Talking Book Publishing with Kathleen & Adanna
This podcast focuses on the business end of the pen. What does that mean? It's getting into the nitty-gritty of the business side of being a writer or publisher. We at Talking Book Publishing will bring in industry experts, Published authors, publishers, agents, and editors for conversations about what tools writers need to be as successful as they can on their publishing journey.
Talking Book Publishing with Kathleen & Adanna
On the Journey of Women in Leadership: Eleanor Roosevelt and Beyond
In this episode of Talking Book Publishing, co-hosts Kathleen and Adanna engage in a captivating conversation with accomplished author Robin Gerber. Robin, renowned for her works on Eleanor Roosevelt, Katherine Graham, and Ruth Handler, shares her unique journey from writing columns to becoming a published author and renowned speaker. The conversation delves into how Robin's book on Eleanor Roosevelt transformed her career and her perspective on leadership and resilience, making for an inspiring narrative.
Robin discusses the unexpected paths her writing career has taken, including her public speaking and playwriting involvement. She offers insights into her latest projects and reflects on the challenges and triumphs of writing about historical figures who have shaped the world. Robin reveals how her book on Eleanor Roosevelt, a true testament to the power of storytelling, not only transformed her career but also created a lucrative career in public speaking, where she inspires audiences with stories of women in leadership. The episode is a powerful testament to perseverance, passion, and the transformative power of storytelling.
We’d like to hear from you. If you have topics or speakers you’d like us to interview, please email us at podcast@talkingbookpublishing.today and join the conversation in the comments on our Instagram @writerspubsnet.
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later, but there's no thought whatsoever. And then you also look at
Kamala Harris. I mean, she's had an amazing four days, but this comes
after three years where, let's be honest, most voters haven't been
paying attention to what she's doing. They really don't know her. And
she has been underestimated in the political world, in the media, even
among her fellow Democrats. one of the things that shaped this moment
were a lot of guys said we have to stick with Biden because
commonwealth would be too risky and now in the last four days she's
coming out hey Kathleen pause will you pause the recording i'll do it
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four days she's coming out hey Kathleen pause
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pause the recording i'll
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recording i'll do it
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Hello and welcome to Talking Book Publishing. I'm Kathleen Kaiser with
my co-host, Adana Moriarty. And today we have a very interesting
author who I think has done some really smart things in marketing her
book and actually taking something from her catalog and bringing it
forward. So I'd like to introduce Robin Gerber. Hello, Robin. Hello,
thanks for having me. Yes, thank you for joining us. I'm referring to,
of course, your book about Barbie and Ruth and the way you repackaged
it to let, you know, come out with everything that was happening with
the Barbie movie. So tell us how that all came
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about. Gosh, I wish I could take credit for that. I'm afraid that my
book, Barbie and Ruth, which was first published in 2008 before anyone
knew who she was and was published by Harper,
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They did not reissue it for the movie, much as I tried to get them to,
but Mattel commissioned a tabletop book for the 60th anniversary five
years ago, which they asked me to write the text. They reissued that
tabletop book, which I think is what you're talking about. Oh, okay.
Yes. Yeah. And that, but I actually had nothing to do with that. And
since we're all authors and talking about what happens with authors,
it's the only book I ever wrote as where I don't have royalties. It
was a work to, what do you call it? Work for hire. Work for hire.
Yeah. So actually when they called me and said
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Work for hire.
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me and said they were reissuing it and they wanted to make some
changes, I said, well, you need to pay me. And they're like, no, no,
no. Your contract said we were allowed to do that, which it does. So
all I got was 20 more books. But if I'm
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I'm lucky, the original 60th anniversary is now selling for like, I
think $1,000 or more. Wow. I'm just going to hang on to my 20 books.
Maybe it's going to be worth
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worth something. Yeah, put them up on Amazon at $1,000 each.
Underprice them,
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$8.99. Well, right now you can buy that reissued 65th anniversary book
for like $20. Okay, so you've had a very interesting career in
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had a very interesting career in writing. You write about very
successful, some
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of our early pioneers, women who have forged ahead, starting with
Eleanor Roosevelt. My mother was a huge fan of Eleanor Roosevelt. She
was of that generation and she was one of her idols. She looked up to
what she did, how she created her own life. She wasn't just a wife.
and everything after, you know, President Roosevelt died, going ahead
with her work with the UN and everything. How did you select her to be
a subject and what was it like to
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research that? Yeah, that was my first book. And I was writing a lot
of newspaper magazine columns. And I had a mentor who said to me, who
had written about 20 books at that point, his name is was James
McGregor Burns. He was a Pulitzer Prize winning author. of a book
about FDR, and I was working with him. And he said, you need to write
a book. Books last. And I said, well, a book? That sounded very
daunting. But there was this genre of books about leadership, which
was what I was doing then. I was running a leadership academy for
women and underrepresented people. And this genre of books was Lincoln
on leadership, Patton on leadership, Reagan on leadership, Gandhi on
leadership, Founding Fathers on leadership. Are you getting the idea?
