If you’ve ever thought about writing a book, you’ve realized that the process is intimidating. Just knowing where to begin and how to proceed pose big challenges. We are tackling this topic with today’s guest and uncovering the things nobody tells you about writing a book. Join us to get real and learn more!

Our Featured Guest

Raj Lulla

Raj Lulla is a StoryBrand Certified designer and strategist. He and his partner, Ben Lueders, are the co-owners of Fruitful Design & Strategy, where they “create and grow compelling brands.” Raj has spent the last few years writing a book called The Caring House, and he joins us to dive deeper into the book-writing process. He shares why he chose to write a fiction book, how he approached the publishing aspect, and the financial outlay for a project like this. We wrap up with Raj’s perspective on the things no one tells you about marketing a book and Raj’s best tips for anyone who wants to write a book. 

Fruitful Design and Raj Lulla

You’ll Learn:

• Raj’s choice: fiction vs. nonfiction?
• Big questions to confront around the grief-processing journey
• Raj’s idea for The Caring House as part of his personal healing process
• Writing to answer the question, “What is this book for?”
• Narrowing your purpose to the “most important thing”
• Understanding the publishing dilemma: a traditional publisher, indie/hybrid publishing, or self-publishing? 
• Differences in the pitching/publishing process between a fiction vs. nonfiction book
• Financial considerations in the book-writing process
• Details about the “print-on-demand” publishing option and the hard work required to market a self-published book
• Raj’s advice to aspiring writers

Resources:

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Mentioned in this episode:

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Swell AI Transcript: 364: How to Start Writing a Book: Things They Don’t Tell You

Melvin Varghese:

Hey there, it's Melvin. Today's podcast is supported by the American Psychological Association. If you are a psychology professional, which I think is most of us that are listening to this podcast, maybe you're considering your next career move. Well, the American Psychological Association's PsyCareers service actually has a listing of over 400 available positions in psychology. You can check it out over at sellingthecouch.com forward slash APA. And you can create a free account, upload your resume, set up job alerts, and submit all your applications. Again, that's over at sellingthecouch.com forward slash APA. So we'll jump right into today's session. Hello, hello, welcome to today's session of Selling the Couch. I hope you're doing well, having an awesome day. So if you have been wanting to write a book for a long time or you're in the early stages of a book journey, Today's episode is all about what they don't tell you about writing a book. We're joined by my friend Raj Lilla from rajlilla.com and fruitful.design. Raj and I have become friends over the past year. Shout out to our friend Dan Cumberland for connecting us at Raj professionally is a StoryBrand certified designer and strategist. Him and his partner Ben co-own Fruitful.Design, which is a website marketing agency. And Raj in the last couple of years has been quite busy and including writing a book called The Caring House. And Raj and I pretty much catch up once a month. I just do like a phone call just to just be in each other's lives and Over the past couple of months, Raj has been kind of sharing the journey of writing the book. And I just thought, you know, there's so many of us that want to write this, write a book, but there's, I feel like the process of writing a book, and even just the publishing whole, that whole area just feels incredibly confusing. We thought, you know, it might be really interesting, writing something or creating an episode that is called What They Don't Tell You. And so we're going to cover a number of different things. One is we're going to start with why Raj decided to write a fiction book versus a nonfiction book, especially because if he's maybe thinking about business growth, right, it makes more sense to write a nonfiction book. And then how did Raj decide between this sort of indie publisher, mainstream publisher, versus like self publishing? And what are the pros and cons of all of that? And even like little things like what size of a social media audience do publishers look for as someone for them to be like, okay, this person has enough of a following where people might be interested in. And then stuff around money, I feel like it's really important to talk about that. So Raj actually shares some numbers about the money that he invested into publishing a book, working with an editor, all of that kind of stuff. And then we wrap up with this, this thing of like marketing a book. and all of the stuff that they don't really tell you when it comes to marketing the book and what that looks like and sort of the mindset to approach. I think you're going to really enjoy this conversation. So here's my conversation with Raj Lulla from rajlulla.com and Raj's book is The Care Hey Raj, welcome to Selling the Couch. Thanks for having me. I, well, first of all, before we even jump into our conversation today, brother, I am just so incredibly grateful for our friendship. I mean, I don't know, like you've become a close friend. We talk frequently about a range of different stuff and yeah, I'm just, I'm so grateful on many levels that for your, for our friendship and for you and the stuff that we're talking about today, which I know that so many folks want to do, which is writing a book and just for your courage to do that. And then more importantly, for the courage to share like the real side of it, because I feel like there are lots of programs out there. They're like, help us. We'll help you write a book. And then they don't sort of talk about the nuances. So I appreciate you and excited for our chat today.

