Interview with Andrea Glass

Emma Dhesi  00:00

Hello, I’m Emma Dhesi and welcome to another episode of turning readers into writers. If you’re brand new here, welcome. And here’s what you need to know. This is a community that believes you are never too old to write your first novel, no matter what you’ve been up to until now, if you’re ready to write your book, I’m ready to help you reach the end, I focus on helping you find the time and confidence to begin your writing journey, as well as the craft and skills you need to finish the book.

Each week I interview debut authors, editors and industry experts to keep you motivated, inspired, and educated on all things writing, editing, and publishing. If you want to catch up, head on over to emmadhesi.com, where you’ll find a wealth of information and tools to help you get started. Before we dive in, this week’s episode is brought to you by my free cheat sheet 30 Top Tips to find time to write.

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Okay, let’s dive in to today’s episode.

Andrea Susan Glass is an award winning ghostwriter and book coach for first time nonfiction authors. For more than 20 years, she’s ghost written dozens of books, and copy edited hundreds of non-fiction books. As a book coach, she’s guided countless new authors to write and publish their book some the bestseller status.

Andrea is a longtime instructor for the University of California, teaching classes in the creative writing and copy editing certificate programs. She wrote the best selling book, your fabulous first book, how to write with clarity, confidence and connection to guarantee that new authors would have all the essential preparation to write their own fabulous first book.

Learn more about Andrea and her book coaching programs at AndreaSusanGlass.com. So let’s find a little bit more about Andrea and her journey to coaching. Well, thank you, Andrea, thank you so much for joining me today. I’m thrilled to have you here. 

Andrea Glass  02:57

 It’s my pleasure. 

Emma Dhesi  02:58

So I wonder if you could start just by telling the listeners and myself how you got started in writing what brought you to the wonderful world of writing?

Andrea Glass  03:08

Gosh, I talk about this in my book that I started when I was about five years old. And I used to write poetry and little songs and I would make little books like craft objects. And I was just told growing up that you can’t make a living as a writer. So I always wrote but I put it on the back burner. And then I took a class an evening class in writing. And I started writing reviews for plays and movies.

And eventually, I submitted that to newspaper and I got paid for it. And the first time I got paid for my writing, I was hooked. And so I started writing articles for magazines and got paid for that too. And then eventually I had a few book ideas. And I spent probably about 10 years writing small books, kind of gift type books, and seeking an agent which I had for a while and seeking publication. And at that time, self publishing wasn’t very popular.

But I did self published a book in the 1990s. And I couldn’t sell it because I didn’t know how to sell it and we didn’t have Amazon. So I said, you know what if I wrote books for other people, and I got paid up front, and I didn’t have to worry about selling the book. So I put out a notice in a newspaper and I got my first ghost writing job and I realized that, hey, I’m still writing and this is fun, but I’m getting paid for it.

And the very first book I ghost wrote I won the San Diego Book Award for the Best structure book and that sort of clinched it that yes, I could write books. I was good at it, I could get paid for it. So I did put aside my own writing dreams for a number of years and started writers way in 2000. And I edit, copy-editing to ghost writing because sometimes a client would come with a book already finished and didn’t need ghostwriting.

And I did the cleaning up, I call it polishing your book to perfection or near perfection. It’s no book ever gets perfect and after that, then I also added book coaching because there were some people who needed hand holding from the beginning of their idea for a book, all the way for to keep them on track and to give them accountability, support, encouragement and feedback. So writers way offers ghost writing, copy editing, and book coaching. 

Emma Dhesi  05:55

So what is writer’s ways that your sort of company? 

Andrea Glass  05:59

That is the name of the company, it’s my service based business, I also do construction, I teach for the University of California. And I have held webinars and live classes when we had live meetings. I’ve taught for several of the local universities where I help live classes. And most I teach people how to write an E-book in 30 to 60 days because people are looking for shorter books and so a short ebook could be anywhere from 10 to 15,000 words, and it gets people a good start a good practice with their first book, so they don’t get overwhelmed thinking I have to write a 200 page book. 

Emma Dhesi  06:51

So I’m interested in your ghost writing. So when you were ghost writing for other people, how did you kind of get into character so to speak, or take on the voice of the person that you’re a ghost writing for? Was that kind of easy to do? Or did you have to spend time with that person getting to know the sound of their voice? You know, getting to know their voice?

