The Art of Self-Publishing with Rodney Miles | Rodney Miles

PROFITABLE TALKS

In this episode of The Profitable Creative, host Christian Brim speaks with Rodney Miles, a self-publishing consultant and author. Rodney shares his journey from a non-creative background to becoming a successful author and consultant. He discusses the importance of resilience, the self-publishing process, and the therapeutic nature of writing. The conversation also touches on the impact of criticism on creativity, the significance of passion in writing, and the role of editing in producing a quality book. Rodney emphasizes that writing should be an enjoyable process and that authors should align their goals with their publishing choices.

PROFITABLE TAKEAWAYS

• You can start a creative career at any age.
• Everything in life contributes to your current path.
• Failures can lead to significant personal growth.
• Self-publishing allows for greater creative control.
• Understanding your audience is crucial in writing.
• Writing can serve as a therapeutic outlet.
• Criticism can shape your creative journey.
• Passion is essential for sustaining creative work.
• Finding flow in creativity enhances the experience.
• Choosing the right editor is vital for success.

Ready to turn your PASSION into PROFIT?!? Let's get CREATIVE ➡️
https://www.coregroupus.com/profit-first-for-creatives

Transcript

Christian Brim (00:01.542)
Welcome to another episode of the Profitable Creative, the only place on the interweb where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. Special shout out to our one listener in Fishers, Indiana. I have no idea where that is, but thank you for listening. Joining us today, Rodney Miles. Welcome, Rodney.

Rodney Miles (00:25.698)
Thank you very much. Thanks very much for having me. And hello to Fisher, Indiana.

Christian Brim (00:28.282)
Absolutely. Yes. Yes. I find it fascinating how many, you know, you go through the stats and you see the downloads and it's like all these little one-offs and all around the world really, but some of these towns are just fascinating because I've never heard of them. So, for the audience, why don't you tell us a little bit about Rodney Miles, who he is, what he does, how he got here.

Rodney Miles (00:47.918)
Right. Right.

Rodney Miles (00:56.386)
Yeah, you know, I think that's relevant too for creatives because I grew up not with parents and my parents were creative actually, they were artists, but that's not what they did for business or vocation. for whatever reason, I formed the idea that the only way to go was some sort of business career. And nonetheless, you know, love the arts. So it's been a...

Christian Brim (01:09.767)
Right.

Rodney Miles (01:24.662)
It's been a journey. It's been kind of a circle ending up where I probably should have been in the first place in an art-oriented career. But as far as my most recent and my forever career, which is what I do now, which is being an author, being a self-publishing consultant, I just turned 55, and I started that when I was 40. Thank you so much. So a host of benefits at 55.

Christian Brim (01:46.152)
Congratulations.

Rodney Miles (01:53.91)
started over at 40. Actually went back to college and started from zero, writing it for a penny a word as a ghostwriter. And it's been fabulous. It's been fantastic. So you can do it. And if you don't, well, I also believe there's probably a reason why this was my journey. Everything has led to this. Everything contributes to it now. But yeah.

Yeah, it's good when we end up where we feel like we should be.

Christian Brim (02:26.202)
Yes, purpose driven. Absolutely. So, so we're before you, you did a Rodney 2.0. Were you in a creative business before or creative industry?

Rodney Miles (02:42.496)
Not so much. In college I jumped around from majors and that'll hurt you a lot because it'll draw it out. And I got to where I got into writing, actually creative writing, and had a little bit of a unfortunate... I wrote my heart out into this one assignment in a class I had fought and petitioned to get into with a fairly famous author who taught it and he destroyed me one day.

Christian Brim (02:52.668)
Yes.

Rodney Miles (03:11.946)
on an assignment on a paper I'd written and I didn't know what was happening. I based it on a book of his that I'd read. Maybe that's what pissed him off. I don't know. But it was one of the final straws where I realized there's really nothing for me here. What I really want to do at that point was just own my own business, just be an entrepreneur. I didn't see any reason why I couldn't do that.

