ALLi Campaigns Manager Matty Dalrymple speaks with Kathy Meis, founder and CEO of Bublish, about editing with your audience in mind. Kathy explains why authors should view their books as gifts to readers, designed to evoke specific emotions and experiences. She advises stepping back from the manuscript, studying the market, and understanding comparable titles to better position a book. Kathy also highlights the value of knowing your genre, reading reviews, and seeking editorial feedback to align with reader expectations.
Listen to the Podcast: Editing with Your Audience in Mind
On the Self-Publishing with ALLi Podcast, @MattyDalrymple speaks with Kathy Meis, founder of Bublish, about editing with your audience in mind, focusing on market research and genre expectations. Share on XSponsors
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About the Host
Matty Dalrymple podcasts, writes, speaks, and consults on the writing craft and the publishing voyage as The Indy Author. She has written books on the business of short fiction and podcasting for authors, and her articles have appeared in Writer’s Digest magazine. She serves as the campaigns manager for the Alliance of Independent Authors. Matty is also the author of the Lizzy Ballard Thrillers, beginning with Rock Paper Scissors; the Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels, beginning with The Sense of Death; and the Ann Kinnear Suspense Shorts, including Close These Eyes. She is a member of International Thriller Writers and Sisters in Crime.
About the Guest
Kathy Meis is the founder and CEO of Bublish, a complete publishing and marketing solution for self-publishers. As a veteran developmental editor and ghostwriter, Kathy has guided many books to Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon bestseller status. With more than thirty years of experience in media and publishing, she is a sought-after expert on independent publishing, book marketing, and author branding. She has spoken at BookExpo America, Women in Media, GrubStreet, PubSmart, the San Francisco Writers Conference, ALLi’s SelfPubCon, and the Women in Publishing Summit. You can find Bublish on the web, LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and Facebook.
Read the Transcripts
Matty Dalrymple: Hello, everyone. I am Matty Dalrymple. I am the Campaigns Manager for the Alliance of Independent Authors, and I am here today with Kathy Meis.
Hey, Kathy, how are you doing?
Kathy Meis: I'm great. How are you?
Matty Dalrymple: I'm doing great. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you, Kathy Meis is the founder and CEO of Bublish, a complete publishing and marketing solution for self-publishers.
As a veteran developmental editor and ghost writer, Kathy has shepherded many books to Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon bestseller status, and is a sought-after expert on independent publishing, book marketing, and author branding for many events, including ALLi's SelfPubCon.
I asked Kathy to join me on the editing and design stream of the podcast to talk about editing with your audience in mind.
So, I always give the little caveat at the beginning of any of my conversations about editing, that ALLi is not really focused on craft, we're focused on business. So, we really focus these editing-centric conversations on, how can you apply editing in order to succeed on the business side in your author career?
So, I wanted to start out this conversation, first of all, just talking about, Kathy, when you say editing with your audience in mind, what does it look like to consider your audience during the editing process?
Kathy Meis: The way I think about books are as experiences. They take readers on a journey that the author has created.
So, when you're in the writing mode, you can be in your little bubble with your characters or your content, your stories, and then when you go into the editing phase, that's the time you need to start to think about your reader, and about how this journey that you've created is going to impact them.
To me, you start to think of the book as a gift you're going to give to a real person, and what is that person like? And how are your characters, their relationships, the experiences that you put them through in your plot, or if it's nonfiction, the memoir, the content, how's it going to land on the reader?
I think when you work with an editor, you get that kind of feedback, it's not landing right, or it's landing great.
So, it becomes more reader-focused, to me, if you're doing it right.
The other thing I think people forget is that in books we look for emotions, for feelings. We're on a journey to feel something. So, what types of feelings is the story evoking in your reader?
And kind of stepping back from your manuscript, which is about you just being in there and looking at it from afar with this sense of the journey, and the experience, and the feelings that are conjured up by a reader as they go through your story, that's where working with a great editor, I always say, the best stories come out of the friction of working through that experience, and refining it, and making sure it is how you see it, might not be exactly how the reader experiences it.