Andrea Glass  07:13

Well, that’s a good question. And because every situation is unique, and I’ve never called myself a cookie cutter, writer or ghost writer, I try to customize myself to each situation. So let’s take one situation, the first book that I was ghostwriting, we got together the author and myself, and we had at that time tape recorder, and I would interview him.

And I would get the discussions transcribed so that this was really in his voice. And as I took the transcription and added to it, and modified it, and cleaned it up and pulled it all together into a book, we still had the author’s for us. Because basically, when you’re working with nonfiction, a book and nonfiction is more like a discussion. It’s like a conversation the author has with the reader.

And so I’m talking to you, and I’m telling you about my area of expertise. This particular book was about how to find honest car repair and the gentleman was building a nationwide car repair service and we found that there were many industries such as the legal industry childcare, senior care, and Car Care, where there was a lot of negativity.

So he wanted to share the tricks on finding honest Auto Care. So if I’m talking to let’s say, my target audience is a female, which women definitely have a difficult time talking to a car repair mechanics because they don’t understand cars generally. The author would say, Now, here’s what you’re going to do when you get into your car and the check engine light comes on. And so you basically find that a lot of non-fiction books will have discussions.

So when you interview the author, you’re getting the author sharing his or her expertise with the reader. Now another author I worked with had written a bunch of blogs and newsletters, so I had his voice in those particular writings that he had done and this is very common with those writing projects.

You will take content that has already been written, but isn’t in anything that looks like a book and so what we would do is create an outline for the book, basically your table of contents, your chapters, and then I would take all of this miscellaneous years of blogs and newsletters, and figure out where they went in the table of contents, and then pulled it all together with transitions and we did some more interviewing with this particular author and then of course, you give it back to the author, and then they go through it and they look at it and say,

What do I have to do to make this really sound like me, because even though the author is not a writer, they can see, when I have put something together that looks more like a book, they get a better handle on how they can modify it to, to give it what they really want to make it sound like them.

Another time I had someone do their own recording, they just talked into a digital recorder, sent it off to a transcriptionist and I turned it into a book. I’ve had people who’ve done webinars, and they had the webinars transcribed and they sent them to me, and I turned that into a book.

So it’s basically making your table of contents your chapter outline, then gathering the content, however it is from previously written material, or from interviews, or from a live webinar, and then popping it into the chapters where it goes, and then pulling it all together, weaving it together, it’s kind of like a tapestry, you know, you have to have connecting threads between the chapters, and it is definitely challenging.

For me, it’s an you have to have kind of one of a big perspective, you have to look at the whole thing as one, and then you have to look at everything in detail too. So you have to have these two different perspectives working at the same time. But it’s very rewarding, and it makes so much it gives so much reward to the to the person who wanted to write a book, but knew that they just couldn’t do it. Either. They didn’t have the time, or the talent. That’s what I usually say.

They don’t have the time or the town, or they just don’t have the perseverance. Everyone who’s written a book knows that it takes concentrated effort. Nobody writes a book overnight, no matter how many books say write a book in 30 days or write a book in a weekend? It really doesn’t happen like that. 

Emma Dhesi  12:34

No, no, it Yes, you’re right, It takes sort of consistency of time and effort. You absolutely right. And now you yourself, have written a book to help people write their book, you’ve written in your fabulous first book, how to write with clarity, confidence, and connection. and a lot of my audience certainly tell me that one of the things that they struggle with is how to feel confident about their writing, because often they’re, they’re beginner writers, their first time writers and so that that self belief is still growing, they’re still working on that.

And so what are some of the ways that you suggest to the people you work with? how they can start to build their confidence? and start to feel feel good about what they’re writing puts a putting out into the world?

Andrea Glass  13:22

Well, I’m glad you asked me about that Emma because when I was considering what to write for my first book, and that did take quite a bit of consideration I wound up doing some interviews and asking people who I would consider my target audience what their biggest challenges were, because why not write a book that meets the needs of your typical audience, then just coming up with an idea off the top of my head, and there were so many books on writing out there that I was a little bit intimidated at first,

I’m developing my own confidence in writing a book that would be a little bit different, and that would be helpful. So some of the issues that came up, were about confidence. And in my book, I talk about confidence in your writing confidence on your subject and conference in marketing. So let’s talk first about confidence writing.

