Interview with Laura Duksta | Sound Authors Radio
November 19, 2008
Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors. Today is July 11, 2008. The next guest I have on the show is Laura Duksta. She wrote a book called I Love You More. It was on the New York Times bestseller list for awhile. It’s a flipside book and on the front she says Flipside book, like love, it never ends. Today on the show Laura is going to be talking to us about her book and then at the end she’ll be speaking to us about her music as well, or we could mix it up a little bit. But this will be a great honor speaking to the author Laura Duksta of I Love You More. Welcome to the show.
Laura Duksta: Thank you Kent thanks for having me.
Dr. Kent: Tell me a little bit about the success this book has had.
Laura Duksta: I self published it to start off with. I was a bartender with no real good idea what to do with my life after graduating from college and one night I had the idea for this book where it kind of came to me as divine inspiration. I was saying a prayer for my sister and nephew and all of a sudden this idea just flooded my being.
It was one of those ideas that wasn’t going away so I decided to self publish it after I had sent it out to a few agents and a few publishers and got a handful of nos. We self published the book and we sold 179,000 copies. Then last year it got picked up by Source Books Jabberwocky, their new children’s imprint and they re-released it and now our numbers are up to I believe 250,000 and like you said we hit the New York Times bestseller list three times.
Dr. Kent: How do you do that with a self published book?
Laura Duksta: The numbers; like one of the things we were able to do as a self published author and the way that we did it we kind of remained under the radar so we were this best selling book that nobody knew about. Not nobody but this is one of the tips that I like to pass on to authors, one of the things that really resonated with me when I was learning about the process. They said one of the toughest, not worst places, but one of the toughest places to sell your book especially if you’re a self published author is a bookstore.
One self published authors they have the bookstores have so many books from the publishers that they already work with to deal with that its hard to get your title in there and then its hard to get seen, even when you’re with a publisher. So the advice that I heard was find your niche, consider who your market is and then find out where they are. It was really just another I think divine moment of inspiration or divine intervention I should say that had me go into a they actually happened to be the number one American craft gallery that year. Seldom Seen Gallery on Source Boulevard.
I walked my book in there with every ounce of courage I had and I said, “I have this book and I live down the street and would you like to carry it? He said, “Well I don’t really carry books.” And I said, “Oh, I just got an endorsement from Wayne Dyer,” he said, “I don’t really much like Wayne Dyer.” I was like well if you can just stick it with some of the other artists you have and he took a look at it and said “Okay, I’ll take ten copies just as long as if they don’t sell I can give them back to you.” I said no problem. Three days later he had sold the ten copies; it was like from Monday to Thursday. He took another 12, I know fully believing that I had sent my friends and family in to purchase those first ten. But he sold those 12 by Monday and then he called me and said how do these books come and I told him they came in cases of 40. He said bring me in 40 and come sit in my office.
He started giving me the names of gallery owners and gift shops across the country that were taking 40, 80, sometimes 160 copies at a time and selling this as one of the only books in their store. It’s just a really special message, one that parents want to share with their children; grandparents want to share with their children. And then because the title of my book I Love You More, people would say, oh my goodness that’s what my mother always used to say to me, and they would buy one for their 80 year old mother or 45 year old children. What was so ideal about this market for us was that people that would never end up in the children’s section of a bookstore were seeing our book and the title and the message and buying multiple copies and sharing our message and our book all over the world.
Dr. Kent: You talk about your message. What exactly is your message?
Laura Duksta: This is another one of the things that I kind of learned in self development, human potential world that I was studying was have a mission or a cause greater than yourself. Ever since I was a child I remember being like seven or eight years old. I felt this strong connection with St. Francis and somehow knew that I was meant to travel the world, meet my brothers, and spread the message of love.
