Read The Outback Governess for free!
Read for free when you join my mailing list!
100% Privacy guaranteed.
Read for free when you join my mailing list!
100% Privacy guaranteed.
Known for “sensual, empowered stories enveloped in heady romance”, Bella Andre’ has sold more than 7 million copies, been #1 bestsellers around the world and have appeared on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists 65 times. She has been the #1 Ranked Author at Amazon – on a top 10 list that included Nora Roberts, JK Rowling, James Patterson and Steven King.
If you like what you see you can become a patron for just a couple of dollars a month. You will also have access to bonus episodes and insider information. Go to http://www.patreon.com/Sarahwilliamsauthor
Transcript:
Sarah Williams: G’day, welcome to Write With Love. I’m Sarah Williams, and I’m recording live today from the Romance Writers of New Zealand conference in Auckland, and I have a very special guest which I’ve been telling you about for a year now that I’m gonna get to interview, and here she is, finally, in person, Bella Andre.
Sarah Williams: Thank you so much for joining me, I’m so excited!
Bella Andre: That was just great. I’m excited.
Sarah Williams: So this is going to an absolutely fantastic weekend, and you’ve been out traveling from America, so a few weeks down under so far?
Bella Andre: Yes, so we were in Australia, and we kind of bopped around. I actually have family in Sydney, so we spent some time with them and went into the Outback, which was super exciting as a Californian, so I sent an email to pretty much everybody I know that started with “Hello from the Outback”, so that was cool. And Great Barrier Reef, and came down the Sunshine Coast I think is where we were? And then beautiful New Zealand and the lovely Melanie Singh gave me a personal tour of Auckland, yesterday, which I’ve fallen in love with and I was joking she’s my new real estate agent. Sold!
Sarah Williams: That’s right, summer house in New Zealand.
Bella Andre: Exactly!
Sarah Williams: Sounds like a plan.
Bella Andre: That’s right.
Sarah Williams: So you’ve been in the industry for quite a while, and you were a pioneer in the ending days when Kindle was still feeling new and everything else. So explain in your own words, tell us about your journey so far.
Bella Andre: Well, my mom … let’s go way back. My mom was always a huge romance reader. I mean she read all pretty much mainstream fiction. I remember growing up and there was always the hardcover books from the library, and she kept a reading log. Which is interesting, I’ve never done that. I wonder if she still has them. So, huge reader and somewhere in there, I must’ve found romances, probably like 10, 11 and a book a day. And still, I’m almost a book a day still. It depends. I write a lot, but it sort of depends on my schedule. My reward for writing is reading. Love to read, still.
Bella Andre: I was a songwriter and a performer, so that was always what I thought I was gonna do. I was gonna go off and be a rockstar, and I did that until my mid-late twenties, and then I was like “Ugh, I’m too old for this”. So I hooked up with an old college friend who just basically said, and she had always wanted to be a romance writer, and she said “Oh I wanna go to this Romance Writers of America, and me being super nervous, go with me”, and so I was like “Okay”. And at that time I was just a reader. I wasn’t thinking I was gonna write then. I remember she said something about “Oh, I think maybe I can sell a book to Harlequin”. And I was like “What’s Harlequin?” Just so not aware of the industry at all.
Bella Andre: But I walked into a room, and it was the San Francisco chapter, and there was probably a hundred or so women in there. And having come out of the song writing world where I was writing with number one hit song writers, who really couldn’t pay their rent. The songwriting world is so … it’s so difficult to make it as a musician. I think everybody’s aware of that. But then having lived it for a while, and then I came into this, and these women were standing up and saying, during the good news sections, you know, “what good news do you have” and they were standing up and saying “I just signed a deal with this”, and “I’ve done a deal for that”, and “Oh my books just sold at auction” and I was thinking I have to try to write one of these. This is actually a viable career for women who are super creative, and so I actually went home after that meeting and sort of waved at my husband, and I sat down at my computer, and I wrote the first three chapters of something.
Bella Andre: I had heard about a small digital publisher, who’s actually no longer around, from another writer there, and I sent an email off, and told a small lie and said the book was done. And I got an email back from the editor that night, saying “This was great, I loved it, I’d love to see the whole thing”, so I sent another little email back saying “I just need to revise it, I’ll have it to you by next week”.
Sarah Williams: Oh, my gosh.
Bella Andre: So I wrote the rest of it in the next couple of days. And it was so exciting, I felt so empowered as an artist and a woman, and it was so fantastic. I loved everything about it. I didn’t know what I didn’t know, which was great. I think you’re just so … I don’t know it’s so exciting. And that small digital publisher did acquire that book and four others and then, on the fifth book, my critique partners who were my old roommate from college, and then another woman who went to law school at our university, Jami Alden and Monica McCarty, who both write, they said, “Alright, this fifth book that you’re working on, this one go bigger with it”.
Bella Andre: So that one I submitted to Simon and Schuster. Actually, I submitted it to an agent, first, and again told her it was done. It wasn’t done. And then she called me the next day or the day after and she said “This is great, can you just email me the rest of it, because I think this would really fit well, Simon and Schuster are looking for books like this” and I admitted to her, cause I thought “This is an agent, I need a little more time” cause I think I was only about halfway done, and this was the first sort of full length book I had written. It was about 100000 words, and I just said “Well, it’s only about half done”. And later, she told me that when she heard me say that to her, that she just thought “I’ll never hear from this person again” because every other author who had ever sent her a partial manuscript that wasn’t done, had never finished it.
Bella Andre: So I took the next six weeks and just wrote and wrote and wrote, and revised and revised and revised, and I sent it to her, and she said “I think you’re almost there”. First of all, she was like “I can’t believe you sent this to me” and then she had some suggestions, and then we sold it to Simon and Schuster almost immediately.
Sarah Williams: Wow!