First of all, I believe that confidence comes while you’re doing something, not always before, and you could look at many stars in Hollywood. Take Barbra Streisand, for example, who has always said she’s never confident she gets up out on stage. And the book that was written called feel the fear and do it anyway, some people step into what they want to do without the confidence knowing that the confidence will come while they’re doing it. Because it’s hard to be confident in something you’ve never done before.

So if you’ve never written a book, It’s hard to feel confident writing it. So one way you can start to build a confidence, of course, is writing something small, like a blog. And as soon as you get any kind of positive feedback, your confidence will start to grow. I have to tell you that being a copy editor for 20 years, when I had my first beta readers read my book, and give me positive feedback. And even some negative feedback, I was blown away. Because I didn’t have confidence in my book right away.

And when someone said, this is the book I’ve been waiting for, you know, I’ve been wanting to write a book for years. And I just couldn’t get started. And I’m going to follow your book, step by step, it’s going to be my guide. And others said, I didn’t like this, can you fix this? Or can you do that, I was just so thrilled that there were people who, whether they liked it, or didn’t, they read it, and they gave me some good feedback. So that helped to build my confidence that what I was writing was making an impact.

So I suggest people get some early readers. Whether you start off with short blogs or articles to just build, start building a confidence. And then once you start trying to book get some early readers, and don’t take the negative feedback, harshly take it as constructive criticism, because your goal is to write a book that impacts your readers.

And when you ask your readers if it’s working, and they say, No, fix it, and keep fixing it. And don’t lose your confidence, because you did make an impact, you got them to say something whether it was negative or positive. So start building your confidence as you get some positive feedback in your writing.

Now, in terms of gaining confidence in your subject, my initial fears were at some of the clients fears are that Who am I to write about this, I’m not an expert. Nobody knows Andrea Susan Glass, you know, Who is she to write a book on, on how to write your first book? Well, I twisted that a little bit. And I said, I’m writing my first book along with you, the reader and we’re going to learn this together and everything I’m learning I’m going to share with you.

So I created that kind of confidence in my subject, by saying that I can learn it and I can teach you and you can learn along with me. Also, I read voraciously. My Kindle is full of tons of books on writing, I learned, I built my confidence in my subject by striking, and talking to people in my target audiences seeing what they wanted to know and then the third area of building confidence is in marketing.

And I have to tell you, that’s going to take a little bit of time, nobody comes out of the gate, confident marketing their first book, because it’s your first book, and it’s not a service. If you’ve been in a service business, for example, I work with a lot of coaches and speakers, financial planners, service professionals, they’ve been marketing a service, but a book is a product.

So you have to learn the difference. And you have to learn how readers find books. Generally they find books, either by searching and might go into Amazon or Google look up a particular issue or look up if they’re looking for young adult fantasy, if you’re looking for women’s contemporary fiction, and they’re looking for how to get your cat to stop scratching your furniture, whatever it is, you can use the search bar, but the other way people find you is by referral or by your promotion.

So you need to understand these two different methods of marketing. Whereas people search or people get it by referral. And once you study and you and you learn and I have to tell you, there are so many ebooks and so many blogs, and so many webinars on book marketing and I probably studied intensively for two or three months because there’s two levels of marketing with your book anyway.

One is before you launch it, and one is after you launch it. So you can start to build your confidence in marketing by doing a little bit of it before you launch your book and that’s called building a platform and building a platform means getting yourself out there and letting people know about you. If you’re comfortable on social media, go for it, whether it’s Twitter or Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, just start conversing with people and providing information.

Find the groups if you’re in fiction or non-fiction there are plenty of writers groups and share ideas. Answer questions, ask questions, and get comfortable with promoting yourself in a very low key sort of way and you’ll start to build your confidence when people say, hey, that’s a great idea, or I really appreciated, you’re sharing that information with me and then as you grow more confident being out there in the public, because let’s face it, writers are hiding behind their computers and a lot of writers are very shy and especially now that we’re not out in the public as much.

They may not feel comfortable sharing who they are but I spoke to a friend the other day and author and I said, look, I know you just want to sit and write all day, butyou can just build it and they will come, people want to know who you are. They want to feel a connection to you as the author, so that they’d be interested in your book, people don’t just look for books anymore, they really do like to make a connection with the author and social media is definitely one way to do it and another way is to share with other authors, if you can find five other authors who might like to do a group emailing, you know, some kind of a group promotion together, then that helps you help each other that way.

