What Grace's Up To: Issue #9
Back from traveling✈️. Earning Update💰. Working with International publisher🧑💻.
Hi, this is Grace. Each month, I talk about what I tried and stumbled upon as a creator. I share exciting findings and honest learning along the way.
I haven’t sent updates for a while now, because I have been visiting my family and friends in China. You know, almost everything that is liberating is banned, including Twitter, Medium and Substack.
Now I’m out of China and have got access to the real Internet again.
Working with International Publisher
This update focuses on my husband’s book Inside the Machine Learning Interview, rather than my books. However, I learned a lot just by watching how he did and how traditional publishers (vs. Amazon KDP) work with authors.
If you’ve read my previous update, you're likely aware that my husband Peng’s new book was released and earned a #1 New Release on Amazon. This achievement was remarkable, as it was his first book. It also caught some attention.
First Contact
We did not plan to do any work while traveling over the summer. However, during our time in Japan, he received an email from a Korean publisher expressing interest in translating and publishing his book in Korean.
Without much experience in publishing with a publisher other than KDP, we had no idea how to respond to it: Was this a legitimate inquiry or merely spam?
Identity Verification
After some research on the domain name of the email, we were able to confirm the sender was indeed affiliated with a reputable Korean publisher. Adding to our confidence, this publisher has Korean-translated editions of several renowned books, such as Ray Dalio's The Changing World Order, listed on Amazon.
Fortunately, my husband’s aunt also works at a publisher in China. She helped confirm this Korean publisher is indeed well-established and recognized.
Negotiation and Signing
After the publisher learned about my husband's interest in collaboration, the publisher proceeded to present a list of contract terms for his consideration, including:
The extent of the publishing rights (encompassing worldwide or exclusively South Korea, and whether the content would be restricted to the Korean language)
The mechanics of royalty distribution
The duration of the contractual commitment, and more
Once a consensus was reached on the general terms, the publisher proceeded to draft a formal contract, for the author to review and sign.
One important learning from running our own business is that you need to read terms word by word and make sure you understand what it entails. Don’t be lazy at this step.
Several conditions need to be met to finalize this agreement, including the receipt of the initial royalty payment within a stipulated timeframe.
Sending Book Artifacts
Once the deal was sealed, the author sent the book artifacts to the publisher. The publisher will prepare the translation and publishing.
Important Learnings
Some learnings from this experience:
Including Contact Information: For independent authors, it's wise to provide your email address within the book, preferably on the copyright page. This enables interested publishers to easily get in touch.
Identifying the Publisher: Always ensure you verify the identity and credentials of any potential publisher before proceeding. This step helps protect your work and interests.
Earning Update
I did not plan to work while traveling during the summer. Aside from publishing a few travel articles, my activities were quite minimal. (I did make an effort to push some code to GitHub, but unfortunately, China had also blocked access to GitHub.😥)
However, the earnings appear to remain consistent and entirely passive. It's worth noting that, for over a month, I lacked access to the majority of Western media websites. For the past 2 months, I was swamped with kids and had no time to work. Remarkably, the earnings have continued independently.
It has been my goal to let my products/services sell by themselves, without me actively marketing everywhere. So far, it seems on the right path.
On a side note, I found my books started to generate sales on Apple Books recently. It came as a pleasant surprise to see some Apple Inc. transactions posted on the bank account. It took me a while to figure out where the money came from. 😅
Niche Website Update
Why am I so obsessed with this niche website? You may have some clues if you’ve been following my newsletter: This niche website was my guinea pig to test whether a website can take off and eventually produce value for people who are looking for specific information on Google, and subsequently generate passive income through affiliate partnerships and advertisements.
I haven’t updated the website in the summer, yet I was able to see its progress on the clicks from Google search pages. It is a good sign!
I completely turned off ads and decided to turn it back on when it had enough traffic from Google. Sure, I can monetize now, but the earning is too little to be worth the penalty for the page performance.
While we were traveling, I had ideas about at least 3 more niche websites. I’m still qualifying them in my mind. I want to see whether I would be willing to create content in those domains.
Books I Recently Read
The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest, by Edward Chancellor
I absolutely love this book. If you are not familiar with finance or macroeconomics, it may appear too technical to you. But if you are, this book is a good mine!
The book explains the significance of interest rates and the harm of keeping interest rates too low. It doesn't solely focus on recent decades' historical data; it extends its exploration to centuries ago. For anyone who believed that the notion of zero-interest rates was a modern experiment by the US central bank, this book dispels any excuses that former Fed Chairs Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen might have had for injecting vast amounts of money into the system and maintaining low interest rates. In reality, such circumstances existed more than 300 years ago.
A chapter I particularly appreciate is the one centered around China (Chapter 18: "Financial Repression with Chinese Characteristics" to be precise). It offers a comprehensive understanding of how interest rates have profoundly shaped China's dynamics.
During my trip to China, I heard numerous stories—tales of substantial income disparities, young individuals postponing marriage and parenthood, families torn apart by disputes over real estate, and instances of government corruption. All of these seem to be direct outcomes of prolonged exposure to nearly zero interest rates.
I first came across this book while listening to one of my favorite podcasts, On The Tape.
You can find this book on Amazon.
Longevity...Simplified: Living A Longer, by Howard Luks
I first came across this book through a tweet by Daniel Vassallo quite some time ago, but only recently I started to read this book when I was on the plane.
This book talks about very easy ways to keep your body fit and improve your metabolic health, to increase your healthy longevity. The way he optimizes for healthy longevity is eye-opening because traditionally we tend to optimize for simply living longer in terms of age, rather than longevity while you are still active.
Once I read this book, I started to make changes to my lifestyle. For example, I appreciate stairs.
I also started to pay attention to the food we eat and add whole grains to our meals as much as possible.
You can find this book on Amazon as well.
About Traveling
It has officially been a year since we left our corporate jobs! Throughout this time, we've had the opportunity to explore 6 countries spanning 3 different continents.
It definitely changed many perspectives about life, raising family, aging, spirituality, cultures, economics, and more.
Among the countries we visited, Japan stands out as my favorite. The current Japanese monetary policy made visiting Japan an insanely good deal. Everything seemed cheaper comparing to US. I also love the modest and humble demeanor of the Japanese people and their rich history. Japanese history never got a fair share in Chinese education due to WW2. So it was an eye opening to finally learn about it. We want to go back in the future.
China was in lockdown for 3 years. After 4 years, I finally got the chance to go back to my hometown Beijing, to see my parents 🥰, extended family members, friends from middle school, high school and college.
I did not write much while traveling, but tried to record my journey as much as possible. You can find my Mini-Series called Traveling the Entire Summer on Medium:
That’s all for this issue! Thanks for reading. If you have any questions, I would love to hear from you. Just reply to this email.
God willing, until next time! ✌️