Self-Publishing Success: Lessons, Creative Freedom & Midlife Magic with Barb Hopkins & Kelly Garcia

In this episode of Writers With Wrinkles, we dive into the world of self-publishing adult fiction. Authors Barb Hopkins and Kelly Garcia share how they turned frustration with traditional publishing into indie success, building their paranormal mystery series Chronicles of a Cursed Midlife from the ground up while navigating the challenges of co-authoring and marketing.

Guest Bios:

• Barb Hopkins – A former marketing director and freelance writer turned hybrid author, Barb writes middle grade fiction and co-authors the adult Chronicles of a Cursed Midlife series. Her dual path of querying middle grade while self-publishing adult fiction demonstrates persistence and versatility.
• Kelly Garcia – Known for her humorous, feel-good paranormal fiction, Kelly co-authors the Chronicles of a Cursed Midlife series. A veteran of the querying trenches, she now thrives in indie publishing, celebrating magical chaos, found family, and creative freedom.

Key Discussion Points:

• Why Barb and Kelly chose self-publishing for their adult series.
• The inspiration behind Chronicles of a Cursed Midlife and its themes of midlife empowerment, friendship, and second chances.
• The biggest challenges in indie publishing: editing, design, distribution, and discoverability.
• Essential tools and resources: Amazon KDP, Vellum, Canva, Publisher Rocket, Bowker, and 20BooksTo50K.
• How co-authoring adds both complexity and creative energy.
• Marketing lessons from Facebook takeovers, in-person events, and building an online community.
• Barb’s dual journey: querying middle grade while finding success in adult self-publishing.

Conclusion:
Barb and Kelly’s story shows that self-publishing isn’t just a backup plan—it’s a thriving path to creative control and connection with readers. Their success with adult fiction proves that persistence, community, and smart strategy can empower authors to take charge of their careers, even while pursuing traditional goals in other genres.

Links/Info Mentioned:

• From the Mixed-Up Files…of Middle-Grade Authors: https://fromthemixedupfiles.com
• Arcane Covers by Karen Dimmick – Cover design
• Publisher Rocket – Keyword research tool
• Bowker – ISBN provider
• Kindlepreneur – Self-publishing resource
• 20BooksTo50K Facebook Group – Indie author community

Transcript

BETH MCMULLEN

Hi, friends. I'm Beth McMullen. And I'm Lisa Schmidt. And we're the co -hosts of Writers with Wrinkles. This is Season 4, Episode 18. Today, we're excited to welcome authors and self -publishing experts Barb Hopkins and Kelly Garcia to the show. Barb is a former marketing director and freelance writer. After nearly 20 years of freelance, she stepped away and now writes books filled with mystery, deep friendships, and a healthy dose of magic. As a hybrid author, she's currently querying her middle grade books while self -publishing an adult series.

BETH MCMULLEN

Barb is the co -author of Chronicles of a Cursed Midlife, an indie paranormal mystery series filled with magical mayhem. Kelly writes funny, feel -good paranormal fiction where magic, mischief, and middle life collide. Her stories are filled with found family, swoony romance, and a healthy dose of magical chaos because adventure doesn't end at 40. Amen to that. Yeah. And it just gets more interesting at 40. When she's not dreaming up hijinks for her heroes, she's happily buried in a good book, sharing space with her cats, dogs, and an ever -growing collection of coffee mugs. Welcome, Barb and Kelly. Thanks so much for being here. We're so excited to have you. Thank you for having us.

BARB HOPKINS

Thank you very much.

BETH MCMULLEN

Yeah. So before we start grilling you about self -publishing, I wanted to take a minute to ask you to talk about the series that you write together, Chronicles of a Cursed Midlife. I mean, it sounds so entirely up my alley, just the description of it got me all excited. So let's just bring our audience in and tell them a little bit about it. So if it's something that they get excited about too, they will know to go out and purchase it.

BARB HOPKINS

So Chronicles of a Cursed Midlife are... A series of books of you've got two very smart, strong women in their 40s who, when our story starts, they've been estranged and they come back together. And there's some mystery. There's some science. And there's definitely a lot of magic. Our first books is set back after they've come back together. After about 10 years or so, they've been apart. And it's the story of how they, essentially how they kind of have to save each other. The heart of it is more about friendship.

KELLY GARCIA

of it is more about friendship. I mean, everybody writes about romance. So this had to do with like repairing old friendships. I think that's something that resonates with a lot of us, particularly in middle age, I think.

