00;00;00;02 – 00;00;31;09
Mark
This podcast was produced by New Leonard Media. NewLeonard.com for all things audio, video and podcast related.

The Pursuit Podcast: a purely guest centric show focusing on people and organizations that advance positive change. Positivity can be anywhere and in a time of vast discord. The pursuit of this finding those who champion its causes loudest. Join us as we sit and learn about the pursuits of local leaders in their communities.

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Mark
Let’s go.

00;00;33;29 – 00;00;45;16
Ryan
Hello good people and welcome to the pursuit of podcast where it’s truly not us, it’s you. I’m Ryan Buck, Artist Development, New Leonard Media. And with me is The Boss, Mark Wilson, President, New Leonard Media. How are you?

00;00;45;20 – 00;00;48;10
Mark
I’m doing great. You realize we’ve been doing this three years together.

00;00;48;18 – 00;01;03;18
Ryan
That’s enough about us chat, chat, chat. Look at us. More importantly, our guest today is Amy Shamroe, Book Awards Director, director of the Traverse City Children’s Book Festival and creator and host of the Behind the Cover a Jenkins Group podcast.

00;01;04;15 – 00;01;05;27
Amy
Sounds really impressive when you say out loud.

00;01;05;27 – 00;01;09;08
Ryan
It was fun to say. I hope it was fun to hear. Welcome.

00;01;09;11 – 00;01;10;22
Amy
Thanks. Thanks for having me.

00;01;10;22 – 00;01;29;27
Ryan
Well, it’s really nice to have somebody who is a podcaster. You feel comfortable. I can tell you’re ready to go. And this is a question that I’ve started asking recently, and I just kind of like this. We talked about this long title. So you’re at our social events. Can we say party part? Yeah. Party. Because we’re going to parties now, right?

00;01;29;28 – 00;01;40;16
Ryan
Right. So envision yourself however you want to in this party. At this party. But at parties, as we’re want to do, somebody says, Hey, what do you do? What’s the party answer to that?

00;01;40;17 – 00;02;01;16
Amy
It’s actually funny because it really depends on the party and who’s hosting it. So a lot of times I say I work in publishing if I’m being very vague. If it’s a group of people I know and maybe I’m meeting somebody new at it, then I might say I run five international book awards and then depending on where I’m at locally, I also am a city commissioner.

00;02;01;16 – 00;02;05;01
Amy
So sometimes that’s what I lead with because that’s how a lot of people know me from the community.

00;02;05;05 – 00;02;21;22
Ryan
Okay. Wow. All right. So usually it’s a tougher follow up question because I’m saying, well, now you’ve gotten the semi-circle of people around you. What’s the expanded version? So let’s say I’m in publishing and there’s a semi-circle. What happens next and what are the questions you typically get?

00;02;22;01 – 00;02;41;09
Amy
Sure. Well, and definitely with the book awards being what I do in publishing, that’s usually sparks a lot of interest from anybody, whether they’ve worked in New York publishing or just like to read books. It’s a very unique position and I’ve been at it for about six years, and I think I’ve only met maybe one other person who’s worked in book awards as well.

00;02;41;20 – 00;02;58;10
Amy
So that earned 2 hours. Wow. So it’s it’s very unique. It can be difficult to explain. I have one friend who I’ve been friends with since before I worked at Jenkins Group. And every once in a while he’ll be like, Now, what do you do again? So it’s not even just at parties. I get that from people who know me.

00;02;58;10 – 00;03;03;25
Ryan
So it’s this amorphous concept of what do you do? But does that do you like that question? Is it more fun to answer that way?

00;03;03;26 – 00;03;25;28
Amy
It is. And I think it’s just that kind of thing of we all like to think or I should say we all I think most people want to hopefully have something unique about them that sets you apart from other people. And it doesn’t have to be bright shining lights, name on marquee, but it’s kind of fun to just not be like, Well, I work at the store and I, you know, I work at this office job and I’m doing this thing and that’s all I do.

00;03;26;10 – 00;03;32;28
Amy
It’s kind of fun to have something that’s a little unique that not a lot of other people do, and so they get to have some good conversation about it. Sure. Yeah, it’s a good way to do it.

00;03;32;29 – 00;03;45;09
Ryan
Well, one thing this podcast does, and honestly it hopes to do is encourage listeners to exclaim, I didn’t know that or I didn’t know this was going on in Traverse City. So Publishing Company in Traverse City, that’s.

00;03;45;09 – 00;04;05;09
Amy
Actually, I guess a very, very often is. So you run five international book awards in Traverse City, Michigan. Right. And that gets credited to the owner of our company, Jerry Jenkins. He was walking through Horizon Books downtown for Traverse City. People in the know. One of our local independent bookstores. And see I think the words have been around for about 32 years now.

00;04;05;16 – 00;04;25;12
Amy
So he we were running a magazine that we I was in the company at the time, but they had a magazine at the time called Small Press, and it eventually became independent publisher. So Jerry thought, well, there’s all these books that are now being independently publish are small presses, and they’re not going to ever win the awards like HarperCollins or some of the bigger names that you probably see on the New York Times bestseller list.

00;04;25;13 – 00;04;42;10
Amy
Those are the people are going to win the National Book Award. Those are the companies that are going to be getting all the accolades. How do we recognize some of these independent books and these people who are doing it a little differently? And so the Independent Publisher Book Awards, named after the magazine at the time were conceived and started.

00;04;42;10 – 00;04;44;28
Amy
And so I think that was in 1996. Right.

00;04;44;29 – 00;04;50;13
Ryan
And it had started the Jenkins group and like the earliest version of it in the late eighties, right?

00;04;50;14 – 00;05;12;03
Amy
Yes, he did. And that’s custom book publishing. So that’s that kind of independent. He works with a lot of and always has worked with a lot of people in the business is there were certain ideas where the book helps to convey their ideas or market what they’re doing as part of their whatever they’re working on. So maybe it’s a investment ideas, maybe it’s a memoir about the founder of a company that helps people understand the company better.

00;05;12;03 – 00;05;19;25
Amy
So there’s a lot of things that Jerry has done really well since back in the late eighties that he continues to do today, and it’s a really great way to connect.

00;05;19;26 – 00;05;36;11
Ryan
Wow. And that comes up a lot to these mighty little things happening in Traverse City and being under estimated and in this landscape of independent publishing, although it sounds like it’s easier to traverse these waters than the majors, it’s still got to be a crowded marketplace.

00;05;36;16 – 00;05;55;19
Amy
TRAVERSE It’s it can be crowded. I think it’s interesting, though, because by the time I mean, I’ve been at the company six years now, and I feel like even by the time I started versus when Jerry started back in the early eighties or even in 96 when the awards started. So about ten years before I started at the company.

00;05;56;10 – 00;06;14;07
Amy
I think what people are doing with independent publishing and small publishing has just changed so dramatically from those early days. You’ve got more companies that help people publish. So, you know, it used to be you’d go maybe to your local print shop and they’d run out of 100 copies or 500 copies for you of something. Now you have Amazon has KDP.

00;06;14;07 – 00;06;39;24
Amy
So Amazon got into that pretty early on of publishing and there’s book Baby and there’s a bunch of these other companies that essentially do it all online. So you can upload your manuscript and you can pay to have somebody edit it or not. You know, some of them are as basic as you pick from a couple of your cover designs and you use one of those, or you can pay a little bit more and you pay an artist, or maybe they have a few extra options available and you’re going to do something more basic.

00;06;39;24 – 00;07;05;06
Amy
And then there’s hybrid publishing now, which is where maybe you’re going to say instead of paying $20,000 to your book, start to finish with editing and everything, you pick and choose kind of a package. And so the company is going to like your manuscript enough, are going to give you a little money towards that and maybe like how offer the editorial services and the cover design, but you’re going to do a little bit of the marketing and pay for some of the printing costs and so there’s all these different variations out there.

00;07;05;06 – 00;07;10;18
Amy
And I think we’ve got more smaller presses now, too, which is they produce in-house, but they’re only producing maybe 20 titles a year.

00;07;10;20 – 00;07;28;00
Ryan
Wow. Well, we’re definitely going to get more into that. I I’m actually going to step back and say the books it’s going on with books like they’re here, They’re not here. They’re in vogue. Again, are hipsters bringing books back? Are we going to start carrying them again? I’d love to hear from you. What’s happening with books?

00;07;28;01 – 00;07;43;01
Amy
Well, since I feel like since I’ve started and by the way, before I was at Jenkins Group, I also was a bookseller before. So I’ve spent about 20 years in books. And I feel like for a majority of that time, all I’ve heard is the printed book is going to die as soon as the first Kindle came out.

00;07;43;01 – 00;07;58;12
Amy
This is what everybody is going to do. And what we found over and we being everybody working in publishing or anybody who follows it is the market share has never been more at its peak than 30% of titles sold in a year. The print never went away. So, you know, you might not see people walking around with books anymore.

