Margot Wood

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First Draft Episode #317: Margot Wood

August 5, 2021

Margot Wood, founder of Epic Reads, talks about her debut young adult novel, Fresh.

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Welcome to First Draft with me, Sarah Enni. This week, I'm talking to Margot Wood, founder of Epic Reads and debut author of Fresh, out now. I loved talking to Margot. I always love talking to her. We actually spoke with Margot for one of the most interesting episodes of the Track Changes Mini Series, the episode about marketing (Marketing and Publicity episode of Track Changes).

I loved what Margot has to say in this episode about her unlikely path for being an ADHD and dyslexic non-reader, to becoming the founder of one of the most dynamic young adult reading communities in the world, how she plays with structure and format to more fully immerse readers into her characters heads in this debut novel, and we dive really deep into her approach as a professional book marketer, first on the production side of publishing, and now on the creative end as a debut author herself.

She gives a ton of perspective and insights and behind-the-scenes information, and a lot of advice for how authors can position themselves. You do not want to miss this conversation. There's a ton of great stuff in here.

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You can also go to the website, FirstDraftPod.com, to check out the show notes for this episode, and every episode, for links to everything that the guest and I talk about. First Draft is an affiliate of bookshop.org so when you buy books through the links on the website, it helps to support the show and independent bookstores at no additional cost to you.

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Okay, now please sit back, relax and enjoy my conversation with Margot Wood.

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Sarah Enni:  Hi Margo. How are you doing today?

Margot Wood:  I'm good. How are you?

Sarah Enni:  I'm good. I'm so excited to chat with you. I'm excited to chat with you again, and this time we get to talk about your debut novel Fresh.

Margot Wood:  Yeah. It's really fun and weird to be on your podcast now as an author cause I've been on it, I guess, twice now as a marketing person. So full circle.

Sarah Enni:  Yes. You have been on the show before and I'm gonna link to your episodes, particularly the episode of Track Changes where you broke it wide open and really helped people understand about marketing their book, which we're gonna come back to because now you have a whole different perspective on it.

Margot Wood:  I was so salty that day.

Sarah Enni:  It was a very illuminating interview. I love it. Okay, so I can't wait to talk about Fresh and all of these good things, but on First Draft, you know the game, I like to go back to the very beginning. So I'd love to hear about where you were born and raised.

Margot Wood:  I was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Sarah Enni:  How was the reading and writing part of growing up for you?

Margot Wood:  Ooh, um, non-existent. So I grew up in a sports household. I was a sports kid. I was on a lot of teams. I was doing golf, soccer, squash, horseback riding, basketball, among various other things that only lasted one season. So in my house, reading wasn't a pastime that anybody really did. And it was actually [sighs], god I hope my mom doesn't listen to this, but it was a form of punishment in my household. So like if we were bad, or we were being grounded, the line was always, "Go to your room and read." It was always a form of like a negative thing. So for me, I always associated reading with negativity.

And also growing up I'm ADHD and I was dyslexic growing up, which I've since been able to overcome, which has been great, but not so much the ADHD. But reading was really, really hard for me. I was not good at it. And the books that they have you read in middle school are just not fun for middle school readers.

You know, we're reading Johnny Tremaine when I wanted to be reading Calvin and Hobbs. And I really wish that I had spent more time developing my skills as a reader, and becoming more competent as a reader, before being thrown into the deep end with a bunch of these classics, with old dialogue and styles that I wasn't used to.

So for me, I actually was really afraid of reading and kind of avoided it at all costs, even in high school. My claim to fame was I never read a single book required in high school, and I just SparkNotes everything.

Needless to say, I did not do very well in English. It was one of my worst subjects. So I didn't really discover reading until I was 25. I was living in New York and I had just gotten a studio apartment in the East Village. And I scheduled the internet guy to come put in internet in the apartment, but he was backed up and couldn't come for two weeks.

And so for two weeks I had no internet. And what did I end up doing? I ended up reading the Hunger Games and that was it for me. That was when I discovered YA and realized I had been missing out on all this amazing life-changing experience of reading, you know? And so I just devoured absolutely everything I could possibly get my hands on and ended up making it my career. Very quickly, actually.

Sarah Enni:  That is amazing. Okay. There's a lot there that I want to get to. I do want to just take a second because I really appreciate you speaking to having dyslexia and ADHD. And I actually know a lot of authors who have ADHD, and or dyslexia, or both. And it's something I'm not familiar with. So I'm interested in how you have managed to become the avid reader that you are while having to manage those two things. What are ways to manage it? I'm just interested in your journey there.

Margot Wood:  What's interesting is that I was probably one of the earlier class of people who got diagnosed with ADHD, especially for girls, women are often very under diagnosed. I was first diagnosed when I was 11 years-old in sixth grade. And unfortunately I have never once had a doctor or a psychiatrist walk me through what actually being ADHD means. Cause most of those people who were prescribing that, aren't actually ADHD themselves. So they don't really know. They understand the symptoms, but they don't really know what that means in a larger context.

Margot Wood:  So I grew up without any formal education on how to manage it. It was just, "Here's a bunch of medication take this and try really hard to focus." Which was hard. So I've been medicated on Adderall since I was 11 years-old, literally every day of my life. To the point now, where I actually do go through withdrawal symptoms if I go more than four days without it, it's bad. It's very, very bad.

But that being said, that medication is a life-changer for me. I would not be able to work in a professional environment without it. I would not be able to be in a relationship without it. And so for reading, there's this thing that some ADHD people can do, maybe you've heard of the term hyper-focused? Not every ADHD person can do this and those who can do it, cannot do it voluntarily. If we could turn that on whenever we wanted, my God we'd be like superstars, but that's sort of the whole thing with ADHD is that we can't actually control our focus. That's what it is.

But with reading, I found that if I sit down with a book and I genuinely give it a good solid hour with no distractions, no phone, an airplane is a really good place for this. But if I really just sit down and just turn off all of the distractions, I can get to a place of hyper-focus and then it doesn't matter if there's music playing, or people talking at me, once I'm in that hyper-focus mode I read so fast and nothing distracts me. And it's really, really great.

The hard part about getting to that place though, is getting to that place. And I think a lot of people just don't give themselves the time to do it. You know, they sit down for literally 10 seconds and read one page and are like, "Nope, this book sucks." And they move on. And I have found that if that's happening a lot, it's not the book, it's me. But yeah, as a reader, I've learned how to become a better reader despite the ADHD.

Being a writer [laughs], I mean, I've only written one book, so I don't know if what I did works, but I just tried to break everything down into scenes. I've never taken a writing class. I don't know how to write a novel formally. I just go off of what I've known from theater and a play is broken into acts and then scenes.

And so every scene, I just sit down, I don't even think of it as chapters because some of those scenes ended up becoming two chapters or many, many scenes were in one chapter, but each little scene. And if I think of it in that short, small chunks, it becomes much, much easier to handle because then I'm not thinking I need to write a whole novel. I'm thinking I need to write one scene and once that's done, then it's the next scene.

And I don't even keep track of everything that I've written until I feel like I've got enough. And then suddenly you have like 30,000 words, you've got half a novel. So that's pretty much what I did with Fresh.

I'm sure that there are other methods and I've been connecting with a lot of ADHD writers like Aminah Mae Safi (author of Not the Girls You’re Looking For, Tell Me How You Really Feel, This is All Your Fault, and Travelers Along the Way: A Robin Hood Remix. Listen to her First Draft interview here).

She's been giving me a lot of advice, which has been really helpful. So I've been trying to connect with people who are like me, but who are a bit more experienced as being a writer to try to figure out the best way to write for me.

Another thing is I can't write every day, that's not really how my brain works. I can't do it in little chunks. It's like that hyper-focus thing where I'm either all in, or I'm not writing. That's how I wrote Fresh. I wrote Fresh evenings, weekends, every free waking moment. I was so immersed in that world for like four months when I was writing this book. And that was how I was able to do it. Just go all in super hard for a short period of time.