BARB HOPKINS

You get a lot of paranormal books out there with main characters who are in their 20s. There's nothing wrong with that. That's great. I love to read them too. It's fabulous. However, you know, it's kind of nice to see ourselves on the pages. People who are in their midlife, we have life experiences and a wisdom and in a different way of doing things. And it's great to be able to write those characters and share that and put them in those adventures that we want to have. Who wouldn't want to uncover a magical book and decode spells and maybe find a cool crypt? a mummy, you know, and have all cool things happen to you. We all grew up with Indiana Jones, kind of want to play along. And as writers, we get to do that sort of thing. And I think readers are enjoying that aspect.

BETH MCMULLEN

I love the premise of that book. It speaks to me. I swear to you, if an alien came down to our planet and looked at, say, the romance genre, they'd think that nobody ever lived beyond 30.

LISA SCHMID

So how did you guys... decide to write this series together? How did you guys meet? How did you know each other? And before we jump into it, I love the cover so much. I just had to say that. Just whoever did the cover design, it's fabulous. But how did you guys decide to write the series?

KELLY GARCIA

So quick shout out, Karen Dimmick at Arcane Covers did the covers. So I think credit is due there. I think they're beautiful. And thank you very much for the compliments. Barb and I were critique partners. We were both working on middle grade things and she was querying and I had, I was actually on my fourth agent, if you can believe it. I was on my third and then on my fourth agent. And when my fourth agent left publishing, I was ready to indie publish. I kind of was done with a traditional process. So I asked her if she wanted to write this series.

BARB HOPKINS

Yeah, I think the text message that came across that day was, I have kind of a crazy idea. Can I call you? Yeah, I'm down for a crazy idea. What's up? I didn't have it really on my bingo card. That wasn't at the moment. I mean, I... I had indie publishing in my head for adult books because I wanted to write a cozy series that I had. You're playing around with it in your head. I'm like, yeah, I'd like to indie publish that. I can do that. I mean, it's sort of a side. And then Kelly said this, and I was like, ooh, we could do this. This would be so much fun. And we have a similar writing style. I think we just knew, you know, we'd been critique partners, I don't know, four or five years, maybe. A while, yeah. Yeah. And it just, it worked. It was a lot of work at first. A lot of work.

KELLY GARCIA

And the whole idea of jumping into the indie realm was intimidating, right? Very. And so doing that with someone instead of just being there on your own, you know, that was immensely helpful. It was huge.

BARB HOPKINS

Very. And so

BARB HOPKINS

Yeah. There was a lot to figure out. I remember specifically us having conversations before Kelly had brought up, you know, doing this partnership about, you know, just talking about where we wanted to be in publishing, you know, and what our goals were. And, you know, and Kelly was, you know, at that time, I think you had just gone to your new agent. And I was, I don't know, you were with an agent somewhere and I was still querying and multiple books, you know, I was querying middle grade and YA, trying to kind of find my foothold. And we were discussing where we wanted to be like in five years. And it seemed like this would be the avenue that would get us to where we had wanted to, where we were wanting to go. And also have really some fun writing, writing things that we really wanted to do. And I think a lot of people, indie authors, when you hear them, when they ask like, well, why did you choose indie versus self -publishing? A lot of them say, well, I want the creative freedom, right? And while there is that, and I think that was a factor, it's also, I think we both wanted the ability to have control of our own publishing timeline. I think that was really important.

KELLY GARCIA

I mean, I think that's really important. I spent, you know, and it sounds like Debbie Downer for a little bit, but it's actually a very happy ending story in that I spent so much time looking for that and searching for that traditional deal. I mean, as Pitch Wars, I've got about 30 contests. I've had six books on Subright and nothing ever clicked. And at the same time, you're hearing about people who do get contracts and God love them. They get beat up just as bad, you know, because there's so much that goes on that publishing is hard, right? I mean, one of the brilliant things about being an author is that other authors support each other. And thank God for that, because it is a hard road to ho. So at some point, like looking at all those external forces, it was for me, it just felt like enough of that. I'm taking control over my own destiny. It's time that I watch out for me. And that was an empowering moment. And yeah, I don't, you know, regret changing directions. Not one bit, not one bit.

BETH MCMULLEN

I think that's actually, that's a kind of an important point, right? Like, cause you guys have some perspective. And I think a lot of people, when they're standing on the threshold of making that decision, they're like, am I going to? What am I going to feel like in a little while once I start going down here? So to feel, to have you say that you look back at it with a very positive feeling, knowing it's hard. But, you know, as you said, publishing coming from any angle is hard. That's actually a good thing for people to hear, I think. Our first question for you was about this very thing, self -publishing. How did you choose that? Are there other things that factored into your decision other than obviously that sense of control, managing your own destiny, working on your own timeline? Was there anything else that frustration with traditional publishing that goes in there? Was there anything else that you felt like tipped you over into making that choice and saying, yes, this is the path to publication that we're going to follow?