00;07;58;12 – 00;08;12;17
Amy
And I know people who do this. They say, Well, I just download some of the books I’m reading for when I travel, or I have one that I put on my Kindle that I read when I’m at the coffee shop, but I have a stack of books by my bed when I go home. So I think the readers read in different ways.

00;08;12;17 – 00;08;32;02
Amy
There’s a lot of misunderstanding. I think that because somebody reads an e-book, that’s all they read. And I think that most people kind of read and again, a hybrid way. So they read the printed and the online. There’s very few in studies. When I looked at last time, I wrote an article about about three or four years ago, right, Like 10% of people exclusively do digital.

00;08;32;03 – 00;08;42;13
Mark
Sure. I saw a meme once in favor of vinyl records, which I am as well, and a collection. And it said because nobody wants to look at your M.P. three collection.

00;08;42;14 – 00;08;42;27
Amy
Yes.

00;08;43;14 – 00;09;09;23
Mark
And so in that same sense, I have a bookshelf in my living room that for me is just proof that Mark Wilson has read a book. But but for the most part. For the most part, I think it says a lot about me. When you see what’s on the shelf and when I’m invited into somebody else’s home and they have a small library up and you can just look like I look for books that maybe I read as well.

00;09;09;23 – 00;09;20;02
Mark
And it sparks conversation, or you just get a good idea of who they are as a cultured human being based on their display.

00;09;20;04 – 00;09;32;05
Ryan
Yeah, and that’s the irony. Like, once the Kindle came out, we all said, All right, we’re going to trade our libraries just for one spot with a Kindle. And right here we’re going to scroll through the eBooks. But film director John Waters also had something wonderful.

00;09;32;05 – 00;09;34;04
Amy
I was going to bring this up, but I wasn’t sure if I could spare.

00;09;34;28 – 00;09;55;27
Ryan
You know, this. Oh, I love I am. I adore you in And so yeah and it is a good point about it is a reflection of you. But is this a better time now because there’s more access? And forget about audiobooks and that’s a whole nother thing. But is this a better time? Because there is just more and you can read the way you want to read.

00;09;56;06 – 00;10;17;12
Amy
I think that is it. I think it allows if anybody wants to and here’s how I would actually phrase that, because you opened it up so much broader. If you want to consume a book in any way, shape or form, there are so many options to do it now. And I think where the conversation has moved, I think there’s still a little bit of room for improvement in some circles is when the fear of the eBooks taking over everything.

00;10;17;12 – 00;10;40;18
Amy
You had some people got very elitist and said, No, it must be a printed book to do that today. Then, as audiobooks have risen and their share of the market has really increased, a lot of people said, Well, you listen to it, it doesn’t count as reading the book. And that’s not I personally have never bought that because for various reasons, whether you have issues with reading or you’re busy and you just want to get that story and somehow you have to be flexible.

00;10;40;18 – 00;10;52;08
Amy
And then we also have there’s a debate about there’s I should say debate. There’s a little bit of a lead as I’m also towards comics or manga or anything that has the visual graphic novel kids specifically. Yeah.

00;10;52;15 – 00;10;58;28
Ryan
So if you consume an e-book, do you tell somebody you read that book or do you say, Listen.

00;10;59;27 – 00;11;02;28
Amy
Oh, no, I would say you read Yeah, an audiobook, I mean.

00;11;03;05 – 00;11;03;15
Ryan
Yeah, an.

00;11;03;15 – 00;11;05;24
Amy
Audiobook. Sorry. Yeah, I would say I listened.

00;11;06;05 – 00;11;29;23
Mark
Yeah. I don’t. And so we’re a house divided here. Oh, boy. My wife, she doesn’t have to prove anything to anybody like I do. And and so she makes great use of our fantastic library here. The Travers Area District Library is a wonderful place, and she can walk you up and down those aisles and be like huge books I’ve read.

00;11;29;23 – 00;11;37;07
Mark
If you’re really that interested versus smart, who will listen to an audiobook and if it’s really good, I’ll go buy the book.

00;11;37;14 – 00;11;38;12
Amy
I’m interesting.

00;11;38;12 – 00;11;57;02
Mark
And then then it makes then it makes the shelf. So makes that makes a case. So kind of back back to like the music comparison. So if I’m consuming music for free or it’s like, you know, my Pandora and it’s streaming, but I really like you then like I feel like I should buy your album and I should have it in my collection.

00;11;57;02 – 00;12;05;23
Mark
And then that’s interesting. If I really, really love you, then I’m a buy it on vinyl so that it’s like really in the collection and I’m going to go to the show. I’m by the shirt and wear the shirt.

00;12;05;23 – 00;12;22;04
Amy
No, I think that’s really excellent. And I like that idea that you listen to it and then you would buy the book because I think subconsciously a lot of people might people who really love books would do that. And to your point, too, I think I would say if I was recommending a book to somebody and what are you reading right now, or have you read anything good lately?

00;12;22;04 – 00;12;39;08
Amy
And it was an audiobook, I’d say, Well, I listened to, but if somebody is talking about a book and I listened to it and just thinking about natural conversation, I don’t think I always underline, Oh, I listen to that because you just talking about the story again, it’s about the story now. Sometimes I think audiobooks and this is what I like about them, is sometimes audiobooks.

00;12;39;08 – 00;12;52;05
Amy
The narrator can enhance the story so much. There’s been books that I don’t think I would have liked the book, but the narrator. I am really afraid that if I get through it, I usually liked the book well enough, but there’s times where the narrator enhances the story so much that it makes a lot of people.

00;12;52;05 – 00;12;59;04
Ryan
Who couldn’t get into the book in the printed version. But the E version of it was that got him through it.

00;12;59;06 – 00;13;00;26
Mark
What about the movie adaptation?

00;13;01;07 – 00;13;01;16
Amy
Yeah.

00;13;02;03 – 00;13;04;14
Mark
Not the movie titled Annotation for Nicolas Cage.

00;13;04;14 – 00;13;08;06
Amy
Great movie. If we got into book versus movie, we could be here all day. Oh, yeah.

00;13;08;23 – 00;13;30;12
Ryan
Well, thinking about plans, because that was a movie that was about plans going awry or not coming to fruition. You graduated from MSU, which at the time of this recording, unfortunately, we’re days away from a terrible tragedy that happens. But when you look at your plan, what was the dream? What was the plan and what was the reality?

00;13;30;12 – 00;13;31;22
Amy
There’s a long and winding road, but you.

00;13;31;22 – 00;13;41;28
Ryan
Talked about this has been a pursuit of yours for a long time. And I see the look on your face when you talk about books. And I have that same passion. So, yeah. What was your trajectory?

00;13;41;28 – 00;14;00;02
Amy
Well, I’ve always loved reading. I’ve always read my grandmother was a huge reader and always books were a very common gift from my family. We did the reading series together before I could even read with my brother and I. My mom would read to us. So I’ve always loved books, but it was never really a thought to work in publishing.

00;14;00;10 – 00;14;19;11
Amy
So what I went to Michigan State for was international license. And I have a degree in international relations with a specialization in Russia and Eastern Europe. And I also have a history degree in there too. So but what happened with that was when I was thinking about going to college, a couple of things, not to date myself, but it was early in the century.

00;14;19;11 – 00;14;31;19
Amy
Let’s say those, but it’s all sparks from reading. But I was between studying archeology and studying international relations and kind of weighing.

00;14;31;19 – 00;14;36;00
Ryan
The going to be Indiana Jones or James Bond, the verb your version of that was pretty.

00;14;36;00 – 00;14;51;28
Amy
Much. And so looking at, you know, what I thought the field was like and I say the early part of the century because the Internet wasn’t as robust, there wasn’t as much information you could go look up. And I made the call to go to Michigan State. I really love the campus. I really love the school. I like that they have the Spartans.

00;14;51;28 – 00;15;14;27
Amy
Well, now, that wasn’t what we used then, but I feel like that’s a very much the feel on campus is it’s a great community and there’s so much because it’s such a huge campus, it’s there’s so much you can dig into and any degree in any anything you pursue there. And so I got into the James Madison Residential School and studied international relations, and my intent was to work in the diplomatic corps.

00;15;15;18 – 00;15;23;17
Amy
And so I went through three years of undergrad work and studied Russian, took a little Italian in there, but it was too hard to take the languages back to back.

00;15;24;02 – 00;15;30;16
Ryan
Was that just because it was a sexy language? It helps in international relations to just downshift into Italian?

00;15;30;16 – 00;15;43;15
Amy
It was actually because my family is Italian. Anybody who looks at me would be like, Oh, okay, no, no, I think I’m very pale skinned. And so I don’t think anybody thinks that about me. But yeah. And so I was just like, Oh, I’ve got a little bit room on my schedule. And again, this is such a huge campus.

