Episode 12
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Welcome back to the Women in Writing podcast. My name is Christina. I'm a six figure freelance writer, and I'm also a coach for other people who want to grow their freelance writing business to gain more freedom in terms of time and financial freedom. Today, I have a super inspiring guest. Her name is Morgan Gist McDonald, and she built From a freelance writing career and a freelance editing career, a multiple seven figure business, all while having four kids, and that in just a matter of years.
She's super inspiring. Welcome with me, the wonderful Morgan.
wElcome to the wonderful Morgan. I'm so excited to talk to her. I was waiting for that interview for a long time and I'm so [00:01:00] excited to have you. I'm quite honored. Hi, Morgan. Thanks, Christina. I'm super excited to be here and can't wait for our conversations. Give me a good one. I can't wait as well.
So do you just want to introduce yourself or? Sure. So I'm founder CEO of Paper Raven Books. We are a publishing services company and I started out as a freelance editor and writing coach. So we can talk about any part of that journey or all of it. That's amazing. So it's very inspiring. Like my podcast is really about inspiring others, especially other women to that there is a Korean writing and there's also a Korean editing.
And there's a career in being like a freelance writer or editor. So do you just want to let me know, like, why do you start, why did you start freelance editing then? So I was in graduate school, I was in a PhD program for sociology and thought I [00:02:00] was going to be a, tenure professor teaching sociology.
But in grad school, I found that I really much more enjoyed helping other people with their writing. So I was helping other graduate students with their. Theses, dissertations, some of the faculty I was helping with their articles, and I really loved kind of the writing process and really the editing process or coaching process much more than doing my own research.
And so I left graduate school. I did continue to teach. I taught at Malloy College in New York for a couple of years while I was just getting my footing, right? Because when you make a big. pivot in life. And of course, lots of other things were going on at the same time. My husband was graduating law school.
I was having my first baby. And then, a couple of years later, a second baby trying to do this freelance thing on the side while teaching. Everything's like life gets chaotic pretty quickly living in New York. I can totally relate. I'm at that stage now, with motherhood entrepreneurship.
I'm also pregnant with our [00:03:00] second one. So super exciting. And yeah it's just crazy. So it's really good to hear for me that there's like other people who really love like the academic writing process, because, that's where I come from. Like I'm in a doctorate program myself. And I Never thought like when I was in school that I would do that.
But like when I wrote for my master's and I also supported other students, I like really loved academic writing. And most people said, Oh, I just hate it. I just want to, have my job and just get done with it. But I think it's an enjoyable process and. Yeah, that's really cool. Very inspiring.
Yeah. My first clients for several years were mostly other academics. So even after I left the program, I got my master's, but did not continue on with the doctoral work. But left the program and still maintained good relationships with. fellow students and junior faculty. And I would just reach out to them occasionally and be like, Hey, do you have do you have anyone that might be [00:04:00] looking for an editor or a writing coach?
And they would often say, Oh, I just talked to someone who's looking for an editor and they would connect me. So those, even just a handful of my own personal connections, like over time enough, reach outs, started to build my own. client base. And I was just editing, evenings and nap times and weekends and in between teaching and trying to keep the family together.
But just slowly over time really grew that editing and writing coaching business. And I liked the academic stuff. It slowly morphed into more and more trade because people would just refer me to other folks that they knew. And so as that network expanded I naturally went more and more into people are just writing like a nonfiction book or a memoir or something else.
I, I think. Even when we start with a niche, there is going to be space to expand. If we want to, I say that to my clients all the time, because I think [00:05:00] there's a lot of people that say, Hey, I just love writing or I just love editing. I just love, reading other people's work and I pick up on like mistakes or something that they could improve and we don't necessarily always have to have a niche.
I feel like there's also like an open space, but like you said. Network is super important. Was there any point where you found your jobs on like freelance platforms or was it never really necessary for you? So I had a profile on, before it was Upwork, it was called something else. I don't even, I don't remember what it was called anymore, but I didn't ever really spend enough time to get clients through that kind of platform.
So I really spent much more time in internet marketing. Blogging, SEO, social media were what I started to build up in addition to personal reach outs. But even editors, like I mentor editors today. In fact, we have a call, later on this afternoon on me talking to a group of editors and every single time we meet, I'm like, remember, [00:06:00] reach out to your existing network and you don't have to badger them and ask them for work, but ask them if they know anyone.
Who might be looking for an editor? It's a super easy ask. They can connect you to someone if they want. They don't have to. But it's, every, at least every year reach out to people, reconnect. Hey, how you doing? I saw you went on this amazing trip. Hope everything's well. By the way, I have a couple of slots opening up.
