The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers: Recent Episodes
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Information, inspiration and interviews on writing, self-publishing, book marketing and making a living with your writing.
If you need help with writing your book, or you want to learn how to navigate the new world of publishing and book marketing, then join Joanna Penn and her guests every Monday. Also covers the business of being a writer and how to make money with your books.
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How can you write a memoir that is emotionally honest and revealing enough for readers to care, and cope with the inevitable fear of judgment that evokes? How can you write about real places and people in memoir?
How can we focus on the joy of the writing process itself, rather than the outcome? How can we embrace the positive side of being jealous of the success of other writers? How can we deepen our writing with metaphor and sense of place?
What's the difference between an audio book and an audio drama? What are the steps to write a script and produce it? Joanne Phillips gives her tips.
In the intro, Amazon KDP's new AI content guidelines; AI at the heart of what Amazon does [The Verge]; Writing the Shadow Kickstarter; 1000 Libraries Kickstarter;
Today's show is sponsored byDraft2Digital, where you can get free ebook formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Get your free Author Marketing Guide atdraft2digital.com/penn
Joanne Phillips is the author of 14 books, including romantic comedy, literary fiction, mysteries, and self-help books. She's also the scriptwriter, showrunner, and executive producer for GravyTree Media, specializing in audio drama, with Everyone's Happy out now.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- What an audio drama is compared to an audiobook or podcast
- The process of writing and adapting an audio drama
- How to cast voice actors
- Details on creating the raw audio, editing, and adding sound effects
- Time and cost commitment of creating an audio drama
- Incorporating AI tools into the audio production
- Marketing tips for fiction audio
You can find Joanne at GravyTreeMedia.com
Transcript of Interview with Joanne PhillipsJoanna: Joanne Phillips is the author of 14 books, including romantic comedy, literary fiction, mysteries, and self-help books. She's also the scriptwriter, showrunner, and executive producer for GravyTree Media, specializing in audio drama, with Everyone's Happy out now. So welcome to the show, Jo.
Joanne: Hi, Jo. It's great to be here.
Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you about this topic because it's so interesting. But first up—
Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing.Joanne: So I've always written and made up stories, like most writers, really. I can't remember a time when I wasn't writing and creating narratives. I think it's how I make sense of the world. It's how I escaped, that sounds terrible?!
Joanna: No, not at all.
Joanne: It's how I kept myself company, I think, as a child.
So, then my first novel took about six years to finish. I got a bit quicker as time went on. Then I began publishing chapters of it on a blog back in, I think, about 2011. Then some people seemed to like it, which was nice.
Early in 2012, after I got my first Kindle and read about self-publishing in the writers magazines that I used to buy, I decided to take the plunge. That first book was called Can't Live Without, that was a rom com. It did quite well back then because that was when you could get a massive boost after going free for just a few days. Remember those days? So I just carried on self-publishing, and that's how I got into it.
Joanna: You talk there about the writing side and a bit about self-publishing, but you must have been interested in audio as well. So how did that come about? And did you do that for a job or something?
Joanne: No, no, I just really, really had an interest in it. I love audio drama. I always listened to it, but I never considered that I could write it.
I think I did, back in my 30s, I did have a stab at writing a script for a competition. It didn't get anywhere, and it wasn't very good. So it wasn't really on my radar at the time, it was only very recently that I considered that I might be able to have a go at that. I just thought of myself more as a writer of books for a long, long time.
Joanna: Well, that's encouraging. Let's just be clear about some definitions.
What is audio drama versus an audiobook or a podcast?Joanne: It's interesting, isn't it?
To me, an audiobook is when a book is just read out loud by an actor or a voiceover artist or the author, and that's it. Sometimes there are effects or music added, but you can tell it's a book.
So say—and I've been thinking about this, about how to describe it, because it is a distinction that's quite difficult to make—so say it might sound like this, “Jane walked off the elevator and saw Martin's dead body on the floor.” I mean, it would sound better than that if somebody professional was actually doing it, but you can tell that it's a book.
In an audio drama or fiction podcast—because they're the same thing, it's just different terms for the same thing—is where there are actors. I mean, sometimes only one actor, to be fair, or two, or sometimes, like in mine, I think I ended up with nine and some more walk on parts, which was far too many to start off with, but we'll come to that.
And there's a script, and you can hear the action unfolding with dialogue and sound effects. So for example, in my example I just made there with Jane and Martin, you'd hear the elevator stop, and the doors opening, and Jane's footsteps. You might hear her cry out and maybe say something like, “Oh, no, Martin's been shot!” I mean, not that, but something like that.
Joanna: She might just say, “Oh, no, Martin!” and then we might hear footsteps running over something.
Joanne: You've got it completely.
It's more similar to TV and film, but without the pictures, except you see the pictures in your head because your brain creates them from what you're hearing. Because I always say, I mean, I've got this little kind of motto now, which is, the pictures in your head are better than TV.
I think that with really, really good audio drama because you've got the actors who are bringing the script to life, and you've got the sound effects, and you create it in your mind. Whereas with TV and film, somebody else is making that for you to sit passively and look at, and it's somebody else's idea of what it looks like, whereas our imaginations are amazing.
So with audio drama, and like I say, I've been a fan of audio drama for years, and I've listened to some really great audio drama from BBC and other producers like QCode and Gimlet in the early days. Oh, it's amazing. It's such an amazing immersive experience.
Whereas audiobooks, although they are brilliant, there's a remove. So there's you, There's the story, and there's somebody reading the story to you. So it's more like being read to, whereas with audio drama, you're there experiencing it. I think that's the main difference for me.
Joanna: Absolutely. It's funny, I have listened to some audio dramas, and not that many fiction audiobooks. I mainly listen to nonfiction audiobooks.
It's funny with the audio dramas, sometimes they have really famous actors. It's like I almost don't want them to be famous when I hear their voice because I associate that voice with what they played on TV. So I almost like it when the actors are more unknown, or they're more of a voice actor than a visual actor. You know what I mean? It kind of puts something in your head otherwise.
Joanne: Yeah. I know exactly what you mean. I think it can really help a production, you know, get some ears on it if you have a famous actor.
But yeah, it's funny, isn't it, because you will picture that that character in your head. If you recognize the voice, you immediately picture that person or the last character that you saw them play in a TV program, but if it's an unknown, you won't do that.
Joanna: It's really interesting. So then tell us—
Why did you decide to get into audio drama? And tell us about Everyone's Happy.Joanne: Well, okay, Everyone's Happy. It's a dystopian sci-fi, and it is set about 50 years into the future, I would say.
We're controlled by the happiness program, which is a government-mandated system where all our negative emotions are eliminated. The protagonist is a teenager called Parker, and she lives in a dome-covered city and is struggling with her emotions, which of course, she shouldn't be.
She has a set of these old-school tapes that her grandma left her, and it sets her off on a journey to discover the truth.
So there are themes of climate change, the nanny state, and really, whether we should all be medicated into happiness, and what the consequences of that would be. So that's Everyone's Happy in a nutshell, really.
And the reason I got into it, like I was saying a bit earlier, that I love audio drama, I've been listening to it for over 30 years.
I had the idea for Everyone's Happy a while ago, I struggled with mental health myself, I have bipolar disorder, and I was just really fascinated with this idea that we could be medicated into everything being fine and what that might be like. You know, as a writer, yourself, you know how you kind of like to take these ideas to the limit and think where it would go.
At first, I thought this would be a YA book, but I don't write YA. I know I write in lots of different genres, but I didn't feel that I could do this. Then how I got into audio drama, it was kind of a longer process. My partner that I'm with, we've been together a couple of years now, he works in TV. He's a sound recordist. It didn't become immediately obvious that he'd be useful—that sounds so mercenary.
Joanna: I respect that!
Joanne: But yeah, we obviously both have an interest in sound and audio. I began to think, oh, maybe podcasting, something like that could help. First, I thought he could help me do a podcast, but I didn't immediately think of fiction.
Then serendipitously, I saw an advert last year for a course on writing fiction podcasts with Helen Cross, who was written lots for Radio 4. So I took the course, it was brilliant. I can't recommend it enough. She runs them throughout the year.
By the time I started it in September last year, I had already decided that I was going to produce this audio drama myself because I'm just indie through and through.
So I just started it. I just threw myself into it headfirst. I don't know where I've quite got the energy from, but I just did it, as you do.
Joanna: So did you write it as a book first and then adapt it, or did you write this as audio? Because of course, like you said, you have to put in sound effects and you write it in a different format, more like a script or a screenplay, rather than a book format.
How did you go about writing it and adapting it?Joanne: I didn't write it as a book first. I have thought about maybe writing it as a book one day, but it would be a big thing to do. I've never written a sci-fi book.
This just was a script straight off. I'll kind of break down the process, and I made lots and lots of mistakes in this process, which was is great because that means I've learned from them and other people can, too.
First off, you need the script. Like I said, I did this course, and Helen was a brilliant teacher. One thing you need to understand, I think, if you're going to jump into writing an audio drama as a writer, is that writing a script for audio is very different than writing for TV or writing a novel.
You really have to think about dialogue, and about how people speak, and making the sound very natural. I thought, yeah, I'm good at that, and I read my work out loud when I edit it, so it's easy, but hearing actors read your lines is completely different.
Joanna: I mean, it's kind of cringy, isn't it?
Joanne: Well, it is if it's not good dialogue, but it's great if it is good dialogue.
One thing, I'm going off the topic here now, but one thing I did do—because I directed it too, and I've never directed anything before, obviously—but I found that when we went into the recording studio, one thing you really have to make sure is that each character has their own voice, and that's not just an accent.
You've got to make sure that when you're writing it, they speak in their voice and not yours, as the writer. So you've got to think about the language that that character uses and not make them all sound the same.
So one thing I did when we started on the recording day, was I said to each individual actor, I said, read it, and if you feel that your character wouldn't say it exactly like that, if you feel that they would say it slightly differently, if you want to change your word here and there, as long as it doesn't affect the story, then then go with that. Or say to me, I don't think that Ben, say, or grandma would do it like this.
In fact, the actor who played grandma, she did come to me and say, in some of the scenes, you've got her saying, my dear, in some of them you've got her just saying dear, in some of the scenes you've got a saying this, and is it okay, if I just do it like this?
And I was like, yeah, I don't really care. Just do it however you want, as long as it sounds right. I really liked that. It felt like a collaboration. So there were other times too when I felt that the actors really felt quite free to interpret it how they wanted to. The good thing is, is that that made it sound realistic. They didn't have to be glued to what was written on the page, they could just say it.
Joanna: That's super useful.
How did you find actors?Joanne: Yeah, well, that's the next thing. After you've done the script, you need to cast your actors. So I found mine on Backstage. I did a casting call. So I researched how to do a casting call just by looking at loads and loads of other ones. I also found some from a local acting school because I thought it'd be nice to have a mix of professional actors and amateur actors.
The lead actor that I have who plays Parker, I didn't open cast her, I just hunted her down. I chose her. I listened to loads and loads of people on the websites that had different voice actors and then approached her and asked her if she'd do it because I needed somebody who I felt was really, really right for that role. But everyone else auditioned for the roles via casting calls.
The mix of voices is so important. I needed Parker's family to sound like they fitted together. When you have people of a similar age, as well, the listener has to be able to distinguish them from each other by ear. It's a difficult thing.
You have to have them sounding right together and sounding like they fit, but at the same time when you're listening to audio drama, they can't all sound the same. Most of the characters are in the north of England, but I also needed them to sound different. So that was a tricky one.
I also wanted to be really inclusive and diverse, I made a point of this in the casting call, but it's also hard to show this in audio drama because it's not a visual thing.
Joanna: Also, age is really interesting because I didn't really understand how much age is in a voice.
But even someone in their early 20s versus early 30s can sound different, let alone someone in their early 20s versus in their 70s, for example. So there's so many variables with voices.
I did want to ask on this in terms of paying actors because, I mean, you mentioned there was a lead character, so that character would get the most audio time, but some people might only play a bit part. So what can people expect in terms of paying? I mean, you don't have to tell us exactly if you don't want to, but is it by the minute? Or—
How are actors paid for this work?Joanne: So we paid everybody. I was very, very upfront about the fact that we're a small indie startup.
The lead character did get paid the most because she did the most work. I negotiated that with her upfront. Then everyone else had a flat fee, which was based upon how much time they basically had.
I kind of worked it out like how much time they would have to do in terms of work so how much recording time. It wasn't kind of a wildly difference. So say, there was like the lead character, and then say, maybe five secondary characters, and then some smaller characters.
So, I mean, there weren't huge sums, but because I was open about it to start off with, the people who put themselves forward, I assumed that they were happy with those fees.
Then the other thing that I offered, which I think if you're gonna go into this as a small production company who can't offer big fees to actors, what I added on was the IMDb listing. So that obviously helps because that goes towards their credits, and if you're an actor who wants to get a spotlight listing, then having that credit really helps.
Joanna: Interesting. So you can list on IMDb if you do an audio drama? Because you can't if you just have a podcast, right?
Joanne: I don't know, actually. But I know that for an audio drama, you can now, and it's a lot of work. So I committed to doing that for everybody.
