The Author Behind "I Met My Younger Self For Coffee" - Jennae Cecelia.

so Jan welcome to the podcast wait first of all have I said your name right Jan is that right yes you said it right perect okay you got the right okay fantastic welcome to the for here yeah introduce who you are and what people would know you for yeah so my name is Jana Cecilia I have been writing poetry and Publishing books for the last nine years I've self-published 13 poetry books and then now I have a 14th book coming out with a traditional publisher and August with Andrews MCM so they're like a partner company with Simon and Schuster they've done the book milk and honey so I was really excited to get to be publishing with them yeah nice and probably you're being a

little bit humble at the moment because actually people have definitely seen your work even if it's a reiteration of what your work is which is the coffee series having a coffee of your a younger s which absolutely like for a week or two there just took the World by storm yes I want to dig into that because like I i' I've watched some of your updates and once I found out who you were and we and I did a little look into it and just tell me what tell me tell me first of all when did it start like what was it like tell me the beginning like tell me this little last month or so it's been like tell me the story yeah so

even going back just a little bit more than that I had wrote the poem back in October yeah and it was in the second round of editing my book and and I messaged my editor and said can I please put this in the book I know we're in like the second rounds but I think this really makes the whole book and I had even shared it on social media then which is how I knew like okay this needs to go in the book because the response was amazing however it was not what it was then come January because in January I posted literally the same thing again the video clip and I don't know what happened this time that didn't happen a couple months before

but it just took off and I was first it well some readers of mine had made me aware of it actually because they were like hey I've seen your poem but it's like not your poem but the person kind of is using it and so that brought it to my attention and by the time it that I noticed there was probably there was at least hundreds of them and then it just a few days later thousands the next week it was like and it started on Tik Tok first and then maybe a week later all of a sudden Instagram just like flooded with it it was wild I love that that is wild tell me what was like it like what was previous to that

happening what is it sort of like the biggest sort of attention or virality that had come prior to that because you you've been solid at this for a long time so like what was that sort of looking like what was your like say Instagram for instance was was the follow account there and how have things changed yeah so uh currently my follower account on Instagram I think I gained like 50 or 40,000 people um I had another moment of this that was kind of similar but not the same back in 2020 when Jennifer Garner had shared one of my poems to her Instagram and so that brought it's funny because there's like a big group of people that came from that time probably like 30

to 40,000 then yeah um which was like so sweet of her she's so nice and just randomly I had never spoken to her before but she was like here and I think at the time I had only had maybe like I don't even know 30,000 followers on Instagram not a whole ton so that was like one experience and then I did actually have my second book that I ever wrote it went pretty viral on the Amazon charts so that became pretty popular so I've had like different phases throughout my career yeah yeah but nothing quite like this no this is like not many people have heard things that that's like actually how crazy it went and it's one of those weird things that when it

C when stuff like this catches you can't really even explain it like it just goes okay so but can you give me a little insight I mean I've watched some of your Clips but just for people listening who might not have watched all your content like I did Deep dive on how long have you been at this social media journey and the book journey because obviously 12 13 books you said you're read already like how long of a period of Time Has This Been yeah I started when I was 22 I'm now 31 um I was a College full-time college student and yeah I published three self-published three books in the course of a year so that really kind of gave me my put my

feet in the door for the self-publishing world um but yeah I've been doing this for a really long time I was you posting poetry on Instagram before people were doing like stuff like that on Instagram like it was still back when people were just posting like their food and random little updates and it was before there was even Instagram stories and I just would spam like my account with poetry every single day so yeah it's been quite the journey that is so good and I love that because that said ho um you know the old saying of overnight success only takes 10 years um to happen I had one interview and the lady I don't think she knew too much about me which is totally

fine but she said can we expect you to share more poetry after this and I just had to kind of laugh because I was like yeah I mean I have been for a really long time yeah so I'll just keep doing that yeah I'll just keep doing the same thing i' done for n years that's so funny and you did do a post the other day talking about right like it just you know you got to stick to it you just got to put in the work and keep coming back tell me a bit about that like what where did that work e come for you and why have you beat like self-publishing that many books is a feat in its own that's that's a