Yeah. There were many, many books like this, and they were all about
men. There was one about a woman. You're trying to guess right now,
but I bet you won't. Elizabeth I, CEO. They hadn't got that far back.
I'm like, wait, I have to go back 500 years and across the ocean to
find a woman. So I thought, well, maybe I could write a book like that
genre about a woman, American woman. And then I thought, well, Eleanor
Roosevelt was pretty famous. I didn't know much about her. But the
movie, the one with Anne Hathaway that made her famous, Princess
Diaries. Princess Diaries had come out, and in that movie, on her
bedroom wall is a poster of Eleanor Roosevelt, saying, no one can make
you feel inferior without your consent. Later, I learned that the
screenwriter was a big Eleanor fan, and that was kind of the theme of
the whole movie. So I went with my daughter to see that movie, and I'm
like, oh, I guess she's still pretty contemporary Eleanor.
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made a pitch and Penguin bought the book. And I start writing about
Eleanor and I just fall in love with Eleanor Roosevelt. And she's been
my great subject for 22 years now. And that book, Leadership the
Eleanor Roosevelt Way, is still in print. And I evolved a speaking
career talking about leadership and the stories of her leadership with
corporations. And I've been in a
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professional speaker, corporate speaker for 20 some years. So that was
how I came to Eleanor. Thank goodness. So you developed your speaking
career because of that one book? Yes. You know, it's really a lesson
in the unintended consequences can be quite wonderful when you try
something new. So I tried something new. I wrote a book. It was
published in my 50th year. I'd done many other jobs before that. And I
went to Barnes and Noble to give a talk, my first book talk ever. And
a woman came up to me afterward and she said, would you come speak at
our grocery manufacturers conference at the Greenbrier, which is a
very, very fancy resort outside of Washington, D.C., and we'll give
you a free weekend. And I said, yeah. So I go and it wasn't a keynote.
It was a breakout session, but I had quite a full room and it was fun.
Didn't hour. And then I went to their big dinner. They had a very
fancy dinner and they sat me next to Patrick O'Connell, who was a
founder of the in at little Washington, which is a five star in and
restaurant just outside of DC in Virginia. Very
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famous. And. He's a very proper British guy. And I said to him, my
God, can you believe we got a free weekend at the Greenbrier just for
talking? And he said, you mean they didn't pay you? And I was like,
they pay you? So I didn't know there was
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was such a job as speaker. But the next week I was at a conference, a
women's conference, and they had a wonderful speaker, one of the first
women in the women's NBA. And I went up to her and I said, would you,
can I take you to lunch? I need to know what is this business of being
a speaker? And she very generously did have lunch with me, Mariah
Burton Nelson. We're still Facebook friends. And she told me what it
was. And from that grocery manufacturer's talk, I got three more
requests. So. That's how my career
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career started. Thank you, Eleanor. I always think it's so
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interesting, you know, like there is this myth that as a as a writer,
as an author, you can't make money because it's so hard. But there's
so many avenues that you can take to make money. like you did as going
from writing this book to becoming, you know, like having a career as
a public speaker. And I think it's really important for people to
know, like, you know, if they have a subject that they can talk about,
like you can sell that as
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that as a service. Yes, very much. And I've, you know, helped a lot of
people, people call me and ask how you can do that. And there's a lot
to know about it. You have to have a good product to sell like
anything else. Eleanor was a great product. And then I wrote about
Catherine Graham. Sorry, I'm getting over a cough. And then I wrote
about Ruth Handler, who was unknown in 2008. And, you know, I've had
speaking right now, I'm getting quite a lot of speaking requests for
Ruth
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Handler. She was Jewish. And so from Jewish federations, which are
major philanthropies all over the country, having a lot, a lot of fun
with that. It's a good. Could you just like talk a little bit
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about, I mean, like you have a subject, but like, what are those talks
actually look like when you go, you know, to somebody's conference,
like they hire you and you go in and then. I mean, are they like
leadership conferences? Like, is that, and you talk about this subject
and how they
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led. So I, I did run this leadership Academy and I'm, I am an expert
in women's leadership. And when you're, when you write a book, you're
really an expert. So, you know, I wrote the book leadership, the
Eleanor Roosevelt way, and that helps a lot to get speaking. So yes, a
lot of the talks up till the recession of 2009, many corporations had
given money to their women's groups. So like Deloitte and Touche, I
spoke for them all over the country. They had a lot of money for these
women's groups. And they would have major luncheons at gorgeous
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clubs. And they would have, I mean, I was the warm-up. I said I was
the warm-up act for, I spoke because I'm a good speaker. But I'm not
famous. So I was the warm-up act for Sandra Day O'Connor, Barbara
Walters, Jihan Sadat, Mary Madeline. It was like a joke, because they
were getting, you know, you can make a lot of money. I mean, I was
getting $7,000, $10,000. But they were getting three, four times that
or more, because they were famous, which is a little frustrating. But
I'm not complaining. It was these were great gigs, a lot of fun. And
then corporate conferences where you I'd like to be. I'd like, you
know, speaking so much like running workshops. But I have I've done
that, too. And then eventually I got hired for years by a company
called Institute for Management Studies. And I would come in and do
talks for them. And then during the recession, 2009, it collapsed.