Do you know anyone who might might be looking to work with a writer or with an editor, whatever you're Exactly, and then it's not that feel of cold outreach, like you message complete strangers on LinkedIn because I like clients as well that they, they worked with other coaches and they said my other coach, not that it's bad or anything, but my other coach told me to send out a hundred cold DMS on LinkedIn to get to work.
But then it's like a full time job just doing that. Instead of focusing on the editing. eXactly. And you need both, right? You're when you are your own solopreneur kind of freelancer, you're always going to have [00:07:00] some amount of your time that is devoted to sales and marketing, as well as some amount of time that you're just doing client work, as well as sometimes it's just, finances and bookkeeping and invoicing, right?
So you're always going to have all of these roles. But yeah, can you how little sales and marketing can you do in order to be successful? Feed the freelance business is I think an important question just for optimization. And especially like when you grow, I feel like, yes, the first couple of years, I think are difficult and then like you have to figure things out, but.
If you keep going it will be rewarding at the end, right? Yes, absolutely. I would say as long as you I would say the most important kind of marketing thing to do in the early days is Keep a list of individuals that you are in contact with. Reach out to them on a regular basis.
And then, yeah, have some sort of personal social media account. Like you're, Christina, your Instagram is amazing, right? So like something like [00:08:00] that, where you you show up and you are visible and people remember you. And then beyond that, I don't know. Sure. Have a, or if LinkedIn is your platform, put your energy towards LinkedIn.
I personally don't. Love the sort of Upwork read the types of platforms. It's just not my jam historically. And I think it's not really, sustainable also especially for beginners, like putting a lot of energy and trying to get a job and then it's like a dead end, like it's not really how you build relationships as well.
Yeah. How did you then start your own company? And how is that like amazing transition? Yeah, so for the first few years I was just operating under my own name and just. Filing taxes as a normal, right? As a normal person. And then in 2013, I did create an LLC. That was Paper Raven Editing. I felt like I wanted a brand name.
I wanted to be able to eventually work with other editors.[00:09:00] Because I had just had enough of a taste of the business side. I was like I think I would like to maybe grow a business and work with other editors and I could be the one who maybe brings in the clients. And then, I have a team that helps me fulfill on the project.
So I started that in 2013 and then did start to grow a little bit of an editing team, took on more sales and marketing, had more reach outs and blogging and social media and sales calls and all those sorts of things. And we had enough clients that went through the editing process with us. At the end of editing, you give them a word document and we were working with books primarily out.
That's the sort of nonfiction books was the niche I was focused on and they would come back to us, six months later, nine months later and say, thank you so much. I loved working with your team. I'm so proud of the book. I can't get anyone to publish it. nO one will publish this book.
I've been rejected by all the publishers. I, people keep telling me to self publish. I don't know how to self [00:10:00] publish. Could your team help me figure out how to self publish? And I was like, I know how to write a book. I know how to edit a book. I don't know anything about publishing a book. I wrote a book.
It's called Start writing your book today. It's like all the things I learned about writing a nonfiction book, put it together, published it in 2015, and said, okay, I think we are really going to double down on books, the whole book process, editing the book, designing the book, publishing the book in this sort of self published style.
And then I created a new LLC. See Paper Raven Books rebranded, in a very DIY kind of way, change the name and all that sort of thing. And at that point we became Paper Raven Books. And that was, the beginning of where we have become now. So 2015 we published my book. In a handful of other clients, and I said, I don't really know what I'm doing yet.
But if you don't mind being a guinea pig, we will charge [00:11:00] you very little to be a guinea pig. And we help them publish their books. And then year over year, we just publish more and more books. I think this past year, we published over 100 books. Wow. In the year 2023 and hit 1. 2 million revenue.
That's zooming out over eight years. We steadily grew. I love like that journey of you, like that you didn't settle, like you, you saw what is the demand? Like what? What do you clients need and how can you support them? And that's amazing that you figured it out yourself.
So when you published your own book, like who helped you, did you just figure it out on your own or did you have people in your network or did you hire like a coach or like, how was that? I I mostly figured it out myself. I don't mind technology. Like I built my own website and that sort of thing.
So I don't mind getting in there and like reading the help articles and watching the YouTube videos and figuring it out, hire pieces like cover design. I [00:12:00] went to 99designs. com. We still use 99designs. com to get like a cover concept because you can, it's crowdsourced. You create a competition with a prize, a cash prize, and you pick a winning design.
And so I worked with that designer on the cover and then I also hired him separately for the interior. And then I hired a, like a formatter to help format the files. Although, to be perfectly frank, I didn't know how to hire well. So I ended up fixing the formatted files myself anyway. And these days it's so much easier.
