every chapter. MBA a myth buster action that two really authors can use that action 

Rich Bennett 42:29
Mm. 

Terry Whalin 42:29
to apply the material from that particular chapter to their own writing life. And I intentionally pick different things that you could do no matter how you publish, if you self-publish, if you publish independently, if you publish with a traditional publisher, no matter how you do it, you can still use these these actions for your own, your own writing life. 

Rich Bennett 42:57
I want to get. I want to talk to you about writing, too. But I want to see if Tammy has any questions about the publishing part first. 

Tammie Wingrove 43:04
I'm just so fascinated. 

Everything. As As I have more of the business mind. And so 

Rich Bennett 43:13
Right. 

Tammie Wingrove 43:13
now you've got my gears turning. Okay, I can market. I knew how to market this. This totally just absolutely shifts everything in my mind. And I really feel like even for business owners, they could take your your tricks and your tips and apply them in their lives for you. Make sure that you have that you've got your website. Make sure even in the tagline of, you know, owner of this business or whatever, because you're the owner of a business, you're the owner of your book, you're what does Rich say? An author preneur. 

Rich Bennett 43:50
The author preneur. Yeah. 

Tammie Wingrove 43:52
So you can be an entrepreneur and author preneur and mash it all up. And I don't know how you would say that all together. Control through preneur are real on. I'll write a book about that. 

Rich Bennett 44:06
Just say Northrup from Nevada, it makes. 

Tammie Wingrove 44:08
But I did want to ask you really quick, where do you see so some of the unrealistic expectations coming from so much of social media because people are getting on and you see how big they get so fast and you think, Oh, I could be like this person and you're watching from home. And it's you know, I'm on lots of mom blogs and mom talk and stuff like that. So you see it and whatever you're getting and you're real in your feed, do you think that that's sort of setting them up for the unrealistic expectations of, look, their book came out and they sold a million copies. 

Terry Whalin 44:43
I think I think I think it does in some ways. But, you know, everybody everybody starts small, you know, in this in this area. So you just have to get started and and keep keep working at it. Your your persistence and your consistency is something that really, really will will pay off in the long time. And I mean, even the whole social media thing, they pretty much proven that you don't sell books through social media. I mean, that's that's a known factor out there. So why why do why do publishers care about your social media numbers? Well, they care because one of the things we've learned is it takes somebody has to know about your book, probably nine, ten, maybe a dozen times before they actually buy it. So part of what you're doing through social media is just just telling people about the benefits of your book. You don't want to just send little notes, buy this book, buy this book. Nobody to look at that. But if you can talk about the reasons and the benefits of what somebody is going to get for buying your book, then that's valuable insight and valuable information for them. And that's going to drive drive people to to buy your book. We also. Morgan James, one of the things that we teach our authors is we teach them not to use one word. 

That word is Amazon. 

Rich Bennett 46:14
Oh. 

Terry Whalin 46:15
Because let's think for a minute. Look at this from the bookstore owner vantage point. They believe, right or wrong, that Amazon has destroyed their business over the years. So they don't really care what Amazon's doing. I mean, Amazon is a big customer of Morgan James. 

Rich Bennett 46:34
Right. 

Terry Whalin 46:34
But there are only 24% of our overall business. 

Rich Bennett 46:38
Really? 

Terry Whalin 46:38
Well, look at us. If you publish with Amazon, which you can certainly do, you're missing 76% of what we do for the book out there. I mean, we sell our books at Target. That confirms that. 

Rich Bennett 46:50
Yeah. 

Terry Whalin 46:51
We saw all over the place. So we encourage authors when they set up their website, not just to put an Amazon button on their site, but to include buttons to other places. Your local independent bookstore to Barnes Noble's dot com books-a-million dot com or to get it directly from you. I sure I have an Amazon button on my site, but I also don't promote that that strictly from Amazon. You want to if you have a best seller you don't want to just say you had an Amazon bestseller. You want to say you had a bestseller. 

Rich Bennett 47:27
Yeah. 

Terry Whalin 47:28
You don't want to say you had. You had 55 star review, five star Amazon reviews. You just want to say you had 50 reviews. Keep keep that word Amazon out and that'll that'll help you with the general buying public out there because believe me, those people that are in the national accounts that are ahead of those things, they look at that stuff and they they can blacklist you from your book getting into those those venues. 

