AL EP 56: Morgan Gist MacDonald – The Ins & Outs of Running a 7-Figure Book Agency

Show Notes

Morgan Gist MacDonald is an author, speaker, and the founder of Paper Raven Books, an innovative publishing company designed to help first-time and experienced authors alike through the writing, publishing, and marketing process so they can get their books published and build a loyal readership and a long-term career as an author. Morgan believes that even an unknown debut author with no connections, platform, or following truly can sell tens of thousands of copies of a book, gather thousands of reviews, and attract fans of their work that will come back for more, year-over-year.

Connect with Morgan:

• https://paperravenbooks.com
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/morgan-gist-macdonald/
• https://www.instagram.com/paperravenbooksllc
• https://www.facebook.com/morgangmac
• https://www.facebook.com/PaperRavenBooks

Episode Transcript

00;01;12;09 – 00;01;32;03
Jesse P. Gilmore – Speaker 1
Today I am here with Morgan Guest, MacDonald, the founder of Paper Raven Books, a full scale publishing agency empowering writers to bring their vision into reality through ebook Content Development, editing, publication and platform building book Launch Services. Thanks for coming to our show today.

00;01;32;05 – 00;01;36;26
Morgan Gist MacDonald – Speaker 3
And thank you so much. Jesse is super excited to be here. This is going to be an awesome conversation.

00;01;36;28 – 00;01;42;24
Speaker 1
Looking forward to it as well. Can you start by telling us a little bit about the history and background of your agency?

00;01;42;26 – 00;02;05;21
Speaker 3
Yeah, so I started out, like many of us as a freelancer solo, I was a book coach book editor. I had left a grad school program. I was kind of just looking for to build something on my own and didn’t have any real background, you know? I mean, how do you start off calling yourself a book coach? Especially 15 years ago, it was a new kind of idea.

00;02;05;23 – 00;02;25;27
Speaker 3
But what I discovered while I was in grad school was that there are a lot of writers who really want a sounding board when they’re in the writing process. They want someone to discuss ideas with and review their drafts and, you know, offer suggestions or clarifications along the way. And when I niche down, which I know you’re big on, you know, and said, I’m just going to work on books.

00;02;25;27 – 00;02;52;21
Speaker 3
And at the time it was specifically sort of nonfiction types of books, I realized that I was getting higher, like I want to say higher value clients, but that’s not exactly maybe the best way to say it. It’s more like the clients valued the book more highly than they valued other types of editorial services. So they’re willing to pay more for a book editor than they were for an editor of emails or blog posts or, you know, other types of content.

00;02;52;21 – 00;03;12;21
Speaker 3
So I thought, Well, I’ll just double down on being a book editor and a book coach. And so I was solo for probably seven years or so for about 28 to, well, maybe 2013, so maybe about five years. And then I had enough clients that I could bring on editors to work underneath me. So we’ll get into this.

00;03;12;21 – 00;03;39;11
Speaker 3
But my first hire was actually an editor to replace me and so that I could then go out and do more sales, which I had no background in sales or marketing. But that’s really when I started digging deeper into sales and marketing and brought on more clients, more projects, lots of referrals, lots of networking, eventually realizing, Oh my gosh, there’s this thing called digital marketing, you know, Internet marketing, I should figure this out.

00;03;39;11 – 00;03;57;08
Speaker 3
So that was 2013, you know, one by one, kind of bringing a small number of editors on underneath me who were just project based. And 2015, we had enough clients come back to us and said, Thank you so much, Morgan. You know, you’ll help me write the book. You help me edit the book. I’m really proud of it.

00;03;57;10 – 00;04;15;06
Speaker 3
It’s still a word document, like I can’t get anyone to publish it, can’t get an agent, can’t get a publishing house to talk to me. I’m scared to self publish. Can you help me? You know I trust you. Can you help me self-publish this book? And I was like, I know how to write a book. I don’t know anything about how to publish a book.

00;04;15;06 – 00;04;36;12
Speaker 3
We usually just hand it off to somebody else for that. But I thought, Well, you know, is that our entrepreneurial spirit? Right? We were like, You’ve probably figured this out. Can’t be that hard, right? So I went and wrote this book. It’s not enormously long. It’s like 25,000 words on how to write a book and published it and took a bunch of notes.

00;04;36;12 – 00;04;59;17
Speaker 3
And I was like, We can do this. We’ll need some more people. We’ll need, you know, a book designer and, you know, someone to help format files and that kind of thing. But we can do this. So it took on a handful of clients, help them publish their books for super cheap, no promises, you know, experiment guinea pig style and figured out that, oh my gosh, I think we really can do this.