So it wasn't necessarily healthy. It was extremely exhausting. But that seems to be the only way that I can work, because that's just sort of how my brain works.

Sarah Enni:  I actually can relate to that, like sprint and rest, sprint, and rest. That is how I write as well. And, as you say, sprint could be four months, it could be six months. It could be two weeks where you're by yourself in a mountain cave, or something. But like really, really, really immersing. And then you have to respect the rest part. That's an incredibly important part of the process.

I want to jump to working in publishing in a second. But I want to just take a moment to talk about college, because that is obviously such an important period of time that you're really flushing out in Fresh and you have this great story about your freshman year of college that is one of the formative pillars of what ends up being your debut novel.

So I'd love to just hear about what your experience was like at college?

Margot Wood:  My freshman year of college was a learning experience. There was so much I did wrong. And I think that almost every person I talk to says the same thing about their freshman year. A lot of people are like, "Oh, I should have done more!" Like, "Gone more wild," and things like that. And I feel like I was good academically, and good socially a little bit, but there was just a lot that I really did wrong on a relationship and friendship level that really set me back.

And I got into a relationship too early and then we broke up and then that kind of defined me. And then I fell into the wrong friend group. And so then I had to start all over with friends, but everybody had already paired up by then. So I had to start over, I got a new roommate second semester because my first semester roommate and I did not get along.

So while my freshman year was super fun and I met amazing people, had a very sort of typical freshman year, it was also really hard and it was really lonely. And I do think that's where I differ a lot from Elliot. Elliot's experience, I definitely dip into the lonelier parts, the harder parts with her, but she definitely has a lot more fun. She clicks into a friend group right away, which I never had. It took me a long time to find a good friend group.

And so my freshman year was fun, but it wasn't like Elliot's. There's definitely a common misconception with that because so much of it is based on my own experience, you know? But the majority of it is based on the mistakes that I made and I'm turning those mistakes into comedy for this book, which are funny. And they're a lot of fun to write about.

And now having my college years so far in the past behind me, I can look on those mistakes and be like, "Ha! That was so stupid and funny." But at the time I remember being very sad and upset about a lot of the stupid mistakes that I made. So I'm glad I made them because I wouldn't have this book without them, which is why I dedicated my book to my mistakes.

So I'm glad that I went through what I went through, now. I actually almost dropped out my freshman year. I've never talked about that, but I almost dropped out because I just didn't think I could handle it. And my dad came up one weekend in March and we went and got coffee and he was like, "Well, you can walk away if you want to."

He was like, "If you want to walk away, you can do that. But you need to know that it will be very hard to come back if you do walk away. And if you stick with it, you'll be a lot stronger for it." And so I ended up sticking it out and I'm really glad I did, things got a lot better after that.

But there was a point where I did think about dropping out because I just didn't feel like I was doing anything right.

Sarah Enni:  Thank you for sharing that. And that's gonna tie into when we are talking about Fresh, cause you really did such a great job mining that time and the details in the book were so vivid. I was like remembering my own freshman year so much. But I want to ask about ending up working in publishing cause I don't know that that was your intended career field. How'd how did that come about?

Margot Wood:  I majored in marketing at Emerson. Emerson students declare a major when they apply. So almost all Emerson students come in first day freshman year knowing exactly what they want to do. I was marketing. I was a marketing major. I wanted to go into branding. That's what I thought I wanted to do. And after I graduated college, I got a job at a branding agency in Cincinnati, Ohio. And I was like, "Yeah, I'm doing it! I'm doing the branding." And then I was like, "Oh my god, this sucks. It's so boring. It's the worst."

Eventually I decided, "Screw it. I'm just gonna move to New York." So I moved to New York during the last great recession with no job, no plan, just went there with a suitcase. And I got this job off of Craigslist that was a digital marketing agency, a tech startup, where I was their front end designer.

So I was designing the front end of these communities, these virtual communities that they were building. They assigned me three communities to design, but also sort of community manage. And those communities were Naruto and Dragonball Z, that was like one community. Diptyque Paris, which is a luxury fragrance brand.

Oh, it was actually four communities, Barefoot Wine.

Sarah Enni:  Oh, okay. Yup. Familiar.

Margot Wood:  That Moscato. And then the fourth community was this site called Random Buzzers, which was a young adult book community created by Random House, which was this community full of like, probably about two to 300,000 young adult readers that were just so wholesome. They were so excited about reading, and books, and just so positive and upbeat and energetic and silly and goofy and sweet and charming.

And I was just like, "Who are these people?" And that was at the same time that I got that studio apartment in the East Village. So everybody was talking about The Hunger Games on this community because they'd just cast Jennifer Lawrence, this unknown actress named Jennifer Lawrence. And they were all in a tizzy talking about it in the forums. And I was like, "I should probably know what they're talking about in order to be a good community manager."

And that's when I read The Hunger Games and that's when I was like, "Oh shit. I love YA!" I immediately read Divergent. And then every single dystopian book, and then every single paranormal book, and then every single contemporary, I read everything I could get my hands on. And I just threw myself into this community.

I was going to every single author event I could get my hands on in New York. I was going to all the conventions. I was trying to connect with readers. I just lived and breathed this community. And so I reached out to Random House and I was like, "Hey, you guys are outsourcing this community to this tech agency." I was like, "Why don't you just hire me internally because then I can actually work with you on strategy and branding," - ha ha, here comes the branding part. I was like, "I can work with you guys on all of this stuff. I have the design skills so I can keep designing stuff. We don't need to outsource that stuff anymore."

And Random House was like, "Nah, we're good." They straight up just said no. So I was really defeated at that point. And I hated working at the agency because meanwhile, I'm throwing my whole life into this community. I still have three other communities that I was supposed to be managing full time. And it was a lot. And if anybody's ever worked at an agency, they'll tell you that it sucks. It sucks. Especially if it's a tech startup type of environment where it is ridiculously long hours, very low pay, super misogynistic, just a bad environment.

And I really wanted to get out of that agency, but I had no connections in publishing. The one connection I had, turned me down. Then out of the blue, an email popped up. And I don't know how... I think it was actually through LinkedIn. And they were like, "Hey, there's this job listing that we think you should apply for."

And it was at Harper Collins and it said it was for someone to come start their own young adult book community. And I was like, "Oh my god!" So I applied. I got an interview. I went in for the interview. I wore red pants. And I was offered the job within 20 minutes of leaving the interview. And I took it. And it was like [sings], "Ahhhhh!" It was the best day of my life. It was like a week before my birthday. I remember I was just like, "Everything is so great right now."

Sarah Enni:  Amazing. And I want to just pause here and say... now obviously I, and a lot of people listening, will be like, "And then Epic Reads, duh!" But I also want to just be aware that some people might be listening to this podcast who are newer to the YA scene. So I want to give you the floor to brag on yourself and tell us what is Epic Reads? What had you created by the time you actually left?

Margot Wood:  So, Harper Collins wanted to have a competing community to Random Buzzers. So the first day I got there, they had a logo, they had a website built, but no content in there. And that was it. So they didn't really have a strategy other than, "We need to create content." And we were just gonna try to build some traffic to the site. And they said, essentially, I could do whatever I want.

And I learned this actually about a week before I left, five-and-a-half years later, that they didn't have any plans for Epic Reads to succeed. At all. This was just a sort of marketing talking point for them for one season that they were putting money towards cause they had some extra money in the budget and they were like, "We're gonna make this community cause it gives us something to talk about for a little while something to like get authors excited." But they did not think that Epic Reads would last at all.

So now knowing that, it puts everything else into a completely different context and it makes sense why they hired me and then let me do whatever I wanted with like kind of no eyes on me. And that's the reason why it became what it is today, because there was like no oversight.