Rich Bennett 47:57
Oh. I didn't realize that. But, you know, and I'm glad you brought it up, because it's just like with podcasting, you know, if if you're a podcaster, you're going to have the lugers of where everywhere where your podcast is carried or at least tried to, you know, you're not just going to say, Oh, just go to Spotify. Listen now. Yeah, you can listen here, here, here, here, here, here and here. And then if you're a best selling author, well, Terry, you can answer this. How many times have people asked you to autograph a book? 

Terry Whalin 48:34
Quite, quite a bit. 

Rich Bennett 48:35
You can't get that all the crab version from Amazon, can you? 

Terry Whalin 48:39
No. 

Rich Bennett 48:39
But if they buy from your website, they can. 

Terry Whalin 48:44
Yeah. And I don't really care where they were. They bought the book just as long as they've they've got it and they take it home and read it. I think they. 

Rich Bennett 48:50
Yeah. 

Terry Whalin 48:51
I think it's great. 

Rich Bennett 48:52
Yeah, but. Well, I mean, but for some reason I don't know what it is, but a lot of readers just like to have that autographed copy, and you're not going to get that from Amazon if you get it directly from the author. And it to me, it has more meaning because. 

Terry Whalin 49:06
That's right. That's right. I've actually got a series on my shelf up above where I'm sitting here. I've autographed books that I have from different. Different people that I've interviewed through the years. 

Rich Bennett 49:17
Yeah. 

Terry Whalin 49:17
And then, yeah, it needs a lot 

Rich Bennett 49:19
It does. 

Terry Whalin 49:20
photographs. 

Rich Bennett 49:21
Oh, yeah. There's Alan open. The ones that get autographed. I'll actually I'll buy. I'll have them autograph. One then I'll go ahead and buy one to actually open up and read as just me. You look, it's the collector. It'd be okay. I learned this from my baseball cards. 

Terry Whalin 49:40
Sure. 

Rich Bennett 49:41
You don't. 

Tammie Wingrove 49:42
Marketing 

Rich Bennett 49:42
Yeah. 

Tammie Wingrove 49:42
tactic to as you're sitting there signing the books, say, oh, don't forget to buy one for you to actually read. This is your display book. Here's your reading book teaching. 

Rich Bennett 49:53
Yeah. And one of the things one of the things I always tell people, even when they purchase your book and they leave a review wherever. Purchase another if you like, to that much. Purchase another book for somebody else that you know instead of passing the book on because and I learned this the hard way one of my favorite books that really changed my life was Tuesdays with Morrie. And And I passed that book on, and I don't even know where it ended up, but I wanted to read it again. It's like, Oh crap, got it? So I had to buy it again, which I didn't mind, but it now out. I'll actually buy that and give it to other people. Any of his books because they're, they're, they're great books, which I'm going to have to do with your book now. 

I'm going to have to buy that for aspiring authors. All right. So when it comes to writing, what is 

one of the biggest pieces of advice you can give to an aspiring author? Because they're all just. Well, I'll just throw me out there. When I started my book a year ago, I stopped because I just I had brain fog and realized that maybe I'm writing the wrong thing and decided to turn it around and write guidebooks instead. Like instead of one big chapter book on advice, different guidebooks. And that and that helped me a lot more. And every time I talk to an author, I just get encouraged more. But I do know there are a lot of authors that well, I don't want to say there are even authors yet because of books not published. I know there's a lot of writers they'll start writing and it's just they stop for some reason and they got a lot of good stuff. And I think of my daughter a lot. My daughter is an awesome writer, but she just like for some reason just lost the love of it. 

Terry Whalin 52:02
Well, the whole the whole writing process is very, very interesting to me. But you have to you have to tell stories as one of the things people are always interested in, stories. But you have to combine those stories with some practical how to information. 

Rich Bennett 52:18
Right. 

Terry Whalin 52:19
And those stories have to lead to something for the reader. Every everybody's selfish when they look at books. They look at books. What's what's in it for them? 

Rich Bennett 52:29
Right. 

Terry Whalin 52:29
When they when they're reading it. So you always look when you write a chapter or when you write a magazine article or whatever it is you don't always want to have what you what we call a take away for the reader in that in that chapter or in that magazine article. So you want to have sort of one point that you really want somebody to take away from that. So that's another element that you can you can add to that to the writing process that. 

Rich Bennett 53:02
Okay. I never thought about that, even with a guidebook. And I. A friend of mine wrote a recipe book, which is not really. I mean, he's got the recipes in there, but she's told stories behind it, which actually to people I've had on now have recipes. But they they told the stories behind it unlike a regular recipe book. Just a little hint there, Tammy. Oh. 

But even with a guidebook, that makes sense if you're telling the story, it's. It's. It's letting them know that your personal story on how this tip helped you. 