Christian Brim (03:36.52)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rodney Miles (03:39.938)
And I didn't see how college was going to teach me that. College teaches you how to be an employee or a manager, you know, in a corporation. But there was really nothing for entrepreneurs, at least then. So I went out on my own and I grabbed onto the first available opportunity after a couple little jobs, which was sales, of course. Sales is usually there, offering independence and dash of creativity. it was also mind over matter.

Christian Brim (03:45.564)
Yes?

Rodney Miles (04:09.672)
It was a very, everything that I was kind of looking for took me until, took me decades to figure out I was a horrible salesperson. But I had been kind of administering my way through sales and through business and got along with people. But I went from there still in the entrepreneurial mindset. I flipped houses for a few years.

Christian Brim (04:38.013)
Mm-hmm.

Rodney Miles (04:39.042)
I had one collapse and that kind of spun that career a little out of control. So I became a handyman and people would call and say, can you help me with my soffit? I'd say, yeah, I'll be there Tuesday. And then I'd find out what a soffit was. Real C to your pants. It was great. You you look back, really, I really wouldn't change anything that led to

Christian Brim (04:47.793)
Right?

Christian Brim (04:58.974)
Yes.

Rodney Miles (05:08.482)
being a real estate agent, which is probably one of my most enjoyable, rewarding little professional periods. I ended up managing a small brokerage and really, really loved it. So much so that I neglected my million dollar clients and stuff, which was on paper, very stupid. then I went through the whole real estate boom. Now when the real estate boom happened, some of these things

Christian Brim (05:10.482)
Mm-hmm.

Rodney Miles (05:36.792)
people recount their sexes, their successes or their sexes, yeah, both. Sometimes combined. But it's funny, it's the bigger failures that really stand out. It's the bigger, in fact, one day I'll write a book called The Joy of Failure because without those crises,

Christian Brim (05:41.36)
or their sexes, whichever. Yes.

Christian Brim (06:00.328)
Mmm.

Rodney Miles (06:05.612)
you might not change. For example, we lost a home after the real estate boom. I'd leveraged my house to open a couple of real estate offices and I had one of those adjustable rates back in the 2007. So my payment was going to go from like a thousand dollars to three thousand dollars. And back then, right when I was losing my businesses, we lost everything. It was the best thing in the world though, because

Christian Brim (06:20.456)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (06:29.787)
Right.

Rodney Miles (06:34.156)
We downsized our home, we sold off 80 % of our crap, it was just, was an Alan Watts lecture on this morning about clutter and getting rid of stuff. That was one of the best things that ever could have happened to us. But when that went bust, I was at zero anyway. You know, was kind of a rare opportunity, not that people seek that out. But I had to decide, I'm gonna go back into real estate or I'm gonna go into...

Christian Brim (06:43.954)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (06:56.787)
Yeah. No.

Rodney Miles (07:02.718)
anything else because I'm back at zero and my dad was kind of nudging me to Write he had discovered a website called Elance With some of us gray beards will remember from 15 years ago now. It's up work. It's still Yes and Started writing for a penny a word, but I knew enough at that point to not make some critical mistakes like I knew

Christian Brim (07:12.081)
Yes.

Christian Brim (07:19.024)
Yes, the predecessor to Upwork.

Rodney Miles (07:32.034)
Hey, I think I really like this. It's worth learning. It's worth doing badly at first it's worth treating every job and not taking any shortcuts because I found when you do that you You ruin the relationship with whatever it is you're talking about if you you know and Treat every client build a portfolio there's two ways to enter the freelance business as far as I could see back then one was to

start cheap, work with excellence and build up a portfolio and then just systematically raise your rates through your time. The other was to enter with a big splash with a lot of credentials. Cause I remember back then some of my competition, they'd get on Elance after having been a speechwriter for the mayor or, know, and I didn't have those credentials. came from an unrelated fields, but I was always writing. So

Christian Brim (08:09.117)
Right?