Raj Lulla: Yeah, likewise. I'm thankful for our friend Dan Cumberland for introducing us. And over this past year, it's been amazing to grow in our friendship and grateful to be here.

Melvin Varghese: You've had quite a career. So you've been a former pastor, you were a photographer, and now you own or co-own a successful web design agency along with Ben over at Fruitful Design. The logic would have been to write a nonfiction book related to your business. So what made you write a fiction book?

Raj Lulla: Yeah, I think it's still on the table for me to write a nonfiction book, but For me, the fiction book just came out of inspiration. I was driving between meetings actually for Fruitful, and I would frequently listen to podcasts. This is pre-pandemic, so I had a lot of in-person meetings and I spent a lot of time in my car and was listening to an episode of This American Life, heard about this place that does grief support for children. And something about that idea just really took hold of me. And I wondered, what if a little boy and a little girl met in that environment? Unfortunately, about 60% of the kids there have lost a dad and about 20% of the kids there have lost a parent to suicide. And so I just thought, man, if a little boy and a little girl met, both having lost a dad, to suicide, could they grow up and they'd probably stay close, maybe fall in love, get married, and could their marriage survive that kind of origin? And so writing this book is not really something I asked for, it was something that just felt like it fell in my lap. And now many years later, I started this about eight years ago, now a long time later, I realized that I was processing a lot of grief in my own life and kind of wanted to wrestle with this question of like, how is everybody okay? Like, how do we make it through when things are so difficult? And so writing a story about people who start with something really difficult and seeing whether or not they can be okay was just part of my own healing journey.

Melvin Varghese: I feel like many of us have, when we write things, we do have that personal connection. To the degree that you're comfortable, you said there was like your own grief, right? So what was the connection between the book idea and even your story?

Raj Lulla: Yeah. So the first year that my wife and I were married, tragically, we lost her sister to either an overdose or suicide. It was hard to tell. Nobody was with her when it happened. And she was, I think, 22 and left a three-year-old behind. And so, I mean, that was, everybody talks about how hard your first year of marriage is. And ours wasn't hard because of socks outside the laundry hamper or somebody loading the dishwasher incorrectly. Ours was difficult because we dealt with profound and sudden grief in the first seven-ish months of our marriage. And so then after that, we graduated in those lucky couple of years where we graduated college kind of right into the recession. And so it graduated, I had seven jobs in 10 years, the first 10 years of our marriage. And they were also all in faith environments at that point. So it felt like just the grief of this place that's supposed to be safe and nurturing and good for our family has been really, really difficult to hold down a job and all those things. And then we also had two miscarriages during that time as well. And then in the year before I started writing the book, I lost two friends who were also in their 30s, both had kids. And so by the time I started writing this, it was kind of just wave of grief after wave of grief that hadn't really been dealt with. It just sort of felt like, oh, I guess this is what adult life is. It's just the hits keep coming and they never stop. So yeah, I mean, there was there was kind of a lot of grief. I'm sure there's even some I forgot to name in there.

Melvin Varghese: Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Like, I feel like any one of those things is profound grief. And then when you add all of them and they're compounding and it's not like and it almost sounds like unrelenting. I just can't even imagine. Like, imagine just going through all of that process. How do you think the book helped you make sense out of that grief?

Raj Lulla: Yeah. So like I said, the idea behind the book was people start in these tragic circumstances. Can they be okay? And I'll spoil the book a little bit because I knew that I wasn't writing like a Manchester by the Sea kind of book or some other, the movie Seven Pounds with Will Smith kind of comes to mind. It was just like something that's just like bleakly sad. I could have written that book and it probably would have been more literary or whatever. but I knew the end when I started this book. And so for me, the question was, how can they be okay? Like, how can we get to the end of this story without it being massively tragic? And so the process for me, kind of like my own healing, and then processing it through this writing was to go, okay, what's the path? What what things do we need to do? Well, let's throw as much stuff at a character as possible. And then like, what's the through line? How do we get to a end that's not just bleakly sad? And that's how the book helped me personally. I didn't realize I was doing it at the time, but I needed it.

