Love in Montana with Leeanna Morgan

This is Episode 12 of Write with Love.

Leeanna Morgan is making a six figure salary as an Indie Author. Based in New Zealand’s north Island, she writes contemporary cowboy romance. In todays’s chat I get the scoop on selling to the American market.

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Transcript:

Sarah Williams:            G’day, I’m Sarah Williams, romance author and independent publisher at Serenade publishing. Today I’m talking to USA Today best selling New Zealand author, who writes contemporary romances set in Montana. Welcome to the show Leeanna Morgan.

Leeanna Morgan:          Hello, good to be here Sarah.

Sarah Williams:            I really appreciate you taking the time today. I know you’ve got a busy schedule. So can you tell us about your author journey?

Leeanna Morgan:          Well, I started publish … I published my first book in April of 2014 and my book’s all self published. Since then, I’ve written and published about 25 books and about a year and a half ago I was able to give up my full-time role and work exclusively writing, which is wonderful, ’cause I was doing huge hours, I was starting writing at about 5:30 each morning and racing to get the kids to school and then coming home and writing to about half past two each night and then during weekends it was just dynamite, so it was nice to simplify my life and devote my time to writing. So, it’s been an amazing journey.

Sarah Williams:            Excellent, and have you always wanted to be an author or you had a day job before that, obviously.

Leeanna Morgan:          I was a librarian so I was surrounded by awesome books and when I was doing my Business studies degree, extramurally at Messi, I would, at the Christmas break, which is our longest break, I would get piles of Mills & Boons and honestly I would tear through probably 50 Mills & Boons, and I just had saturated myself with the reading romance because during the year I was reading management tips and books on contract law and oh, I just needed some light relief. So, they got me into my subconscious about writing and I always thought like everyone else, oh I could do this. And so when I turned 30, which is many years ago, I thought I’m going to do it.

Leeanna Morgan:          So I actually wrote the first three scenes in a book and put it into a romance writers of New Zealand competition, because I didn’t know if I could write, and I got really good feedback, but then we had two children and lots of house moves and different jobs, so the writing got put on the back burner, and then when I turned 40, I looked back on the last 10 years and I thought oh, where did it go? And I didn’t want the next 10 years to go as quickly and not to achieved one thing that I wish I’d done when I was 30.

Leeanna Morgan:          So I decided that one thing would be writing and so my goal was to write one book and to have someone enjoy it that wasn’t mum. And so I wrote that book, I made a five year plan of how I was going to achieve that and ticked all the boxes each year and then I had my little airing planes as well and so it really worked out and here I am, sort of a few years later. I’m 49 now and I’ve got a lot of books that I’ve written. So, and I really enjoy it and my career’s changed completely and it’s great.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, and you’re getting to do it full time, which is the dream.

Leeanna Morgan:          So I think self-publishing is … I like it because it combines both sides of my brain. You’ve got your creative side and then you’ve got the analytical, marketing, promotions, business side, so, you know … and you can find that fine line between balancing both sides and I like it. Gives me a challenge and I’ve met some really neat people, so that’s great.

Sarah Williams:            That’s excite. So your books are all set in Montana in the US. How did that come about, ’cause you’re in New Zealand.

Leeanna Morgan:          Up until last year I haven’t even been to Montana, so there you go. Well when I was writing Forever Dreams, which is the first book on the Montana Brides series, there’s a character called Gracie. And when I first started writing, everyone said write what you know, and so I had a librarian in one of my … get my third book was a librarian, but Gracie was from New Zealand and she was going to … she wanted to find her birth father. And she knew her father came from Montana.

Leeanna Morgan:          Well she didn’t actually, ’cause what we did is we looked at a Google map and I said where’s your dad. I was talking to [inaudible 00:04:28]. And I just … my eyes went straight to Montana and I’ve never been there, and I didn’t know anything about it. And then I said well, where about in Montana, and then we clicked on a bigger Google image and we saw Bozeman and that’s where her dad was. So that’s why we went there. And it was great because she didn’t know anything about ranch life either. And I’m pretty shy. I didn’t know one end of the cow from the other. And … which is shameful coming from New Zealand, but yeah, we studied and after I’d written Gracie’s story, the others evolved and I actually had two other books that I had written before that that was set in Australia and New Zealand and I changed the whole environment, the whole landscape to Montana and tied them together, and that was the beginning of the series.

Sarah Williams:            Excellent, so you actually have been to Montana now. Was it everything you expected?