00;15;43;26 – 00;16;12;21
Amy
Where will I ever have a chance to find an instructor in a language and take a course on it? So it was there was a lot of components like that that you could add that I really felt enriched my education there. And so about three years in, I took the preliminary exam for the Foreign Service exam, and it kept telling me that the only job I could get was a basically desk work in D.C. And I at that point had studied, and I will never claim to have had fluency five different languages, romance languages in Slavic languages.

00;16;13;03 – 00;16;16;26
Amy
And I just could not figure out why this was telling me I could not have a foreign assignment.

00;16;17;06 – 00;16;18;14
Ryan
This was just a test and this.

00;16;18;14 – 00;16;19;10
Amy
Was a prelim test.

00;16;19;10 – 00;16;20;27
Ryan
The door was closed at that point.

00;16;20;27 – 00;16;36;20
Amy
Well, I mean, I could have done it and worked in D.C., but then I dug into it a little bit more. And what it turned out was I’m a Type one diabetic. And at the time and this has changed. I don’t want to really listen to this and think that they’re limited at the time because they could You don’t get guaranteed that, let’s say because you speak Russian, you’re going to be in Eastern Europe, somewhere in Russia.

00;16;37;04 – 00;16;52;29
Amy
You can be assigned anywhere as part of the diplomatic corps. And so they said, because we can’t guarantee you’re going to be a place that has ready access all the time to insulin, We can never give you a foreign assignment. And that has changed. Now, they let you load up a year in advance. And I’ve talked to diabetics who worked abroad.

00;16;53;09 – 00;16;57;01
Amy
They weren’t allowed to be in the Peace Corps for the same reason. And so I had.

00;16;57;01 – 00;16;58;14
Ryan
A stopping point for you. It was a.

00;16;58;14 – 00;17;18;29
Amy
Pivot, I guess I would say. I finished my degree. I still very much I’m glad I took that. I’ve learned so much. It changed my perspective on the world. It enriched my life in so many ways. But at that point, I could have probably gone and worked. You know, I know people who went and worked doing international contract things like kind of paperwork stuff at major companies, things like that.

00;17;18;29 – 00;17;42;07
Amy
But that’s not what I wanted to do. And so I kind of pivoted. I’d taken a bunch of history classes at that point, and so I started taking more history classes. Yeah, That second degree. And I was actually taking some master’s programs. They let me do that as part of like the undergrad senior some, but also to start working on a master’s because I knew enough people, professors and stuff at that point in the department, they knew I was serious and then I got laid off from my job that was helping me pay my tuition.

00;17;42;18 – 00;17;59;18
Amy
So I had I was kind of faced with this. I pivoted to this plan to get a history degree, maybe teach at a community college with a master’s. And another thing, a kind of a rug had been pulled out from underneath me. And so I kind of needed to regroup. I didn’t have money coming in. I was coming to the end of a lease and all the stuff.

00;17;59;18 – 00;18;09;00
Amy
So I moved back home to Traverse City with one and a half. Well, kind of two degrees. No master’s yet, though, And a lot of education and not sure what to do with.

00;18;09;00 – 00;18;09;22
Ryan
That half degree.

00;18;09;22 – 00;18;21;03
Amy
Only one and a half. Well, I mean, that’s it wasn’t only but I mean, I had all this education and then I was like, well, I don’t know what else to do. It’s a different time. And so I needed to I honestly I moved back home and lived with my parents.

00;18;21;03 – 00;18;23;15
Ryan
This is where Horizon Books comes in the place.

00;18;23;15 – 00;18;26;11
Amy
Yeah, pretty much. The first job I got when I came back to Traverse City was to write.

00;18;26;11 – 00;18;27;15
Ryan
Some books doing events.

00;18;27;25 – 00;18;33;09
Amy
I started out as a bookseller and then eventually I got given the responsibilities of doing like their newsletter and helping somebody.

00;18;33;10 – 00;19;01;11
Ryan
So I’m likening this because I think of the path of any writer, any artist, anybody. I play music. It’s a grind and you’ve had a grind. You know, I think people who want to aspire to artistic pursuits in this way, you’re stopped from doing something else. You were stopped from being a spy for a foreign diplomat, and now you pivoted, as you said, into history.

00;19;01;21 – 00;19;13;02
Ryan
And so what kept you inspired during the grind? What kept you going to say, I’m going to keep doing this, And it may not be foreign service work, but what kept you going?

00;19;13;14 – 00;19;27;19
Amy
Well, it’s interesting you ask, because some of it’s just survival. Again, I’m type one diabetic and so we live in America. And so I always had to have jobs. I had health insurance. I got in this job at Horizon, which was thankfully with books, something I’d always loved, and they had health insurance. So I was able to work there full time.

00;19;28;01 – 00;19;50;22
Amy
But as the couple of years went on, I just got cost of living was hard everywhere, and this was like over 15 years ago and it was still expensive to be alive, basically, especially when you’re paying medical expenses too. And so I got a second job and it just so happened and this was back in the day when you find your jobs in the newspaper, I noticed that one of the listings had the response email we were emailing by then.

00;19;50;24 – 00;19;52;04
Amy
I don’t want to make it sound like the dark.

00;19;52;13 – 00;19;52;28
Ryan
Highlighter.

00;19;52;28 – 00;20;08;18
Amy
Though. I think I circle it in pen. Oh okay. Cool. Was a book publishing dot com was the email. And so I thought, well, I’m curious, it’s just a data entry position, but it’s part time and a little extra money. And so I went and interviewed I think I was hired within three days and that was Jenkins group.

00;20;09;02 – 00;20;25;25
Amy
And so I was grinding along in retail, which there’s a lot of aspects about retail I miss and American I like romanticize it because I know it’s hard work for a lot of people, but it is, you know, you got to talk to people and especially talk to people about books. And I still like to think I’m a pretty good hand seller of books where you tell me what you like and I can find a really good.

00;20;25;25 – 00;20;26;24
Amy
What was your passion?

00;20;26;24 – 00;20;31;15
Ryan
Lovely books at this point. Are you just selling books because it’s something to do?

00;20;31;29 – 00;20;47;13
Amy
I think it was more than that. I think I was lucky that I got that position. I say lucky that there just happened to be a position open there at the time and that it was selling books and it was something I really enjoyed because again, talking to people about books, helping them find the right book, that was something I really loved doing and I honestly still miss doing that.

00;20;47;13 – 00;20;52;13
Amy
Sometimes I feel like what I do now helps me to show people really good books, so at least I get to do that.

00;20;52;13 – 00;20;53;09
Ryan
It is important.

00;20;53;09 – 00;21;09;11
Amy
Yeah. And thank you. Yeah. So I was kind of in this like loving books, and I even interviewed for some other jobs out of town during that period, more involved with politics and lancing. I even got offered a couple, but at the end of the day I thought, I just can’t do this, you know, this isn’t what I really actually want to do.

00;21;09;24 – 00;21;35;13
Amy
I don’t want to go be a lowly aide in Lancing. Like that’s not where I’ll be happy. And so I ended up staying and working in retail, and then the opportunity came to have this second job. It Jenkins group and I started out just doing data entry. There was only one book award. Then it was myself and Jim Barnes working on it, and I think a little bit of having an extra staff person that was interested and just where they were as a company.

00;21;35;21 – 00;21;54;18
Amy
It was right around then within a year of me starting that, they opened up the next book award that they did, which was believe the next one was the Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards. And so from there, over the years we added four more and I was there with Jim Barnes every step of the way, and that that allowed us to get into a couple of different genres.

00;21;54;18 – 00;22;19;16
Amy
And what it started with backing up a little is the Independent Publisher Book Award pretty much covers every genre. We’ve expanded it out since then, but we have everything from cozy mysteries to psychology and everything in between. And so there was always all these great books about all these different great things. And it got to the point where, like in the children’s book section, we were thinking, Boy, this is really, really good for young kids, but it doesn’t quite compete against this book.

00;22;19;16 – 00;22;38;23
Amy
That’s kind of maybe more for a five year old, right? It has a little bit more story going on or, boy, this interactive book is really great, but we kind of hate to give the edge to an interactive book to who’s interactive on this. One is beautifully illustrated and has a great story. So we kind of started seeing that there is nuances that we could really look at and that launched the Children’s Book Award.

00;22;38;23 – 00;22;53;05
Amy
And then similarly with we have the Axiom Business Book Awards and the same thing. We had business and we had economics, but there’s a lot of nuances in there of leadership and philanthropy and other things that are really what a lot of business leaders are looking at.

00;22;53;05 – 00;22;54;21
Ryan
It was enough to give it its own.

