Transcript
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Hi friends, I'm Beth McMullen and I'm Lisa Schmid, and we're the co-hosts of Writers with Wrinkles.
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This is season three, episode 16, and today we are excited to welcome Matt Eicheldinger to the show.
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Matt wasn't always a writer.
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He spent most of his childhood playing soccer, reading comics and trying to stay out of trouble.
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Little did he know those moments would ultimately help craft his first novel, matt Sprouts and the Curse of the Ten Broken Toes.
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Matt lives in Minnesota with his wife and two children and tries to create new adventures with them whenever possible.
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When he's not writing, you can find him telling students stories in his classroom or trail running along the Minnesota River bottoms.
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So welcome Matt.
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We are super excited to have you today.
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Thanks, I'm happy to be here.
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This will be fun.
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It's so funny.
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I can't even believe you're here, because I'm going to use a Taylor Swift quote kind of quote or a song title.
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You're in a lavender haze right now.
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You are winning.
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I'm just going to let you tell, like, what's happened to you in the last like two weeks, and then we can dive further.
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But let's talk about your really big thing that just happened.
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Sure, and yeah, I do want to talk about the past because I think from the outside people might look at my Instagram following and think like, oh, he got a following and then a book deal and it couldn't be more opposite of that.
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But yeah, the last two weeks my book released with Andrews McNeil publishing on March 19.
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And then that same week we found out I was on the USA Today bestseller list and we're like, wow, that's crazy.
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And then we saw I was like publisher weekly bestseller.
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We're like wow, that's also crazy.
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And then my wife and I were sitting at home and we got a call from my editor and she was like, put it on speakerphone and she let me know that we were a New York Times bestseller.
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And, to be quite honest, like we we don't really know how to react to that yet Like we did cry, there was a lot of tears.
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But like, even when you emailed me and you and you said, oh my gosh, new York Times bestseller, like even that was one of the first times I saw it come from somebody else, or like I was on a plane a few days ago and I wrote it down and I started crying because it doesn't seem there's some definite imposter syndrome happening, but I'm really thankful for the opportunity to hopefully continue telling stories for a while, because it's been a lot of fun this past year it's amazing, and I'm sure you described very well how heady it must be to be, because you know we live in that imposter syndrome, that self-doubt as writers and then to have that that sort of world embrace of what you've done creatively is pretty amazing thank you, and I think that the hardest part for me is both my wife and I are big time planners, and so, like, when someone gives you a title like New York Times bestseller, you're like cool.
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What does that mean, though?
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Like, what does it do?
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And so even one of my kids says, like, do you get a jacket?
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I was like I don't, I don't think I get a jacket.
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I think you should make a jacket Should.
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I.
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Just put on the back, you know like instead of the school name it's like New York Times bestseller on the back.
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That would actually be cool.
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That would be cool, Although you'll find while we talk I'm not good at talking about myself and any accolades I've gotten.
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Well, this is going to be an awkward interview, then, because this is all about you.
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Okay, well, I'm ready.
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All right, get ready.
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Well, congratulations on all that.
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We are super excited for you.
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Thank you, I I you know the the book is really resonating with people and that is gotta be super gratifying.
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So you initially self-published Matt Sprouts and the curse of the 10 broken toes, which then got picked up by Andrews McNeil.
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So can you walk us through that backstory?
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Like you said, this wasn't an overnight.
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24 hours after you wrote the book, you were wildly successful.
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What was that journey like?
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Yeah, so I'm getting better at taking a 15 year long journey and condensing it into not 15 years of me telling that story very long.
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So what originally happened was I'm a teacher.
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So when I was 21, I was still shocked that anyone would let me be in charge of children.
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And they they put me in a room and over the course of a day I would see about 136 grade students and all of my colleagues at the time had these really unique like traits about them.
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Like that teacher is a dancer, that teacher is a comedian, like everyone had a thing, but I didn't have a thing and I was like what could be my thing?
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And I happened to have a decent memory of experiences.
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So like if you were to ask me what was it like to, you know, walk in your third grade classroom, I could probably remember that to the point of me crying because it wasn't a great experience.
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So I have a just a very strong connection with things that I've been a part of, and so that also means I remember every embarrassing moment of my childhood and middle schoolers love that stuff, and so so I was like, well, maybe I could tell stories, maybe that's a thing I could do.
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Had no background in storytelling, but I started telling these embarrassing stories from my childhood of, like, my first kiss gone bad or getting trampled by a llama, and it, it, it hit kids so well that I ended up telling stories to other classrooms in the school.
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They just wanted to be entertained, and so I was like, well, there will be a point where I forget all these stories, so I should probably write them down.
