The Book Writing Industry 101 & the Art of Becoming a Best-selling Author with Caroline Paul

Show Notes

Best-selling author Caroline Paul shares why having an agent is 100% necessary if you want to become a full-time author, the process of writing a book, the importance of clarity and tension in writing and much more.

Thrive Nation on today’s show we are interviewing the best-selling author, Caroline Paul! Caroline welcome onto the Thrivetime Show. How are you!?
Caroline, what was your background like growing up and were you raised in an entrepreneurial family?
1. I was raised on the East Coast with a brother and a twin sister.
Caroline Paul, I would love for you to share about your time at Stanford and how that impacted your career as an author?
1. Clarity
  1. When I am reading someone’s perspective, I can tell if someone doesn’t know what they are saying. You have to know what you are going to say before you put it onto paper.
  2. What I do to clarify my own writing is to make my sentences as short as possible
    1. See Spot run. Spot runs fast.
  3. You have to figure out what you are trying to say and using short sentences to start helps you do that.
2. Tension
  1. Tension is the propulsion that makes you turn the page. You always are asking “Why?”
  2. A lot of “first time” author books can’t keep that tension.
Caroline Paul, how would you describe your time as a firefighter?
1. I became a San Francisco Firefighter when I was 26 years old and I wrote a memoir about it.
2. I realized that I wasn’t the best writer but I knew I could be one of the few in that area.
3. When I first sent out my memoir, there wasn’t any other memoirs about female firefighters.
4. I found a niche that no one had occupied. I found my parking space.
What work of yours are you most proud of?
1. “The Gutsy Girl” because it reached a lot of girls. It opened up the door for girls to be open and confident.
Caroline, what is your process like for writing book?
1. A lot of people aren’t really interested in the audience that they might reach. I really care about the audience. If my book touches one person, I feel successful. I want people to read what I write.
What is some advice would you give someone who wants to be a writer?
1. You can start at any age.
2. If you want to write a book, the hard part is that you have to write. You have to write a lot.
3. Many people think writing a book is easy because we “write” all of the time throughout the day. It is a big difference between writing notes and writing continuously.
4. When writing a book, you have to not just write a lot but also read a lot.
How do you get paid?
1. You get an advance but the advance is against sales.
2. If you get a tiny advance and sell a lot you have a larger chance of writing again.
3. The agent gets paid 20%
4. The publishing house gets paid a %
5. We get about $1.50 from a $35.00 book