So, now when you're working with an editor, you're getting that feedback from someone who really knows the genre and knows what the readers are looking for.
I think also the last thing is, where do you take people in this reading experience and where do you lead them? So, that sense of when a book is finished, do you think about that? What's the moment?
There are a thousand different emotions someone could feel when they're finishing a book, and sometimes they don't feel that it's complete. So, these things, these emotions that your reader experiences on this journey that you've created for them, have an impact on how they feel about the book and what they say about the book and how they review the book.
So, I just think when you go into the editing phase, that's the time to really make sure you haven't forgotten that this book is for someone and it has the potential to lighten their day, or deepen their understanding, or compel them to think differently, or fall in love with your characters, or a million different things.
That, to me, is really where editing plays an important role because you're working with someone else.
Matty Dalrymple: I wanted to stay for a moment on this idea of what the author themselves can do before they engage an editing professional.
I think one of the most difficult things for an indie author, because they're responsible either for doing or for managing someone else who's doing all the aspects of the publishing process.
So, ALLi has the seven processes of publishing; editing, design, production, distribution, marketing and promotion, and selective rights licensing, and the indie author is responsible for making sure all those things are covered.
In a lot of cases, that means putting on a different hat. A lot of authors, I think, are uncomfortable with the marketing and promotion part, and they have to take off their creative writer hat and they put on their marketing and promotion hat.
I think editing is similar, that it really requires you to step back and look at what you've done from the point of view, not of the author, but of the reader, and I'm wondering if you have any tips for how writers can do that.
How can a writer get some distance from the words that they themselves have put on the page?
Kathy Meis: One thing is to walk away from it for a little while, literally time between. I think sometimes people rush a lot, and so when you have something that you feel is complete, just breathe for a few minutes before you go back to it. That alone gives you some distance, but I also think studying the marketplace.
So, we've been in this creative writing mode, we are very interested in the concept of positioning, which is to some degree, what we're talking about when we're talking about writing and editing with the audience in mind.
So, you step out of creative and then you go into a place with the business had on, and you don't feel conflicted because you're not in your manuscript, and you go study comparable titles.
I am surprised by how many people are not deeply read in the genres that they write in, and I always advise people to know who else is going to be on the shelf. Take a look at their books. If you have not read deeply in your genre, or on the themes or on the topics about which you're going to write, if you're writing nonfiction.
But I think studying the marketplace, just reading deeply gives you a lot of perspective on the millions of ways things can be tackled, but also what else is sitting on the shelf that your book is going to sit on. You can learn so much by reading the reviews of a popular author in your genre and see what professional or nonprofessional readers say about a work.
It's fascinating. I do it as an editor sometimes just to I study different authors and different genres when I'm working on manuscripts, and I find it fascinating what you can find in the reviews.
And the interesting thing there again is, at some point on a product page, you're making a promise to a particular reader, and they're going to come into the book with that promise, and if it's not delivered, then you might have a disappointed reader.
Whereas, if that's aligned and you've looked at the marketplace and you've said where your book fits but also how it's different, and you prepared the reader for that experience, then they might be delighted, but they're not going to be shocked and disappointed.
I think that's what you're trying to avoid if you can.
Matty Dalrymple: I think that identifying comp authors is another one of those things that's very difficult for the creator to do themselves. This is actually one thing that I've found AI very helpful for.
So, I'm terrible at picking my own comps and going in periodically to something like ChatGPT and say, tell me what the comp authors or the comp books would be for Matty Dalrymple's, whatever the series name is, that is a way of getting a little distance from it.
But one thing I've been thinking lately is there's sort of two ways of approaching comps. One is, on what virtual or actual bookstore shelf is your book going to be shelved? The other one is, if a reader likes this book, they're going to like that book, which I think can be quite different.
So, I think that sometimes there are aspects of a book, like the emphasis on certain kinds of relationships or somebody loves a coming-of-age thing, and they don't care whether it's a fantasy coming of age or a literary fiction coming of age, they just like that sort of trope.
So, can you provide some perspective on those different kinds of comps, and again, how can an author do this for their own work when it's so difficult to extract yourself from being its creator?