Bella Andre: That was really super exciting. So I wrote for Simon and Schuster, and then Random House and then Hachette, and then everything sort of … I dunno, what’s the word … imploded, in my career. So I never really as a traditional writer, we always joke that I was hanging on by my fingernails, barely holding on, and it just never really happened at all for me in the traditional publishing world. In early 2010, my editor at Random House, who I love, we’re still really good friends, called very upset, called my agent and said “Unfortunately we are not able to go forward with her for anymore books”.
Bella Andre: And so my agent called me, and just said “You might be at a point where you need to start with a new name” all of that. And so I had sold first in 2003, so it had been seven years.
Sarah Williams: Yeah, right.
Bella Andre: And when I initially worked with Random House, it was sort of, I’d sold at auction, and it was supposed to be sort of a big break out thing, and it didn’t happen. I am usually pretty bouncy, like “Oh, it’s okay!” And that kind of leveled me for a while, and it was right around … I’m thinking it might’ve been February. My friend Monica McCarty, we were on the phone, and she said “You have a Kindle right?” And she had a Kindle, and Kindles, I think had only been around since maybe late 2008, 2009, not that many people had them. They were kinda just starting to become a little bit in the mainstream in early 2010, she said “Why don’t you put something up onto that? I think I’ve read about Joe Konrath has a blog, go to his blog,” and so I did, and I had gotten the rights back to some of those early digital … there are some novella length books.
Bella Andre: And I kinda thought, “Well, I have nothing to lose” so I did. I put up one of those books, and then promptly forgot about it, cause I was still like “I need to get a traditional deal, I need to get another deal with a publisher, I need to change my name, I need to blah blah blah” and I woke up on my birthday in 2010, so this was maybe a couple months later. And I thought, I felt a little better about the world. I have never logged back in to see if I sold any books on this Kindle thing. And I even forgot, what was my login?
Bella Andre: I did figure out my login, I logged back in, and I had sold 250 books. And to this day, I’m like that was the most exciting 250 books ever sold, for me. Because it meant that people actually went to Amazon.com, they typed in Bella Andre, and I was like “Wait a minute, I could sell these books myself” and that was the moment that everything changed for me. So fast forward, that was 2010, we’re summer of 2018 so, I’ve sold 7.5 million books. Almost all of the 7.5 million are books that I’ve sold myself.
Bella Andre: That’s sort of the long yet edited version.
Sarah Williams: And when you were in those initial stages, I remember hearing that you would find all the bugs in Amazon, all the distributors.
Bella Andre: Yes. I was one of the first users for everything. So Amazon and then Barnes and Noble came on the scene next. And then Apple came on, and then Kobo and Google. Consequently, I have very close relationships with everybody at each of the retailers because it’d be like you’d be in there and the stuff would be wrong. Through no fault of theirs, any software … They’re just constantly trying to upgrade it and upgrade it. The thing is my husband is a software engineer and stuff breaks whenever you update code, something else breaks somewhere and you don’t know it happens until someone says, “Oh, that’s not working anymore.”
Bella Andre: So yeah. And there were no author services. None of the industry that exists now to support independent writers existed. I often say, me and my fellow and the authors who were doing that, we were making fire with sticks, and we were in the trenches and just trying to figure out as we went along. I think I spent an entire month on one of those early years, it might’ve been 2010, I had asked my husband to give me the text to some of the bedtime stories that he was telling the kids because they were so good and I could copy edit it and illustrate it. But trying to put together an illustrated children’s book file. It was actually undo-able in 2010. And so I spent a month trying to get it to work, talking to everybody.
Bella Andre: I finally, I think I got something up. But it was as good as I could get it, and it was terrible. There was a lot of frustrations, but at the same time, I liken it to the wild, wild west where it literally was anything was possible and endless possibilities. And it was really just as far as your imagination could take you with regards to, “How do I want to do this writing and publishing thing?” And having coming out of the traditional world in which I felt like I was always fighting a battle I couldn’t win, and being able to say, “No, no. I know what my branding should look like. I know who Bella Andre readers are. It’s up to me now to go get them and find them and show them my works so that they can decide whether they like it or not.”
Bella Andre: I have found the whole thing to be really empowering from writing whatever I want, right? To running my business how I want, to working with the people that I want to work with. So the whole thing has been fantastic.
Sarah Williams: Oh I’m getting goosebumps. This is great. I love that. But, of course, you did get a print … Let me make sure I get this right. So with Harlequin mirror, a print only deal, which was ground breaking seven figures.
Bella Andre: Yes.
Sarah Williams: They obviously would’ve approached you and-
Bella Andre: It was really exciting. So in 2013, so I write a series about a family called the Sullivan’s.
Sarah Williams: Love the Sullivan’s.
Bella Andre: My beloved Sullivan’s. They’re real. They’re not fictional characters, they’re real people. So I had the great fortune of, I think it was the week of the RWA conference in 2013. I think it was the last week of July, 2013. Three of my Sullivan’s hit the New York Times bestseller list, and three of my books hit the USA, different ones, at the USA bestseller list on the same week.
Sarah Williams: Oh my gosh.
Bella Andre: So I had six Sullivans, which were all six. So I only had six at the time, and I have 18 now. Actually 20 if you count the novellas, so 21. I had six books on the bestseller’s and it was funny because I was on the plane there, from … I was in upstate New York at the time, and I’m trying to think … Boy, you’d think I’d remember where the conference was. I can’t remember where the conference was. On the plane there and I got an email from an agent who’s not my agent. I had parted ways with my earlier agent by that time, because I had gotten Indie, it was like, “Oh, I don’t need an agent.”
Bella Andre: I knew that the books were on the USA Today in the airport before I got on the plane. It was like, “Oh, that’s exciting.” And I don’t think I had ever had anything on the New York Times at that point. I’m on the plane and we land so I turn my internet back on, and I was sitting next to a woman who was super-serious. We did not speak on the plane. Super serious. I check my email and open my inbox and there was an email from a very, very prominent agent who’s not my agent saying, “Congratulations.” And I was like, “Why is this agent who I don’t work with, but I know who is like big stuff, congratulating me?” And that was when I saw, “Congratulations for your three books on the New York Times. We’d love to meet.” And I start basically crying, and like laughing and freaking out.