Melvin Varghese: Yeah. I mean, I feel like that process of writing something, you're absolutely right. Like I feel like many times you start and then you don't quite realize the ways that it changes you and the ways that it helps you grieve and make sense out of life and all of those different things. You just said something which was really interesting. You said you started with an end in mind. Is that like a general like good advice? like when it comes to writing a book, like, or is it more of like, let the words come out and see how it all evolves and ends? Like, what are your thoughts on that?

Raj Lulla: I think for your audience, for therapists who are thinking about writing books, most of them are going to be in the nonfiction space. And so I would definitely, if I were writing nonfiction, begin with, if not the end in mind, because it's not a narrative per se, where you've got the end moment of a nonfiction book, but to begin with a purpose in mind. And one question that would be great to answer before you even start writing is, what is this book for? And another way to tackle that idea is, I know so many friends in business and in the therapy world who probably have several books in them. And so instead of seeing this as your one and only book, even though writing a book is a huge lift and a lot of effort, and you may not think you have it in you after you finish the first one, But think of it as, this is my first book. And because that way, when you're trying to identify a singular purpose for the book, it's a lot easier than saying, hey, I want this to be an artistic expression of my soul. So I might include some poetry or quotes in here. I want this to be healing for people with depression. I want this to be memoir. I want this, it's like, if you start trying to do too many things, it's just not going to be a very good book. I remember there's this quote about Michelangelo carving the statue of David and somebody asked, how did you do it? And he said, I took a piece of marble and I started chipping everything away that wasn't David. And it was something like that. But the idea is that great works are things that are really focused, that you take away everything that doesn't serve the purpose of this one. And as Michelangelo did a lot of other works, and they were all really great. So you have more books in you, you've got more time, and muddying the purpose of one book is not actually going to help that book. It's not going to help, well, there's a little something for everybody. It's going to be a lot of mess for no one, essentially.

Melvin Varghese: Yeah. And I feel like it's a lot less pressure on the writer that's considering this. Just to be fully transparent, we've talked about this, my own struggle with anxiety. Part of what anxiety tells me is I have to figure out and compact all of this information into like a certain situation to account for everything. And that is usually a formula for insomnia or just like feelings of just being all over the place. And I love the fact that you said it, like think of it as just like, this is my first book and there could be some other opportunities. And I also love that tip around great, great work. So like really focused.

Raj Lulla: When you're talking about anxiety, because I also struggle with anxiety, and one of the works that's helped me is Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. And in that, he talks about how they helped people through some of the darkest times of their lives. And Donald Miller adapted that into his Hero on a Mission course and other like daily planners and that kind of stuff. One of the questions that you ask yourself in applying Viktor Frankl's work to your life is, if I had today to live over again, what's the one thing that I would do? And for me, that was really helpful in dealing with my own anxiety, was to sort of say, hey, what's the most important thing that I could do today? And for whatever reason, if you ask yourself that question, what's the most important thing for me to do today, you can get all locked up. But if you time travel in your brain to the end of the day, and you say, if I had to do today over again, what's the one thing I would have made sure to do? Our brains switch into a different mode and go, well, of course, it's this one thing. And so we come up with that. I think it's kind of the same idea with a book. If you say, if I had to write this book over again, what's the one thing that I would say? And it weirdly just brings this level of clarity to us. It's kind of like, If you go to a party or something and it's like, again, if I had to do this party over again, who's the one person I would connect with? Or something like that. It's this way of just like really filtering out what's the most important thing that we could do. And when you do that, you give yourself permission to not have to do everything, to not have to be everything. I don't have to connect with everybody at this party. I don't have to get every task on my task list done today, just the important one. and then you allow yourself to believe there's more books ahead, there's more ways that I can influence other people ahead, and this is the most important one right now.