[Both laugh]

Margot Wood:  That summer we launched Epic Reads. And at the time I was the only person working on it full-time. There was a whole digital team and some other people from within the digital team would touch it every once in a while. This girl Aubrey I worked with, would help out with the social media, like Twitter and Facebook. And then Shaz would help out with some of the content creation for the blog. And Alex would help out with the newsletter. But I was the only one whose sole job was dedicated to Epic Reads full-time.

So I just started immersing myself into the forums, "What are people talking about?" And that's what the key to marketing is, it's just listening and then going where the data is telling you to go. So I'm listening and I'm hearing what people are talking about. And then I would try to provide content based on what people are talking about and just let it build and build from there. And I would try new types of content pieces. And if they didn't work, then I'd give up on that and try something else and just sort of take a shot and see where it leads me.

And about six months after it launched Superstorm Sandy happened in New York which was, essentially, a hurricane in New York City. And New York City was unprepared for that amount of water. The whole city shut down for a week.

At this point, Epic Reads was popular among hardcore YA readers and bloggers, but it hadn't really broken out beyond that, it was still a relatively small audience. We're talking about like maybe 10,000 people at this point. And so when Superstorm Sandy happened, the whole city shut down for a week and everybody's working from home. Most people's power went out or their electricity went out. Our internet went out. So I had a whole week without internet. I decided to make an infographic because I was like, "Well, I need something to do while I'm supposed to be working all day. And I have no internet."

So I started to make this infographic called the United States of YA. And what it was, was finding a book set in each state of the United States and then making a little map out of it. So I made this infographic. And then when I eventually went back to the office a week later, I posted it up on the blog and it took off. Entertainment Weekly picked up on it. I hate using the word viral because everybody calls things viral, even if they're not. But at the time it felt viral because mainstream media outlets were picking up on this.

So I started making tons and tons of infographics, which really helped establish Epic Reads as like an authority on all things YA And the whole point of Epic Reads was to promote books that maybe weren't getting a large marketing budget. So all of these mid-list titles are getting their day in the sun on Epic Reads. And other people are using Epic Reads as a resource for finding good recommendations, but also resources, like I said earlier, for like libraries and things like that.

What also happened was we started doing this thing called Tea Time. So our boss said that, "Hey, there's this new platform. We want you to start trying it out, just see how it is." And it was called, this is how old I am, YouStream, doesn't even exist anymore. YouStream! So we were supposed to try out YouStream, it's a live streaming platform.

I grabbed my coworker Abra cause she sat right next to me. I was like, "Hey, let's go eat our lunch and just talk about books for 20 minutes." So we go into this little room called the fishbowl and we open up my laptop and we just click live and we tweeted it out. We're like, "Hey, we're live in case anybody wants to watch!" We had twenty viewers. And that felt like so many. And we literally just ate our lunch and talked about what we were reading for 20 minutes. That was it.

And we were like, "Hmm, that was actually kind of fun. And people seem to really like that, the 20 people that watched it." So we decided to try it again the following week on Wednesday and more people tuned in and we're like, "Hmm, all right." So then we kind of kept doing it and it kept growing, and it kept growing, and it kept growing, to the point where we were getting 2000 live viewers at any one time. Over like 900 comments, just an insane amount for YouStream. This is early days of live streaming.

Suddenly all those viewers are now also checking out the site. Our site traffic goes up, our social media platform starts to take off, our Twitter followers take off. Everything starts coalescing because they finally have a face to Epic Reads, there's like a personality to it. Cause before that, I was not associated with Epic Reads at all. And I didn't want to be because I think it should stand on its own. And if you rely on a personality, then if that personality leaves, then it's hard to keep that going.

I didn't really want to become the face of it, but at the same time, the data - I couldn't ignore it. Because it was telling me that what we were doing was working and this live video thing was absolutely working. So we did this for about a year. Again, at Harper, still no one internally is paying attention to this point. So we were able to do some hilarious shit with some Divergent cardboard cutouts.

Sarah Enni:  Oh! I recall those.

Margot Wood:  Yeah, the Theo James cardboard cutout, whoo! So it got to a point where we were getting, five- 6,000 live viewers, tons and tons of views afterwards. And all of a sudden Harper Collins is owned by News Corp, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch who owns like the Wall Street Journal and stuff like that. They break off. News Corp used to be like the movie studio Fox as well as, obviously, Fox News, but the Fox side of the entertainment arm.

And then all the publishing stuff, the Wall Street Journal, Harper Collins, the Sun and things like that, they decided to break those two companies up. And so now Fox and Fox News are its own separate entity. And the publishing side is its own entity. Then they realized that they didn't have a millennial audience on the publishing side because it's Wall Street Journal and Harper Collins, like there's nothing young and sexy about that.

So they were kind of looking through what they had within the Wall Street Journal and within Harper Collins that spoke to millennial audiences. And somebody at News Corp came across Epic Reads and came across our Tea Time stuff. And they wanted to go all in on Epic Reads. And that's when the suits at Harper started to pay attention. And that's when things started to change. For better and for worse. We got a huge influx of funding. None of that went to us by the way, it went to the operation.

So we got a huge influx of cash to put towards video which was great because we could up our production value. We got cameras, we got training, we got hair and makeup and all this stuff. We had a whole production crew, like literally a whole crew for some of these videos, which was so awesome. But the problem was is that when somebody gives you a bunch of money to do something, they kind of then also want to control it. And so they were coming in and sort of being like, "Everything needs to be scripted. It needs to be like this. It needs to have this sort of style."

And it never really worked with what we were doing, cause our whole thing was like live and off the cuff, and genuine and honest. The live stuff was just so different, I love doing live stuff. But the scripted stuff, I was like, "Oh, I'm not a actor! This feels odd." And then my partner, who was doing all these videos with me, she left to go have a baby, which is great, but she left New York. And so then it was just me for a little while. And then a lot of the pressure kind of started to come just solely on to me. And again, it was such a blast. And I will say this to the day I die, it was the best job I've ever had in my life.

And at that point, it went from Epic Reads when I got it with zero followers, zero fans, nobody knew about it. And at that point then it was 3 million people; half a million followers on Instagram, a hundred thousand subscribers on YouTube, like all up, it was 3 million followers. And I'm extremely, extremely proud of that.

I poured everything I have into that site. I loved everything about it. I loved working with the authors. I loved being able to work on books that didn't have marketing and see them grow and build solely through Epic Reads. I was extremely proud of what we were able to do with Simon versus the Homosapiens Agenda and so many other titles. And I made so many, many, many connections and I'm extremely grateful for everything that Epic Reads brought me, especially the readers. Always and forever the readers.

But I think what most people don't know is that my dad got sick with brain cancer nine months after I started at Epic Reads. So the entire time I was at Epic Reads, my dad was sick and then he died and then I was dealing with the grief. There was only nine months when I was at Epic Reads where my life wasn't revolving around my dad's death in some way. And so I used Epic Reads as an escape. That's sort of why I threw myself into it so much is because I didn't want to face the reality of what was about to happen to my dad. And then what happened to him.

But then something sort of cracked. This site that I had sort of loved and become identified with and built my whole community around, it started to become a burden because I'd had this public identity of being bubbly and excited and "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah!" All these things... after he had died.

And that was so difficult to maintain because I wasn't about to get up there and be like, "Hey guys, I'm actually in the worst place of my entire life and I'm gonna talk about that on this brand platform." But this isn't a personal platform, this wasn't my personal YouTube where I could get on there and talk about those things, nor did I want to do that on a brand platform. And so I never talked about it.

Literally the day he died, something broke on the Epic Read site and I got a bunch of texts and nobody could figure out how to fix it because the site was like built on stilts. And so I was literally fixing the Epic Reads site while my dad's body hadn't even been carried away and it was upstairs. A month after he died, I was doing the Book Shimmy awards video. And I remember that while filming that video, something broke in me because I was trying so hard.

