#402 – Writing a Library Best-seller with Marta Molnar

0:06Marta Molnar: Hey, writers, you're listening to the Kobo Writing Life podcast, where we bring you insights and inspiration for growing your self-publishing business. We're your hosts. I'm Rachel Wharton, author engagement manager at Kobo Writing Life. And I'm Tara Kremen, director of Kobo Writing Life. On today's episode, we chatted with author Marta Molnar, who is the bestselling author, I should have said, of The Secret Life of Sunflowers, Girl Braiding Her Hair, and Raising the Titanic. She is an art history enthusiast and a self-taught artist whose passion is writing about amazing women forgotten by history.

0:42Marta Molnar: She wants her books to inspire and motivate and leave readers with an I-can-do-anything feeling. And she studied writing at Seton Hill University and briefly at Harvard. We had a lovely conversation with Marta. She talked to us about how she pivoted to writing historical fiction after 15 years of QuickPaste releasing four books a year for traditional publishing. She wanted to write something that her real passion was behind, which is showcasing women who were forgotten by history. It's really interesting to me to chat with an author about their craft and how you balance historical fiction with writing, well, historical facts with writing fiction.

1:23And Marta talked about how as an artist, she sees comparisons between painting and writing. And we also went in a little bit about book clubs. Her book is very popular with book clubs and just how what her experience as an indie author was working with libraries and book clubs.

1:38Marta Molnar: So hope you enjoy. Hi, Marta. Thanks for joining us on the Kobo Writing Life podcast. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into writing? I've been writing my first book came out at in 204. It took me 13 years to get published. So clearly, I don't have the shortcut. I was trying for 13 years, wrote five full books, and some unfinished books. I started querying a lot of publishing houses, and I got a bunch of rejections, but I won some writing contests. So that sort of had me encouraged. And I didn't have an agent. And at the time, that was a big deal, because publishers would only accept manuscripts from agents.

2:22And then somebody told me, oh, there's this publisher in New York City and they take on agented manuscripts. So that was super excited. That was Harlequin Books. And I immediately started writing for them. And I think I sent them four books. And then the fifth one they called and told me that they are going to publish it. I think they just figured I will not leave them alone. So they might as well give in. So it took a while, but I just always, always wanted to write. I always had a million stories in my head and I was not going to give up. And I did four books a year for them for about 15 years.

2:59So that's a lot of books. And eventually I wanted to write bigger books because four books a year is about 90 days a book. So I realized I'll never be able to write the best book I can write. I always be writing the best book I can write in 90 days. So I started to try maybe to write something longer. And then at the same time, you know, COVID came and we saw all the people dying. And, you know, my friend's husband died. My mom's friend died of COVID. And I was writing suspense for Harlequin. And I just didn't want to write murder anymore. Norman Mailer said, every book I wrote killed me a little more.

3:37And I said, oh, that's not how I want to be with my writing. I just, I want to be able to say every book I wrote healed me a little more or inspired me a little more. And I wanted to write something that wasn't about murder. Because when a reader reads a book, it's two hours, I mean, not two hours, but I don't know, five hours, six hours, eight hours a day in the character's head. But when I'm writing, it was three months in the head of a serial killer, you know, or a terrorist, or it got just dark after 15 years. For one book, I read autopsy reports for two weeks straight. So I could get into that language and describe it appropriately.

4:17And I saw this documentary on Vincent van Gogh and how he only sold one painting in his lifetime. And his sister-in-law, after he died, his brother Theo inherited all the paintings. And then six months later, Theo died. And there was this 28-year-old widow with a one-year-old baby in Paris. And she was Dutch and barely spoke French. And she had literally nothing but all these hundreds of paintings and drawings that Vincent did. And her brother came to take her home to, you know, live with their parents for the rest of her life and just recommended to get rid of these worthless canvases because how would they even take them on the train?

4:56And I thought, wow, what an inspirational story this is. She was 28 and she figured out life and she figured out how to raise her son. And she figured out how to save Vincent's legacy. And it was so inspiring. And I thought, well, if this speaks to me right now, and it's exactly what I need, this story, maybe other people would respond to it. And that's how I switched to a pen name from Dana Martin to Marta Molnar to indicate that this is completely different. And that's how I started in historical women's fiction.