Bella Andre: And the woman sitting next to me, okay no exaggeration. So I’m here and she’s here. No one’s ever been more horrified to sit next to the crazy lady. By the time I got to the conference, the shit had hit the fan in the good way, right? So lots of emails and phone calls. So that was where I connected with Steven Axelrod who was wonderful and said, “Yeah. Whatever it is, whatever kind of thing that you have that you might want me to negotiate, no matter how out there, you know what? Happy to work with you however you want.” Just really, really nice guy.
Bella Andre: And it was interesting because I had spoken at the San Francisco writer’s conference the year previous. I was definitely not of a mind at all, that I was ever going to work with a traditional publisher in any way again. It was like, “I don’t see how that would work. I’m very happy doing this by myself.” And there was a woman, Valerie, who came up to me at the little cocktail party after the conference. And she and I had been on a panel earlier in the day and she was with Harlequin, and I think that the intention of the organizers honestly was to pit us against each other. She just seemed really nice and she was like, “You seem really nice.” So it was a very nice panel, and I’m sure the organizers were like, mad that we didn’t use fist fights or whatever[crosstalk 00:18:26]
Bella Andre: So she came up to me afterwards, and this was a year previous to all those books hitting and just said, “I just think what you’re doing sounds fascinating. I don’t know anything about self-publishing. You know if you wouldn’t mind telling me about your journey. I’d just love to listen. I just think it’s really interesting.” So we had the most lovely chat. We talked for probably about an hour. We talked about our kids. It was one of those conversations that was like, I was like, “Well, we’ll never work together, so let’s just be buddies.” So there was no sense of nerves or networking or anything. It was just like, “You’re a delightful person and thank you for a lovely evening.”
Bella Andre: So fast forward a year. So I was giving a workshop after all this. And I’d been meeting with agents and then met with Steve and said, “Okay, let’s work together.” And various publishers had come and said, “What kind of deal can we do?” Pretty much everybody came at that point. All the different publishers and said, “We’re trying to think what would work for you and us.” So I gave a workshop on something. I don’t know what. And then Valerie came up after the workshop and just said, “Bella. I haven’t seen you since last year. Really great.” And she said, “I’ve thought a lot about you in the last year and obviously you’ve had great success in all of this.” And she just said, “We would very, very much like to work with you.” And she said, “Since I already feel like I know you, we’ve gotten over the hurdles, how would you like to do this?”
Bella Andre: After talking to all the publishers and everything, it was great to get to work with Valerie and to basically construct a publishing deal. What I ended up doing was, I licensed them the World English print rights. So I kept all of the digital rights and all of the audio rights and all of the film rights. So they just took World English, no translation rights. They were great. They were just very responsive and excited. So we did 11 paperbacks and then we did a hard cover for Bella Andre. And then for my sweeter pet name, Lucy Kevin, we did six books, I think. So we did almost 20 together. And it was great. So, that was fun. It was fun.
Bella Andre: People would email me and just say, “Oh, I found your book on this desert island in the middle of wherever we go.” So that was fun. I quite enjoyed being the first ever person in the industry to do that. That was exciting. It was because I think if I had come into publishing as someone who was like, “Oh yeah, my first book it did amazing. It’s been so easy.” And it wasn’t. Mine was a continual struggle, and never breaking through. To have been able to, within three years of self-publishing, to get to that point where I can negotiate a deal the way I wanted to negotiate it, was again very exciting. Yeah, it just felt really exciting and to do it as a woman.
Bella Andre: And it’s interesting because Hugh Howie did his deal after mine. Hugh and I are friends and he’s always like, “No. No. Bella did this first.” So he’s a nice guy. Anyway, yeah.
Sarah Williams: Oh, that’s fantastic. I’m a big fan of Joanna Keen as well and her podcast, and I’ve met her as well. She came to Brisbane a few years ago. She’s always like, “Hugh Howie, Bella Andre.” It’s fantastic. And I’m an Indie. In Australia, not so much New Zealand, so I’m going to say this is more an Australian thing. We really want a traditional publishing and contract, and if we don’t, self-publishing is like the thing you do if no one wants it. And then there’s people like you and it’s like, “This is a thing. This is the future.” So it’s empowering for me to hear you say these sorts of things because I just go, “In Australia, why would you?” Because they get really crappy contracts. It’s like Australian only. It’s like Australia, America, the rest of the world.
Bella Andre: Right, right. If you look at my reviews for my traditional books and you look at the reviews for my Indie published books, where, left all my editors, I’ve had great editors, but for me I think when I was writing for traditional publishers, it was definitely a sense of, “Well I know what they’re looking for.” You kind of know what they want and as an Indie writer, I write exactly what I want. I don’t take input or feedback. It’s totally like, “This is the story I want to tell, and I think I have a really strong internal sense of when something’s working and not working, at least for myself.”
Bella Andre: My reviews on the Indie stuff are like miles better than any other reviews for my traditional books. You can even just sort of see. And I am definitely not the only author who’s gone from traditional to Indie who you’ll see that on.
Sarah Williams: Yeah, for sure. And I know there are lots of people now getting their rights back, and putting them up and rebranding and all that sort of thing.
Bella Andre: Well and rewriting. And I actually did that last year. I got a couple of the books back and I was like, “Okay I have to rewrite these.” I have to see what were these books that I wrote in 2002. The one that I thought was going to be difficult to rewrite, actually wasn’t that hard, it was the other one that I got too nearly broke me. I mean it was sort of the re-writing of it [crosstalk 00:24:24]. Because I was like, “No. No. What happened here in 2002 would happen now. And it was so interesting, my copy editor is a brilliant writer herself, and she actually, she has a masters and she teaches writing. She’s getting her PhD, but anyway she teaches writing and she said she could base an entire revision course around what I did to that book, because she knew it from before, and I had had her read it actually before I even did the revision. And she was like, “Oh my God, you completely …” she’s basically like you took everything that was wrong, and you fixed it without really changing the framework of the book.