So slowly, but surely, just learn a little bit about marketing and try a few things and as you get some positive responses, your confidence grows, like I said, you have to step out there and start getting positive results and keep track, you know, find out what works for you, because I had an older client in his 90s. and he didn’t want to do any public speaking.

So I would say don’t get on podcasts and webinars if you don’t want to speak, but do some guest blogging, and get on social media and do things that you’re comfortable with, because you’re never going to shine, and feel confident if you step too far out of your comfort zone. But as you step a little bit more and more your comfort zone will expand.

But I don’t, I don’t ever tell anyone to put themselves in a position where they’re not going to be their best self because they’re so uncomfortable. And there’s going to be some form of marketing that you’re going to find that you’re comfortable with everyone, there’s so many opportunities for marketing nowadays with the everybody being able to reach us where we are in the world, I’m in California and Amazon, Scotland.

So you know, nothing keeps us apart anymore. So find your comfort zone, and build your confidence slowly and, you know, you just have to do it, you have to market your book and your will. I sold one book, I was confident and when I sold two books, I was more confident and when I sold 1000 books, I was really confident.

How to write with Clarity, Confidence and Connection with Andrea Glass

Emma Dhesi  22:58

There’s so much good stuff in there, Andrea, I think also, I just want to point out to our listeners who might be feeling you know, I’m brand new to this, I have not written my first book yet. But you know, listening to you, you’ve been in the industry for 20 plus years, you’ve ghost written many, many books.

But when it comes to writing your own book, you know, you still have the same, the same feelings that all of us have and so I want the listeners to kind of know, everybody has this to have that kind of initial fear is completely normal and it’s parcel of it and I love the advice that you’ve been giving Andrea about taking it small steps and little by little, and that the confidence comes from from the action from doing and the more that you do, the more confident you become and, you know, particularly then if we think about the marketing side of it,

I love particularly for those who are doing kind of more hopefully books or development books, you can go out and sell without being salesy and as you were saying, it’s about sharing information about being of service to people being helpful to people and that’s what drives that connection and will bring people to you and your book about personal development or professional development and so really good three great ways there of growing confidence.

So thank you for sharing those with us. I know that you have, so I know that as parcel you’re helping writers you have this kind of process that you take them through and so what are some of the steps that someone needs to take when they’re looking to write their their book?

Andrea Glass  24:43

Oh, sure. I put together a checklist that helps people follow the path that they need to take. I find checklists are sort of like a plan and as you check each thing off, I find it’s a real good way to keep be self accountable.

As I said before, writers are on a solo journey for most of the time and unless we can hold ourselves accountable, it’s very difficult to stay the whole course, I have seen writers who have thrown up their hands in the middle and said, I can’t do anymore, I’m facing a blank screen or, you know, somebody challenges that come up.

So the first step that I found is the most important, absolutely the most important is what I call in my book, the author aspiration, that could be the reason that you’re writing the book, a lot of people call it the Y. If your y is not strong enough, any of the challenges that come up, can throw you off and I’ve seen this happen with clients who have hired me and then they disappeared and I’ve tried everything to contact them, and they’ve just sort of snuck back into their little shell of fear or whatever was keeping them.

So if your y has to be strong enough, and your y would be, you have this book inside you that just has to come out, or you you’re ready to build a career as an author, that’s one of my why’s I have waited long enough, and I have a lot of books in man, probably one a year is going to be my, my format and then I’d also like to have passive income, which, ultimately down the road, it’s passive.

Some people want to leave a legacy, some people have some really valuable information to share, I have a list of maybe 20 different y’s in my book, and that y will carry through everything else so if my Y, for example, is I want to create passive income, and something comes up, let’s say, a hardship in my life. I know that I have to deal with that.

And yet, keep going because I have to do what it takes to create their passive income. And I’ve talked to other people, like I said, I was talking to a friend the other day, and she says, Oh, I admire you for doing all that. I said, I’m doing what I have to do, because you write a book and then I know I have to market it. If you write your book and it sits there, I’m sorry, I’m not gonna feel sorry for you because you know that you have to do what it takes and so if my Y is strong enough, I will do what it takes and then the second most important thing is the readers why.

Why is a reader going to buy my book? I think there’s about 4500 books published each month on Amazon, and several million a year. So the reader has a lot of choices, and the reader can get a lot of information for free, as well. So why my book? Well, obviously, there’s a reader result and my result in my book is that I want to help every first time author now how to set themselves up for success before they write the book.