because companies cut off that money. And then, of course, COVID. I
don't like doing it on Zoom. So it's just starting to come back. And
oddly, because of the Barbie movie, people heard about me because I
was interviewed ad nauseam last year. I mean, all from outlets all
over the world. But the
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Baltimore Jewish Federation A woman called me from there, and I just
did a big talk for them, and Vanguard had me. And I'm hoping to get
more with Jewish federations. There's others who are interested. And
interestingly, I said to them, well, the talk I had just given, the
talk at Vanguard, and it was a leadership talk for women. It had 1,700
people. They had 350 in the room, and another, whatever, 1,400 on
Zoom. And it was a leadership talk. And I said to the Jewish
Federation, well, wouldn't you like more of a biographical talk about
Ruth Handler? And I said, here's what the leadership talk entails. And
they said, oh, no, we really like that. And they loved it. I'm Jewish
myself, and I put in more Jewish elements into the talk. But it was
still, essentially, the talk was how to create a global icon. You
know, we all have great ideas. There was a time before 1959 when there
was no Barbie. She was an idea. And how did Ruth Handler take her from
an idea to a multi-billion dollar product that has changed culture and
sparked, practically sparked revolutions and is still going strong?
Anyone can do that. That's available to anybody. and there's steps to
get there. So I tell that story. It's all stories. You have to be a
storyteller. You must be a storyteller. Stories are... I was just in a
little writing group. I'm in here in Ojai with some younger women,
which is nice. And one of them is quite a good writer, but she was,
you know, telling, not showing. And I said, you know, turn this into
stories. You really have something. You've got to show. You've got to
bring the reader in. Same thing in speaking. You've got to create a
story that people can see. I don't like to use PowerPoint, although
with Barbie, I kind of have to, because people really want to see the
doll. But as I say, I didn't write a book about Barbie. I wrote a book
about Ruth. She's much more interesting. That book is Barbie.
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is Barbie. What? Ruth is Barbie in a way, you know, that she she
created her. And more than
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that, I think she created her because with the high concept idea,
little girls just want to play being big girls. But she was that
little girl because her mother, she was the tenth and last child of
Polish Jewish immigrants. And her mother was quite sick when she had
her and gave her to her eldest sister to to be raised. Her older
sister was 20 when she was born. And Sarah, it turned out, couldn't
have children. So Ruth was her only child. She never lived with her
parents. She never went back. And she also never spoke Yiddish, which
is what they spoke. Because she didn't grow up with them, she couldn't
actually ever talk to them like the other nine children. So I think
there was a way that she felt that she had to show she could take care
of herself. So she was, Sarah ran a little, not little, she ran a
diner in the Denver market, which was a big open market under a, not
open, it was, you know, in one of those giant hangers. And, you know,
you go in, buy meat, cheese, fruit, and her husband sold liquor. And
she ran like a diner or cafeteria. And Ruth was working in there when
she was 12 years old. She was a little girl who wanted to play She
wants to be a big
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girl. Yeah. I think I told you my next door neighbor, she was huge on
Barbie. She graduated from UCLA, and that was the only place she
applied for a job, and she got it. And she spent her entire career in
the Barbie division. She was in clothing. I looked back at some notes
to try and remember. She was in designing the clothing in that. But
Kay spent her whole career there. She loved it. I think it's a great
place to
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work. I don't know how it is now, but it was certainly a great place
under the handlers. Ruth really was the management side. Her husband,
Elliot, was the designer, the creative side. She had one toy idea. It
was a pretty good one. But they knew their workers very well. They ran
a completely diverse workforce. They got many awards from the NAACP.
And if you watch this new documentary about Black Barbie, The woman
who thought of that worked in Mattel. And she talks about Ruth coming
around and saying, do you have any ideas? She wanted to hear from the
workers. She respected her workers.
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Yeah, that's what Kay, I remember I saw Kay maybe 20 years ago. And
she said, I said, so you've been at the same place because I'm one of
those people that went here and learned stuff, then went here and
learned stuff. I bounced around a lot industry to industry. And she
said, no, it's a family. We all have the same passion. I'm respected.