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And so I went back home Again.
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I was 21, had never written a book.
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I just decided to start writing them all down.
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And as I was writing them, I was like, well, maybe it would be cool to like connect them in some way.
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And so I did that.
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I have happened to have broken all 10 of my toes, and so that was like the general thread of it.
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I see your faces dropping right now, but like they weren't.
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It wasn't like a grand piano fell on me, it wasn't like one moment of traumatic memory, like I'll tell you a couple of them later.
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And then, when I had reluctant readers in class or readers who were struggling to find something, I would go well, do you like those embarrassing stories of me?
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Yes, we love those Great.
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Here's a book full of embarrassing moments that's based on me and kids read that so much in that year that it kind of shocked me.
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I was like, oh, maybe did I create something that's good, like I don't know.
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And so I spent.
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You know, that was the moment that I started querying agents in New York, 21 years old, had no idea what I was doing.
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I'm sure the first five years worth of me querying agents were horrendous.
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I'm sure they were full of mistakes.
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I wasn't representing my book well I probably the summary was was I know one had edited the book, you know.
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So I'm sure it was kind of a five-year waste of time, but I did learn a lot.
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And so in 2021, I'd received, up to that point, like probably well over 200 rejections easily.
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I kept them all in a spreadsheet and I'd gotten close a couple of times to getting an agent, but otherwise it was pretty much fail after fail.
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So I decided to self-publish.
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So my wife and I sat down and decided like, well, how much are we worth contributing to this dream?
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I ended up doing a Kickstarter campaign to like ask people to buy the book before it existed, and got enough to print about 2000 hardback covered books.
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I designed the cover with with a company called Wise Inc.
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Wise inc.
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And they kind of it's like pay to publish.
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So you, it's like itemized and everything, and I drew some spot art.
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I have no background in drawing, I just happen to doodle all the time.
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So I've gotten fairly decent at my style of doodling and I doodled some pictures in it.
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And then that book, in 2021, over the next year and a half, went on to win four awards, one one of them being Indie Book of the Year, and I was like, oh my gosh, surely someone will notice me after all of this time.
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And all of the, nobody was interested, not a single.
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I would send new query letters of Book of the Year.
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I've sold out all my books.
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And then I had about 30 books left and I looked at my wife.
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I'm like I think it's time to be done.
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It has been a really long time.
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I did what I set out to do.
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I made the book.
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People bought it, I visited some classrooms.
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It's been great, but when you are an independent author, most of that money that you make would go right back into printing and it was just like as a full-time teacher.
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I didn't have the energy to keep it up.
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And so, once you know it, though, the moment I decided to be done, that's when I got picked up by an agent, and I could go into that backstory all the time.
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But when I signed with my agent, I was so happy just to have an agent.
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I'm like so how long do you think this will take?
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And she's like I don't know.
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Matt, I've read a lot of books, and this book I read really quick.
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I think we'll sell it fast.
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And in two weeks I read really quick, I think we'll sell it fast.
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And in two weeks we had a multi-book deal.
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And so my 15 years of struggling to get this book anywhere, it happened within a two-week span.
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It just like that.
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All of a sudden, I have a two-book deal.
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And then what's even crazier is I was like oh, I'm realizing my dream.
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I should probably take a year off from teaching.
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I wonder what that looks like.
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I'd never gone on leave before, so I called HR the day that I signed my contract.
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The day that I signed it, I said when's the last day to go on leave?
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They said tomorrow.
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You have to put in your paperwork tomorrow.
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So I went home and I cried with my wife because that's 50% of our salary gone, gone.
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And we're like I get, I mean, we have.
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No, I still am learning so much about the industry.
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Like I didn't know, like my advance was good, I'm not complaining at all, but it didn't replace my teaching salary.
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So we just went for it and we decided, okay, I will take a year off of teaching.
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And then the first day I wasn't a teacher is when I started telling stories on Instagram and within a month of me telling those stories, I had 300,000 followers and that allowed me to pitch other book ideas because, as you probably both know, having a following means a lot in this industry.
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You have more exposure.
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But it wasn't even that that got me.
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It wasn't the following count, it was my pre-sale numbers had set records at the company.
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I was the number one pre-ordered book at Barnes Noble for Simon Schuster distribution, above Britney Spears, her autobiography.
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And so we joke in our house that when's it going to stop?
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Because it's always something that's bigger and better.
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And I don't want to say I'm being trained for all this attention, but it's like I'm honestly scared, I'm waiting for something bad to happen, because it just seems like I'm due for it.
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But also I think that I've earned it after 15 years.