Bella Andre: So I was like, “I can’t change the framework and it was so …” I think when there is … I don’t talk about writing that much, but what I do find is that sometimes there’s gift books and easy projects, but not that I like the difficult projects. I’m not saying I want more of those, but that you definitely are flexing your muscles, and growing bigger muscles I think when you’re going and doing a project like that and saying, I have to keep the framework for this story, but have to fix it. And what’s interesting is, I think that might be the fix of it, might be my best review book ever.
Bella Andre: It’s really interesting to go and look and at it and see oh new readers totally … they didn’t know that I fixed it, but they obviously got what the end result was, and it moved them in the way that I was hoping that it would.
Sarah Williams: Oh, fantastic. Wow. You were saying you’ve got your … your print rights back. You’re bringing those all back now.
Bella Andre: Well, they will start revolving over the next few years.
Sarah Williams: Yeah. Are you still printing? Are you still doing paperbacks as well as the eBooks?
Bella Andre: Yes.
Sarah Williams: So your paperbacks, your eBooks, your audio, all of your books now on audio?
Bella Andre: I think everything’s on audio. Yes.
Sarah Williams: Yeah? Fantastic.
Bella Andre: 50 plus [crosstalk 00:26:27].
Sarah Williams: I did notice with audibles romance package, that you’ve got some in there, but all of them.
Bella Andre: I think I have two Sullivans, two Mavericks and two Lucy Kevins I think.
Sarah Williams: Yeah, excellent, so that’s a great little package.
Bella Andre: Well, it is certainly a great package for listeners, and we’ll see how it goes for audible. I always think it’s good and this is what I told them when they called me before they launched the package, and said would you like to put a few things in and give it a whirl? And what I told them then and what I tell everybody who ever calls me like, “I have an idea”, is I’m always excited about new ideas and I’m always excited about experimenting. So, let’s give this a whirl and see how it goes. I always try to stay positive on things and I have high hopes [inaudible 00:27:24].
Sarah Williams: I definitely, I joined it when I got my two months free or something. I didn’t renew because I binged everything.
Bella Andre: Oh, very good. [crosstalk 00:27:32].
Sarah Williams: And it was great because I still was reading a lot of Australian, New Zealand authors and there’s really no Australian and New Zealand authors in the romance package, and that’s because it’s hard for us to do that [crosstalk 00:27:50]. So not that I’m sure we’d all love to do audio at this point being August 2018 [inaudible 00:27:58]. It’s not as easy, but I was introduced to Lauren Blakely, yourself, Melissa Foster, Maisey Yates, all these sorts of people, and of course now I’m buying their audios, so still gain for them. They’ve still got [inaudible 00:28:11]. I’m talking about them, so you know, they’re gaining others.
Sarah Williams: So, yeah it’s definitely … you got to try these things. When you do some market … I don’t want to talk too much about marketing, but do you have to do Amazon ads and Facebook ads and those sorts of things?
Bella Andre: Absolutely. The reality of the business that we run as self-publishers is that we’re a business, and so businesses advertise, and I am really pragmatic about it and … yeah, so I do advertise in all the place that one advertises, Facebook, BookBub, Amazon marketing services, Google, Pinterest, Instagram. You know I could keep going probably, so, absolutely and I have a marketing budget, and you’ll see … often during a launch you’ll see my new release will be the home screen on your kindle. And again, I like to try everything once and then I’m … I actually have a degree in Economics from Stanford, and I’m sort of a math-brain, which is funny-
Sarah Williams: For a writer-
Bella Andre: Yeah. I’m actually a math geek, so I really crunch numbers, and I’m very interested On my return on investment, so I’m constantly looking at it, constantly working with … I work with upwards of 20 contractors around the world in various capacities, depending on what I’m doing in my business and what I need the help with. They’re all amazing, and I love everybody I work with. They’re so fantastic.
Bella Andre: So with the people I work with for running ads, we’re constantly looking at it and saying “Okay, what’s working, what’s not working, what do we want to wrap up, what’s new that we want to try?” So there is a subset of stuff that I do with contractors and then there’s a subset of stuff that I run entirely by myself. So, I think it is important to have a knowledge base across all of them, and that is sort of my big thing is and I think because I kind of came of age, in a time of self-publishing where there was nobody to help unless you hired an assistant, which in 2011, friend of a friend … my friend. Veronica Wolff, she writes Scottish time travels, or she did write Scottish time travels, now she’s writing Young Adult, but she said “oh there’s a friend of mine, I think you guys will get along great. Let’s have lunch together.”
Bella Andre: So we went to lunch, and this woman, Martha, she seemed really interested in what I was doing and was asking me questions, and it was all moving so fast at that point, and I was already … I’m trying to think if I had started the Sullivans yet, I think I sort of just started the Sullivans and I was writing so much, and then trying to do the business, you know, I was probably like 20, 21 hours a day, seven days a week, and not terribly organized at the time, because I was just like, “well, I just have more work to do and that here’s ideas”. I would write down ” oh that looks interesting”, on these post-it notes. I had these post-it notes, pretty much stacks of them everywhere, in folders and whatever. My laptop was a mass of files. I could never find … but you know, you’re doing your best and you’re in there and you’re running a start-up by yourself basically.
Bella Andre: So I had lunch with them and Martha sent me an email that afternoon and Martha had a really, really high powered position in San Francisco. She said “I had been interested in starting my own business for a while” and she also was writing and she said “I think this could help us both”. Yeah, and I was like “Oh she’s so right”. She said, “What if I came and worked on a contract basis with you? We’ll figure out how many hours and I will help you clean up your mess of a business”.
Bella Andre: And to this day, she even took my computer … when she came to my office and I just handed her this folder with the post-it notes and she was like “Oh my God. I’ve never seen anything this horrible”. And she wanted my laptop and she just said “we’re creating a system here for you, so that you will always be able to find everything. Everything goes where I’m going to tell you.”