00;22;54;21 – 00;23;10;18
Amy
Yeah, so that became enough to give it its own too. And so we did that a couple of times more. And so it’s I love the job and I love books. I’ve always have. And it was just amazing. And sometimes it’s kind of like everything else, right? You’re just pushing along and then I’ll send you look up and you’ll say, Wow, this is what I’m doing.

00;23;10;25 – 00;23;17;16
Amy
Like, this is crazy. Like Amy would never have imagined. This was even an option in life, really.

00;23;17;29 – 00;23;30;26
Ryan
So thinking about that, those early years, what the Jenkins group, did it feel like a startup? Did it feel like a little like you were part of something that was growing or what did they do and what did they say to keep you engaged?

00;23;31;09 – 00;23;55;08
Amy
I think the fact it didn’t feel like a startup because the company had been there so long, and to this day even, there’s a lot of longevity on our staff and so some of the newer people had been there, I think at that point eight years or something. Right. And it’s still that way. And so I think it felt very organic as we added these awards because it was we went from having the one basically we’re managing another book award for someone else, but we we weren’t running it, we weren’t judging it.

00;23;56;04 – 00;24;15;22
Amy
And it just felt very organic because we had shared children’s books. Yeah, we really have trouble judging those categories and keeping it down to those two. That makes total sense, right? So we got this opportunity then to honor more books. And so that seemed really natural. And similarly, when we moved into the business books, same thing of Yeah, this makes sense.

00;24;16;07 – 00;24;26;09
Amy
This is something else that’s got a lot of nuance to it that we’re not really able to explore in 80 categories without making it a gigantic even like, you know, we’d have 200 categories probably if we edited all the babies.

00;24;26;09 – 00;24;45;07
Ryan
Interesting. Well, going back to Jenkins group, the core of what Jenkins group does, there are a lot of things publishing, ghostwriting, marketing, audiobooks. We talked about that. There’s so many people involved in making something like this happen. What’s something that’s kind of surprising about the business?

00;24;45;21 – 00;25;02;09
Amy
Well, I think, first of all, that it exists with all the levels that it has here and diversity. I think that surprises people. But, you know, everybody in the last few years has been talking more about hybrid and talking more about balancing or working from home, or do you have to be an office. And Jenkins has always been hybrid.

00;25;02;18 – 00;25;22;13
Amy
And so because we’ve always been set up to, I should say, always since I’ve been there and before it’s been hybrid. And so that what that allowed us to do is have a team that was nimble and, and set up enough that in such a way that the publishing side they can work with an author or a person as a project in California and be located right here in Michigan.

00;25;22;13 – 00;25;28;17
Amy
And our team can find ghostwriter in Georgia or a full editor in New York.

00;25;29;04 – 00;25;29;14
Ryan
Right.

00;25;29;20 – 00;25;53;00
Amy
And so because it’s not all in-house and there’s a lot of like freelancers that are picked to fit the job versus this is who we have and this is how they do things, I think it’s really allowed Jenkins Group to be a world class. We call it custom book publishing versus self-published, because there’s a bit of a price tag that comes with it because it is custom.

00;25;53;00 – 00;26;10;15
Amy
We’re not going to sell you a package that says, Well, for this much, it’s going to be this. They work with our clients from step one of how they want it to be do on hardcover software. Would you want us to design the cover, etc. It’s been something they’ve been doing for decades and it’s really interesting that we’re able to do all that here in Traverse City.

00;26;10;15 – 00;26;29;14
Amy
And then the marketing aspect kind of comes from, you know, I often get asked, Well, oh, so the marketing, is that just your book award? Where is absolutely not. It’s anybody who wants help with their books. Our staff will help put them in book shows nationally and internationally, get press releases out, things like that. And so again, working with authors from all over the place.

00;26;29;14 – 00;26;36;17
Ryan
Are individuals who need that help and probably wouldn’t have these kind of resources reach the partnerships that you have without it.

00;26;36;21 – 00;26;54;28
Amy
Absolutely. And one thing we like to say off the bat to anybody is if you choose to publish your own book, you’re basically signing up for a part time job if you want to do anything with it. If you want to just publish a book and give it to your family or have it at your local bookstore because it’s about your particular neighborhood and you don’t care if anybody else reads it, you can get away with doing that.

00;26;54;28 – 00;27;12;07
Amy
But if you write a mystery book and you want a lot of people to see it, there’s a lot that you have to do because this happens to people. We have people come to us even from some of the bigger publishers, because any more a publisher is going to put their marketing budget behind a couple key titles that they think are going to be the big ones for this year.

00;27;12;19 – 00;27;15;22
Amy
And so if you’re not that person, even then, sometimes they’re struggling.

00;27;16;14 – 00;27;37;15
Ryan
This is a fascinating part about what you do and we are definitely going to get into that. I do want to ask you a little bit about the building, because you talked about hybrid work, and I think the Jenkins group building looks really cool. The office looks really cool, like you expect it, but it’s in the true fit trouser factory building that was a building built in the 1950s, which is where I want to bring trousers back.

00;27;37;28 – 00;27;43;10
Ryan
What do you call the pants? Trousers anymore? I think that would be a maybe old person thing for me to do.

00;27;43;22 – 00;27;46;27
Mark
Like, is it just pants or is it a specific kind of pants?

00;27;47;13 – 00;27;48;03
Ryan
A trouser?

00;27;48;03 – 00;28;05;08
Amy
I don’t know. I think trousers more like, like a what we now call do like khakis and like. So I don’t think you’d say it about like pleated no pleated front slacks or but yes, I think what I think you refer to as like slacks, maybe a trouser and maybe this could be the basis where there might be people who would be screaming at us right now.

00;28;05;08 – 00;28;05;17
Amy
Yeah.

00;28;06;06 – 00;28;26;28
Ryan
Well, we we don’t mean to be insensitive to the apparel industry, and that was really meant more to talk about the energy of a location. You talked about the surprise to Traverse City and what’s the culture like? You think maybe it’s a bunch of artists walking around and nobody’s got shoes on. What’s the experience like being in the office?

00;28;26;28 – 00;28;42;11
Amy
I think it’s really funny because again, we go to everything that people are talking about now that startups do or that businesses do now. We don’t have ping pong tables or anything like that, but it’s very casual. You know, we have to pay to wear jeans to work for some fund or something. It’s just we look professional people are wearing shoes.

00;28;42;11 – 00;29;04;24
Amy
Just to clarify that. And everybody looks well put together. But there isn’t a pressure to, you know, wear a suit or anything like that every day because so much of our work is not in-house. It’s very rare that a client comes in that’s local and sits down there, happens a few times a year. But we’re not an office that needs everybody in-house all the time.

00;29;04;24 – 00;29;21;19
Amy
And so there’s a few people in there. People bring their dogs. We do get dog visits sometimes we do potlucks and things like that because we’re very small organization and it’s can be a blessing and a curse to talk about. It is like family, you know, Again, our newest employers are the two people I hired when I took over the department and other people in the department retired.

00;29;21;28 – 00;29;28;08
Amy
But before that, I think with who’s on staff right now, I might be the most recent hire. And that was six years ago.

00;29;28;08 – 00;29;28;28
Ryan
That says a lot.

00;29;28;29 – 00;29;33;14
Amy
So. Oh, no, actually there’s one person who came two years after me. So 14 years ago, I think is the most recent hire.

00;29;34;00 – 00;29;49;12
Ryan
So still impressive. Yeah. And you talked about the Independent Publisher Book Awards, the Ippis. Yes, if I may. And those have been around for a long time. And I know that deadlines are coming up. What is your life like right now?

00;29;49;12 – 00;30;09;08
Amy
Oh, life is pretty chaotic. It’s interesting because we hit the ground running kind of at New Year’s. We have a Illumination Christian Book Awards that we close out at about beginning of the year. So we just announced that about a week ago. So we’re in the middle of going through that announcement process. We’re also finishing up the judging of the Axiom Business Book Awards.

00;30;09;08 – 00;30;30;02
Amy
Those will be announced early part of March and right on the heels of that, we will start judging the AP Awards. So while all that is going on, as you said, we’re also marketing these deadlines as they’re coming up. So the AP, your deadline is at the end of February and we’ll do some work with that. We wait for the books to come in and then we start the process of in this happens with every word.

00;30;30;02 – 00;30;34;27
Amy
Then we start the process of kind of starting going through the categories and starting the judging process.

00;30;34;28 – 00;30;38;10
Ryan
Okay, so what’s that like? Any insight?

00;30;38;10 – 00;30;39;10
Amy
Yeah, I.

00;30;39;10 – 00;30;41;16
Ryan
Have a picture in my mind, but it’s probably not what I think.

00;30;41;18 – 00;31;06;28
Amy
Well, yeah, I don’t know. It just depends. So we work with a lot of judges, the AP Awards, because they are so large and because we have a very talented and diverse staff, there are certain categories that we do keep in-house. We try to always go with people with knowledge of specific categories. So like we have a doctor do our medical, we have a psychologist do our psychology, we sometimes can have those judges available locally, and sometimes we ship books out to different people.

