Before BookTok, There Were Book Bloggers: Shauna Casey on Indie Romance, AI & Human Connection

Alli: I expected that a lot of these eighties, nineties romances, especially the historicals that the bodice rippers

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: were just gonna be really fluffy and not have any substance. And I have found the complete opposite because I feel like that's

Shauna Casey: For sure.

Alli: how people portray them, like as just

Shauna Casey: Yeah.

Alli: this

Shauna Casey: Or it's Fabio or

Alli: these books are just for They're just they're just porn in book form.

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: And that is not what I have found. I found beautiful

Shauna Casey: the furthest thing from the truth.

Alli: Before book talk, before Bookstagram, romance readers found each other on book blogs and Facebook groups and through word of mouth. And today's guest was right in the middle of it. Shauna Casey is a Navy veteran who moved home to California in 2010 to help care for her dad. And not long after, she picked up a book about a billionaire who whists the heroine off to an island very much in the spirit of the old Harlequins. And by 2014, she had she started a book blog. more than a decade later, books are her career. Shauna is the co-owner of the author agency, which she runs with her business partner, Becca Smith. Their team is all women and they help authors launch their books with cover reveals, advanced reader copies, release day promotion, and backlist tours. They work with indie hybrid and traditionally published authors. And in April, they'll celebrate four years in business. Shauna is also a breast cancer survivor, and she'll tell you herself that books and the people that she's met through them have carried her through a lot. We talked about the books that made us readers, why older romance feels so different from what we read today, the great romance cover debate, AI in the book world, the two thousand tens Authors Who Deserve More Love, and the books that Shauna Can't Stop Recommending. I hope you guys love this conversation. It truly felt like talking to a friend the entire time. And I can't believe how many different topics we covered. Let's get into it. I was probably way too young to be reading this, but when I was maybe 12, 13, I remember my mom had this book there was a moon on the cover, and I remembered very specific things about like the heroine and her dress. And there was some kind of like a detective hero, something adjacent to that. And I remember there was also like a side character that he was either displayed. figured or a little person. I couldn't remember the specifics. but it was very like scandalous for me reading as a 12-year-old because there was a steamy scene in a truck in it. And I have for years been trying to figure out the name of this book. after going back and forth, I believe that it is Carolina Moon by Nora Roberts. I believe that that's what

Shauna Casey: yeah.

Alli: it was. And I remember just like really enjoying it. And then I read several of my mom's Danielle Steeles. I still remember Sisters like vividly. I'm actually I don't know if you've read that one, but I'm terrified still today of the trucks with metal pipes on them, because in that book there's a terrible,

Shauna Casey: the big rigs? Yeah.

Alli: terrible accident with one of those and like the pipe comes through the windshield

Shauna Casey: coming off.

Alli: and kills somebody and injures the main character. and Anyways, I've always been a reader, but those were my first memorable romances outside of young adult, I loved Larleen McDaniel, these sob stories of

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: there's one vividly I remember where I think I don't know if it's the heroine or the hero that has cystic fibrosis and almost all of them like have some sort of really terrible tragedy in them. And I just

Shauna Casey: Yeah, I remember reading those two and I w because there was Walden books and all these ones I used to go into when my mom would go shopping and I'm like, Why am I reading about these kids dying? Like, who was

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: writing these books?

Alli: I was such a morbid teen in that instance. I also loved suspense books. I remember really loving the what is that one book? The girl on the milk carton,

Shauna Casey: yeah, I know what you're talking about. Was then there there was one called Alice also.

Alli: I think I read that too. I read all of Lois Duncan's too. it's very different now, I feel like, the juvenile and YA time of

Shauna Casey: for sure. I think it's more like of kids being more mature n I don't even know mature, but more fast, I guess I would say. That's showing my

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: age. That that's how the YE books are now. Because like I mean, when I was in high school I wasn't I'm not high school, but like junior high and sixth fifth, sixth grade. I wasn't paying attention to any of those things, even though I would when I would go I used to spend the summers in Missouri and my grandpa got me a a library card. So we had went out there and I remember getting the Harlequin books and my grandma was like, Are you supposed to be reading those? And I'd be like, Yeah, of course

Alli: it's really funny 'cause the the series on social is called Books Your Mom Never Told You About. And I get a lot of people that will say in the comments, my mom actually gave me these books or my grandma was the one who told me about these books. And I think that's funny 'cause my mom never explicitly gave me the books. they were just lying around and I was a nosy kid and would just pick up. But I do think especially with Gen X, you hear that a lot of my mom was the one who had me read these books, who told me about them, and the name is more clever than it is maybe accurate, but it's it's fun to hear all of those stories too perspective because it was so

Shauna Casey: I don't my mom wasn't like a big reader, but she never like policed what I would read, which is odd. Looking back now.

Alli: Yeah, I want to ask you a little bit about your blogging and kind of how you got started in this and made it a a career, in your bio you said that you started blogging about books in twenty fourteen. So you've been immersed in this community for

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: a really long time. And I'm curious what the culture was like when you started, 'cause I have to imagine the community's huge now. There's so many creators and bloggers today, but I have to imagine that at that time it was pretty,

Shauna Casey: It was so I got started in twenty fourteen. I moved home. I was in the Navy and then I was working in Virginia and I'm from originally from California. So that was never an o like I left when I was seventeen, so I was out. Well, my dad got sick in twenty ten, so I moved home to help take care of him and then I can't even remember and I couldn't find the book. I was trying to look for it. I read some book about a girl that a guy wanted and then he was like a billionaire and he kidnapped her and took her to an island and it was very reminiscent of, those Harlequin books or anything of that.

Alli: Mm-hmm.

Shauna Casey: And back then it was more you had blog pages like WordPress, Blogger, all it wasn't huge on

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: Instagram. It was more Facebook and it was like the wild, wild west. it wasn't as saturated as is now. But you still had these authors that were putting out book after book after book after book. And then once it got into the indie side because you know, when used to go shopping for books, it was like you would go to the CVS or the Walgreens and they had a book section and that's where I would get my stuff if I wasn't at the library. so it was I don't think I ever had my first e reader until Maybe twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, and

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: and you still had the readers that were impacted by the traditional authors, Nora Roberts, Sandra Brown, all those. And th I I want to say that the the substance was more valued back then than it is now.

Alli: I totally agree. It's actually really interesting. Like one of the first things that I noticed when I started reading these, and I think the first official book in the series was Dreaming of You. And, you know, then once I got into some of these books like Paradise by McNaught and, I think Woodwiss falls in this category, Joanna Lindsay, D Judevereau, like

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: there is so much setup, character depth, world building, and I am certainly one of those readers where I like a very fast paced book a lot of the time with contemporaries because I'm ADHD and everybody else, fueled by that instant gratification. But there's something really beautiful to me, even if it takes me a little bit longer to read some of these older books

Shauna Casey: Yeah.