Also, I will make sure that I gave them all a really good quality voice reel that they could use. So I'm going to do everything I can to make it a success if I possibly can, which in the future will hopefully help them get extra work.
We feel like a family now. It's really, really nice. There was a virtual launch party, and it was just so nice to see everyone again. Yeah, it's just really, really lovely. They've been very, very supportive. I feel that they're proud. I feel that they're proud to be part of it. So that's a really nice thing.
Joanna: It is a brilliant creative project, but let's carry on with the difficulties.
So you've got these actors, you've got a script, and then you did mention a studio. Now I didn't expect you to be bringing people into a studio, I thought everyone would just record their bits away from each other and send them in.
Explain the process of actually creating the raw audio.Joanne: Yeah, so we were really, really lucky to have a studio fairly locally. It was Orchard Studios, it's just up the road.
We did actually two days there, two separate days, because we couldn't get all of the actors in on the same day who live fairly locally, which was just as well actually, because we did one full day and we did about 50 scenes in that day, and then we did another 50 scenes the second day, and it was exhausting for everyone. So yeah, that was amazing.
As I said, my partner is a sound recordist, so he was there to set everything up. He's got all the equipment and all the professional microphones. It was really, really lovely. I think the actors got a real vibe out of being able to record in the same space because they can read the lines, but they can bounce off each other in that scene.
Although from an editing point of view, I have to say, and me and Mick, that's my partner, we discussed this at length beforehand, he had this imaginary thing where we would have everyone in a separate room and record them. And I was like, well, that's never going to happen, is it, because we don't have that kind of studio setup.
The recordings that we did remotely on Riverside have made it easier for me to edit the dialogue. Whereas the recordings that we did everyone in the same room have been harder to record the dialogue because you do get microphone bleed, kind of.
What we had to do is we had to get everyone to leave a bit of a gap in between them speaking, because obviously they can react, but in a sense, they can't because if they ran over each other's words, I can't get my scissors in there to cut.
Joanna: Which is why recording it remotely, as you say, is much easier.
Again, there are pros and cons with every creative decision, which I think is really useful.
Okay, so now we've got some raw audio, and again, you mentioned your partner is very good at sound, so let's assume it's quite good quality audio. What happens next? Because this is—
The bit that I think is kind of crazy is the editing for this.Joanne: Yeah, I had a massive learning curve and a little break down. No, mainly just learning curve.
So I then edited the dialogue, basically, in Audacity, which is free. I had to learn how to do that. Yeah, I mean, we had, oh my goodness—so picture this in your head. So for some of the scenes, I've got recordings that happened on one day, mixed in with recordings that happened on another day because some of the actors couldn't be there at on the same day.
Then I've also got recordings that were done remotely because the main character, Parker, there's kind of like a voiceover because there's thoughts in her head that we recorded separately. Then there's also a couple of walk on roles that I had dialed in from other people. So there's a lot of different things to kind of pull together.
So what I did was I sat down, and I have all these things—oh, and of course, there's pickups because there would be things that didn't go right on that first read through that I'd have to get them to do again.
So I pull all this into Audacity, and then I have my script on a different screen, and then basically just start to listen to it, and then cut it, and work through the script, bring it all together.
What I found fascinating though, Jo, was that, as a writer, I actually did a little bit of editing of the dialogue in the script, in that sense of I moved stuff around and cut bits out, you know, even at that stage.
I thought it would all be done by then, I was relieved. I thought, right, the script is finished, I can't do a thing to it now. It's done, it's recorded, it's finished. No more messing about with this flipping script.
But in fact, even at that point, I was thinking, oh, now I wonder if she doesn't say that then, but says that a bit further on? Or oh, no, I don't think that works there, that's a bit long, that scene there, I'm gonna cut that. So I was still editing this even at this point. So I think even though a lot of people might say, well, the writer's job is done here, send this dialogue off to be edited by someone else, I think it's quite good for the writer to learn how to do this part because I did a lot there at that stage.
Joanna: Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, when I record my own audiobooks, I often republish another version afterwards, even if it's just small bits and bobs, because I always find something when it's the actual making of the product that I need to fix.
But just on that, because I can visualize it because I do sound obviously. So you have a big screen, and you've got all these different sound wav files on the screen, and you're kind of dragging them around and cutting them. What about the sound effects? Because they have to go in there too. So tell us—
Where do you get your sound effects from?Because I imagine they're royalty-free. And then how are you bringing those in as well?
Joanne: Well, I don't do that part. So I originally thought that I was going to do that, but then I realized that that would be a no. I thought if I did that, it just wouldn't really sound as good. I think eventually maybe I would like to be able to learn that, but I found a fantastic sound designer called Zoran Nikolayevich, pronounce his name right I hope, and he's in Serbia.
So what I do is as soon as I've cut the dialog, I then save each person as a separate file, and then I send it to him.
I do is a really, really detailed production script at that point where I go through it, and at each place where it needs sound, I will say, I want this here, these people walking, or this bit.
I will make really, really detailed notes about how I want it to sound, and then I send it to him, and then he will put sound effects in each scene and send it back. Then I might say, I want that a little bit later or that's not quite right, can you do a little bit more like this? Then he'll send it back. So we work together on that until it's done.
Joanna: Where did you find him?
Joanne: On Fiverr.
Joanna: On Fiverr, fantastic.
Joanne: I know, I'm so lucky.
Joanna: I mean—
You just searched for a sound designer?Joanne: Oh, it was hard, Jo. Oh my goodness, there's not many on there. Yes, and interestingly, he mainly was doing just like editing people's podcasts, mainly normal podcasts, what I call topic-based podcasts.
Joanna: Like this one with no sound effects.
Joanne: Exactly, but he has a background in Serbian radio drama. So by going through, I would say maybe 30 different profiles, I eventually found him by looking at all the other stuff that he has done in the past.
Joanna: Okay, wow. Okay, so you send everything off to him, he does his thing, it comes back to you. What next?
Joanne: Then I record the little bit that goes at the beginning. Although, actually, the intro comes after the first scene because I really, really want to mimic TV series. I want to mimic that the Netflix series feel where you have a little intro scene, then the opening credits come in, then it carries onto the rest. So I sent him the opening credits, the finishing credits, he packages it all up, puts the transitions in.
Now, I was absolutely fascinated by what a difference that makes. So the transitions are the little bits in between the scenes. It could just be a bit of music, it could just be like a sound, just like the sound of air or something. He does this magic with it that makes it sound amazing. Then he sends it back.
Then of course, then it's the uploading it. I'm using Acast, I ended up using Acast mainly because it's free, and I really, really need to keep my costs down. That's it, I think.
Joanna: So in terms of the time for this project, because as we record this, the first couple of episodes—
Joanne: Yeah, the first two are out.
Joanna: By the time this goes out, then maybe—how many episodes are there?
Joanne: Eight. I think by the time this goes out, there will be four. I think we'll be halfway through.
Joanna: Right. So that's Everyone's Happy, which you should be able to find on any podcast app.
Joanne: Available everywhere you get your podcasts.
Joanna: Yeah, wherever you're listening to this.
How much time did this project take you?Joanne: All my time!
Joanna: But was it like three years? Was it—
Joanne: No, no, it's been a year. I would say probably maybe six months of early developing, where you're kind of thinking about it, making little notes while you're doing everything else, then pretty much full on.
It's my day job that earns me money, I do indexing, I work as the back of the book indexer freelancer. The rest of my time, which is pretty much all of my time for the last year, has been focused on this.
Joanna: Right, and you mentioned you had to keep your costs down.
So this is another question because, I mean, I love this as a creative project. It's something that I've tiptoed towards several times and backed away from. I have adapted a number of my books into screenplays.
In terms of budgets, doing an audio drama is much more expensive than doing an indie audiobook, but it is equally not as expensive as trying to do a TV show or a film. In a way it's much more accessible.
Like you said, the sound effects, you can achieve the sound effects very cheaply for what takes a lot more to develop on visually. So I think it's really interesting. You've mentioned the time— Can you give us any indication of cost?
Or is it that you bootstrapped, and it was mainly the time cost involved?
Joanne: I can give you an indication of costs because I did a Kickstarter, and I think I set the goal for the Kickstarter at about £1600.
The reason for that target was because I thought that's what I could achieve because obviously on Kickstarter, it's an all or nothing deal. I barely made it, to be honest, because I haven't really got that much reach.
My friends and family really, really helped. I would probably say it's cost three times that. That's included, obviously, actors fees, sound design costs. That's probably included paying for the website, all the other little extra things.
Joanna: So let's say between $8000 – $10,000 US dollars, without including your time or your partner's time.
Joanne: Oh, yeah. Flipping heck, if you added in Mick's cost, which he charges. He gave his time for free.
Well, I mean, you don't need to have a professional TV sound recordist though at the studio. You could have could have done it all on Riverside or something else.
Joanna: Well, let's talk about that because the big question that I think comes up for people now is, maybe we could use some human actors and also some AI voices or AI effects.
Obviously, I narrate my audiobooks, you're supporting actors, we want there to be a vibrant community of human actors. But also, let's talk about AI.
What are your thoughts on using AI tools and voices for at least part of the production process?Joanne: Well, I did use some AI. I mean, there's some in-show artwork that I'll be using for promotion, some posters that are seen inside the dome.
So I thought it would be cool to have those posters made real, and I used DALL-E to design the original face for that, so I've made the posters on that.
The voice actually that announces the episodes at the beginning is AI-generated from play.ht, I think it is. There's another AI voiced character in a later episode, I think it's a guard, I think that comes in maybe episode six. I just couldn't find anybody to do the walk-on part. It's only like two lines, and the poor actors, I'd already got them to voice so many extra walk-on parts.
That's the other thing, another little bit of advice —
Don't write too many extra walk-on parts because they're the ones that you'll find yourself not being able to get anyone to voice. So when I went into Descript, and I just used their text-to-voice to just get that voice, and it's fine. I think it works okay. I've used Chat-GPT to help with descriptions and marketing ideas.
I'm hoping to delve a bit deeper into how AI can help with the production process when I've got a bit more time. Because I'm really, really frazzled and tired, and doing this alone is exhausting. So, obviously, I want, as I've demonstrated, I've given jobs to nine actors, and I think I had three extras as well.
Joanna: And your sound guy.
Joanne: Yes, of course. And yeah, obviously, I'm going to I'm going to carry on doing that. I have lots of other ones in development. But I do also think that there's a place for AI tools to help where they're appropriate.
Joanna: Also, I feel that if you bring down the cost of production in general, then there will be more content. That should also bring more work to humans who are doing acting jobs.
It's unlikely people are gonna do like a 100% AI production, but it may be as you said, there might be some main characters that are human, and then other voices that are AI, or effects. So that's how we want people to think about it.
Also, there's some great tools, some mastering tools. I mean, you've got your partner who does the sound and that designer, but like I've used Hindenburg for my audiobooks, which is fantastic mastering.
And I use Auphonic for my podcast audio mastering. So these are both AI mastering tools. I used to pay a human to master my audio, and now it's just kind of a one-click. For people listening, I'll put links to all of these tools in the show notes because I think people will find that interesting.
So I want to come back on a couple of things. First of all, so you're using Acast. It's out there now, it is a podcast, it is free. People can go listen to that.
What the hell is your business model?
Joanne: Oh, my goodness, people have been asking me this all year now. Yeah, what is the business model?
Well, there isn't any direct money making off it, obviously, at the moment. I have got a Patreon page for trickle-in money, as I like to call it, if there are fans one day, and that has got a lot of cool extra stuff on there. I have a long-term goal, everybody has a long term goal.
My long-term goal is to keep creating content, to keep creating great IP, and one day sell something to Netflix or Amazon Prime and have it made into a TV show. There, I've said it.
Joanna: That's fantastic. So you're seeing it as almost like a billboard for your creative work.
Joanne: Yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah.
Meanwhile, just focus on making great audio dramas that people love listening to. The thing is, I love doing this. I really, really have enjoyed it.
I mean, it's funny, really, isn't it, because it's been stressful, and it's been on the edge of your seat terrifying sometimes. There was one moment when I sent the script to the actors and I was nearly sick. I really was. It was awful, actually.
Joanna: Why was that? Was that fear of them hating it?
Joanne: Yes, it was. I felt so exposed. It was the first time I'd sent it to anyone, first time I'd shown it to anyone, my first ever script.
And I thought, what if it's absolutely rubbish? That was awful.
Then obviously, when I uploaded the first episode and that went out, I was also so, but that wasn't quite so bad. But —
Those are the moments when you feel alive, aren't they? You have to push yourself to do this stuff. I love this, and I really am quite proud of what I've made.
Joanna: That's great. So I think, yeah, understanding that this is a labor of love at the moment, but you have these bigger plans.
Also, I mean, I do think that turning that into a book, then that is a way to use that IP in other ways. I mean, I presume you can license things.
So this would be another question, which is, if someone listening is like, oh my goodness, that sounds like way too much work, but I would like to license my book or write a script and license a script without doing the production—
Do you have any tips if people just want to license to other audio drama places?