And she says, I hear all this stuff about sexual harassment. She goes,
we have no problems. Yeah. And she goes, I, you know, I said, boy,
have you been lucky?
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Yeah. Well, or smart. Well, smart, too. I know women say we're lucky
too much. Men don't say
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too. I know
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that. They say we don't
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have to.
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Yeah, I'd like to go back because you said something in the very
beginning of when we first started recording about how when you
started writing the book about Eleanor, you didn't know anything about
her and then you fell in love with her. And I would I would like you
to just maybe expand on that. Like, what was it like? What was that
moment where you were
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you were like, man, I just love this woman? Mm hmm. Well, first of
all. Eleanor had a very difficult and tragic young life. Not that I
related to that, but the transformation she went through, her mother
really didn't love her because in 1884 when she was born, her mother
was considered the most beautiful woman in New York. They had such
designations in Knickerbocker society. And she had this baby who was
clearly not going to be
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this baby who was clearly not going to be pretty. She just wasn't a
very attractive baby. And she wasn't a beautiful woman. And for her
mother, that was all that counted with a girl. So she had this kind of
cold mother. And her father was an alcoholic and drug abuser. She
adored him, but he was the way alcoholics are. He was unpredictable,
unsteady. By the time she was five, he'd been banished from their home
to two little brothers. When she was seven, her mother died of
disease. The next year, her youngest brother died. And when she was 10
years old, her father died of the alcoholism and drug abuse. And she
was sent to live with her grandmother on her mother's side, who had
three adult children, who were just drinking and carousing and
spending down the fortune. This was the richest people in America.
This was, you know, like our royalty. They were literally, she's
literally descended from the Livingstons. And they were original
King's land grants on the Hudson River. So it was a very
dysfunctional, put mildly, family. And, you know, suddenly three locks
show up on Eleanor's door when she's 14. And she tells a friend
they're there to keep her uncle out. And serious historians have
speculated that she was sexually abused. And suddenly her grandmother
sends her to a girls' school in England called Allenswood, which has a
very progressive, radical, feminist, atheist, lesbian headmistress who
sees this young girl who is just a mess. She is, she says in her
diary, I'm lonely, I'm afraid of everything, you know, basically just
miserable. And she takes her and transforms her in three years. So,
you know, that piece of the story I just love and I'm still
researching and writing about. And then, of course, she has to come
back and come out in high society, sees cousin Franklin, his cousin
twice removed. They fall in love, they get married. And then she has
this other great trauma. They have five children, six children, one
dies. But when she's in 1918, so they've been married 15 years or so,
she discovers that Franklin's having an affair. And then within which
just the world drops out from under her because she's already so
sensitive to being unloved. And then, of course, he gets polio a
couple of years later. So however she feels about the affair, she's
got to take care of the husband who's now suddenly can't walk in the
space of an evening. He goes from being John Kennedy athlete to can't
get out of his own bed. And the 20s are this huge transformation
because he says, I need you to keep my name alive in the state of New
York. And she starts getting involved with women's organizations. And
of course, that changes her. New York is a hotbed of feminist women
who are making change and women got the right to vote. And, you know,
that's exciting. That was wonderful, exciting reading for me. And
then, of course, she gets to the White House and does everything we
all know about. So, you know, but you know where she's, once you know
where she's come from, it all is more amazing. This is truly an
exceptional person. You know, Jim Collins, the great leadership writer
who wrote Good to Great, He has the 5th level leadership. These are.
Like, there's only a handful of people he puts in that category and
Eleanor's 1 of them. So that's why I. I could, I could go on for
another hour. How long do
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do you. She's 1 of those fundamental historical.
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people who, after her husband died, she, like Catherine Graham, she
went on to even do greater things, working with, you know, the League
of Nations that became the
00:24:11 SPEAKER_01
U.N. and all of that. And that all goes back to Madame Marie Syvestre,
who was that headmistress. You can exactly trace all of her work for
social reform, her values around those things to Marie Suvesse. And on
the day Eleanor dies in her bed at Valkill, Marie's letters to her
from 1905 are in her bedside table, because Marie died in 1905. Wow.
Yeah, it's a great story. It hasn't been told in a way that satisfies
me. I have a book proposal. I haven't gotten it bought yet.
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That would be a great movie for this time. You
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know, it appears there's a TV series about her whole life taken. There
is should be coming out, taken from Blanche Weasley Cook's three
volume work biography
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work biography on Eleanor. So I assume they'll cover that period more
deeply. I still want to write my
00:25:13 SPEAKER_00
book, though. So I want to ask a question like on your publishing
path, like, you know, just kind of the business side of that for you.