Is well. Is. Well, I'm. Well, just tell stories in the book, period. 

Terry Whalin 53:47
And make it and make those stories. You want to make them timeless. 

Rich Bennett 53:50
Yeah. 

Terry Whalin 53:51
So that like like you don't want to I mean, we just went through a pandemic here, but you don't really want to be talking about COVID and 

Rich Bennett 53:59
Yeah. 

Terry Whalin 53:59
the pandemic and all that stuff because that. 

Rich Bennett 54:02
Negative. 

Terry Whalin 54:03
So 

Rich Bennett 54:03
Yeah. 

Terry Whalin 54:04
you want to just tell tell things that will be be good five years from now as well as now. 

Rich Bennett 54:11
Like. Like evergreen. 

Terry Whalin 54:14
Evergreen. That's 

Rich Bennett 54:14
Yeah, it's relevant even 2051. Well, hopefully 100 years from now, 

Terry Whalin 54:21
locally. 

Rich Bennett 54:23
you never know with the 

publishing part. I want to get back to that because one question came to my mind. A lot of people say, I've heard this a lot, and the reason they go through KDP or other types of self-publishing is because they say trying when they find a publisher just cost too much. I mean, can you elaborate on that? Because to me, that's the person that's not 

looking at their book as a business because, you know, you got to put out money to make money. 

Terry Whalin 55:02
Yeah, there's there there is there is something to that. And, you know, once, once your book comes out that gives you the the authority and the open doors to really get get speaking gigs and. All different kinds of things can happen. Once that once that book is out, is it sort of the way you look at the world to do you look at the world with with scarcity or do you look at the world with abundance? And I look at the world that there's tons of tons of opportunity out there. So sure, it it's not cheap for any of us to to produce a book. I mean, Morgan James, we, we spend, you know, ten, 15, 20, $25,000 on every book that we publish. So 

Rich Bennett 55:52
Wow. 

Terry Whalin 55:52
we. Conscious decisions on which books we're actually going to bring on, but 

the author is going to. And Morgan James, we asked them to invest, invest in their book, to get the book at the at the present cost. And so there is an investment that we have at Morgan James. And some people say that's not right for them. But, you know, I again, back to the scarcity or abundance issue, I believe that, you know, God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. And so there's somebody in your life 

that if you ask them about this, they would probably give you the money. I mean, the book of James, there's a verse in there that says you have not because you ask not. But it takes courage, you know, to ask somebody for help. But if you ask somebody for help, maybe they would help you to be able to get your book out there into the world. So there's that kind of thing. There's also a mortgage. Morgan James, There's a system we use called publicizing. And that's kind of like a go fund me or a Kickstarter. But it's. 

Rich Bennett 57:10
Okay. 

Terry Whalin 57:11
It's just for books. And I've had authors, you know, raise the money that they need using using a system like that. So there's there's a lot of different options out there. You just have to be open to the options and explore those options and find the right one for you. 

Rich Bennett 57:29
And the thing is how many when comes to business? How many businesses when they start up look for investors. So a book is the same thing. Look for investors. Why not? You know, again, it's just like looking for a publisher. You may get some news, but get you'll get some yeses eventually. 

Terry Whalin 57:50
Right. 

Rich Bennett 57:51
So, Tami, first of all, are you okay? 

Tammie Wingrove 57:56
All of a sudden where I'm sitting, that air clicked on and it just hit me. I'm sorry I jumped out for a minute, but luckily I could still hear everything. Hopefully the mute. I kept checking. It says it's muted. They're not hearing me. 

Rich Bennett 58:12
First of all, is 31 degrees. Why do they have the air on there? 

Tammie Wingrove 58:17
I guess it's the heat. The heat clicked on, but I heard that I should clarify. 

Rich Bennett 58:21
Okay. 

Tammie Wingrove 58:22
We're not crazy. 

Rich Bennett 58:23
I just want to make sure. So before I get to my last question for Terry, do you have any questions for him? 

Tammie Wingrove 58:31
How do you recommend? So as a business owner? My mind is always going in different directions. So I think all the time I've got a children's book and I have this book and I have all these different ideas. Obviously, they're not all great ideas. I always, my business partner and I say we're idea people, but they're not always good ideas. 

Rich Bennett 58:53
There's no such thing as a bad idea. 

Tammie Wingrove 58:56
They're just not winners. The most successful idea. How about that? The most profitable idea. But when somebody has all of these different ideas for different books that they're going to go in the direction that they're going in, what's the best advice that you would have for them to to find their path? Do you recommend that they you have a business plan, a book plan for all of these different ones, get it down on paper just to have it down and come back to it or get something quickly down. But stay the course on the one that you're most invested in. 