My book that I wrote, my fabulous first book is not a guide on how to write your book, but it’s how to set yourself up beforehand and a lot of people don’t think about that, they might just plunge right in, and then they get stuck. But if they figure out in advance why they’re writing the book, and and why the reader will buy the book and then the third thing is who that reader is? going to write a book that meets those goals, rather than a book when they’re finished with the book, and they say, Oh my God, who is this for?

And you know, when somebody says who you’re marketing, for instance, I don’t know, everyone, anytime someone tells you that their book is for everyone, you’ve got to just kind of step back and say, I’m sorry, but you can’t market to everyone. It doesn’t work that way. It just so well. Yeah, you’ve got. Yeah, and frictions even harder, because who knows that? Me an older adult is reading young adult fiction. You know, and I do like young adult fiction. So it’s, it’s difficult. But if you start off thinking, why am I writing the book? And why is the reader going to buy the book and who is the reader, then you’re, you’re off to a better start and so those are my first three steps.

The fourth step is choosing the right subject that meets those criteria because I had to really niche my subject for my book. I didn’t want to wait another book on how to write a book from start to finish, because there are a lot like that. But there weren’t that many books that set the reader up for success on what to do before they wrote the book. So that’s what my subject was and then the fifth step, which I think is really important, and I wanted to definitely get to this Is your overall vision? If people don’t, or the overall objective, I call it if people don’t look at the big picture, they get stuck.

Because some people say to me, Well, how much should I put in the book? And how long should my book be? And how many pages and how many words? They say, Well, are you planning on writing another book. Because if you are, maybe all of everything that you know about your topic doesn’t belong in one book maybe belongs in two books, or three books or a series of books.

One of my goals down the road is to write a series of 12 books. And they’re short ebooks on different aspects of book writing, so that people can just buy the one that they might need, for example, how to come up with your book title, a whole short ebook just on how to write a book title. So you have to think ahead, and you have to have your overall objective, your overall vision.

So you know how much to put in that book? And where you’re going? Are you going to just write this one book and put it all in there? You’re going to write several books? Are you going to write a book and then a workbook? Like I’m working on a workbook? Are you going to do a course? Are you going to morph into services, do some coaching.

So your overall objective is the fifth step. And it will really help you know how to position the book that you’re working on.

Emma Dhesi  31:20

I love that. 

Andrea Glass  31:22

It’s up to the big picture. 

Emma Dhesi  31:23

Yeah, but there’s a strategy behind it that either this is a one stop shop, or it’s part of something bigger, and then you know how to write it and then you know how to market it and and who it’s for.

I love that you’re encouraging people to think about that big picture and that’s the strategy that comes behind it. Because often, we can get really excited about an idea and we just want to do it and get it out there and then we don’t really know what to do with it once it’s done to it’s brilliant that you’re putting that in place.

Now I know that there’s a few other steps but rather than give them all the way here today, people can actually find this checklist on your website and and so I’m going to link to that in the show notes so that people can can go and find it but it’s not your website isn’t andreasusanglass.com and I’ll…

Andrea Glass  32:13

Right I call it the write a book checklist and on the first page, you can check off different items as you go through them and then there’s an expanded version of what each of them means.

Because it really is important. If you want to take yourself seriously as an author, to have some planning behind it, and not just sit down and say, I’m going to write a book, and then all of a sudden, you’re finished, and you don’t realize who you wrote it for and how you’re going to find them, a lot of people talk about planning your marketing, even before you start the book.

And I have two opinions on that. Because sometimes it shows an author off and they get all nervous about it. They say well, I don’t know anything about marketing. And it’s, you know, now I’m scared about writing in my book. So if you’re, at least think about it a little bit. But don’t get caught up in the fact that you know nothing about marketing.

But as you’re writing it, still think about the reader still write to that reader, because you are going to have to find that reader when you’re doing your marketing. But don’t get caught up in it. And in a lot of people say oh, for a year before you write your book, start your marketing. If it throws you off, if it distracts you too much, and then don’t do it, just think about it. And maybe keep a few notes.

You know how you plan to market or, or study a little bit about it but don’t let it distract you. Because I have seen that happen with some of my clients and they they got so shell shocked. They just put their manuscripts away and said, I’m sorry, I can’t sell. I can’t mark it, I better not write a book. So you know, don’t let it sidetrack you like that.