Kathy Meis: Yeah, and this is why I don't think it's a bad idea to segment it, and not be in writing mode when you're doing some of this more business side comp work.
We built some AI for the same reason, because the other thing is when you ask authors what the comp titles are for their books, from our perspective in the industry and positioning books all the time, we're often surprised, even when you explain what a comp title is, how far off it is from our understanding of the manuscript.
So, it is a little art and a little science, and it does take time, but I always say, it's not just about category, exactly to your point. It's something that your audience has probably read, they're about to read it or it's on their, I'm going to read it list.
For fiction, it is about that journey again, getting back to this experience. It doesn't necessarily have to be in the same category or, like you say, the exact same trope, but you might be invoking the same emotions, the same reactions. There are similarities in the journey that take the reader to a final feeling that they're looking for, and not every book is for every reader.
So, you really have to understand that side of it. What is the journey that you're taking this reader on and what kind of journey are they expecting?
And as long as those are aligned, and you can get as creative as you want, but at a gut level, it's really about emotions, and feelings, and the sense of the kind of experience.
Like, you're never going to take me on a rollercoaster ride. I am not going on a rollercoaster. So, if you tell me, it's a rollercoaster ride, no, thank you. And that's fine, you don't want me to read your book because I hate rollercoasters, and that is not a reflection of your book.
You want to draw the right kind of reader, who's going to be delighted to buy your work and that experience. But in order to do that, you do have to think about that, and those comparable titles are interesting, because if you really do understand the nuance of a book and the themes it's exploring.
Even, like, I read books for sentence structure. I am just one of those people. So, I'm seeing reviews where I just couldn't get over the writing in this book. I'm like, okay, as long as it's not a roller coaster, I'd read that book.
Matty Dalrymple: Can you describe in a little more detail about, once someone has identified these comps, whether it's genre comps or experiential comps, I'll say, how should they apply that to the process of editing to ensure that they're setting themselves up for success for that process?
Kathy Meis: One thing that's interesting is, does the editor know these comps too? That's always a great little tool to use when you're vetting editors. Even in hiring an editor, if you go in and you understand comps and you understand how to articulate the journey and the emotions that you're going to evoke with this story you've created, you're going to have a much richer conversation with the editor, and you're going to understand what you're hearing back and if it makes sense to you, and if this editor is the right editor for your book.
So, I think it empowers you a lot as you go out and put together your team as an indie author.
But the comps play a role. First of all, I would read at least some of the comps, if you haven't already read them. I would study their positioning, their promise that they make to the readership, not just around category, but around title. Is it part of a series? How long is it? You can learn a lot about, again, what's the shape of that experience?
It's sometimes the length of the reading experience and there are genres and there are certainly books where people want a character, and they want a lot of that character. So, they want to know right from the get-go that there will be more of this character going through similar experiences in some genres. That's key.
Nobody's picking up a great book that's not part of a series in certain genres. They just don't do it.
So, understanding where the creative meets the marketplace, and the marketplace is full of readers looking for experiences. So, you're understanding all of that, and then being very clear on your promise to that readership. As long as there's alignment, you'll get readers in and then you have to deliver on that promise, and that is the essence of your author brand.
Brands are built for audiences. So, the more you understand about that audience and the clearer you are about the experience you're going to deliver in your book, and that gets down, like I said, to the emotions, where you take them, how you take them there, the faster you'll be able to define your brand. Then that's where people start to say, oh, I love the experience this author provides. I want more.
It might not even be in the same series, or it could be a standalone. We've seen that happen. I want it all, because now I get it. I like this author's work.
Matty Dalrymple: Yeah, I think that tapping into one's followers, even if it's a very small group, I'll say, regardless of the size of the group of followers, even if it's your college roommate or whatever, tap into them and periodically ask them, if you like this book, what other book would you recommend?
Like, what would you go to next if you wanted more of the same? Or if someone asked you for a recommendation, they said, oh, I just read, you, the author, I just read Matty's latest book and I loved it, what should I read next that's similar to that? That can be very informative.