Melvin Varghese: Yeah, I love it. I love it. Publishing, I think, is something that a lot of folks struggle with, right? How did you decide on an indie publisher versus like a mainstream publisher versus self-publishing? And maybe before you even dive into that, like, you distinguish between all three of those, like doing indie publishing, mainstream versus self?

Raj Lulla: I think that it's possible that mine is technically considered self-publishing. However, there's a blurry line there because I used a professional printer. And so kind of your three streams here are traditional publishing, so that's your Penguin Random House, your Simon & Schuster, kind of all those really big ones. There's actually only about three or four or five major printers in the U.S., or major publishers in the U.S. You might have all sorts of different imprints from them, but they all essentially come from HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Penguin, I'm trying to remember the fourth one, but there's just a handful of these major ones. And so that's one thing there is it's all kind of flowing up to the same place. Then you have the kind of Indian hybrid world where it's you are, as an author, probably putting some skin in the game. You might be paying for your own copies of your book. those types of things. And, or you might be kind of co-venturing with a hybrid house where you're paying for the first half of the copies, but they'll cover the second half until, until you earn out those, those types of things. So you have, those are some options as well. And then you have the truly self-published world where you're in charge of cover design and, and marketing and distribution and, and all of those things.

Melvin Varghese: So basically you are, you, you write, it's on the last one, you write everything, you're in charge of the marketing, you're in charge of everything, right?

Raj Lulla: Yeah, you have to hire your own editors, even, all those things. It really is your work from beginning to end. And for me, choosing to go the self-publishing route or the indie route was, I mean, it was a little bit of a choice. It was also a little bit of something that was kind of pushed on me. And so I started pursuing traditional publishing, but it is a really daunting process. And I'm up for the challenge. I've created two businesses. I've raised them up to be profitable. I can do those things. But one of the problems with how daunting it is, is how much time it takes. So for fiction, you have to write the whole book and you have to probably even have it professionally edited before you even seek an agent. You have to get an agent to get them to sell it to an editor, which is kind of, when we say editor, we think somebody who's like changing commas and that kind of stuff. Editors are essentially agents who represent the publishing houses. So it's like two agents talking to each other. Kind of think of like an actor's agent and a movie studio rep trying to get together on a project. And so you got to get an agent yourself. That's a huge process. It's a lot like applying for college. Every agent wants a different thing. Some of them want their first 10 pages. Some of them want your first 10 chapters. Some of them only want the first 100 words or something like that. And so you can't even just send the same application to everyone. You have to write specialized query letters to each one. And you got to kiss a little butt in the whole thing, too, where it's like, Mel, you're also Indian and a therapist, you're going to get this book and so you have to customize it to each one. And the crazy thing about that is even after you do all that work, most literary agent websites say something to the effect of, if you don't hear back from us in three to six months, assume it to pass. Like, they don't even respond in most cases, or if they do respond, it's a form of rejection. Hey, sorry, this book is not a fit for us. They don't tell you why. They don't tell you if the writing is bad. They don't tell you if they even read it at all. In fact, there's this thing called the slush pile at publishing houses where, or sorry, at agents, literary agencies, where if If it's somebody who say represents John Green or John Grisham or James Patterson or any of those folks who've got a cash cow, they've got a client that is the one for them. then unless they're waiting around for one of those guys to write their next book, if they don't have one to promote right now, they don't even touch the slash pile. If they do go into the slash pile, a lot of times you're talking like an intern or a lower level staff member, literally like sorting through an inbox of hundreds, maybe thousands of people trying to query them and then go, oh, this one, I might run up the chain. When I say daunting, it's not just, like I said, it's not just hard work. It is extremely exclusive, and there's probably a fair amount of luck involved. There's this joke in publishing that says that you don't have to work in publishing to get an agent. And it's like, well, but why does that joke even exist? It's kind of like if somebody said, don't worry, there's no snakes in your car, the very first thing you would do is look for snakes in your car, because you're like, I don't know why you even made that joke. I wasn't thinking that there were snakes in my car. That's kind of that process. And so I spent about a year and a half doing that. I got 40 rejections. You're actually supposed to try to get at least 100. But after having no idea, is it the letter they don't like? Is it the book they don't like? Is it the topic they don't like? Is it… We're kind of post-pandemic at this point when I'm querying. And it's like, do you just not want a serious book right now? Because everybody wants a fun, lighthearted book after the pandemic. There was just no way of telling why it wasn't landing with the 40 people it didn't land with. And being an entrepreneur, I decided like, I'm going to take this in my own hands because a lot of what publishing houses provide is marketing and distribution. Well, I own a design and web agency, so we get the marketing side of things. And then distribution, Amazon handles about 80% of distribution of books in the US anyway, and you can get on Amazon for free in terms of self-publishing. So what value is the agency really providing at this point, or the traditional publisher really providing? Don't get me wrong, it'd be nice to be in every Barnes & Noble in America and lots of airport bookshops and stuff too, but I mean, Amazon's where 80% of the books go.