But you really do need to think about it in advance because otherwise, you know, you spent a year or however long writing a book and there it is 200 pages for fiction, maybe 150 for nonfiction, and you don’t know what you’re going to do with it. 

Emma Dhesi  34:13

Good advice. Good advice there. Now as well as your your breakers in addition to your first your fabulous first book, you also help writing you’ve mentioned it briefly before but with coaching. And so what do you notice that are some of the common things that your clients need? Need help with? What do they come to you for coaching for?

Andrea Glass  34:37

Well, because I have the steps that I just talked to you about? Very often they will come to me with those issues like who is my target audience for this book? and how can I start the book, so that I’m reaching my goals of what my author aspiration is and what the reader result is, as I call them so the most important thing that we do is discover why this author is writing the book and who they’re writing it for, and what they want the reader to get out of it.

And then we work together to develop a table of contents. I think that’s often one of the hardest steps for new authors when they come to me, is I need an outline, I have all these ideas floating around in my head but if we create, you can call it an outline or table of contents or chapter outline, at least we have a plan.

And then all of this content that’s floating around for them can go into the different chapters. The other thing that they often need help with is a book structure. I call there’s two structures to the book, one is a book structure, and one is a chapter structure. And we all have books on our bookshelf. So I always say go take a look and see what you like, chapters, a book structure would be how you have the front of the book, you might have acknowledgments in the front.

Nowadays, if you’re writing an E book, we don’t like to put too much in the front, because when you’re going to Amazon, and you have that look inside feature, you want readers to get to the book as quickly as possible. So you try to keep your frontmatter very slim, and put as much in the back. But we look at the book structure we’re gonna do, we are going to have a prologue or we’re going to have a foreword, that sort of thing and then we look at a chapter structure, my chapter structure, I love to start my chapters with a quote, I think quotes are very inspirational.

I also like, I also put some photo images in my book, I just, especially with an E book, I just like coloring, and images and then I go into perhaps, a lesson and then I go into a story, my stories and my ghost stories about my ghost writing clients and I have a little ghost there and I thought that was really catchy and then at the end, there’s an action step. So that’s a chapter structure and I think a reader feels comfortable if each chapter is structured the same, so they get a sense of continuity.

So those are some of the issues that I do with book coaching. Another thing is accountability as I said, because we’re on a solo journey, sometimes we have trouble sticking to our schedule, just by ourselves. So with accountability coaching, I will get on the phone or zoom once a week, for 15 minutes or so with a client and check in and see if they reach their goals for the week.

Maybe their goal was to write a chapter that week. Sometimes a coaching wouldn’t involve having them send me the chapter and I would offer feedback. So there’s no different levels of coaching, basically, you know, how many hours a month Do you want to hire me for, to either do a check in or to do feedback and give you feedback, it’s really good in a sense to work with the code from the beginning, because then you’re getting feedback right away, and you’re not writing a whole book, and then find out at the end that it just didn’t work.

And so if I give feedback on the first chapter, and I show them, what’s working, what’s not working, then each subsequent chapter gets better and better, because they’ve had that feedback along the way. And then there’s also group coaching, where we would get on zoom. And I would give a short lesson. And then people could ask questions, and then there would be laser coaching, if people have a specific issue.

So there’s just different levels of coaching at different price points, based on what someone can afford and what they need and I just like to be like I said before, very customizable, and be flexible, and give people what they need to succeed.

That’s my goal. I know the joy of writing a book and I want everybody to experience that. 

Emma Dhesi  39:09

Yes, it is. It’s life changing. And when you write your first book, it can really change your life in ways you didn’t realize before. 

Andrea Glass  39:17

We use Amazon every day, every day I look at my book cover. I look to see if anybody’s written a review. I look to see my ratings. It’s just exciting. 

Emma Dhesi  39:29

It is it is exciting. That’s exactly the word is I have to admit I I still pop on to Amazon every now and again and have a look as well. But you’re expanding how you how you help rates again, you don’t sit still. And so now you have an upcoming online course as well. Is there anything?

I know it’s Judo to be released later this year, but is there anything you can tell us about it? 