5:26Marta Molnar: And historical fiction is quite the shift from writing serial killers, both in just like tone and also reader expectations. Do you have any advice for authors who are kind of looking to experiment in a new genre and how to get used to a completely different writing process? Oh, that's a really good question. That's a difficult question. I think it really helps if you can just, it's not that different, honestly, because the writing is getting in the head of your characters. So you just sit at the computer and put yourself in the scene and it's like, okay, it's midnight. I'm hiding. Who am I hiding from?

6:05like what am I waiting for, what I'm trying to do and you really, really, really get into that and if needed you research it. Like I used to research, I don't own a gun, never owned a gun, but I've done a ton of guns research so I could tell you know how far you can shoot with this gun and how accurate it is and how you take it apart and what kind of caliber bled it takes. I mean if you don't know it, research it, there's the internet. And so it's the same with really every genre and every book, it's just with the historicals I was researching historical effects and what happened the year she was in Paris.

6:37There was a World Fair. Well, that would affect her life if the World Fair came to town and, you know, because everything would be about that and the crowds and, you know, everybody from other countries coming. And so you sort of fill in, it's like when you're painting and you're filling in the background and you really get into it after a while because it's interesting. I love research, just really, really love research. Actually, somebody offered me to do my historical research for me, an art history person. And I thanked her, but I'd rather do it myself because it's really interesting. And when I look for one thing, I find 10 other things that I would never known to look for that gives so much detail to it and puts the reader into that time.

7:23So if somebody did the research, they would answer my question, but I would lose the 10 extra things that I find while I'm looking for that one answer. It's interesting you mentioned the research even in your suspense books as well, because it's obvious that with historical fiction, you kind of assume there's a number of like a lot of research involved in it. But you seem to be just interested in research like off of the bat. And just curious for if you have any advice for authors, like how do you balance knowing when to research and then knowing when to write that into the story? because I think it could be very easy to get caught up in the research and then actually write nothing because you're just having such a good time researching the World's Fair.

8:04You know, what would your advice be for authors who want to balance well-researched books with like actually finishing the book? Is it relevant to the story? Does it move the action forward? And if it's in the story, because it has to be like, I had a hearing for a romantic suspense and she flew from one town in Brazil into the other town. And so I really had to make sure that the flight was really 120 minutes because A, readers would write to me about it if it wasn't. And you look up, what's the weather like that time of the year? So it's okay even to write a scene first and then pick and then like maybe highlight, okay, what do I need to check for accuracy?

8:43And definitely do that first and then build on that for flavor. So, you know, like then I would go and say, well, what are the, what's the food? What are the street vendors selling? So if she's walking, what is she smelling? What's making her stomach growl? You know, so yeah, just filling in the colors, kind of in the scene. Is it safe to assume that you're a plotter then in our plotter versus pantser world? I do try. And then sometimes I lose it, or, you know, the characters just go, or I find something in the research that's so much more interesting than I plotted, or I find, oh, this is really predictable.

9:21You know, it sounds good when I plot it, but then I'm writing it. I'm like, well, this was predictable. And then I think, especially when I planned suspense or wrote suspense, I thought, okay, what's the thing that could happen right in this minute that the reader would least expect? And then that's what I would write. You know, so it's because your brain goes to the most obvious solution, but then the 10 authors who wrote similar books already wrote that solution. So you want to dig behind it a little.

9:51Marta Molnar: And I want to stay on the research bit just for another second, because I am somebody who will get lost in a Wikipedia rabbit hole so quickly. But where does the research kind of fit into the writing process? Do you focus only on story first? And then, like you said, fill in the color or like taking The Secret Life of Sunflowers, which is the Vincent van Gogh novel that you recommended, you were inspired by the character. Did you then research her a little bit and then write the story? And just, where does it fit into your overall process or is it throughout? Absolutely. So for, if it's completely fictional, then I write a plot and then I research the elements of the plot to give it like, you know, so it tastes like real life.

10:33But with historical, the plot is her life. So I can't make it up. So first I have to know what happened to her. like what happened you know how did she and Theo meet how did Vincent die how did she figure out what to do with all those paintings and raise her son and so it's I suppose it's the opposite so for fiction plot comes first and for historicals the real life history comes first and then you have to make it so it's interesting because your life every day is not necessarily wildly interesting and even for interesting people every day is not wildly interesting So I have to kind of match it to that arc that you normally would do with a fictional plot that pulls the reader forward.

11:15And you have to highlight the most interesting parts or the most compelling, the most emotionally. Readers read for emotion. They want to feel something. You know, they want to feel triumph or sadness or motivation. So you pull out the scenes that will let them feel those emotions.