Alli: because there is more setup. About the depth and the substance, and then even just the eloquence with the way that the words were written. I finished Almost Heaven last night by by Judith McNaught and I I have so many pinned and highlighted sections. And I like

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: there's one very specific intimate scene where I'm like, gosh, this is just one of the most beautiful, intimate scenes that I've ever read. the words on the

Shauna Casey: it's mm-hmm.

Alli: page are just beautiful and so romantic and flowery and you just don't get that anymore. And I I

Shauna Casey: No.

Alli: appreciate both. I love reading contemporaries.

Shauna Casey: Yes.

Alli: but the writing style is very different. And the point of view, it's this more

Shauna Casey: It very different.

Alli: kind of narrative point of view where it's less first person, third person. It's either called omniscent or omnipresent. but I think that's really interesting too. I have no preference on whether I, prefer one versus the other, but I do think it's interesting that you get perspectives from side characters in that way without it really taking away from the story

Shauna Casey: Taking over the story. Mm-hmm.

Alli: and the main characters. And one of my big pet peeves and contemporaries is when like there's too many multiple POV chapters. it's not just dual POV, but like all these side characters get their chapters and There's some people that do it expertly and it doesn't take away, but

Shauna Casey: Yeah.

Alli: and so many of them I feel like it takes away from the character depth of the main characters

Shauna Casey: For sure.

Alli: and pulls you out of the story.

Shauna Casey: Where I read one author and she I don't know if she knows how to do a transfer of POV, but she'll do it from each part from them, but she makes it a whole different chapter. So not like a page break. So then you're reading and then it's like one page is of just of his thoughts or her thoughts. And I'm like, this isn't even a full page. And that takes me out of reading, so it's not very fluid. you can't seamlessly read it.

Alli: Yeah, I agree. And I don't know if you would be able to get published with that old way of writing today because we're in such an era of instant gratification and fast pacing.

Shauna Casey: Instagram, yeah.

Alli: But I think what's still is really interesting to me is even with all this setup, you know, almost heaven has a lot of preamble and there are some chapters with slower pacing because they're building up the story and they're not skipping,

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: you know, huge chunks of time,

Shauna Casey: Right.

Alli: but there's still enough in almost all of these authors, high stakes drama that keeps you turning the page, even though it is a very different style of pacing.

Shauna Casey: it's almost like romanticy is now because it's such a word building thing

Alli: yes. Yeah, that's a great example.

Shauna Casey: now. So I think that's I mean, and I wish more authors would do it. And then there's also like with instant gratification with readers. I have a one author that sometimes she repeats if she ends a chapter then in she doesn't repeat but she'll add more details because she

Alli: Mm.

Shauna Casey: wants to know all those details. I'm that kind of reader. But she gets dinged in her reviews. why are you repeating yourself? But then people are just skimming over it, I think. So they're not seeing

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: that there's new details or there's new things that are in those chapters that are beneficial to the story because they're just like, I gotta get through to get to the

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: next book.

Alli: I do think that that that plays out within book talk culture a lot. I feel that sometimes. I'm I'm like last week I create content around books and I post every single day and I'm like, I've gotta keep up my pace of four books a week. Sometimes it's just in

Shauna Casey: Yeah.

Alli: the back of my head. And I I read two books last week and I was like, you know what? That's okay. Like there was a lot going on

Shauna Casey: Yeah.

Alli: and I really read them and even with almost heaven, I was I was thinking vividly last night about there would be sections where I would just go back and reread it two, three, four

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: times. Not because I wasn't grasping what was going on. And I I do think that happens sometimes, especially with some of the historicals where there is just a lot of

Shauna Casey: For sure.

Alli: world building or setup, but because it was so beautifully written, I I wanted to make sure I absorbed it all. And

Shauna Casey: Yeah, sometimes you want to live in the story. There's Public Secrets I read at least once a year, if not more. Because it's just such a comfort read. It's and sometimes I even find okay, I didn't remember that part, but now other things jump out at you. I think at different points in your life, it depends on what you have going on. and I think

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: paradise is the same way. And I mean paradise, especially with her being a face in the business. At that time I don't think that was that was my could have been controversial because you didn't s you didn't see these women billionaires or it was always men. And especially with him being

Alli: Yeah. I I feel like

Shauna Casey: another nationality, I think that's a real when I don't even know what year this was originally built

Alli: was Paradise ninety two, ninety three? Almost Loving

Shauna Casey: ninety one.

Alli: and Paradise came out in the same same year.

Shauna Casey: Yeah. I have like every and then I have to have the hard back.

Alli: Yeah. my gosh, I love it. You have the original versions. I I have two versions as well. I really do want the first edition hardcover. I will say, the hardest thing for me in reading a lot of these older books is the print is so tiny and I'm just not used to it. So the mass market paperbacks, even though they're so easy to carry around and I love the feel of them, the the text is tiny.

Shauna Casey: somebody got this for me for my birthday one time. I don't even know where she found it at.

Alli: Do you have you especially being like in in the industry, I mean Judith obviously has kind of been like she disappeared and you know, is supposed to have a book come out like what in twenty eight twenty eighteen and

Shauna Casey: Yeah.

Alli: nobody's heard anything from her. She hasn't done any interviews, her website hasn't been updated I think since two thousand six. like have you heard anything within the industry?

Shauna Casey: I don't not that I know of. I think something happened and then I think she came and was like, You guys I'm not doing this anymore so I think that's when she kinda went dark.

Alli: Mm.

Shauna Casey: I had to have all the covers also. And I think there's another cover now.

Alli: Yeah. I I love the old covers. Like there's something and fun.

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm. I mean how many I think guys are great looking, but how many naked guys can you have on a cover? Like

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: how many is too many I really like object covers or like Sandra Brown covers I think are beautiful and it's not like and it's

Alli: Yeah, she is beautiful as her covers. I have French Self up here and it is a gorgeous cover. I I love the old school Harlequin ones too

Shauna Casey: a contemporary who I think actually does romance really well, Maya Elden, she has some of those covers. She has a series that look very reminiscent of Harlequin. I'll send you her link. But her books are very good.

Alli: Yeah. I feel like we're at we're going to be at a renaissance within the cover romance

Shauna Casey: hope so.

Alli: covers soon because what I think is so interesting is the animated cartoon covers have

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: just become so proliferative and I enjoy them, but I think that it is it's kind of becoming overdone. And one of the things that I think is really interesting, and I don't necessarily think this is a negative, it's just surprising sometimes is. Is you will have a cartoon cover sometimes and that book is like not a rom com. it'll just be super spicy, but you'll be surprised 'cause like it looks just looks like this Demir rom com, on the cover. Yeah.