Christian Brim (08:22.246)
Right.

Rodney Miles (08:31.446)
Like for example in real estate. I wrote an article for a local paper Always it was interesting. I always found myself writing in one way or another and then the last 15 years have been Just fabulous. I in fact. I only really feel like in the last few years. I've kind of completed the It'll never be complete, but really completed the publishing cycle because you can make a living on one little action

in the publishing cycle. example, you can be a cover designer and do that and be very happy the rest of your life. But I've really enjoyed the comprehensive, you know, all the activities.

Christian Brim (09:02.182)
Right?

Christian Brim (09:10.28)
So there are a couple of things I want to go back to, but to clarify, so now do you essentially help authors self-publish that whole process, the editing, the cover design, the layout, is that what you do? Okay.

Rodney Miles (09:26.7)
Yes. Yeah, I would divide it into three stages, the whole self-publishing process, which has developed out of traditional publishing best practices and things self-publisher. It's very neat when you really look at what self, what successful self-publishers do. A lot of actions and stages and tactics are modeled or derive from, for example, in old, well, any traditional publishing house.

They generally have a developmental editor, for example, who will work with your manuscript. So if you're a self-publisher, you don't have that. Well, you can hire one, or you can get your book to a full draft and then engage a handful of beta readers and achieve some of the same things that they do in the publishing houses with a developmental editor. So lot of these things have been modified to suit the self-publisher. And in addition to this,

Christian Brim (10:03.922)
Right? Right?

Rodney Miles (10:26.094)
The reason I love it so much in addition to being in the creative arts in books You are independent and entrepreneurial so So very cool, so I would just add the full process would be what I call I've got generic generic terms for it, which is product platform publicity Or more specifically with books is your book your platform

Christian Brim (10:49.896)
Hmm?

Rodney Miles (10:55.435)
And or you could say your book, your organic growth by way of your platform and then strategic growth of which publicity is just one tactic. So.

Christian Brim (11:03.261)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (11:09.276)
Yeah, it is interesting. I published my first book last year and learned all of these things that I did not know, like what a developmental editor is. And I used a company that sounds like it's similar to yours in that they, you know, I paid them a fee and they walked me through the process and provided those services.

But you know when I I talked to I interviewed on this podcast Todd Henry author of the accidental creative and several other books, but He's done both The traditional publishing route and and his latest book

Christian Brim (11:59.217)
not coming to me off the top of my head. He self-published. And we talked about, you know, the benefits, the pros and cons, but I think the thing that drew him to the self-publishing was the flexibility that he had in like how he marketed, how he used the book as opposed to the traditional publishing where your hands are tied in a lot of ways.

But, know, one of the things, and I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but for the benefit of the audience, you know, there are so many books that, I mean, the technology has allowed anybody to publish. And with the advent of AI, there are a lot of people that are publishing that shouldn't be publishing. but you know, it's hard to, you know, just write, say, a mystery novel.

and get traction with it and make money with it if you're an unknown, right? But I look at our case where I wasn't looking to sell 100,000 books or a million books. That wasn't my purpose of writing the book. Self-publishing allows us to achieve our goals of having a tool to use in our business to educate,

promote to gain credibility, et cetera. You know, and a traditional publisher wouldn't have touched that book. They're like, no, it's too small. Who wants it?

Rodney Miles (13:37.838)
That's a really good point. I don't think I've ever actually, you know, the synapses have connected on that exact point that a traditional publisher would have no way. I mean, they're in it for the book sales. So, which isn't necessarily what, especially early on, lot of the, I did a lot of books early on that were all what I call books of expertise. And along the way,

realize there's really two avenues here with your book. One is credibility and the other is book sales. And some people want a hybrid of both. But every project or author I've worked with, I try to ascertain their goals, assess why they're doing it. The other category would be, in fact, in my book, I talk about as far as what I've experienced, I've got four or five types of authors in there. And there's the expert.