So when we came up with the idea that we were going to self publish the book, I said alright lets create a vision that is so great that we can kind of live and play too so we created the mission of the possibility of generating the conversation of love around the world. That was another thing that really helped us sell the book when I was talking to store owners, I’d show up sometimes unexpected all over the country and I’d tell them we have this book and our mission is to generate the conversation of love around the world, they were really moved by that and I think they liked the book and the message and the illustrations are beautiful. So I think they got really excited about helping to bring that conversation of love into their stores, into the lives of their customers and then into the world.
Dr. Kent: So I’m intrigued by you say you had a connection to St. Francis and I believe isn’t he the fellow who in the middle of the church took off all his clothes, gave them back to his father and said “Now I’ve paid you back for what you’ve given me,” and went off into the woods and took care of people and animals? Is that the same guy?
Laura Duksta: Yeah it is and I like to sometimes say that I’m like; well I have to add more. Like St. Francis meets Wayne Dyer meets Dr. Seuss and I have to come up with some jet set gypsy multi-billionaire. Because I resonate with St. Francis though instead of walking the earth in my sandals I think I would like to be flying around in my private jet instead and I do believe that anything is possible, but yes he is the patron saint of animals. He was known for walking the world in his sandals but yeah a little bit crazy and I can’t say that I’m not.
Dr. Kent: Now I want to ask you at the very beginning of your website you explain that you don’t have hair. Obviously in all promotional pictures you proudly show yourself the way you are. What does that have to do with your message of love, the book itself, any of that?
Laura Duksta: One of the things I guess is I had the opportunity to do so many radio interviews, which are great. What your listeners can’t see is that as you said I have absolutely no hair. I have a condition or disease called alopecia arietta that I got when I was 11 years old. I had long brown hair waving down my back and my hair slowly started falling out to the point that I had none and had to wear wigs. I wore wigs for 19 years and never let anyone see me without a wig on. I just became very introverted and shy and probably very depressed.
It was after I had the idea for the book I kind of just out of nowhere and its ten years ago this week, my 30th birthday I decided I wasn’t going to wear wigs anymore. I didn’t know how connected the book and its message and the decision to stop wearing wigs really was until I started to experience it. It really freed me up so much creatively. It gave me this experience no longer always wondering if people knew, when I was going to tell them, I hadn’t realized how much of my life was consumed by this almost like this thing I was keeping a secret.
So not only that but then I started going into schools to talk about my book, my mother was the kindergarten teacher I was like okay this is great I’m going to go and read my book in her classroom and the first thing that every five year old will say to you is “Hey lady, how come you have no hair?” so really quickly it began and the funny thing is what I realize is adults will sit there and wonder and they might not ask but you could talk to them for 30 minutes or three hours and they may not hear anything you say because they’re wondering is it cancer? Oh she’s so young; oh my sister had cancer without getting a question answered.
So I really turned my school programs into something that we call self esteem through love, empowering our children to shine. The first thing that I address is why I have no hair and that’s really important. Simple, though not always easy lesson to just be yourself but we learn from kindergarten and sometimes I really think we spend our whole lives learning to embrace.
Dr. Kent: You’re lucky you don’t really have any strange lumps on your head. I think if I didn’t have hair I would look pretty horrible but you have a good looking head.
Laura Duksta: Thank you. So many people say that and its kind of a joke in the bald community that you know God made a few perfect heads and the rest he put hair on. Who knew?
Dr. Kent: It also explains all the times your parents dropped you come out once you don’t have hair.
Laura Duksta: It’s been a real blessing.
Dr. Kent: Tell me a little about the movement. I know you have a web presence beyond your website lauraduksta.com. You have an expanding interest in helping people and things like that. How are you doing that?
Laura Duksta: The internet is so fascinating and I think one of the things that really helps is like what I said. I want to travel the world, meet my brothers and sisters and spread the message of love. Generate the conversation of love around the world. One day I’m sitting in front of my computer. I have a social network called cocreatingourreality.com and I’m sitting there and connecting with people all over the world and all of a suddenly realized that this isn’t exactly how I planned to travel the world and meet my brothers and sisters but how amazing the internet is that it can connect us as in your program with people from all over the world. It’s just a phenomenal entity.