Melvin Varghese: So is the reason most people go or the lure of the traditional publishing, is it because of the distribution to these like Barnes and Noble or the name? What are usually the big motivations of why people try to do the traditional route?

Raj Lulla: At least for me, the number one motivation was validation. I just wanted to know that I was good enough, that the book was good enough. And then yeah, there are some of those professional distribution networks, Barnes and Noble, your airports, those kinds of things that if you hit it big, then you have scalability because they can do second and third print runs without, you don't have to put more money out of your own pocket to do that. The other thing I will say too is that not everybody is as equipped to finish their book in the way that I was. Thankfully I was connected well enough in the publishing world to find out who should I talk to that's a professional level editor. What what printing house? So I'm gonna show it on video. Here's like, here's the book and I mean, it's a professionally printed professionally hardbound thing and your options for Printing on Amazon. They all kind of have this crease near the spine That is just part of the print-on-demand process. This my book is not print-on-demand it was a full run that we did at the same kinds of presses that they use for professional books. Holding this book, you literally could not tell the difference. In fact, I took it to Barnes and Noble and put it on the shelf just to look at the difference, and you would not be able to tell. The only way you wouldn't be able to tell is that if you took it to the cash register, it wouldn't be in their system. But otherwise, I mean, I have an ISBN, I have a barcode, everything. It's a legit book, but I had the resources working with a really talented graphic designer and and like I said having great contacts in the publishing industry to use the same kind of people that they use and just do it on my own and I also I will say I had the resources to do it as well. Now, don't get me wrong, there's a couple of things that went on the credit card to try to get this thing across the finish line. So it's not like I'm just swimming in it over here. But there was a lot that went into it. And when you go traditional publishing, they take on the risk for you. So there are some benefits for sure of going that traditional route if you can make it through.

Melvin Varghese: Hey there, I hope that you're enjoying today's podcast session. So I've jumped back into private practice and I decided to go the private pay route. And one of the things I've been thinking a lot about is how do I tap into outer network benefits for clients that might want to use it? Now, the common sort of perspective or tip that a lot of folks say is just to provide a super bill for clients. But the reality is I feel like most clients aren't going to go take a super bill and then call the insurance company and then deal with that whole mess of trying to communicate with the insurance companies and waiting on reimbursement and all of that kind of stuff, right? And then at some point, especially if they're keenly aware of budget and stuff like that, they're like, oh my gosh, I may not be able to afford working with this therapist and all of those kinds of things, right? This is where Thryzr comes in and the really cool thing with Thryzr is that they will actually float the clients for the sessions. So basically when you sign up for Thryzr you can automatically submit out-of-network claims for your clients. It's simply done through an app, it literally takes seconds, and Thryser takes care of all of the insurance stress. So we don't have to deal with it as clinicians, our clients don't have to deal with it, and clients just pay what they owe for actual sessions, i.e. like the difference between your rate and the reimbursement rate, in order to skip the long insurance wait. All they have to do is pay the standard 3% credit card fee. There is no monthly contracts or fees or anything like that. If you would like to try out the riser You can go to sellingthecouch.com forward slash thrizer, enter the promo code STC so that your first $2,500 in fees are waived. Again, that's over at sellingthecouch.com forward slash thrizer and thrizer is spelled T-H-R-I-Z-E-R and enter the promo code STC.