There's the professional author, somebody who's in it for book sales, wants to be an author full time. And then there's the legacy author, which everyone might want to create a legacy, for example, but, or many people, but I have had clients and they're very enjoyable to work with who are retired or they're getting on and they just want to write a memoir. Or, you know, and they're really fun to work, to work on.

It's fascinating process too, to go through creating a book. If you're a professional, you'll be better at what you do if you write a book about it. If you're writing a memoir, you will have psychological catharsis as you go through and hammer out and evaluate your life, map it out so that others can... And I always say, imagine if your great grandfather had written a memoir.

Christian Brim (15:08.487)
Right?

Christian Brim (15:21.222)
Yes, yes.

Christian Brim (15:33.585)
Right. Yeah. Yes. You know, it's similar. There's videographer down in Austin or San Antonio and he does legacy documentaries. So for the family. And so it's a similar concept only in a video format. And then, you know, like they'll go and interview other family members.

Rodney Miles (15:33.666)
How cool would that be to read?

Rodney Miles (15:51.598)
Mm.

Christian Brim (16:02.116)
in conjunction with the principle. But it is, as a matter of fact, when I met this gentleman, I was talking to him about like, you use the word catharsis, I was like, I could see how that would be very therapeutic for a family to make that film and have those conversations because, you know,

Those are conversations that you don't have around the Thanksgiving table normally, or, you know, because they're deeper, they're more challenging, and those are not conversations that are gonna just organically happen, right? I wanna go back to the comment you made about the professor that you had, and how it knocked you off that path.

of writing, right? And then you've come back to make a career in the space and a business out of the space. What did the professor get wrong? What did he not see?

Rodney Miles (17:14.83)
I don't know That's a good question I think That's why you're the host I Think as I sat there I Couldn't understand That's a really good question. What was he missing? That's what bewildered me. He completely missed my intention Which was the same I assume as the intention he had

Christian Brim (17:21.606)
I know, that's why I asked it.

That's right.

Christian Brim (17:39.72)
Hmm.

Rodney Miles (17:44.814)
with one of the books he wrote about his childhood. And I just thought, I just assumed, oh boy, when he sees this, there's gonna be this camaraderie, he's gonna recognize, yeah, kid's trying to do what I did with this book. And he just tore it apart. I mean, he had like a negative, visceral reaction to my, I guess it was a short story, you know, 20 pages.

Christian Brim (18:09.704)
Hmm.

Rodney Miles (18:14.936)
whatever it was. I loved it, by the way. still, it's one of the, I don't keep a lot of stuff, but a folder somewhere, I've got that story. I called it Stars and Stones. It was a story about being a kid when my parents were breaking up and there was an upset. My aunt and uncle came over and cheered us up and distracted us. And it's really a precious little story. And I tried to,

Christian Brim (18:22.288)
Right.

Rodney Miles (18:43.094)
I tried to use some detail, like the Hemingway modern novel, write about periphery, immerse people in detail. And I wasn't as sophisticated with it when I was 18, 19, but I knew enough to write about the little rock wall and things. I think I was excited to get to class that day. it was one of those moments that

Completely backfired. I didn't take it Completely personal I should mention that I didn't I didn't Internally I didn't back down from what I felt about what I'd Sure, maybe I made some major mistakes and so on but That's why I'm the student here, you know But it was such a bashing I I had a there's a fellow next to me older fellow he must have been 40

Christian Brim (19:23.944)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (19:31.728)
Right.

Rodney Miles (19:41.524)
that class which is funny because years later I'd be the 40 year old dude and he turned to me and he said I get what you were trying to do with that man you know and that's kind of all I needed even if he hadn't said that I still like what I wrote which is interesting too because you're really as a creative you got to do it for yourself you've got to be happy with through that's one thing I try to inject into every

Christian Brim (19:45.405)
Right?

Christian Brim (20:04.326)
Mmm.