11:33Marta Molnar: And that actually segues really nicely into our next question, which is when you're writing historical fiction, there is the fiction element of it. So how do you balance the like keeping a level of historical accuracy while adding in a little bit of flavor to keep the story moving? Whatever information I can find, truth, I try to put it in. So like I go to ridiculous degrees. Vincent and Theo walked on a beach and went to a windmill once and ate herring, fried herring with milk. And that really happened in real life. Or, you know, if the herring says, oh, this guy, you know, Theo came to visit me on a Friday at 2 p.m.

12:16he really came to visit her on Friday at 2 p.m. So I try to put in like really minute, even minute details that are true. And I think it comes through to the readers because then readers tell me, oh, I love this book so much. I went to research if all you said were true and everything was true. I'm like, I know. And readers get really excited about it because I feel like they got something real and they learned something and which people also like. People who lead historicals like learning something. So you have to sort of think, what does my reader want to get out of this story? And then I just try my level best to give them everything they would like.

12:55Yeah, I was wondering about that, whether readers would be so kind of detail oriented to sort of double check the level of accuracy, especially with historical novels. And I guess the answer is yes, that they will definitely try and make sure that what you've written is true to the historical elements of the book. People who love history, they really love history. And I suppose it makes sense. You know, that's why you read it. You want to see what it was like. Absolutely. And I really like the angle that you take, which is focusing on women that history forgot. So we've been talking about your, I don't want to say your first book, but your first book in this sort of historical fiction realm, The Secret Life of Sunflowers, and, you know, learning her story is how, like you said, that you were inspired by a documentary piece there.

13:50But can you talk a little bit about the other books that you've written since to give listeners a bit of a sense of the characters that you write? Absolutely. So my second book was about Suzanne Velodon, and she was a best-seller child of a very poor, like, cleaning lady in Paris. They lived during the Prussian siege. So there was no food. They eat the dogs and they ate the cats and then they ate the rats. And the rich people actually had red pate because they couldn't be just basic and eat a basic rat. So it was really interesting. See, this is where I'm going with the research. Like, how do you not love this detail?

14:28So she went to school run by nuns because they gave them one meal a day. And that really was her only meal. And after she was, I think, a teenager, she started modeling for money because they desperately, desperately needed money just to eat. And while she was modeling for all the famous impressions, Degas, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, she was watching them painting and she learned painting from them. And she became, in her time, as famous as any of them, possibly more successful. She ended up, she made so much money. She ended up buying a castle with a moat. I think late 1800s, early 1900s, she had a car, like probably one of the first cars in Paris.

15:12I mean, she was like, just really, you know, really, really made it. And she died. I can't remember. I keep confusing this knife. She died at 78 or 87. But she died at the easel painting. and Le Figaro, the Paris newspaper, in her biography said, Suzanne Veldon died yesterday, mother of an artist and wife of an artist. And they couldn't give it to her that she was an artist too, which just annoyed me so much. You know, I mean, she was this major artist. The people of Montmartre put up a marble plaque to her in her memory. And they didn't do that for any of the others, like not even Monet. They loved her.

15:50She was, you know, really, really, like a really good artist. And immediately like day after her death was like, oh, mother of an artist, daughter, you know, but a wife of an artist and immediately erased. And I said, that is just so dang annoying. I'm going to write about her. So this is usually how I find my plots when I think, oh, I love this woman and more people need to know about her. And for the third book, Raising the Titanic, Helen Candy Churchill. If you would do one thing in your life that she did, it would be amazing. And she did like 20 of them. Like she helped Oklahoma achieve statehood.

16:29She interior designed the White House for two different presidents. And there wasn't even an occupational interior designer back then. So she was like one of the first. She wrote, I know how many bestselling books on interior design, tapestry, what women could do for a living because the biggest issue was that like really poor women could work. But if you were a certain class, you couldn't and you had zero source of income, no matter how better your husband was, you had to stay. You couldn't save yourself. You couldn't save your kids. And she actually ended up divorcing her husband who was very abusive, but she couldn't do it in New York City.

17:06So she, where they lived, so she took her two little kids and went to Oklahoma because there, if you were a resident for 90 days, you could obtain a divorce. Oklahoma at the time was very, very progressive and was Oklahoma territory and was still fairly wild. And she took two little kids there and she went, she lived through a horrendous flood that just about, you know, wiped out the city she was in and then, you know, helped them get stated. I don't know. It's just, she worked on women getting the vote. She rode a horse up the steps of the capital to demand women getting the vote at the women's parade.