KELLY GARCIA

I mean, I'll just say that one of the things that did it for me was that over COVID, there was this group of authors about, I think it was the Fabulous 13, and it includes Dorinda Jones, right, if you've ever read any of her books. But they got together and they decided that they wanted to craft. books about middle -aged heroines and as i was reading you know they were a lot of them were traditionally published and their publishers were saying there's no way we're not going for that but as i you know they they took this what they call parent midlife paranormal women's fiction And as I was reading what that was about, it just really spoke to me. The topic, it was, you know, when you hear, like, I love to read. I read about a book a week. And to have somebody say, hey, there's this new subgenre, and you've never heard about it before, but it's totally your jam because it's got everything that you would want in a book. And knowing that these people who are just really good role models went out and... made this really great niche, I felt inspired. So, you know, kudos to them. I hope a lot of authors feel that way. Yeah.

BETH MCMULLEN

It's kind of amazing that you can do that now, right? You can see this space that it used to be impossible to fill because unless the traditional big five, whoever said, okay, we're going to take a chance on filling this space, now you can fill it. And as you said, people are like psyched to see that stuff there. I know that that that there are definitely things out there that I'm like happy they're out there. And I don't think they would have been if they tried to be, go down the more traditional path. So that's a good point.

BARB HOPKINS

And I think I, you know, also with, with Kidlet, with, with middle grade and YA, YA as in the indie publishing has been there for a while and, and, and it does really, really well, especially, you know, YA fantasy, obviously. But honestly, we're starting to see more middle grade indie publishing. And it's doing well. People, it's finding its market because I think the walls are breaking down. There's not as much the stigma. I mean, like us, there's professional books that are being put out. They're good books. They're not. It's different than what it was five years ago, 10 years ago. And so I think that if you're on the fence with it, it is something that you can definitely consider, especially, you know, maybe you've got two or three books that you've already written and you've sent them all out there. And for whatever reason, and it doesn't mean necessarily maybe the books aren't bad. It just may be the timing and the market and what's selling. And, you know, it's all it takes for it to get, nope, sorry, we can't, you know, we're not interested. But you can take that power back. I think that people are even going to be able to publish now picture books and absolutely anything. It's just you had to crack the code.

KELLY GARCIA

think that people are even going to be able to publish now picture books and absolutely anything. It's just you had to crack the code. Somebody had to figure out how to approach it and what to do, how you would take that next step. And again, I'm going to say the author community is awesome because You hardly ever, I'm sure they're out there, but you, for me, I've been blessed that at least the authors I run into aren't, you know, looking down at me like I have secrets. I'm not going to share them with you. Right. They're usually quite supportive and happy to talk to you about things. So I think if you want the information and you're curious, there are people out there who are willing to help a hundred percent. Yeah.

LISA SCHMID

It's interesting because Barb recently spoke with a friend of mine who is a middle grade writer, and she's exploring self -publishing. And I pointed her in your direction because one of the things that I noticed about your book, it took me a while to figure out it was self -published. So I initially had emailed my library, or I tried to order it online for the library. Because every time I have a friend with a book comes out, I always contact my local library and say, will you please buy this book for the library? And so they didn't have it. And I was just like, OK, well, it must not be like in a system someplace yet. So then I tried to order it from my local indie. And they're like, I was down there and they're like, yeah, it's not in the system. And I'm like, oh, my gosh. I think this might be self -published. And so then I started looking at it. I'm like, no way. You do. You break all those misconceptions that people have out there of how a self -published book looks. I mean, this book is amazing. Everything about it is amazing. And that's one of the things I tried to convey to my friend. I said, you know, these women. took control of their own publishing path and did a fabulous job with it. There is no, it's seamless. It's beautiful. And the other thing I just have to say, your marketing is stellar. Like everything you do is just, it's everything involved with this series is top notch. So kudos to you. And that's why I wanted us to have you on the podcast. So I want to jump into the next question because I could just go on and on about you guys, but you know. Got to stop at some point, right? So what platforms or tools did you use to publish this book? Because I know that is a big question on everyone's mind. So there's so much out there,

