It’s that time of year--one of our favorite online summits, the Children’s Book Mastery Summit is coming July 17 - 23, 2023. Karen Ferreria is back on the podcast and we’re talking to her about this summit, the sessions you can expect, how to sign up, and even how to get it for whatever you want to pay! Don’t miss out on this special summit JUST for children’s book writers. Give your Writing Momentum today!

LINKS:

• https://writing.fyi/cbm - Children’s Book Mastery Summit
• Liz Wilcox's Email Marketing Membership at https://writing.fyi/liz
• Get your FREE Move the Needle goal-setting for authors ebook at https://www.writingmomentum.com
• Write with us! Join Chris, Gena, and Rene each Wednesday at noon Central and let's get our writing DONE! https://www.writingmoments.com

Hi, welcome to the Writing Momentum Podcast.

I'm Gena Maselli, and I'm here with my husband Christopher Maselli.

Woo hoo!

And we have a special guest today.

We do!

Yes, Karen Ferreria is here with us.

She is a professional book illustrator, bestselling author, and award-winning

creative director, but she's also the founder and the director of the

Children's Book Mastery Summit, and we are so excited to talk to her today.

Karen, welcome!.

We're so glad you're here.

Thank you for having me back I'm so happy to be here.

Yes, we're just thrilled to have you.

We have loved being part of the Children's Book Mastery Summit.

And I'm wondering, tell us a little bit about it.

What is that today?

So the Children's Book Mastery Summit is a summit I actually started in

2020, so this is the fourth year.

And really what it is I get together experts, leaders, bestselling

authors in the children's book industry and the publishing industry.

And interview all of them around 25 to 30 experts every time.

This year it's about 30.

And interview all of them about different topics.

Anything from how do you get writing to editing, publishing, illustrations,

marketing, just all of that stuff.

And people can attend for free or pay what they want.

And the whole point is that, as an author, there's just so much to know.

So this is a way to just really help people at least get a foundation in place.

And not flounder around.

Yeah.

There are so many writers' conferences around the world

and then there's online summits.

But what I love about what you've put together here is that it's

completely focused on children's books.

So if you're interested in children's book writing, this is like the one stop shop.

And every year that you do this, like you said you have dozens of people

come and speak and you're really getting into the latest information

about writing for children, and that's super important, especially when it

comes to marketing and selling your book, because that's all based on

technology, which changes so fast, right?

It's hard to even keep up with it, but by hearing the latest things to do, you can

always just be on the edge, I think, a little bit, but then it also has some of

those, a lot of those sessions that can help you just become a better writer and

just hone your craft, that kind of thing.

You have the things that are always evergreen and stay the same, right?

And then you absolutely have new things.

AI is all the rage right now for instance.

So you have to stay abreast as well.

And even writing craft changes, picture books now aren't the

same as they were 10 years ago, so you have to be aware of that.

Yeah, and you can watch online at your convenience, which is pretty cool.

We always like that.

And then I know you can get the videos for later, but one thing you said

that I just think is just really neat that I like that you offer is the fact

that you have a kind of pay what you want model for the general sessions.

So if you watch the session in the first, what is it, 48 hours, you can

pay what you want, what you're able to.

So if you can pay a lot, you can pay a lot.

If you're like, you know what times are tough for me right now,

I can afford a $20 or $40 for this.

You can do that, right?

And still get in on those sessions in those first 48 hours, right?

So the way it works, we've always had it only free.

And then you get the free or the premium pass or the all access pass, where with

the free, you can attend all the sessions.

Like on Monday, about five sessions will go live and you can attain those

for 48 hours and then we lock them away and Tuesday the next batch goes live.

You can attend them for 48 hours, then we lock them away.

But if you upgrade to the all access pass, you keep access to them because

we put them on our website and it's like a course that you can access

and there's lots of stuff with it, transcripts, action guides where you

can follow along and actually turn the interviews into action and do things.

And obviously we charge for that because that really, it costs a lot of money

actually to produce all that stuff.

And as people will sometimes say, can't we keep permanent or long term access?

But I think what people also don't realize is that isn't free to host

everything and all that, right?

And there's a lot of support involved, et cetera.

So this year we are doing the "Pay What You Want" model, which is

the first time we are doing that.

So they will still be the completely free, there'll still be the premium plus,

but there's a pay what you want in the middle for those who go, you know what?

I'm actually, as you said, I don't wanna upgrade all the way, or I don't have

enough to upgrade all the way, but I wanna contribute $10 or $20 for all this value.

So we thought we'd add that option.

That is just awesome.