00;04;59;20 – 00;05;29;21
Speaker 3
And we’re we have always been a little bit early on the self-publishing wave but now you know, fast forward, you know, another six or seven years, we’ve done 200. We’re just about to cross. I think we’re about 199. We’re just about to cross over to 200 books. We went from doing five books a year to this year. We’re doing about 60 books just this year because there’s so many more people who want to publish books and they want to self-publish, but they want to use a team.

00;05;29;23 – 00;05;43;15
Speaker 3
And so kind of to circle back just you to your original question, how did you build the agency? I didn’t really mean to. It was kind of one project at a time. And then I look over it, I’m like, Oh my gosh, we’ve got a team and we’re an agency now. But it’s been a really fun ride.

00;05;43;18 – 00;05;59;09
Speaker 1
But that’s really cool how you started off your agency just based around editing and then that there continue to follow the customer based around their journey. And now what you’re offering is an end to end solution for them, which is really cool.

00;05;59;12 – 00;06;18;16
Speaker 3
Yeah, exactly. We help with the writing, the publishing, even the launching of the book and the marketing later on. So yeah, we just keep, we keep building out, you know, within your own lane. We’re trying not to get, you know, wide and, you know, talking to people about it’s very tempting to talk to people about business models and courses and podcasts and other things.

00;06;18;16 – 00;06;26;09
Speaker 3
But so far we’ve really kept it to like, where are your book people when it comes to the book? We are your book people. So we’re trying to trying to stay in that lane.

00;06;26;11 – 00;06;54;04
Speaker 1
Yeah. And you on your website, you have kind of like the four steps within your process the book content development, editing, publication and platform building. Can you walk us at least from like a high level through those different services? You kind of talked about it from like a story perspective, but if if someone who’s listening is either a writer or wants to become a writer and they want to understand your process a little bit more, you mind talking a little bit about that?

00;06;54;06 – 00;07;14;14
Speaker 3
Oh, yeah, process wise. So we think about the whole book journey as four major phases. Now we don’t have to work with everyone through every phase. It does become a little bit of a custom project by the time we get down to the nitty gritty with someone, but it helps to conceptualize. Look, we’re talking about a book we’re thinking about.

00;07;14;14 – 00;07;39;27
Speaker 3
Phase one is developing the content, right, typing words into a document and taking those ideas and the frameworks and the philosophies and methodologies, typing them out, getting them down on paper, so to speak. A phase two is editing. Okay, we’ve got all the content now we need to edit, and most people don’t realize that that is actually multiple passes of editing.

00;07;40;03 – 00;08;08;04
Speaker 3
That’s developmental editing, copyediting, proofreading, that’s all one phase. It can take several months, really. Phase three is design. We’re moving the book from manuscript into book, right, from word document into cover design, into your design, getting all those files ready to actually publish and be printed. You can do so much now with Amazon, KDP Ingram Spark Print on Demand, which still has to be files uploaded and printed.

00;08;08;07 – 00;08;36;04
Speaker 3
So that’s one major phase. We also optimized for Amazon at this phase. And then the fourth is launch promotion. So this is what a lot of people think about, you know, social media posts, podcast interviews, book awards, endorsement. Yeah, that’s a whole separate phase. And many people, if you just this is probably true of all of us in agency businesses, you have a solution that you help people with and people have this big nebulous thing of like, Oh, will you help with all of it?

00;08;36;04 – 00;08;55;23
Speaker 3
Right? It’s all built in. So we kind of have to delineate like there’s actually major phases of this project to help them see kind of the full scope. Now when when we get to actually talking back and forth, sometimes people, you know, it turns out they’ve already written the book. They already have 60,000 words down on paper. Okay, great.

00;08;55;27 – 00;09;18;13
Speaker 3
What we’re really talking about is editing that book. So we’re talking about phase two. And they say, well, you know, I already work with a podcast company. They get me interviews. Great. Maybe we don’t need phase four. Cool. Maybe we’re talking about phase two and phase three. So maybe we’re really talking about editing and publishing, but it helps them to sort of be able to conceptualize what’s the scope of the package.

00;09;18;13 – 00;09;24;05
Speaker 3
Once we get down to talking about, you know, their particular work with our team.