KELLY GARCIA

much out there, you know, you kind of have to pick what you want and stick there. So we're exclusively on Amazon in terms of, you know, distribution platforms. And we're in KDP and that's, you know, we made that. So for people who don't know, KDP is a subscription program. And so once you put an e -book into KDP, you're signing a contract basically that says you won't put that book up for sale, at least the e -book, anyplace else. So, you know, you're restricted just to KDP. you the opportunity to kind of break out and find a readership that is people who are really dedicated to reading and honestly probably don't have the money or the library resources around them to buy a couple books a week or whatever. I think that's where that market tends to go. And so I think it's a really nice place to start, a good place to get your foot in the door. And it's a place where a lot of indie authors find their success. So that's the primary platform that we've used. And in terms of like programs, you mean like programs that we use to like format the book and all of that? So I bought Vellum. And Vellum is a product that is exclusively for Mac. My friends who indie publish... And who have PCs use something called Atticus. I understand that's a little more frustrating. I think it's becoming better. But it's a little more frustrating, a little bit more difficult to use than Vellum. And it really is kind of drag and drop. You know, you upload your manuscript and you say publish it. And then you kind of scroll through the fonts you want. And it packages everything. So very, very simple thing. To do. Yeah.

KELLY GARCIA

And then, you know, just there are a host of other tools that we've had to use, you know, Canva, Barb's the Canva expert. And that's been. Yeah, really. But there's things like, you know, K rocket. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and publishers rocket that we, we like the first time we. We put the books up. I think I probably spent four or five hours just going through Publishers Rocket. And there's this whole process that you go through just to find keywords, right? So you know how to get Amazon to target your book to your readers. And Publishers Rocket allows you to go in and look at the top selling books that are similar to yours. and then mine their data for what keywords they're using. So you can kind of target your book to the same group of readers. So that was one that we used. What else did we use? I don't know. We used many other programs. OneNote was important for us in Google Docs, but that's because we're writing.

BARB HOPKINS

Yeah. Co -authoring is a strange beast.

BARB HOPKINS

There are different considerations if you're doing it with somebody else, especially where actually we found this out where Amazon is concerned. Because when you're a co -author, Amazon only allows one of you to be the publisher of your books. And that person who holds the publisher, so Kelly has experience with this. I did not going into this at all. You had published a couple anthologies and a couple of your own books.

KELLY GARCIA

We had, as I'm, you know, a couple of writing groups. So a couple of friends and kind of an anthology thing. So I had experience with one book. So a little bit of - I had nothing.

BARB HOPKINS

Zero. I had never done any of this because I had been on a traditional path. I was very focused on that and that's where I was going. So I didn't have a KDP account. I didn't have any, nothing started from scratch. It was a lot. But as a co -author, so I went in thinking I could put our books on my KDP account and I could see everything. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Amazon does not let you do that. I know. We had so many conversations where I was like,

KELLY GARCIA

many conversations where I was like, that can't be right. You didn't ask the right person. You can't be right. I mean, it doesn't make sense that,

BARB HOPKINS

that, you know, as a co -author that I can, that Amazon will not allow me to see our sales dashboard, or I can't go in and I can't place an Amazon ad for our books because that's how this works. I've talked, actually, the people I've talked to on the phone have been really nice with KDP and have been helpful and very sympathetic. You know, obviously, I'm not the first one to call in and go, why can't I do this? But that is something you have to consider. And we have to, you know, it makes navigating for us sometimes a little bit more difficult. You know, if I want author copies of the book, Kelly has to order them for me.

BETH MCMULLEN

why do they do i mean what are the explanations they gave you for why they won't allow it doesn't seem to make any sense unless there's something in the financial back end that's difficult for them but come on that's just numbers it's yeah it is yeah the magnificent zone gets to do what it wants right yeah that is very true yeah so

KELLY GARCIA

yeah the magnificent zone gets to do what it wants right yeah

BETH MCMULLEN

is very true yeah so All right. That sounds like a good lead into our next question because that does sound challenging in itself. But what are the most challenging parts of this process that you've encountered where you've had to really sort of rethink or regroup or whatever it is to kind of get over the hurdle?

KELLY GARCIA

For me, the whole thing was the sheer volume of stuff. And I don't want to scare anybody off that's in publishing because We did a lot of stuff that I would not do. Like, you know, we learned along the way, right? We learned a lot. But just the sheer volume of stuff that we had to learn, like ISBN, where do I get the ISBN number? You know, how do I set up the account for that? It was like there was a growing experience on a daily basis. You know, everybody knows the first time you do something, it takes about 10 times as long as the second time you do something. So, yeah, our learning, you know, just the sheer amount of stuff that we were doing was kind of insane, kind of hella hard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

BARB HOPKINS

Yeah.