So I have several websites and it’s just so brilliant that you can get your music out there, your message out there, products out there, people can download products in Australia if they’re interested in being an author. I’ve got transcripts and mp3s on self publishing and how to market your book successfully. As I said, I have an amazing community that I started with two other women called cocreatingourreality.com and we started that a few years ago and after the release of the secret and especially after their appearances on Oprah our community really took off and I would say we’ve got close to 2,000 members who are setting intentions, goals and co-creating the life of their dreams using universal laws and principles, which I really believe.
With how, generate the success of our book especially self published and now we’re with a publisher. A couple on MySpace, we got Lauradukstamusic and the I love you more book tour and we’ve also got lauraduksta.com and my illustrator has a website, we call ourselves hippie and the bald chick.
Dr. Kent: I was about to ask you about the hippieandthebaldchick.com website. That’s pretty fun. Can you talk about your illustrator? The illustrations are gorgeous of course. How did you end up teaming up to write this? She’s obviously your original illustrator?
Laura Duksta: Yes and she and I were friends from our bartending days in South Beach on Miami’s infamous Ocean Drive at the Clevelander Hotel. I had gotten the book done and one friend thought that he would illustrate it for me but his career really started taking off by the time I had it done and I was looking for a mutual friends name or number who I knew as an artist and Karen said, “Well, why? What do you have there?” I said, well I wrote this book about love and she said I remember as clear as day. “I might not be a famous artist but I know what love looks like to a five year old.”
She pulled out a bag of pastel chalks she’d gotten at yard sale for 50 cents and she said I’m sure if we sit down together we can do these pictures. She started drawing these beautiful pictures that do have this child-like quality and softness and beauty to them that are I believe are really genius; they’re just gorgeous. I kind of laughed like who would have thought after seven years of bartending that hippie and the bald chick would be sitting here writing a book about love.
Dr. Kent: The book itself is a flip book. You flip it over on the other side it also says I Love You More, it also says New York Times Bestseller and there’s a picture of you see the child and on the front cover you see the mother but it’s the same picture on the front and on the back. Where did you get that idea? Was that her idea, yours?
Laura Duksta: Yes this book was really a collaboration, one with spirit. Like I said I was praying for my sister and something clearly answered me and said your sister is fine, pray for your nephew. I began praying for my nephew. Well first of all I said that’s strange. But as I began praying for my nephew this whole idea for the book came to me and it was just all these different random ideas. I love you more than spaghetti and meatballs, I love you more than chocolate milk, and then gradually over the next few months, several months actually, I began to put it into a book format.
The first person that I showed it to after it was done and I was certain that it was fabulous. I showed it to my mom who was a kindergarten teacher for 38 years. She said honey its great and we argued and she says but; we argue that she says she said and, and she’s probably right, she said “And if you really want this young audience, teachers and parents to love this book it really should rhyme.” So when I first wrote the book it didn’t rhyme. I huffed and puffed a little bit but I went back to my office and rewrote it so that it rhymed and then I showed it to my sister who has four children.
So she had read a few children’s books in her life and she said oh this is a really great book but I think at the time it was called The Story Between A Mother And A Son, but it was just read like a regular book and every other page was mother, son, mother, son. She said I think this would make a really great flip book if you took out the son’s story and took out the mother’s story and have them meet in the middle. I thought it was a really great idea and will make the book unique. What I see with the students when I go into a classroom visit is that how many drafts, how many rewrites it actually took to get it to look just the way it does.
When my sister said this would make a really good flip book I had to pull out the two stories. That meant I had to go back and rewrite the entire book to make it rhyme again; that was how we made it a flip book. And then when we self published it, it actually had the exact same cover on the front and the back. Then together with our publisher we came up with the idea of putting the mothers face so that you see it on the front cover because its her sharing with her son or child how much she loves him or her and then when you flip it over it’s the child story so you see the child’s face. And that’s what the message of the book is, the story of a love shared between a mother and a child.