Shauna Casey: it it Definitely. And I think with Illustrated, I'm not a fan of Illustrated just because I don't know. And the ones I really, really don't care for are the ones that don't have a face. I'm like, your face is freaking me out. Like when they don't have any like

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: and I'm I don't know where covers will go from here. I think everybody's trying to just get the next best thing or what the and then you have generative AI. And then that's

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: such a thing in the book world and then you have people who think they're the AI police and I don't really know w there's gonna be pretty there's definitely gonna be people that are gonna

Alli: Yeah, let's talk about AI a little bit because I think that that is really interesting.

Shauna Casey: I don't know even if no you're gonna be able to tell eventually.

Alli: Yeah, it is sometim I and I'm mostly just use L L so that your chat GPTs and your clods and as someone who I I feel like you you hear a lot of AI policing within the book talk community and some of that

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: I think is absolutely warranted because I do think that there are valid concerns about a AI books being written in its entirety or like just the yeah.

Shauna Casey: Or in the top one hundred and you can tell that it's AI. Mm-hmm.

Alli: Or just the originality being taken something that I very much think about and I'm very glad that they're outspoken. But as a creator, from my perspective, I have a full time job and I have three kids and I have a side hustle that's outside of even like this book talk bookstagram space.

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: And I use AI in my content I use it for a lot of image generation and for my podcast thumbnail. Now it took me probably like seventy five rounds, going with chat GPT to get it to be where I wanted it. but I'm not a designer. So I use Canva and I use templates, but sometimes

Shauna Casey: And then pain but even in Canva there's elements in Canva that we found with our graphic designer that we didn't even know that there's embedded things in there that's AI that nobody would know. And I'm not a graphics person that my business partner deals with that 'cause she's more books grammar, things like that. But there's such a witch hunt that We're not

Alli: Mm.

Shauna Casey: asking people, hey, did you use AI? Did you mean to use AI? Did you know it was AI? there's not a conversation.

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: want to cancel them and then they're just done.

Alli: I think.

Shauna Casey: Yeah, or even that song, Puerto Rico, landing in Puerto

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: Rico, that's an AI song and everybody uses that and nobody says anything about that and I'm like, one, you can't pick and choose, and two authors are using their ads in meta is adding AI. we had an author that had there was an ad that had like a third arm in the stomach. do you really think that that author would have put that out if she knew that that's what it was?

Alli: So But figuring out how it can enhance and not detract and the right ways to use it. And I don't think anybody is

Shauna Casey: Or if it's completely like AI books or authors, I think Amazon has to figure out how to take those down.

Alli: Yes.

Shauna Casey: I don't think that's how because the the the industry was already saturated, but now it's tenfold.

Alli: it is a problem. I have no faith that Amazon will fix it. their book business, that's not a profit maker for them, right? it's

Shauna Casey: putting up. Mm

Alli: just a way for them to continue to be ubiquitous within every

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: single facet of culture and society.

Shauna Casey: Yeah, they want their they want their fingers in all the pots and they don't care

Alli: Yes.

Shauna Casey: who it affects.

Alli: Yeah. So I don't I and I know that a lot of authors are having trouble with people passing books as being theirs and it's not. I've seen I don't know I've seen like Penelope more asked about that. Yeah.

Shauna Casey: Yeah. whole books. It's crazy.

Alli: So I it is a really big problem. I don't know how we overcome it. Obviously the AI problems go way beyond the book industry. But I do think in the book industry it feels like a very high pressure, fueled conversation where it almost feels like there's

Shauna Casey: I yeah, because I think because of the

Alli: there's nobody that's looking at it with nuance. And maybe I just haven't seen that. It just it it's talked about as a binary.

Shauna Casey: I haven't. No, it's very much you don't give any grace, it's cancel culture and people should know. And if you don't answer if somebody asks who the artist is and you don't answer it as quickly as you can, then the must be AI the person could be offline. Like not everybody is online twenty four seven.

Alli: Yep. I agree.

Shauna Casey: it's definitely the witch hunt I we're not a fan of.

Alli: Yes, I totally agree. that was a really interesting segue. I'm gonna pull back I wanna ask about some of the books that you were reading in your early blogging years and go into some of the nostalgic romances. But when you started back in twenty fourteen what books were you reading in those early years talk a little bit about what they were doing differently, because I feel like the the 2010s was this weird kind of purgatory within romance because

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: obviously we had Instagram and Facebook was very popular. and it was a really interesting time for romance, post fifty shades. But I feel like there are a lot of authors from that era that were writing amazing books that have not been given as much notoriety today in the book talk era or they're not getting enough

Shauna Casey: for sure.

Alli: chatter. And so I'm thinking about the Jayna Astons and the Kylie Scotts. And obviously they're still active. It's just why are more people not talking about some of these books on book talk?

Shauna Casey: Yeah. it I think because it's so saturated. I was reading Kristen Ashley was like one of my first indie authors and her books are very reminiscent of Judith McNaught, Nora Roberts.

Alli: Mm.

Shauna Casey: she has one of my favorite books and that was I don't know when that book came out, but she has one of my favorite favorite books and it's very much remin Lady Luck which is he goes to prison and then he gets out and then he's trying to he was sent to prison falsely. So it's very much they have world real world conversation pieces that back then it wasn't so much. I graduated in nineteen ninety five and there was like the Rodney King and all that stuff that had happened. So it was very much that there's this biracial character that is in this book finding love and trying to clear his name after he gets he went to prison. she also has one of my favorite, favorite books of all time is called Fast Lane, I will die on the hill that I love this book by Chris Nashley. But it's very much a book where it's not written like normal, but it's very written like it's a magazine interview. So you get the whole backstory

Alli: interesting.

Shauna Casey: they're really thick books. which is reminiscent of these other books where they're, you know, they're thick. They're there's a lot of information in there. there's character development and there's just so much that She p would put in her books. And I know Aurora Rose Reynolds has been around since I wanna say twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen. She wrote the Until series. she still writes now and in fact she lives like twenty minutes from me.

Alli: I'm like putting all of these in my gutterings.