BARB HOPKINS

I will second that. And I think. part of it too, like exactly what you said, getting all those business bits set up very early on while we were trying to channel creative energy into creating characters and a plot. And not just for one book, we knew we were writing a series. So multiple books and making changes and you have, you know, two different authors so we have our own ideas and opinions and coming together and and while we had been critique partners and had worked you know together we had never written together so you're learning you know how to do that and we had to come up with a communication system and and where are how are we going to do this are we going to you know alternate chapters when are we going to send things to each other where are we going to have a it just all those logistics we ended up using one note which is a little titchy, but to store things, I'm not sure I would necessarily recommend that. But the first time that you publish indie,

KELLY GARCIA

first time that you publish indie, you know, you have your website, right? And the website took a long time. And then you need to get your mailer lights or whatever newsletter account you're going to get set up. Or post office links. Post office. Right. You need a post office box because you have to have a physical address in order to. There's just so many little pieces. And then you would think you would think like I'm going, we'll just we'll get ahead of it. I'm going to set up my Goodreads account. So I have a Goodreads author account and I'm going to set up my BookBub author account. Well, no, they won't let you do that until you claim. book and then they let you set it up, right? So you're in the middle of releasing and, oh, by the way, I need to go in and set up a Goodreads author account too, which, yeah. So the first little bit was hard. There was a lot.

LISA SCHMID

Seems like there should be like a self -publishing checklist somewhere that you can like go down and do each one of these instead of like figuring it all out.

KELLY GARCIA

it all out. I think a lot of people hand those out, right? You've seen a lot of them go, I don't. Okay, I'm really bad about following directions. I have to admit that. So a lot of this I bring on myself, right? But I wonder, I just don't know if they're exhaust, right? Because there's like all these little details that you think about.

BARB HOPKINS

you think about. And again, we were running into certain obstacles because of co -authoring, because not just with Amazon, because I ran into that with Goodreads. Getting my author page verified. would not go through manually. I ended up having to, I ended up having to talk to somebody and we emailed back and forth. And finally she came back to me and said, she goes, I can't get this to go through. She had to do some sort of an override to get me to have my page with those books because it was a coauthor situation. And I'm like, I don't understand this because People do anthologies all the time. And so I don't know, maybe it's something different behind the scenes that I don't know or understand. But there were those things. And so it was days of, you know, those kind of those frustrations, just like, wow, it just never ends. But also, Kelly and I, I think, you know, because we each bring a different skill set to the table. We're kind of a lot, I think, in a way like our duo, like Izzy and May from our books, right? We each have the things that we're good at. And we are that duo. And so you have each other to lean on. And I think that's what made those challenges that we encountered regularly just a little bit easier to deal with. But it's a lot. I bet you they're,

LISA SCHMID

bet you they're, you know, because there's like Facebook has. help groups for everything or discord. There's got to be groups that are like self -publishing, you know, help groups where you can all like tap in because like, for example, we have podcast group. There's a podcast group I follow that gives tips or if somebody is having a problem, I mean, I have to imagine, do you guys belong to anything like that? And if you don't, you should. Oh yeah.

KELLY GARCIA

you should. Oh yeah. A bunch.

KELLY GARCIA

I have discord groups that I think I go to even now and, and back then daily, if not, you know, like I'm lost. What do I do here? You know, friends, discord, Facebook, just Google. Yeah.

LISA SCHMID

So it, it sounds like. We've kind of figured out what you've done for your formatting and your cover design and what tools you've used. I'm curious, did you guys use an editor? Because I've read this and it just, I didn't, you know, I didn't find problems. So I'm curious, did you use, did you hire a copy editor and an editor?

KELLY GARCIA

curious,

KELLY GARCIA

Yeah, you know, and not only did we, but Barb is edits, right?

LISA SCHMID

you know, and

KELLY GARCIA

Yeah,

BARB HOPKINS

I do. I freelanced for so long. So you learned to self -edit along the way because you have to. And then, yes, I've taken editing classes. But we did hire our own editor, Owl Eyes Proofs and Edits. Jenny is our editor. And she's fabulous. We really liked her. We used her for all four of our books. So there is a consistency there, which, I mean, I think is important because she got a chance to know us and our characters and our writing style and the story. And I can't imagine publishing a book without an editor. I mean, because you catch the things that you can't or you don't. Right. You know, as much as I know the rules, I cannot place a comma in the correct space to save my life.

LISA SCHMID

Well, I agree that. But you can't edit your own books because you're just, you know, you gloss over everything. I mean, you can read something 20 times, 100 times, and you still don't see it.

BARB HOPKINS

can read

LISA SCHMID

So, yeah, no, but you can tell it was done professionally.