Leeanna Morgan:          Not the same. Well, it was really weird because I did a lot of research about Montana and I entered … anyway I’ll tell you about that later, but this was like stepping into your imagination in 3D. You know when you see those science fiction movies where people sort of go into a different reality, well that’s what it was like and I walked into a bookstore and I looked around, and I … god, this place is familiar. It was like I was actually … I’d been there before. It’s like I had … it was actually the setting that I’d used for one of my books for Emily’s … one of the girls boutiques, fashion boutique. Down to the last thing that hadn’t changed since I’d seen the photos on Google on the internet. So it’s a lot more spread out than I thought. And, but yeah, I looked for cowboys. I found a couple of cowboys, but they were working of course when I was there during the week, so it was a bit of a … but I did find two and I got the photos with them so that was good.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah we do like our cowboys. I write rural as well so anything with cowboys is great.

Leeanna Morgan:          It’s funny that two of my book actually had cowboys in them but I really want to find a cowboy and I did, so that was great.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, fantastic so tell us about your series. You’ve got four different series of books?

Leeanna Morgan:          Yes, they all relate to each other, so the characters pop up at all books. So, for instance one of the places where Gracie … well one of the places that tends to be a communal café talking point in Bozeman is something called Angel Worx café. And the lady who runs it is Tess. So she appeared in the very first book I wrote, and then I did her story about nine books later. But she pops up in each of the books going through little cameos.

Leeanna Morgan:          And then brothers and sisters of Gracie and her step-family are in other books and friends of friends turn up in other books, so they’re all interrelated, so what I try to do is … I decided to divide my books into four series rather than just take one long series because I wanted to give my reader something a little bit different, and so even though the setting is the same, and there’s characters pop up, the Montana Brides is contemporary romance, and then The Bridesmaids Club, which is a follow-on series to that, is contemporary romance, but with a little bit of mystery in there. And then the Emerald Lake Billionaire series, I decided by that stage I wanted to write about rich men and by rich men, they had to be billionaires, but they had to be really nice men. And, ’cause a lot of the billionaire books are quite alpha male logistics and things like that, so these are just really nice, sweet almost, but there is a little bit of sex in there, but they’re great.

Leeanna Morgan:          And then my … The Protector series is more romantic suspense. So my readers, although they are familiar with the setting, they like, they keep reading because I give them something different, it’s not just straight, contemporary romance. Which seems to work.

Sarah Williams:            Oh that’s excellent, so yeah. If they want a little bit of suspense they go one way and I if they like sweet, they go the other. That’s brilliant. Now I have read several of your books and they are really, really brilliant. I just couldn’t put them down.

Leeanna Morgan:          Yeah, what I found is that even people that wouldn’t necessarily read a romantic suspense, really enjoyed them ’cause the romance is still … you know, romantic suspense isn’t a procedural … a police procedural romantic suspense, it’s more a hero and heroin having someone chase them. So they’re off to save the world or whatever they’re trying to do. So there’s a lot of romance still in them, so that’s really good.

Sarah Williams:            Excellent. That’s great, and I love how you … because you keep them all in Bozeman, it creates a community and the friendship between the characters. I really love how that plays out.

Leeanna Morgan:          And they all have babies and get married and … you know, there might be a couple that get together in one series and then four books later they’re getting married, and that’s a … sort of a backdrop to the story that’s going on in their book. So, you know, you get to catch up with what’s happening and I’ve got a little … a young girl, Caitlin, who’s 16 in the first book, Forever Dreams and she’s a college student now. So, you know, and going off to work, so yeah it’s really interesting.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah that’s awesome. You’re building your own little world. Love it.

Leeanna Morgan:          Eureka.

Sarah Williams:            And so tell us about your writing. Are you a fast writer to have this many books out already?

Leeanna Morgan:          Well I don’t think I’m fast. I’m just determined and so I try and do … I’d love to write 3000 words a day. I can do 2000 words and there’s no reason why I couldn’t do 3000, but I kinda let other things get in my way. So that’s my goal this year, is to 3000 words a day. I tend to edit as I’m going so I spend the first, maybe 45 minutes of the day rereading previous chapter that I wrote and making edits. And then I just start from there. So by the time the book’s finished, I have a fairly plain copy until I put it through Grammarly and see what the comments, what they want me to put there. But yeah, so I would do about 2000 words a day and probably … I can write about 500 words an hour, so that’s four hours of writing and then I do other work. Whether it’s updating my website, or files or booking marketing. I do that for a while.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, and how ’bout your editing process?

