Transcript

Bryan Hyde
Welcome to the Janine Bolon show, where we share tips from around the globe. As we guide practical people with their finances using money tips, increase their incomes through side businesses, and maintain their sanity by staying in their creative zone.

Janine Bolon
Hello and welcome to the show. You may or may not know this, but the Janine Bolon show is a syndicated program of four different podcasts, and in October of 2021, my team and I merged all four of those podcasts into one program just for you. Up to that point, you probably remember us from when we were running those four separate podcast called Three Minute Money Tips, The Thriving Solopreneur, The Writers Hour Creative Conversations, and The Practical Mystic Show. Today, we are bringing in one of our highlighted 99 authors, we are interviewing 99 authors over the course of this year, and they are going to receive, we are going to receive from them their guidance and perspective on how to get your message, your story, your memoir out into the world. Now many of you have been told you should write a book about your life experience. Well, guess what? These authors that I’m interviewing over the course of this year, have all been prompted to write their stories as well. Each one will tell you what got them going into writing. But more importantly, they’re going to share what worked, what didn’t work and the experiences they had as they became published authors. Now today, we have Kate Solisti with us who is the president of Kingship Enterprises and is dedicated to giving animals a say in their care, and in our world. Kate is a leader in the field of Interspecies Communication, having translated animals thoughts, feelings and needs to caring humans for over 30 years. This woman is doing this longer than I’ve been in radio and that’s saying something. Kate has authored six books published in the nine languages, and has co edited a seventh book with author and playwright Michael Tobias. She is an inspiring teacher and speaker featured nationally and internationally on stage, radio, and television. She is a recognized expert in dog and cat nutrition, flower essence therapy and energy healing, addressing the whole animal body, mind and spirit. Kate’s passion is giving voice to all members of the animal community and kingdom so that they can participate with humans and improving their own health and well being, as well as that of all species on the planet. To that end, Kate hosts a membership community, the harmony pack, where people passionate about non human beings on earth can learn from each other and collaborate for the good of all life. She lives with her husband, Marcus Kurek, and two fabulous felines in Colorado. Welcome to the show, Kate.

Kate Solisti
Thanks Janine, it’s great to be with you.

Janine Bolon
Well, thank you for coming on, because one of the things is, as we have these author highlights, we get a whole range of people. And one of the things that I think is wonderful is some people would think that your books would be in the genre of fantasy and science fiction, but they’re not. It’s nonfiction. You are an interspecies communicator.

Kate Solisti
This is true.

Janine Bolon
So did you choose to write under your name? Or are you under a pen name? What was the choice you made for when it came to that authorship?

Kate Solisti
I wrote under my own name. It never occurred to me to write under a pen name. But yeah, I’ve always written under my name. One time, when I was married to someone it was hyphenated briefly. But the Solisti is always there, so.

Janine Bolon
Gotcha. So, what’s one of the very first decisions that some authors go through is oh, my gosh, should I hide under a pen name? Or should I, right, but you didn’t even have that. You were just like, nope, I’m out there. This is who I am. This is what I do. So this is just a curiosity question, and that is, did you have any marketing background before you ever started publishing? She’s laughing. You can’t see this. She is busting out laughing.

Kate Solisti
No. That’s a great question. No, marketing has been something that I have continued to learn about, and it’s always seems that it’s always way ahead of me, no matter where you am. So, it’s a continuing and ongoing challenge.

Janine Bolon
Well, tell us the year that you first got yourself published. You were actually published by a publishing house, is that correct?

Kate Solisti
Yes, it was in 1998. And it was actually the book that I collaborated with, with Michael Tobias, the Anthology Called Kinship with Animals. That was my first foray into publishing. And because it was anthology, I didn’t have to write much. It was very interesting. I wrote my piece and then I ended up getting the book published, even though Michael said he had an agent and he would take care of that part if I did all the other work. Well, I did all of it.

Janine Bolon
We hear that a lot. Yeah, supposedly this is supposed to happen, but I ended up doing everything anyway. So just out of curiosity what most surprised you about the book publishing process as a whole? I mean, what were some expectations you had or what was the big surprise or reveal for you as a published author?

Kate Solisti
Well, that is an excellent question. I mean, honestly, I did not have to put a lot of work into getting it published which was very fortunate. The first publisher that did the Anthology was a German publisher called Cosmos in Germany, and the book was actually published originally in German, because of my connection with Linda Tellington Jones. Some of you people may know, Linda, from The Tellington Touch with Animals, a brilliant woman or author, teacher. Anyway, Linda was one of the contributors to the Anthology, and suggested we send the manuscript to her German publisher who loved it. And then, the way it got published in America was, the book was at this massive bookfair in Frankfurt, called Frankfurt Book Fairs, huge, worldwide thing. And everybody from everywhere comes, and an American publisher saw the book and wanted to publish it in America, and they bought the English language rights. So that’s how the first book ended up being published in America under that publisher, who then asked me, because this was the time of Conversations with God, when that first came out, they asked me if I would write a book called Conversations with Dogs. And I said, absolutely, I’d love to as long as I can also write conversations with cat and horse. So they agreed. And they also agreed to publish my book, that got the name, The Holistic Animal Handbook, which was a guide to nutrition, health and communication. So that seemed really easy. It all kind of fell in my lap, it was amazing, and that was back in the 90’s.