Terry Whalin 59:35
Yeah, basically. Basically, you have to you have to choose which which one you're going to start with and then which maybe which one you're going to do next. And then maybe the one after that. So you want to narrow your focus so that you take your passion of what you're really passionate about and then use that to continue for you every day to be be doing that rule of five and, and telling people that about that book. You don't want to be too scattered. If you did too many things at once, then it watered down your effectiveness and you're really not able to to focus. So like like even these podcasts here that I'm doing for my ten publishing this book, I'm not talking about all these different books that I've written. I'm really encouraging people to still go to publishing often. I. 

Rich Bennett 1:00:27
Right. 

Terry Whalin 1:00:27
To pick up my tent publishing this book. At the end of the day, the one thing that I haven't talked to you about is that I actually wrote an 11th myth for my. 

Rich Bennett 1:00:37
Huh? 

Terry Whalin 1:00:38
Because Alice Kreider, who's an acquisitions editor at David C Cook, when she sent her endorsement back to me, she told me she said, Terry, you're missing the 11th myth. I'm like, okay, Alice, I'll bite. Tell me what the 11th myth is. She said, Well, the 11th myth should be that if I send my book to Oprah, she'll book me on her. And I'm like, Well, yeah, that's a that's a pretty good math. And so what I decided to do is I wrote that 11th myth, I wrote that chapter, and I give that away. You can get that for free for me if you go to Terry links dot com forward slash 11th myth forward slash one one myth and then I'll take you to my website. You put in your first name, your email address there, and then you can get the 11th myth automatically from me. And so. It's just another resource because, I mean, if you Sure, you can send your book to Oprah Winfrey. But as I understand it, Oprah has a big warehouse in Chicago full of that stuff that people send her. She organizes it all. And a couple of times a year, she gives it all away. Now, Now, you can put your book in there if that's what you want to do. But I think there's a lot more effective ways that you can get your book out there rather than do something like that. 

Rich Bennett 1:02:09
I didn't even realize she's still doing that. 

Terry Whalin 1:02:12
She's still got you know, she still got her book club. She still you know, people are still trying to get her attention to to sell books at the end of the day. 

Rich Bennett 1:02:23
Yeah, go back. Go back to Terry's methods and you'll sell more. It's a lot easier. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Tammy. 

Tammie Wingrove 1:02:31
So just send it to Oprah. But it's. 

Rich Bennett 1:02:33
Now. 

Oh, God. 

Tammie Wingrove 1:02:39
Getting a free book. I want Oprah to buy my book. 

Rich Bennett 1:02:42
Wendy Terry, how many different websites do you have? 

Terry Whalin 1:02:46
I have quite a few websites. 

I started early on and I've I've built a lot of stuff online. 

Rich Bennett 1:02:54
Okay. 

Terry Whalin 1:02:54
Part of what I do. 

Rich Bennett 1:02:55
Because, I mean, the only one I knew about was your blog, which is on Pod Match. And then you mentioned the other one, which is it was a for the book proposals. It was a book proposals that was. 

Terry Whalin 1:03:12
That's a book for ghosts. Yes. Yes. 

Rich Bennett 1:03:14
And good Lord, now I'm forgetting. Well, when I when I play this back and transcribe it, I'll know I'll get them. You know, I'm just. You're just going to have to send me all the links you wanted, the show notes it's going to be. 

Terry Whalin 1:03:29
I'd be happy. Happy to do that. 

Rich Bennett 1:03:30
Yeah, because I want people I mean, I love the 11th myth idea to and I'm sorry, but when you first when you said that for some reason spinal Tap came into my head and I don't know if you've ever seen that movie. No. Okay. You got to look at it because Rob Reiner film and he was asking the guitar player about his I say, Well, why do you go to 11? Well, because 11 is one higher than ten. 

So I would to be louder than everybody else. But you said that it was like, Oh, my God, he watched Spinal Tap. 

Oh, take me any more before I get to my last one. 

Tammie Wingrove 1:04:14
No go for. 

Rich Bennett 1:04:16
Okay. Well, first of all, before I ask you my last question, is there anything you would like to add? If you throw in five more websites, I'm really going to fall back. 

Tammie Wingrove 1:04:26
I am so many tabs open now. 