So, I mean, you said you're working on a book proposal. Are all of
your books are traditionally published? Yes. So in that journey, I
mean, when you pitch that first book, I mean, how did you think that
was going to go? I mean, you didn't. You didn't really know, right?
What happened was
00:25:44 SPEAKER_01
was I had a friend I was writing with and she said, we should go to
this writer's conference. And I'm like, I don't, you know, why? Like
I'm right. You know, she's like, no, no, I just think we should go.
And there's going to be agents there. So you
00:26:00 SPEAKER_01
signed up in advance. I signed up with somebody and I got, and you
send them your manuscript. So I sent them leadership, Eleanor
Roosevelt way. And, I came in, Lynn Whitaker was her name. She's not
in business anymore. And I remember she said, I don't know why you're
here, but this book should be published. You know, I'm happy to take
it. So I said, okay. And then she told me what to put in the, you
know, what sections to put in the proposal. And she sold it to
penguins, but actually she sold it to apprentice hall. This is a good
story for writers. Sheldon's print is all great. I had a lovely editor
named Ellen Coleman, who I'm still in touch with, and she made some
wonderful suggestions. I write this advice book. It's, you know, the
chapters are advice chapters, how to find your leadership passion, how
to communicate, how to network. At the end, there's 10 reminders. It's
stories from Eleanor and contemporary women. Ellen had me put in a few
of my own stories. It's pretty good. Prentice Hall is about to publish
it. And I get a call from Lynn, the agent, and she says, Penguin
Business Books Portfolio, which is their business book in
00:27:20 SPEAKER_01
in print, has bought Prentice Hall. And they're only going to take two
of their titles, and yours is not one of them. Literally, the book was
supposed to come out in a month or two. And I said, no, no, no. So
now, admittedly, I was a
00:27:40 SPEAKER_01
lobbyist in Washington, DC, a labor lobbyist. So what I did
00:27:45 SPEAKER_01
next, it'll make more sense. I got the name of the head of Portfolio,
who
00:27:52 SPEAKER_01
it turns out was the biggest business book publisher in the country.
And I got a hold of his office and I said, you've, you've got this
book. I hear you don't, you know, he doesn't want to publish it.
Adrian Zachheim, that was his name. I said, can I get a meeting with
him? So they get me a meeting, you know, they put me on his calendar
and I take the train from D I was in DC up to New York, go to his
office. I walk in to town. He looks at me and says, I don't know why.
Why should I publish this book? She wasn't a leader. She was just the
wife of the president. And I say, as calmly as possible, I think you
got that wrong. And I make my pitch. And he said, well, I hate the
cover. I said, hey, you know, feel free to change it. And he did. He
did a much better cover. And he brought the book up. And it's still in
print. So I was right.
00:28:58 SPEAKER_01
That feels good, doesn't it? Yeah. But I mean, more I mean, more
importantly, the story is about that. You can't give up on your
project. You know, no, no. Just means they don't they aren't agreeing
at this
00:29:09 SPEAKER_02
Just means they don't they aren't agreeing at this moment. That's the
way. And the other thing
00:29:15 SPEAKER_01
thing is, don't get resentful. I mean, I think women, anybody, men
can, too. But. You know, don't. Don't waste time on being resentful or
what idiots they are. Just make a plan. Eleanor said it's as easy to
plan as it is
00:29:32 SPEAKER_01
as easy to plan as it is to dream. I see it as dreams just
00:29:36 SPEAKER_02
just manifested. That's a way to go to achieve it. Yeah. They're not
going to manifest unless you manifest
00:29:44 SPEAKER_01
unless you manifest them. So a plan is what are you going to do
strategically? to make this happen. And trust me, if he hadn't made an
appointment with me, I would have been there anyway. I was going to
see Adrian that time. He was not going to not publish my book. So you
might say I manifested it, but I also made it
00:30:08 SPEAKER_02
it happen. Yeah, you did. So what are you working on now? Oh, excuse
00:30:11 SPEAKER_01
are you
00:30:13 SPEAKER_00
me. Diana, go ahead. I'm sorry. I was just going to say, I mean,
that's for anything like, you know, everything takes a little bit of
chutzpah to keep moving forward. And, you know, like, if you want it
bad enough, like, you can't just be like, oh, well, you know, I mean,
I think everything in business and writing and life. it, you know,
there has to be some perseverance on that journey because it, every
part of it is a roller coaster. You have really, especially in the
book publishing path, like they're really, really high highs and
really, really low lows. And you know, those lows, you have to push
00:30:58 SPEAKER_01
through to get to that high. Well, what I tell people is, and again,
my own children don't say no first. So don't say, Oh, you know,
really, I should do this. I should send it to this person. Oh, but
they won't be interested because, you know, they've never done a book
like my book. Don't say no
00:31:21 SPEAKER_02
first. Let them say no to you. It's OK. I think a lot of people. It's
almost like they're afraid of being accepted. So look at it. So they
put barriers
00:31:32 SPEAKER_00
up. That's a real thing. The fear of success. it's, it's an actual
thing. And it's, you know, there, there are all these coaches who, you
know, talk about mindset and money mindset and overcoming your blocks.