BARB HOPKINS

So,

BARB HOPKINS

We also use beta readers too for each of the four books, you know, because they give us such valuable, you know, feedback before it goes to the editor. And we did a lot of self -editing along the way because we, you know, we would each write, we would write a chapter and I would, yeah, I'd finish my chapter and I would send it to her and vice versa. And then, you know, because writing. And writing the different characters, well, I could, you know, I can write Izzy. There may be something that I wrote in my chapter that Kelly's like, no, Izzy would say it this way, you know, Izzy speak or may speak. And we would make those changes because you want to have the consistent voice. And as with everything, that takes time.

BETH MCMULLEN

I feel like that is such a nice thing to have, though, you know, for. writing together with the challenges of like controlling the drafts and making sure everybody but having that instant sort of it's not editorial but it's that feedback on what you've done you know to send it to your partner and they're like this is all great we got to tweak this and then you're doing that for them I feel like in some ways you may come up at the end with something that is a little bit more polished than if it was just you working alone because you are getting outside input into the parts that you're doing and vice versa so you get a little bit of that that polishing as you're going as opposed to when it's just you and the words and you're like okay I've read this 30 times I have no idea anymore if it's any good or if it's terrible I don't even know what's happening it's kind of a cool thing to co -writing that I just hadn't really thought about until you said that and and I'm gonna you know I think that even though we paid for editors and we get you know we have

KELLY GARCIA

and I'm gonna you know I think that even though we paid for editors and we get you know we have fabulous beta partners. I have beta partners that I've had, or critique partners that have been in my life for 10 years, right? They're wonderful and they do a great job, but I would argue or contend that when you put your name on the book, you look at it just a little, you know, that ownership, right? You're just a little bit, you're invested in every single word on that page, right? So you know, you're a solid writer, you have another solid writer backing you up, it's only going to make the work better. So that was... Yeah,

BETH MCMULLEN

was... Yeah, I love that. It makes me want to go out and write a book with somebody so that I can have that.

KELLY GARCIA

Yeah, I love

BETH MCMULLEN

I want that. I want that in my life. So we covered some of this already, the more technical aspects of publishing. What are some of the things that you have to take care of? ISBN layout distribution? Does the KDP, the Kindle thing do a lot of that for you? So what are the things that you feel like are the technical things that you still have to do yourself?

KELLY GARCIA

So there's a lot of technical stuff that you still have to do. So even when you, you know, you start with, okay, you're writing a book, but because you're going to indie pub it. You know, even if you're not, but you're going to indie puppet. So you want to make sure that you're writing to market and that you're writing to trends and stuff. So you're doing market analysis as you're building plots and structures, right? I think that is where it starts. But then when it came to the covers, we had to go out and look at covers and figure out which cover artists would capture. what we thought would work, right? And then you have to work with that cover artist. So like some of the first things that she sent over, you look at it and you kind of go, maybe not so much, right? I'm thinking more along over here. This is what I had in mind, right? And Karen's a really, really talented cover artist, right? She's great. But it takes some back and forth, right? To get that. to where it's just where you want it. And so that ended up being like a couple of Zoom calls and things to go over different things that we wanted on the cover. And then deciding between the two of us,

BARB HOPKINS

deciding between the two of us, what are, you know, merging our visions. And in addition to our covers, Karen also designed our Chronicles of a Cursed Midlife logo with the moon and the cat, which so it's on our Facebook page and on any socials that I put together. So we always have that. We have stickers because you got to have stickers. But she did that as well. And then coming up with all of that, it's yeah.

KELLY GARCIA

But then, you know, you have to you have to get you have to go to Bowker. I don't know if I say that right. It's B -O -W -K -E -R. It's the only place you can go to get the ISBN numbers, right? And they're very expensive. So if you go there and do that, be prepared to spend a lot of money and get a group of them because one alone, I don't know, a horrible memory, $100, but you can buy 100 of them at $30 a piece. So you're going to spend a lot more money, but you're going to buy a group of them at a time. So that's something you have to do. And then... Just figuring out how to assign your book to Bowker, because that has their own language, if you will. So our book is 18+. And as an author, I never would have said, what kind of book are you writing? It's an 18 -plus book. I never would have done that. And then just putting things up on Amazon, you have to have... the bank account that the money is going to go into and you have to have a way of shoring that up. But there's also the keywords and the categories and, you know, just understanding how you're going to position that book. So you need to have a little bit of marketing sense before you go in and drop the book.

KELLY GARCIA

you go in and drop the book. I think that's important. You have to know your market.