Joanne: I don't know, really. I mean, I'm not licensing it. I'm not 100% sure how that works. I do see platforms like Fable and Folly, and Rusty Quill, and even Realm absorbing other podcasts, and that's interesting. I know that they only take on podcasts that already have a good listenership. So I don't really know how they work.
My production company that I set up, GravyTrain media, I will be looking to buy other IP, as in buy scripts and produce them. So that is something that I'm going to be interested in doing next year.
Joanna: That is interesting. So let's also just talk a bit about marketing because, like you said, it's an audio podcast, and having podcast fiction on all the platforms, I mean, it has to be discovered in some way.
Hopefully, some people will go over and have a listen from this show. But—
How are you marketing it?Joanne: Yeah, I don't know that I am yet. I've been so focused on making the audio drama and getting it out that I'm only just now thinking seriously about marketing.
I've always had the idea that as soon as all eight episodes are out, I'll switch into a different gear. I was thinking about finding a TikToker who would like to talk about it, because as I said, the main character is a teenager. So I was thinking, you know, trying to think of the target market.
Although I don't really know that audio drama is a thing for teenagers, that teenagers have discovered yet. So that might not be the target audience. I really, really need to give some thought to that. And maybe I'll try and look at some paid advertising.
I'll tell you what I do think though, Jo, I keep coming back to this question. I am an avid audio drama listener, so how do I find new ones to listen to? I think the answer is I just look at my Spotify app or Apple podcasts, and I just see what comes up. So how do I get mine on those ‘also listen to' lists?
Joanna: Do you search on those apps?
Joanne: Sometimes. I don't know, I don't really think I do. I'm very passive, and that's not good. I run out regularly because I listen all the time. I mean, I don't know how I find time to listen because I'm always working.
So that makes it sound like I'm not working, but I work from home, I always have one earpod in, and then when that one runs out, I put the other one in and charge of that one up. So I just kind of like run out of things to listen to. Then I get my app, and I look and scroll down, and it tends to come up with ‘because you enjoyed this one.'
Joanna: Well, then, okay, I'm gonna give you a tip around this, and everyone listening, which is —
If you have an audio product, market it with audio. So I mean, TikTok is a video platform. But audio, essentially what you're doing here, hopefully some people are gonna go from here into listening to that audio drama.
But also, there are tons and tons of fiction podcasts, and many of them allow either for free, or you can pay, to have an audio bumper or an ad, but essentially a little clip, like a 90-second teaser, almost.
So if you have fiction audio, then be on fiction audio shows, essentially.
The other thing you could do, for example, is write a spin-off short story and get that in audio because there's tons and tons of fiction audio podcasts that have short stories.
Then use your main character or one of the spin off characters, and then at the end be like your call to action is you can listen to the whole story here. So there are loads of things you could do with fiction audio, in particular, that will advertise this.
Those are just some things to think about. The thing is, the only way those algorithms work is, the same as Amazon, same as anything, they're not going to serve up product that is not already moving. So you have to get it moving somehow. So that would be some of my recommendations anyway.
Joanne: Thank you. That's really great.
Joanna: So just circling back on the Kickstarter, you did say that you didn't have many people, but you did make it. I was a backer.
Joanne: Thank you so much.
Joanna: I know how big a deal it is. So any other lessons from Kickstarter? Since I know the audio only is very hard to do. Most people do audio as a sort of second tier against a print book at the moment.
Any lessons from the Kickstarter?Joanne: I don't know whether I got my page looking exactly right. I think I would spend a little bit more time. I mean, yours was amazing, yours looked really good. I think you structured it just right. Yours got picked up as a—do they call it featured or?
Joanna: Books we love. But that was an algorithm thing based on the velocity of funding.
Joanne: Was it? Okay. So I think I would just pay a little bit more attention perhaps next time, if I do it again, to other ones that people have done and make sure that I break down within the body of the description what the tiers are.
I kind of relied on the fact that people would go and look at the tiers, and didn't maybe break them down as obviously in the actual body text. But that's a small thing, really.
I'm happy with the rewards that I offered. Although, it has been difficult to fulfill the early access one, which was a bit of a rookie error in that I didn't realize that it was going to take me so long to produce it.
I imagined that I would have kind of all eight episodes up and running before I was ready to launch so that I could give everybody those as early access. And as it's happened, everyone's just going to get early access to each episode a couple of days before.
So there's just kind of little things to maybe think through. I think just when you start a Kickstarter, the very nature of it is that it's before you've done it. So you can't really know. It's an unknown.
Joanna: Will you use Kickstarter again for the next one?Because you mentioned that you do have plans for more.
Joanne: Yeah. Oh, yeah, there's definitely going to be a season two and a season three. I definitely know how season three is going to end, but haven't thought beyond that yet.
I would do crowdfunding again. I'm not sure if I would use Kickstarter because I found the all or nothing so stressful, and I've seen other platforms now. But then again, you have to push yourself. I don't know. I don't know.
Joanna: Well, one of the benefits once you start using a platform is the people who funded your last one, you can essentially tell them you've got a new one.
So it's kind of built-in marketing for your next Kickstarter. So as we record this, I've just put my page up for my next one, Writing the Shadow, and I will shortly be telling everyone who funded the last one about it and hopefully bringing some people over.
I kind of see it as a separate ecosystem that we're almost building for the future for that. So I think that's quite interesting.
So just one more question. You've obviously got these books in all these different genres, but now you've got the audio dramas.
How do you see your plans ahead? Will you split your time between writing books and doing audio drama?Joanne: Yeah, that's a really, really good question. I actually joked to my boyfriend the other day that I might write a novel next as a rest, which shows how incredibly crazy it's all been.
I don't know, I haven't really missed writing books. I think it's been about a year since I wrote, maybe a year and a half, since I wrote a normal novel. But I will, though, because I'm interested to see how writing the script and editing the dialogue and all of that that I've talked about might have changed my writing. So I am quite keen to get back to it.
I don't know how I'm going to split my time. I'll have to figure it out because right now, I seem to be struggling to split my time between working, sleeping, and being a functioning person. I need to reread your book on productivity.
Joanna: I was gonna say The Healthy Writer would be the one.
Joanne: The Healthy Writer is the one, isn't it? That's the one I need right now. Yeah, definitely. Both of those. I think I'll just listen to them. I'm not sure I have time to sit down and read
Joanna: It's a good point. No, that's brilliant. And of course, you mentioned your mental health earlier on in the process. I would urge you, and obviously everyone listening, that's really important, and you can't spin off into difficult times with mental health because of a creative project. I mean, yet you will sometimes, but let's try not to do that.
Joanne: Yeah, yeah, I know. It's interesting, actually, as a person who has great bursts of creativity, followed by perhaps lows that follow that. Yeah, I should say that you must look after yourself. I should look after myself more.
Joanna: You have to be gentle with yourself there.
I think it's understanding these seasons of creativity as well. Like you said, as we record this, it's just going out, you're kind of finishing the production. Then maybe just take a rest. I mean, what I like about these things is that people will be listening to this interview in years to come. Maybe you'll have done some marketing by then, or maybe not, who knows.
Joanne: I will. I will do marketing. I'm gonna take up your ideas. They are great.
Joanna: I do love evergreen audio!
I mean, people find this show and they listen to years back in the backlist. So I think that's sort of encouraging you to think longer-term about the IP. I think that's great. So—
Where can people find you and everything you do online?Joanne: Yeah, well, I think the best place to go to is to GravyTreeMedia.com because there's everything about the podcast there. If you just look for Everyone's Happy wherever you get your podcasts, then you'll find it.
Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Jo. That was great.
Joanne: Thanks for having me.
The post Writing And Producing Audio Drama With Joanne Phillips first appeared on The Creative Penn.
How can you expand the possibilities of book cover images with AI? What are some of the controversies and how can authors and designers work together with AI tools to create original design? Book cover designer Damon Freeman discusses his views.
There are lots of links in the show notes below to specific resources, but of course, the AI space moves fast, so always check the Terms and Conditions of any site you want to investigate further. I also mention the free webinar on AI Ads for Authors with Mark Dawson and James Blatch.
Today's show is sponsored by my wonderful patrons who fund my brain so I have time to think about and discuss these futurist topics impacting authors. If you support the show, you also get the extra monthly patron-only Q&A audio — and my tutorial on how I use Midjourney. You can support the show atwww.patreon.com/thecreativepenn
Damon Freeman is the founder and creative director of Damonza.com, creating custom book cover design and interior formatting for authors.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- Using AI tools as part of the creative process
- How Midjourney works
- Discussion on copyright
- How AI tools are enabling the creation of unique cover images that have been almost impossible before
- If AI will be able to do everything, how will creatives make a living?
- Tips for working with your cover designer and incorporating AI
- Damon has some great articles on AI images in book covers here, and he also mentions James at GoOnWrite who has an article for self-published authors around AI and images here.
You can find Damon at Damonza.com.
Transcript of Interview with Damon Freeman Joanna: Damon Freeman is the founder and creative director of Damonza.com, creating custom book cover design and interior formatting for authors. So welcome to the show, Damon.
Damon: Thank you, Joanna. Thanks for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to chat. I'm really looking forward to it.
Joanna: Oh, me too. So we're going to talk specifically about AI images as part of the design process today. But first up—
Tell us a bit more about you, your design background, and how you've been working with authors for over a decade. Damon: I trained as a graphic designer, and I was working in normal graphic design businesses.
I started my own company as a general kind of graphic designer many, many years ago. Over time—you know, it was going pretty well—but in around 2007, with the global financial crisis and all of those kinds of things, kind of everything just started falling apart, and it wasn't going well. Out of desperation, I started looking at other potential opportunities.
I found a website, which maybe you've heard of or some of the authors, have called 99designs.com. I started pitching different kinds of design work on there to try and earn a bit of extra income. One of the kinds of work projects I was pitching on was obviously book covers, and I started getting quite a good rate on the covers.
So as you may know, they only pay the designers that they select they work for. So you might be doing graphic design work, and you put in all the effort, and then your cover doesn't get picked, and that's it. So I found I was getting quite a good win rate for book covers, so I just started doing a few more of them. Eventually, it just sort of took over.
I stopped my normal day job, and I just started focusing exclusively on book covers. That was in about 2010 or so. So in 2011, I started the website, Damonza.com. It was just me doing book covers, and I was fortunate in that because of the way I'd done things before, I had quite an extensive portfolio of book covers. So I put them up on a website, and for a while the website existed, but nothing happened. Just slowly, slowly, I started picking up work and picking up authors and picking up clients.
Eventually it grew quite a lot that I had to start looking at how I could service all of these clients. So I brought in somebody that used to work for me before as a graphic designer, and she started helping with the book covers, and it slowly grew from there. Now I oversee a team of designers, and we've got project managers, and the designers we work with are all over the world, but have been working with me, many of them, for seven or eight years now. We're a happy team, work well together.
I still oversee all the work that goes out. Occasionally I'll do some of the designs myself. If it's a tricky one, then I might choose to do it myself. But generally, the designers that I've got working for me are amazing, often producing work that is much better than what I could do.
Joanna: That's brilliant. Do you have any idea how many book covers would you have done since you started Damonza?
Damon: Well over 10,000.
Joanna: Right. That's what I thought because I know you've been in the space for a long time, we've been connected for a long time, although we've never spoken before today, so this is quite cool.
Clearly, you're really experienced, the team is experienced, and yet some would say like, why are you so interested in AI? I mean, you've got loads of skills.
Why did you want to explore AI when it has been—well, still is—pretty contentious in the art community and the author community? Damon: Well, initially, what happened was that one of the designers on the team, she had noticed that on some of the stock image websites, we use Shutterstock, and she had noticed on Shutterstock that there were new kinds of images cropping up.
They all kind of had, I guess, they had a distinctive look to them, but they were really interesting. They were kind of unusual. They weren't normal. They weren't like a photograph, and they didn't really look like a 3D rendering. They were kind of something in between.
She just told me, she'd found Midjourney, and she said, “Look at these images. This is the software. This is the program that's being used to create these images.” I looked into it and she wanted to know now, can she use Midjourney to create images. So not really knowing how any of it worked, right, seeing that it was AI, but not really knowing how it worked.
I checked the terms and conditions, and I saw, alright, fine. If you pay, you get a commercial license, and you can use these images. So I said sure, we'll get the license and she can use them. Really, in the beginning, it was just backgrounds and landscapes and those kinds of things. I guess earlier on people and those kinds of images, they didn't look very good. So it was kind of just small bits and pieces we started using, and that was it.
So at the time it wasn't contentious, right? It was just another place to get images that we could license.
Joanna: But obviously, it went on from there because things have moved really fast. I mean, I also got on Midjourney. So we're recording this August 2023, so important to timestamp these AI episodes.
But when I got on Midjourney about a year ago, as you said, there was the joke around fingers and photos having weird stuff, and where we are now, it's like a completely different world in terms of how far it's come.
Tell us what are the different ways that you're using AI tools now as part of the creative process. How have things changed, I guess, over the last year? How have things moved on?
Damon: Yeah. So I mean, I guess what happened was that we still weren't using it that much, right, for quite a long time. It was really just the one designer, and you couldn't really tell where she was using it. It wasn't sort of obvious, it was always maybe a background or something like that. You couldn't really tell.