Leeanna Morgan:          When I finish the manuscript I go through it myself and have a read from top to tail, because quite often how I write is, I plot out the whole book in a very broad sense and I use Michael Hauge’s six plot structure, I think it’s called, it’s marvelous. And so I do that and then after every third chapter, I review where the book’s going, and if I’m still on track. If I’ve had any brainwaves or if the characters, sort of want to go off in a different direction, I see if it’s working with the story. So by the time I get to the end I’ve got a nice, clean copy and I’m happy with the storyline, that gets a Grammarly check and I then mom has her read. She’s my first editor.

Leeanna Morgan:          And, so she’s wonderful, because she picks up all of the … she’s at a fresh read so she picks up words that my brain has overlooked, or areas of the story that don’t make sense to her. If she has to reread something twice, I know that it needs to be looked in, simplified. Or if I started a new scene and it really doesn’t follow on from the previous one it just kind of leans the readers somewhere that they’ve got no idea where they are.

Leeanna Morgan:          So she does that and then I make all the edits and then a friend called Ellie does a grammar, sort of, sentence structure and she knows about all the things I don’t know about writing, so she’ll go through and just see any words that I’ve used too much or the tense might not be right. I might be writing the past tense, using inactive words instead of active words. So she does that, and I’m really pleased to say that I’ve gotten better as I’m going along, so it’s less edits to do, and then it goes to Penny in the States, and Penny does a check of Americanisms. So she makes sure that I’ve got the right terminology. Sometimes the way Americans say something is different to how we would say it, even though it’s the same words.

Leeanna Morgan:          And she picks up the odd thing that Ellie, mom and I had missed, which is great. And she also makes suggestions. She just had a suggestion with a book that’s coming out next week, to add a little bit at the end and it actually made the story much better, so yeah, so it’s quite … and then it’s ready for formatting and uploading to Smashwords and Amazon.

Sarah Williams:            Excellent, so it’s just the two aggregators … well, Smashword’s there, Gregator and Amazon?

Leeanna Morgan:          And Google Play, sorry.

Sarah Williams:            Google Play.

Leeanna Morgan:          Sorry, I’ve just started using Google Play, so that’s quite an exciting adventure. Sometimes it makes it easier, because when I get more than a couple of books, even just updating a big measure and new books to reflect a new series being added, or other information you want to update, it take forever if I had to do iBook files. No, and then Smashwords, Amazon, Google Play, NOOK or anyone else I could upload to. I don’t even know if I can from New Zealand, so I just use those three and it works well.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, and you don’t put your books in print at all?

Leeanna Morgan:          Yes, although I use CreateSpace, and to be honest, the only reasons I’ve actually published the books in hard bare, ’cause if they’re going to be entered in competitions, where I need to have a paperback version, because I found that most of my … my books sell really well ass Ebooks, but I’m not gonna get two or five or six sales a month, is [inaudible 00:14:50]. And for the … the formatting’s fine, I’ve just started using Valon, so that makes … basically it’s done straight away, the click of a button, but … [inaudible 00:15:08] what are you doing? [crosstalk 00:15:10] the dog. He’s giving his best [inaudible 00:15:16].

Sarah Williams:            Come on show us the dog, he’s gorgeous.

Leeanna Morgan:          He took … Oh, I’ve had a dog before. So, where was I? I’ll go back to the beginning. So I use … I published my books in paperbacks through CreateSpace, but the sales aren’t very high each month so it costs about $120 for … euros for me to get a full cover made after I’ve had the Ebook cover done, and I really, sort of haven’t wanted to go to that length, especially when I’ve probably got about 10 or 12 or 15 that needs to be done, it sort of adds up. Eventually I might, but not quite at the moment.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah. Well your doing brilliant sales with just Ebooks. So, tell us a little bit about how you get some of those sales, is … BookBub, promotions? What are you doing now?

Leeanna Morgan:          Well there’s a couple of things [crosstalk 00:16:14], sorry. Couple of things. BookBub is great. Really had to … [crosstalk 00:16:21], you just had to keep persevering to get a spot on the email they send out, and that really can launch a series or a book. And this follow on sales hopefully attract readers to sign up to newsletter list and it just grows, and hopefully they keep reading the other books in the series. I use … I think that publishing a book every three months, at the most, is really important and it gives the readers something to look forward to without it being too big a leap. Pre-orders are really important. Amazon only lets you do a pre-order three months in advance, whereas SmashWords, it could be up to a year, so depending on the platform. So, that gives you a little bit more flexibility and it also encourages people to order the next book in the series after they’ve read that one, ’cause you have one [inaudible 00:17:19] at the bank or you buy this, it’s all pre-order, click here and wait and go.