But you know, that fear of success is a real thing because we, we live
inside this kind of bubble, right. Of our comfort zone. And the closer
you get to stepping over that threshold towards the thing you really
want, the more that bubble or I like it as a rubber band pushes
against you and pushes you back and you have to stretch that rubber
band and stretch that comfort zone, you know, and each step gets you
closer, but the closer and closer that you get to possible success,
you know, for a lot of people, not everybody, but for a lot of people,
it becomes, you know, like this almost like a brick wall in the rubber
band that is really hard to break through. It's a legitimate thing.
00:32:32 SPEAKER_01
Yes, I think so. And I think you don't have to think in terms of
success or not success. I think when I look at what I've done, I just
did the next right thing for me. You know, I wanted to write. I heard
what Jim said about writing a book, so I did want to write a book. And
I didn't think I'm not saying I never thought, oh, this could be
success. Of course, everyone has those thoughts. But I just. also
really wanted to do it. And then as I started to do it, I really
wanted to do it because I loved Eleanor. And then I wrote it and I
thought, this book is horrible. No one's going to read this book
because I had no perspective and I'd never written a book. And I was
sure no one would read the book, but I liked it. And I was totally
wrong. I was totally wrong also because I thought young women would
like it, like teenagers and maybe 20-somethings, maybe if I was lucky.
And then it turned out as I started speaking and going to these big
corporations, I remember Southern Company, which is a big power
company in the South, one of their vice presidents came in, carrying
my book to have me sign it, and there were all these yellow sticky
notes in the top. I'll never forget that. I thought, oh my gosh, It
really spoke to her. So you just never know. You just kind of do the
next right thing for yourself. Yeah. Doing your
00:34:02 SPEAKER_00
best. Yeah. And I think that's beautiful advice because I think, you
know, we get caught up on success. Like we got caught up on that end
goal of success and forget about the steps that we have to take to get
there. And every step you take is successful. You know what I mean?
you have success in every, whether it's a 10% shift or a 20% shift
towards that end goal, like every one of that is a success that should
be celebrated. Yeah, yeah, that's
00:34:33 SPEAKER_02
right. Yeah, that's me with my to-do list. Every time I can mark
something off and have accomplished something, those are little
successes and you need to revel in the fact you've been able to do
that. It's like, For an author, the first time they get that proof of
their book, they're holding a real book in their hand. That's such an
amazing feeling. Yeah, for five minutes. Yeah, but you actually, out
of the millions of people writing, you're one of them who actually got
it in print.
00:35:10 SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I'm not very good at remembering that part, you know, because I
just, I just have more always more than I want to do. Oh, yeah,
there's always a lot
00:35:19 SPEAKER_02
a lot more. But I, I try to tell because we do book marketing. And
it's like, I try to tell people now be ready when that book comes. I
want to see a photo of you holding it because it's probably going to
be one of the best smiles of your life.
00:35:35 SPEAKER_00
Especially that first book. I mean, you know, I think that when you've
moved into having multiple books, but like that first book holding the
print copy, like not your galleys and, you know, it's not marked up by
your editor, like that, that one that's going to sit on the
bookshelves is. I mean, there's a moment in that. It's yes, it's very
00:35:57 SPEAKER_01
cool. It's cool. One time I got on a plane and someone was reading the
book, you know, like, It's, it's amazing to have your work in the
world. I just wrote my first play, not just six years ago, but it's,
you know, we've had some productions and that's all, that's a whole
other experience where I have an actress reading my
00:36:17 SPEAKER_01
an actress reading my words. And that's a really strange one because
it's almost like you didn't write it anymore because you've been
writing and rewriting and rewriting. And suddenly it's up there. Like
I have to keep saying to myself, you wrote that because someone else
is doing what you wrote. That's a very different
00:36:39 SPEAKER_02
a very different deal. Yeah. So you have a lot. What else do you do?
You write plays. You've had book published. You wrote articles. You
were a journalist. You lead your leadership. You're a speaker.
Anything else on the agenda? Um, well, I'm, I'm learning
00:36:59 SPEAKER_01
pickleball. I actually wasn't sure I'd write another
00:37:04 SPEAKER_01
play, but I was some, a very accomplished playwright said to
00:37:10 SPEAKER_01
me, I said, how do you decide what player, you know, you're going to
write? Like, I feel like I won't have another idea. And he said, well,
I, I write what I have to write.