There's so many more like softwares and things like Atticus, A T I C U S, Atticus is a formatting software, vellum. Vu sorry. V-E-L-L-U-M. Vellum is a formatting software, both super easy to use. We didn't have those in 2015, but but now it was, it's way easier to format books and then yeah, just uploading and figuring out what Amazon wanted.
Keywords and categories and it was a lot of research. But I [00:13:00] think, like when you come from an academic background, it probably means you already like research , like you self-selected. It's worth it at the end of the day. And you're curious as well. I always feel after I like started my masters, like you become like more critical as well.
Like I want to find out myself, like I don't want to trust any article on I don't know, like here in the UK, there's like the hello magazine, whatever, that's not really about research, it's just something like someone's opinion. I'm really critical with figuring it out myself as well, but that's great.
But the whole process changed a lot over the last couple of years. It has changed. There's still there's still a little bit of why are you self publishing kind of question mark, but it has reduced significantly. And now more and more we're hearing people just of their own accord say, I think I want to self publish my book.
I want, I think I want to keep my intellectual property or I want to. Publish my book faster. I want the book done this year. I don't want to wait three years or I don't want to go out to agents and, or, so there's, there are a [00:14:00] lot more people who are coming to us and saying, I this idea of self publishing and that's huge.
That's different. Amazon of course is like the gorilla in the room, love it or hate it. Amazon is where readers go to buy books. And so we really, we have to continually update our kind of best practices around how do we get books to be discoverable on Amazon? How do we get reviews on Amazon?
And then we use that as a foundational platform for, authors then going out to bookstores and selling, selling in bookstores. So do you have a team that only does the marketing as well? lIke the marketing process in terms of like book publishing and like just figuring out like what is the best Marketing strategy or yeah, good Sorry, because I guess like not everyone that works with you might have a lot of people might have a big following already But not everyone might have a big following, right?
Yeah, some people have a big following. Some [00:15:00] people are, new authors, debut authors, or maybe even making a change. We work with, now we've broadened we work with non fiction and memoir. Especially some of our non fiction folks, they might already have a business, right?
They might already have an email list and we can use that for their marketing. But if you are just releasing your first fiction novel or your first memoir, you might not have a following. And really And like any way you slice it, you're going to need to optimize the book for Amazon. So we do have team members who like, that's what they do.
They do research. What are the keywords on Amazon that are working for this type of book right now? What are the categories that are going to be the best categories? How do we get reviews on the book? Even when someone has a platform. You still have to go out and get reviews from your platform.
And then we also have our own review team that we pull on and ask them to read an advanced review and an advanced review copy and then leave a review. So yeah, we have team members who focus a lot on okay, this [00:16:00] book, how are we bringing this book to market, which is different than the marketing that like I do for the company to let authors know that, that paper, even books, exists.
And it's different. Fiction and non fiction is very different then to publish and to handle. And I think you talked about like the business model, right? Yeah. So the actual publication process, right? Like it's a main script and a word document, and then, you get a cover design and you format the files and you upload the files.
Like all of that is pretty much just the same across the board. You're producing a book, but the business model behind the book is pretty different. So for instance, like. Mine was a nonfiction book that I wrote to build my business. And if you go to Amazon and you type in, start writing your book today you'll see it.
You'll pull that up. It's got, a couple thousand reviews. So I've really, worked on the review process, but there's a free offer at the beginning of that book. [00:17:00] I offer the audio book for free. Just provide your email address and I'll send you the MP3 file and you get a free audio book.
Now, of course. We know what the value of a lead is, right? If someone is even just looking at a book on how to write a book, I want to have their email address because I might be able to, offer a service to them. So that was what really helped me to grow my business from 30, 000 a year. was 2015.
That was my, personal income was 30, 000 a year from freelance editing and putting out a book with that kind of lead generation built in is what helped me to make that leap into six figures. And so nonfiction, we talk a lot about that. Like the book is to help you find clients. That's the whole point of the book.
Whereas fiction and memoir that's not the point of the book, right? The point of the book is to gather a readership so that they might buy more books from you. So if you're gonna write a novel, [00:18:00] we, when I'm talking to authors about What is this book going to make possible for you?
If the author is saying, I just want to kick out one novel and be done, I'm like, then do it as cheaply as possible, because you're not going to get a return on investment, right? These days it really is, and truly has always been, you write multiple books, right? You write either a series has become quite popular, for readers love series, or writing the same type of book for the same type of readership.
So writing multiple, YA fantasy or writing multiple crime thrillers so that if someone finds one of your books, they might want to buy all of your books and you have multiple for sale. That's the business model for fiction. And then memoir gets to choose. Do you want to create a client based or even non profit business, or do you want to keep writing books in a memoir style?