BARB HOPKINS

Yeah. And, and I think that was something you had done research wise before we even started the project. You, you knew, cause you had looked into, you know, you kind of knew the genre and the market. And so you had that going into it, you know, with this, I had to, you know, kind of catch up, so to speak, kind of came in this, what are we doing? Okay, let's do this. Great. But yeah, you know, you have. I think what we're saying is you can't emphasize enough doing enough research and it'll help you to make things go smoother. Yeah.

LISA SCHMID

I think one of the things that this episode is going to do is help some people to find their way and then equally is scare people off because this is a really labor intensive. project that is, I think it's more than at face value, you think, oh, I'm going to slap a book up there. And it's just not that at all. I mean, there's a lot that goes into the details, especially when it's done as well as yours. I have a question with, when this goes out, is it print on demand or is it there like are certain number of books printed? Like, how does that work?

KELLY GARCIA

Print on demand. Okay. Print on demand. And we, you know, we print bunches of them so we can take them to booksell, you know, that kind of thing, but it's print on demand. And I don't want people to feel like I can see that because it does seem overwhelming. There's a lot of stuff you just learn by experience and there are people out there to support you. It's not impossible. Just, you know, it's a whole new language. So yeah, you can just slap a book up. I guess the point, you know, if you want to have decent sales, then. You have to think a little bit more.

LISA SCHMID

Which I feel like. Oh God. No, I was just going to say, which I think you do. I popped on there just to look at something with your books the other day and I'm like, oh my God, they're ranked pretty high. Like you guys are doing okay.

KELLY GARCIA

Like kudos to you. I think especially I'm not unhappy with sales for any of them. Yeah. It's good. Do you feel like the learning curve, if you look at your experience with book number one,

BETH MCMULLEN

you feel like the learning curve, if you look at your experience with book number one, self -published book number one and self -published book number four, I think you said you're up to four in the series.

KELLY GARCIA

you feel

BETH MCMULLEN

Has it become exponentially easier for you guys to pull it off because you've got it dialed? So, I mean, I think when people are thinking about that fear factor in self -publishing. Or is it somebody who's like, I just have this one book and then I never want to do it again? Okay, that might not be the best use of your time. But if you're looking at a series or a slew of books or whatever, then good to know that once you go through the process and you learn it all by doing and you figure out all those tiny little details and how to take care of them, then your next go is going to be easier and then possibly easier. I mean, it's good to keep that in mind for people who are now running out of the room with their hair on fire. Like, no, not doing that.

KELLY GARCIA

No, 100 percent. Because, you know, as I've said, we've got like we had to set up the Goodreads pages and we had to set up our BookBub pages and we had to set up our newsletter, you know, and all of that is done now. Right. So it really is. If I sit down and look at the amount of time that it takes me to drop a book now versus. back then, maybe 20 hours versus like three hours, right? It's exponentially lighter now. And also, and I wouldn't say that I, we made decisions like we were learning. So we did things that we would not go back and do again. And for example, we did Facebook. party takeovers and we didn't look at her face and we didn't notice she smells like this is the worst experience of my life right no and it wasn't the worst but it was we bought we bought stuff we bought nice stuff and we had like really heavy structured games with like People are going to read our books because they're going to want to solve puzzles because we have all these puzzles in the book that you have to solve in order to get to the end and make sure that Izzy doesn't die from the curse kind of thing. So it was all structured like that. And it took a fair amount of effort. I spent a lot of time.

BARB HOPKINS

I spent a lot of time making these Canva, the posts for this takeover and coming up with these. Yeah. No, but to be fair, the people that joined in, they were fabulous. They were engaged and they really seemed to enjoy it. But it is an awful lot of work for very small reward and return. But it was good to do that as a new author, right? Because you're trying to get your name out there. And this was in a Facebook group where these are the kind of books that these people read.

KELLY GARCIA

I don't even know that the Facebook takeover was the problem as much as it was just us being both kind of type A overachievers. Yes. Right? But it wasn't just we took it over. It was like, this is the best damn takeover of the past century, right? So, yeah, we went a little extreme, I think. Yeah. Yeah.

LISA SCHMID

I think you guys just answered the question. It was the next question. It was, if you could go back, what would you do differently? The Facebook takeover. No Facebook takeovers. No.