Bella Andre: She really came in a wonderfully … you know, I don’t mean to make light of O.C.D. but she’s like “I am very O.C.D. and we are going to do this”, and so, to this day … it’s so funny because I have a computer I write on and a computer I do all my business on, when I go to the one that I do all of my business on, really, whenever I open a file I’m like “Bless Martha”, and so she stayed with me about a year and half and then went off to pursue her own … which was exactly what was always agreed on and everything and then I started working with some other people.
Bella Andre: But, I’ve been so lucky along the way and found such amazing people who essentially, we work together and they didn’t just help me build up my business, but I also helped them create theirs and so, it’s been a really, really wonderful experience all the way through. Honestly, there’s nobody I’ve worked with over the last eight years who, either I don’t still work with unless they’ve moved on because they’re now doing it for themselves, as they should. It is just everybody’s amazing.
Sarah Williams: Oh, that’s fantastic.
Bella Andre: Yeah, and just super excited and super good at the work that they do, and just supportive and flexible. I mean it’s really great in this business and writers are great.
Sarah Williams: They aren’t they? And everyone is just so willing to share their experiences and help and-
Bella Andre: They are.
Sarah Williams: It’s fantastic.
Sarah Williams: So you’ve got your team. So, do you have like a cover designer and everything?
Bella Andre: Right. So I do … I design my own covers. I do all my own Sullivan covers and I do all my own Morrison covers. I work with Damonza for my Maverick covers, and they’re doing my newest Lucy Kevin covers too. And they do my German covers for the Sullivans.
Bella Andre: So that’s been a nice … they’re great. They’re fantastic, working with that and then I have a team in Germany of … I have three translators who pretty much, work full time with me because I put out a new book in German every six weeks.
Sarah Williams: Wow.
Bella Andre: And I am planning to do that through 2020. I have enough books to put out through 2020, so we’re cooking along. We’re always cooking along on those books. And then I have a woman who runs my German Facebook page and then I have a fantastic woman and her mom, actually who, translates my newsletter text and help me run ads in Germany. So that just alone, is just my German team, so we’re at six in Germany, just for that.
Bella Andre: So that kind of shows you what … and then the US, the amount of people who work on things for me are much bigger because I have two different names and I use different copy editors for those, and I have a large team of proof readers. A lot of people help me to run ads, a woman who puts together a sales spreadsheet, I’m trying to think … There’s more. There’s more. I can’t quite think of everything I have going at one time, but a ton of people who I can always contact and say, “Hello. I need you to help me make a print-on-demand cover out of the digital cover for this”, in fact, she’s wonderful, she’s in Australia. So she helps me with those ones, and it’s like “Oh okay yeah”, “So if you could squeeze me in this week?” and she’s always like “Yeah, no problem Bella”[crosstalk 00:36:31]And she’s really, really nice.[crosstalk 00:36:32]
Bella Andre: So people are … they’re wonderful and they’re all really just flexible and just good at their jobs. Oh, and then I have my formatter, and they’re in Thailand.
Bella Andre: Just, the thing for me, and I don’t know if you’ve gotten this, but I’m a bit of a perfectionist?
Sarah Williams: Yeah.
Bella Andre: Which, you know, is not always the best thing, but it’s just that everybody that I work with does really, really impeccable work and it saves me a lot of time, in one, not having to redo everybody’s work, but also, you know, just feeling 100% confident that when I’m getting the books back from my formatter, they’re going to be perfect. They’re going to be perfect the first time and I’ll do my cursory check, more to see if I’ve screwed anything up, [crosstalk 00:37:18]I give them something that was wrong and then try to get it out there.
Sarah Williams: Excellent. Wow. So what does a day, when you’re in your office and you’re working on a book, so what does a kind of day look like? And also I want to know, do write in[Scriben inaudible 00:37:33] or something like that? [inaudible 00:37:36]How do you do it?
Bella Andre: You know, there’s not totally a standard day, which I think is pretty common when you’re running your own business, but if I’m at a point where … so, I’ve been gallivanting for the last three months. So for instance, when I get back to California next week, there’s got to be some buckling down.
Bella Andre: And I have a secret Sullivan novella that I’m so excited about. I think people are going to freak out because it’s two of their favorite Sullivans, so I think people are going to be super-excited. I’m super-excited.
Bella Andre: So I basically have a month before I head to Europe again. So I’m like “Okay I have to get this done”, so my day will pretty much look like I’m very active, and my husband and I go out and we walk and we swim and we play pick-a-ball and all that in the morning. Pretty much after lunch I’ll go with the laptop and headphones, and at that point, husband and children know, do not bother her, you have no reason to bother her and I’ll get in there and I work, well actually now I do, for the last year, I use a Pomodoro Technique.
Sarah Williams: Yeah, yeah, I love that.
Bella Andre: So I have a … I can’t think of the App, I would have to look at my phone, but basically depending on how crunched, if I really need to get a ton of words done fast, I go on 45 minute chunks, so I go 45 minutes on, and then I’ll do 15 off. If I have a little more time in the schedule, so maybe in the 45 minutes that I get back, I’ll go 25 on and then 10 off.
Bella Andre: And what I found, strangely, works for me about it is you’ve got that little timer next to you, and then say you’re going for 25 on, and you can’t do anything but write for 25 minutes. You can’t check email, you can’t talk to anybody, nobody better bother me and all that right. The dogs shouldn’t even come over so that and then, when I see that timer … because sometimes you’re like, at the beginning of a Pomodoro session and it’s like “So, where was I? What am I trying to say in this scene?” Because I’m not really a plodder, I write very instinctually. So I’m like “What was I trying to write?” And sort of by the time I’m like “Okay, this is what I’m trying to get at”, and I think I kind of know where my hero is, and I’m like, “How am I only at 18 minutes?”
Bella Andre: I’m looking at my phone and going “Oh my God”. So, the panic of only having 18 minutes until I have to get up and walk around, because that’s the whole premise of this right, is you get up, you work really hard in these bursts and then you get up and clear your head.