17:42Then she rode an elephant through the jungles of Southeast Asia and was the first person to write a book about Angkor Vat. Oh, I think at one point she nursed the young Hemingway in Milan, Italy. Oh, and by the way, she survived the sinking of the Titanic and she rode the boat when the men were too chicken and gave up with a broken ankle because she broke her ankle when she jumped into the lifeboat. You know what I mean? I'm like, who is she? Who is this woman? And nobody knows about her. Like, I have to write about her. And then weird thing, sometimes when I write about people, this thing that I write comes through in my own life.

18:18I don't know. This has been happening forever. When I wrote about her, I broke my ankle. After I wrote about Vincent, I had to have a chunk of my ear cut off because there was a suspicious growth on it. But the very first book I ever wrote that never got published, The Garage Door Falls on the heroine's collarbone and breaks it. And I don't know if you can see it. Here's the bone sticking out of my shoulder because I broke my collarbone. So it's just a really weird thing. And my family is begging me to write a character that wins the lottery. So if you ever see a book and the character wins the lottery and you think this is really weird and has nothing to do with the plot, that's why it's in there.

18:59I feel like I would quit writing because I'd freak myself out. happened to me that's that's intense I don't know it's just really weird and you know my husband just laughs at it and I'm like there you go I'm like here we go I'm very curious about how you've learned about these characters especially the last the titanic lady that you mentioned I forgot her name apologies but was this just you know you came across a wikipedia article and then did a deep dive into things like how did you learn about that person first let me just say how much I love Wikipedia and I always donate to Wikipedia. So people listening, please donate to Wikipedia.

19:38I got Vincent or Joe Bunger because I watched that documentary. I'm an art nut. You can probably see some paintings behind me. I paint as a hobby also. So I love art. I watch a lot of art documentaries and that's how I found it. And then while I was researching Vincent, I found out about Suzanne Veladon because they were in Paris at the same time and they would go to the same parties together. So she would be at some party Vincent attended or Vincent would go to her house. And then I am not even sure how I found. I think I was just reading about the Titanic. And if I like something or something catches my eye, since I'm a writer, you know, my first thought is, oh my gosh, there's such a story there, or I want to know more.

20:21And then I look into it. And then like, oh, there is really a story there. You know, with Helen, she has such an amazing life. I'm like, how do we not have statues to this woman? So that's sort of, and now I am in that time range of the late 1800s, early 1900s. So I think I'm going to stay there because A, it's really interesting. And then B, it's not so much easier to write the next book because I already done all the background research. So I'm sort of doing myself a favor. So probably the next book will also be in the same time. And that's kind of the time period where a lot of women did amazing things, but then were completely brushed aside, you know, because now it's different, like sort of, you know, women's liberation and the vote and everything happened and then more opportunities came and then on the internet, everything is recorded.

21:08So it's easier now to be seen. But in the 1800s, it was really, really easy for even exceptional people just to disappear from you. I mean, there was no TV. If the papers didn't write about you extensively, How would even anybody know what you did?

21:23Marta Molnar: STEPHANIE DESMOND - One thing I'm curious about is what strategies you use to make the history element of your fiction accessible to readers. So for example, in The Secret Life of Sunflowers, you have the dual POV of the past and the present intersecting. And I'm curious, was that a strategic choice to make history more accessible? Are there other writing techniques that you use to do that? ANNA KASWALAZIKA - Absolutely, that is a choice. first I just wanted to write about Vincent and Joe and then because this was not my first rodeo I said oh well are there readers for you know this kind of thing if I say this is what I'm saying to readers would you like to read about a woman who lived in the late 1800s in Netherlands a person you never heard of how many hands will go up so I went online and I looked you know like top hundred historical novels set on continental Europe.

22:19And it's basically all World War II fiction because that's famous or that's trending right now. And if you expand it a little to England, then it's Regency romances because of Bridgerton is so trendy right now. So it was World War II or Bridgerton. And I thought, okay, well, that's not my book. So who's going to read my book? And I thought if I had a present day heroine, maybe somebody from New York, people, reader can identify with. And then this person can be our tour guide into the past. So first we meet Jo through her eyes. Once you identify with the modern day heroine and you want to know what happens to her, then I am sneaking in all the historical information.

