PEGGY HOYT - Author of "All My Children Wear Fur Coats," among other books

"Hi, my name is Peggy Hoyt. And I'm an estate planning and elder law attorney and now a best-selling author. I live in Central Florida, and I practice at the Law Offices of Hoyt and Bryant. I'm passionate about pets. And I host a weekly podcast that I call a pawcast titled All My Children Wear Fur Coats.

I was able to participate in one of your anthology book projects. And that was easy to do, fun and super simple, and a great way to get started in the book marketing business. But I had already accumulated a little stable of books of my own. And some of them were going stale. And I really needed to get them updated, get a fresh view, a fresh look, some fresh marketing. And that's where our relationship really blossomed because I was able to say to you, "Hey, Mark, I need help. And can you put the fire behind me to get me motivated to update these books? Give them a new good look, and get them out on the market?" And, of course, your answer was, "Absolutely, I can do that." And then, one day, I just had a crazy idea. I was like, "I'm going to write a book called 101 ways to F*ck Up Your Estate." And I told you about the idea, and you said, "I don't really like the title." But I said, "I don't care. I'm going to do it anyway; I just need your support." You said, "Absolutely. I'll give you my support." I was able to crank it out, get it out there. And that's the one that recently became a bestseller on Amazon.

Really, you motivate me more than I would motivate myself. So it is great having Mark as a partner because he nudges you to get you to do the things you need to do. I still owe you some content at the moment on another project that we're working on. But I will get it; I promise this weekend. So working together has been great because you laid out the format, the expectations for what we're going to do, the steps in the process, and what I need to do. Then as I complete my part of that process, I get feedback from your team. "So here's the next step. I need you to review this, edit this, and then submit the rest of this." And then it's all digital, or we do face-to-face video meetings, which is a lot of fun. But a lot of it is digital, so that you can do it from anywhere. And it just makes the whole thing seamless. So easy from start to finish on this last book. I bet it didn't even take three months. 

There was a cover design process. So some ideas were presented for covers, and I couldn't get my arms around the original designs and shared some of them with my friends. I was using them as a kind of focus group. And then I came back with some suggestions and other ideas, and you came back with a new set of recommendations. And that worked out perfectly. And that did result in the cover that we have today, which is absolutely fabulous. Because it's so bright and eye-popping, and everybody loves it. But that was perfect because it made it easy to get the cover done. I sent you all of the content on a chapter-by-chapter basis. And then your team laid out all of the interior design. To me, that's the hardest part. I have done numerous books in the past, and getting the cover design and interior design was always a huge challenge for me. Having your team review and edit and ensure that I didn't misspell words was also an excellent part of the process. Once all of that was complete, I didn't have to do anything else. I just had to wait for the final product. You sent me a preview of the product. Once I okayed that final preview, boom, it went up on Amazon. And then I said, "How do we make this a best seller?" And we got busy, and we got it done.

I wish I'd had you for my first book! Because when I did my first one, I tried to pull all the pieces together myself. And it just was overwhelming. And you make a lot of false starts and go down some bunny trails, and you don't know how to get an ISBN, and you don't know how to find a cover designer, and you don't know how to find somebody to help design the interior. And you don't know how to find somebody to help edit the book, and you don't have this nice digital platform to work on. It was just a lot.

I would absolutely give my 100% raving review endorsement of Mark and his team. I didn't know him from Adam either when I met him, but I really liked him. And I've done a couple of projects now. And would highly, highly recommend you and your team. And if anybody has an idea for a book, and everybody does, we're all authors inside our hearts, right? So if you have an idea for a book, if you have a business you want to grow, writing a book is the best third-party credibility you're ever going to have."