Raj Lulla: I should mention that if you're going for a non-fiction book, the process is different. It's still probably as difficult, if not more, but it is very different. If you're writing a non-fiction book, you actually write a proposal to an agent, And then you wait for that to be accepted. Because you don't actually write the book first, you write a proposal for a book. But one of the things that they consider, especially in nonfiction, is the size of your platform. And the general rule of thumb is that you have to have 10,000 followers to get a traditional publishing deal in nonfiction. And then you also of course have to have a really compelling concept.

Melvin Varghese: And what is followers like where, like on any platform or total or?

Raj Lulla: Yeah. You would want to have 10,000 followers on one platform. So Instagram, Twitter, somewhere they want to see email list would be email list would be the most valuable place to have 10,000 people. But, but yeah, you need to have 10,000 on, on, on a singular platform. Now that's general rule of thumb. Do people get it with smaller audiences? Yes. Do people with bigger audiences not get a book deal? Absolutely. So then you also have to have a compelling concept that an agent or a publishing house is excited about.

Melvin Varghese: That's really good stuff. You said earlier about you had to put some money on the credit card. I have no idea on any of this stuff. Like how much money do you actually set aside if you are going like this indie self-publishing route? Just kind of a ballpark.

Raj Lulla: Yeah, I'm almost afraid to say, but maybe it'll actually help sell some books. So it really depends on how, it's like a house kind of, right? Where, how much sweat equity are you going to put into it? Are you designing your own cover? Are you editing your own book? Which I don't recommend, actually. I think you should hire a copy editor. But even then, you know, how much are you paying your copy editor? Are you getting one in the States or somewhere else? There's kind of all sorts of things that you could do there. I personally spent about 10,000 invested in the publishing of the book. I would add into that that I hired editors beyond that, and so we're probably talking 10 to 15 all in myself, plus eight years of my life. So if this is something that you're planning to do to make money, it is a tough way to go, I will say. Now that said, I chose purposefully to make sure that this book was bookstore quality print because of what this book needed. Not every book needs that. If you are doing a workbook for therapy, print on demand is totally fine, especially if people are going to write in it and, you know, that it should be kind of used and beaten up and that kind of thing. That's totally fine.

Melvin Varghese: There are many, many… I'm just, I'm going to ask, print on demand, what does that mean?

Melvin Varghese: I feel like our time flew by, so I'm trying to decide. I have a couple of questions, but I just want to be mindful of time. Maybe we can end here, which is, I feel like even with traditional publishing, you have to do a lot of heavy lifting with marketing. At least that's my understanding of it. I was wondering if you could sort of shed light on that piece of it.

Raj Lulla: Yeah. So even if you make it through that whole gauntlet of the traditional publishing process, unless you are a major bestseller, you're not likely to get a lot of marketing support right out of the gate. You are going to be doing a lot of your own work, setting up your own book signings at local bookstores, those types of things. I've heard that you maybe get around $10,000 of budget for marketing, which anybody who owns their own practice or business knows that that's not much, really. I mean, that's barely enough to set up a website, or even if you do all that work yourself, I mean, you're not buying many Facebook ads with that, or Amazon ads, or, yeah, I mean, it's still a pretty tough grind on your own, which is one of the reasons why a lot of people will choose to go an independent or self-published route is because If it's all kind of equal, where the only thing that you're really missing out on is the distribution and professional support of a traditional publisher, but you can piece those things together through your own investment and retain your rights, by the way, that's a huge thing, of if you want to print it in different languages, or if you want to distribute to other countries, or you want to pull it off the shelves and revise it, or whatever you want to do, you have a lot more control if you have your book. So, yeah, but from the marketing side, yeah, unless you are somebody who they expect to sell a lot of copies for, a million copies or whatever, then… I mean, think about every time you've ever walked into a bookstore, how many books are in there that you've never heard of? and how many authors are in there that you've never heard of. And yet, if Stephen King or John Grisham or whoever has a new book out, then it's front shelf, at the top of the shelf, with a sign above it that goes, new book by John Green or new book by whoever, which is great for those authors. I don't begrudge them their success at all, because it's really hard to get where they've gotten. But then even three shelves down, you've never heard of the person who's on that list. And then three shelves back from that, nothing. Like that book may not have sold any copies at all this year. And so it's like, yeah, you get the distribution, but you still have to be the one out there working for your own sales or else it's not going to make much difference.