Bella Andre: [inaudible 00:40:27]is going.
Bella Andre: Basically writing as fast as I can with taking panic glances every once in a while at the phone, which I don’t know where all the time is going. And before I know it, there’s only three minutes left, and I’m like “I only have three minutes”. No one has ever written that much in the last three minutes in their entire life, right. It’s like everything comes in those last three minutes and by the ‘ding’, and it’s like you’ve just sprinted through and have your sweat from the brow. I can usually get on average, about 650 words in that 25 minute burst. So, if I need to about 4000 words … how many are those? I have to do about six and a half, is that about right? So, I kind of know where I am and on a good day of writing where I actually know what I’m doing, and it’s all working, I can be done in four of those little 25 minute things. On a bad day, I’m looking at eight or nine.
Bella Andre: It just depends but very focused … I’m a very, very, very focused worker. I’m a very, very focused writer. The truth is that if you look me up on line, you only ever see me talk about business. The writing is the thing that gets me up in the day and keeps me sane. I love to write and that is my fallback at all times, is writing.
Bella Andre: The reason I don’t talk about writing, is because for me it’s a magical process. I don’t do writing classes. I don’t read books about writing. I don’t go out and try to understand the craft. I just want to feel what I’m writing and so it’s totally … there’s a complete split in me between the like weeping over the keyboard right … 100% I’m like the [inaudible 00:42:36]Althea weeping over the keyboard and feeling that they’re all real. They’re all real so [crosstalk 00:42:36]and then when that’s done it’s like “Right, dry your tears”, put your business hat on and get to work.
Sarah Williams: That’s it. That’s it. Love it. That’s fantastic.
Sarah Williams: So how long does it really take you to write a book, not just a novella, but a book?
Bella Andre: Yeah, I give myself on a schedule, I give myself more time now. I wrote a few books where I had to write a 5000 words a day clip, seven days a week and after I did four or five of those, I was like, never again, until the last one where it all went horribly wrong from there and I had to throw out 200 pages. It was so bad that my friend Monica, I do have other friends … I hit the 200 pages … Monica was kind of … again because I’m not a plodder, so yeah I’ll go on and figure this out when I get to the end because I definitely write a draft and I then I’m like, “Oh that’s my book” and then I re-write about 100 times, to the point where all of my writing friends are like “You’re psycho and you need to let the book go”. And I’m like “I can’t let go until it’s perfect” so again, little perfectionist issues but I hit 200 pages on it and I was …
Bella Andre: The thing is I was cooking along right in line with my schedule, and I had to keep my schedule because we were heading into the summer where I knew I was going to be off with the kids and the husband and no writing gets done. The book was coming out in July and I actually came out of my office and just went, “Oh my God” and my daughter was sitting there and my husband and just talking to myself, “I can’t believe I have to throw it all away” and my daughter looked up and was like “What? You have to throw your book away?” And I said “It’s not working” and she’s like “Surely that can’t be true?” And I was like “It’s true, it’s true”.
Bella Andre: Anyway, my friend Monica had the misfortune of sending me a text in that moment and I just totally ignored whatever her text was, and just was like “I have just …” you know. And she wrote me back and said, I’m having a panic attack for you and tell me what your entire plot is right now, over text and I’m going to help you figure this out.
Bella Andre: She was so great, and it’s funny because my husband, who is so awesome but has had now like 14 years of me being like “I stuck on my thing and I can’t figure out … let’s talk about my book forever”. You know he has the tendency to glaze over all that all when it comes to me and my book issues.
Bella Andre: When I had come out of my office, he was walking away at that time, and he heard me say it and he turned around and he came back and he was like, “You’re just being a little melodramatic. You don’t really have to throw away 200 pages, do you?” And I said I do, I have a fatal flaw with this and I cannot fix it. I said I actually just googled to see if any writer has ever gotten away with this. And I said, all I have found is all these blogs about readers saying how much they hate books that do that.
Bella Andre: And I was like … I’ve realized it and I said that understand why all readers hate it, and I said I actually have blown this, and it will never work. I said I can never make it work either, I’ve tried to figure it out, and I realize I can’t do it.
Bella Andre: So, between my husband and Monica, for two days the two of them kind of just came to me, “What about this? What About that? What about this? What about that?” and when you’re in … it’s funny I’m talking a lot about writing today, I don’t normally talk a lot about it, but when you’re in that kind of place I think where, you’re just so [inaudible 00:46:28] and so I spent a lot of the two days, not all of it but a lot of it, just saying to both of them “No. No. No.” And then finally … but things were getting in and I actually was headed to London and I was on a plane scribbling madly and I was in the Tube scribbling … you know I had my note book and again, not much of a plodder but I was like, I have a very limited amount of time now to write the 18th book in the series. The last one of the New York Sullivans. It’s the hero everybody’s been waiting for.
Bella Andre: You want to make sure that every book is better than the one that came … it was really … and I woke up on sort of five days after my meltdown and I was like “Oh I think I have it”, and my best friend actually lives in London and I was sitting at her kitchen table, and she’s like “Alright. Where are you now?” And I said I think as of today, I think I’ve got it. I think when I get back to California after this trip, I think I actually can hit the ground running that I can maybe keep about 20 pages, but I think I know where to go forward.
Bella Andre: She’s a brilliant writer, optioned her last book to Sony Pictures. She has literally like epic genius, and a brilliant plotter. It’s funny, we’re very different in our process and she was like “Alright. Tell it to me right now. Run me through the whole thing right now”. And her husband, who is also a brilliant writer, was at the kitchen table with us and they were both watching me and I am not someone … I don’t brainstorm with other writers and I don’t share stuff, but of course, this was a different process, so I was alright, here it is and this that and dah dah dah … and then she asked me some really poignant questions to try to nail me on stuff. I was like no, dah dah dah, this is how I’m dealing with that dah dah dah and this is how …
Bella Andre: So at the end of this, you know, we’re very sweaty, the interrogation at this point and her husband and I are just looking at her and she’s just sitting there. She’s very quiet for quite a while, and her husband John was like “You need to say something. We’re very nervous here” and then John said I think it’s working. He said I think I everything I heard her say but … and we all acknowledged, we all just turned to this plotter extraordinaire, like what’s the vote?