On the one side you’ve got the boy saying mommy, just how much do you love me? And she’d say things like I love you longer than the longest path ever wound; I love you prettier than the prettiest flower ever found and then when you flip the book over the mother asks the child, well just how much do you love me? He responds more childlike things like rocket ships, lollipops, kites and bubbles.
Dr. Kent: It truly is a beautiful book but lets talk a little about you have another life; well you have many lives. You can sell some self publishing and things like that. You’re a speaker of course, you talked about that. You’re also a musician and this show features authors of sound as well as sound authors. So I’d like to play an entire track from you called We Are One. Can you tell me a little about that song?
Laura Duksta: Thanks and I love the way you just phrased that. Authors of sound, that’s gorgeous. I’ve been trying to figure out singer/songwriter musical artist but artist of sound is beautiful. We Are One came about when you hear the words you will see that it really resonates with the message of generating the conversation of love around the world and really believing that we are all brothers and sisters and it’s a little bit of a wake up call to get back to that awareness.
Dr. Kent: Let’s listen to the entire track, We Are One, by Laura Duksta.
[Music 19:03 – 23:16]
Dr. Kent: There it was, We Are One by Laura Duksta. Tell me a little bit about your music career.
Laura Duksta: Actually this is just kind of getting, I’m still in the inquiry I guess really of what this next stage is going to look like. I have a company called I Shine Inc. As I said our mission is to generate the conversation of love around the world through books, music, speaking, TV, film and the web. So this is my first step into the music arena. I always had it in my heart when I was young and I wanted to sing and I think I actually remember an older and much cooler cousin of mine told me you don’t sing, you say the words.
I don’t even know if they said you can’t sing or you’re not a good singer, but I just kind of shut down that dream for a long time. Then a few years ago I said you know what? I think its time to revisit that. I wrote twelve songs, got into a studio, found an amazing group of partners that were producers that really helped me with the music and getting it out there and a little bit with my voice. We’re still working on that a little bit and I really wanted to create music with a message.
Not necessarily a children CD, I’d like to say our book is a book about love presented as a children’s book because it certainly is a children’s book but the message is for everyone. So a lot of people ask me about the music and ask me if it’s a children’s CD and I say no, its adult contemporary but its one you can listen to with your children. All of the songs have some sort of message about life, human potential and of course love.
Dr. Kent: Well it’s been a real pleasure speaking with you. The book is called I Love You More. Of course that’s been on the New York Times Bestseller list. Do you have any more books in the hopper? Are you thinking about writing some more?
Laura Duksta: Yes, Karen and I are doing another book together called Purple Potatoes, which doesn’t have a release date yet. And then I’ll be doing another book, the fourth book with Jabberwocky, which will be released next fall. Again it’s a children’s picture book but the message will certainly be for all my brothers and sisters.
Dr. Kent: Wonderful. I’d love to listen to one more track after we find out we can go to your website lauraduksta.com, and we can Google you on the web as hippie and the bald chick, there’s your MySpace page, there’s tons of things. What do you have planned in the near future? Are you on tour?
Laura Duksta: Well actually, this summer I have the next two months to write my next book that will be released next fall. So that’s first and biggest on my plate. Then really just stepping into looking at how to get my music and my message out to the world so I appreciate this opportunity you’ve just given me today.
Dr. Kent: We’re going to play one more track. Would you like to hear They Say or Expose?
Laura Duksta: They Say is a little dancey. So let’s show them that, this is good for dance music in the clubs and we’ve gotten a good response from that one.
Dr. Kent: Perfect; it’s been a pleasure speaking with Laura Duksta. Her website again is lauraduksta.com. Thanks for being on the show.
Laura Duksta: Thank you Dr. Kent have a bright and blessed lifetime.
Dr. Kent: This is They Say from Laura Duksta.
[Music 27:05 – 31:03]
Dr. Kent: Thanks for tuning in today to Sound Authors. It was a real pleasure speaking with John Straley, Peter Webb and Laura Duksta. Special thanks to Jody Walls, Amber Bean; see you next week.
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