Leeanna Morgan:          And I also … I don’t use Facebook advertising a lot, although I want to start doing that, but I’ve been on a bit of a mission to get the last book finished in time, so I’m going to sit down and do some more Facebook advertising. And I also advertise on places like eBookSoda and Robin Reads to get the English market, and Friend booksy, or Bargain Booksy, and some other sites that booksy, just to keep my name out there in books and people’s vision.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, brilliant. So, where would you say most of your sales come from? Is it in the US?

Leeanna Morgan:          United States and I have … I probably have 75% of my sales come from the US and about 10% from Austrasia, ’bout 10% from UK, and ’bout 5% from anywhere else in the world. So, yeah it’s been really good. I mean, to be able to give up a six figure salary where I was working before, to write full time is amazing, and before I made that decision to resign from my job, I wanted to make sure that my sales … and I had a number of books out so that if the market goes up and down, which it will and it has, that I still had the capability of more than meeting, or even just meeting what I was earning in my other job. So that’s what I’ve done.

Sarah Williams:            Oh, that’s a really great way of thinking about it too. Yeah, don’t give up your day job before you can make that much money in your writing.

Leeanna Morgan:          You know, I think last year I made about $260,000 and so yeah, that’s great, but we saved … and we made a couple of overseas trips, so that … I went to the Romance Writers of America conference and then had another trip as well, but we saved that money because … take out a bit of living expenses, ’cause we would’ve out of my old salary, but in my brain it helps me know that I’m doing the right thing because I’ve got that cushion for the future if anything should happen, and … so that’s what I do.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, that’s fantastic, congratulations. Tell us about your association with romance writers at New Zealand. How long have you been with them?

Leeanna Morgan:          I joined up with them way back when I was 30 years old, when I first thought I was going to write a book, and you know, I let my membership lapse and then I think I rejoined about 2013 or 2014, ’bout 2013 when I first started writing. And I was president a couple of years ago and vice president before that. So it’s great and organized some great conferences and I met some lovely people. I love the group, It’s a Wellington Kapiti chapter. Has some awesome people in it. And some really, really neat writers, who write totally different into each other. And it’s just a nice friendship and it’s a nice recharge of your batteries once a month to go to the meetings.

Sarah Williams:            Excellent, have you ever done any of the workshops, like presented a workshop?

Leeanna Morgan:          With that group I’ve done a couple of little ones. I presented a conference a couple of years ago. I did a self-publishing 101 workshop, and it was fun. And I … when I was the library manager at Kapiti library, I set up a learning center with the digital team. So we teach other people how to self-publish. So, that was great, that carried on after I left, which is great to see. So yeah, I like sharing because people have shared their information knowledge with me, and so if I could help someone else, I’m really grateful to do this.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, that’s it and I am also a member of the romance writers at New Zealand and I’m going to my first RWNZ conference this year so definitely come and say hi, and I just love the Facebook group, you know. It’s so much sharing and support. There’s no tall poppy syndrome or anything like that. It’s the same with the Australian one as well, I just love, you know … have a question? Ask it. It’s great.

Leeanna Morgan:          Everyone’s at a different sage in their writing journey and not everyone’s self-publishing, there’s a lot of writers who are their own contracts with publishing houses or with agents and, sort of trying to get their first publishing contracts, so it’s really nice to have those different experiences to draw on.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, would you ever consider going traditional, if you got a really nice offer?

Leeanna Morgan:          I have. I have had an offer and I turned it down and I don’t have an agent. When I got my first goals, because back in 2014 self-publishing was still, oh you do that and you can’t get a publishing contract, which is really sad, but anyway, that was the way the world was back then. So I luckily found an agent in New York who signed me up, and she was sending Forever Dreams, my first book around the publishing houses and there were two people that were interested. And then I just asked the question, which I should have asked in the first place, is how much does a first time author get? And she said about $8000, plus extras if it sells over a certain range, and I knew what two of my friends were making from self-publishing and I, at that stage, I said no, I’m not interested. I’m keeping the way in.

Leeanna Morgan:          So I got the book back and started self-publishing, so … and then last year Austronesian publishing house gave me a call and asked if I was interested in talking to them, and we did, we had a really neat conversation, but with traditional publishing, is quiet … there’s a lot of constrains. You can’t publish a book every three months, and it’s basically once a year or 18 months and the money that I receive from a book that I publish at the 18 month period as self-published is far more than what I could get through an Austronesian publishing house. If that publishing house had very good contacts with the American market, then I might have considered it, because it’s the American market where my sales are, but the big one wasn’t to be and it was fine and I had a really interesting conversation, we learned about each other’s work a lot, so I loved it. So, here I am still self-publishing.