Rodney Miles (20:09.816)
project and I talk about a lot that People will tell you with a good cover for example. It's got to have contrast It's got to have technical expertise. It's got to meet your genre. Well, the other factor is you have to love it and I mean love like Affinity and you want it close and you're excited to look at it If you don't love your cover, I mean you can get by but if you love your cover and you love your book You'll you'll first of all, you'll enjoy it

Christian Brim (20:25.137)
Mm-hmm.

Rodney Miles (20:39.694)
rest of your life and the stops are gone as far as promoting it. You'll share it and so on. So there's that human element as well that can kind of lost, can kind of get lost in the process with all the steps you're supposed to take and so on. But you should enjoy the process. Many people write one book their whole life and I've always felt like anyone who comes to me, even if it's a business book or specifically to raise their rates or get them on stage, it's

It's a special experience, maybe more special after the fact. Very often I'll enjoy a vacation more when I'm home. And you're basking that memory of walking down the little parkway, or man, know, and I'm even cognizant of that, or when we're on a vacation, or something like, wow, this is fabulous. I'm going to enjoy it even more when I'm home and remember it.

Christian Brim (21:18.184)
Yes. Yes.

Christian Brim (21:32.636)
Yeah.

So did you ever publish a short story?

Rodney Miles (21:38.592)
No, no, that's interesting That's an interesting idea that in some of my poems from college Yeah, I will dedicate it to my teacher

Christian Brim (21:42.035)
Yeah. You might, you might clean it up and put it out there. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Well, you know, you've, you've, you've mentioned some interesting ideas and one of which is, the passion behind it. And, and if, if you're not passionate about it,

Rodney Miles (22:04.227)
Mmm.

Christian Brim (22:10.184)
And I've experienced this in my own entrepreneurial journey. If you're not passionate about it, for me, it's really hard to sustain. know, Todd Henry, in his book, The Accidental Creative, he talks about the Greek word for passion.

Rodney Miles (22:19.992)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (22:33.673)
which I don't remember it's pericure or something like that, it mean it is literal translation means to suffer and And his his statement about like if you're not willing to suffer for what you love Then you you you won't you don't truly love it like you won't be able to Sustain it or bring it to its fruition if you're not willing to sacrifice for it

And or suffer for it, not to say that you will suffer, but you know, in your case, I'm thinking like you had this passion for writing, but, it, didn't come to, it's fruition, it's fullness until decades later. and that's because you had a passion for it. If you didn't have a passion for it, you would have just moved on to something else. You would have maybe gone back to real estate.

Rodney Miles (23:26.552)
Yeah, yeah, it's true. It's true. You you makes you make me think of I just saw another a little video by a little snippet of a lecture by Alan Watts and he's it's called don't force anything and he talks about the definition of Wu Wei in a Taoist thinking is disputed some people think it means do nothing

Christian Brim (23:48.978)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rodney Miles (23:55.438)
He contends that's not what it means. It basically means flow, but in the video in his talk there's one metaphor he gives which just really explains the whole thing and the name of the video is don't force anything and he points out an artist an athlete you can tell if they're forcing it and if they're just flowing with it, it's like the

Christian Brim (24:01.65)
Hmm.

Rodney Miles (24:25.428)
I figure skater, maybe figure ice skating is one of the easiest analogies for this because when they have the, you can tell when they're, I mean, I watch that and I think you could kill yourself doing that, right? I would, There's some, there's a Saturday Night Live skit, think, where Horatio Sanz is ice skating, ice figure skating. But when the, you can tell if they're still kind of

Christian Brim (24:37.7)
Right, yeah, I would.

Rodney Miles (24:55.202)
have some degree of attention on the technicality of what they're doing so they don't die or they're trying to be perfect. And then the others that that milestone was passed a while ago. They've got the technical down and they're flowing with the art of it. And those are the ones that really stand out. And I thought, what a great analogy. I've never applied that to like a book process. If you're having a book done and you've

hired a company and they're shuffling you from department to department and you're getting lackluster results and it's more about deadlines and it's forced and it's it could end up it could end up all right but it's not a good experience when if done right even the experience of doing it is going to be a valuable enriching memorable enjoyable yada yada yada

Christian Brim (25:36.712)
Right?