And if you watch that video, you don't really know that it was like the worst moment of my life. But after I filmed that video, I just sat on the floor and just sobbed because I felt so exhausted and dead inside, but I felt like I owed so much to this community because I loved them. I love everyone in that community so much. And I felt like I had to keep going for them. And I didn't want to let anybody down. I didn't want to let the authors down. I didn't want to let Harper Collins down. I didn't want to let anybody down. My own reputation down as being a really excellent community manager. So I put on a brave face and I kind of limped along for about another two years, or a year-and-a half, really.

Until eventually I just couldn't. I couldn't keep up with the responsibility of the site anymore. I didn't have the energy for it because I wasn't dealing with my grief. The grief was turning into PTSD, which was affecting my sleep. And I didn't know what to do. I didn't know if it was a job change. I didn't know if leaving Epic Reads would help, but I had to do something. I had to make a change because I was kind of losing my mind.

So I left in 2017. I took a job outside of publishing because I thought that that would help. No [laughs], it did not help. All it did was make me realize how much I genuinely, genuinely love the book publishing community, despite all of our toxicity that people like to talk about. Trust me, the book community has less shitty behavior than almost every other community that exists on the internet.

The job that I left Epic Reads for only lasted me about six months. And then I just left New York because I was like, "Nothing's working. I don't know what I'm doing." So I left New York and I didn't have a job for about a month. And then I got an offer back in publishing in comic books this time. And it was in Portland, Oregon. And I was like, "You know what? Screw it." It felt like when I moved to New York for the first time when I was like, "I don't know what I'm doing. I've never been to New York. I've never been to Portland." Like, "Screw it! I'm just gonna go."

So I moved to Portland and I'm still at Oni, three years later. So it's been really nice to be part of publishing, but in a slightly different area of publishing, but I'm still in there. And then once I got to Portland, that's when I really started to, not only heal from my dad's death and really start to process that, but that's also when I really started to throw myself into Fresh.

Sarah Enni:  I mean, first of all, thank you for talking about that.

Margot Wood:  I didn't cry! I'm so proud. I was so close, I was so close.

Sarah Enni:  You did great! You and I share this experience, as we've talked about before. So I, of course, understand exactly what you're talking about; before and after. Orienting yourself. I do want to just touch on something. You sort of waving the flag, even at the very beginning, saying, "This entire brand shouldn't be built on one face because then if anything needs to happen for that person and that actual individual to do something else, for any reason, it will be a huge hindrance to the brand."

There's two thoughts that are combining in my head. So I just want to say that, I think when I've been thinking about this conversation about authors being on social media, how much do we really need to be there? How much good is it actually doing to be there versus the toll it is taking on our mental health and is it actually resulting in sales? Et cetera, et cetera, that whole conversation that's going on right now is very important.

One aspect of it that I think we aren't talking about enough is that things like Epic Reads were so great for that reason, it takes the pressure off of an individual author. Because the publisher, this huge company owned by an international media conglomerate that has the money to very low cost videos and things like that, it just gave a platform for books that otherwise didn't have a voice in the world. And a much bigger reach than an individual author, on their own, especially a debut author.

And then also the same reason that it was a hindrance for you to be the only thing forward-facing for Epic Reads is exactly the same thing being replicated with authors, having to be their own single advocate on social media.

Anyway, authors need time. Authors have things happen in their life. They have to step away from the internet or constantly marketing themselves. And without anything backing them up and having any kind of marketing to fall back on, you're just left with nothing. I don't know. These are the thoughts that came to mind when you were talking about it. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.

Margot Wood:  Yeah. Epic Reads really was supposed to be that vehicle for, it was still super, super early days of social media. And so social media marketing wasn't really a thing. It was still sort of social at that point, not the marketing side. So it made sense for every publisher to have their own version of Epic Reads. And at one point I think they all did, and it made sense. I understand. I get why Epic Reads authors loved it at first, you know? I get it because it was our job to do the heavy lifting for them. They were just supposed to show up for the guest spot or come on to Tea Time, or whatever.

And now that I'm an author, I get why that's so important. Because it is very, very different if an author gets up on a platform and says, "Hey guys, read my book. It's really good." Your reaction to that is probably like, "Well, you wrote it. So of course, you're gonna say that. You're just trying to sell me something, and that feels weird." And also like, "Why are you being so cocky?"

I know that we all are saying like, "Oh, we shouldn't be afraid to self-promote." But that's all in our heads. When we do self-promote, every single time, it's just being like, "Oh God, I'm just talking about myself. I'm being selfish. And I'm being cocky, really cocky." All this stuff. But there's a big difference between authors going up on a platform and saying, "Read my book, it's really awesome." Versus somebody else getting on a platform, a reader getting on a platform, and saying, "Read that book. It's awesome." You're going to believe the reader over the author every single time.

Why? Because it's word of mouth. When an author does it, it's promoting, it's marketing. When a reader does it? It's word of mouth. And word of mouth is the most valuable marketing asset of any kind of book promotion ever and it's the one thing you can't control. But we were trying to control it through Epic Reads. We were trying to replicate that in an authentic way.

So that's why we were talking about books that weren't also Harper Collins books. We wanted to be able to talk about the books that everybody was talking about and bring to light just YA fiction in total, cause that's the 'rising tides lift all boats' mentality. And so as a vehicle for that, it makes absolute sense as to why people sort of globbed onto Epic Reads in the way that they did and why it really did help and serve authors.

And yeah, it does bring back up this whole larger conversation about authors and social media. I have no idea - I should probably figure this out cause I just love the history of YA - but at some point, there was a shift in publishers doing the heavy lifting of social media marketing, to relying on the authors to doing it. And I think there's pros and cons to both. On the one hand, if authors are doing it, they can control when and how and where it happens.

"Oh, your publisher's not promoting your stuff enough on social media?" Great. You can pick up the slack and promote it yourself. Again, you're kind of running up against that same issue of like, "If I say my book is good, versus somebody else says, it's good." You know, that issue is still there. And then on the other side of things, there's just so much reliance now on authors to have their own profiles.

Do you need it? And I've said this in your First Draft podcast, no, you don't. Authors don't need to have their own social media profiles to promote their own stuff. They definitely don't. But do they feel like, and have that pressure, to do it? Uh, yeah. Big time. And every time there's a new platform, there's this big pressure to be like, "Oh crap, Tik Tok is working. Now I need to go be an author on Tik Tok because I've seen those 10 people it's worked for. I need to go and dedicate all of my time to this."

And I talk to some authors still, like I will consult with friends and things like that, on social media. And I tell them all the exact same thing, which is, "Listen to the data. Track how long you are spending on social media. Literally use a tracker on your app, on your phone, or just write it down, but take one week and track a regular week. Take one week and track how much time you're spending on social media to promote your book. Now weigh that against how many units you actually sold. Is the amount of time that you spent on social media worth the amount of units that you have sold?"

Sarah Enni:  Right, do some math, yeah.

Margot Wood:  But guess what? You can't even do the math because authors don't have access to their sales data.

Sarah Enni:  Right. And the sales data that everyone has access to is only 80% accurate, right? BookScan is not...

Margot Wood:  Correct, which is why I've consulted with some authors. I've got an author friend who really went hard on Tik Tok last year. And she grew her account, it's over 80,000 subscribers, it blew up really fast. She got a couple of viral hits. Everybody was talking about her book and she was getting really excited about it. And I was like, "Hey, do you mind if I compare your Tik Tok growth with the growth of the sales of your books through BookScan?" And she was like, "Yeah, let's do it."

So we coordinated when each of her viral hits happened with BookScan data and we could see the rise and the fall based on the Tik Tok stuff. And while we have heard these stories of Tik Tok bringing these older titles, you know, giving them a new life and they're selling hundreds of thousands of copies through Tik Tok, that's almost entirely based on just readers talking about it. It's not the authors doing it.