Because some people have that. goal in their life, Oh, I want to write a book, but they might not think what should be [00:19:00] like the outcome in the next step? Is it just this one book? Is it just for the sake of writing a book? Then yes, you're probably right. Like just publish it and then be done with it kind of thing.
But yeah, I think it's a. It's very interesting what possibilities they have, right? Yeah. And the reason I think it's important, if you were working with someone on their book when I'm mentoring editors, I'm like, one of the first questions you need to ask them on the sales call is what does this book make possible for you?
You will get a reading right away. about how much they're willing to invest. Yeah. Because it's not that important to them. They are not going to pay much money for an editor or a writer or anything else. If they can see how this book is important to their business or their author career, and they are passionate about what's going to be possible with this book.
Now we know they're going to be willing to pay an amount of money, for professional to, to work with them. Exactly. And you [00:20:00] have to make sure that Like your company is protected too, if the process takes longer, right? Because a lot of times they might have a goal in mind. But so is the client always writing their own book?
Or do you have like writers that help them write? Or do you have writers that completely write their idea? Or how is that usually? We have worked with ghost writers but not That's not the most common situation. For us, probably the most common situation is the author is writing their own book and then we are, coaching them through the writing process and we're editing the book once the manuscript is done.
Amazing. That's really cool. So the prime question, like how did AI affect you and like the whole business, like the whole industry, I would say. I was more ready for bigger changes to happen. I think they're going to be slower than we had anticipated. Just because. [00:21:00] AI has a lot of potential, but it's not fully realized yet.
I know there are people, and we have seen manuscripts where people like use AI to write the whole book, and then from a professional book editor's perspective, you read that manuscript and you're like, this is trash. Like it makes sense. It is coherent and it is mostly logical, but it's mediocre. No one's excited about this book.
It does not have an exciting perspective, or philosophy, or methodology, or framework, right? Or narrative, even. Or compelling characters, or plot twists, right? It just, it sets the baseline for, we are all going to expect. A bare minimum, coherent, logical book without typos, right? That's the new baseline, but it's not really that great at generating truly new creative ideas.
It can help the writing process but not, doesn't replace the human writer. Yeah, maybe it will be someday we use it for [00:22:00] editing. We run it through Grammarly ProWritingAid that kind of thing, just to make sure that we caught everything. But that's mostly we do. Sometimes if we need to brainstorm a bunch of subtitles for a book, we'll run it through AI and say, provide 30, Alternatives to this subtitle.
And it will give us something neat to, that we hadn't thought of, or a description for the book. Sometimes we'll give it like a format, follow this format for the description. Write a description for this type of book and it will generate, some neat ideas, but it's more of like an assistant.
Joanna Penn talks about it like the AI assisted writer. And I like that philosophy a lot. That's true. Yeah. That's what I think too. It's definitely not at that point, like you said, if you're like a professional writer, like you can pick up like what's AI and what's not or if you're someone that reads a lot, like it's not, it's not at that point, like not at that level at all, where you think that's anything good.
MAybe you would rather read an AI generated book than a badly written book. But you would not rather read [00:23:00] an AI generated book. Instead of a well written book, like the well written book is still, I think, human, human original with maybe some AI assist. A hundred percent. Yeah. So do the writers or your clients, do they really make money off their books?
Or is it more like you said, Part of their brand or part of their like getting clients and part of becoming known and creating an audience or do you think they generate a lot of income from the book as well? And with that question in mind, like sometimes you see these, ads online, Oh, create your own book, upload it.
We show you the whole process. You can make a thousand in passive income and that goes up to 10 K a month or whatever. So what do you think about this? I talked to a lot of people who've been through those programs. I'm sure. And aren't making that money, right? So I don't know. I haven't been through those programs.
I don't know what their [00:24:00] methodology is. My personal philosophy from having been in this world for going on 15 years now is, If you need to make money from book sales off of one book, don't do it. Don't do it, right? Don't do it. There's way too steep of a learning curve. It's a huge amount of effort, not only to either write the book or supervise a ghostwriter on the book, but to get the book out and marketed.
And it just do something else. If you're going for exactly one book. Not worth it. However, again, non fiction, if you're writing the book because it's going to bring in clients. Now we have something really to talk about. That's how I've grown. My seven figure business is off the back of a book.
One of our clients, Tom is a, he works with C level folks of fortune 500 companies. He launched a book. And it was all that the way he does strategic planning retreats and he had 300, 000 worth of [00:25:00] clients within a month just because book launch helped him to reach new clients or reach out to existing clients and book new clients, right?