Christian Brim (25:54.345)
Well, that was certainly my experience. mean, when I started to write the book, I set out to raise my credibility in my target market and visibility. But early on, I decided that I didn't want the book to just be a business card. I didn't want it to...

business books I see out there is they just really kind of make you aware of the problem, uh, with the intent of selling the solution, which is fine. But I wanted my book to have value, uh, in itself. Like if they picked it up, read it and, implemented it, it would be a value to them. Whether they ever contacted me or, or core, I, I, that was what I wanted.

And through the process of interviewing clients and reflecting on my own entrepreneurial journey, as I wrote this, I had some very deep insights for myself. the clarifying insights, that, that really propelled me forward that, you know, had I not written the book, I don't know that I would have come to those conclusions.

Rodney Miles (27:18.168)
Yeah, it's a great observation. It sounds like you had a great experience, which is great.

Christian Brim (27:22.412)
the editors killed me. Like I felt like I was back in eighth grade English class with the red pencil and it was like, are these edits ever going to be done? And yeah, it was, it was, it was a challenging process and, it was, now looking back on it, I completely understand why the editors were so hard on me.

because they wanted me to have what I wanted, which was a good book. And I didn't know how to write a good book, so.

Rodney Miles (27:57.944)
Yeah, that particular area, editing, is wide open to discussion, philosophy, good editors, bad editors, and I think that's very important when you look for an editor to find someone who will at least explain their philosophy to you. The editor you choose, as one example, should match your purpose for the book.

If you're writing for a lay audience, that's different than writing a white paper or if you're writing for a professional audience, know, if you're a physician writing for other physicians, that's one thing. Most of my experience, if not all of it, has been someone with an expertise and I almost become a translator to where they, their message needs to reach a lay audience, you know, popular trade audience. So.

Christian Brim (28:38.034)
Right.

Christian Brim (28:52.412)
Yes.

Rodney Miles (28:55.394)
That's a certain editorial approach and Further with that I always tell explain to clients as soon as possible that Everything I do everything I suggest everything I point out is a suggestion You can do whatever you know you have final cut on your book But I'll explain like if there's a change here why it needs to be changed and so on and it's it's a profession editing certainly obviously, but it's also

subject to different approaches.

Christian Brim (29:30.342)
Well, sure. Yeah. I think the thing that was most helpful to me was the developmental editor where, you know, in some ways she was the target reader, that I was writing for, which kind of helped. but you know, it was, it was all about from the reader's perspective and did what I, what I was trying to communicate, make sense. it.

Rodney Miles (29:43.758)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (29:58.513)
And, and, and as a professional, I think that's, that was the hardest part was I don't want to call it dumbing it down, but it's like what you, what you know in your head that you, you know, you start from point F and, and go on and realize that nobody knows a through G or, or a three, right? Like, and so they're lost and, and having to go back.

and fill in the gaps to give them the foundation to understand what you're talking about. And then, you know, I don't know how many times she just had a comment of like, why? And I'm like, well, I thought it was self-evident. to me, it's clear, but like to her, wasn't. So that process was difficult, but it produced a better book.

Rodney Miles (30:56.066)
Yeah, she sounds like a good editor actually

Christian Brim (30:59.933)
Yeah, yeah. So tell me how people find you to learn more about working with you if they're interested in publishing a book.

Rodney Miles (31:11.022)
Sure, RodneyMiles.com

Christian Brim (31:14.45)
That's simple enough.

Rodney Miles (31:15.854)
In fact, my book, The Modern Author, is available as a free PDF there in the bookstore as well.

Christian Brim (31:24.489)
Perfect. Well, Rodney, I really appreciate you coming on the show and sharing your experiences. Listeners, if you like what you heard, please rate the show, share the show, subscribe to the show. If you don't like what you heard, shoot us a message and I'll replace Rodney. Until then, ta ta for now.