Granted, there are still lots of authors out there who are seeing a lot of success with their sales through Tik Tok. But with just this one case, so this is just one case study and does not reflect overall - I just want to put that out there - this is not quantitative data. This is qualitative. So what it showed when I was tracking her sales versus her hits on Tik Tok, when she had her biggest viral hit, which was the week after Christmas, she sold about 12 more books. And the amount of time she was spending on Tik ToK to sell 12 more books? I mean, if she was having fun on Tik ToK, if you like being on there? If it's giving you more than just selling books, trying to sell books, then keep doing it.

But if you're a person who feels burdened by the social media and feel like you have to do it, I'm here to tell you that you don't actually have to do it if you don't want to. I have to remind everybody that you're a content creator, but your content is books. Your content is not social media. Do you want to be a social media star? Or do you want to be an author? Because you can be both maybe, but that's like hitting a lottery.

Usually those authors who are extremely, extremely popular on social media, are authors who already sold really well, who were already on the New York Times bestseller list. So if I were you, if social media is not the thing that you are excited about, if it's giving you anxiety, don't worry about it. Your readers will find the book, or maybe they won't. But the point is that you should be spending your time writing.

Sarah Enni:  That is gold advice. I really appreciate it, but let's get into Fresh. So I want to hear about this process of moving to Portland, brand new job, then starting a book. I mean, what was that moment like? What did you start working on? Had you had ideas for a long time? Take me to this time of your life.

Margot Wood:  So actually I first had the idea for Fresh in 2014. So peak Epic Reads time. I had found this letter that I'd written to my younger sister when I was a freshman, after I'd just finished my freshman year. I wrote this letter to my younger sister that was like, "Here's a list of every single mistake that I made last year. Please don't make these mistakes." I found the letter, I re-read it, and I was like, "This is funny."

And there's something to this idea of taking this list of mistakes and turning it into something. And so I started to just write a few scenes based on each one of these mistakes. And I took the couple of samples that I had written, plus the overall concept, to an agent who was a friend of mine at the time, who is since no longer part of the literary agenting community.

And he said, quote unquote, "No publisher would ever publish a book about college girls wanting to have sex." Full Stop. That was his response. And I never should have listened to him. I was such a fool for listening to him, but I was like, "You know, he's probably right." Cause I trusted him at the time because he was the biggest name, biggest agent, at the time. So I shelved it and didn't look at it again until I left Epic Reads, left New York, and was living in Portland.

I had just moved to Portland and I had my job at Oni, and Oni is distributed by Simon and Schuster. So every once in a while I go back to New York to do sales conferences and I present our upcoming titles. Cause now I'm on the sales side, which is fun.

My very first sales conference with Oni, I was flying back and I had just finished the book that I was reading and stupidly forgot to bring a second book. So I just pulled up my phone and was going through random documents that I had on my phone on Google Drive. And I found some of those scenes that I had written three years, four years, prior.

 And I sat and ended up reading all of them on the plane, forgot where I was, I disassociated and just forgot that I even wrote what I was reading. And I read it like a reader, like somebody else had written it and I was laughing to myself and at the end of it, I was like, "I wrote this? I don't remember writing this. This is actually pretty funny and good."

So I sent what I had, I cleaned it up, and I sent what I had to my agent. I had an agent at this point, Jo Volpe, who's amazing. And she was like, "Let's meet up for lunch." So I went back to New York and we met up for lunch and she was like, "Yes." And I was like, "Really? But that one agent years ago said no." And she was like, "Yes, just go with it, go write it, come back to me when you have a whole thing." And I was like, "Okay." So I started to write more.

And then at one point I got totally stuck. I ran out of random scenes. I'm not a plot person. I don't know how to write a novel. Again, never took writing, ever. I'm a marketing major. I got C's in high school English. I'm not a writer. I still have an uncomfortable time calling myself a writer because I'm like, "I wrote one thing. Does that actually make me a writer?"

Sarah Enni:  Yes, but I understand what you're saying.

Margot Wood:  I had just all of these funny scenes and I had absolutely no connective tissue. I had the setting, Emerson College. I had the themes that I knew I wanted to explore: sexuality, screwing up, making mistakes, blah, blah, blah, freshman year. I had my cast of characters, Elliot, her roommate, her friends, her love interest, but I had nothing else. I was like, "What's the actual story? Cause otherwise this is just like a bunch of funny, short stories. There's no story here."

And so that derailed me for like six months; 6, 7, 8, 9, maybe even a year. I don't even remember at this point, but it completely derailed me. And so what I did was I put on my marketing brain and I've had to do this a lot now since I'm an author, step out of my own shoes and be like, "Hey, if I'm talking to this author and they come to me and they're like, 'I don't know what to do. I want to write this original story that's new and different and (ha, ha, ha), fresh.' What would I tell them to do?"

And the first thing that came to my head was, "Why are you trying to reinvent the wheel? You've worked on how many books that are re-tellings? Literally so many books are re-tellings. Why are you trying to reinvent the wheel? Clearly you are not a plot writer. So you're never gonna be able to come up with a plot that's great. So why not build on the foundation of a classic?"

I didn't know what classic to read. So I started to go back and just reread a bunch of re-tellings that I had loved working on over the years, but also just the classics themselves. Like, "Which ones do I like?" And so I stopped writing completely. I set it aside. I was like, "Screw it. I'm just gonna read. I'm just gonna read and get some inspiration to see what other people are doing." That kind of a thing.

I read so many re-tellings. And then I read, or re-read I guess for the umpteenth time, Emma, by Jane Austin. And at that point, the new Emma movie with like Anya Taylor-Joy had just come out. So I watched that, I went back and watched the old BBC version. And then I watched Clueless. I watched and read all of the Emma stuff. Within 20 pages of rereading Emma, it was like, "Holy shit!"

I was in my kitchen. I had a yellow legal pad, which I still have, and it just clicked, everything. I knew exactly what I wanted to do because already everything about what I had already written, the characters, the setting, the themes, the style, the tone, all of that stuff, it already felt like Emma. It was like I was doing it without even being aware of it. So within 20 pages of rereading, I put the book down and I started scribbling, furiously scribbling down the plot for this book. I took a photo of myself in that moment because it was like one of those crystallizing moments where you're just like, "Holy shit! As a writer, I know what I'm doing. I know where to go. The path is clear. It has been paved for me."

And within three months, the first draft was done. Three months after that it was sold. Like it was so fast after that. And almost everything that I had originally written is still in the book. I had to work it in somehow, but it all made it in there, which is so fun!

Sarah Enni:  That's incredible. And I'm so glad you took a picture of yourself in that moment cause those moments are so rare. But I think those are the moments where you feel most like a writer. You just are like, "Oh, my brain has been doing this. And it just took a while for it to be conscious. But now that it's here, we're flying." Like, "We're ready to go."

But let's talk about the fact that it is raunch-com. So it really is about Elliot, this young woman going to college and discovering so much about her identity, but it is a lot through the lens of her sexual explorations in college. And I want to ask first about, knowing that Elliot is bisexual and it's a huge part of the book because it is expressed through her connections and her relationships with people. But it is not a huge part of the book in any kind of coming out way. Any kind of shaming way.

She has a wonderful community of people who all understand where she's coming from and respect it. So I just want to hear about deciding to write a bisexual character and presenting her sexuality in this way.

Margot Wood:  So what I really wanted to write, I mean, before the Emma stuff, before anything, I knew I really wanted to write a story about seconds. So a lot of YA books are set in high school and they're about coming-of-age, so you are doing things for the first time. And I really wanted to explore the idea of what happens if you've already come out? What happens if you've already had sex and you've already kind of figured out who you are and what your identity is, what your personality is like? Your whole vibe, I guess you could say. What then? What comes after that?