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I've worked really, really hard to get to where I am and I believed in my idea for a very long time and I'd like to think that this is finally, you know, good coming back to me.
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But I know every author could say that too, because every artist dreams of getting known and having an audience and I'm just really thankful for everything that's happened.
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But I honestly can't believe any of it.
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It seems very surreal most days.
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We're going to call this episode bigger than Britney.
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I just made a note because that is such a wonderful little stat to kind of illustrate this crazy journey that you're on.
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But I like what you said about it being hard work.
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It was 15 years of hard work and faith in your own ability to tell these stories.
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And, yes, you had kids in your school who were like, yeah, we love that.
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But, we can very easily talk ourselves out of believing that that means something on a bigger scale, right?
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So?
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Absolutely.
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Overcoming all those mental hurdles, overcoming the logistical, financial, all of those things to kind of realize your vision.
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I think that's a super important lesson for listeners to, to pay attention to.
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You know it's not overnight, but you don't get those amazing results unless you do the hard work exactly, and what I like to tell people is, as I was prepared for my moment, like I had done self-publishing, so I knew everything about that side of the industry that I feel like I could know.
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So when my opportunity came to talk to an agent, I feel like I was well-prepared.
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I had all of my data ready.
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I had all my talking points.
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I wish it wouldn't have taken 15 years, but I do feel like all those setbacks that happened over that time really did prepare me for what I'm doing now and what I like to tell students too.
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Like and I shared this with my students as I went through this for 15, I showed them rejection letters.
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I showed them ones that you know were very common, where it's just like this book's not for me at this time, thank you.
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And I showed them the ones that hurt really bad Some.
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There were some rejections that I got that were pretty ruthless, really bad Some.
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There were some rejections that I got that were pretty ruthless and like their thoughts on my book, and it was.
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It was fun to be not.
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Maybe not fun, but it was.
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It was good to be able to show my students like I got this rejection and then my students go well, now what are you going to do?
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I'm like, well, I'm going to write another one.
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I'm just going to keep trying and and I hope that those students remember that too and I've gotten some DMs from former students on Instagram.
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They're like I remember you telling stories in class when I was 11 years old.
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I can't believe they're a book and that's pretty special to see that they can watch a full circle moment of a teacher, an adult who tried really hard for a really long time.
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I mean, it's amazing to illustrate that to your students, because we're constantly telling kids be resilient, keep trying, blah, blah, blah.
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But you did, and there you go.
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And the other.
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The other thing I tell kids when I do author visits is I really stress that you know, as an artist, you get feedback all the time, and feedback can be helpful but it can also be hurtful, and oftentimes you, as an artist, are going to have to choose what to listen to and what to not listen to, and a lot of those are opinions, and opinions are not facts, and so you need to continue to persevere.
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If you feel like your idea is a really good idea and you have people telling you know, that doesn't mean it's not a good idea, that just means you haven't found your audience yet.
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So I do believe every, every author, every artist has an audience.
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It just might take you some time to find them.
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This is all good information for our listeners, because this is something we talk about all the time, that you just you just have to keep plugging away.
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And one of the things that you said, I was just about to give up and that's when it happened and I I we've heard that so many times that I was just about to give up.
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You know, it happened for me, I was just about to give up and then, you know, I, I got my first book deal and so I I want to encourage people, like if you're thinking I'm done no, you're not, you're not, it's just a moment and done no, you're not, you're not, it's just a moment.
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And you know, tomorrow, pick yourself up and just keep going.
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I mean, look what happened to you, I mean this whole thing.
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I wish viewer or listeners could see me, because my jaw has been dropped the entire time, like I just and it couldn't happen to a nicer person.
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Oh, thank you.
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Yeah, I really do hope that, that I get to leave a legacy not just for my own kids, but for other kids who want to go into publishing.
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Like I said before, the journey was not always enjoyable, but now I appreciate having gone through it a lot more than maybe a celebrity overnight success, right, I always dreamed about like you know.
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Oh, I write a book and then it goes on to be a bestseller, right, it's like well, that's like the best you can do, right.
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But that wasn't.
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It didn't seem reasonable either that that would happen.
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So to have gone through all the things that I went through just makes it that much more enjoyable.
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Awesome.
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So what advice that you've gone through this whole thing and it's it's going to be pretty difficult to replicate this journey from anyone else, but what specific advice would you give a writer who's interested in self-publishing, because that's kind of that's where obviously you started.
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So what would you, what would you dole out for them?
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Few weeks of me actually being an independent author, like how do you get into bookstores, or what books will be in a bookstore, like just all the ins and outs of the industry I learned so much.