23:02and truly I don't know I might have overthought that because historical readers are really interested in in a wide range of things and I don't think it's necessarily that they are only interested in World War II and Regency romance it's that that's what gets published now because a few got published it hit they got really really big and now the publishers want to repeat that success. So it's not, I don't know if it's necessarily on the demand side. And it could have worked just as well having the historical part on its own. But this is a decision I made. And then I really liked it because I have the modern day heroine and I have her grandmother also who is a famous artist.

23:43So the art is like the sort of echoes through the book. And it started to become obvious that the more things change, the more they stay the same. So So they still face the same problems in the present. So it was really nice. I thought it added layers to the book. And once I got a few chapters in, I was really glad. I'm like, oh, this is a better book. It's a better book because of this.

24:07Marta Molnar: I'm going to go off topic just for one second. Because you mentioned that you are a visual artist. You like to paint. Does your painting influence what you end up writing about, or vice versa, when you are writing about, let's say, the Titanic? Does that influence what you are inspired to paint? Not really, although I have been painting a lot of seagulls lately. So maybe, I don't know. I wasn't thinking about it. But it's so similar. Like, you know, you first, you sketch it out. What goes where? And it's the same. What goes where in the book? What goes where on the canvas? And it has to be balanced.

24:40You know, all the big shapes have to balance each other out, just like all the big plot points. And then you add in the detail to fill it in and you add color. And then you look back and you edit. because sometimes you did too much. So on a paint, you paint something over in the background, maybe because you need visual space where the eye rests. And then same in the book, you need to let the reader catch their breath. It just can't just be chase after chase after chase. You know, then there needs to come a more reflective scene where they can digest a little what happened and if it is a lesson to be learned.

25:14Or, you know, so there's really a lot. I remember taking an art class years ago and the teacher was teaching us all these things. And I just see my head kept thinking, oh, it's the exact same in writing. Oh, it's the exact same in writing. So there are parallels for sure. That's so interesting. I really like the parallels that you're drawing between the two. Drawing between the two. But I wanted to ask a little bit about your publishing journey with these books, because As we've covered, you love to research and you do your due diligence with your writing and your different plotting. So when it came to self-publishing, what did that look like?

25:54Did you do a lot of research or how did that unfold for you? So very first time I self-published, I actually, before I did this, I self-published a handful of suspenses because that's where my audience was. So that was sort of my safe space. And I know people, some people would follow me over and they did, thank God. And they followed me even to historicals. So thank you for, thank you. Thank you, readers. And it was fairly easy because there was one, I think at the beginning, Kindle. So it was easier. It wasn't so complicated. There wasn't a hundred places you had to promote because this whole business was the self-publishing was figuring itself out.

26:32And I won the lottery by having a software engineer husband and a graphic designer daughter. So like all the books, all my Martha Molnar books, my daughter designed all the covers because it took me a long time to shop it around to publishers and I kind of ran out money by the time I got there. So as a gift, she gave me covers. So it was easier if you started at the beginning because it was so much more simpler because there wasn't this huge maze of jungle of an industry that you had to like navigate at first, you know, with your first step. And I kind of grew up with the whole self-publishing thing.

27:12And so I had the chance to learn it little by little.

27:15Marta Molnar: I would love to know about if you've done anything to get your books into libraries, because your books are popular with library readers. Have you done any library specific marketing at all? No, I put it in overdrive. And I think just by, honestly, I don't want to make it sound like I know anything about anything because the reason I made it with The Secret Life of Sunflowers was that the Van Gogh exhibit was going around the country. And then people who went to see it looked for Van Gogh online and my book would come up just by, not even because I didn't even have Google Ads, but Google just sort of knew that, oh, here's a brand new book and this is what people want to see and showed it.

27:57And then a few book clubs chose it. So the book club ladies went to the libraries. And then once book clubs choose it, they have their Facebook groups and places they talk and they told other book clubs about it. And then more book clubs chose it. So all the paid advertising I did, which for a long time, pretty much every penny that came in went back out. There was just no profit whatsoever for like months and months and months and months. And I am really not sure if that was half as effective as the things that were completely out of my control. So I was really, but, you know, after 15 to 20 years of trying really, really hard, I felt like it was okay if I got a break from, you know, from fate or luck or whatever.

28:47Well, I mean, don't cut yourself too short here. If they didn't like the book, it wouldn't have taken off, right? So you've written a very detailed, historically accurate book about an artist that they're interested in. So I think you can give yourself a little bit more credit. Thank you. You mentioned the book club piece, and I thought that was really interesting because your book includes book club questions at the end, which is maybe not something that we always see with indie titles at all. So did you have them? Was that kind of inspired by the book club's interest in your titles? Or was that something that you already included?