And then also what comes after that when you are put into an unfamiliar setting? Because what's unique about your freshman year of college, is that you've just come off of your scenery. When you are confident, you just got out of that hell hole, things are good.

And then suddenly you're in a new place and you have to start all over again. But at least this time, you have some things done. Maybe, maybe not. Not every character in the book has done all the things that Elliot has done by the time she gets to her freshman year. But I really wanted to explore that concept, especially from the lens of sexuality and having sex.

So Elliott, by this point in the story, she has come out. I never even talk about her coming out. She never even says the word coming out. It's never mentioned at all. She just is out. She never even says out. In fact, she never even calls herself bisexual. She says, "If you must label me, my sexuality is horny."

And I really wanted to explore just the relationship between intimacy and sex. And I think it's also important to read about girls, and women, trying to find what good sex is, because I don't think that's really talked about in YA enough. It's a lot of like, "Oh, losing your virginity." And then like being with your one true love, or whatever.

And I'm like, "Well, what if you lost your virginity to like some douche, you know? And it didn't mean anything. Can you still have that sweet moment?" I guess with Elliot, there was never a conscious choice to be like, "I'm choosing to make her bisexual. She just is." Because I am. And that's always been a part of my life and it just feels very natural to me.

When I was in college, being at Emerson, it was super liberating because so many people were gay, or queer, or were coming out, or questioning. It was a very safe space. So for me, that's all I really know. And also, I wanted this book to be happy and fizzy and bubbly and like champagne and just upbeat and super energetic. And I wanted to explore queer joy without having it be about being queer.

The book isn't about her being queer. The book is about her trying to figure out what she likes in the bedroom. That has nothing really to do with her queer identity. Like it could be with anybody, or whoever, or however many people. She doesn't know. She's trying to figure it out. But she knows that she likes all genders. So at least she knows that much. So now she's trying to figure out the rest of it.

Sarah Enni:  It struck me that you really embarked on this quest to talk about things that are not gonna feel accurate to every reader. That's really what I want to ask you about. Is just knowing that you're putting stuff out there that's very personal, talking about sex in bad ways and good ways. Knowing that not everyone who picks this book up is going to relate to all those things or understand all those things. How do you feel about that?

Margot Wood:  That was a conscious choice. I knew going into Fresh that some of the plot choices, but also the themes, were going to be alienating and make my book less universal, less commercial, more niche. I first came across issues with that when I went on submission. And some of the big five were really interested in taking it, but they wanted to change a lot. One publisher wanted to make Elliot straight. One publisher wanted to set it in high school. One publisher wanted it to focus on the parents! Ugh, that was weird.

Sarah Enni:  [Laughs]

Margot Wood:  If my experience in publishing has influenced my writing at all, and it has only influenced in the sense that I knew going in, that I was going to be creating an uphill battle for myself, at some point along the way, by making these certain choices. And that didn't scare me because I felt like if publishing is gonna open the doors to anybody, maybe they'll open it for me because of the Epic Reads thing.

Maybe the Epic Reads thing could help me open the door and if Fresh can get through, then maybe I can keep it open for others to follow. I knew that if I was going to talk about things like sexual identity, like sexuality not even sexual identity, and the sexual assault scene, I knew that the only way to help readers who maybe don't identify with Elliot, or her story, or her journey, to help readers get through those scenes that might maybe make them uncomfortable, is comedy.

And the sexual assault scene is probably the only scene in the whole book that does not have any comedy in it, and it kind of stands out on its own, it's very different. Because the scene is really different and the buildup and what happens in the scene, it's serious. It's very, very serious and it's scary. But I didn't want the sexual assault, or any of the other more summer things, to weigh down the book. I was so worried about putting these things into my book and having them just overtake the comedy, and the lightness, and the fizziness, and the point of the story.

So for readers, this is not really a spoiler because if you've read Emma or seen Clueless, you know that there's a scene where a guy comes on to Emma, or Cher, and she doesn't want that to happen. And yes also, this experience is based on something that did happen to me, but it is also true to the Emma story as well. But this is more of the modern version of that because this happens so often in college spaces. I mean, it happened to me. It happened to so many of my friends.

So in order for me to bring the lightness back into the novel, I had to make Elliot choose not to report the assault. And that is a big choice. And there's a whole footnote. There's a reason why I put it as a footnote too, to also sort of lessen the impact that she's choosing to not let this experience impact her. Even though it's going to, she knows it, but by making it a footnote in her life, she can move on from it.

Because if she reports a sexual assault, or an attempted sexual assault on a college campus, that has to be a Title Nine report. And with that comes so much shit. Her entire life would be turned upside down. It would define her. She would spend the rest of her college experience being 'the girl' that got sexually assaulted at a party and then raised hell about it.

And while I do think, for every single person that this happens to, they absolutely should decide whether or not reporting is the right choice for them. And if it is the right choice, good! Do it. I think you should. But if it's not the right choice, I don't think you should be shamed for that either. And I really didn't want it to become this thing in the book. I didn't want to take a stance on all of this. I wanted it to feel honest and feel like how any one of us who've experienced this thing, our own thought process that goes through it, whether or not we chose to report it or not. We sat there and we were like, "What do I do now?"

So for Elliot, that was the choice that made the most sense for her, for who she was and what happened. And also to not derail the story. My editor really helped me slowly, but in a moderate pace, but slowly get Elliot back to her old self. With now, a whole new perspective on things.

Because obviously, experiences like that are going to change you, whether or not you want it to, it's going to change you. So content warnings, I'm very grateful for them, but it's also one of those things where I'm so worried that people are gonna see like, "Sexual assault" with my book and be like, "Oh no, this is like a serious book." And, and I'm like, "No!, It's literally just one scene!"

Sarah Enni:  I really appreciate what you're saying, because I think it's important as well to say, as an author, you are writing this book and you know what you want to talk about. You know what the story is about. And as a reader, I was like, "This book is about someone." About, as you said, intimacy versus sexuality and understanding for every person where that balance is, or how they feel comfortable with becoming vulnerable enough to be intimate with someone.

And for those of us who have gone through sexual assault, as you say, it doesn't define... it's part of our story, but it is not the entire story. And there needs to be space for books to be that as well. And to have the breadth of human experience. Elliot has that experience. She shares that experience with, unfortunately, so many other freshmen in college and then how she incorporates it in her life. Deals with it, processes it, shares it with people, doesn't. Is part of how she moves forward.

And that's something that I think needs to be seen in a book and discussed in a book. And then move on to exploring all these other thoughts and ideas that you're interested in exploring in Elliot's story. So I think it's really important. Not every book needs to turn into an issue book, I think that's what you're saying.

By incorporating something that is traumatic, it's so easy as an author to be like, "Okay, actually now that's gonna spin out and it's gonna consume this whole book. And now it's 400 pages about this." And we need those books, but we also need books where it becomes a contained experience that someone incorporates into their life and move on. Because we, as authors, need to be able to write about what need to write about.

Margot Wood:  Yeah. One book can't be all things.

Sarah Enni:  Right.

Margot Wood:  You know? There is a need for books that address sexual assault in a more serious way, in a more focused way. And those exist. This is not one of those books.

Sarah Enni:  Yes, well I appreciate you speaking to that. I thought it was really well done. It was really interesting. And as you say, canonical to the story of Emma is this moment. So we can say that it is rampant now, and also always has been part of this.

Margot Wood:  Also, I gotta say, writing that scene was so cathartic. For those that have not read it you can earmuff this part, but if you have read it, I mean, she owns him in that moment. I mean, he goes for it, but she owns him. Utterly crushes him. And that was so much fun to write because obviously, I mean, I wasn't able to do that in my moment when it happened and I wish that I could. So for me it was a lot of like wish fulfillment, but it just felt so good to write that. Because yeah, something bad happens to her, but she, in that moment, she controls and owns that moment. And that felt empowering to me and also to the character.