BARB HOPKINS

No Facebook

BARB HOPKINS

Yes. You know what? I do have something. I thought about this question. This is a really good question. And there's a lot of, as Kelly said, there's a lot of little things because we were learning on the fly as we were doing it. But one of the biggest things I would go back and I would say to past Barb is. Don't worry so much about release day. We released Cursed Companions. So it's a trilogy. So you've got books one, two, and three. And the fourth book is actually the prequel, which is set before our characters are in book one, which makes sense because that's a prequel. But anyway, so we released that in October of 2024. And it was my very first book ever released out into the world. So exciting, right? But I get so much in my head and there's that anxiety and it was stressful. But I know now I didn't have to be that stressed out because we were prepared. We had done the work. We had newsletters. We had sent our social media out. The online event happened the week of our release. We had actually done a in -person event the Saturday. before our book released. And that was our first in -person event. We got to meet readers. We didn't know what we were doing, but we did it anyway. And it was fun. And we sold some books and we got to talk to people. So we had done the work and it was going to be okay. And I would like to have just been able to enjoy that debut experience more. And so I think for anybody who, whether you're indie publishing or traditional, Enjoy your debut experience, you know, savor those moments and yeah, just enjoy them.

BETH MCMULLEN

Yeah. We tell that to people all the time. I tell that to people all the time and they never, ever, ever listen. It's like, it's like that. You have to learn it yourself. You have to do it a few times. And then you're like, what was I thinking back then? I was completely hysterical for nothing. Got me nothing.

KELLY GARCIA

Yeah. That's pretty great.

BETH MCMULLEN

That's pretty great.

KELLY GARCIA

Yeah. We stressed about so many little things like. Do you put the book up for a pre -order for a month or two weeks, right? And now it's kind of like, who cares? You slap it up when you slap it up, right? It gets there and it's done. It's fine.

BETH MCMULLEN

Well, I mean, that's like the great product of your going back and doing it again and again and again is that you get down to the set of things that are critical and that's what you focus on and that's what you do, which I think is a great lesson for people who are thinking about taking this path to publication is that you're going to be rewarded for going back again and again and getting your ducks in a row and then it becomes a much easier process. So you have that reward at the end somewhere.

KELLY GARCIA

you have that

KELLY GARCIA

If you think about it, if you take on indie publishing, and again, I don't want to disparage anyone because I would not change this path at all. It is incredibly rewarding. But it's the same thing as like you're opening up a small business. You've become your own publisher, your own author, right? It's a substantial undertaking. And that first year you start a business, right? It's hard. It's very hard. You know, you hear I have never started a business before, but you hear people talk about, you know, they slept in their stores and they worked these massive hours. And yeah, there's just there's just a lot to acclimate yourself to. And then it feels much simpler after a while. Right.

BARB HOPKINS

And that leaves you more time, you know, to to hone in on those skills that maybe. were rougher in those first few months. And then each time you do them, they get a little bit easier. And then to also discover new areas that you might want to, avenues that you might want to follow. I mean, for me, I've kind of fallen into in -person events. I really like doing those. I'm in an area where there's a lot of them and they're very good events. The readers are amazing and just super fun. And so for me, I mean, I think, you know, you don't have to, you don't have to have, you know, 20 books out to go do these things. You can go and do an event with two books or, you know, we have our series and it works great and it's fun.

KELLY GARCIA

I would tell anybody who was going to indie publish to, you know, get into 20 books to 50K. the Facebook group. And just go online and find indie author groups and just hook up with indie author groups. Read Kindlepreneur. It's an Amazon resource. There's a lot of information in there about self -publishing. And then give yourself permission to do those parts of it that you're comfortable with and don't feel like you have to do. Everything. Right. Because some of the stuff is, you know, we know with Barb and I, we know that there are some things that I do well that she doesn't and things that she does well that I don't. Right. And that's never going to change because we are who we are. Right. So. It's you just have to give yourself permission to live in your own space and it'll work out and everybody has different goals. Right. So you have to figure out what they are. what you're willing to do to get there and you can make it manageable. Yeah. But yeah,

BETH MCMULLEN

that is a good note to wrap up on. It can be manageable. So people are not leaving scared. I want to have you guys back on at some point to talk about co -writing. I think that would make a really interesting episode. Like how do you write a book with somebody and have it succeed? You know, the nuts and bolts and the higher level stuff. So I'm going to keep that in my mind for. Later. So thank you so much, both of you, for coming on the show and being here and sharing this experience with us. I know that many of our readers are self -publishing curious, and they will love this episode and take away a lot of things to think about and research. So thank you for joining us today. Thank you for having us. It's been fun. Thank you.

BARB HOPKINS

you. Yes, thank you so much. This has been great.

BETH MCMULLEN

And listeners, remember you can find out more about Barb and Kelly and their books by visiting our podcast notes and the blog at writerswithwrinkles .net. And a quick reminder that the best way to support the show is to buy our books. They are available wherever you purchase books, so please do that if you can. And Lisa and I are back next time with an Ask Beth and Lisa episode. Please see the podcast notes for how to send us a question or use any of our social channels to submit a question. Listening.