What was happening was that it kind of became clear that it was getting better at what it was doing, and she was starting to question me more. Can she use it for this? Can she use it for that? And I started to kind of look into it more for a while, and they looked pretty good.
It was quite interesting, it was probably in the same week or two that I said, yeah, alright, we can start using this a bit more, that I received two emails in the same week from two authors who said, “Are you using AI images in our covers? And if you are, I don't want you to.”
That's how it happened. So we were barely using any AI images, and I hadn't really thought about it. It had been in our terms and conditions from the beginning that we might use these AI images from Midjourney, but we hadn't made it explicit that we were because we weren't really.
So when that happened, I looked into it much more.
That's when I also started doing a lot more research into generative AI and really trying to form my own opinions. — on kind of, should we use it, what is it really, those kinds of things. I mean, that's where I found a lot of your podcast, some of your articles. I found a great article, which I've referenced myself quite often, from James from GoOnWrite.com, really, really great. I thought it clarified things very, very well for me.
So that was the point where we immediately sent out something to all our authors, all the clients we work with, saying, “Look, we might be using this. We think we should use it. We like it. But if you don't want to use it, we won't.”
It was actually at that point that I then briefed in all the designers saying, look, this is how Midjourney works, and if it is suitable for a cover that you're working on, then, you know, go for it.
These are the restrictions: Don't mention a real person's name, whether it's an author or a named style. So we don't want to copy anyone or anything like that. But this could be a way to source images that are just not available as a stock photo.
The problem has always been that there are limited stock photos. Even though there are a lot of them, they are limited.
When you're working on book covers, and certainly in particular genres, they start to get—I mean, we try not to reuse stock photos—but you start to see the same stock photos on many different covers, by different designers and different authors. So I kind of saw it as a way to differentiate a book cover.
We started to come up with designs that we never could have come up with before just because those stock images didn't exist. So we started to use it more and more, and we made it much more explicit on the website. So we had the order form where you can opt out of the images. We put why we think you shouldn't opt out of potentially using AI imagery, just because it exists doesn't mean you have to use it, and we've kind of just gone from there.
Joanna: Lots of things to unpack from that.
The first thing I want to address is you said there are limited stock photos, particularly in some genres. I love that you mentioned this because it's like these tools create things that don't exist.
So I have a cover, which is a female combat photographer, and there were no pictures of female combat photographers, like it's just a male-dominated field. I mean, there are some, but they're not represented.
Of course, people of color, people with disabilities, there's a whole load of different people, let alone settings, that are not represented. So what are some of the things that you find amazing? I guess—
What are some of the brilliant things that you've been able to do because of AI art? Damon: Well, we used to have an additional fee on our design work that we really tried to discourage authors from going with because it was very, very difficult, and it normally didn't work out that well.
It was if they wanted to create a very specific character, to use your example, let's say a female combat photographer, which on its own, we could possibly make work, but when you had this character, and she had to be in a specific position, maybe she's lying on the ground taking this photo, and she's wearing particular clothing, and she has a certain type of camera, or whatever it might be, those kinds of things to create using stock photos are impossible.
So we tried to discourage authors from, I guess, being that specific on what they wanted on their covers, and we did that by adding a character creation fee.
But really, what that meant was that we would sort of try Dr. Frankenstein style to cobble together a person out of different images. It'd have different one woman's arm, another woman's head, another woman's body, another person lying down.
Joanna: It's very time-consuming.
Damon: It's very, very time-consuming, very, very difficult, and often, it doesn't really work.
Stock photos are limited, the light is coming from one direction on one photo and it might be coming from a different direction on another photo, or the camera angle is a little bit too high or too low on one of these images. So it was very, very difficult.
Now, with generative AI, suddenly that's not a problem anymore.
We can just generate an image that might not be exactly right, but instead of cobbling together five or six different images, maybe we can generate one or two, put them together, and incorporate a stock photo of a particular kind of camera, whatever it might be. That becomes much easier, which means we can do more with the cover, right, those kinds of things, and we want to charge an extra fee for it. So that's a good example.
Another one is when certain kinds of covers, let's say, action-thriller covers, where we must have designed 200 covers of a man in a suit running down the road.
Joanna: Oh, that old one?!
Damon: Yeah, we still get many, many authors, that's what they want, that's what they like. That has got a lot of excellent genre signals for potential readers. I get it. It's great. We love it.
But they're not that many stock photos of that kind of image. Maybe there's 20, and even if there are 20, that's not enough.
With generative AI, we can generate 10,000 different versions of that that all look different, and that are all original and have never been seen before. Joanna: Let's explain because some people listening may not have used Midjourney or any of these tools, or may not have seen a tutorial. Obviously, this is a visual tool, so it's quite hard to explain.
But you did mention that you learned how Midjourney works, and you became happy with it from a creator perspective and an IP perspective.
You also mentioned the restrictions, not using a person's name, an artist name, or a named style. Like Disney, like I always say this to people too, don't use other people's names, don't use IP brands, just use your words.
Can you explain how Midjourney works to people who've never seen it and how you can generate 10,000 images just like that? Damon: Yeah, well, I'll first tell you the reason why, when I kind of investigated, why I personally do not think there are any ethical or copyright concerns with the way that it's trained.
It's quite specific—well, maybe it's not—but I think it's quite specific to what we do with book covers. When an author is briefing us on what they want, they give us examples of book covers they like. They might send us a Pinterest board or email us images of covers and movie posters, or they'll send us a picture of Matthew McConaughey and they'll say the main character looks like him, whatever it might be.
Now, those are copyrighted images, or they haven't purchased those images to send to us, or whatever it might be, but they're effectively training us, the designers, on what they want so that we can create a cover that's inspired by those, but not copying those.
When I looked into Midjourney, that's pretty much what it's doing, albeit with millions of images, but it's effectively the same thing. If I could look at millions of images at the same time, and I feel like I've looked at millions of book covers, and learned from them on how to create book covers, it kind of fit in with the same thing that we were doing. That is why I've never had an issue with it.
In terms of the way that Midjourney would work is that, as an example, let's say it's a man running through the streets.
So we might go into Midjourney or Discord, and we might say, “Imagine a cinematic film still of a man in a suit running down the street backlit in the streets of New York,” whatever it might be, and we'll get four options of that that have never been seen before.
We might choose this one and make a few changes to it, we might make variations of that, or anything like that. So then we'll get the output that we want.
Then we'll have a man running down the streets, and we'll put him on our cover, but there'll be other elements to the novel that we will use stock photos for still, just because it's more convenient, really, to find some kinds of images, an image of a street scene, for example, then to create an image of a street scene that takes a few seconds or a minute or two, but might not be right, and we have to keep doing until we get the right one. Sometimes it's just easier to search for a stock photo.
We're combining the generative AI images, the images created with Midjourney, with stock photos, and then incorporating text and whatever effects we might have, until ultimately we get a cover that we're happy to present to the author. Joanna: Yes, and like you mentioned, I think the ‘film still' or ‘movie still,' I use that for quite a lot of my prompts that I'm doing for ads, for example, because they're really thriller movie still, two people running with the Vatican in the background.
Although I've tried things like the Vatican or St. Peter's dome blowing up, and it doesn't like that! So there are definitely some restrictions.
As you say, it's a collaborative process, in that this is what I also do with my designer, Jane Dixon Smith. I used to send her, like you said, pictures of other people's covers, and say, these are the things that I think resonate with the book.
[Here's an example from my horror novella, Catacomb. I made the 2 images in Midjourney, and my designer Jane used them in the final cover on the right.]
But now I useMidjourney, and I generate maybe 50 images of all different kinds, backgrounds, because I love using Midjourney! I find it so much fun. I find it like a really creative, fun process.
Then I say, this is my mood board, the mood board I created. Then what she's doing is, as you said, using elements of those images, using some other things from stock, and also doing fonts. So it feels to me like a really collaborative process.
Can you just comment on the copyright of the output of the finished book cover compared to the copyright of a stock photo? Damon: Right, so in the US, which is really where most of the authors are that we work with, you cannot copyright a book cover that's been created with a stock photo because the photographer owns the copyright of those stock photos.
Those stock photos are being used by multiple people who are paying the license to use those images, so you can't copyright a cover that's been made with it. It doesn't matter how much you've changed them, you've used that other person's stock photos, in the US, and you can't copyright it.
The same way, if you are using licensed fonts, those fonts belong to somebody else. You didn't create those fonts, you can't copyright the cover with those fonts and those images.
With generative AI images, it's a little bit more of a gray area because, I believe, if you've made enough changes to it, then perhaps you can.
But we have never copyrighted any one of the 10,000 covers that we've designed, and we've never had to provide anything for any of our authors for them to do it. It's just never come up.
At the end of the day, the readers are not buying the book cover. They're buying the book. The cover is just an ad for the book. It's just an advertisement for the book. So in my mind, it's never been necessary to copyright a book cover. The product isn't the cover, the product is the book, and the book is what can be, and should be, copyrighted.
Joanna: Well, I think there's the license to use as a book cover is what we should say the authors have.
So when you, as a designer, when you license a stock image from Shutterstock, you have a commercial license to use that in a book cover, for example. So then you grant the author the right to use that as part of the payment for work. That's basically how it has been working.
Then with Midjourney, as you said, if you pay for Midjourney, like $10 a month, whatever it is, $20 a month, you get the commercial license. [Check the Midjourney Terms and Conditions.]
Again, I think of it in the same way, which is, I don't—even know some people say you do—I don't think you have a copyright on that image, but just as you don't have a copyright on the image from Shutterstock. You then combine those images into a composite, and that becomes the image that you use.
I think the difficulty for authors is that we don't have legal training, and you're not a lawyer either, right? Yeah, so these are difficult terms.
I feel like with the AI side, the word ‘copyright' has become quite inflamed, and a lot of people don't understand what lies behind it.
So I'm just going to point people to a couple of the interviews I've done before, including one with an intellectual property lawyer.
So we are not lawyers, we're not commenting officially on this.
It's also really different by country because here in the UK, we do have a copyright law that says works generated by machines, basically, are the copyright of the person who created them.
[ “In the case of a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work which is computer-generated, the author shall be taken to be the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken. — UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 ]
So have you looked into this in New Zealand?
Damon: No, I haven't. At the end of the day, we look at the terms and conditions of the stock photo sites we use andMidjourney.
Midjourney retains the right to use the images you create themselves. So it's kind of difficult for the creator to have a copyright on it because they're just taking the right to use the images. So although they could do it, people are generating millions and millions and millions of images a day, I don't see that as an issue.
For us, and for anybody who has a paid Pro license, they really should be generating the images on a private server where nobody else can see them and no one else can use them. So the copyright itself, I mean, it's kind of, in a sense, it's worthless because what is anybody going to do with it.
Once you can start creating any image you want, why would you need to copy somebody else's? Joanna: That's how I think about it.
I've been very open about my use of AI for images, and I've done blog posts about it and all of that. And why would you copy my image, why would you take my image, when you can generate your own, basically? I mean, that's what's so crazy.
I think that we have to separate the two things.
The training of the models is something that will be fought in various jurisdictions, but what I think will happen is there will be some kind of payout eventually to somebody, but we'll all carry on, and then each jurisdiction has these different rules, but as long as we are open and honest about it.
That's why I really wanted to talk to you is because you put these blog posts out on AI usage in book covers, you're being very open, because to me, we're proud of this. This is great fun, it's really creative, it's super creative.
It's expanding the potential of what we can do, so why would we hide it? Damon: Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, yeah, I put it out there because it was becoming a thing, right? It was certainly becoming something that people were talking about, and it was something that affected us. I needed to just be open and honest with how we are going to be approaching this. I knew at the time, putting them out, that lots of people may disagree.
I kind of thought at the time, and still now, that people are still forming their opinions. They're not sure kind of which way to go. I wanted to put it out there that —
Cover designers are still artists, and as artists, we agree with it. We think it's a great thing. This allows us to do much, much more. I think it's a great thing. I'm very positive about it and I hope it carries on.
Joanna: Yes, and it's only going to get better.
Well, on that you've mentioned Midjourney. You also mentioned that Shutterstock has its own AI image category, and many of the stock sites are doing this now.
What's so funny about Getty's legal case against Stable Diffusion—I think it is, I'll put it in the show notes—but at the same time they're doing that, they're rolling out their own AI image, obviously based on their own images.
Adobe Photoshop has also said that they will support any legal cases that come up around any AI images generated by its own engine, and they have Firefly. So I mean, what other developments do you see?
I think within six months to a year, there won't be a design tool that doesn't have AI in it. I mean—
How can a designer avoid this if it's going to be in every single tool?
Damon: Yeah, I mean, look, they can't. They can't, but I do think there are different ways that it's being used which are really interesting.
I mean, so there is, I guess the normal Midjourney style generative AI that is part of the new Photoshop beta, but we never use it. It exists, but it's not anywhere near as good, for now, as Midjourney, and we don't use it.