00:37:24 SPEAKER_01
what I have to write. And it turned out there was something I had to
write. Now, I got there because I did something out of the box that
was definitely risky, more risky for other people than for me. But I
took a comedy class. I took an eight-week comedy class, stand-up
comedy. I always thought I could do stand-up comedy. Although when I
told my son that, he immediately said, but you're not
00:37:56 SPEAKER_01
funny. And he said, yeah, and you actually weren't good at soccer. But
we got past that. So I took this class, and in writing, so you have to
figure out what your theme is. And I thought my theme was going to be
my mother, who did some very funny things. But he said, no, it has to
be you. let's talk about you, you know? So he said, what do you do?
And I said, well, I, you know, I ride, I play tennis, pickleball, I
hike, I have a dog. He's like, no, no, no. I said, well, you know, my
husband has Parkinson's and I'm his caregiver, but not super happy
about that. And he's like, oh, that's it. That's your theme. And I'm
like, really? He goes, yep. That's what you look for in comedy.
Something that's, you know,
00:38:49 SPEAKER_00
Painful, painful, but you can make it funny. I wrote this
00:38:53 SPEAKER_01
routine. People can find it on YouTube, on my channel, Robin Kerr.
It's just four and a half minutes. And it was hugely successful within
a room of, you know, 75 people who were, it's Ojai, so everyone knew
everybody, including me. But there were people who came up to me and
thanked me for my honesty about this, you know, hard issue of
caregiving. and the humor. So I thought, hmm, maybe I should write, I
think I have more to say. So I wrote a modern love column for the New
York Times, which keep your fingers crossed, I'm supposed to hear next
month or so. And I liked that column. I expanded on this idea and I
thought, this is good. And I thought, I still have more to say about
this. So I wrote a play. And I mean, I just had to write the play. And
this morning, actually, in my this writers group I have, I read them
about 10 pages and they loved it. Like they really responded to it.
It's funny and it's about caregiving and the serious matter of a
serious illness. And how do you deal with that and try to find and
figure out how to find something beautiful and joyful in
00:40:19 SPEAKER_02
that. And I won't tell you the
00:40:20 SPEAKER_01
you the answer, but perhaps you'll get to see the play. So that's what
I'm working on. I'm very excited because I'm just, you know, you know,
sometimes, especially after been writing as long as I have, you know,
if you have something and I just, I feel like I have something. It
meets my value as a writer of, wanting to make change in the world. I
don't just write. It's okay to write for your own fun or satisfaction
or whatever, but it's not how I write. I write to make change. Well,
that sounds like an amazing subject
00:40:59 SPEAKER_02
matter. And to find the humor in it is, you could probably help a lot
of people that are, you know, just starting down that road. If you
don't keep your sense of humor when you're a caregiver, It's really
hard. Yes. Yes. I hope so. Stay tuned. We must know when you're having
a reading or something. Yeah, I'm going to do a
00:41:21 SPEAKER_02
going to do a reading. I think I'll probably wait until
00:41:25 SPEAKER_01
wait until September. But if you're interested, Kathleen, I'll let you
know. But Donna, you're not here, right? I'm not. Yeah. But I'll let
you know, because I would like to have an audience of people who are
writers. Oh, I would love to come see
00:41:43 SPEAKER_02
love to come see it. I love plays
00:41:46 SPEAKER_01
anyway, so. Okay. Well, you know, the Ohio Playwrights Conference is
here. Right. And the festival is next week, August 1st through 4th.
Right. They use the Thatcher School Theater and it's pay what you
00:41:59 SPEAKER_02
and it's pay what you can. Sure. It's, well,
00:42:03 SPEAKER_02
Well, like Friday night, we have Into the Woods opening with the Ojai
Performing Arts Theater. Yes, I'm with it. There's a theater up in
this little
00:42:08 SPEAKER_04
Arts Theater.
00:42:11 SPEAKER_01
little valley. Yes. A lot of theaters. It's true. It's true.
Unfortunate that the second weekend is the same as ours, but I'm going
Friday night. So maybe I'll see you there. I'll be doing the party.
I'm the wine pourer. Oh, OK. The Ojai playwrights are some of the top
playwrights
00:42:27 SPEAKER_01
are some of the top playwrights in the country.
00:42:31 SPEAKER_02
Oh yeah, it's an incredible
00:42:32 SPEAKER_01
an incredible conference. We've been sending plays to New York for
many years. It's been going over 20 years. And I did workshop my play,
The Shot, the one about domestic abuse, my first play, about Catherine
Graham. I did workshop it at Playwright
00:42:51 SPEAKER_02
Conference. Yeah, that's a wonderful organization and what they do,
the material they put out. Yeah.