00;31;07;12 – 00;31;32;01
Amy
But as you’ve said, Traverse City is a surprising place. So, you know, fiction and things like that. We through this work and working in bookstores and working on I’m also on the Friends Library board, you know, we can sometimes get librarians to help us, booksellers to help us. And at the end of the day, when you’re talking about fiction and things like that, yes, you want people who understand the structure of a book and we kind of tell everybody, do you read the whole book?

00;31;32;01 – 00;31;51;11
Amy
And in our ethics, we say the better the book is, the more we read. And so there are books that sometimes get eliminated. Yeah, pretty close off the bat, because within the first two pages there’s major write, there’s spelling error sometimes, or there’s major punctuation or formatting issues or three run on sentences that are really hard to read.

00;31;51;21 – 00;32;02;06
Amy
And that’s where it can be tough too, though, because again, the storytelling aspect, you love to see what stories people put out, but if they’re not conveying it in the best way, that’s not what’s going to get our medals.

00;32;02;29 – 00;32;04;18
Ryan
So a little bit of insight.

00;32;04;20 – 00;32;05;00
Amy
Yeah.

00;32;05;10 – 00;32;07;27
Ryan
You’re interested in knowing what it takes.

00;32;07;27 – 00;32;09;15
Mark
And the physical medal gets mailed.

00;32;09;15 – 00;32;14;13
Amy
Yes, we do actually send out physical medals. I have a really funny story about New York and the AP award ceremony there with that.

00;32;15;01 – 00;32;20;21
Ryan
Well, and on the website there is a merch page, just FYI. So you can get AP merch.

00;32;20;21 – 00;32;32;19
Amy
Yes. Well, we prefer it just be bought by the winners. Okay. But yeah, you can get his buy. So I mean, that’s a minor. Maybe we’ll give you Mark. Maybe we’ll give you a you to an honorary medal from us.

00;32;32;19 – 00;32;57;16
Ryan
But I thought that was really cool. And the website is great and it has a lot of fantastic information about, I think, what it takes to be considered independent, what it takes the criteria and you touched on it, as did Mark is you are on the friends of the library organization and how great our libraries, how unheralded our library, any library, the amazing things that happen in a library.

00;32;57;16 – 00;32;58;27
Ryan
Nobody talks enough about.

00;32;58;27 – 00;33;14;03
Amy
Absolutely. And I think that gets into what you guys were saying. How do you read? Who do you read? Our libraries have evolved to offer audiobooks through different services and ebooks and things. You can use your library and never set foot in it, right? No, and it’s amazing to do that. But at the same time full.

00;33;14;04 – 00;33;15;09
Mark
On media center it’s.

00;33;15;09 – 00;33;21;20
Amy
Yeah, it’s yeah, full on media center. And then at the same time you can walk in and find movies and free offerings. Yeah.

00;33;21;27 – 00;33;23;14
Ryan
Even I mean it’s, it’s.

00;33;24;02 – 00;33;44;01
Amy
And service and I think the big thing too is programing right. So especially during as COVID restrictions were lessening a little and even as they were in our library, many opened a curbside so you could check out a book online and they’d come and bring it out to you in a totally sterilized way so that people were still able to have those connections to that thing that they love.

00;33;44;01 – 00;33;51;27
Amy
And then there’s services for families and people seeking jobs like a library could be without books and still be essential to your community.

00;33;51;27 – 00;33;59;22
Ryan
Yeah, it’s lovely. I love our library and I’m glad we have it and all good things to them as always. But you have a podcast.

00;33;59;22 – 00;34;00;25
Amy
I do have a podcast.

00;34;00;29 – 00;34;05;06
Ryan
And it’s wonderful. It’s called Behind the Cover. It’s very well done.

00;34;05;06 – 00;34;05;23
Amy
Thank you.

00;34;05;25 – 00;34;10;29
Ryan
So what was the genesis of it from concept to ear? What was your pursuit in your journey?

00;34;11;08 – 00;34;29;05
Amy
So I’m a huge podcast person as well. I kind of gets into the audio book of it too, right? I like to listen to podcasts in audiobooks when I’m taking the time to finally clean my house or go on a road trip to drive somewhere. And so I’ve always been a fan and I don’t know when the genesis the idea came Full Disclosure.

00;34;29;06 – 00;34;48;14
Amy
Mark produces our podcast and I found when we finally got rolling a little bit ago, an email from I think December of 21 saying, Okay, what would you be proposing if you did a podcast for us? You know, like how would that look? Kind of the more details of. And so that’s when I know we started pursuing it.

00;34;48;14 – 00;35;09;13
Amy
But I think the idea had been percolating in my mind probably for a couple of years before. But as I mentioned, at the end of 2021, going into 22, I took over the department. Jim Barnes retired. I was hiring new staff, getting used to running these awards myself with new people who had never done it before. And so at point when I was thinking about it, I was kind of, okay, I’m a little overwhelmed right now.

00;35;09;13 – 00;35;36;20
Amy
I don’t think I can quite do this. And then there’s the idea of like selling it to people, too. But I think that really at the heart of it was one of my absolute favorite parts of my job is being able to talk to our winners. So we have traditionally before COVID, we’d host a large party for the big winners in New York during it was usually in New York one time in Chicago during BookExpo America, which was it used to be a huge industry event at Javits Center in New York, the casualty of COVID.

00;35;37;01 – 00;35;51;23
Amy
So we’re kind of regrouping on what happens next with that. But early on, I think we were the same as many other people as well. Everything’s online now. Nobody needs to do anything in-person again. And as the next year or two kind of dragged on, we thought we started talking about when can we start doing something in-person again?

00;35;52;18 – 00;36;09;07
Amy
So we always have that party. And then when we started the Children’s book festival here in Traverse City, it was because we decided to start hosting the celebration for the Moonbeam Awards in rather that we had been going to different arts venues and kind of trying to see who had things going on around the time we would be doing the awards and hosting ceremonies as part of that.

00;36;09;27 – 00;36;27;10
Amy
And then we finally said, Well, Trevor City is a great city. We’ve got two independent bookstores on our main street. We’ve got great library system. National writers brings these authors in. We’ve got Interlochen, so why not just host it here? And so we kind of looked at schedules and slower times the year to make it more affordable for people to come.

00;36;27;24 – 00;36;46;26
Amy
We landed on second Saturday in November and with that we hosted the ceremony here too. So not only do we get to meet these winners, we had to invite them to our town. And so all of those different situations and talking to people in those different contexts produced great conversations and almost kind of different ones because of where they were and how many people were around.

00;36;46;26 – 00;36;52;15
Amy
Right. So we had much better conversations, the moon being because it was a smaller ceremony versus the 300 people at the AP.

00;36;52;15 – 00;37;15;21
Ryan
And that’s fascinating to me because it sounds great in conception. We have all this going for us. We’re Traverse City. Look at all the things we do. Let’s do it here. But then these other things have to come in rates and hotels and and all of these things. And you’re settled on the second week in November, which seems to be that one weekend that is a reasonable weekend to visit and you’re able to create this community.

00;37;15;21 – 00;37;25;03
Ryan
And I think the people who are in who are involved in literature are not or our artists thrive on connecting with each other. And being in-person is a good thing.

00;37;25;03 – 00;37;44;22
Amy
Yes, it’s amazing. Actually. That’s what I like about the children’s book festival aspect of it is that we have the ceremony that evening and pretty much everybody who participates in the children’s book festival come to the ceremony that night. But sometimes some of the authors only come to the ceremony and it’s so interesting to watch because these people have spent all day together selling books and it’s usually pretty steady.

00;37;44;22 – 00;37;59;20
Amy
But some years the weather’s super nice. You don’t get as many people in or there’s just lulls at different parts of the day and they all talk to each other and they all swap books. So before they even get to the ceremony, there’s this bond between them and they’ve all connected and shared contacts and ideas and things like that.

00;37;59;20 – 00;38;21;20
Amy
And so great to watch. And that would happen at the Happy Party, too. But there was so much of it. We couldn’t you know, it wasn’t as easy to see how that was happening. I liken the the getting all the authors together, no matter where to like the salons of France back in the you know, in the age of enlightenment and things like there’s just this exchange of ideas and people just naturally just running with all of these conversations.

00;38;22;03 – 00;38;42;10
Amy
And so when we get to be a little part of it during especially like the Moonbeam ceremony where we’re there and it’s, you know, maybe 50 people instead of this large group, or we’re just working the room and at the AP ceremony or a party before we started the ceremony, it was just so wonderful to hear people’s stories and they’re excited and they’re so creative and they have all these ideas.

00;38;42;10 – 00;38;46;19
Amy
It’s a little bit of a lightning in the bottle, and that’s what we’re trying to capture at the podcast.