However, for things like filling in the gaps, right, or a really good example is if you need to turn a normal eBook cover into an audiobook cover, Adobe Photoshop new generative AI tool is amazing because it can just seamlessly make your background, whatever it is, fill out the space that is needed for the audio book cover, and things like that.
This is a form of generative AI, it's not as flashy and interesting, I guess, as the really creative outputs that you might get, but it's amazing.
We've actually for quite a long time, and it is a form of AI which we also don't really think about, We use AI to just remove the backgrounds from images that we might use and want to put into a book cover.
Whereas in the past, it took 10 or 15 minutes of painstakingly cutting out the image from the background. Now AI can do it in 10 seconds, and it's done, and you can use that image.
AI has already been a part of these design tools for a while. And yeah, absolutely, it's going to just become so much a part of it that you don't even know that it's AI anymore.
Joanna: Yes, and it feels like people are only calling things AI when they haven't gone into the mainstream.
So for example, Canva, many authors have been using for many years now. Canva is amazing. It has so many options. And that thing you just said, and obviously it uses a lot of AI and it now has a generative AI tool, but it also has a one click remove background.
So I don't know why people don't understand that this stuff is AI-powered in some way, but that seems to be the point.
It almost feels like in a year's time, it'll just be “book design,” and you just use the tools. People haven't been questioning your use of Photoshop in the past or whatever, have they? Or any of these things. So I don't know, how about you? What do you think?
Where will we be in a year's time? I mean, I guess the other thing to say is that the speed at which Midjourney and other tools are getting better—
How do you see things being different in a year's time? Damon: You know, I wish I could predict that. It's so unpredictable because it is moving so quickly.
I think maybe in a year's time, but I hope not, maybe in a year’s time, you might use generative AI to just stick your book synopsis into some sort of AI and it will just create the best possible book cover in a few seconds, and it's done, right. There's your book.
This was your novel input, here's your output, this is the book cover. That could happen. In fact, that probably will happen, but it might not be in a year's time. It might be in three or four years’ time, but that probably is what will happen in one way or another, where you just put in the least amount of input and you get the best output.
Joanna: I mean, I would say a year's time for sure. I mean, sorry to tell you this, but at the moment, okay, so you can feed in a whole book to something like Claude, Claude 100K, and output a book's description. (Through www.Poe.com]
You can also then say to it, “Please create me 15 prompts for book cover images that I could use here,” and then you can use those. I mean, some of these models now can generate really good prompts for Midjourney, and then you can go use that. There's still a question of font, and this is something that is the missing piece I feel.
Regardless, and this is the important point, regardless, because this is the same for authors, can you generate a book with one click? You almost pretty much can at this point. I mean, with nested stuff or Code Interpreter and all this kind of thing, there are ways to generate books very, very quickly. So this is the big question.
If — when — AI can do all of this stuff, are we worried about our living as creators? Or are you worried about your business as a cover designer? And should authors be worried? Or how are you thinking about this future?
Damon: Look, we can only work with where we are now, right? So we're adapting as we're going. I mean, we can't predict what's going to be in the future.
You're quite right in that it's, for now, for right now, that those AI engines, you probably could find a way to add text to the cover in a kind of way, but it none of it works very well. The amount of time and effort that it would take to create a really good and effective book cover using only AI inputs, I mean, it might be possible, but it's not very easy.
For now, it's still easier to just get a book cover designer to put your book cover together for you. Even now, you, anybody, right, for however long, anybody could learn Photoshop. Any author could learn how to use Photoshop, could learn how to design book covers, and could create their own book cover.
That has happened, that will continue to happen, but that doesn't mean that that's what every author is going to do. And I guess it's the same now.
It might become much, much easier to design a book cover, or to write a book, whatever it might be. However, for many, many people, that's not what they're interested in.
An author very often wants to write the book, writes a great book, but doesn't really want to go into the nitty-gritty of figuring out how to put together the best cover for the book.
I guess it's the same as how it's possible now to put together your whole interior house design, but there are still interior designers around that are really good at what they do and get lots of business. I kind of feel it'll be the same this.
It will be easier to design your own book cover, it will be easier to put together a book, but there will still be a place for professional cover designers, and there will still be a difference between the people that are writing a book using AI and the people that are actually writing a book with the help of AI, but really putting in their time and effort to write the book.
Just as, you know —
We're graphic designers, and although we're using AI to help us put together a cover design, we're still not using AI to just put together the whole book cover. For now, that's a little bit of a way away.
Joanna: And even if you did, this is how I see it, is even if you were using AI tools for a whole load more stuff, like generate a new custom font for every single cover, which I'm sure will be possible at some point, it may be possible already, I don't know, but it's not about that.
It's like you said, it's about being the human involved in the process. There's this kind of meme going around, I'm sure you've seen it, is that “your job will not be taken by AI, your job will be taken by a human using AI,” because the tools enable us to do far more than what we can do alone.
That's how I see it —
It's like this incredible booster of our own creativity. I love Midjourney, and I'm probably on Midjourney far more than the average author. I mean, one of my little guilty pleasures in the morning is I'll pop on X, I use X for a lot of these images, AI stuff, and I'll find someone's prompt, like a new prompt that I've never seen before with a really cool image.
And I'll go put it in Midjourney and see what it is, and I just have a little reroll of it and just enjoy the process of creating something new. Do you know what I mean?
Damon: Yeah, I mean, for us that's work. For me, I'm never on Midjourney unless I have to be Midjourney. I'm never on Midjourney unless we can't quite get something right with stock photos, or it would be just better if we could create a particular kind of image using Midjourney. That's the only time I'm on Midjourney, which I mean, that shows you.
Joanna: But in terms of creativity, it's the human, and it's still our imagination. And also you as a designer, it's your taste. I did want to mention taste because I can generate loads of images, but I still send them to Jane, and Jane makes better covers because I don't have the — not just taste — but the experience. Like you said, you've looked at so many thousands of covers, tens of thousands of covers, and you know, the market.
Again, it's the same with authors. Like we know our readers, we know about what we want to achieve with our creative vision.
I just want people listening to feel that it's okay, even if the tool can do it all, we're not worried. Before we finish, because we're almost out of time, if an author wants to work with their designer, so a lot of authors already have other designers.
I mean, obviously, if they come to you, they can choose not to use AI, you have that option, or they can use that as part of the process.
But if an author has a designer, and that designer is like, ah, I don't know—
What are some ways that an author might encourage their designer to play with this? Like, should it just be to come over and read your blog posts?!
Damon: Maybe, maybe. I mean, I kind of feel not every cover needs AI.
So if you trust your designer, and your designer is able to produce a really effective book cover for you. I mean, what if the cover only is a text-only cover, or it would work best with a hand illustration, or the perfect photo already exists, then AI isn't required, right? It might just not be the best option. As I see it —
AI is just another tool that we can use to create book covers that we can use as part of our toolbox. So I feel like, if you trust your cover designer, and if they don't need to use AI, and you still really happy with the result, then that's fine, right?
But if you're not happy with the result, or if you're looking at other sort of options, and if they're open to it, I would absolutely recommend that they look at your podcast, and they look at James from Go On Write, and sure, look at the blog posts that I've put out, but whatever it might be, just to kind of get different viewpoints and different opinions.
I think often, like on X, everyone's kind of in their own echo chambers, and you might find that you just happen to be in the echo chamber with AI being terrible and it's going to take over everything.
And maybe it's time to just step out of the echo chamber and look at other viewpoints and opinions — and see that there are other things out there. It's like I often think that sometimes you might see something on Twitter—sorry, on X—where there's been some sort of outcry over how AI was used on a particular cover. And you might see the sort of feedback loop of, “How could that publisher have done that? Or that author have done that? That's terrible.”
At the end of the day, 99% of readers don't care where the image came from that's on that cover.
It's really like the last time you bought something, and maybe you saw an advertisement for it and you bought something, did you think, on this ad that I'm looking at now, where did they source the image for this ad?
Because the end of the day, the book cover is just an ad for the book. So I think don't worry too much. Look at other viewpoints, look at other opinions, really consider the bigger picture of what the job is of the cover.
If the author really wants the designer to look into that, you know, give the designer their own opinion about what they think of it, and let the designer form their own opinion. If they still don't want to do that, then either trust them to come up with something great that doesn't require AI, or look for another designer.
Joanna: Absolutely.
Where can people find you and everything you do online? Damon: The easiest way is just the website, Damonza.com. That's where everything is happening.
Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Damon. That was great.
Damon: Thanks, Joanna. Appreciate it. It was great to chat to you.
The post Using AI Images In Your Book Cover Design Process With Damon Freeman first appeared on The Creative Penn.
How might thinking differently help you create clarity in our noisy world? How can you produce a high-quality print book — and successfully fund it on Kickstarter? Holger Nils Pohl discusses these things and more.
In the intro, Copyright in an age of AI [Self Publishing Advice, Monica Leonelle, Ars Technica, The Verge, The Atlantic; Insider; Kathryn Goldman; US Government Copyright Office AI Submission]; Writing the Shadow Kickstarter; Lesbians Who Write; Pretty Links;
Today's show is sponsored by Ingram Spark, which I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 40,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries, and more.It's your content—do more with itthroughIngramSpark.com.
Holger Nils Pohl is a visual strategist, professional speaker, trainer, and coach. He's also the author of multiple books, from business to children's books, as well as the co-creator of an award-winning business board game.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- Breaking out of the traditional publishing mindset
- The creative process — distilling ideas into visual images versus words
- Neurodiversity as a creative
- Living authentically and breaking out of ‘masking'
- Challenges of creating a high-quality book
- Return on investment for nonfiction authors on Kickstarter
- Six tips for a successful Kickstarter
- How creatives can create clarity and choose the right direction
You can find Holger at HolgerNilsPohl.com. You can also go to HolgerNilsPohl.com/penn, and you will find examples of the visuals we discussed, as well as the process of how you can find clarity to cut through the noise in the author world, as much as the rest of your life.
Sign up for the Autism children's book here.
Transcript of Interview with Holger Nils PohlJoanna: Holger Nils Pohl is a visual strategist, professional speaker, trainer, and coach. He's also the author of multiple books, from business to children's books, as well as the co-creator of an award-winning business board game. So welcome to the show, Holger.
Holger: Thank you for having me, Jo.
Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you. Before we get into it—
Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing.Holger: So while we're talking here in 2023, I'm 43 years old. I was a late reader of books, I would say. So until the age of 14, I'd only read comics and magazines, but nothing that was kind of like a book.
I didn't like German or English in school, and I'm coming from Germany, by the way, you might already know from my accent.
I found my passion for reading crime and science fiction, as well as fantasy, a bit later. At the age of 14/15, I started to read, and then I never stopped.
I'm kind of a whale reader, I read very fast and very much. I always have trouble to find more new books that I can read because somehow I read faster than the market can provide me with books sometimes. I love the pen and pen roleplay and, as well, developed new worlds and systems with my friends to play that, but I never had the urge to write anything but always to create. I love to create.
I got distracted from all of this by university because I had to find something that is worthwhile spending your working life.
Everybody told me you need to be an engineer or do something proper, and not be just creative. By now we know that this was stupid advice, but back then I didn't know.
I tried architecture, I broke up from university after one and a half years, I became a carpenter then, I did an apprenticeship as a carpenter, and afterwards became a designer. And luckily enough, that was a good fit for me. In 2009, I started my self-employment right after the university.
I work with visuals. I teach, as well, people to draw. But at some point, people were begging me to write about my knowledge about business, as well as how we can communicate better with visual tools, and everything I have done in the past.
People asked me for so long, basically for three or four years, that I started writing, and then I never get out of that again.
I started writing, and I couldn't stop, and somehow the nonfiction opened up an avenue for my fiction writing.
So I wanted to write fiction, and now I'm all over the place with writing, while still being a consultant and coach full time.
Joanna: Well, can I also ask you about the self-publishing side? Because you and I have been connected now for many years, and I feel like, I don't even know, do you know how many years?
Holger: I mean, I've been following you for, I guess, seven years now. So yeah, quite a while.
Joanna: So seven years, so maybe 2016-ish. And it's interesting because, of course, Germany I feel is even more traditional around literature, and proper books, and proper publishing.
How did you break out of that mindset that traditional publishing is the only valid path in Germany, in particular?Or is that just part of you being more of a designer?
Because it's a strong feeling in Germany, I think, not to be self-published. Although I know some Germans listening will be like, “No, no, we're a very big indie community.” But it has been a slower trend, I think.
Holger: Oh, yeah, definitely. And I would still say, it's predominantly traditional publishing here in Germany.
I actually had my first book traditionally published, and it was a huge failure in terms of sales. I still get my check, which is basically 12 euros per year or something. So we sell like 10 to 20 books per year with our publisher. That was from year one, so it was not that we had a high peak or something.
I was super disappointed with that first book, especially with the process with the traditional publisher, and that was basically the thing that pushed me into self-publishing, because I said, I can do that better.
If I could decide the things myself that the publisher decided for me, in that case, this could have been a better book. That drove me to self-publishing and actually to your podcast in the first place.
I think the first book I published in 2015, and I listened to you and thought I can do that myself. But saying that, it's still super difficult to do that in Germany, especially. It's way easier for me to publish in the US, the UK, everywhere around the world, not in the German-speaking countries.