00:42:59 SPEAKER_02
Well, listen, this has been really interesting. We went a little
couple places I didn't know we were going to go. And I love it,
though, because I try to tell people, especially nonfiction writers,
you know, if you're passionate about the subject matter, there's going
to be some place you can talk about it. And what you need to do is
start finding out, you know, where could you introduce yourself to a
group? to be helping inspire them. It's not just because you think you
can sell them books, but talk about your passion that made you write
the book. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. What you discovered.
00:43:34 SPEAKER_00
Yeah. So, Robin, where can people find you? Do you have social media,
website? I have a
00:43:40 SPEAKER_01
a website, robingerber.com, and I have a professional page on
Facebook. I really don't spend my time on Social media, I'm afraid.
The truth is what you're saying about not making money writing books.
You don't make money writing books. I mean, leadership don't. I mean,
you do if you, you know, hit it big, but leadership, Eleanor Roosevelt
way has been in print for 22 years. And I've made a total of about
$50,000 from the book book sales. Exactly. I've made, as you say, a
lot more money because. It has evolved a speaking career from that
book. Barbie and Ruth, same thing. I got a $60,000 advance in 2008,
and it's never earned out. However, it has been optioned. It was
optioned for seven years by a movie company. It was optioned for three
years by a guy who wanted to make a musical. So I probably made more
than double the advance on option payments. So that's another stream
of revenue, but straight up book
00:44:52 SPEAKER_01
up book sales. You know, I'm not saying people don't make it, but it's
very, very hard. It is very
00:45:01 SPEAKER_00
very hard. It doesn't mean that people shouldn't do it. I keep
writing, keep publishing. I mean, but it's very rare that people, you
know, strike it
00:45:13 SPEAKER_01
strike it rich. John Grisham's or Yeah, Michael Lewis, you know. Yeah,
he
00:45:20 SPEAKER_02
does. And all of his Michael Lewis, almost all of them become movies.
Which is very strange. Harlan Corbin. Yeah, Harlan Corbin, almost all
of his books
00:45:30 SPEAKER_00
almost all of his books are a Netflix limited series now. Diana
Gabaldon, she wrote Outlander as a test to see if she could write a
book and look at what that book did.
00:45:43 SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you know, there's a story my daughter told me that she was
actually sued because I guess that story came from some anime or
Japanese story or
00:45:53 SPEAKER_01
story or something. Outlander? Yeah. I don't think so. No, that was
00:45:57 SPEAKER_00
I don't
00:45:59 SPEAKER_02
was just, that suit got knocked down. You know what I'm talking about?
Yeah, I read about it. It was in Publishers Weekly and it got thrown
out of court. Okay. Somebody just thinking just because you have a
similar theme that time walking and that that's not the same story.
And there I
00:46:20 SPEAKER_00
And there I mean, there are other stories that have time walking, like
the time travelers wife. And, you know, I mean, even. Discovery of
witches like they time walk in that. I
00:46:32 SPEAKER_01
in that.
00:46:33 SPEAKER_00
mean, it's not an off concept. Yeah.
00:46:36 SPEAKER_01
Yeah. You know, I did, by the way, write a novel. I wrote a book about
what if Eleanor Roosevelt had run for president in 1952, which is
suddenly very relevant, called Eleanor versus Ike. It's an alternative
history, and it's a very fun book. That sounds like a fun one. Yeah.
Very fun. I loved writing, and I won't tell you what happens. Don't
ask me. We can put
00:47:02 SPEAKER_00
whatever books up on our, on our webpage for this episode that you
want, if you want to send them to me and whatever you
00:47:11 SPEAKER_01
you want, they're all on my website. Oh, okay. Yeah. We'll link. We, I
always link to our
00:47:18 SPEAKER_00
speaker, our guests website. So, I mean, this, this one has been a
pleasure. It's very interesting. Like your subject matters are very
interesting. you know, and I, I think that strong women throughout
history, like their stories are really important because like you
00:47:40 SPEAKER_00
you said, most men don't have to say we got lucky or, you know, so
being able to tell those stories
00:47:46 SPEAKER_00
those stories and, you know, and share that positive look of, you
know, even like if you have rough beginnings, you can overcome that
and become. you know, somebody that is important and offers change and
is progressive and all of those things. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And help do
something for the better good. Right.
00:48:07 SPEAKER_02
do something for the better
00:48:11 SPEAKER_02
Well, thank you, Robin, for being here. Thank you, Kathleen. I'll see
you around town. Oh, yes. We'll see each other and we'll we'll talk
next time. So thank you, everyone, for tuning in to this episode of
Talking Book Publishing. And our guest was Robin Gerber. If you want
to find her website, it's Robin Gerber dot com. And we'll have that on
our site. And of course, as always, download us and subscribe on all
of your favorite podcasts. outlets. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you.
Bye. Bye.