Bella Andre: Finally, she was a lawyer before … finally she just looked at me and she nodded and she went “I think you’ve got it”. Oh my God. I think I’ve got it right? And when I got back home … and so the rest … Again when I travel I’m not … I make sure I take that time to take the creative input but I don’t … I again, every moment that I had to myself, if I was in a café or Tube or something where I wasn’t doing something with somebody, where it wasn’t rude to be like “Excuse me with my notebook”.
Bella Andre: So I was that nutso on the Tube just missing my stop because I just wanted to make sure that by the time I got back home, I could go in and I could dive and that was coming back and that was 5-6000 words a day and really, as I did it, I was like, these have to be perfect because I didn’t have a ton of time on the back end. You know, in a way it kind of wakes you up. You go “Oh I’ve got this. I’ve done like 67 books” and you have one that comes and smacks you across the face, and was like “Really? Do you have this?'[inaudible 00:50:20] happen?
Bella Andre: So I ended up and the end of it, really, really, really happy about the book. It was called Every Time We Fall In Love and this one, I think might be my new Best Review book. What was really super gratifying with my fans … I don’t go into my social media. I never go in and say “I’m really having trouble with this”. I like there to be a veneer, like a little mystique to it. Like it’s all glorious and sunshine and roses, which you know it normally is and really, I don’t tend to read reviews. But, on this one fortunately they were all good and everybody basically said in their reviews, and this meant a lot to me because of how difficult this book was, I don’t know how Bella at 18 books and he’s my new favorite. It’s my new favorite Sullivan. This story broke my heart and put it back to …
Bella Andre: You know, it was just like, ‘Oh, thank God”. It was all worth it. The struggle you know, and it was funny I was talking to a woman in Australia, and she was like “Well, you know, he didn’t have cancer”. I was like, I know, I know, right? She was like, let’s put it all in perspective and it was yes but for my work, this is my struggle and all that.
Sarah Williams: My Gosh. So, of course, everyone’s going to want to rush out and buy that one.
Bella Andre: Yes. Yes, which you’re going to love.
Sarah Williams: So, you do have a bunch of different series going, obviously. So if a reader was watching this and of course now wants to go out and read everything, where should they start?
Bella Andre: So, you start with the Sullivans. You start with The Look of Love, Chase and Chloe and that was the book that really I think, started my writing life for real. So, the Look of Love is where you start.
Bella Andre: I also have really popular series that I introduced a few years after the Sullivans, called The Maverick Billionaires and Sullivan fans have wildly embraced The Maverick Billionaires. The first Maverick Billionaire is Breathless in Love and I co-wrote that series with one of my favorite writers, Jennifer Skully, also a friend of mine from San Francisco. Love her. And so, we have a great time and those books, I think they are very similar to Sullivans but, because I think Jennifer has a slightly off-beat way of looking at the world, which I really like, so that’s really, really fun and then I have a series about the Morrisons, who I kind of joke are like my Shmullivans.
Bella Andre: They’re a family and they’re loosely linked to the Sullivans and the Mavericks are loosely linked and then I also write books as Lucy Kevin and I actually have a Married in Malibu book that’s coming out. It’s called The Barefoot Wedding and that comes out on September 12th. But then the latest Sullivan came out in July, and that was Every Time We Fall in Love and for all my books, they’re all stand-alones and you can start anywhere, and I think a lot of when people find me … it’s great if they start at the first book in the series, but a lot of people find me in whatever the new book is.
Bella Andre: What I find to be true, through the reader email I get and on Facebook, is people generally say to me “Well, I found say, Every Time We Fall in Love in July, and I was Oh my God. I love this, who are these Sullivans? Then I went and read all of the other 17 in a week”. Right, so I think we’re like binge-watchers, binge-readers. For me, if I find a new author, I’m like, they have a big series. It’s like Christmas and my birthday and everything all came together in one. And then when you’ve finished the series, it’s like the worst like it’s #serieshaul right like #[authorhaul inaudible 00:54:25] you know, I’m so lost when I finish the series and so devastated. Now what will I read?
Sarah Williams: So, you’re not finishing the Sullivans or any of … No? They’re going to keep going?
Bella Andre: No. So I’ve done the San Francisco Sullivans, there were eight of those. There was five Seattle Sullivans, four New York Sullivans. The first of the seven Maine Sullivans will come out in the spring of next year. So early next year. I have a whole secret branch of the Sullivans that I’m also hoping I can currently work on. A whole European branch. Very excited.
Sarah Williams: And then you’re going to have to do the Australian and New Zealand ones[crosstalk 00:55:00]
Bella Andre: Absolutely going to the Australians, the Australian Sullivans. No question.
Bella Andre: It’s funny because I have family in Sydney, but I had never been to Australia before, and I don’t know what that was … dumb. So anyway, so now I’ve fixed that, and pretty much, no exaggeration, as soon as we landed in the airport, I was like “I’m totally starting a branch of the Sullivans in Australia”. I mean, it was just so obvious to me so I think, I know what I do, and it’s very subconscious thing.
Bella Andre: I did this in Maine. I have been to Maine several times years back, and this was before I had started writing the Sullivans, and when I am writing a series set in an area, they’re set in Bar Harbor but they’re all going to be all throughout Maine, I’m accessing these mental snapshots that I’ve taken of the places that I’ve been. Even it was a while ago and [inaudible 00:55:59]in those and so I was actually a little more aware because literally, as soon as I got in the airport I was like “Okay, I’m starting a branch here”.