Joanna: Yes, and I've heard that from other German indie authors. These things emerge at different times in different countries. People listening, we've got listeners from over 220 countries, and I think it's probably still much easier in Germany than it is in a lot of countries in the world. We appreciate you listeners in other places!
Let's get back to your books and what you do because you are, as you mentioned, you're a designer, you're a creator, and you use a lot of visual images. It's very hard because this is an audio medium, but tell us—
How does your creative process work differently in terms of distilling ideas into visual images versus words?Because they're just so different.
Holger: Yeah, that's true.
Let me just back up for a second and give a short definition of what we say when we mean visuals. And again, that is difficult to explain with only audio, but I think we will manage. So I don't mean paintings or photographs or generated pictures when I say visuals.
NOTE: Speedboat for character development shown below is by Holger Nils Pohl, used with permission. You can download this and other useful images at http://holgernilspohl.com/penn
So when I say visuals, I mainly mean drawings that are quickly done, more like icons, I would say. If you imagine a picture in your head right now, it could be like a hand drawn icon, I would say, and perhaps emojis to express ideas and concepts. I think that's what I say when I say visuals,
Joanna: On your style, I almost think of it as professional cartooning.
Holger: Okay. If you see like that, we can say that too. Okay, I agree with that.
Joanna: Is that okay? It's got more of that vibe, as you say, it's kind of hand drawn, but it looks more professional than I would hand draw something.
Holger: Okay, I can agree on that. A lot of people when they see my work, they think that I think as well in visuals, and I distill ideas right into visuals.
But the funny thing is that I always need the words first, before I can put them into visuals. Because still, my brain works based on words, and I think all the brains we have work based on words. Of course, we have visuals in our head, but most of the time we think in logical structures step by step in words, and I translate those words into visuals.
So what I do is, first of all, and I think your question brought me two new insights, actually. I think the first most important thing is intention. So compared to other people —
When I am in a creative process, I have the intention to make something visual, compared to just writing words down. So everything I listen to, I always translate them in parallel to: how could I express that in visuals? How would that look like in a structure? How would things be connected to each other? Would that be a Venn diagram? Would that be like a pie chart? Would there be a timeline? Which kind of visuals would I use?
I'm always reflecting on when I hear something, like how would that look like? It makes it easier for me to see my ideas as well because if I only have words, sometimes it's difficult to read through them. It takes a long time. When I see a visual that I have drawn, everything becomes super clear very fast to me.
Joanna: I'm just writing some notes down there because you said there that you have words first and you make them into images. I wasn't expecting that because for me, as a creative, I see images first, and then I have to put them into words.
I mean, well, for my fiction anyway. For fiction, my latest, my novella Catacomb, I had such a clear idea. It was like a movie in my head. I can see the characters running down into the earth, into the catacomb, and I could see it all.
Then I had to just get it into words. Like there's this tropical underground jungle and I had to describe that. I could see it, I just have to find the words. So that's so interesting. I just didn't expect you to say that. I thought that you had the little people doing the things in your mind and then you just drew them and then you wrote up the words later.
Holger: No, I mean, you can't even go so far. If you would put me into a dark room, close the door, shut down the windows, it's pitch black in the room, I don't see anything.
Joanna: I think there's a name for that. There's some kind of name for it. I've heard someone else talk about that too. [Note: I referred to Aphantasia, but that's not necessarily what Holger experiences.]
Holger: Yeah, for me, it's words. Sometimes I might see kind of a movie scene or something, but basically, I think about a story first in words and those words would trigger a scene for me.
Joanna: Wow. Do you hear it? Because some people I know they say they take dictation, almost as if they hear it. My mum, when she wrote books, she was like, I hear these things. I never hear anything.
How do you experience those words?Holger: I don't hear them either. I would say it's like I would talk to myself in my head, let's say it like that.
So you could say I hear them. Sometimes I have a scent, so that I smell something. Sometimes it's a color that I see. Sometimes it's a touch, like a feeling or so. But very seldomly there is a picture first, very seldomly.
Joanna: I love that.
It's so interesting. I mean, just sort of coming to—you talk openly about being autistic, and I don't think this is part of it.
I think it's a completely different spectrum of how we create, but maybe talk a bit about that. I think this is so important. I mean, neurodiversity, even just talking to anyone and asking like this question, like how do you see visual images or words?
I mean, we all think so differently, and yet, I think sometimes we assume that things are the same for other people. So tell us a bit more about your experience of being autistic?
How does neurodiversity help you as a creative?Holger: So first of all, I think it's important that I didn't know I'm autistic for 40 years of my life. So I only know that for three years now, so I'm kind of a freshling, a newbie in that field of knowing myself as an autistic person.
It came as a bit of a surprise because I can do masking very well. So masking is the activity of pretending that you are neurotypical, not neurodiverse, but you are as everybody else, while you're not as everybody else.
So just pretending you're understanding a joke and laughing like everybody else, and nobody recognizes you didn't find the joke funny or even understood the joke.
I masked so properly that I didn't even notice myself that I am different to other people. So I masked for myself too.
For three years now, I know I'm autistic, and that helped a lot. I mean, that created a lot of challenges and problems to be very fair, but as well as opened up a whole new world for me understanding how I work, and how everything in my life functions, basically.
So I had to understand, first of all, that I have a lot of strengths that are related to my autistic being. For example, seeing patterns everywhere due to the need of understanding everybody through my cognition.
So as an autistic person, I don't feel what you feel, but I see what you feel. But I don't really feel your emotions because I don't feel my emotions very well, either. But I can understand by how you clenched your eyes and how you move your mouth, I can very precisely forecast what are your emotions right now, and therefore react accordingly.
So I'm pretty good in finding patterns, which helps me with my nonfiction writing, because everybody asked me like, how can you know what we're talking about so fast?
That's only because I listen very carefully and very intentionally for every single clue in a conversation, and then very quickly can forecast what will happen in the next 10-15 minutes.
As well, I can see through the surface because I don't care for emotions too much. So if everybody is raging about whatever it is, let's take AI, and everybody is emotional about that topic, I don't care for that too much.
I just want to know the facts and figures, how it works, why it works, what's the problem, what's not the problem, how can it help, and I don't get emotional about it. So that helps me my creative process because I can stay clear of all those emotions.
Joanna: When you talked about masking, for myself, I don't think this is just an autistic thing.
Holger: No, that's an introvert thing too, and a neurotypical thing, too.
Joanna: Well, I mean, obviously, there's a spectrum of everything. But when you say that, I mean, I remember when I discovered Susan Cain's book, Quiet.
It made a huge difference in my life and a lot of people's life because I feel like introverts, we have had to—I mean, I'm a bit older than you at 48—but I almost had to pretend to be an extrovert for 35 years because that's how we're expected to behave.
I mean, you talk about humor there and laughing—oh, my goodness, I literally don't have a sense of humor. I feel like I'm always fake-laughing at things. I'm laughing now because I'm laughing at myself. It's so interesting, isn't it?
So for people listening, masking for yourself is a really challenging statement, that wherever you are on neurodiverse scale, it's something that we should all be questioning.
Where do we mask and why are we doing that?
I mean, you're one of my patrons, you know about my upcoming book, Writing the Shadow. This is something I've been thinking about a lot, and it's very damaging to do that. So I mean—
How did you break out of expectations in order to live more authentically, be more you, and get rid of some of that masking?Holger: Yeah, I think I'm still on the journey.
I didn't really completely break out of that. So one thing is, I'm under chronic pain as well. I have headaches like basically every day since like 15 years or something. And this demands a change, right?
So if you are under pressure, change is a bit easier. I started telling people about it, so it enables me to act more as myself without stepping on toes. Like, if somebody is questioning why I behave differently right now, at least they know and they can decide for themselves That helped me, instead of just behaving differently, and everybody's asking, like what's happening to Holger?
The other thing is that I understood, for example, dealing with energy loss when I am with other people. I know you talked about that on events. For me, it's kind of the same on a very high scale, I would say.
I'm losing a lot of energy, and I have a job, I am a coach and trainer and consultant. So basically what I do is stand in front of people, and helping them get through their complexity.
I had to understand that I need to rest afterwards. I can't go for example, for a dinner with the clients because after a full day of workshop, I have to rest because otherwise I can't do the next day properly.
So it's more small things often enough, or bigger things when I have more private contact, like with you or with family and friends. People who I know, I can be a bit more open and speak about it, and perhaps not smile all the time because I can just relax sometimes.
Joanna: I love that. Really, it is hard. It's funny, because we're recording this in August, I am almost preparing now to go to 20Books Vegas in November. I've talked about backing out of it last year, I had a ticket and didn't go because I was so worried about the whole energy thing. I'm trying to incorporate all these practices, like you say, you just have to go and be somewhere else. I think that's how we have to manage it.
It is interesting because, of course, and I used to have headaches every day when I was a consultant and worked in an office. I was popping pills every day, and I got very sick.
So how do you manage that then as a consultant, doing the work you do? Because like you say, so much of your work is giving to other people. How do you manage that? Is part of your writing, and doing these books, and building your store and everything—Is that trying to offset that people-time?
Holger: Yeah, pretty much.
So definitely publishing is one way to reduce the onside time with people into products that I can sell without spending time.
And there is another advantage of being autistic, which is hyperfocus. I can click on hyperfocus anytime. I can do that for eight hours straight, and I can do that for three days straight, basically. Nobody will ever get a slightest clue that it's hard for me because I can step into that hyperfocus and be the so-called showman, and help people with what they have to go through.
Afterwards, I'm pretty destroyed, to be honest, but for a certain time I can do that.
Changing my mindset, as well as the intention, and stepping on stage as a different person.Joanna: Yes, and I can do this too. I would say this is partly extroverting. I mean, I don't have that hyperfocus that you do. I think that is one of the—do we still call it Asperger's?
Holger: I would say you can, some people say you don't. I don't care, like that's another thing where I don't care too much about the label.
Joanna: But people who have been characterized with those words, are people who do have that hyperfocus, kind of high functioning, extreme high functioning. I certainly don't have that, but I do have that exhaustion afterwards. I feel like it's an extroversion.
I think the other thing is how important it is. So we're not saying to people listening that we don't want to do this.
We're saying that it's incredibly important to do this work for both of us, but it takes something out of us.I think many people listening probably feel the same, and yet it is so important, isn't it? You must love a part of it.
Holger: Oh, yeah, definitely. That's the difficult thing to explain, right?
I really enjoy being with people and talking about the things that I am interested in, or they are interested in, and I can help with that. I grow when I meet people, and I learn something new.
I love being with people because it inspires me. So it gives me something and it gives me energy as well.
But on another level, I lose a lot of energy as well. It's kind of this the same thing at the same time kind of thing. It's difficult, it's a catch 22, and we need to acknowledge that because that makes it more difficult. We want to meet people, and it's really enjoyable, but we need some rest afterwards or have to deal with that in another way.
Joanna: Absolutely. I feel like it's even more important, becoming more important, to do this kind of thing in a world where a lot more is AI-generated. Of course, you know, I'm positive about AI, but I also want to connect with people. So I think that's important.
Let's come back to your books because I want to talk about Creating Clarity. I have a copy here, it is incredibly high quality. It's a heavy book. It's got a lot of color. It's got, of course, the illustrations, your drawings. As well as, it's basically a business book.
You published it through Kickstarter, you raised over 30,000 euros, which is fantastic. Now, you obviously sell it on your online store, you sell it in different ways. So first of all, tell us a bit about the book itself. Why did you want to do such a really sort of magnum opus book? It's a hell of a book.
Why did you want to do this project in the first place?Holger: First of all, this is the book that everybody was begging me to write. So people were nudging me right, left and center to put what I know into a book.
And I honestly didn't find a way to do two books out of this, even though I thought it could be two books, but I didn't find a proper way to do it. So I decided to make it one book. So that's why it's so big. It's 1.1 kilograms. So it's pretty heavy.
Joanna: Yes, it's a ‘proper' book!
Holger: And it's not even hardcover. It's paperback.
Joanna: It's lovely quality. I think that's really important. I mean, partly, books are heavier when you use high-quality paper. So that's probably why it's so heavy.
Holger: So what I found is, when I have books that are really important to me, like from other authors, I really enjoy if they have a version of the book that is higher quality than the trade paperback because I want to read it more often than one time.
I want to put notes into it, I want to put posts into it, I want to have it on my desk for a time and put it back to the storage, and then get it back to the table again and work with it. So I enjoy high-quality books that I can work with. So that's why I wanted to create that.
I knew, as per my topic, visual tools, I needed to have visuals in it because I can't write about leveraging that side of our brain, the visual part, without having a proper example in terms of a book.
And the whole book should be an example of how to work with visuals and how to create clarity. That's a thing that's even more important because I promised that you can create clarity when you read that book, but then the book needs to be super clear, as well.
That demanded of me a good design, working with a lot of whitespace, which costs, again, in terms of the page numbers, and a lot of visuals. So that's why I decided to make it the way you have it now in your hands.
Joanna: Tell us, I mean, it's interesting, I think partly you doing this, and also when I look at the books I have.