Janine Bolon
And that’s one of the things I don’t think a lot of people understand. There was a huge sea change, right as we moved from the 90’s, into the 2000’s, where publishers stopped doing any kind of marketing, and you really had to almost move into, well, at the time, it was called vanity publishing, you know, or you may have been a hybrid. So, talk to us a little bit, you actually made that sea change with it, you were a published author, where people were doing supposedly, a lot of the marketing for you, you had somebody who was getting licensing for you, different languages, different countries, and then boom, you moved into hybrid publishing, and that was a whole different animal for you. No pun intended. Sorry, that just came out.

Kate Solisti
Lots of different animals, it was. And yes, I mean, in the early days of marketing, yes, it’s true, your publisher sent you on book tours, set up radio programs for you, you know, and some television even. I did some local television, in Portland, Oregon, where the publisher actually where they were. And so, when it came to a hybrid press, and the new world of publishing, you know, they basically were telling me I had to have a huge email list, and it was really up to me to promote the book, they would give me a copy of stuff, you know, they would help me with press releases, and things like that. Oh, wow, big deal. And then it was up to me to get them out to millions of people. Haha.

Janine Bolon
Yeah, and to this day, authors are still struggling with that and learning from each other. That’s one of the things I do love about the author community, is the fact that we’re very generous. We’re very giving. We’re like, we know what authors have to do now that was unheard of just 20 years ago. So, that’s one of the things that’s brilliant. But, you and I were never talking when we were in the greenroom about what you liked best. What you liked best about being an author. Tell us about the things that you really enjoyed.

Kate Solisti
I loved my subject matter. First and foremost, I loved talking about, and for animals, and teaching people. You know that my holistic animal handbook, as I said, was a guide to nutrition, health and communication. And I loved being able to get that information out there because there wasn’t a lot of, certainly nothing that covered all those areas together. You know, again, back in the early days in the early 2000’s, and late 90’s. So, it was the joy of educating and sharing the animals wisdom, that was the best part. I will say, I am very fortunate. I had an early education that taught me how to write, and taught me how to speak really, between elementary and middle school, so that I never had trouble writing papers and writing, in high school, and college. That came easily to me because of that early education. So for me that was never a struggle, which a lot of writers really have a hard time. I went to a writers group once, in this great coffee shop in Boulder, you know, everything was very location, very academic, and very movie with black berets and very hip. And so I went to this meeting of this writers group, and they began by talking about the torture it is to write. They’re passionate about it, but it’s torture to do it. And they have to make all this time, and create all this discipline, and I sat there and went, oh, oh, it flows, it just flows for me. So, those are some of the things I love the best. The subject, and the fact that writing is a joy for me.

Janine Bolon
Right. That you have this writing, it’s a joy for you, it’s not the torture that other people put on it. You don’t make it difficult for yourself. That’s the other thing I’ve noticed about you. Back in the time you were talking to us about how much fun you had with the book talks, that those are still things that we can do. We don’t have the book signings like we used to, but we definitely have the book talk. So tell us a little bit about your experience with that.

Kate Solisti
I think it’s still a great thing to do. I totally do. Whether you’re doing it at a bookstore, you’re doing it on a podcast. You know, I think one of the best ways today to market your book is to get on podcasts of people that, who have audiences you want to reach, and have people that care about what you’re writing about, especially the host. That they’re really interested in what you’re doing, so that they ask great questions, and that you are having a terrific, exciting dialogue. You’re picking somebody who cares, because I think that’s critical. But I think that is one of the very best places to talk about your book, any opportunity you have, with people that are interested. Not just ramming it down people’s throats.

Janine Bolon
No need to run them down with your grocery cart and tell them hey, guess what? No. You gotta hear this, right. So when it comes to being an author, and all your work, do you have a current project that you’re working on? Almost every author has a project of some sort or thing, working on. And I know you’re in the process of selling your house and moving and all that, but when all that dust settles, do you have something next on your agenda?

Kate Solisti
Oh boy, I mean, I am writing all the time, because I do a newsletter, so my newsletter is every week. And so, then that’s attached with, usually there’s a blog that you know, so I am doing that. It’s not really going to anybody but my mailing list, which isn’t huge, it’s only about 820 people. I do put it on social media, so, I have it go out to LinkedIn, and Twitter and Facebook, that does do that. So I’m doing that all the time. But I do have like four books in various states of readiness. So I hope at some point to get working on some of those, so that they can be published. I would love to get them out in the world.