Andrea Glass  39:54

Well, first I’m doing a workbook because I love action steps. I believe that Unless you take action, you’re not going to make any significant changes. So whether you’ve read my book or not, the workbook has fill in the blanks so that you can answer these questions. What is the author aspiration, what is the reader result, cetera.

And there are pages for you to write down how you’re planning out your book, and what’s your overall vision, and, and that sort of thing. So the workbook will be released in April, probably. And then I’ll be working on the course, the course will be an expanded version of the book. What I found and you and I discussed is people learn in different formats.

And we want to make all the different formats available. So however someone needs to learn, it’s available for them. And people do like online courses, because it’s a very sequential thing. If they, for example, they can, they can take most online courses or self study. So they can take it whenever they want. So let’s say you do, let’s say I have six modules. And each week you do one module.

That way you get to build on your learning in an a pace that works for you that you can fit into your lifestyle, especially people who are still working full time and working on their book. So each week, you’ll have a lesson that you can follow, do the work and then the course will most likely have a once a month Q and A live q&a on zoom.

And then anyone who has questions about the course that can answer it, my goal is to create online courses, it’s a little bit more passive, so that people can work on their own time, I find that the live ones take up a lot of time for people, they take up a lot of time for me, and I want to spend more time writing and coaching.

So when you have an online course that people can take on their own time, I think that works best for everyone and then if you have once a month a live q&a, at least they get an interaction with the creator of the course and they feel comfortable knowing that there’s someone that they can talk to if they’re having any challenges and of course, anyone can always contact me by email, or set up a free consultation on my website,

I offer 30 minute free coaching for anyone who wants to interact and get some specific help because it again, you know, we’re talking about relationships here. And there’s so many people doing what we do but you find someone that you feel comfortable with, you know, either relate to someone or not. I’ve had a lot of different teachers over the years, I’ve taken a lot of course and now I’m just working with one, marketing coach Derek Decker.

And I decided he was the one and we get on zoom once a week. And any question I have about my book writing and publishing journey he answers and it’s it’s very helpful. Yeah, yeah, to know that you’re not alone. Again, nobody can do this alone. The book writing and publishing journey is not meant to be solo, you need a copy editor, you need a book coach, need a web designer, you know, you need a lot of different people on your team and maybe you can’t afford them all at once.

But you will have to have several people helping you because if you want to do a professional job, you know, you need to have a team. 

Emma Dhesi  43:42

Yeah, absolutely. Andrea, you have given us so much great stuff in this conversation. Thank you so so much. If listeners want to find out more about you online, what’s the best way to do that?

Andrea Glass  43:56

Well, I would suggest they go to Andreasusanglass.com And they can see my programs that I offer my coaching programs. They can buy my book, they can download my free white book checklist. And they can sign up for a free strategy session or coaching session on my website, I have the calendar program and I love I love to talk to people nowadays.

I used to do it all by phone, but now we’re doing it by zoom and I find that when I talk to clients or potential clients on zoom, it’s just such a difference you know, they want to feel comfortable with who they’re working with you’re giving me your precious words and to know what you’re giving them to is so different than just going on to some anonymous website and hiring an editor coach or a ghostwriter that you’ve never met.

You don’t know if they’re going to do a good job for you and you don’t know where they are in the world. So I will encourage people to set up a consultation before they work with anyone and I’m happy to speak to anyone and even if they don’t want to work with me, at least I can give them some advice. So andreasusanglass.com and find everything you need there.

Emma Dhesi  45:20

Lovely. Well, thank you so much. It’s been a real joy talking to you today. Thank you. 

Andrea Glass  45:25

You too Emma, Delightful.

Emma Dhesi  45:29

Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you find that helpful and inspirational. Now, don’t forget to come on over to facebook and join my group, Turning Readers Into Writers.

It is especially for you if you are a beginner writer who is looking to write their first novel. If you join the group, you will also find a free cheat sheet there called three secret hacks to write with consistency.

So go to emmadhesi.com/turning readers into writers hit join. Can’t wait to see you in there.

All right. Thank you. Bye bye.

If this interview with Andrea Glass was useful, you’ll love:

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Emma Dhesi

Emma writes women’s fiction. She began writing seriously while a stay at home mum with 3 pre-school children.

By changing her mindset, being consistent and developing confidence, Emma has gone from having a collection of handwritten notes to a fully written, edited and published novel.

Having experienced first-hand how writing changes lives, Emma now helps beginner writers find the time and confidence to write their first novel.