00;38;46;19 – 00;38;48;02
Ryan
Through these journeys together.

00;38;48;02 – 00;38;51;12
Amy
Yes, absolutely. So different journeys, but together in a way.

00;38;51;12 – 00;39;14;08
Ryan
Yeah, exactly. It’s still difficult. So the podcast well, what’s really fascinating and the episodes I listen to our great and you do a really good job. Oh, thank you. And what’s profound is some of these authors are just regular people trying to do things. And getting these awards helped open doors for them. Yeah, that’s really profound. Can you talk to a little bit about how that’s meaningful?

00;39;14;09 – 00;39;43;20
Amy
Absolutely. I think I find it to be a very rewarding job. I would say rewarding a lot because I think my work is very rewarding for me and hopefully for the people who participate in our programs as well. But it is amazing to be able to say, here’s this award we’re honoring you and hearing from these people who either have worked on slaved over their managed sometimes to save, slaved over their manuscripts for years, and now finally got it to be what they wanted to be or had this sudden jolt of inspiration and put it down and got it out there for the people to see.

00;39;43;20 – 00;40;14;19
Amy
And now they’re being recognized for it. And so that’s where we’ve always tried as a company, as our organization, to help our authors win in any way we can. And it’s varying degrees. We always put out press releases, we always do some profiling for them on different articles or things like that wherever we can. And I see the podcast as and this is kind of I think what ultimately sold that is we’re capturing these great conversations we have or doing these profiles on these authors that we get these connections through just awarding them for their books.

00;40;15;10 – 00;40;19;00
Amy
But then we get to give them this way to profile themselves more to.

00;40;19;05 – 00;40;43;27
Ryan
Yeah, and I love the idea the Reshma so pre episode she’s the author of In the Indian Night Sky. The award gave her the confidence and was a little bit of a catalyst to change her idea and how she even presented the book. And it led to that puppet show that was done here and giving them confidence. And you would think an author has enough confidence.

00;40;43;27 – 00;40;49;10
Ryan
They wrote a book, but a lot of them don’t. So these awards help give them legitimacy?

00;40;49;15 – 00;41;15;06
Amy
Absolutely. And I think sometimes it’s that difference between you had the confidence to print it and put it out there. And what I hope and sometimes see, some people just have confidence in spades and that’s fine. But what I hope for some of the authors that are passionate about their stories but struggle with what to do next, like we said, it’s kind of like a part time job that gives them the confidence to go out and whether it’s do a puppet show or even just feel more confident going out and doing book signings and things like that.

00;41;15;06 – 00;41;39;19
Amy
Now you’ve got the seal on your book that’s saying like we’re approved by the case of the IPRs and honestly, our offshoots, an organization that’s been doing this for almost 30 years, right? This is legit. And now I can go forward with that. Confidence behind me was saying we have this validation of what I’ve done or we’ve done, you know, depending how many people have worked on it and kind of go forward with that.

00;41;39;19 – 00;41;53;25
Ryan
Sure. You’ve traveled extensively and do you think about you’re trying to help celebrate these authors here? What about all the authors around the world who just don’t get their chance to shine? Does that stress you out?

00;41;54;10 – 00;42;22;12
Amy
No. Well, it doesn’t surprise me. I think it’s a lot of opportunity because our awards are international, except for one category in the Moonbeam Awards, which we do have a Spanish language category in that award. Right. They are limited English books or at least bilingually printed. There has to be English so that our judges can read it. And so we have in the Ippy Awards, one of the things that we expanded out to just before I started working for the Jenkins group was Regions, and we’ve added two regions of the world since then.

00;42;22;28 – 00;42;42;23
Amy
So at the time they were getting so much from obviously different parts, the United States and then also Canada that we were kind of recognizing, Wow, this is a pretty good book and let’s say fiction novel. I feel like I’m down in Atlanta. This is so well-written and it’s capturing this essence. It’s not better than these like three or four other books in this category.

00;42;43;17 – 00;43;03;23
Amy
But man, just how they they wrote this great story and it really captures the essence of this place. So we created a fiction and nonfiction for the region. This also goes to coffee table books and things. This is really amazing. It’s super niche about this neighborhood in Philadelphia or something, right? And it can’t beat this book that came from the Met in a coffee table, but it’s really nice.

00;43;03;23 – 00;43;24;14
Amy
And so we’ve created this fiction and nonfiction for these different regions of the world. And over the years we added Europe. We kind of did a little bit more with Australia because we had a lot of Australians who enter as well. So in my dream world it’s kind of a joke. Everybody’s like, Oh, Amy just wants a free trip to Australia, which I kind of do, but I also have these connections to these different places.

00;43;24;14 – 00;43;50;05
Amy
I’d love for us to be able to one day go to Australia. In my mind, in the back of my mind, I almost hope that Gerry and Jim not listening, but maybe not listening. I’d love to get us to Australia for our 30th anniversary and figure out if we can do something there to have previous winners come celebrate, because we have a lot in Australia, we have a lot in Canada with a fair amount in the UK and then we have some for branded parts and so parts of the world too that kind of fall in these bigger regions.

00;43;50;05 – 00;44;05;13
Amy
And so we get to connect with them by sometimes. And actually that was one of the advantages of having the AP award ceremony in New York is it is such a central location for airports, right, that a lot of people could come from around the world because it was a much easier flight than getting to Traverse City, Michigan, for example, which is I love this place.

00;44;05;23 – 00;44;23;01
Amy
So as we’re in, actually, I’ll say as we’re looking to where we might move the awards to now, that Book Expo doesn’t exist. We’re having major conversations about maybe keeping in Michigan and maybe doing like Detroit or another central airport major hub right in our own state. We could show off a little bit, too. But, you know, yeah, so that’s part of what is we think of next steps.

00;44;23;01 – 00;44;26;26
Amy
We’re always thinking of how are we remaining accessible to to be able to meet these people.

00;44;27;13 – 00;44;39;03
Ryan
In doing the podcast, have you been surprised by anything along the way? Have some of these results or have some of the responses to your questions from these authors been surprising? Have they been gratifying?

00;44;39;08 – 00;45;03;16
Amy
Are there definitely gratifying? So far, a lot of people have interviewed. I’ve talked to a different point. So I think I kind of know the the overall story. There’s little bits and pieces that are always enlightening when you hear a little bit more. When I was doing the first interview with Lisa Turner and finding out that she had connected offline after our online ceremony with the winners of I think it was a Living Now awards, we do zooms for all the awards, but we were trying to get to at least having a couple in person again.

00;45;03;16 – 00;45;26;05
Amy
Right. But she connected with this author offline and they did a session together and she was inspired to do something on her new book because of it. It’s gratifying to hear that continuation of the story. Another one, it’s coming out soon was Andrew Poacher did this book called The Jewish Life of Alexander Hamilton and it was fascinating to hear him that he was in the process of researching the book.

00;45;26;28 – 00;45;48;02
Amy
And he talks in the interview about going to one of the previews of Hamilton before it actually premiered officially on Broadway and then Hamilton blow up kind of internationally as this person is. He’s been working on this work that involves him. And so that was really interesting to hear because I think now if anybody sees a book on Hamilton, they’re like, well, of course you’re writing about it.

00;45;48;02 – 00;45;49;04
Amy
And, you know, I think most people.

00;45;49;04 – 00;45;49;19
Ryan
It pops in.

00;45;49;19 – 00;45;49;27
Amy
Your mind.

00;45;49;27 – 00;45;50;16
Ryan
When you.

00;45;50;16 – 00;46;13;17
Amy
Go. And I think people you know, of course, like I appreciate they’re adding the historical context, but he’s a professor and academia. And so if people don’t know about academia, they may not realize that for something to actually be published, it’s probably been years of research. Sure. And that’s where he was. He was in the middle of starting this kind of he found some documentation that sent him down this rabbit hole of the possibility of Alexander was Jewish.

00;46;14;00 – 00;46;21;27
Amy
And in the middle of doing it, the musical that changed the world really was just starting.

00;46;21;27 – 00;46;34;23
Ryan
Fascinating. Well, I guess the world of literature can move quickly as well. And in an odd way, timing can hopefully be everything. But you’ve done writing in your past, you’ve done some editing, copywriting, things like that, correct?

00;46;34;23 – 00;46;48;01
Amy
A little bit here and there. When I was kind of for a while, I worked both at the bookstore and at Jenkins and kind of doing like you said, the grind. But I think a lot of people do, even today, is trying to pick up jobs here and there where you can. So I did some editing on some books.

00;46;48;01 – 00;47;05;12
Amy
I helped another person. I know who their full time job was, editing textbooks and would help with some of the subsections of those. So Never You Won’t open a book and See edited by Amy Schumer or anything. But I, I did some of that work, and then the articles I’ve written have mostly been or the writing I’ve done is mostly been articles, right?