So you can make a lot of money off of a book if it's part of a business model. And then for fiction authors, I always tell people, look. You can absolutely launch an entirely new fiction career we've had Tracy Borgmeier is she wrote the Hayley Harper series and she was a, an engineer by training and then had kids and took a break from work and really wanted to write middle grade books like novels for girls in science.
Over a period of some years, she wrote five books. And now, yeah, she's selling thousands of dollars worth of books every month. But it wasn't one book that she just tossed out there and it sold instantly. It's usually multiple books over multiple years, continuing to market those [00:26:00] books. And then over time you're gathering that readership and everyone who finds you, they buy not just one book, they buy The whole series, right?
And then it's a business model. That is so cool. Yeah, it's really inspiring. Like I just looked her up. Like it's really inspiring, like what you can start. And again, like the sky is the limit. If you have the time and that's what I, Tell like my clients as well, if you have to really make fast money, then, like you have to have a backup.
It's not like you can live off your writing like instantly of course there's people that do it, but it just creates so much pressure on you, so you don't really want to do it, like you can build and you can create something, but it's more like slower and for the people who have, the time and the persistence of keep going.
Then, it's not like you see it on social media, all make five brand a month from, months, number one or whatever, it can go past [00:27:00] if you have the right people to work with, especially like in the freelance world, I would say, but I think like in the publishing world and like like passive income wise, yeah, really difficult.
If you have writing skills or editing skills or both working as. In the service industry, like getting clients is absolutely the fastest path to cash. A hundred percent. Write a book on the side for sure. Or build up your social media on the side, while you're doing the work, build up your email list while you're doing the work.
But if you need the, if you need cash, first thing you do is go get clients. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. You really inspire me. I should write my own book as well. Again. As long as you have clients, Christina,
yes take five, 10 hours a week, write the book in a couple of months, totally doable. I will not come to you and say Hey, I need money. I want to write a book today and make money tomorrow. That's right. [00:28:00] That's so cool. Thank you so much for that conversation. That was definitely super inspiring.
That was super inspiring. Thank you for hosting this conversation. It's a really important one to have for everyone who's interested in writing and working from home and doing the whole motherhood thing. This is an incredibly important conversation. So thank you for hosting. And you said you have four children, right?
That's, you made it work also with your children. Yes. Yeah. I have four kids. The first one was born in 2010 and then the next was 2012 and then 2014 and then 2017. So this was all happening in a, babies and toddlers were in the mix the whole way through. The last question, do they understand like what you're doing?
Like that you build that legacy. Are they already interested? Obviously they're super young still, but are they already interested in Hey, I want to be like mom and like work, like in this industry or like, how is that? I think it's [00:29:00] helpful for them to see the pros and cons.
So my husband works for a company. He loves the company he works with. He loves the job that he's doing. And then they have me who's doing more of the entrepreneurial thing, which is a little bit more, I don't want to say scattered, there's just, I'm more likely in some ways to work odd hours or have, these weird projects that need to happen.
And so they get to see both, which I think is really helpful for them. And yeah, some of our kids are more like, Oh, I want to start a business or I want to, work with clients. And then some of our kids are like, I think I might just want to. Go to school. That sounds great.
Thanks for sharing that my husband has like a corporate career as well. So we are also like like similar. Yeah. Thank you so much. That was an amazing conversation. I will pop all the information below. So whoever is inspired, they can reach out to you. I think There's a free quiz on your website as well.
So if they want to know how, what is the best route for them to [00:30:00] publish their book, they can go through the free quiz and then you would reach out to them, right? Yep, so if you're interested in kind of the book publishing process, that's paperravenbooks. com. And then also we are, as I mentioned, I mentor book editors.
So we've partnered with the Professional Book Editing Association and we offer training and mentorship for people who want to edit books specifically. So that's linked on Paper Raven Books as well, but that's the, yeah, the Professional Book Editors Association. Perfect. That's amazing. Thank you so much.
Absolutely. Thanks, Christina. Thank you.
Yeah. Yeah.
Wow, what an amazing episode. I really enjoy talking to Morgan. She's so inspiring. And I love how she talks from the heart. And she's that multiple seven figure entrepreneur. [00:31:00] And she made it to my podcast. I feel really honored. If you want to chat with Morgan, or if you want to take the free quiz on her website that we talked about, just head over to her website.
I popped the link below. Follow her also on Instagram and me on Instagram, please as well. I'll pop our information below. So if you have any questions, any feedback, you can always email me under hello at with Christina. com. And if you enjoyed this episode, please share it and rate it. Can't wait for the next one and speak very soon.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