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That'd be the first thing, like, if you're going into self-publishing, you are going to learn so much about the industry and I think it'll help set you up for continuing to try new routes to get traditionally published.
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Does that make sense?
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You know, for example, I remember you know I had my, got all my books and also I had 2000 of them.
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And I was like all right, and I went to Target.
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I'm like, hey, target, will you put my book in your store?
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And they're like who are you?
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You went to Target.
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I didn't get into Target.
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I just I worked all my connections, I know you, who happens to know you, who happens to know you?
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And Target said no.
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And all the big box chains said no.
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But even some small independent stores I went to and I was like, hey, I have this book.
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And they're like, oh, you don't have the correct distribution, we won't carry you.
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I was like, well, what if I just call you on a biweekly basis and check inventory?
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They're like, okay, we'll do that, we'll carry two books at a time.
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And you know and that, and I ended up only getting into like three stores.
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But anyways, not to get too sidetracked.
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The first thing that I would tell people about self-publishing is you're going to learn a lot.
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And those are just some examples.
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The second thing I would give people as advice is you need to be willing to pivot and pivot in your approach to getting noticed.
00:17:19.817 --> 00:17:22.346
And I've done that many times over my career.
00:17:22.346 --> 00:17:25.701
When I was writing letters, I thought I had the best query letter ever.
00:17:25.701 --> 00:17:33.522
It had gotten me some partial manuscript reads and I thought it was like that's it, all right, I'm ready, I can just send these out in bulk.
00:17:33.522 --> 00:17:42.016
And I ended up getting some feedback from an agent and it made me change my letter completely.
00:17:42.016 --> 00:17:53.606
And that can be really hard when you feel like you've nailed it or you've grasped onto something you think is great, but some feedback you really need to take to heart, and so that was one place I pivoted.
00:17:53.606 --> 00:17:56.871
Another place I pivoted was TikTok and Instagram.
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Like, if you especially TikTok, if you go, look at my TikTok history.
00:18:00.561 --> 00:18:02.326
I have not been telling stories forever.
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It started off in the middle of the pandemic, with me trying to just like revitalize my love for teaching, because I was standing in a room by myself every day looking at a screen and I didn't get to talk to colleagues.
00:18:14.288 --> 00:18:24.479
I was talking to kids 30 of them some of which were having a really hard time at home, and in between those moments I needed to do something in my classroom to give me joy.
00:18:24.479 --> 00:18:33.503
So I was just making silly videos of teaching, poking fun at me not my kids and that ended up selling some books by Carrie's.
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It just did.
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And so then I pivoted.
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I'm like, oh, maybe I do this now, maybe I go all into teacher humor.
00:18:38.941 --> 00:18:51.590
And it took me a while to find what I was good at, and I happen to have saved hundreds of stories from my teaching career and I never thought they would be for anyone but me, and that's what I ended up doing.
00:18:51.590 --> 00:18:53.112
On Instagram was just something I do.
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Naturally, that's repeatable and genuine, and so you know.
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The second advice is to pivot, but the third advice is, if you want to get noticed on social media, do something that is repeatable and genuine and that does not take you a lot of energy at all.
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When I record my videos, it is a computer stand that barely holds my phone up Like it's horrible.
00:19:16.810 --> 00:19:18.644
I should probably invest in something better.
00:19:18.644 --> 00:19:20.086
Stand that barely holds my phone up Like it's horrible.
00:19:20.086 --> 00:19:21.148
I should probably invest in something better.
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And it's me.
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That's it.
00:19:22.171 --> 00:19:24.693
There's no, there's no cool editing tricks.
00:19:24.693 --> 00:19:36.008
You know like, and I think if, having gone viral before in things that I spent a lot of time trying to edit, it's just so hit or miss, like.
00:19:36.008 --> 00:19:39.984
There's no reason to have a high production value when that video might get 10 views.
00:19:39.984 --> 00:19:43.529
Just do something that you love and eventually your audience will find you.
00:19:43.859 --> 00:19:44.842
And your reels are.
00:19:44.842 --> 00:19:59.109
So you know, when I first was introduced to you by Eric Pascal, I went and checked out your reels immediately and there's something your storytelling is and it's just the way you do it.
00:19:59.109 --> 00:20:05.820
It's very soothing and you're like a Mr Rogers.
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I'm like, oh, I could watch him all day.
00:20:06.603 --> 00:20:07.243
So I just like went through.
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But each story has so much humor and such a great lesson in it that it's like but it's not like a lesson that you're shoving down people's throat.
00:20:14.565 --> 00:20:21.424
It's just this really lovely reel, that's just fun and I want to hear the story Like where's this going, what's happening with it?