00;47;05;17 – 00;47;21;09
Amy
So it’s kind of one of those things where just in recent years I was talking to somebody, a friend of mine, who actually has testified in court as an expert witness, and we were talking about something and she’s like, Well, you’re an expert. I said, I’m not an expert. She said, You would qualify to be brought up in court as an expert witness.

00;47;21;27 – 00;47;41;22
Amy
A couple of things I learned about that is the threshold for that isn’t as high as you’d think. It’s also but also it is it is enough that I was like, Oh yeah. And I think a lot of people struggle with that in any industry or anything that they do. We all kind of go along and move along in our career and again, like head down, working, focusing, and all of a sudden you’re kind of like, Oh yeah, I, I do know a lot about this, right?

00;47;41;28 – 00;47;50;16
Amy
I have done a lot with working with authors or marketing and with books and things like that. And so, yeah, it’s just been an evolution, right?

00;47;50;16 – 00;48;01;27
Ryan
What do you want out of the podcast? You know, this is the early stages. Is it a good way to talk about the Jenkins group? It’s a good way to obviously celebrate authors and their work, and that’s what you’re doing. What do you hope for it?

00;48;02;04 – 00;48;21;11
Amy
Well, I really hope that we award I did the number. It’s really high and surprising and I can’t remember where it is now, though, but we award hundreds of authors a year. So the nice thing about it is between even people who are awarding, just like I said, had a cycle where we announce them. We’re constantly awarding and then there’s always people have won before and we don’t want it.

00;48;21;11 – 00;48;40;10
Amy
We’re not limiting it just to people who have only just now won, we’re opening it to anybody who has. And so the conversations and there’s just endless conversations we can have, and that’s very exciting, that prospect. I do hope that one of the things people will recognize is, in a way, you’re taking a gamble on yourself when you enter the awards.

00;48;40;10 – 00;49;01;26
Amy
You know, the AP awards in particular get literally thousands of submissions. But I’m hoping that by just hearing the stories of these authors that other authors will listen and say, okay, like they’re kind of in the situation I’m in and maybe I’ll take a chance on myself and enter our our entry fees, depending on the time of year, you enter a range from 75 to $95.

00;49;01;26 – 00;49;09;04
Amy
So for under $100, yeah, potentially. Are you willing to take that risk on yourself that your book stands with? And I think.

00;49;09;05 – 00;49;37;27
Ryan
That’s about right, yeah. When there’s a lot of people involved in this, but it is the author. They need to make the choice to write Even if you collaborated. Yeah your grind you pushed. It’s your pursuit, you made it happen. And the awards again, just listening to the podcast hearing because as one of the guests was from New York, you know, this is all over international, as you said, what I could hear in her voice that she was really thrilled to have been seen.

00;49;37;27 – 00;49;45;26
Ryan
I think she used word it helped me feel seen. Yeah. As an author, which has to be great for even a burgeoning author or somebody who’s been doing it for a while.

00;49;45;26 – 00;50;06;13
Amy
It is, and it’s amazing. And so we’ve talked a lot about the AP, you know, gotten a little bit more to the criteria of that independently published by the name. And that case that includes university presses. It can include, you know, like there’s a company called $2 Radio that I love, and they enter periodically and they do kind of I guess it’d be the literary equivalent of indie music, right?

00;50;06;13 – 00;50;23;09
Amy
Like they do these cool, unique things. And so the not only are we giving them a voice, but we’re giving the people who might win with them that just did their book on a not on a whim, but they’re a one off that’s in a book all by themselves, and they’ll win with them. And our other awards, they’re open up to all the awards and some people will win a get in the same category that a book by HarperCollins wins it.

00;50;23;09 – 00;50;25;01
Amy
Sure. So there’s that opportunity.

00;50;25;06 – 00;50;30;13
Mark
Do you have to be the to submit for the award?

00;50;30;15 – 00;50;35;04
Amy
Great question. And no, you don’t. So we have publishers who will enter their authors. We have authors who are published.

00;50;35;04 – 00;50;42;28
Mark
By a publisher, a fan who knows of an independent author, read their book and was like, This is a really good week.

00;50;43;04 – 00;50;49;06
Amy
We had one person do that one time. So yeah, you might get to you’re just your and hey, great. I love to hear that because that’s our.

00;50;49;06 – 00;50;49;20
Ryan
Deadlines.

00;50;49;20 – 00;51;05;13
Amy
Do Yeah so yeah it’ll be deadlines in February but we’ve got other ones throughout the year too. And so I love to hear that we’ve had that happen. One time before and it was somebody whose it was their very good friend. They said they don’t have the confidence to do this. I want to do this for them. And it’s going back back to that key component.

00;51;05;13 – 00;51;20;26
Amy
And so I think that there’s I actually because if we we opened up two audio books two or three years ago, I just had an email this week from somebody said, Hey, I narrated this book and I think it’s really great and we did a good job on the production. Can I submit this book? And I said, Yeah, absolutely.

00;51;20;26 – 00;51;39;19
Amy
Especially because the narration is part of the team in that product, right? So I think there’s just a lot of ways that a lot of ways people can be honored. We also have a couple of awards, the Illumination, Christian Book and Living Now awards that have four or five categories open to books published since 2000. So a lot of hours we try to award.

00;51;39;19 – 00;52;08;01
Amy
It’s the 2020 Free AP Awards coming up. So we want books that were published between 2021 and like early 2023 just to make sure we’re getting current things. But we also wanted to create a couple of categories in some of these smaller awards where we have the room to do it, where a book that maybe somebody published a few years ago that they’re still kind of working on and feel like didn’t get quite the attention it deserved has another opportunity to get some recognition because maybe they didn’t know about the award or maybe they’ve edited it a little since then and want some change or a friend knows that they published it three years ago

00;52;08;01 – 00;52;13;29
Amy
right before COVID and didn’t get the shot they thought, and maybe they should give it a whirl this time and give it a shot that way.

00;52;14;19 – 00;52;18;16
Ryan
That’s that. Just give somebody that affirmation to keep going.

00;52;18;19 – 00;52;19;12
Amy
Absolutely.

00;52;19;13 – 00;52;40;29
Ryan
Which is what art is about. So I’m going to ask you the questions I’ve been dying ask you, and they’re book related questions. Great. So when I first met my wife, she had several copies of a book in her car that in case she met somebody that would benefit from that book, she could give it to them. Did you or do you ever have a book similar to that?

00;52;41;00 – 00;53;01;14
Amy
Actually, I do. And to your point that we were talking about earlier, about bookshelves, I think half my decor in my home is just books and bookshelves, But I have one in particular that’s in my living room. I have an open concept, living room, dining room area. And so when I have parties, if we start talking about things, if it’s one of those books, I usually have extra copies of some of my favorite books around that.

00;53;01;14 – 00;53;15;25
Amy
I’ll pick up it, use bookstores and stuff, and I’ll just run over to the case and they pull them. You’ll hear you just have to take this home with you. And so it changes from time to time. But pretty consistently. American Gods by Neil Gaiman is one of mine, but I like that you have a great.

00;53;15;25 – 00;53;17;12
Ryan
Read Neverwhere Way.

00;53;17;12 – 00;53;18;05
Amy
Early. Oh yeah.

00;53;18;10 – 00;53;19;16
Ryan
Hi. Big fan.

00;53;19;16 – 00;53;23;20
Amy
That’s awesome. Yeah. And so American Gods is a good one. I should note is not a.

00;53;23;20 – 00;53;25;29
Ryan
Heavy book to give to somebody for a.

00;53;26;10 – 00;53;26;29
Amy
Well, I think.

00;53;26;29 – 00;53;27;16
Ryan
Check this one.

00;53;27;16 – 00;53;45;19
Amy
Out. Yeah, it’s a bigger book, but it’s really accessible and that’s what I like about. Yeah, yeah. Then another one is the Master Margarita, which is by Bulgakov. And I read that in Russian Lit during college and it’s great. It’s a certain everything. Like I check my hands on books, everything has a certain type of reader. I wouldn’t give this to somebody who says, but I read a lot of nonfiction and touch that.

00;53;45;20 – 00;54;05;21
Amy
But if somebody really likes kind of interesting out their narratives, it’s an allegory that was written and published in the Soviet period in Russia, right? So it’s a it’s a major allegory about like the Stalinism moving in at the time. And but it’s very fantastical. So there’s a black cat named Behemoth who, like goes around, talks people, and it’s like a representative of the devil.

00;54;05;21 – 00;54;16;13
Amy
And so there’s all these kind of literary allusions. And so people who are really, you know, that I would give to somebody who talks all they write all the classics and really loves like a challenging story, You know.

00;54;16;20 – 00;54;21;13
Ryan
They’ve got Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Yeah. Under belt. This is a third.