Shauna Casey: Her books are my favorite book by her actually she wrote in the past five years, and that's King of Nothing, where I had read an early copy and I called her and I'm like, and I'm not a crier, and I was crying, and she's like, Are you crying? And I'm like, You're gonna heal people with this book. It's a road trip. Both people have losses. her mom had died of of cancer, and she meets this guy and they go on a road trip to all these places she was supposed to do with her mom. It's one of the most beautiful love stories where it's not like all the spice driven that you feel t that you see today. Because I think a lot of authors nowadays, they're on this reel where they have think they have to have this publishing schedule like every

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: three months, every four months, because if not, they're gonna get f there's somebody else that's gonna take their spot. and we always tell authors it, you know, if you this is a marathon not a sprint and you have to give

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: out quality. Quality is gonna win out every time. You might get those Flash in the Pants authors, but quality is what's gonna keep your readers around. Aurora

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: Kristen Ashley's been around I'm not even sure when she started. I think it was before Aurora Aurora's been around at least since twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen and her books stand. You could read it and you're gonna feel like it's you're visiting old friends.

Alli: I don't have to make that thing.

Shauna Casey: Who else did I read back then? Lorelai James. And she was a huge spice person. I didn't think that she was, but her blacktop cowboy series is pretty spicy. And there's even like MMF or Fm or things like that, which that was all brand new because you didn't really know.

Alli: Yeah, that feels very progressive for that time period.

Shauna Casey: Yes. who else did I read? very much people now you don't see them as you did then. Deborah

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: Deborah Cain, which she has she was also with Berkeley but she was one of the Her books are very thoughtful and emotions, and it's not rushing to get you from point A to point B. A lot of things that I do see differently now from then till now is the cookie cutter plot lines, which

Alli: It it does feel like we're so much more trope driven now. I don't think that that's always a bad thing, actually. a derivative book is not always a bad thing. there's really good books that I'm like, this storyline has been done a million times.

Shauna Casey: For sure.

Alli: but it it does create kind of sea of sameness that And those books tend to just go right through. they're often quick reads, but I don't remember

Shauna Casey: Yeah, you're just like and

Alli: I'm back.

Shauna Casey: they're all the same.

Alli: So one of the books that I actually recently read through the author agency, which I will just continue shouting about this book is Julia Wolfe's Let's Be Real. And she's one of my favorite contemporary

Shauna Casey: I love Juliet.

Alli: authors, and she's such a gifted writer. And

Shauna Casey: For sure.

Alli: that was one I signed up for it because I knew that I've loved everything that I've read by her, but I was like, this story has been done a lot. it's fake dating, best friends, brother, they fake date for a wedding because she broke up with her ex. And so I went in thinking it'll be a fast read and I know it's gonna be well written, but there's nothing that's super different and interesting to me about

Shauna Casey: Gonna pull you in. Mm-hmm.

Alli: this one. But then I read it and it was such a standout book because it has so many of those similar plot lines, but there is so much depth to the book.

Shauna Casey: Yeah. And

Alli: Their characters, their story.

Shauna Casey: she takes it where like you're getting treated by the character is getting treated the way she's treated by her family and the insecurity and the invalidation. And those are things that, you can connect with. And I think it's really hard for those authors to do those is those connection. one of my favorite books is Broken Night by L J Shin and I went in and

Alli: I love L J.

Shauna Casey: I usually don't read college or young adult not young adult but new adult

Alli: I don't either. I'd I have to be in a very specific

Shauna Casey: yes. And I messaged her after and I was like I sobbed. I thought it was so well written, even the characters for them being young new adults. I think I have six different covers for that book. So if I y love a book, I'm gonna have to put it on there. I want every cover. And especially nowadays everybody has a different cover. Br

Alli: Yeah. I haven't read that one. I've read a lot of LJ Shin. I I love some of my favorites of hers are ones that I feel like just don't get enough attention. I I actually really

Shauna Casey: For sure.

Alli: love Beautiful Graves and I talk about it all the time because I've never heard anybody talk about that book. she has a lot of really great ones, but I haven't read like outside of Vicious, like the like high school books.

Shauna Casey: Yeah, Vicious it Broken Knight is one of the kids so it's one of the second

Alli: yeah. I will have

Shauna Casey: generation of Vicious. And even her second gen with them being new adults, 'cause like usually you're like you have to have but she makes it believable. Like you have to have real world

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: experience, but somehow she writes them where it very much feels like you're you it's believable.

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: And that's not easily done. else? I'm a huge Natasha Madison reader. I don't know if you've read her. She has mm-hmm.

Alli: Mm. her, but I definitely I see her all the time show up. which ones stand out for you of hers?

Shauna Casey: My favorite of hers is Buried Dreams. But you have to read Shattered Dreams first to like get the I mean I guess you could she always puts like you could read it, but Shattered Dreams was really good. It's some friends are out for the last night of summer and one is drinking and people die and then the MMC blames this one FMC and then she moves back in town because her dad's sick. it's just very well done. She has a new series that's coming out in 2027 from is it twenty yeah, end of twenty twenty seven for Blackstone. And it's called the Blindsided series. And I think it's her best work yet. This emotions, the angst, the and it really pushed her out of her comfort zone. she's kind of wrote those her dad had just passed in January unexpectedly. And I think she really channeled those emotions, but it also pushed her to be a different writer. so that series in twenty twenty seven I think is gonna be really good. hockey, if you're hockey sh which bo

Alli: I love hockey I love hockey. I'm on a little bit of a break 'cause I read so much.

Shauna Casey: Yeah.

Alli: I love a hockey romance.

Shauna Casey: Her hockey made for you is really good. It's he has mental health issues and he gets help and it's very much it's okay to not be okay. she has This series where she deals with somebody who's recovering from addiction. And you don't think that that it she said it was very hard for her to write because she didn't she you wanna do it justice. else are some of my faves around here but I'm I'm always driven to emotions

Alli: Me too.

Shauna Casey: Your characters have to be more than one dimensional. and I think those are the people that are really going to have a long lasting career. And

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: it's it's a business. I think people want to be they want to read well written books and quality over quantity is gonna get me every time. And sometimes

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: I've stopped reading authors that they're just putting out books like I can't keep up.

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: So I have to read other books. There's other people that I like to read. And then by the time that I come back to you, you have six books. I'm not I'm probably not gonna

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: I'm not gonna go back and read

Alli: Yeah. I do think that there's this pressure to put out a certain number and

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: but then it does take away sometimes. don't know if you've read any of her books, but Jessica Joyce only has like two books and a novella out.

Shauna Casey: Mm mm mm. I'll have to look for her.

Alli: and I like each book that I've read by her, the two that I've read, I haven't read the novella. It they are both five stars for me. I just love them so much. one you with the view is probably my favorite of the two, but like they're both so good. it's a road trip romance. but there's some elements it kind of reminds you of Up in a way. So

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: her grandmother died and her grandmother was her very best friend. And as she's going through her grandmother's stuff, she finds that these love letters and she thought, her grandfather

Shauna Casey: wow.

Alli: was her grandmother's love of her life.