I don't know if people realize how much work it takes putting on a summit like

this, cuz I, I know I've, we've looked into it with writing momentum for doing

some kind of summits in that, and there's, it is just a tremendous amount of work

between all of the people you're booking, the technology you've got to get together

to host these videos and the landing pages and the emails like do you work for this

for months to make this happen each year?

Yeah, it is.

I work for months, basically it's a lot of work.

When the Summit's on, you wake up in the morning and you have 430 emails from

overnight, so it's quite a bit involved.

Wow, thank you for doing it because.

Thank you.

We just are amazed at everything you're able to put together

I'm curious what inspired you to do this summit?

What brought it about and made it what it is?

Yeah, it's a good question.

We spoke about get your book illustrations before I chatted with you guys,

which is my illustration company.

And really that illustration company brought about all

of Children's Book Mastery.

So I don't only do the summit, I do lots of online training and so on as well.

But it actually started with the summit and what happened was we, in doing

book illustration because I have a team, so we illustrate a lot of books.

So I work with a lot of authors and I saw all the time two main things.

I saw many things, but two main things.

Either the person would come to get the illustrations and they're investing

all this money and time and energy into the illustrations, and then they're

gonna publish and they're doing all these things, but you receive the

manuscript and the manuscript isn't good.

And I always hate that, but that's just the simplicity of it.

And then I was like, ah, they investing but they didn't really know they

needed to look into writing craft and learn how to write, et cetera.

And then the other part was, for instance, someone's book would be done and they

would be like, okay, the book's done.

What do I do now?

And variations thereof.

And I was like, oh, okay.

And then of course with that being said, you go check on their book on

Amazon months later cuz I'm like that.

I like to see what happened with people I worked with.

And they have maybe one review and.

And I really hated seeing that.

I really felt like this person put like their heart and soul into the

book and it's something that was important to them, and that has to be

a real letdown, that, oh, okay nothing happened when they published it.

So that's really where the summit came about.

I was like, okay, people need help.

People don't really know what they're doing.

And it's understandable because being an author, we have so many hats, right?

It's like you once you know how to write, you need to know how,

oh, you have to get an editor.

You need to know how to revise.

You need to know how to publish.

You need, I can go on and on.

Yeah.

I just realize people really do need that help.

And I don't think it's realistic for most people to start off with

massive investments in training, when they're still just finding their feet

and figuring out what is this even?

And they don't even know what they don't know, so the summit even just helps

people to go, oh, I really didn't know, and now I know a bit more then great.

Yeah.

One thing I like too about online summits like this is that you can listen

to a session time and again, right?

You don't have to just listen to it once and be like, okay,

I hope I caught everything.

Because that's what happens when you attend something in person, right?

You just have a little bit of time.

But it's great to be able to have those videos or those audios to be able to

say, okay, as I'm driving today, I'm just gonna listen to another one of

these and you'll pick things up and it makes you a better author, right?

Makes you a better writer, makes you a better entrepreneur.

Cuz as writers, a lot of us are entrepreneurs, right?

And that's a really good thing.

Yeah.

I was just going to mention, you talked about how you have received

these manuscripts and then you realize that they weren't very good.

We have had, probably in the last couple of weeks, we've had a couple of different

authors that have on two sides of that.

One, we've had the author who just got her book back from her editor

and realized, oh, I have realized that I need to learn how to write.

That I just really did, thought I knew how to write because I wrote this book.

But I really have needed to brush up my skills.

And then on the other side, we just, like you mentioned that people

spend so much energy on the writing.

But they have no idea how to market.

Yeah.

What now?

Or how to launch a product or a book.

And then they and we see this so many times where they get their

book and they just launch it.

They just publish it with no strategy at all.

And it's, it is it's heartbreaking to see that, because then

it just, crashes and burns.

Yeah.

It's a lot of work.

It's a lot of work to just throw it out and then that's that.

Yeah, and you tend, like when people publish a website for the first time, they

tend to think, oh, now people are gonna go to the website cuz it's out there.

But no one knows it's there.

They don't know, they don't know how to get to it.

It's the same with books.

There are so many books in the market today.

That even if you put your book on Amazon, it's just, it can get lost

unless you know how to promote it and how to get it noticed.

Exactly.

I use that exact analogy.

It's exactly like putting your website out there and thinking, great, I'm

gonna get like a million visitors.

Yeah, there may have been a day when that happened, but

I don't remember when it was.

No.

Too long ago.

So tell us about some of the people that we're gonna see on the

Children's Book Mastery Summit.

Yeah.

So first of all, we are gonna see you lovely folks, Chris and Gena.