Melvin Varghese: I said that was my last question, but I do. I feel like this has been incredibly helpful, but I think there's a part of me, I'm like, I felt like optimistic about writing a book. Like I heard the real side of this and I'm like, Oh my God, this is so much like to navigate and think through. If someone's listening to this and they're feeling, they've been wanting to write a book, but they feel now like overwhelmed in thinking about all of these things. What advice would you give them?

Raj Lulla: Yeah. I would start differently. Instead of thinking of writing a book as sort of your manifesto to the world, and if you pick up this book, it's like seeing my heart in the world and this is going to be my ticket for people understanding me or this way of doing therapy that I do or whatever it is that you're passionate about. Instead of starting there, starting with more of an approach that like Jay Klaus from Creator Science does, or you selling the couch, or anybody, it's like validating your audience online, or even in your practice, validating, say, hey, I get people who deal with post-traumatic stress after car accidents all the time, and they all have these issues, and I've come up with a system that works 90% of the time to help. In fact, I've kind of become known as the car crash therapist. Then validate your idea in some way, and then kind of going all the way back to the beginning of the conversation going, begin with the end in mind here and go, what is this book for? And if you have a really strong answer to that question, then you will build an audience around that thing. StoryBread talks about this as being known for the problem that you solve. And I feel like it was a lot of negativity about the publishing industry, and part of that is because you don't need them for validation. You have so many tools right now, you have access to more or less the entire world. online. So, you should be writing online. If you want to write a book, write online. If you want to find an audience, find your audience first and then write the book. Because like I said, you get a platform that's a reasonable size, then a publisher gets interested and maybe your advance gets not just the $10,000, but maybe you get $50,000, $100,000, $200,000. And those kinds of numbers are completely possible. I would say you still have to do a lot of work after that to market your own book. But you start from a much healthier place if you've done the entrepreneurial work of really think about this like starting a small business, because that's, I think that was one of the things I didn't realize going into this, but even literally, like I'll show on the spine of my book, there's a little elephant there, because Ben and I, we got to the point of designing the cover of the book. We care a lot about every detail of the book, the inside flap, the back cover, the barcode, all those things. And we got to that point, we go, oh, shoot, we don't have a publisher logo. And I didn't want to just put my initials and be like, this book is by Raj Lula, brought to you by Raj Lula Publishing, sponsored by Raj Lula. It's like, it felt too, for one, it felt too amateur. And then for another, it also just felt too self-aggrandizing. I was like, this isn't the right flavor for this. So instead, we came up with Lula Publishing, which I get is not that far from my own name. But my family in India, they have a school called Lula Classes. And when I first got started photography, it was Lula Photography, mostly because I didn't want a cheesy name like a stitch in time photography or something like that. And I apologize to anybody who's got a stitch in time photography out there. But so for me, there's kind of this tradition of using my last name with that. And it kind of represents a bigger part of my story with family in India, all those things. So we did that when we branded that. And it was kind of that moment where I clicked into it and go, oh, this is another business. I accidentally just started a business. I thought I was just writing a book for eight years, but I was starting a business that has a budget, needs a business plan, needs a marketing plan, needs a website, all of those things. And so if you have the margin in your life to start another business, to do another venture, even if it's just a side venture, again, there's room for side gigs, there's room for print on demand, all those things, but just think of it as Another venture and that's where the hope is right because there isn't many as many ways to build a business as there are Business owners and so when you when you do that I mean there's people who've built their entire business by giving away their first book and build that's how you build your audience is is you just give away a thousand copies two thousand ten thousand copies and I think Alex Hormozy's book has always been, I don't remember, it's like $4.99 or whatever on Amazon, and that dude blew up. Now, brilliant speaker, pretty clear idea on his first book. It really got people thinking, and so that worked really well. But again, it's a business, just like anything else, it's a business venture, and your book is kind of, your book might be the product or it might be the hook. Your services might be the product, and the book might just be the, the lead generator or the book might be the project product and the and the workbook is the add-on and the coaching cohort is the the upsell and you know there might be a again there's a thousand different ways to build this thing and I actually am really I mean I wrote one and I published I put it out in the world I am super hopeful about it thing I was just more hopeful about was myself not the industry I was way more confident in my ability to get this book out in the world than I was in waiting for systems that have typically been exclusive to accept me. And I think that's the thing that I kind of want to help challenge for your listeners. That's not to say, hey, if you get a traditional book publishing contract and you feel good about the fine print and the rights and the advance and all those things, Great, do it. I have no problem with that. Obviously, Stephen King doesn't seem too upset about it. But if you're not attracting that kind of attention, don't feel like, well, I don't have anything to say. Feel like, OK, I have to start this business in a different way and believe in that and put the work into it the same way you would do anything else. And there's still so much room for opportunity in this country.