Terry Whalin 1:04:29
You know, I guess what I would like people to know, Rich, is I've been in some of the, you know, top publishers, top, top literary agencies in New York City. I've been visiting with these people and and as authors, all of us here know a lot as we as we talked about. But one of the things I really want people to know is that each of these people, when I meet with them, they turn to me and they say, okay, Terry, where is the next best best selling novel? Where's the next best selling nonfiction book? And so they may be ghosting you. They may not be responding. They may be telling you that their their client list is full of those kinds of things, but know that they are reading their email, they're opening their physical mail. They're looking for that diamond in the rough that they can take out there into the world. So never let the risk, the lack of response or the nose that you get keep you from doing your work day in and day out to be knocking on knocking on more doors. 

Rich Bennett 1:05:43
So I'm going to ask you a different question. And then I then what I ask everybody else, because I think this is I think this is more important. So for me and all the other aspiring authors out there, after they get your book 

and they finish writing their manuscript, what should be their next step? 

Terry Whalin 1:06:08
Well, after they finish writing their manuscript, they should send it to me and see if see if it's it's the right book that we should publish it. Morgan James, I hate to tell Tammy this, but we don't publish cookbooks. That's one of the categories. We do not publish books. 

Tammie Wingrove 1:06:27
I 

Terry Whalin 1:06:27
We don't 

Tammie Wingrove 1:06:27
have 

Terry Whalin 1:06:28
do. 

Tammie Wingrove 1:06:28
to. Books and all kinds of other things on my list. 

Terry Whalin 1:06:31
We would do full color coffee table books. We don't do poetry. So there are some categories that we do not do, but most categories we do 

Rich Bennett 1:06:40
Right. 

Terry Whalin 1:06:40
and have done over the years. So send it to me, you know, and I'll check it out and see if it's if it's going to be a good fit. I mean, even on Twitter X, I mean, I have my personal email address right in my profile there because I want people to reach me. I mean, they say that I'm one of the most accessible people in the in the publishing community because. 

Rich Bennett 1:07:05
Wow. 

Terry Whalin 1:07:06
I really do try to be available. I answer my phone calls, I answer my email, I try to try to point people in the right direction. They might not get a long email from me, but they know that at least they they heard from me in that process. 

Rich Bennett 1:07:20
You want to help people? Which is good. That's something I love to hear. It's you're willing to help people, which is why you're successful at what you do. I believe in I lie. I have one more question. 

Terry Whalin 1:07:32
Books change people's lives and. 

Rich Bennett 1:07:34
Yes. 

Terry Whalin 1:07:35
So I want I want that's what gets me up every day. I keep doing this stuff. 

Rich Bennett 1:07:39
And I'm going to have to find that book, Jesus the Revolutionary. And I'm glad you said that, because you have books to change your life. There's and I've said this several times. There is a certain book that I read well, after I read after I watched a movie, because the book came out after the movie. But it changed my life. It helped move my anxiety and depression. And that was The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. It it changed everything. But with your writing and you being, you know, an editor, do you actually edit your own books as well? 

Terry Whalin 1:08:15
No, I usually find somebody else. 

Rich Bennett 1:08:18
Okay. 

Terry Whalin 1:08:19
The end of my books. I mean, there's you just have blinders on as a writer. You don't see all the stuff that somebody else can take a fresh look at and help you with. 

Rich Bennett 1:08:30
I had a funny feeling that was going to be your answer. That's why I wanted to ask, because I know there are authors out there that will do their own editing. And you're right. Yeah. Blinders on. Yeah. You don't want to do that, so. Oh, God. Terry, I want to thank you so much. I've learned a lot. I cannot wait to get your book. And now I am inspired to sit down and write some more. And, Tammy, hopefully you are too. 

Tammie Wingrove 1:08:59
I'm ready to give right in and find my my business plan for my book and get going on that. 

Rich Bennett 1:09:06
Which is good business plan too to so. 

Terry Whalin 1:09:08
Fantastic. Well, thank you all very much. I appreciate this opportunity and hope people go to a publishing offer and get my book. 

Rich Bennett 1:09:17
Oh, definitely. That's where I'm headed to, right when we're done. Thanks, Terry. Thank you, Dave. 

Rich Bennett 1:09:23
Thank you for listening to the conversations with Rich Bennett. I hope you enjoy today's episode and learn something from it as I did. If you'd like to hear more conversations like this, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode. And if you have a moment, I'd love if you could leave a review. It helps us reach more listeners and share more incredible stories. Don't forget to connect with us on social media or visit our website at conversations with Rich Bennett. Com for updates, giveaways and more. Until next time, take care. Be kind and keep the conversations going.