Sarah Enni:  Good! I do want to talk about the other thing that you're talking about, tone and maintaining tone, and keeping it where you want it. Let's talk about the fourth wall and how far behind you left it. I mean, the book starts with two chapter ones because Elliot...

Margot Wood:  There was no page two. Did you notice? There's no page two. It just goes from one to three.

Sarah Enni:  Yes! So I would love for you to talk about, not only the fourth wall that our narrator Elliott, in first person, is addressing us as the reader directly. But also the introduction of, as you say, footnotes. There's lists. There's choose your own adventure elements. Which end, with the reader in dire straits.

[Both laughing]

Margot Wood:  Elliot always dies. I think she dies always in those choose your own adventures.

Margot Wood:  So, remember when I was said earlier about how I was thinking about how, if I was ever gonna publish my own book, that I wanted it to be different. I wanted it to be just... just try new things, just try something a little different.

So what was in the back of my head from the very beginning, because I was writing this book from first person, such close first person. She is addressing the reader from the very beginning, it was like that. I was like, "Elliot has to be aware that this is a book." Like, there's just no way. If she's having this relationship with this reader, she's addressing the reader? Then she's aware that this is a book.

And in order to really fully immerse the reader into Elliot's head, and in this world, I had to play around with structure and format and anything that I could play around with. Because in television and TV, they have a lot more at their disposal.

They've got camera breaks, and editing, and music, all of these special effects. They've got a lot of tools at their arsenal to really put you into this world in a way that books don't really have. So I literally just thought of every possible way that I could use this book, physically, to manifest Elliot's head.

So she's ADHD, like I am, but she's probably even more ADHD than I am. She doesn't really take her meds. And so the footnotes are a visual representation of what it's like to be in an ADHD person's head. You are in the middle of a thought. And then all of a sudden you have another thought and you have to jump down and read that in the footnotes. And then you have to find your way back up to where you were before. That's exactly how it feels to be a person with ADHD.

You're thinking about so many things all at once, and it's really hard to sometimes work your way back to the point that you were originally talking about. So for me, the footnotes do serve several purposes. One: they are an extremely great comedy vehicle. You can just throw in joke after joke, after joke, every footnote. I had to take a lot of jokes out because they were just getting way too many.

And then the other is because it really puts you into Elliot's head. This is how she thinks. This is how her brain works. And so I know for a lot of readers, the footnotes are extremely jarring. It is uncomfortable for them. They don't like it. It is too disruptive. It's a personal choice, they just don't like it.

And that's totally fine. I get that. But for other readers, especially ones who are ADHD, some have reached out to me and they're like, "This is the first time I've seen myself on the page, like truly accurately represented in a positive way." And I'm like, "Yay! That's so great that people are seeing that." And they don't even notice the disruption that the footnotes are. They see it as like adding all the comedy and all that stuff.

Sarah Enni:  So, I want to start to wrap up by asking about your experience being on the author side of things, and then we'll wrap up finally with advice. But was there anything else about Fresh itself that you wanted to make sure we got to? Or we talked about?

Margot Wood:  Honestly, I hope readers walk away having fun with this book. I grew up not a great reader. I just wanted to find books that were fun and easy to get into that I could lose myself in. I could finish in one sitting. Something that just completely distracts me from whatever else is going on in my life. And this book is that, that's what I want it to be.

Like we were saying earlier, it's not a super serious book. It is fun and silly. I keep calling it the White Claw of publishing. It is fun. And I want people to have fun reading it because I had a lot of fun writing it.

Sarah Enni:  Amazing. The White Claw of publishing is absolutely gonna be the episode title of this podcast. So good. Well done! [Laughs]

You've been so generous in sharing your perspective as someone that came up in the marketing side of publishing, specifically in YA publishing. I think all that information is gonna be incredibly interesting to listeners. But I do want to hear about, given that you were someone who worked for many years on the production side of publishing, now you're coming in as a new author. What has been surprising to you about this side of things?

Margot Wood:  Oh my god, everything! Oh, I have a new-found respect. I now understand what authors don't know, better. There is a gap in knowledge between what publishers know, and what authors know. Is that on the responsibility of the publishers to educate the others? I don't know. There's probably a much larger discussion to be had about that.

Do I think that all of this information is available, especially like in podcasts like First Draft and your Track Changes and all that stuff? Yeah. All of this information is out there. This is not secret information. It is available. You just have to go looking for it.

So it isn't as accessible as say your publisher just being like, "Here's everything you need to know." But on the other hand, publishers can't also really just say, "Here's everything that happens." Because each one of those things also comes with a giant list of context and why this matters and how that one bullet affects all these other different things.

So publisher marketing teams are extremely understaffed and they don't necessarily have the time to do that level of education for their debut authors because they have 9 million other books that they have to work on as well.

Do I think that maybe, potentially in the future, publishers should consider having an author education-like arm of their company, whose job is solely to provide these resources and materials to authors? 1000%. But currently those things don't really exist. Although I have heard rumblings of those things opening up.

So being on this side is very wild. And I also wonder if maybe a lot of it has to do with the fact that it's still pandemic and I'm doing all of this alone, I haven't been able to meet up with any author friends. I haven't been able to meet with buyers or booksellers. I haven't been able to meet up with readers. I'm not doing any in-person events, I'm doing all virtual stuff.

So it's hard to tell whether or not my experience feels more isolating because of the pandemic or if this is actually just how every debut author feels? But there is a lot of like, either everything's happening or you have these periods of like nothing's happening. And that seems to be par for the course.

Whether you're editing the book, like you hear nothing, and then all of a sudden you have a million due dates. And then with the marketing, it's like, hear nothing and then all of a sudden you have 8,000 interviews and all these other things. So it is very overwhelming, especially cause I still have my day job. And it's very hard for me to balance so many random to-do's that aren't part of my day-to-day cause I'm very much a routine person, I have to be, cause I'm ADHD.

But having the knowledge that I have did make it easier for me to ask for certain things that I know I should ask for. Or say no to things that I know wouldn't necessarily move the needle. And I do think that authors should, if they even get a marketing plan from their publishers, they really should spend time going through it and deciding what actually they think will move the needle, but also trusting your publisher. Because a lot of times the things that move the needle are not things that are sexy, or anything that the author can do. Like sales conference.

Sarah Enni:  Right.

Margot Wood:  Authors can't be part of sales conference. Even though I asked, I was like, "Do you guys want a video?" And they were like, "No. We're good." And I was like, "Okay." Abrahms marketing team has been absolutely phenomenal to work with. They've been a dream, like seriously, I could not have asked for a better team to work with. They've been so wonderful.

But there are times where I was like, "Hey, can we do this?" And they'll be like, "No, we're good." But, I knew to ask for it. And I knew when sales conference was happening and I knew to be able to follow up and be like, "How'd it go?" And talk to them more as like a peer instead of that author publisher weird dynamic.

So I do think that my experience is always going to be different than everybody else's because I work in the industry, because I have that relationship and that knowledge. So yeah, with authors, with their marketing, there's things that I do very differently now, publicity is one of them. I no longer view publicity as a means for awareness-building, but more so as a means of validating your book.

Because when somebody hears about your book, what they're gonna do is they're going to Google it. And what you want is there for to be an interview with you, from a legitimate news source, that appears on the Google news section, because that then validates your book. Your book is legit now. Your book is like, "Oh! Oh, there's a Publisher's Weekly interview." Or actually for me, it was the Emerson College newspaper, which is syndicated. So it shows up as the Berkeley Beacon in Google news.

But when you Google my name, now that's like one of the top search results, but it's a really good in-depth interview. So having that one interview makes it feel, to a lot of readers, much more legit. So I don't know that you need a shit-ton of press, honestly. I really don't think you do. I think you just need one good interview.