The other thing I found in terms of kind of understanding who your tribe is. I've had very good luck on Facebook groups doing author takeover kind of things, and somebody who had hosted me for one of those author takeovers had recommended me to another group, and I said, sure, that would be great. So, I signed on as a user, figuring it's always a good idea to have an experience as a user of these kinds of things, and after I'd scrolled through some posts, I got in touch with an author friend of mine and I was like, all the book covers have men with their chests bare on this page, I don't write men with their chests bare kind of books, how is this going to work out?
And it was somebody who writes crime fiction like I do, and she said, oh, it's going to be fine because they must have just hosted somebody who wrote that kind of book, but they are interested in all sorts of different kinds of genres, but if you scroll through that whole feed and you found nothing but books with covers with men with their chests bare, then you probably, if you don't ever have a man with a bare chest in your book, you probably shouldn't be spending your time on an author takeover there, and just understanding what you're drawn to yourself as a reader and what you hope your readers will be drawn to as an author.
Kathy Meis: Yeah. I think you hit on something interesting there too, is just studying the social side of the books that are in this collection of comp titles. Studying the author's social, I think is interesting. What are they talking about and how are they creating community around their book? How are others talking about this book? Book reviewers, BookTokkers. I think all of those things are interesting learning experiences for new authors, especially, trying to understand what this concept of, how do I break through the noise? How do I find my people who are going to love this book?
And whether you think you're going to be a New York Times bestseller, or you just hope you sell a few books and you're just dipping your toe in the water, like to get a great review, because the right reader read your book and was delighted, that feels good. That's what you want.
It's something that a lot of new authors, especially when they're self-publishing because they don't necessarily have the guidance, don't get until after the fact, and then they see the misalignment and it ends up being really hard to recover from it.
I think that's where to create the experience , but just from the get go, working with editors who do know and can guide you around those comp titles, doing the work yourself to learn the marketplace a little bit and learn about what the readers are saying, be it in a social setting or in a review, or it could be on Goodreads, wherever, and learning what that all looks like, the community around a book.
That's really important now.
I mean, your “look inside” feature, for example, when you get the right person on that page, and let's say you've really written the right promise, it's fair, and if someone just gets in there and reads that “look inside” feature, you've got to grab them, and that doesn't mean in a thriller-esque way. It means you've got to get them into that journey. That emotional journey reaction has to come. There's got to be connection created very quickly.
It's a very unforgiving marketplace because most books are sold online, and you don't have that wonderful bookseller hand selling you anything. So, even studying the comparable titles and looking at how they open, especially if they're not classics, people with big names, like emerging authors who are coming into their stride now because they had to build their brands in this unforgiving marketplace that we live in with people coming in to buy a book and leaving with toothpaste. It's brutal.
So, it's never been more important to really understand what your readers, those book browsers, are looking for.
If they're on your page, they found you either through an ad, on a comparable author, or they found you through a recommendation or an algorithm, or someone told them about it, but you only have a few seconds once they get there. That “look inside” feature really has to do the job.
Matty Dalrymple: I realized that something that you were talking earlier about, this sort of experiential as well as the bookshelf comps, that if what you're really emphasizing is that your book is a rollercoaster, it's going to be a rollercoaster ride and you're looking for those rollercoaster readers, then you need to make sure that you give them a rollercoaster in the first few pages.
You can't say, I give them a great roller coaster from page 11 on if they're never going to get to page 11 and look inside.
So, having those first pages be a microcosm of the promise of what they're going to get in the rest of the book.
Kathy Meis: Yeah, and that's not always easy to do. It was not something that was important to do 15, 20 years ago. You didn't have to think about that. But today, I think you really do, which again goes back to why you really have to understand more than just, here's the plot, here's the story, here's my characters.
It's what emotions, how does it land on the reader? Then craft an opening that does reflect the reading experience and journey you're going to take them on.
For better or for worse, it is shifting the way books are written, but especially for new voices and nothing about this is to template your writing or follow every little thing you, it does have to be unique, that's what is going to make you stand out. But knowing the rules and just knowing how brutal the marketplace is, you do have to think, I need to get them in. So, I need to weigh how this opening is going to land on that reader so that they give the book a chance.