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: That she finds that her grandmother had almost gotten married and had this first love. And she goes on TikTok and she tries to find the man

Shauna Casey: wow.

Alli: who her grandmother was in love with, and she meets him for coffee and his grandson joins him, and her his grandson is her high school nemesis. and the the grandmother and the man that she finds were supposed to go and get married and run away together. And as a way to get to know him and and hear the story about how they fell

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: in love, he pitches that they go on the honeymoon that they

Shauna Casey: They were supposed to go on.

Alli: were supposed to go on. And so it's it's her, the grandfather and her high school nemesis

Shauna Casey: wow.

Alli: doing this road trip in an RV and it's it it's just got everything. It's got the intimacy, it's got the angst, it's got the spice. And I loved it so much. And then she has another one, X Vows. It's just one of my favorite. I don't know if it's a grand gesture or what I would call it, but the MMC in there, like they're broken up and then they have to both be in this wedding of their friends and they haven't seen each other since they broke up. And there's little keepsakes, something that he's been doing like the whole time that they had been together that you find out like at the end of the

Shauna Casey: I'll have to definitely put those on my TBR.

Alli: And it's just one of my favorite little I don't know if it's a grand gesture, but that's the only thing I can relate it to in my

Shauna Casey: If you like that first book, where the grandfather there's unexpected proof by Janny Grimes.

Alli: look at that. See I need to add all.

Shauna Casey: ten out of ten, no notes. And it's very she goes her grandmother was gonna be with somebody I wanna say after the war and they she goes to Boston and she's like having the worst day ever as she goes into this bar. Well the I think the grandmother or the grandfather has Alzheimer's so they she can only talk to him during certain times. It's so good. Like the backstory of the grandparents was also ten out of ten. Like

Alli: Well.

Shauna Casey: All of it was really and Danny Grimes is one you don't see very often. I don't see enough people talking about her.

Alli: Yeah, sh it's not got that many ratings, but the ones it does have are really good. And I love finding a gem like that. I actually do

Shauna Casey: Yeah.

Alli: a a series every week called Hidden Gems, the hidden gem

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: of week. And I love kind of highlighting those because it's, you know, when you find one of those authors that nobody else is talking about and so good. Yeah. It's my favorite my

Shauna Casey: Yeah. You're like I why aren't you reading these people? For sure.

Alli: favorite thing. so I love that. I wanna ask you as we're talking about contemporaries, of the authors that you work with at the author agency, what is your favorite book that you've read this year and who's your favorite author that you are working with? And I'm sure it's it's hard to pick 'cause you guys you you work with a lot, but

Shauna Casey: We do. I think it would have to be Soul by Eva Simmons.

Alli: This is a new one for me too.

Shauna Casey: Eva Simmons has a tattoo series. All of her series is really good. She's one of those authors that you would think,

Alli: With a motorcycle club entail? Okay.

Shauna Casey: She has a motorcycle club. Yeah, Soul is. But it's just so well done with the feelings and it's not like your typical C where it's like trying to be a one percenter or trying to show all these people off. it's just the emotions that she puts into and it's surprise baby.

Alli: I love surprise baby.

Shauna Casey: the girl is her they're the club's rival, so it's also doing that. But a guy that's all in that once he hears about this girl that she's all in, it's just so good. but that whole series I think is really good. But she really puts emotions and feelings and Just the human connection I always go back to the human connection. It's just

Alli: Mm-hmm.

Shauna Casey: being able to and then she drops cameos by other people. And I think like and you know when you read somebody a lot and I've read her whole backlist, I think except her rock star series, and you go back and think, okay, well that's you know, you don't think they're gonna top this one, but she really does top each book that she writes. I also think that authors are very genuinely that write what they wanna write instead of writing what they think the masses want, have a deeper connection also because you can feel when something's forced. And just her

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: every book she writes it, just all the emotions, the found family, the connection between the club, the club brothers, but then also the connection between these women. And she doesn't do it where it's like like MC culture. Like she does she just forges her own path. And I think that's what I love about Eva and her books. Maggie Gates has a Cowboy series and then she has a poker club series that are all these couples that are in it. Well, Smoke Ring is coming out in December and she said she wasn't gonna write second gen, but she wrote this book and I read an early copy. She sent it to us early and I'm a huge Maggie fan. It's somebody who's has revenge porn taken out on them. how especially now, right now with the Cornell seven and the all these things that are coming out. And she wrote this probably last year and didn't know. But the way that she writes women and the men the the way that their childhood best friends to lovers, they were always just gonna be best friends. This girl thinks it because she's a billionaire from her parents. But she never wanted to just lay on that. So she goes out and she's a lawyer. And then like all these consequences for women for saying for that she had nothing to do. her ex-boyfriend ended up doing it as extortion. but she just writes it so well. There's also another series called What Saves. The my favorite book by her is What Saves Us. And it's a vet. And he's going through all these other emotions. then she's pregnant, so it's not his baby, but then him just being there and just a quiet strength of a man that all of her characters they choose to have these partners. They choose to have these guys that are there and supporting them, but it's not, I'm gonna fix it. I can fix all your problems. I could talk about Maggie all day.

Alli: if you guys have sign ups for the smoke ring.

Shauna Casey: We have smoke ring, we do. she just writes really well written books. Natasha Madison, of course, I've talked about her, Aurora Rose Reynolds. Natasha has her third book falling for him that's coming out second chance, in January. But then she also has her hockey.

Alli: Do you and your partner do you read all of the books that you guys promote? Okay, I wouldn't think you have so many, like

Shauna Casey: No. We wish we could. We wish we could. We try to read as many as we can. Of course we have, our one click authors. I read early copies of Natasha's and Aurora. I love a Julia Wolf book. I love a Maggie Gates book. I always try to read, and that's how I found Julia Wolf. that's how I also found Eva when she came to start working with us. it's a perk of the job that you get to all these, but then you

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: become obsessed and then you gotta read the whole backlist and then that puts you off

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: from reading other people. somebody just said Kristen Granada.

Alli: see her on lot and I love her content, but I have I want to

Shauna Casey: angsty. she has a real good hockey series. but her most recent one, I haven't read it yet, but two of my friends have, and they're like, Go in blind, it's gonna wreck you, but just know it's quintessential Kristen Granada She's a

Alli: I watch her on social and I see her all the time and that because

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Alli: I just feel like I've connected with her as a human and I love that she is very outspoken what should I start with?

Shauna Casey: Kristen.

Alli: I've

Shauna Casey: I did the hockey one. that's where I started with her. another author I've worked with since her first book is Britt Benson. she's a good human.

Alli: I feel like I see her a lot too.