29:23I think I added that in. I'm not sure if the first edition had that in. But then people kept emailing me and saying, oh, my, you know, I'm the head of the book club, or I'm the one introducing your book, or I'm leading to, you know, this month's meeting. Do you have any book club questions that we could use? And after making them up, like 10, 20 times in a row, I thought, oh, I should really save this. And I could put it on my website so people could just find it. And then I like, oh, I could really put this in the back of the book. So that's where that came from.

29:56Marta Molnar: And what's the process of coming up with those questions? I just pick the questions that people were asking me either on. My main media, social media presence is on Facebook. So that's where I mostly chat with people and people ask questions. And basically, I just took like a 10, 20 most asked questions and the most asked questions in email. And they all really tend to be the same. I mean, most of the questions are like three questions and 90 % of people will ask those three questions. It's so interesting, though, because we like at the core of bookselling, like word of mouth is the most reliable.

30:32Like that's why librarians are such great resources for authors, because they are the greatest booksellers. The librarian is going to recommend your book like that's golden. But book clubs, like, you know, you see it within like the popularity of like Reese's Book Club or name Next Celebrity Book Club that are here, you know. And I know that you maybe didn't kind of create this piece, but I just wonder if you have any advice for for authors who might be interested in trying to get their books part of a book club or what your experience has been like with it. It's been the best experience ever.

31:04So make yourself available. The first thing I did at the end of the book in my author notes, I said, hey, you know, this is sort of new to me. I would love to know what you think. Here's my email. Email me, tell me. And a lot of readers said, oh, my gosh, I have never seen an author just give me their personal email and say, talk, you know, ask me whatever you want. And, you know, I think readers appreciated that. So when they ask me questions, then they feel a personal connection because, oh, this author responded to me. And they don't know I'm a total nobody. Like, you know, sometimes you buy a book and you think all authors are famous authors.

31:41So they could be tempted to think I'm somebody and, oh, I was an important author responded to me. And, you know, they're excited about it. But and then they when book club comes up, you know, when they go to book club, they say, oh, I just corresponded with this author. And other people might say, oh, what did she write? Would you recommend it? And that and you're and you're in just because you were available. So I think that tended to happen a lot. And on Facebook, I respond to every single comment. I check every single day. You know, I'm not on five different places. I'm in one place, but I do take that one place seriously.

32:13And I think that helped just, you know, one by one, like really one reader at a time, making a personal connection.

32:20Marta Molnar: And similar to what we talked about with research, how do you ensure that you are not only spending your day on Facebook and making time to keep writing? That's the hard part because social media really sucks you in. But I try to make daily writer goals, you know, so if it's 5000 words or it's a chapter, and I don't stress myself out too much, like a finished polished chapter might be 15-20 pages. But I'm okay if my first draft of it is maybe 5-10 pages because I just want to get the story arc out there. like who is in it, what's the setting is, what's happening from point A to point B, what everybody goal is for this chapter, what do they want to achieve, what is the obstacle they have to get through, what secret are they hiding right now, what's the subtext, and you know, like what day it is, because that's half the time, I mess up the days.

33:16And something like, oh, you know, it's a month later, but wait, that thing just happened yesterday. day. So then you have to rewrite the whole thing. So I write a super, super rough draft where I don't worry about anything, where I just figure out like really where, you know, where the characters go on the board and how they are moving. And so if I did that and it's only five pages, I'm still counting that as a chapter because I have the beginning of the chapter and I have the middle of it and I have the end of it. I'm good with it. I'll fill in the rest when I'm editing or, you know, on the first rewrite or the second rewrite.

33:48So that's helpful because I will not stop until that chapter is done that day, if that's my goal for that day.

33:54Marta Molnar: And you mentioned making yourself available both in the back matter of your books and on Facebook. Is there any other marketing that you've done that you found has been successful? That's the hardest because you never know what's successful, honestly. You know, I've done Amazon ads. I've done Facebook ads. I've done Kobo ads in the past. It's sometimes hard to figure out. I don't know. I have a newsletter. I think that's really good. So I do ask people to sign up for my newsletter. I do ask people to follow me on various things that push out if you have a new book. Like say BookBub tells people who follow you that you have a new book.

34:31The newsletter, for sure, I would put going forward most of my energy in because a lot of times with social media, I don't know, they do like to do the whole switch and base things. You know how we all built our Facebook page. and I spent thousands of dollars giving away prizes, signed books, whatever for people to follow me there. Because then when I posted, I have a new book, they saw that I have a new book. Well, now 1 % of people see what I post and I have to pay if I want more people to say it. After I already paid those thousands of dollars to get people to follow me. So I'm really starting to not like this game and I will invest my money in things that I control.