whole podcast in itself like where did that work ethic come from to just like stick at an art form like this for so long yeah I think part of it is I fell into it at a very pivotal point in my life so I was just graduating college and didn't really know what I wanted to do anyway and so I kind of looked out at the fact that it was like okay I live with my parents I don't really have a lot of responsibility right now could I take this risk and jump and really put it all into being an author and being a writer and I really made the hard transition like fully like deleted everything that was on my social medias became just

an author even before like I was even selling really anything and my husband also help he's an entrepreneur so he helped me a lot with the business side which like at the beginning I knew nothing thing about and now have had to learn like okay if you're going to be an author you also have to know the business side whether you're self-publishing or traditional publishing you have to know that side of it in order to be successful because it's really easy to get extremely lost in that process yeah absolutely especially authors right authors are um what what I found so so I'm in the currently in the process of writing a book as well for my first ever book that I'm writing I'm like a

year into it or whatever it's taking way longer that thought it would take but it's fine cuz it's my my coaches have been helping me refine my ideas but what I've learned through the industry and like my literary agent is based in Boston and we're looking at a US publisher rather than a New Zealand publisher where I'm based at the moment just because of the reach and whatnot what I've learned is that like actually like Book Sales and you you hear about like the the Stephen Kings and the JK rings and and then you know in poetry it's even less like this you know so it's like people think oh yeah authors and they they go off and they s all these copies but actually

like the number like a good selling book actually the number is not that big like to get into the New York Times best seller you actually not selling I mean some people hit that list by selling 10,000 in their first week and so actually like the numbers aren't big yes I learned that too pretty early on I was like wow these people aren't selling because you don't know what you don't know and a lot of authors won't talk about it so you're just like well how much did you sell to get on the New York Times Like Millions thousand I don't know yeah in total like are you able to share some of like in total how many books or like roughly like yeah yeah

so I don't have the exact numbers off the top but yeah my like top top selling book which is healing for no one but me it came out about two years ago that one has sold I know for a fact around 50 to 60,000 paperback That's not including like the ebooks or anything so that's like my top selling one altogether I'm not quite sure probably close to like 200,000 I would assume that's amazing that's actually phenomenal for poetry books actually in the industry wise that's phenomenal yeah when I first met with my agent he was pretty shocked by that number when I told him he was like I looked it up and I think you sold that much and then he I was like yeah

and he was like okay well you no you're good because I was asking him like are you sure a traditional publisher will want me and he was like no you're fine yeah yeah 100% like they traditional Publishers actually like stoked if you get over anything over 10,000 they're like okay that's worth the investment that's worth the investment yeah espe us us is different yes and what you were saying about um most books not selling many copies there's a statistic out there that 90 I think it's like 95% of self-published books never sell more than a 100 copies and that's like something I kept in my brain the whole time like I was like No we're going to do more than that like we're not going

to be that statistic yeah and think what I like about your story actually which I will get into a little bit of what's happened since the virality recently but I really enjoyed that watching that video you talking about the nine years into it and all the work that you put in and sticking at it because it's actually like something like Stephen King talks a lot about like one of the reasons he's been so successful successful as an author is he gets up he starts work at nine o'clock every morning he he finishes at 5 and he's like just really diligent but he's just done that forever and by doing so much work consistently and being consistent at ease being you know one of the most

prolific authors in terms of sales and numbers of books released um so it's a real hard job okay what I want to know though is obviously this has gone viral people have found out it's you which I think is great because you weren't getting credited very well for at the beginning I know that most of my staff who' made it didn't even know there was an original person until we found out and then we we shared around the team and we're like guys like this is the person we should go back and credit yeah once you did get credited and all this sort of um I guess attention came your way like what's changed since like has did people did it convert into sales of

books like what what's happened yeah so the poem that was featured like I said was is in my new book that's coming out in August and we actually weren't supposed to tell people they could pre-order it until April that was what my publisher advised just because it comes out in August and the first week it started really going viral I was like Hey I'm going to I think I'm just going to tell them they can get the book now because they could like if anyone looked it up there were people that had already pre-ordered it yeah but I just wanted to fully say like here it's available you can pre-order it now and yeah it shot up to number one in a bunch of new

releases for inspirational poetry women poetry whatever it may be and a lot of it too was because like or what I was going to say is a lot of it with pre-orders you don't usually get that much of like a a hype always especially mine being like six months out I was kind of like like some people will probably be like I'll come back which I'm sure there still is that but I was very pleasantly surprised by me saying like hey this is in this book and how many people were like oh I'll support it I'll pre-order it especially people that had posted one didn't know I'd written it and then I feel like they kind of felt bad like oh I feel bad like