Shauna Casey: She is one of the best humans I've ever met in my life. she has a rock star romance and I'm like I said, I'm not a big rock star. This one is from her book that I got after I

Alli: And then

Shauna Casey: was diagnosed with breast cancer. And it says you want madness, you want fire, anything less is a waste of time, nothing's promised. And especially

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: with my breast cancer diagnosis, I'm very lucky. I had a easy case, I guess you would say. a I'm still in treatment. I only have to take a pill and I have to take a shot. But I'm very lucky.

Alli: you think about your mentality. And one of my favorite

Shauna Casey: It makes you look and it makes you realize

Alli: quotes is kind of similar. I think about it a lot and it's kind of under girded the way that I've approached my life and career, which is Find what you love and let it kill you. And I think it's like it's always

Shauna Casey: Yeah.

Alli: attributed to Bukowski. I don't know if it's actually

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: him or not. I've seen, things that indicate that

Shauna Casey: Different people. Yeah.

Alli: it might not be. But it kind of reminds me of that. It's like, well, just like go all in, you know, embrace it.

Shauna Casey: Yeah. And that's what we did with this business and we're go we'll be four years in April. So we're just all yeah, and it's all women.

Alli: I love that. How I wanna ask you about the author agency so you can give a little overview in a second but I'm curious like how did you decide to make books your career? I think about all the time, how can I make this eventually, like five, ten year goal, part of my income stream, I focus on creating content and like iterating off of what's done well. I'll be able to make something out of it I'm so

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: curious in how your trajectory took shape.

Shauna Casey: So my dad died in twenty seventeen and I was still living in California and then I ended up with how life happens and families happens when, you know, the core of your family passes. there was a little break and so I was like, Okay, I'm done here. I've done what I needed to do. And I was living at my best friend's house in California and I was gonna move to back to Virginia where I had moved from in twenty ten and there was this company and I just was like, I wanna move from beyond blogging, but I like you wanna make money or I wanna see if that's something because I wasn't doing anything at the time. and so I reached out to the owner of the company and I said, Hey, do you have any internships or anything? I really want to get into this part of the business. but I don't know how that what that looks like or whatever. And she hired me in August and by October first, she's like, You're killing it. And I would love to hire you. So then I started with her. and that was just doing like promo And once I'm all in, I'm really all in on anything. So and I got to work from home. Like that's

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: super easy. And then COVID happened. And so while

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: COVID was still happening People were still releasing books. everybody was our world didn't stop really. Yeah. Because everybody was at home.

Alli: Honestly, I think that's when blew up. it is yeah.

Shauna Casey: Yeah. And so then Becca came to the company and we had seen the other companies that are around and we were like, we don't wanna do like PR PR. We don't wanna do like we just wanna make our own little lane and do it as best as we can. and help authors be the best release they could have. And so we started s talking about that and seeing what that was look gonna look like. And then it kind of just all kind of rolled into it where we were like, We think we can do this. And before it when we just started, it was me and Becca and a graphic designer. That's all we had. Because we needed somebody to do graphics and we couldn't do it. And we're like, well maybe we'll do offer PA services and we'll offer this. And after the first year, we kind of just was like we can only do promo. Because we had so many clients and it's just and

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: we just wanted to do our best work. And so the best way that you can thank us was by coming back and rebooking your next release. And we have a lot of return clients that stay with us. And like we're always looking and thinking and seeing what's out there that is gonna be like can we can tweak it so that they can have the best release. What do what do we think about this? We have a really good assistant now She knows the trends and kinds of stuff like that. and Becca work on that stuff. I'm more of like the organizer and like if I can do X, Y, and Z, then I like list. I'm a very much a Virgo. I everything

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: has to have a certain way. but again, I think that we never compared ourselves to anybody else. We only did what we only wanted to do the best that we could do. We just kept that as the forefront. And I think with you, I think you don't want to do re you don't want to be like the shock reviewer because nobody likes that person.

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: it's really about the human connection. Keep talking about what you love. it could be brand deals. it could be, Amazon or audio or they do different things, But I think it's very much about the human connection. It's very much I don't think there's any really share what you love. Like you said, you know, do what you love until it kills you. And share those

Alli: No.

Shauna Casey: books that you love. Share a passage that you love. Like it could be one day what you read in your book last night. It could be just a page off that. Like it doesn't have to be wild and it doesn't have to be crazy and it doesn't have to be it

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: just has to have that connection. And you'll find your you'll find it. And I mean if all these people that are the shock ones or they want to tag all these authors in D and Fs or they want to say these are the books that I hated, you know, they're gonna peter off because people are gonna stop. One

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: you can only talk about bad about somebody's book before it really feels like it's it there's an agenda there.

Alli: I try really hard not to talk about books that I DNF unless I come back to them, just because I feel like it truly is it's very

Shauna Casey: be into it.

Alli: subjective. So usually when I'm like not liking a book, it has very little to do most of the time with the way that it's written.

Shauna Casey: With the buck.

Alli: it usually has to do with how I relate to a character, right? or character depth or pacing, and so much of it is just an individual experience of where you're at at one time. I know that some of my five star reads are just books that hit me at the exact right time in what I was going through. there's one that I just think about all the time. It's not one of the ones that's talked about a lot by her, but Lucy Score was one when I started really voraciously reading romance. I read I think her entire backlist. and Maggie moves on, which is about a YouTuber who fixes up and renovates houses. on its surface, I was like, this is really good. But at the end of the book, I think so much of what she was going through as a character mirrored what I was going through in my life.

Shauna Casey: Aho.

Alli: I was going through a huge career transition and just and I was really, really struggling burnt out and also just going through it. I knew that I had an unhealthy relationship with work at that time.

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: But what I didn't realize and what it took a lot of therapy and a a lot of reading, honestly, to figure out is that my primary source of happiness, and this sounds so terrible because I have a wonderful husband and family. And I love them so much, but what made me happy was doing well at work. So for

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: instance, I worked in direct-to-consumer e-commerce marketing and like I got our sales every day as a push notification, like this is how much you sold on Amazon yesterday, this is how much you sold on Shopify. And if we had a good sales day, I had a good day and everything else in my life was

Shauna Casey: It tied into your mm-hmm.

Alli: good. And if I had a bad sales day, everything else in my life was bad. It didn't matter that I had all these other wonderful things going on. that was how I saw my self worth. And

Shauna Casey: Yeah.

Alli: so Maggie in the book she's asking herself a lot of similar questions and really kind of coming to terms with is work holding her back from living. And there's some quotes in that book that just I remember I was in the car, we were driving somewhere on vacation, and I just had tears streaming down my face. And so I don't know if I read that, today, whether it would be a five star read. I'm sure

Shauna Casey: Yeah. Right.