Janine Bolon
Right. Well, first you have to move the house. After you move, then we can worry about publishing right? Then you can worry about getting back into that creative mode. But I knew that, and then, you have a website that people can go to to sign up for your newsletter. Do you mind sharing that with us?

Kate Solisti
It’s my name, Kate Solisti. K A T E S as in Sam, O L I S again, T as in Tina I. www.KateSolisti.com.

Janine Bolon
Right, there you go. And that’s where you can go and sign up. And so if you are really interested in people who can communicate with animals, and there are many folks, many folks with those gifts, Kate has been at it probably one of the longest I’ve ever run into for folks. And one of the very first podcast I ever ran, started in 2015 was The Practical Mystic Show, and so I’ve been able to communicate with a lot of folks who have these sorts of gifts, and Katie has been at this quite some time. So you do want to get to know her a little bit better before you kind of buy into the program that she has offered. I would highly recommend that you grab her newsletter because she publishes it every week for you. So before we get ready to sign off here, is there any other like last parting advice or anything you would like to give people who are starting to publish their books now or they’re thinking about writing their memoir?

Kate Solisti
I would say have fun. I mean, really, it’s got to be. I always say when people tell me they love my book, I say it was a labor of love. And I’m so glad you love it because I loved writing it. I loved bringing through the wisdom of the animals, or information about how to keep our animals healthiest. It’s a joy for me, and that’s for me the biggest. If it isn’t, don’t bother, because people will feel it right? They just go, oh, this person struggling with this I can, ugh. Make sure it’s intersting, be entertaining, you know, be yourself, and enjoy.

Janine Bolon
And don’t be afraid to put your own stories in there, right? I’m sure there’s a story you’d like to share, that always brings a giggle when you share it. So do you mind sharing that with our audience today? I know that there’s always a story floating around that you enjoy sharing. So we would love to hear one.

Kate Solisti
Okay, here’s a giggle story. I have a lot of stories that bring tears to your eyes and make your heart go, awww. This one is cute. So, years ago, when I was doing a session with a guy and his dog. Usually, I’m working with women, and as you can imagine, most women are like, of course, my dog talks to me, and my cat does too, and, you know. But men are a little bit, loath to share that sometimes, and so we had done this whole thing about her health, the dog’s health and what was going on, and as I was sort of out the door, he said to me, oh, by the way, can you ask her what her favorite game is? That I turned to the dog and I looked at her, and she looked at me, and all these different games are running through her head, and she went, I love to chase sticks. And he went, oh, okay. And then she went, I love to run, run with him. And, he went, uh huh, and she ran through about three or four things with this great hopefulness, and he went, what about when I throw rocks in the stream and she goes and dives for them? And she’s like, oh, I love that one too.

Janine Bolon
I love it. The dog is totally into anything, like I’d play any game with you, and the guy have one thing on his mind. Oh, that is so cute.

Kate Solisti
Anything she played with him was wonderful.

Janine Bolon
Right, totally involved. I’m 100% in on this one, my guy. It’s delightful. Well, thank you so much for sharing your work with us today and for sharing with us that you are continuously writing. Not every author has weekly newsletters. So, thank you so much for sharing that with us, that is wonderful. Any other last tips or wisdom you want to share with us before we go?

Kate Solisti
I think I’ve pretty much said it. I mean, again, talk about your books, get them out there, you know, in podcasts and radio shows, and some of the other stuff that I don’t know. Maybe there’s Instagram things you can do. Maybe there’s TikTok things you can do. Use them all as long as they’re not a chore, and it’s fun. And you can duplicate some things, you don’t have to do something different all the time. But the more you share what you love, the more you will attract the people who love what you do.

Janine Bolon
Oh, that’s perfect. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. And thank you so much for your time today. It was lovely having you, Kate.

Kate Solisti
A great joy to be with you, as always Janine. Thank you so much.

Janine Bolon
And that is today with our spotlighted author, Kate Solisti. And this is Janine Bolon signing off with you today, and all of us here at the eight gates that produces the Janine Bolon show. We wish you a wonderful week and encourage you to get your message, your story, or your knowledge out into the world and make it a better place just like these authors are doing with us. They’re helping the newly published authors that are coming along behind them. And well as we’ll see again next week… keep sharing what you know with others, keep shining that light that is you and don’t forget to go out today, and you know, like Kate said, do something fun. See you next week.

Bryan Hyde
Thank you for listening to the Janine Bolon show. Be sure to subscribe to our show notes by going to www.theJanineBolonshow.com, where you’ll find additional resources as well as the opportunity to sign up to receive our program in your email each week. Be sure to visit our sponsor at www.the8gates.com.