I didn't credit you so then like jazz I think you said you had her on here yeah Jazz Thornton yeah she was someone that I think I hadn't even seen hers but originally I don't think she had credited me because she had commented on my thing and it was like I'm so sorry I'm going to make sure I go and take you and buy a copy of your book so I was like okay well I mean like that's so sweet thank you uh but I think that also converted to sales as well so that's pretty much like for my book it has helped it a ton um I won't know the numbers for a while CU my publisher has it but I know just kind

of where I was seeing with it R yeah yeah to be hit number one charts means that there's probably a c a few thousand at least to hit those sorts of numbers yeah I would think so I would hope so you think so you you hope so you never know just cuz the charts are always so different with everybody's books it's like not always the same but yeah that is awesome tell me about like You' obviously had a bit of I I'm the least popular show you've probably been on since this has happened like you NBC and other things like tell me like what's that been like and has like where have you gone like who else has asked you to talk about things and

where what sort of attention have you gotten elsewhere yeah NBC uh I think yeah NBC News was the first to reach out that they wanted to write an article so they had just called me someone from their team and asked me a little bit about it and that's when I found out from that article I didn't even know until I read it that it said 16 million people had participated I was like what how big it is I didn't see that that's what they they reported on so I was like I knew was I knew it hit the millions but I didn't really yeah I had no idea either so I talked to them talked I was on a pod for CNN they're five good

things just a quick a quick little thing and then Upworthy and then there's just been people whove reported on it and didn't even like reach out to me which is fine I mean you don't have to reach out to me yeah but yeah it's just been really cool and it's been nice because like I said earlier I have been doing this for so long and just been working towards this point and it's one of those things that I didn't ever dream up this scenario like when you're just like oh I just hope people share my poems and share my work and having it become something that people really just took and like were able to create and make their own in their own unique way

was really cool to see yeah it was pretty it was pretty cool I think that that I think the way it went viral that people made their own versions was one of the coolest things I'd ever seen and when I especially when I found out it was you know you had the original poem that it wasn't just a trending thing that actually they took a piece of work and they brought it to life in their own way I think that's like that's like one of the coolest ways to make art when people can take concept kicking yes I 100% agree and I loved how some people took it their own route like there was some really funny ones there was just and there's like very

deep and authentic versions and very vulnerable so it was kind of just funny to see which the funny ones definitely made me laugh I think some people were coming to my defense like they're like you're taking her poetry and making a joke out of it I was like guys I do have a good sense of humor like I do I do laugh at these like I'm not just like yeah so it was just funny yeah yeah no it was good there was some definitely some good funny ones some of the guys in our team had some really funny ones as well I likeed I do agree with you I liked how people took it their own way and I think that're that I really love

your attitude towards it because some people are really predictive of their art and some people are really like snobbery about it different things but I love that like your opinion on it and your take on it because actually like it's when you let your work let your fans create their own versions of it it's like um fan fiction when it comes to Harry Potter or like Star Wars or any of these big franch that have these like fandoms that just like write their own fan fictions of it it just takes things to a whole new level of love and appreciation by your audience and some people get like really predictive of it it's like no you're like you're killing your your audience you're telling your

audience don't appreciate my work the way you want to yes yes I agree and I think some people like they didn't know what to quite do when it was like people weren't crediting you and this and that or they were saying oh it's just a trend so you don't need credit and I was just trying to say like I never obviously didn't know it was ever going to be a trend all I was trying to say was hey it did come from an original poem it would be cool if you read it and like saw that that it comes from an original poem however it's also the internet so I'm very aware of that's not going to happen so I'm just trying to make the