Yeah I'm gonna be talking about children's book blunders, some of the children's

book blunders that I've seen in the past, and that's always a fun session to do.

I'm gonna be talking about literary techniques that people can use to

really bring life to their writing.

Very good.

Yeah, so definitely tune in for those y'all.

And what else?

Two fantastic sessions.

Yeah.

And then there's so many good ones.

It's really actually difficult to choose, but I'm just gonna pick a few kind of that

I am excited about and that are different.

So a picture book editor that I always work with it's a team,

Marcy Pusey and Bethany Green, and they both on different slots.

And Bethany is talking about how to become the author you want to be, and

I wanted her on for that because she just has these amazing insights that's

completely different to anyone else.

So that's a really good one.

And then Marcy is talking about how to create a memorable book like that

actually evokes emotion and is memorable.

And then I have the wonderful Heidi Fiedler, which some people may know

she's a really quite a prolific author.

She is talking about how to create a series worthy picture book

character, which is quite interesting.

And then I definitely have to mention Laura Backes because

she's just, like amazing.

So she is talking about tips for developing a saleable book idea.

And then moving down, we have some fun ones like Keith Wheeler is talking about

how to create activity books and puzzle books, which can be really great to add to

your books or to expand your repertoire.

And we have Eric Van Der Hope on maximizing your market reach with print

on demand versus bulk printing, which I find it's something I think more

authors need to be a lot more aware of what you can do in that regard.

And then we have a few on emails.

We have Laurie Wright, Philip Duncan, and Quinn Cummings all talking about different

aspects of building an email list.

Why do you send them when you have the list?

This is something I'm super passionate about, is building your email list,

so people should attain those.

And then we also have two wonderful sessions from Ray Breman, Paul Brody,

on launching your book the Right Way for Long-Term Sales and launching

your book with a proven system.

So there's a whole bunch.

There's more, but I think I'll stop there, but it really is the whole

gamut, as I said, from, how do you even just start writing all the way

through to things like launch and Amazon ads and just marketing in general.

Wow.

That is amazing.

I like, there's several of those that I think I would attend the

conference just for that one talk.

And yet you, when you sign up, do you get access to everything

just for joining into the summit?

Yeah, you can watch all the sessions.

So all, yeah, all of them.

Awesome.

Okay, so if you want to watch the Children's Book Mastery Summit and

be a part of this and get access to the downloads and the videos and all

of that, you can go to writing.fyi.

That's writing dot fyi slash cbm, that's Children's Book

Mastery CBM writing.fyi/cbm.

We'll put that in the show notes too, and that'll jump you right to the

website where you'll be able to sign up and get access to all of this.

And as Karen said it's.

It literally can be free or just very low cost, all the way up to where you

can actually have these, where you can save them and listen to them throughout

the year, which is really valuable and we highly recommend you do that.

If you attend a local conference, you could spend several hundreds of dollars

just to get into the local conference.

And this is honestly, it's, it costs far less than that, but probably

has more speakers, more topics and maybe more takeaways because of that.

I just applaud you for putting this on because there's so much, like Chris

mentioned, there's from the writing to the book, to the publishing, to

the marketing, there's just so much.

And I think there can sometimes be an error in thinking that children's books,

because they seem simple, that they are simple and there really is a lot to them.

There's a lot to not only in the way that they are written and structured, but also

just getting them published and you are definitely answering a need in the market.

So thank you.

Well thank you.

Yes.

There is a lot like we can talk about it a long time so we won't go into that.

I do wanna mention quickly cuz I did forget.

When people sign up for the summit, they'll also get a free

playbook, and the playbook actually has a lot of valuable advice.

Like I take the top advice from each speaker, and you can really use

that to it's this really condensed powerhouse of the top things that

each speaker says this can make the biggest change in your success.

And then obviously the playbook also just helps you with guiding you

through the summit, but that the main part is like the really good advice.

So that's also something that they'll get when they sign up.

Yeah.

That playbook's really cool because it is it's a PDF you download, right?

And it's got things that you can just read and fill out and all that sort of thing.

It can take you through, it takes you through all the sessions,

not just the ones you attend.

This is a playbook that's got things from all the sessions in it,

so it could be really insightful.

All right.

Hey, if you've enjoyed this podcast, please rate, review, subscribe, and share.

Karen, thank you so much again for joining us.

We look forward to joining you for the Children's Book Mastery Summit.

And again, that url if you want to go and sign up for that is

writing dot fyi slash cbm, and we look forward to joining you there.

Yeah, definitely.

All right until next time, what Gena?

Together we have writing momentum.