Why I’m starting a podcast in 2026

Mel Torrefranca: 00:00

The summer before my freshman year, I said, you know what? Maybe I should try being a YouTuber. I had never really made videos with the goal of reaching an audience. And that was the very first time I started thinking about making videos for people who weren’t just my friends and family. And thus began my YouTube channel.

Mel Torrefranca: 00:20

In the early days of my channel, I was working on a lot of videos related to Leaving Wishville because, you know, you hear this general advice when you’re a writer that you need to start promoting your work. That was mainly what my channel was about. Just writing vlogs, talking about how Leaving Wishville was going. Stuff that I honestly thought would be a little bit boring. I tried to make it interesting with some little coffee montages and stuff, but people did genuinely seem to like them.

Mel Torrefranca: 00:48

I had a small, but very dedicated following. And even today Leaving Wishville is my most successful book. And it doesn’t seem that way. If you look at the amount of posts online about these different books, Leaving Wishville doesn’t have that much attention. It is my most sold book.

Mel Torrefranca: 01:06

And then came my Haruki Murakami video. The thing about that video is it was still kind of in line with the other stuff I was posting. It was less vloggy. I suppose it was a bit more of a high production concept for me, but it was still related to writing at the end of the day. So I followed Haruki Murakami’s schedule for a week, and that was the whole concept of the video.

Mel Torrefranca: 01:31

I would wake up, I think it was at 4AM, and then I would write for a bit and then I would run a 10K, and I basically just replicated his schedule and was documenting that experience. That video initially didn’t get that much traction. I think it was sitting at 800 views for quite a while. I woke up one morning and it was like those scenes that they have in movies where you wake up and your phone’s like buzzing and then people are like messaging you like, “Oh my God, did you know that your video…” Like, it was literally one of those moments for me.

Mel Torrefranca: 02:02

I think it’s close to 2,000,000 now, or it’s, it might even be at 2,000,000. I’m not sure. It has over a million views. It was the first time that my small audience grew into something that felt more substantial to me. And my initial reaction to that was, “Oh my God, how do I replicate this?”

Mel Torrefranca: 02:19

And then we led into a new era of my YouTube channel, which deviated from I’m a, you know, I’m a teen writer. Haha, relatable. Here’s some fun vlogs. To me making more viral worthy content, I would call it. Where, you know, I treat every viewer as though they had never seen anything from me before. That was around the time that I moved to Thailand. My friend and I, shout out to Joy, by the way, we were a little crazy.

Mel Torrefranca: 02:48

Joy and I, we graduated a year early actually together as part of our master plan. And we moved to Thailand together with kind of no idea what we were doing, but it was a blast. Me being in the mindset of “I’m going to make content about whatever is going to get views, whatever is going to be interesting to people who don’t know who I am and don’t care about my books…” That led me to start making videos about the most natural thing that was going on in my life, which was moving to Thailand. So I had some videos talking about the move and I made another video about what it’s like to start a new life at 18, in a new country.

Mel Torrefranca: 03:24

Then very quickly I realized, what am I going to do now? Because I didn’t know how much more content I could wring out of this topic that was very popular and getting a lot of traction, at least with a pretty consistent amount of people. I think I was getting around 10,000 views a video and I had to start to seek out new experiences. I did a week of dual sword fighting training, which was one of the best and most challenging experiences of my life. And I’m still very proud of that video.

Mel Torrefranca: 03:58

Creating content for YouTube definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone, but I had to go out of my way to get them. It wasn’t like YouTube was for me when I was a teenager. When I was kind of just sharing updates about what was going on, I’d put my camera up, talk a little bit. I didn’t have to create this grand adventure out of nothing or seek out these new experiences. I started to get some comments around this period of time where people were saying, you know, I really love your videos, Mel, but I miss your old stuff.

Mel Torrefranca: 04:26

Or, when are you going to talk about this again? And I kind of ignored those, honestly. I mean, I noticed them and I acknowledged them and I thought about it. And then I was like, you know what? I don’t want to make those videos anymore.

Mel Torrefranca: 04:41

Like this stuff is working. I was making money from YouTube. These videos were pulling bigger numbers. And I believed that if I could kind of trick people into getting interested in my books through these videos, if I could just plant little seeds of, “oh, by the way, I’m doing this because I’m working on a book and it’s a good experience to inform so and so character in my book” that maybe some people would buy. And yes, it does work.

Mel Torrefranca: 05:06

Occasionally people will, you know, watch a video about me training in Muay Thai for a month and say, Hey, that’s cool. I didn’t know she was doing this for a book. Like I’ll go buy the book, but it’s pretty rare. I’ll be honest with you. It’s pretty rare.

Mel Torrefranca: 05:18

That’s the big secret. Did it convert as well as my small success videos from when I was, you know, 16 years old? No. What I was doing on YouTube when I was 16 had such a bigger and better impact on the success of my books than stuff that was pulling big numbers. And that’s really a huge pill to swallow.

Mel Torrefranca: 05:52

In fact, I kind of didn’t swallow that pill mainly because of the fact that YouTube was making me money. At this point, Joy had gone back to The States. I stayed in Thailand longer. I ended up living there for four years. And during those four years, I would go to this coworking space, which is basically just a workspace plus coffee shop where everyone is working on their own independent projects.

Mel Torrefranca: 06:17

There were writers, there were YouTubers, there were coders, all sorts of really cool people. It was also kind of like high school in a weird way because there were cliques. The popular kids, the kind of jocks who would work and then go work out. There were the yoga groups. I mean, there were so many different types of people and they all had their little social circles.