best of the situation and also like you said the fact that it's been so impactful for people that means a lot for me and I know there's people still like I've made a couple videos like two weeks ago and still now people like oh I found you like I found the original person I'm like see like that's all that really matters yeah I was going to ask one of the questions I had to ask you but you've kind of already answered to me is like how do you follow up from this right like because that's also a thing for artists and and people who create out to is quite a burden I need to follow up the the big record or the big thing but

actually I think I know the answer is that you just did it for nine years you've had other big moments before you just keep doing it again I suppose but like tell me your thoughts how do you follow this up yeah it's funny because I I knew my poetry was good so I was like I know it's like worth reaching people but even now since I've gotten all these this new audience whether it's on Tik Tok or Instagram I've kind of just started repurposing old content that I thought was really good but then like didn't reach the audience it could have and it's funny because now even that stuff is like taking off more than it did originally I I don't think it's necessarily I

have to do anything different I think was already doing what people like and now they're like oh there's more of this and even to the fact where people found out with like pre-ordering my book they're like oh I have to wait till August like I need to go get your other books before like because I can't wait till August to read it so that's been really yeah I'm like there's a whole list of them I love get the more recent ones though because the first ones are a little like you know I was 22 when I wrote them but yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's the way no look I um I think it's amazing like and I'm soed that I got to talk

to you about it because uh seeing this sort of thing like seeing social media change people's lives but also the way that you've done is even better like the fact that you've just been at it for so long because that's like a lot of the thing I sort of talk to people about like our agency people look at our agency and like collectively across our agency there's like something like three million followers or something people are like oh my God like you guys are oh how do we do that it's like oh it just took us six years to do this and a team there's 35 of us you know like it's not don't go for the flashh in the pan like try build real

proper systems do the work be consistent and this sort of stuff pays off it's it's not luck you built the opportunity exactly yes so I'm really to hear that yeah thank you I say that all the time to authors that I talk to I'm like if you want to really do this you have to be in it for the long haul and you have to be willing to like build those pillars to find the success because if you just go into it hoping like your first poem goes viral or share or your first book sells millions of copies I just think you're going to end up being disappointed when you could have gone into it with like a little bit of a different mindset absolutely

absolutely one last thing I'm going to ask have you taken some of your old videos and stuff and tried out the new trials feature on Instagram are you using that as part of your strategy have you have you no I haven't even used that no I reckon you should so we've been doing this right so it's been a month I think since Charles has come out it's such an interesting tool that Instagram's la so we've taken all our old videos that went viral in the past but they're like two three years old or whatever they might be run them on Trials what trials does is it pushes it not to your followers just to other people it tries to find new audiences based on who

your current audience is it goes out and tries to find more of these people what's good about it is that your current audience will never know that you've done it until you release them and you don't ever have to release them from trials they can just sit in trials and so what I would say is like you your Instagram kind of knows now who likes your stuff take all these old videos don't just repost them you can do that too but you can also post them as trials and just see where it goes and see who it finds we've been doing it recently and it's like we've had I think in the last three weeks we've done I don't know maybe 20 videos over videos

we would have had 20 million views across them wow I never thought of that yeah yeah right knew they were good but now we got a Bigg audience and we and and the platform knows who we're trying to Target now that's so interesting yeah I'll have toy that try it try I've never I've seen it there but I've never like participated in it it's amazing like actually amazing it's such a smart thing that Instagram did because it allows you to like post lots to your your page without your followers getting annoyed that you're posting so much to your page sure that makes sense and then you only release the ones that do well again and then right but otherwise they can send trials people still

know it's you they can still follow you like we've gting followers from it and viewership so anyway if there's a tip I can give you yeah thanks for the tip I'll definitely go back and try it make the most of the the wave right because these waves as you know you might another one for two years yes for sure you know yes so anyway hey I I I need to wrap up but I am so happy that I got to speak to you I think it's amazing of what you've done I really love thank you the series that youve done but more than anything actually I really love just how solid your efforts been over time I think it's so commendable because not not many

people do that especially authors yeah so well done thank you so much I appreciate you having me on no thank you so much