Alli: I would still enjoy it. But reading is subjective. I think

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: for any of these authors, especially the indie authors, they are writing a whole book. that is a huge accomplishment. And I can't even imagine the amount of work that goes into that. so especially if it's an any author,

Shauna Casey: Yeah. editing and the feedback and then once it

Alli: I really struggle when people talk about books that negatively. that's not what we want to hear. And you might get, you know, a but

Shauna Casey: you can always get those TikTokers or the book talkers or the book scrammers but then they're not gonna they're not gonna have any longevity in this industry at all.

Alli: Yeah, what I love about it is just I love talking with other people who love books as much as I do. Because it's really

Shauna Casey: Yeah, I can talk about books all day or if I love one, I'll I'm telling my friends about it. I'm like, you have to read this one. my best friend who actually lives here in Nashville, and we like grew up together, like my earliest memory, I want to say like second and third grade of her, and I'm like, You have to write read this one and she's the one who just messaged me last night about Kristen Granada's like, You have to read this one, but go on blind. my friend, painted this and it's the little library house because I have all these I have four

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: I have four bookcases. so books make me happy. My dog makes me happy and

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: work makes me happy. I was at the other company that I was at, I would work from like five in the morning to like nine at night and I had a double

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: massectomy and like a week and a half after I was back at work because I thought that nothing could run without me And Becca, bless her heart, is one who showed me you have to have a work life balance. We're not working on the weekends unless it's an emergency. I would say I don't have a life and she's like, You do, you have Chloe, you have books you wanna read, you have, you know, I moved to Tennessee and I do have more friends than I did in Virginia that I would go and do stuff with. And she's like, You have and she's like, even if you don't, I'm gonna tell you. that you have to have a work life balance. And we're not working from five in the morning till nine at night. You're not gonna have surgery and then do it. I picked a really good business partner, I like to think, because

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: we really do balance each other out and we really do want what's best. for somebody I'm working with day in and day out, I couldn't ask for a better business

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: partner.

Alli: That's great. it's it's so important. I relate so much to that when I was in, my dream job. I was working there were at least a few nights a week where I would be up until one, two, three. I had started working weekends. I have three kids. at that point they were seven and under. Like it was just I literally had no life outside of it. But toxicity was bleeding into my personal life too. And I still

Shauna Casey: Everything else, yeah, for sure. It

Alli: work a ton, I have very good boundaries with my full time job now. and it's been very healing. But I mean, this stuff takes a lot of time. But I enjoy it so much and

Shauna Casey: Yeah.

Alli: it's a creative outlet. And I try to remind myself too, whenever I feel like the pressure of I only read two books last week. it doesn't matter. this is

Shauna Casey: that's a more than some other people

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: aren't reading. And you have to do you have to have something for yourself even with your being married and having kids. Like you have to have some kind of outlet in which you're fulfilled also, because if not, nobody's gonna be happy. And I'm sure your

Alli: Yeah. I

Shauna Casey: kids seeing you do something, go after a podcast or all this stuff is gonna resonate with them and be like, Look, my mom c did this and she, you know, tried it. It either's gonna work or it's not gonna work. Or she just did it because she loves books and she just wanted to put her opinion out there and she thought that there was too many people out there being bad reviewers I totally enjoyed when you when I seen Paradise, 'cause you don't see that all the time. And I do think that you have a really good niche.

Alli: Yeah. What I what I got so interested in is you see the same books peddled on book talk and bookstagram a lot. especially book talk. I think that TikTok algorithm is just so

Shauna Casey: For sure.

Alli: immersive and it's it's very different than anything else. But I just love finding those like those gems that people aren't talking about

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: and that's what I want to do. I love reading a lot of I I try to read the stuff that's really popular too. And sometimes I love it just as much as I thought I would, and sometimes I don't. That's just like the individual reading experience.

Shauna Casey: It's a mess. Mm-hmm.

Alli: But I really love finding the ones that aren't

Shauna Casey: sure.

Alli: being talked about because and I I love talking about the older books because I think that they had such an impact on where we're at now and I just like

Shauna Casey: A thousand percent.

Alli: I hate the thought of them being forgotten or not

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: I I guess what's the most interesting thing to me is, romance has always been looked down upon as a genre. And before I started creating content, like when I first started my voracious romance reading era I call it, I would tell people I'm reading a book a day, a in in my height, that's what I was doing. And

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: you'd be What are you reading? I I'd it's smut I didn't want to tell them.

Shauna Casey: Yeah.

Alli: And I don't use that term anymore, but I expected that a lot of these eighties, nineties romances, especially the historicals that the bodice rippers

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: were just gonna be really fluffy and not have any substance. And I have found the complete opposite because I feel like that's

Shauna Casey: For sure.

Alli: how people portray them, like as just

Shauna Casey: Yeah.

Alli: this

Shauna Casey: Or it's Fabio or

Alli: these books are just for women. They're just they're just porn in book form.

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: And that is not what I have found. I found beautiful

Shauna Casey: the furthest thing from the truth.

Alli: writing and depth and I mean, even if you look at the vocabulary used in

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: some of these books, it is just I mean, Judith McNott and Jude and

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: Joanna and all of these women who paved the way were you can tell that these were incredibly smart, shrewd women who had a gift and unfortunately I don't know that a lot of people who have not read the historicals realize how well these were written and I I don't want them to be forgotten. So that's why I started talking about them.

Shauna Casey: For sure. I always yeah, when I talk about my favorite books, like I have a top ten. I think it's more than ten now. But like my all time favorites. And like you have to be really good to get on that. Like Broken Knight got

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: on that, Fastlane got on that. But I always say my public secrets, The Outsiders, Paradise, all of those all because hopefully somebody will pick them up and somebody else

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: will fall in love with them.

Alli: And I think so many of them, I'm a big believer that like we have to like look at the books in the context and time period with when they were written and

Shauna Casey: For sure.

Alli: as long as you know going into it, if there's problematic things, I think today we have a very good system and language for it, right? that stuff still so shows up, but it shows up in romanticy and dark romance and everything has a trigger warning if there are triggers in it, but I still think they're worth reading because of how beautifully written they are. And it's actually it it's very interesting to me as a time capsule of where we were at. And even if you look at some of these older books in the problematic

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: dialogue or the problematic scenes, gosh, look how far we've come and look how

Shauna Casey: Yeah.

Alli: the industry has adapted. the stories are still absolutely interesting to me.

Shauna Casey: Yeah, still relevant and they still

Alli: You read what you want to read and I would never tell anybody you have to read it. But there's also a lot that stand up to time really, really

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: well. And I think Paradise is one of them. I think a lot of Susan Elizabeth Phillips catalog stands up so well. I think, Jennifer Crusy, I read her yet.