And then if you can get on a bunch of those lists, that's great. But like, I don't know that my book is going to sell a lot of copies off of being in a list of 90 books on Buzzfeed. Like it's great. I'm so honored and thrilled that they were able to include Fresh because I get to now add that on my website under press hits. It's really awesome. But I don't know that that is as validating as having an interview in just my college newspaper, shockingly.

So yeah, I just view these things a little bit differently. I also obviously view social media. I have a very complicated relationship with social media and how much is being asked of me and what is being asked of me. And I still have the default to want to say yes. And I think a lot of authors do that. And so I really want authors to really, really assess, much more honestly, whether or not they want to do these things.

Because guess what? You actually don't have to. I also think authors need to decide... and again, be honest. If you're a person that's a people pleaser, like a textbook people-pleaser and you just want to say yes to everything? You need to step back and find somebody who knows you really well and be like, "Do I want to do these things? Do I want to be a person that's heavily involved with the marketing of my book? Or do I not want to be that involved?"

And you know what? There is no wrong answer to this. Because sometimes it is easier to market a book if the authors not involved, because then we can just do what needs to be done, the unsexy stuff. We don't have to waste our time with a lot of public facing stuff, or social media, or things like that. We can just focus on pushing it to sellers, book buyers, advertising. There's other marketing options that you can do.

But if you're a person that wants to be heavily involved in the marketing? Then you need to decide what aspects? And how can you be helpful to the marketing team? Because that's how I've been viewing it this whole time. And that's why I think my relationship with them has been really, really great. Is because, I'm thinking, "I know that they're understaffed. So what can I do to fill in the gaps for them? How can I make their jobs easier?"

Okay. Maybe they don't have access to filming equipment, they're all working from home. Or maybe they just don't have the 10 years of experience I have with filming video. I'm like, "Great. I'll make those videos." Like, "Can you guys send out Arcs?" There is a shared responsibility here. It's still overwhelming. And I think authors just need to be honest with their publishers and treat them like they're your partner. They are your teammate. They are working towards the same goal that you are. They are not your enemy.

Sarah Enni:  They are not secretly plotting against you.

Margot Wood:  Yeah, secretly plotting against you. If you're feeling overwhelmed, tell them! They will scale it back. Or they will find ways to keep doing what they're doing without putting the burden on you. Talk to your marketing team. Now, if you're one of those authors who doesn't even have access to your marketing team? Then you got to talk to your agent. We could make an entire episode just about that.

But from the perspective of somebody who has access to the marketing team, has seen their plan, that's all the advice I can offer you is to decide what role do you want to play? What team member are you going to be? Are you going to be offense? Or are you going to be defensive? Are you going to be on the sideline? All these sports metaphors.

But you do. Everybody has their role to play, if you want to be part of the marketing. Again, I say this, if you do not want to be part of the marketing, like if that overwhelms you, you're probably going to get in their way if you try to be involved with it.

So if marketing makes you overwhelmed, then don't be involved and decide the one thing that you want to actually see from your publisher that would make you happy. Is it social media? Or is it one interview? Or is it one video? What will actually make you happy? Because they're there to make you happy. And authors can help those marketing teams by being able to identify that thing.

Sarah Enni:  Well, as you know, I usually wrap up with advice, but honestly you just basically gave us all the...

Margot Wood:  I have another piece of advice that I didn't know to expect. When you publish your book, you're going to get some interview requests, whether it's for podcasts or written interviews or Instagram lives. And they're gonna ask you pretty much the same five questions. So I think I knew this, but it never really occurred to me, that you might want to have multiple answers for the same question. Because otherwise you were saying the exact same thing to every single place and that gets so redundant.

So I started doing that at the beginning of all of this, I kept doing my whole spiel. And then I was like, "Oh, I'm so sick of saying this origin story." So I was like, "You know what? Next interview, I'm gonna talk about something else that I haven't talked about, that I've wanted to talk about with this book, but in the framework. So I'm still answering their question."

So be prepared to answer those five questions. It's like, "Where'd you get the inspiration? What was your favorite part? Which characters do you love and why? And what are you working on next?"

Make sure you've practiced that because you're gonna get that question, a lot.

Sarah Enni:  Well, yeah, I would say practice that. And also, I think you're right to say mix it up for yourself, especially if there's a part of the book that you think is important that isn't being discussed. It's important to sort of just figure out how you can pivot on your own.

You are the only person hearing yourself say this that many times. That's something that I think about because I worry about people wanting to answer the question differently, every time. You're missing, actually, the importance of repetition in promo as well. There's a balance to be struck there, I think.

Because if you are a guest on First Draft, say, a lot of people might hear your episode of First Draft, but they're not necessarily gonna read all these other blog posts you're doing. Or hear your spot on NPR, or whatever it is. So it's gonna be brand new to my audience. So don't skip key things. Don't forget to cover the basics with every one, and know that you're not boring everybody to tears. You're only boring yourself to tears and that's okay.

It's true though. It really is true. I had that revelation the other day where it's like, if you have a giant pool of clear water and you drop one little drop of blue dye in it, you didn't suddenly change the color of the water blue. You know what I mean? Like that's probably a terrible metaphor, but not everybody's keeping up with every single thing that I'm saying.

I also try to think of promo, or my answers and stuff, in terms of SEO. So like, if I know that I'm gonna talk about ADHD in this way, then I try to throw in as many words related to ADHD as possible. So that if anybody's ever Googling books with ADHD characters, they're gonna find that interview.

I try to think about each outlet, what their whole thing is, the tone of my answers, and all that stuff. So I'm giving them something different that I'm not giving every single other outlet. I know not everybody thinks that way cause that's like a super marketing thing, but it does sort of help. But you're right, don't worry about feeling like you're repeating yourself because, trust me, there's nobody in your life, other than you, that is that clued into what you're doing.

Sarah Enni:  Exactly. Oh my gosh, this has been such a fun conversation. Thank you for giving me so much time today.

Margot Wood:  Thank you so much for having me.

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Thank you so much to Margot. Follow her on Twitter @MargotWood and Instagram @MargotMWood. Follow me on both (Twitter and Instagram) @SarahEnni and the show @FirstDraftPod (Twitter and Instagram).

As I mentioned at the top of the show, leaving a rating and review on Apple podcasts goes such a long way toward getting First Draft in front of new listeners. It makes a huge difference. Ratings are amazing, but I love reviews because I get to read them in the credits, like right now. I'm gonna read a recent review that was left by Liliana.E.

Liliana.E says, "Recommended to all aspiring authors. FirstDraftPod is the writing support I never knew I needed. Sarah's insightful and well-researched questions bring out the best answers from her guests and show the full range of a published authors journey from emotions, craft, and the business side of things. It's my go to pick-me-up when I'm feeling adrift, drafting my first novel. And I know my writer's community is only an episode away. This podcast has gotten me farther on my writing journey than ever before. Thank you."

Liliana, thank you! I'm so moved to hear feedback like this. I'm so grateful to know that the podcast made you feel closer to a community. That was absolutely the goal. And I'm thrilled that you're writing, writing. Write, write, write. Write Liliana, get to the end, finish a manuscript. It's the only way. And it sounds like you are really doing that. I'm so thankful to you for taking the time to leave that review. Thank you so much.

First Draft is produced by me, Sarah Enni. Today's episode was produced and sound designed by Callie Wright. The theme music is by Dan Bailey and the logo was designed by Collin Keith. Thanks to social media director, Jennifer NKosi and transcriptionist-at-large Julie Anderson.

And as ever, thanks to you, Paul Rudd as Knightley, for listening

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Sarah Enni:  Also, are you telling me that, once again, a lack of internet while you're on a plane is... [laughs]

Marot Wood:  Yes! It was! Oh my god, it really was. I didn't have internet. I should just go live in the woods somewhere. Oh yeah. Holy crap. I'm having like an existential moment right now. Internet is both professionally great, but also a hindrance. Love, hate it.

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