35:11Marta Molnar: Yeah, like we've talked to many authors, both on this podcast and just in the day-to-day. And it does always come up that your newsletter is one of, if not the most important marketing tool that you have because you have control. A hundred percent. I wish I took it more seriously early on and I got caught up in the whole thing. Don't get caught up in how many followers you have anywhere because the platform can take your followers away in a blink where you have to pay for them or take your whole account away in a blink because a bot flagged it for something that's not even a violation or whatever.

35:45I mean, I've had my Facebook canceled for like a month or, you know, I had my Amazon ads shut down for I don't know what reason. They were just shut down one day. So you really don't have control. It's the moral of the story. You have been working sort of in this industry for such a long time and have like such long experience where you have a lot of knowledge going into the books that you're writing and sort of the marketing efforts that you're putting out. Just wondering, like, what would your advice be for somebody that's interested in writing that first historical fiction and wanting to put that out?

36:19And how would you advise them to start building their audience in 2026? I would say 100 % put most of the energy, invest in yourself. That's my biggest thing, you know, invest in yourself. Nobody will, you know, if you invest in followers on some platform that can be taken away. if you, you know, any marketing, you take 100 classes in marketing, and then the algorithm changes, and none of that is good anymore. You have to learn another marketing, whatever platform or trick or hack, and another and another. And so invest it in your writing. At the beginning, make yourself the best writer that you can make yourself, you know, take craft classes, don't take the marketing classes, like for the first year.

37:02Because if you write a good book, everybody who reads it will tell another person about it. But if you write a bad book, no matter how much you advertise it, people are not going to read it. And I was so lucky. One of my, the very first writers meetings, there used to be like an author group in my area that's no longer here. And I found them when I was still unpublished. And they used to have every month a speaker. And And we were all women writing romance. And she said, just think about like, if you don't, and everybody complained that we don't have time to write because we all had children and jobs and the house.

37:41And she said, well, think about it this way. When you die, what would you like your headstone to say? Should it say, you know, so-and-so bestselling author, or should it say so-and-so who always had the cleanest house? And then that's where you put your energy. So if you don't clean the house and then if you have energy at 10 o 'clock at night or whatever you write, no, you write your pages. And if you have energy, you sweep up. And if not, you sweep up tomorrow. And your pages get done first because that's your priority. And I thought, oh, she's really smart. And I met her early on and this is really, really beneficial to me because I just didn't feel guilty about it.

38:24my husband is super, super supportive and my daughter is super, super supportive. And when I used to have to write four books a year, she was like, oh, you're on deadline. Mom, I can toss in the laundry. Or, you know, she was just amazing the whole way through. So that really worked for me. And I put a lot of effort into taking, you know, going to RWA conferences where you used to have like, I know three, four days worth of just workshops from morning to night. I even went back to college and for creative writing. So I'm not necessarily, I know there are people who say, you have to publish 20 books a year and then you make so much money a year or whatever.

39:04And it's now like rapid publishing became a big thing a few years ago. I don't want to write 20 books a year because I did the corporate rhetorics already and I don't want to be in the hamster wheel anymore. And writing is the love of my life and I'd like to have a healthy relationship with it. So I like to write one book a year and I want to make it so good that it sells as many copies as 20 other books would sell. And that's my goal. And that's what I, you know, so you just go and work toward your goal.

39:37Marta Molnar: I think that makes a lot of sense because kind of like what Tara was saying earlier about the success that you found with Secret Lives of Sunflowers. It's if your book is good, readers will come back to you. So it makes sense to invest in making that book as good as it can be. And kind of speaking of writing, I'd love to know what you're working on next. And, you know, you've made the shift from like thrillers to historical fiction. Is there another genre that you'd like to explore in the future? Actually, currently I'm writing, rewriting an epic fantasy. It's a couple of thousand pages. I wrote it.

40:18I was going to publish a 10-year anniversary edition. It was the first book in that trilogy, Reluctant Concubine. It's not erotica. It's just the title. But the first title was The Third Scroll, which is a really fantasy title, right? Nobody bought that book. I rewrote it a little upgrade because I learned as I was going on and retitled it Reluctant Concubine and it was number one in fantasy romance for like six months on Amazon. And then people say, oh, I love that book, but why the cheesy title? You know, sometimes he doesn't write to me like, well, and I didn't have that title. You didn't click on it.