Shauna Casey: I like Ferd yeah, Fern Michaels. Ferd is really good. I think they stand up. because I think that they weren't writing to Trend. They were writing a story that spoke to them. And however that story came about

Alli: But I do think I do think that there were progressive themes in them. I talked to Susan about

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: that last week. you know, writing about a woman owning an NFL team in the like early mid nineties, that's progressive.

Shauna Casey: was unheard of. Mm-hmm.

Alli: a female trying to get like what is Meredith Imperatus trying to be? Should C O L? Is that her goal? Like yeah.

Shauna Casey: See you. Mm-hmm.

Alli: So like that is progressive.

Shauna Casey: Women weren't like that.

Alli: even Bet Me by Jennifer Cruisey is it's the only Jennifer Cruisey I've read yet, but that was very early two thousands, in the height of as someone who was in high school during that era, the scary skinny era. And I think that it had such progressive language around body positivity and disordered eating. And

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: I just think that that was very progressive take with a female who was like, No, this is my body and I like to eat. And I'm

Shauna Casey: Yeah.

Alli: like, gosh, it was refreshing and it really does up.

Shauna Casey: That's it doesn't have the insecurities or the people that think or all what society tells you or like T V tells you where you have to be a stick thin in order to be happy or in order to be valued. So yeah. And Kristen Ashley has a lot of that also. Body positivity and Aurora also does. I mean most of the readers the authors, but like those ones that I read in the beginning, they very much had

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: Curvier women and didn't apologize for it and didn't make it, you know, seem like it was that they were the only ones doing it.

Alli: Yeah, I totally agree and I think there's so much we can glean and learn from them and at the end of the day too, there's just a lot of great stories to be told. So I hope it yeah.

Shauna Casey: Yeah, there's hidden gems in there, definitely, that more people should probably read, or more re authors maybe should read them before they start writing.

Alli: can you give me a little bit of just an overview of the author agency, what you guys do, just your like elevator pitch.

Shauna Casey: the author agency does release promo, mostly release promo for authors that are debut. It doesn't matter where you could be hybrid, could be Debut hybrid traditional, we've worked with publishers, and we have three different packages. We have the sparkle and shine, which is like all of our bells and whistles package. It has teasers and the release and cover reveal and We of course amend each package in order to what fits best for you. But we haven't raised our rate since we started. So we try to keep it cost effective for the authors because This is a very expensive business

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: we have like an eight week promo plan. So like I said earlier, like if you think would we think that people are getting tired of seeing your book, we just push we put it out there because you never know if they're gonna see it on Instagram or TikTok or wherever they can. So we mainly do new releases, but we do have backlist tours, we have release day blitz. a release date blast, we have a sales blast, basically whatever they need. We have built up our newsletter to like six K plus and that's in three years. we just try to get as many as many eyes as we can on your books, whether it's promo, whether it's arc reading, we have a seventy percent turn in rate probably for reviews, which is pretty good considering

Alli: That's great.

Shauna Casey: how many arcs that some people send out or how little arcs send out. So we're just kind of fill that gap in between of taking the promo plan off of your plate or giving you a promo plan if you need it from where it'll be from like cover reveal to release on what

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: what it just adds another thing on your plate to get max visibility on you.

Alli: And on the reader side and the the creator side, you guys offer these releases and backlists as as ARCs. And you guys are my favorite company that I've worked with with ARCs.

Shauna Casey: Mm. thank you. content creation. We don't look at followers, when we when we vet people 'cause we do vet every single person. But if you have a bookish social media platform that you that you post three to five times a month Or you can be a reviewer, Goodreads or Amazon reviewer where you have to do show us three to five consecutive reviews a month. And that's all it is is to be approved. It's as simple as it's we try to make everything doesn't even be hard. We don't complicate it. We don't

Alli: Yeah.

Shauna Casey: look at follower account because you you could have somebody that has a million followers and their algorithm's not getting seen, but you can get a small creator that is posting original content and they could be all over show up in your algorithm. So we never focus on that. It's just about posting

Alli: No.

Shauna Casey: you have to be have a social you have to have a bookish content and or be a super reviewer. And that's it.

Alli: Yeah, and I I do think that that's a really good point too. As someone who works in the industry and has worked for for several brands managing their influencer programs, I will say this until I'm blue in the face. it is like the micro creators that drive conversion

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm.

Alli: because they're more trustworthy and believable. the bigger creators, they definitely serve a role macros, that is for like visibility and impressions, but people know that they're a lot of times bought and paid for and so they don't trust them as much, but you're getting the eyeballs.

Shauna Casey: Mm-hmm. And you're it a thousand percent. Mm-hmm.

Alli: A lot of companies just want to work with the big ones and it's

Shauna Casey: It gets lost. Mhm. And

Alli: the return is not there if you really want the sales.

Shauna Casey: For sure. And you never know who's gonna see it. So we can have a whole bunch of people that are smaller than a big creator that you can send that is either gonna people aren't gonna trust it or they're not gonna prof they're not gonna really push your book unless they get paid for it and you see those people who those are.

Alli: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for your time. This was a wonderful discussion and so appreciate

Shauna Casey: Anytime anytime you want to talk books, I'm here.

Alli: Me too. I it's my favorite thing to talk about. you gave

Shauna Casey: Yeah.

Alli: me so many really great authors and book recommendations that I hadn't haven't heard of before. So I added them all to Goodreads and then I create a page for each podcast as well. So I'll have like the list of books up there as well.

Shauna Casey: nice. That is so fun. I think you have I think that you have a really good idea and I think that your take on the whole book world is different and I think that you probably will be around for a long time. Unless you choose not to.

Alli: Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed it and I've gotten just so much like personal fulfillment out of it. So I appreciate all of the kind words and your time and I'm I'm so

Shauna Casey: Absolutely. Any time.

Alli: Thank you so much to Shauna Casey for joining me. I walked away from this conversation with an entirely new TBR, and I have a feeling you did too. You can find Shauna on Instagram. I'll put her handle in the show notes, and you can learn more about the author agency at theauthor.agency or on their Instagram or book talk. Handles are also in the show notes. If you are a reader or creator, check out their ARC and ALC program. They look at how consistently you post, not your follower count. Every book we mentioned today, from Carolina Moon to Paradise to Shauna's favorite indie romances, will be listed. On the episode page on my website, AlireadsTooMuch.com. And if you loved this episode, follow the show, leave a rating or review, and send it to a friend who still has her mom's old paperbacks. You can find me at AllyReadsTooMuch on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. That's A-L-L-I. And thank you guys so much for listening to your mom's romance shelf. I'll see you next time.