It's very powerful, but it does require a certain kind of craft and understanding. So, that's why it's good to study some of these, not Tolstoy, but study some of the brands that came up through the online sales where they really know how to engage a reader quickly.
Matty Dalrymple: One of the other things I think to consider when people are reading books in their genre to learn those lessons is when the book came out, because you could have a very popular book in your genre that was hitting all the bestseller charts in the 80s, and it might still be very popular, you know, I'm thinking of some of the older, private detective stories. I think that, if you read something from the 80s, unless you were very intentional about, this is going to be in the style of the 80s, and then you just put it out here we are in the 2020s, and here's an offering for you, the lessons you would learn might not be the lessons you should be learning for publishing in the 2020s.
So, it's like finding people in your genre and finding the people who are being successful, reaching the radius you want to reach, in the current day, in the current cultural moors and reader expectations, and so on.
Kathy Meis: Yeah. On one side, knowing who those top names are, because you can say in your synopsis, if you like James Patterson, blah, blah, blah, you'll like, and that's such a powerful, quick way to tell people about the reading experience, as long as it's fair.
But to your point, that's just the power of brand, that if you can say a name and people are like, oh, I love those books because they understand the experience and how they feel and it's comfortable, and now they're like, okay, it's like that person. So, it conveys a lot of information very quickly and shows you the power of brand.
But yes, building a brand today as an author is very different, and I would say the shifts in the kind of experience readers want, because we are media saturated now, changes much more quickly. So, sometimes you have to almost reposition books after they're written, but it's even more important to understand what's current.
The current books, not just the big players that have been there forever, but the current and the emerging.
Then I think that's another thing to do on an ongoing basis, is to sign up for some of the journals on the industry, read Publishers Weekly, sign up for Kirkus alerts on the editorial side, and follow what's really hitting now with readers. Partially that means what demographic is your reader, everything from age to sex to socioeconomic, urban, out in the country. You really want this person that you're writing your book for, which is a persona, but it doesn't mean that you're not really making this person human. They are humans and there might be several personas for your book, but. think about them, because if you really think about them, it's like you're giving them a gift.
I know there's a lot of writers that will say, you should never do that, and that's fine, and they have done just fine. But for authors who want to at least get in there and break through the noise, and start to get some traction, I think that really understanding that and thinking, okay, I'm in service to this reader, I'm going to give them an incredible experience, I'm going to be very clear about what that experience is, and I'm going to build community around this book for those readers who are delighting in it; that has a lot of power for a new voice.
It just makes it so much harder if you don't want to do it that way. Neither is right or wrong, but it's just a very unforgiving market.
Matty Dalrymple: I love that because one thing that I've heard people describe marketing as, is there's this smarmy, bad reputation marketing, like forcing your business card into someone's hand. But then there's the perspective of marketing and promotion are ways that you can alert the people who are going to value what you have to offer about what you have to offer.
I think that can help indie authors get over that creepy feeling about marketing and promotion activities.
I similarly really love this idea of the editorial process being in the service of the reader and that idea that it's like gift wrapping the gift you're giving to them as a way that takes some of the sting out of what can be an awkward editing process for some authors.
Kathy Meis: Yeah, I think at the highest level, the marketing side, and I was one of those people and I saw marketing as almost a dirty word, and the longer that I played this role where I was a ghostwriter and editor, but also running a publishing company, a self-publishing platform, the more it just became about alignment.
If you were giving a gift to a friend, that was a new friend, you'd want to know as much about them and try to get them something that will be meaningful. So, the more I thought about it like that, and then working in manuscripts and watching them hit because the alignment is there, because you actually thought about them and how this book would make them feel, that is very powerful.
It does feel a little more natural.
Matty Dalrymple: Yeah, I think anything that can make that process feel more natural is all to the good.
Kathy, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on that, and please let everyone know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do online.
Kathy Meis: Just visit us at bublish.com. It's like publish, but with a B, because we're turning publishing upside down. So, bublish.com, and we'd love to talk to you about your book project.
Matty Dalrymple: Great. Thank you so much.