Bella Andre: The whole time that I’ve been traveling through Australia and now New Zealand, and I’m going to have to come back to New Zealand, because I’m really only able to be in Auckland and parts of the North Island, so I’ll have to go to the South Island on another trip. But, definitely doing the snapshots because I’m already like “Oh, when the Sullivans go to Ayers Rock”, you know, it’s like “When they’re in the outback”. So I don’t know exactly what story I’m going to tell, but I already know the locations.
Bella Andre: We were joking before … joking, but not joking … before we started filming, that as a California girl, that coming in and going out on the beach up in the Great Barrier Reef and going out and walking the ‘watch out for the salt water crocodiles’. You know it’s quite alarming as a Californian, and I can already see, I’ll have like the local Australian Sullivan, but then the American comes in and is like “What if there’s crocodiles?” You know. So you can go on it … I’m already painting the pictures in my head of what some of these books are going to be and that’s really, really fun.
Bella Andre: So, as far as I can see, at this point, there will be seven Maine, what’s 18 plus seven? What is that, 25 right and then my secret European ones, at least one branch the secret European, there’s five. So that’s 30 and then we’ll have, you know … we’ll have to have a bunch through Australian New Zealand. So I foresee the Sullivans going at least, 35 40 but, I intend to write them forever, you know, unless something crazy happens. But I love them.
Sarah Williams: Cause there’s really no limit. I mean … yeah
Bella Andre: No. And they’re all totally distinct books, because the hero and heroine are always different people.
Sarah Williams: That’s it. That’s it.
Bella Andre: Right
Sarah Williams: So they’re all kind of related?
Bella Andre: They are related. Yeah. Either they’re sibling relationships or they’re cousins or they’re as in The Kiss, will be with the Australian and European ones, they’re second cousins so related through grandparents.
Sarah Williams: Excellent.
Bella Andre: So everybody has a tie somewhere.
Sarah Williams: That’s it. I love it.
Sarah Williams: When you were saying the up there … you know … the guy and everything … I was thinking …
Bella Andre: Can you see it? You can totally see it.
Sarah Williams: This is like kind of like a Crocodile Dundee take two. He can be perving on her, going and washing her face and a croc comes out [crosstalk 00:58:32]
Bella Andre: Totally. Totally. I mean, perving on her in the best kind of way
Sarah Williams: That’s it.
Bella Andre: In a very loving Sullivan way but … yes
Sarah Williams: Of course, ripping off his shirt …
Bella Andre: Can you totally see it?
Sarah Williams: Love it. Love it.
Bella Andre: [crosstalk 00:58:44]I get super excited. I need to write these now.
Sarah Williams: That’s so cool.
Bella Andre: Yes. Yes. So excited.
Sarah Williams: Absolutely fantastic.
Sarah Williams: Do you have any advice to anyone who is not a published author yet? Any advice to pursue?
Bella Andre: I mean, well, just sit down and write. That’s all the advice is. Write a lot, read a lot. You know watching something like this podcast, you’re going to learn about the business and then there’s going to be other podcasts that are going to be super-specific, about one aspect. Like, here’s how you do advertising on Facebook, and here’s how you think about a cover together.
Bella Andre: So I just think there’s a lot of information, and probably the biggest thing to watch out for is, don’t fall down the rabbit hole too much. You need to remember, a writer needs to remember, an inspiring writer needs to remember, that it’s always about the book. So write your book, write the next book, write the one after that and if you ever feel like you need to drop something out, you drop out everything but the writing of the book.
Sarah Williams: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely and of course joining things like RWA America-
Bella Andre: Absolutely.
Sarah Williams: RWA Australia, RWA New Zealand, of course fantastic, and so do you still go to all the conferences in America? The Romance Writers America?
Bella Andre: I have been to everything a lot and [inaudible 01:00:10]America and all that, and then I was traveling around the world a lot, speaking at things, and my husband put in a very nice request, a couple of years ago and said, how about for a while we travel for pleasure, and I was ready to … this is actually the first conference I’ve done in three years.
Bella Andre: It’s great and I met a bunch of people yesterday and just had a really lovely time, and then meeting with you’re fantastic and more people and doing some other podcasts this afternoon. So, it’s nice to come back and … how could I turn down New Zealand? It’s like would you like to go to New Zealand? Why yes, I’d love to come.
Sarah Williams: It’s do funny, because for me, I went to the Romance Writers of Australia Conference the last few years and people kept on saying, we’re going to New Zealand it’s smaller, it’s more intimate. I’m like, that’s really cool, and I’m from New Zealand so, yay, added bonus and then they announced who’s coming to New Zealand 2018, Bella Andre. I was, Bella frickin’ Andre … going. And there were a whole bunch of us “We’re going to New Zealand next year guys. You don’t have a choice”.
Sarah Williams: I’m super excited. So, you’re going to be doing some presentations and-
Bella Andre: Right. Right. So you’ll hear some of this again probably, but yeah, giving a workshop tomorrow. My ‘Yay it’s 2018 in the publishing world’ let’s talk about where we are and everybody perk up, so we give a little cheerleading talk and lay out where we think we are, and what I think people can take advantage of and work with as self-publishers and authors. Tomorrow I think I’ll be doing a keynote during lunch and telling my story again, so you can go “Yeah, I’ve heard some of that”, but I tell the story and at the end of my keynote, I’ll do a top ten tips, so that’s always fun.
Bella Andre: And then sort of generally around, for the people to come and ask questions. It’s like I’m here and in New Zealand so let’s talk.
Sarah Williams: And you’re so lovely and sharing of your time, and you’re just so inspired, so thank you so much. I really appreciate this.
Bella Andre: Ah, it’s been fun.
Sarah Williams: And your website, Bellaandre.com
Bella Andre: Yes. Yes.
Sarah Williams: Excellent, and you’re on social media. You’ve got a beautiful website, and you’ve got a fantastic competition going on at the moment with the beautiful tote bag,
Sarah Williams: It so gorgeous, I’ve entered that like 50 times already.
Bella Andre: Oh good, I hope you win. May you be the lucky one.
Sarah Williams: Fingers crossed. Well, thank you so much. I really do appreciate your time today. Bella Andre!