00;09;24;08 – 00;09;37;22
Speaker 1
And it seems as though within the process you have it too, where there is a package, but then based around wherever they’re coming in, they might need different pieces. And that’s where that custom piece comes from, right?

00;09;37;24 – 00;10;02;13
Speaker 3
We do do some customization. I know there’s a lot of, you know, different philosophies on how much you should customize, and we’re small enough that we can still do an amount of customization and we just have, you know, project template it out with here’s all the to do items that we would normally include in a project, and then we’re able to just copy over the relevant do items and reference, you know, the agreement pretty much.

00;10;02;15 – 00;10;10;13
Speaker 3
But we have, you know, our menu of items and then we can, we can customize a little bit from that.

00;10;10;15 – 00;10;37;22
Speaker 1
I think the people listening right now, yeah, I can understand when you’re talking about client expectations or setting a client expectations of, you know, they’re expecting the world, but you know, this is what we need to be able to focus on. I bet you a lot of agency owners listening can relate to that. So what are some of the things that you found work well with either setting expectations with clients or getting them to understand your role, their role, so forth?

00;10;37;24 – 00;11;01;01
Speaker 3
One thing that we’ve started doing in the last few years that has absolutely changed our business for the better is we’ve started doing a paid proposal of sorts. So we will do a manuscript review and a market analysis because our clients always come to us and they say, Well, is my book any good? Is it worth publishing and is it going to sell?

00;11;01;03 – 00;11;22;01
Speaker 3
You know, those are the two sort of stumbling blocks I need to kind of overcome. And what I used to do was read their book for free, offer them some feedback and then give them my thoughts on how we might approach marketing. The book was it turns out people are actually willing to pay for that. So we actually charge and I think this could be flexible, right?

00;11;22;01 – 00;11;43;02
Speaker 3
I mean, take this and use it however it suits your agency, but we charge $3,000 for an introductory package where our team does a manuscript review, gives them a full feedback letter. They’re on the phone with one of our coaches and we do a market analysis. So we have a market analysis with narrative language that explains book marketing.

00;11;43;04 – 00;12;09;00
Speaker 3
And then we plug in specific pieces that are relevant to their type of book. So, you know, Amazon for Amazon optimization, a book gets an e-book, specifically get seven key words, much like Google SEO, you do Amazon SEO. So what are the key words that we would recommend, you know, using with this book? What are some comparable titles and how are those books selling?

00;12;09;00 – 00;12;32;26
Speaker 3
What are some categories you recommend? What are some social media? Right? So there’s a whole and then the report itself has a narrative explanation. By the time I typed up the whole narrative explanation of book marketing, it was 65 pages. But I don’t have to do that again, right? My marketing team just goes in and they plug in the keywords and the comparable titles and the categories and some other suggestions.

00;12;32;28 – 00;12;52;02
Speaker 3
And now what we’re delivering to them is high value. They’re getting personalized feedback from someone on our team. They’re getting a personalized report from our marketing team because in bonuses, right, bonuses are always great, ever. There’s bonuses, some courses and trainings and other things that are going to be helpful to them on their journey. Package that all up together.

00;12;52;04 – 00;13;17;11
Speaker 3
We say, Look, this is a $3,000 introductory package. If we choose to move forward together, we’ll credit that toward your custom package. And the good news is you’ll know exactly what level of editing you need, will know what level of editing you need, because we’ll read the whole book. You’ll know how we would approach your publishing project and be able to, you know, tailor it specifically to your needs.

00;13;17;13 – 00;13;48;25
Speaker 3
So we do put 100% guarantee on that. So we say this is a no risk situation. If our feedback is not valuable and our market analysis is not insightful, we’ll give you money back. And the good news is so you hear all the copy in here right? The good news is that if you find value in our feedback and insight in our market analysis and you say this team and I are on the same page, let’s move forward together, you get to credit all of that toward a custom package.

00;13;48;25 – 00;14;11;11
Speaker 3
So it’s a no risk situation and that really helps. Then we’re working together for like six weeks there in our base camp, project management software with us. So getting to know how we communicate, they’re getting to know how we schedule Zoom calls, they’re getting to know our book editor, they’re getting to know our, you know, marketing team. They get to talk with me, you know, on the back end of this again.

00;14;11;14 – 00;14;22;01
Speaker 3
And that helps everybody really solidify. Are we a fit? Do we want to move forward? And that’s been a huge game changer for our business.

00;14;22;03 – 00;14;37;29
Speaker 1
I love it because we talk about like loss leaders and different things that are introductory offers. Cool thing is that you’re getting paid for it, number one and second half it actually that’s client expectations from the get go because you are working together. So that’s, that’s really cool.