I wrote in my journal the other day, “I want to make beautiful books.” That's how I want my next 15 years to be. It's not just that I want to put my words into beautiful books, I want to create beautiful objects.
And again, I feel like we're moving from a time where digital is going to be much easier to make. Well it is, one click. But to make a hard copy of a beautiful book, this is gonna be hard work.
Tell us about the challenges of creating such a beautiful book.Holger: So the first challenge is that most of the advice that you get online is for textbooks. So if you're learning on your own, like I do most of the time, it's very hard to find good advice for these types of books because most people who are talking about book publishing, they're talking about textbooks.
Even though you have some people talking about children's books, but then in terms of how to really do it, you don't get so much advice.
I think I have an advantage because I am a trained designer, so I could do everything on my own. So I think that needs to be clear, it's an unfair advantage, I guess. I wrote the book, I created the sketches, and I laid out everything myself up until the physical print production. So I could do all of that on my own. I think that helps, but it costs me like hours and days and weeks of my time as well.
The challenge, I think, with such a physical product is, as well, the timing because you need to order paper to see how the paper looks like, how the print on the paper would look like.
You need to have a test book where the printer creates the whole book without the content, but just an empty book to see how would it feel like, how heavy is it, how big. You're doing all those test prints all the time.
I just spoke today to my printer because I'm working on a children's book around the topic of autism. This should be a super nice book as well, and a very high quality book. So I'm talking to them, if they'll produce another test print, and if they'll produce another binding test, and all these kinds of things. That takes time, and as well, I have to pay for those. So it costs extra money too.
Joanna: Yes, I mean, this is the thing, and of course, there are levels of printing. So I mean, you know about my Pilgrimage hardback, and I still think it's a beautiful book, it is still print-on-demand, the hardback is still print-on-demand. It's much higher quality than what we've been able to do before, but yes, your paper definitely feels different.
This is interesting, then, because obviously, you had to do all of that work before the Kickstarter. So you raised over 30,000 EUR, but it was a very expensive process, and then also the shipping is on top of that, isn't it? So yeah, it's expensive to ship and all of that kind of thing.
Talk about the return on investment for nonfiction authors like yourself.Because it wasn't just the Kickstarter, was it? This is the basis of your consulting as well.
Holger: Yeah, true. So just in terms of the numbers, I mean, just the book itself, I ordered a print run, so meaning I paid for printed copies, not print-on-demand. I ordered 1500 books, and I still had to pay over eight euros per book.
Joanna: Wow.
Holger: Right. So it comes at a price. So I had to order a lot of books to have at least a somewhat feasible price for the book, and that is a challenge.
So that's actually why I used Kickstarter because I said, I can't invest that much money into a book before I am sure that somebody will really buy it. It was a bit unclear if that would be really a success, I was happy that it was. So basically, at the end of the whole campaign, I get out of a profit of 4000 euros. That's my profit after raising 30,000 euros.
So it's not a feasible business model.
It's not a get-rich-quick scheme on Kickstarter with such an expensive book. But it created a lot of buzz. So as you know, it's kind of a high buzz project, these kind of Kickstarter campaigns.
It's a good marketing tool. I got a lot of new followers online, I got a lot of new people on my newsletter due to the buzz that people created around my Kickstarter campaign. That in itself was worthwhile without me investing money because at least I got out with 5000 extra. So it didn't cost me in terms of the marketing.
So that was one part, the marketing piece. As well a bit of money, the 5000. As well as having a few people very engaged, those Kickstarter people I could use as well and leverage when I republished it basically afterward on my own store.
I'm a wide author, so I'm publishing on Amazon, and Apple, and Kobo and whatever in bookstores. So when I launched the book, officially to the market, all those Kickstarter backers helped me, or a few of them at least, helped me to spread the word and told their people, look, I got this book, now you can get it too. I got quite a few orders again when I published the book to the market. So that helped too.
Of course, last but not least, it's basically a credibility product. So people know that I know what I talk about. I can give that to my clients. I do workshops around that. People pay me a lot of money to come to their events and talk about the topic of creating clarity and how they could use that for the business.
So it's not the Kickstarter, the Kickstarter just helped me having that clearness that people want to have that book because the campaign is successful, as well having the money to print enough books that they can give away for free, basically, now.
Joanna: Yes, I think it's so important.
You've spent a lot of time and money to make the best product you could possibly make. It really is very high quality. So you have an asset that is now the basis of a business —which is about, as you say, the visuals. But also, you as a designer, I think from the beginning you talked about how that's part of your brand. If you didn't have such a high-quality book, it would affect your brand.
Holger: Absolutely.
Joanna: So it's evidence for what you're offering to bring to a business or a client, isn't it?
Holger: Yeah, it is. It's my brand promise, basically. I will spend that eye for the detail, and for the best thing that we can create with my clients too, that I spent on the book.
Joanna: I think this is something I want people to think about, and what I'm thinking about now, which is I want people to have a book on their shelf that represents my brand that stands out in a different way, you know, that is some incredible book.
So you helped me with my first Kickstarter. I really appreciated your help with that. But just—
What lessons have you learned about Kickstarter?Because you've done another campaign, haven't you? So yeah, give us some advice or lessons learned.
Holger: Yeah, exactly. So I did actually three campaigns, and all were in that range of 30,000 to 50,000 euros.
And yeah, I have put together six kind of learnings or insights. Let's go through them quickly. Let's see, I hope they help, and they're not too negative here.
It's important that it's not a get-rich-quick scheme. I want to repeat that. There are some outliers out there that paint basically the wrong picture, I would say. Even though there are high numbers sometimes, the profit is not that high, and we need to be prepared for that.
You can earn a living by doing a lot of Kickstarter campaigns, yes, but it is a lot of effort as well. It's not that you get the money for free. I think that's important. That will be my first one.
Then the second very important one —
Don't underestimate the time investment. And I mean, Jo, I told you how much time it will take and you didn't believe me.
Joanna: I thought I had accounted for it, and then I realized I hadn't. Yeah, it definitely is a lot of work. Although, I feel like there are different ways to do Kickstarters, and possibly the people who do four or six a year are doing it differently to how you and I have done it.
Holger: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, if you get into a routine, it might be easier. But if it's not your routine, it doesn't matter if you do a 12-day or 30-day campaign, you should plan like around two months that you spend and do nothing more than the Kickstarter, actually, from my experience, at least.
Overcommunication is important.
You should communicate more than you think you should. You have to keep talking about your Kickstarter, especially before the campaign, but then during the campaign, to your backers and to possible new backers. And as well, after the campaign, what is your process looking like.
You have to communicate more often than you would normally do with a newsletter or when you launch a book or something because you need to create that trust to your people who were paying you on Kickstarter, basically, and like pre-trusting you with their money.
I found it's very important that you answer fast and you update very often to keep everybody happy. I think that will be the third point.
The fourth is —
Make it about you. People trust you, they buy from you. You don't use marketing slang or like copy pasting something. You have to make it personal so people will then come and buy from you.
I think that counts not only for Kickstarter, but for everything else we do nowadays. But especially on Kickstarter, I think it's less about the product that you sell, in terms of the book, because there are many books on Kickstarter too.
It's about you, your story, why did you write the book, why do you want to sell it on Kickstarter. It's about you. I think that's important.
Then yeah, the two others were —
Start early. Don't plan your campaign and then not tell anybody.
But perhaps two to three months early, you launch the preview website on Kickstarter, and then tell people about it a few months early so you can build the buzz. So do not think that you just start from nothing, you should communicate before.
The last one is —
Don't over-promise.I think you did that as well, in a good way, having the book finished when you do your Kickstarter campaign, not still writing the book.
Joanna: Yeah, and I think that's a recommendation that I've heard from others like Monica Leonelle and Russell Nohelty and people like that — finish the book first because you just have a whole load of other stuff to do.
There's enough to do with fulfilling a Kickstarter. It's so funny, so we're recording this in August, and when this goes out on the show, I should have my pre-launch page up for what is still “The Shadow Book,” but by the time this goes out, I will probably in my introduction have directed people there.
So exactly what you say, having a pre-launch page up really as early as possible, right, because the campaign is much shorter. I feel like as independent authors, we've been so used to running longer marketing, you know, we're used to just ongoing marketing for years, whereas this really is sort of a couple of weeks.
Holger: Yeah, true. It's very fast, very fast-paced.
Joanna: It is. So just a couple more questions.
First of all, I wanted to just ask you about creating clarity, as a topic, because it does feel like there is so much noise.
For authors listening, there are so many things to know. And I mean, I'm just as responsible as anyone else for having another podcast that offers people more tips every week, or whatever.
There's so much noise with publishing options, marketing options, we mentioned AI, I mean, there's a lot of noise.
How can people create clarity for themselves around their creative choices and cut through the noise?Holger: Yeah, that's a very good question. I'll try to answer it like briefly and see how we can help here.
The first thing, I think the most important thing is to do things with intention, not just doing things because somebody says something, or there is a new trend, or like this is the holy grail of publishing, but doing everything with intention.
This means not doing anything right away when you see it, but just pause, take a deep breath, and think about, is that something for me?
That will be the first step. If you get to that step, I would say, understanding that the only thing that you can really influence is yourself.
Around us, everything else changes all the time. As you said, there is technology, there might be AI, then there is Scrivener, there's Word for you to write in, you could write in longhand. There is as well your business model. Do you go exclusive with some of the companies? Or do you choose subscription or Kickstarter or wide or direct? Then there are all the channels of like Instagram and TikTok and Facebook and email and whatnot.
Everything around us is changing all the time, and we have close to no influence on it.I think that's important to notice because if you notice that, you could think of yourself and say, what are my goals and values and preferences to work? And sit down and write that.
Perhaps you take a piece of paper and write that in the center of the paper. You ask yourself, what are your goals, your values and your preferences.
Then when you have done that, you can write all the technologies and the business models and the channels down on that paper as well.
You write, for example, technology on the right upper corner and say: there is AI, there's Scrivener, there's longhand, there's Vellum, there's whatever you use for writing, for example, or publishing.
Then on the right bottom corner, you could use your business model, which could be exclusive or direct or wide or Kickstarter, whatever comes to your mind, subscription. And on the left, you could put all the channels: social media, and email, and what you have there, events, for example, fairs or something.
If you look at all these things around you, you could do a quick emotional check. I learned that from my coach. I know you know him well, Mark McGuinness, he's like a long-term business coach. He taught me the emotional scale.
[Note: Mark McGuinness has been on the podcast multiple times, including talking about How to Stay Creative in Difficult Times.]
So everything that's coming up out there, and let's take, for example, the subscription model that a lot of people talk about nowadays, to not take AI here, so let's take subscription.
If you take subscription, place yourself on a scale from 0-10. Zero would mean you would be really unhappy and feeling unwell doing subscription, and 10 means you would be super happy about it, and it will be easy for you. You do that scale for everything that comes up.
And just to take you, Jo, as an example. We heard about TikTok and that you decided to not use it, I would say on the scale, you would be rather close to the zero somewhere.
Joanna: I am a zero at TikTok!
Holger: Which means you don't embrace that direction. It's not for you. If you do that exercise of knowing what your values and preferences are, and then checking just from your gut feeling—and saying that as an autistic individual, but we have gut feeling too.
Is that creating resistance in myself or would that feel easy to embrace? And if so, then should I do it or not? And you just think about that.
Just putting that on a piece of paper might create a lot more clarity than just getting all the insights all the time and only thinking about them, because that creates most often the fear of missing out and then not knowing what to do next.
Joanna: I love that. I also think that as writers writing these things can help us because this is a way that we do work things out.
I think also repeating that kind of exercise over time, so if you're someone listening who has gone certain routes, and then you do this exercise again on what you have already built, that might be when you decide to stop doing things.
Holger: Yeah, yeah. You could use that as a dashboard kind of thing that you revisit every quarter, every year, whatever you want to.
Or depending on your practice, so I write fiction, nonfiction, children's books, and all that kind of stuff. So for example, for my fiction and writing fantasy, I decided on longhand writing because that feels just better for fiction for me.
Whereas I use artificial intelligence to co-write with Chat GPT about a very personal artistic topic because I need to talk to somebody who can't run away from me when I talk about it. So I choose AI for that topic. So it doesn't have to always be the same.
Joanna: That's interesting, a lot of people using it as a kind of therapist or acting as a therapist. I mean, I've been talking a lot—we say talking, I mean typing or whatever—about different things that, yeah, you don't want to necessarily share with a human, which is quite interesting. But we're straying into AI.
So let's come back, we're almost out of time. I did want to just come back on your children's book about autism or for children with autism.
Can you talk a bit more about that because I feel like that we are in a point in history when this is far more acceptable to talk about. Like you said, this wasn't something we talked about when we were children. So we obviously need these kinds of resources.
Tell us about your children's book around autism and when people might be able to get that.Holger: Yeah, so if you're English-speaking, it will be called The Wrong Planet. And in German, it will be called Falsche Planet.
It's a children's book about an alien that is a shapeshifter and lands mistakenly on Earth, on this wrong planet. That's how a lot of autistic individuals feel here on earth, as being on the wrong planet.