Mel Torrefranca: 06:41

One guy in the popular group, he would do this guessing game where if he hadn’t really talked to someone before, he would try to guess what their career was based on the equipment on their desk, based on how much they type, just their general vibe. It came to be my day when he was going to guess my career. He guessed a bunch of stuff. They were all wrong. I eventually said, oh, I’m a YouTuber.

Mel Torrefranca: 07:08

And he said, really? Because you are typing on that keyboard like crazy. I thought for sure you were a writer or a coder or something that required a lot of typing. What are you typing on YouTube? And that really tripped me up.

Mel Torrefranca: 07:24

I mean, I was at this coworking space every day and most of the time I wasn’t working on YouTube. I was writing books because that is my number one passion. At the end of the day, creating videos has always been secondary to me. And yet this guy asked me what my career was. And I said, YouTuber.

Mel Torrefranca: 07:42

My identity had shifted. Not too long after that, I had one of my first big voiceover gigs. So even in high school, I was doing a little voice acting on the side for freelance stuff to make some pocket change. And I kind of just kept that going over the years. I mean, I like it well enough.

Mel Torrefranca: 08:00

It’s fun. And it’s always nice to collaborate on projects in a smaller role like that. And I had this big voiceover gig. Honestly, it was kind of a mess. I think it was, it was a Toyota ad, but it was an agency that had been hired to create this ad.

Mel Torrefranca: 08:17

I think the agency was based in Germany, but the ad was going to be played in some Asian country. I don’t even know. And for some reason they hired me, but they wanted a British child voice. One of the most scarring experiences. There were like 10 people on the Zoom call and they were all giving me notes and it was stressful.

Mel Torrefranca: 08:40

That was a pretty well paying gig. And after that, I just remember kind of reflecting on the fact that I haven’t really made much money from my books. I grew something. I had this YouTube channel, but I grew it wrong. I started in the right direction.

Mel Torrefranca: 08:56

I was making content that was attracting the right people. Those people were buying my books. And then I started chasing stuff that would get bigger views, more clout, more opportunities for sponsorships. And I was making more money through YouTube. And in, as a result, was making less money from my books.

Mel Torrefranca: 09:15

And I won’t go into too much of my channel after that, because it was just a lot of experimenting and spiraling and confusion over what to do next. And long story short, after a lot of experimenting, a lot of thought, some things working, some things not. I am now here announcing that I’m starting a podcast. Now I’m still going to be posting on YouTube. These podcast episodes will be up in video form, but I’m also going to be sharing this podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, so that people can just listen if they want to do that instead.

Mel Torrefranca: 09:49

One of the reasons why I think this podcast is such a great next step is because of feedback that I received from readers at Lost Island Press. So I’ve had an online bookstore for the website, I think for over a year now. It means a lot to me when people buy our books directly on the website. They’re going out of their way to shop with us. I mean, it’s a new website that they haven’t purchased anything on before.

Mel Torrefranca: 10:15

It’s different from Amazon where it’s convenient. They’re used to it. They are not just the ordinary reader, who’s like, “Oh, that sounds like a good book.” They’re like invested, right? So I decided to reach out to some of those people because I could really trust their feedback. And I asked them, did you come from my YouTube channel? What types of videos would you like to see? Turns out a lot of them didn’t come from my YouTube channel.

Mel Torrefranca: 10:37

They just read one of our books and read the about the publisher part at the end of the book and then looked us up. So that was, you know, proof that YouTube wasn’t really as important as I thought. And they also told me that they just want to know the story of Lost Island Press. They want to know what I’m working on at the publishing house. They want to hear about our projects.

Mel Torrefranca: 10:59

They want to hear some writing advice and tips. And I realized, you know, that was a lot of the stuff I was doing in my early years on YouTube was just sharing my journey. I’ve decided to go back to my roots and I think a podcast is a perfect medium for that, mainly because it gets me into that conversational vibe. Don’t have my laptop up here with my very detailed script. I’ve got a quick little notepad on my desk.

Mel Torrefranca: 11:27

It’s a lot more casual. I’m just sharing stories. I’m talking about my experiences and everything that goes into building Lost Island Press from the ground up. And I am titling this podcast Off the Press. This is a huge new project for me.

Mel Torrefranca: 11:44

I’m taking it seriously. I’m going to have a lot of content. This stuff isn’t as viral bait as following a big author’s routine. I mean, it’s just going to be more chill. I’ll be able to share with you guys what you actually want to know.

Mel Torrefranca: 11:59

Answer your questions about writing, publishing, the financial aspects of it as well. Give my advice for people who are going down a similar path. And it’s also going to be less stressful for me because I’m not going to have to go out of my way to chase these new experiences that burn weeks of my time in filming and editing. And instead I get to focus on propelling the books at Lost Island Press, getting new authors signed, publishing new amazing stories. So that’s really my goal with Off the Press is to just make the right content for the right people, talk about things that you actually want to hear, and free up a lot of time so that I can focus on making Lost Island Press the best it can be and reporting back to you on how it’s going.

Mel Torrefranca: 12:43

Before I close off, I just want to say a quick word of thanks to Bookvault, our founding sponsor of Off the Press. All the books sold on lostislandpress.com are printed and shipped by the Book Vault team. Also, if you liked this episode, I encourage you to join my private newsletter where I share even more behind the scenes updates of what I’m working on at Lost Island Press. The link is in the description or show notes. And as a thank you for signing up, you’ll get a free book.

Mel Torrefranca: 13:20

Lost Island Press. Get lost.