00;54;21;13 – 00;54;27;27
Amy
Yeah. And for some people I’d even recommended before those two. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So I had a Russian professor who said, You can love Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, but you can’t love them both.

00;54;28;11 – 00;54;44;13
Ryan
And now this may be a controversial to ask you, but I want to ask it. And maybe as a book lover, I ask any book lover. This your opinion? And it’s your opinion the most overrated book of all time and the most underrated book of all time.

00;54;44;13 – 00;55;01;27
Amy
Well, kind of going to. I think John Waters had something about this or maybe somebody else, but the kind of like it was somebody else. Sorry, but somebody said if you see somebody with Infinite Jest on their bookshelf, you guarantee they’ve never read it. And so I haven’t I’ll admit I haven’t read it. So in some ways I feel like it’s overrated because everybody talks about how it’s this pinnacle book.

00;55;01;27 – 00;55;16;27
Amy
Yeah, but then I’ve never had anybody talk in detail about, I should say that very few people talk in detail about the story, and that’s probably mean because I think there are far more overrated books out there. And I think sometimes, especially in the way that books cycle right now. Yeah, I feel like books already sold for a movie before they’re published.

00;55;16;27 – 00;55;31;07
Amy
And if you’re getting that major money from the marketing department at your publishing house, there have a lot to lose if it doesn’t succeed. And so I think some of the bestsellers of the last few years, I found a lot of them to be overrated. Yeah, or at least to the hype. I think that’s always something very careful of too.

00;55;31;25 – 00;55;33;28
Mark
We put too much into this. You’re going to eat it?

00;55;33;28 – 00;55;38;11
Amy
Yeah, exactly. Go get your eating right and Clean Plate club.

00;55;38;11 – 00;55;41;10
Ryan
You talk about favorites, but what’s the most underrated book?

00;55;41;27 – 00;55;59;02
Amy
Who? Well, I would say Master and Margarita is often underrated. That’s why I like to kind of preach it, if you will. I it’s so hard to say. There’s so many books and I think everybody what I will say without it sidestepping the question. But again, like saying that would almost imply that I’ve read every book that’s out there, but I think people have their favorite genres.

00;55;59;14 – 00;56;19;13
Amy
And so I think one thing I’ve always tried to do, and I think judging the awards allows me to do too, because I’m reading different genres for those, is really like find value in every genre. And so I think I’ll say think it’s vilified versus underrated is romance novels. I think they’re the most consumed genre of books by sales.

00;56;19;23 – 00;56;38;17
Amy
There’s people out there doing all kinds of things with them. You can read a treatises on it of how I think they get the rap of maybe when our moms read them and they were, quote, bodice rippers and bodice that because there’s always historical. Right know what that means? Oh, it’s so it’s a term for historical romances. The women are it’s from back in the past and women are way hot.

00;56;38;18 – 00;56;39;13
Ryan
You’re rip your body.

00;56;39;13 – 00;57;02;15
Amy
I know. I know that the characters will rip their lives off as part of it. So but I think that there was kind of some tones and themes maybe back in the day that maybe like more modern, I won’t say modern. It’s pretty modern genre, but more recent readers might find, you know, there was a lot of the old tropes of kind of who forced himself a kiss, and now I’m in love with him kind of thing.

00;57;02;20 – 00;57;31;23
Amy
And I think if you look at it is now that I think is really interesting about looking at romance now is it’s very feminist now in a lot of cases there’s a lot that kind of stuff goes away. It’s very much about women’s perspective of romance. Instead of women embracing how males have put romance forward. And I’m it’s not I don’t read one genre solely, but I have read romances and I think some people when you say that, are very dismissive of that as a genre, whether it’s anybody reading it or that might be all somebody consumes.

00;57;31;23 – 00;57;49;18
Amy
But I think every genre has its place. And I think some people have fantasy novel that puts you in a totally different world. Yeah. And removes all the modern stresses. That’s what they need. For some people, that’s a romance novel, and whether it’s a modern romance or historical, I think that that offers the same thing that some other genre writing provides.

00;57;49;18 – 00;57;56;06
Mark
So in movie terms, Ryan Because I’ll translate it, yes, she would support the Fast and Furious. Oh my God.

00;57;56;27 – 00;57;59;12
Amy
I love the and Furious movies. Sorry. Sorry.

00;57;59;22 – 00;58;02;29
Ryan
Well, we are about to spin off a totally different podcast that you.

00;58;03;06 – 00;58;04;01
Amy
Want to talk about. Ten.

00;58;04;17 – 00;58;08;12
Ryan
Yeah, it’s going to be called family, right? And Amy and I are going to do it.

00;58;08;12 – 00;58;08;29
Amy
Yes.

00;58;09;05 – 00;58;11;24
Mark
I would not stop until I watched all of those movies.

00;58;11;26 – 00;58;12;25
Amy
Oh, God, I love.

00;58;13;04 – 00;58;13;26
Ryan
I know they’re not.

00;58;13;26 – 00;58;14;24
Amy
Forever love, hate them.

00;58;15;18 – 00;58;19;26
Mark
And as soon as I started as a Oh, this is so stupid. But he’s right.

00;58;20;18 – 00;58;20;29
Amy
Yeah.

00;58;21;11 – 00;58;34;13
Ryan
Wonderfully stupid. Well, there are different ways that you can be supported and get more information. A couple of websites, Jenkins group income. And that is a good way to what’s the best use of that website.

00;58;34;13 – 00;58;55;06
Amy
So Jenkins group income is kind of the home of all of Jenkins group. It’s especially good if you’ve ever had interest in doing a book project and maybe wanted to be a little bit more specialized. There’s some information there to get you started down the right path. If you have a book, there’s some good information there to get you connected with some marketing options at different levels that maybe aren’t even what you’ve thought of.

00;58;55;06 – 00;59;12;11
Amy
Because while we just sending out a press release and then there are some links to our awards from there, and certainly that would allow you to explore the different awards that we have. As I said, kind of independent publishers, the mother of them all. And then off that we have these kind of more genre wide, but still pretty large awards that people can find opportunities for any type of book.

00;59;12;11 – 00;59;21;21
Ryan
Yeah. And the AP Awards. AP Awards dot com. Yep. Correct. And if you’re a past winner, you can order merchandise. Yeah. And it’s a really fun website. And.

00;59;21;29 – 00;59;25;09
Amy
And also I would say for listeners maybe find some good books that you never would have discovered.

00;59;26;01 – 00;59;26;06
Ryan
Because.

00;59;26;06 – 00;59;27;04
Amy
There are independent.

00;59;27;19 – 00;59;34;17
Ryan
And the behind the cover podcast is the best way to I know how I listen to it but where’s the best way where do you want it hurt?

00;59;34;19 – 00;59;48;10
Amy
So we are on Spotify, we are on Google Podcasts and we are on Apple Podcasts, so you can find us on all those. And if you have any want to see any more information. We also have the very elegant title of our website behind the cover podcast dot com.

00;59;49;20 – 00;59;58;15
Ryan
I think it doesn’t get any better than that as a title for that podcast. It’s wonderful to listen to so I recommend you listen to them and there’s a new episode coming out pretty soon. Yeah.

00;59;58;15 – 01;00;12;06
Amy
Actually we’re due to have a new episode come out next week, so by this time you’ll have a couple of new episodes where right now we’re doing every two weeks. So don’t be alarmed if you subscribe and then don’t see it for a little bit. It’s just the pace we’re at while we’re doing all these other things we do was maybe one one day we’ll up to once a week.

01;00;12;06 – 01;00;13;19
Amy
We certainly have the people to talk to.

01;00;13;19 – 01;00;22;10
Ryan
Yeah, and again, it’s really compelling to hear these authors and already the books that I’ve listened to I’m interested in. So thank you for sharing those with me.

01;00;22;15 – 01;00;23;29
Amy
Well, thank you. And thank you for your kind.

01;00;23;29 – 01;00;35;07
Ryan
It’s our pleasure. Well, Amy, thank you so much for your pursuits and to all of those who pursue along with you, sharing and celebrating the works of amazing authors and for doing this wonderful podcast behind the cover. We really appreciate it.

01;00;35;08 – 01;00;36;24
Amy
Thank you for having me. It’s our.

01;00;36;24 – 01;00;45;19
Ryan
Pleasure. And to our listeners, everybody, thank you for listening and thank you for pursuing the positive.

01;00;45;19 – 01;01;12;18
Mark
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us one more time on the pursuit of podcast, The Pursuit of Behind the Covers, the Jenkins Group podcast. We want to thank our friend Amy Shammo for coming in. For more information, go to behind the cover podcast dot com and share this with the author in your life. Links to behind the cover will be in the show notes.

01;01;12;18 – 01;01;27;21
Mark
And as always, for all things audio video podcast production related go to new Leonard dot com.