Sarah Williams:            Excellent, no regrets. That’s fantastic. So what are you working on at the moment?

Leeanna Morgan:          I just finished a book called The Wish so that’s published next week, and that was the last book in the Protector series and so, that was fun to write. The book I’m writing now is called One and Only and it’s the book four of the billionaire series. I wasn’t going to have a book four in that series, it was only going to be a three book series, but I read the Amazon report, or Kindle report, author report form last year, and I did a breakdown of if you have your first book in series free, how many books you need to have had published after that to break even or make money to make up for the lost sales in the first one, and so their magic number was four books in a series.

Leeanna Morgan:          And at three books you’d probably break even, but at four you’re making money. And so I decided to write four books in this series, and I had a character that would fit in beautifully to that, and … i have two characters, a hero and heroin, so I’m writing that. I wouldn’t recommend it, I quiet … my brain kind of likes a consecutive thing, and, but I also have my cover designer, Steven Novak, from Novak illustrations, is doing two series for me, starting next week. The next series after the one I’m writing now, is going to be set in Switzerland. Though it is a heroins from Bozeman, and that’s going to be exciting. I really … it’s a real … badies on the run from badies and gun … and finding treasure and oh, just … I’m really looking forward to that. So, that’s going to be my first ever trilogy, I don’t know what I’m doing.

Leeanna Morgan:          So I … write by the seat of my pants. I’m going to send Michael Hauge … get to the conference just to make sure I’m on the right track with it before I start with this trilogy. And I’m also going to Steven so he can do another four-book-series covers for me, and that those books will be set in Saint Augustine, in … specifically on Anastasia Island by Florida in the States. So reaching out from Bozeman, but they all got their ties to Bozeman.

Sarah Williams:            That’s it, so you’ll be … I mean all of your books, anyway, you can just read. You don’t have to read them in any particular order, so that’s brilliant. And, so just tell us quickly about your cover designer. So, you’ve got your branding done so beautifully, so they just kind of change the pictures?

Leeanna Morgan:          Yes, when i first started, I did my covers myself and they were very similar to what you see now, except the font of my name was different. So, it would take me three weekends, plus hours of looking through shutterstock and bigstock, I think it’s … lots of photo places to find images. And I decided that that was time that I could better spend writing rather than creating covers, ’cause I’m not a designer by trade. I was happy with them, so what I did is I found Steven. I saw another cover that he had done, so I contacted him and he … we talked about font, ’cause I wanted something simple, but I wanted a font that would stand me through whatever I wrote, whether it’s contemporary romance, romantic suspense, dramas or whatever, because I didn’t wanna have to go back and change all the covers.

Leeanna Morgan:          So, I had my own covers up until book four, I think. And then we … all he did, he kept the same pictures, but we just did the … we settled on a font for my name and carried on from there, so the thing to remember when you’re looking at covers, if anyone’s listening and watching, remember that each genre has a specific color pallet so … for instance, contemporary romance, you’re looking at more softer, pastelly … generally pasteller shades, pinks, blues, purples, softer imagery.

Leeanna Morgan:          If you’re going towards a romantic suspense, it’s more earthy colors. Browns, coppers, golds, reds, you know, real earthy tones, so keep that in mind when you’re choosing your colors. I’ve used it … with my Protector series, two of the books are more contemporary romance, although they do have a little bit of suspense in them, so those covers are brighter than the other ones in the series. So when people see the cover, subconsciously they get a different feel for what’s coming. So just remember that when you … but Steven Novak, from Novak designs … or Novak illustration, he’s amazing and very reasonably priced.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, that’s fantastic to know. Excellent. So, where can we find you online, if we wanna follow you on social media?

Leeanna Morgan:          Go to www.LeeannaMorgan.com, so everything’s there. All the little book … follow me on BookBub and my Facebook connections up there and you can email me, or you can sign up for the newsletter, so yeah it’s good. I like hearing from people. I like hearing how my stories are touching lives. It makes writing a real pleasure.

Sarah Williams:            It does, doesn’t it? Well thank you so much for this today, Leeanna and I will come and say hello to you at conference in Auckland. We might have to do a little Facebook Live together.

Leeanna Morgan:          Oh boy, it’s getting a bit techno with people, I hope you know what you’re doing.

Sarah Williams:            I have a little bit of research to do on it, yeah.

Leeanna Morgan:          Flaunt it dear.

Sarah Williams:            Well thank you so much Leeanna.

Leeanna Morgan:          Thank you, you’re very welcome Sarah. We’ll see you at conference.