41:02Anyway, so it was the first book I wrote that sold over a hundred thousand copies. And I switched to it because I, it was another time I needed, it was the first time I needed a break from suspense and I wanted to write something just big that I could let my imagination loose and I was you know self-publish it and so nobody was going to tell me to change everything or cut up you know 100 pages or whatever and I loved loved loved um writing it but it was actually I started writing the first book in that trilogy when I was when I went back to college for creative writing. And I have learned a lot about writing since, and I like to think I'm a better writer.

41:44So when I looked at it to, you know, polish it up a little and give it a new cover and whatnot for the 10th anniversary special edition, I instead realized that I'm going to just rewrite the whole thing and make it as good as I can make it now. Because I would never want to give my readers anything than the best that I can give them. It's my way of showing respect to them. They carried me for the last 20 years and paid my bills and made my dream life possible. So I'm always, always going to give my best. So now I have a couple of thousand pages, which I'm this close, almost done. And then hopefully by the end of fall, I'll be putting that out.

42:27So that's my next thing. And it was so nice. And I would love, love, love, love, love to write more fantasy. I absolutely love fantasy. What pen name do you use for that? Dina Martin. Oh, nice. And how do you keep them cohesive? Do you find that people go from one to the other? Do your readers follow you? They follow me and they don't care. And I thought they might. Mostly I did it for the algorithms. When I went from romantic suspense to fantasy, pretty much everybody just read it who liked me before. And they liked the fantasy. And readers were like, oh, I never really read fantasy before. but I'm so glad you wrote one because now I tried it and I love it.

43:05But then when I went to a completely, completely different, like historical fiction, I was more aware of algorithms. And my worry was, it matters a lot whether the first people who click on your book buy it or not. Because like say the first hundred people who click on it, none of them buys. The algorithm says, oh, this is not a good book. No, you know, people click on it, but they don't want it. So if the first hundred people buy it after clicking, the algorithm says, oh, this is a book people really like. So I didn't want necessarily my romance readers come to my historical novels that set in the 1800s in Europe and say, oh, well, this is not a romance.

43:47What is she doing? No, I don't, you know, this is not my jam. And then mess up the algorithms, possibly long term. And, you know, it's so much easier to build it right from the ground up because I didn't even advertise to my existing readers and I didn't send a newsletter to my existing readers. So my very first batch of ads just all went to historical fiction readers because I wanted the first people who clicked on the book to buy the book. I wanted it to be exactly what they read. And I wanted them to send a strong signal to the algorithms that, you know, this book is something readers want.

44:26And so this is how the whole name change came about. I think readers would have followed me. Readers are awesome. And it really, after 20 years, you have a relationship with your readers. So I have faith in them. I think they would have followed me. But for the algorithm's sake, I thought, okay, I'll try this. And listen, and it's strategy and I it might have been I don't know it might have been a necessary you don't know you have you you come up with an idea and then you test it and it either works or it doesn't well it seemed I mean I think it sounds like a smart strategy and doesn't seem to have done you any disservice you know some readers have found your books either way but speaking of where can listeners find you online if they want to learn more feel free to visit my website martamolnar.com and author martamolnar on facebook or if you type in the secret life of sunflowers anywhere that's easier than spelling my name then i'll just come up but i i'm every day i'm definitely on facebook so if you have a question for me just ask me a question and my email address is in the back of the book so feel free to email me i'm pretty easygoing and you know I like to talk to people it's been so nice connecting with you today thank you so much for coming on and chatting with us thank you so much I really appreciate it I feel so honored I'm like oh my gosh I was so excited I was bragging up to everybody about it even my hairdresser like I am being interviewed I love it so so thank you thank you you really made my day thank you for listening to the Kobo Writing Live podcast if you're interested in picking up Marta's books, we will include links in our show notes.

46:06And if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to rate, review, and subscribe. And if you're looking for even more tips on growing your self-publishing business, you can find us on social. We are at Kobo Writing Life on Facebook, Blue Sky, Instagram, Threads, and TikTok.

46:23Marta Molnar: This episode was hosted by Rachel Wharton and Tara Kremen with production by Terrence Abrahams. Editing is provided by Kelly Robotham. Our theme music is composed by Tearjerker, and a huge thanks to Marta for being our guest. If you're ready to start your publishing journey, sign up today at kobo.com writing life. Until next time, happy writing.