00;14;38;01 – 00;15;01;14
Speaker 3
Yeah, exactly. And we actually train freelance book editors as well. So we offer a certification program for freelance book editors who want to build their business. And of course, I have 50 years of experience to share with them. Right. Plus, when they’re certified, we get to, you know, offer them to our writers who we are working with. We have 70,000 writers, so it’s a really great win win.

00;15;01;16 – 00;15;26;08
Speaker 3
We always encourage them, don’t do the initial proposal, work for free, charge an amount of money, even if it’s $49. You know, charge an amount of money so that they know that you’re a professional, that you respect your own time, and that you respect their product, you know what they’re bringing to you, Their project as well. So I think that could go across across industries for any agency.

00;15;26;10 – 00;16;02;07
Speaker 1
Mm hmm. And so we’ve talked about a lot of different things. Your journey from just doing editing all the way to the end and solution going from five books a year to 60 and getting all the way up to almost a 200 year, maybe one one away from that. If you were to look back on your journey and you were to give somebody that as either an agency owner or even maybe a like a publishing just starting off with publishing agency, some some types of advice, what would you tell them?

00;16;02;09 – 00;16;23;27
Speaker 3
One of my mentors, Ryan Levesque of the asking method, I worked closely with him for like six years in his coaching program. He said something to me relatively frequent, not I wouldn’t say frequent, but a regular basis. And I didn’t really appreciate it until the last couple of years. He always said, you know, Morgan, you have to fight for your margins.

00;16;23;29 – 00;16;49;25
Speaker 3
And I didn’t entirely understand what he meant until I started hitting, hired higher revenue brackets because I just assumed if I just made more revenue, then the margins would sort themselves out, right? So like when I started as a freelance editor, I think I was making around 30,000 a year and, you know, I was still putting a decent chunk of that towards courses and programs in coaching because you’re trying to figure out how to build a business, right?

00;16;49;25 – 00;17;10;17
Speaker 3
Like, that’s what we do. We bring in the income and some portion of it we put back into the business. I just assumed that once I hit six figures, multiple six figures, seven figures like this year is our second seven figure year. We had seven figures earlier this fall. And we’re, you know, we’re continuing to gear every year increase revenue.

00;17;10;19 – 00;17;36;02
Speaker 3
But I will tell you, the margins don’t just come magically, You know, every year, actually, the margins have gotten tighter and tighter and tighter. And so now looking back, I so much more appreciate the wisdom that Ryan’s been trying to give me all along. Like Morgan, you got to fight for your margins, which now I understand, like we as agency owners, we’re caught between two sets of people we really care about, right?

00;17;36;04 – 00;17;54;24
Speaker 3
We want to serve. We want to serve our clients. And it seems like clients always want to push you to, you know, charge a little less, a little less, a little less. Not all of them, but a lot of them, even wealthy clients. You know, the way they got wealthy is probably by negotiating a good deal. So they’re looking at you with the same perspective.

00;17;54;24 – 00;18;12;15
Speaker 3
How can I get a good deal at this agency and you also care about your team. Of course you care about your team. You almost care about your team more than your client because clients will come and go. But your team, I have team members who’ve been with me since 2013 who’ve been with me for ten years, right?

00;18;12;15 – 00;18;33;29
Speaker 3
So I care about them. But when you get caught up in like wanting to reduce prices for your clients and wanting to increase salaries or retainers or project, you know, compensation for your team, members like the business get squeezed in the middle, It’s got nothing left. And then you’re holding, you know, empty bags. You’re like, There’s supposed to be money in here.

00;18;33;29 – 00;19;00;18
Speaker 3
Where’s the money? And I really I’ve just found out the hard way. No matter how much revenue I make, I cannot, you know, compensate for a broken business model. And so we’ve really had to think about, you know, how can we trim out, you know, back end expenses. A lot of like just going through line by line of every credit card.

00;19;00;18 – 00;19;20;29
Speaker 3
What are we paying for? Why are we paying for this? You know, and not trying to necessarily pay people less, but having like, you know, my virtual assistant is based in the Philippines. That’s great for me. I you know, we get along great. You know, that’s fine. I don’t have to have every single person on my team being a U.S. person who has to be paid really highly.