Melvin Varghese: Absolutely. Raj, I am so grateful for you. Grateful for our friendship. Where can we learn more about the book and about the work that you're doing both with Fruitful as well as your personal website as well?

Raj Lulla: Yeah. So the business is Fruitful Design. Our website is super easy. It's just fruitful.design. And then if you'd like to pick up a copy of my book, The Caring House, go to rajlula.com. R-A-J-L-U-L-L-A.com. And then it's also, of course, available on Amazon and you can just search my name or The Caring House to find the book there.

Melvin Varghese: Raj, thank you again for doing this and have a great rest of your day.

Raj Lulla: Thanks, you too. Bye.

Melvin Varghese: Hey there, I hope that you enjoyed my conversation with Raj and especially if you have been thinking about writing a book or are in the early processes of the book journey. I hope more than anything this episode has just given you a raw and real perspective on all of this. there was a part of me you probably sensed it on the interview where I was like oh my gosh did I like have too many like negative sounding questions because writing a book is an incredible opportunity it's an opportunity to help others to serve and all of those things but then there was the other part of me I was like you know what like this just feels sometimes I think in online spaces there's this message of like book publishing is so easy and writing a book is so easy it's literally like going to a coffee shop sitting down on your laptop and just you know publishing it out and then you've got an editor who's doing all this stuff and I wanted to give a more real perspective on all of it. I was thinking about like just this conversation. And one thing that was resonant for me was why it's important to build a following online. And Raj said a nuanced thing, right, which is really focusing on one platform and trying to just get good and established with it. Especially if you are thinking about writing a book, because I don't know if you saw the news even, for example, LinkedIn posts now are showing up in Google search results. So LinkedIn is now, it's beyond just like the ecosystem of LinkedIn. And so when these publishers are usually looking at what books do I consider, all of that kind of stuff, they're also looking at what is the audience that the person has. And then I love the fact of like the strategy that Raj said, think about like what the ultimate goal is of the book, right? Is it part of, for many of us, I think as clinicians, it's probably either to fill our practice, to do speaking or courses or something like that, right? So if you can sort of think about where the book's role is in that larger ecosystem. We don't have time to get too much into this, but if you do a quick Google search of the value ladder, I think this can give you a really good framework. So it's basically a way of understanding where different products and services are in your ecosystem. And so if, for example, the book is related to a future course offering, the book is the lower price offering, the course might be the mid price offering, and then maybe you do like an intensive retreat related to both the book and the online course. If you think in sort of that way, you're not then banking on just the course, I mean, not just the book to be your main source of income. Raj's book is, again, The Caring House. You can find it on Amazon and over at rajlalala.com. Definitely support the good work that he's doing. I'm just a big believer in supporting, especially indie creators like us that are doing this. And I feel like there's just such power when we do that. Have a great rest of your day, and I'll see you soon. Bye.

SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening to the Selling the Couch podcast. For more great content and to stay up to date, visit www.sellingthecouch.com.

Melvin Varghese: Hey there, it's Melvin. I hope that you enjoyed today's podcast session. Just wanted to take a moment again to thank the team over at the American Psychological Association for supporting today's podcast session. If you're a psychology professional that is looking for your next job in psychology, definitely check out PsyCareers, the American Psychological Association services. Career Center PsychCareers now has over 400 job postings posted specifically for psychology professionals. You can connect with leading employers and explore roles that match your skills and your professional and personal goals. You can check all of that out over at sellingthecouch.com forward slash APA, sellingthecouch.com forward slash APA. Create a free account and get started.