00;19;21;02 – 00;19;45;09
Speaker 3
I also jumped in really quickly, too, wanting like a director of operations who’s going to handle the day to day for me. And as it turns out, I just need to handle the day to day myself, you know, suck it up and do it. So and getting your team involved like my now my director of projects and director of editorial and design, they know they’re like, look, we have to all together monitor the margins of the business.

00;19;45;09 – 00;20;08;21
Speaker 3
This is not just one person’s responsibility anymore. It really is. Everyone in leadership, we’re all looking at the numbers together and we’re looking at how can we increase those margins So, yeah, rallying the troops to the fight for your margins is is something that I’m currently learning and I know that would apply to anyone else. But it sure seems like a common theme in the agency world.

00;20;08;23 – 00;20;27;12
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keeping an eye on the profit margins as the revenue increases, creativity over capital. So instead of just hiring a bunch of people and then watching the margins go last, like are going to be more creative with it and then empowering your team to also focus on the health of the business as well.

00;20;27;14 – 00;20;57;24
Speaker 3
Yeah, exactly. Eric Huberman I he’s is an agency owner based in California. He’s a marketing agency. They do 500 million a year gross, Huge agency. He came to speak at a mastermind. I’m involved in Driven Mastermind. And when he was speaking, he said when he looks at his profit and loss statement, he admitted to often he said he looks at it every day, which I think is, you know, maybe a little bit OCD compulsive, but but heck, he’s grown a heck of an agency, right?

00;20;57;27 – 00;21;16;03
Speaker 3
He when he looks at his profit and loss statement, he skips over like his his eyes scan over the top of the report and goes straight down to the bottom first. What’s my next? He looks at that first and then goes back up to the top. And, you know, does the detective work? But that was really powerful for me.

00;21;16;03 – 00;21;37;27
Speaker 3
I was like, I that’s just a habit that I can train myself to do is like, I’m looking at my piano need You want to maybe I could do it once a week? I don’t know, but just skip over the top line to start. Go straight to your net and then go back up and start to fill in the pieces and if you don’t look at your panel, do that, it’s informative.

00;21;37;27 – 00;21;42;02
Speaker 3
It’s great. It’s not scary. It’s fun.

00;21;42;05 – 00;21;51;23
Speaker 1
It’s been awesome. As a morgan, what are you working on right now? What do you excited about with Paper Raven Books and maybe the next 1 to 3 years?

00;21;51;25 – 00;22;10;16
Speaker 3
Yeah. So we are growing our client. You know, we continue to publish more books. We get better and better at publishing books. Every year we figure out the was on algorithm better. We help our clients, you know, find new marketing avenues. So that’s always super exciting. And if you’re interested in a book, definitely reach out to me. Happy too.

00;22;10;16 – 00;22;41;07
Speaker 3
Happy to chat with you about books. We also have a Done with You coaching program that we kind of rolled out. If you’re interested in like learning more about the publishing process, that could be a really good option. But we’re also really getting into certification. So taking everything that I’ve learned as a freelance editor and writing coach and now being able to package that up and help other people start their own freelance editing businesses, supporting them, sending them clients, we’re also going to go into ghostwriting and book design in those kinds of areas.

00;22;41;09 – 00;23;07;11
Speaker 3
So if you’re interested in any of that, feel free to just reach out to me. I am. I’m on Facebook most. Morgan G. Mac also on LinkedIn, if you prefer, and occasionally on Instagram. But you can also just email me. Morgan at paper Raven books dot com I’m not super responsive, but I will I will respond and I’ll be happy just to be a resource or a sounding board for for any you guys.

00;23;07;13 – 00;23;17;00
Speaker 1
That’s awesome. And for anybody that’s listening, I’ll include the links that Morgan just talked about in the show notes. And Morgan, I want to thank you so much for being on the show today.

00;23;17;03 – 00;23;23;13
Speaker 3
Thank you, Jesse. It’s been a real honor and thank you. You have a good rest your day.

00;23;23;15 – 00;23;57;26
Speaker 1
Agency owners, if you want to transform your agency to sustain and grow without your direct involvement, where you can stop working in the business and switch to working on the business where you can regain control of your time, delegate effectively, get paid what you’re worth, and have your team run the day to day. Go to niche in control dot com slash case study right now to learn more about leverage for growth, you can book a free strategy session with us to look at your systems, understand what needs to be done in order for you to scale and get a free strategic plan for the next year to live the life of entrepreneurship that you’ve always

00;23;57;26 – 00;24;05;27
Speaker 1
dreamed about. Go to niche in control dot com slash case study that is nicheincontrol.com/casestudy now.

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