And its shapeshifting when it's meeting different kinds of animals, but never fits in completely. So it always stays kind of a strange thing. It's still green, it still has only one eye, but it looks like a duck, somehow. It tries to interact and never succeeds.
Throughout the story, it meets like five different animals and learns that somehow it didn't manage to properly communicate with them until it meets another last animal, that's the platypus, which is a strange animal in itself. They become friends and talk about being just different, and that it's okay to be different.
It's a highly professional illustrated book. I didn't illustrate that myself, but my illustrator did that in a very classical kid style. So it will be a very high-quality book again. And it has the first part of the story in rhymes, so completely rhymed.
Then there's a second part that explains basically different situations that our main protagonist, the alien, experienced throughout the book. So if somebody is asking, how specifically is that about autism, they can look up at the end of the book and say, okay, this is about special interests, this is about masking, this is about loud noises, this is about understanding jokes and how it is difficult for autistic individuals.
So my aim for that will be, and that came from knowing that two of my three children are autistic as well —
My aim is that parents could read that with their kids, or teachers could read that with their classes to just speak about autism, and have people understand it. We explained to the class of our son how our son feels in the class, just with the draft of the book. So you can relate to that in a different way than just having another nonfiction book about autism, but having a story that guides you through a very emotional journey. So I had a lot of people cry when I read the draft to them.
Joanna: I'm almost crying now! I feel like we all need this book. I think maybe it's a parable book, you know, like some kids books are also for adults. Is that kind of what it is?
Holger: Yeah, it is. I will publish that in November in English and German. So I wrote the German myself, with a German editor of course, and I had somebody professionally edit and translate in English because translating rhymes from one language into the other is another art form.
Joanna: It will be available November 2023—
Tell people where they can find your books and everything else you do online.Holger: Yes, so best you go to my website, which is HolgerNilsPohl.com.
There will be everything, my services as well as my books. And Joanna, we talked about visuals here, so I will prepare something for your listeners on my website.
So you go to HolgerNilsPohl.com/penn, and you will find some examples of the visuals we talked about, as well as the process of how they could get clarity to cut through the noise that we spoke about here in our chat.
Joanna: That would be fantastic. Well, thank you so much for your time, Holger. That was great.
Holger: Thank you, Joanna, for having me. It was a blast.
The post Producing Visual, High Quality Books, Thinking Differently, and Kickstarter Lessons With Holger Nils Pohl first appeared on The Creative Penn.
How can you stop self-censoring your writing and share the deepest aspects of yourself with your readers? How can you break poetry out of the restraints that many try to put upon it? Stephanie Wytovich talks about these things and more.
In the intro, 5 trends that are shifting the future of publishing with Monica Leonelle & Russell Nohelty; Direct Sales Strategies We Love from 36 Authors from BookBub; JFPennBooks Reading Order; AI Training Permission from Hugh Howey; Eleven Labs for AI voices and VoiceSwitcher with Storytel;
Plus, Kickstarter for Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words; Chuck Palahniuk on James Altucher talking about unmasking shadows; Carl Jung's Red Book, which features in Stone of Fire.
This podcast is sponsored byWritten Word Media, which makes book marketing a breeze by offering quick, easy and effective ways for authors to promote their books. You can also subscribe to the Written Word Mediaemail newsletterfor book marketing tips.
Stephanie M. Wytovich is a Bram Stoker award-winning poet, as well as a horror novelist and essayist. She's also the poetry editor for Raw Dog Screaming Press and the editor of Writing Poetry in the Dark.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- Allowing poetry to break out from fitting in a box
- How to put together a poetry collection
- Balancing writing for therapy and writing for the reader
- Ways to stop ourselves from self-censoring
- Where the darker sides of ourselves come from
- The horror genre and what it encompasses
- Differences between mainstream books and award winners
- Benefits of being involved with a community of writers
You can find Stephanie at StephanieMWytovich.com and on social media at @SWytovich and @TheHauntedBookshelf
Transcript of Interview with Stephanie M. Wytovich Joanna: Stephanie M. Wytovich is a Bram Stoker award-winning poet, as well as a horror novelist and essayist. She's also the poetry editor for Raw Dog Screaming Press and the editor of Writing Poetry in the Dark, which is fantastic. So welcome, Stephanie.
Stephanie: Hi. Thank you so much for having me today.
Joanna: I'm really looking forward to our conversation. But first up—
Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. Stephanie: So I wear a lot of hats in my day-to-day life. So I teach literature and creative writing, I work in a couple of undergrad and grad programs, and then, of course, I'm writing, and I had my first child back in 2022.
Writing has kind of been this constant catharsis and quiet time to collect my thoughts during all of the madness of my day-to-day.
I've been writing for as long as I can remember. I always loved to make up stories as a child, and the only thing that really changed was that they got darker and darker as I grew on. Then they just continued to get more morose and terrifying as I moved further into adulthood.
But writing, and especially writing poetry has always been what I identify as in everything, you know, first and foremost.
Poetry has really changed my life in so many ways, which is why I was so honored to have the opportunity to put out this book with Raw Dog Screaming Press, Writing Poetry in the Dark, because I want to bring some of that joy that poetry has given me and share it to make it more accessible with other people.
Joanna: There's a lot there, but you said that you really identify with poetry. I want to get into that first, and then we'll come back to some of the other darker stuff.
From your editor's note in Writing Poetry in the Dark, you said,
“I stopped trying to fit poetry in a box of what I thought it was, and instead opened my eyes to what poetry could be.” I love that because I was taught poetry at school, and it was like, ‘this is literature, it needs to be this particular thing.' So tell us how we can do this. How do we allow poetry to break out of the box? Or how have you done this?
Stephanie: Yeah, I mean, I had a very, very similar experience. I think as children, we're given poetry all the time. We're reading nursery rhymes and fairy tales, and we're getting all of these different versions of poetry that are fun, and creative, and whimsical, and dark, and weird, and all of the above, and we attach to it.
Then something happens around middle school, we're usually introduced to Edgar Allan Poe, and we see how it can be dark. We get Emily Dickinson and we're like, oh my gosh, there's this whole other world, like this is so cool.
Then we get to high school, and like you said, it's very much like, read 17 Shakespearean sonnets and write me a poem in iambic pentameter or you fail AP English. Like all of the joy is just kind of squashed because it becomes this very serious, terrifying thing.
That's not saying that formal poetry isn't wonderful and expressive, because it is, but I think there's this shift where it becomes fun and imaginative to very serious and kind of scary, and we lose some of the creativity and joy that's associated with it.
For me, my journey with it is a little bit different, odd, I'm not sure quite the right word to really pinpoint it. I started writing poetry when I was probably around middle school, maybe a little bit younger. I was in therapy at the time, and I was having a really hard time talking about some of the things that I was struggling with.
My therapist had recommended to me that I start writing poetry and keeping a journal to say the things that I wanted to say, but trusting that nobody else was seeing them. That really opened a door for me in a lot of different ways in my life to kind of get all the darkness out on the page and be really vulnerable without the fear of somebody reading it and judging me or something like that.
So I tried to keep my version of poetry and then the version of poetry that everybody told me that I had to be writing and reading very separate.
It wasn't until probably later on in college, maybe my junior or senior year, I realized that I had all of this poetry that I wanted to start putting together maybe as a collection.
I gave myself a personal challenge or maybe a reading list where I wanted to start reading 30 collections of poetry every year to see what was out there. So I read classics, I read literary, I read Pablo Neruda's romance sonnets that he wrote to his wife, I read tons of Poe, and Sexton and Sylvia Plath.
Then I started reading a lot of contemporary writers that were getting more political with diversity and inclusivity. I was reading Latin American poetry, and I was reading a lot of, you know, black voices and queer voices.
I was seeing how there could be this shift, that everybody's poetry looked different. And it was kind of my lightbulb moment that—I don't want to say that there isn't a definite way to write poetry because we can all read poetry and kind of be like, oh, this person really gets it, or maybe this person still needs a little bit of work in their writing—but it really opened the door that I could be creative and push boundaries. It didn't have to be this right or wrong way, like I got when I had to write my sonnet in AP English.
Then it was really funny because last year, I had an editor reach out to me who specifically wanted me to write a Shakespearean horror sonnet. And I laughed, and I was like, oh, if somebody could find my Achilles heel, like this man did it. This man is like triggering all of my poetry woes.
I had a moment where I was like, do I want to do this? Then I absolutely was, like, I actually have to do. I have to prove to myself that I can sit down and do this, but do it my way. When I finished the poem and it eventually sold, it was kind of like my crowning achievement, that like somehow I had gone full circle on life and everything was gonna be okay.
Joanna: It's so interesting listening to you talk about it because you also have novels, you have essays, you edit, so you see all these different things. I struggle enough with a short story, and it almost feels like the intensity level of a poem is more than the intensity of a short story, which is more intense than a novel.
So when you say like, “Oh, I just read 30 collections in a year,” like, I have quite a lot of poetry on my shelves, and I like reading poetry, but it's almost like I'll pull a book off, and I'll read one poem and that will be enough.
I know you have a poetry collection coming out. So maybe tell us about how you put one together. How do you balance this intensity idea with a poetry collection?
Which is almost like, I don't know, 60 novels or something.
How do you put together a poetry collection? Stephanie: Yeah, well, this next one that's coming out is unlike anything I've ever done before. It's called On the Subject of Blackberries, and it's coming out from Raw Dog Screaming Press in September.
It is a collection that I quite literally wrote in three months when I was postpartum, right after having my first child. I guess which is already like a weird thing, but like to make it even stranger.
How I came about writing it was I had a really, really difficult time postpartum. I was diagnosed with depression, I had postpartum OCD, which is still something that I'm struggling with, and then I was trying to adjust to being a new mom. Like I had every feeling, and probably feelings that nobody's put a name to yet, like kind of on my shoulders.
My comfort book, which is something that I read pretty regularly, is We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, which I know is a weird comfort, nevertheless. So I picked that up because I wanted something familiar, and I wanted something to kind of quell my nerves.
I started writing poems that were inspired by the book. I was using automatic writing, and I was using bibliomancy, and I was using all of these kind of more alternative witchy creative writing discourses to pull poems from the book and from my head.
It's very, very vulnerable. It's very dark, especially when you consider the time period that I was writing it.
I was using blackout poetry, and found poetry, and I quite literally lost myself in the book. So for me, it was kind of like a homecoming. Like, I felt like when the book was done that I had almost exorcised something that was in me that needed to come out.
I can't say that I've necessarily felt that way with putting a collection together before because my approach is always very thematic.
Like with Apocalyptic Mannequin, I knew that I wanted to write kind of like dystopian, science fiction, world-ending kind of poetry. So that was how I started to build I poems, and look at themes, and different artwork and stuff like that for inspiration. But with Blackberries, it was very much like I just reached in and pulled something out of me and stuck it on the page.
Joanna: That's so interesting. So you said a couple of things.
You talked about getting the darkness out on the page, and that you feel like you maybe exorcised something when you write that way. I feel this exactly. And this is why I think horror writers are actually the most mentally sane and well-adjusted people.
Stephanie: Yes.
Joanna: Because you take all the bad stuff and you put it out there in some form. Of course, it might be some metaphorical form, or it might be a poem or novel or whatever.
But you also touch there on depression therapy. So where's the line between writing that is therapy and writing that is—because we're publishing these things for a reader. So—
Where's the line between looking inside, and then thinking about the reader on the outside? Stephanie: So I think sometimes there is a good crossover, and I think sometimes it just has to be separate.
I have poetry that I've written that no one will ever see. I don't care how desperate I ever get to have something published, like it's just not getting out there. I think that's really healthy. I think sometimes we do have to write for ourselves to remind ourselves why we're doing this.
On the same token, sometimes I will read those same poems, and I will find a line, or I will find an emotion or an image or something, that I think I could work with and kind of play with genre a little bit with it.
I might write something completely separate that kind of plays with those ideas, but isn't that idea, if that makes sense. So a lot of the time, I think that in itself is kind of therapy because you're continuing to process and process and have conversations with yourself. Just one way is a little bit more blunt, and one way is a little bit more hidden, if you're talking about monsters, and the supernatural and stuff like that.
That's something that I feel like I take over into my fiction too because sometimes when I'm really struggling.
If I'm at a point in my story and I don't really know where to go with it, I'll start writing poetry based on the short story that I'm writing, or I'll start writing in my character's voice. That usually helps me unlock things. Sometimes the things that it unlocks are emotions that I haven't been able to kind of pinpoint yet. So I do get very vulnerable in my fiction that way. So I think they ebb and flow and work with each other.
A practice that I do myself, and that I've started encouraging a lot of my poetry students to do, and this will feel very scary when I say it, is to keep a shame journal.
I have a little notebook where I write down like all the things that embarrassed me, or that I would be kind of like afraid if somebody ever found them out, like little quirks and maybe things that aren't necessarily so quirky, like things that just like gross me out, or things like that.
Then when I feel like I'm in a place where I want to start playing with that and start having some of those conversations, I'll open that notebook up and start writing poems based on it.
I did that once with a piece called The Crone Confessions that I published in Black Telephone Magazine under Clash Publishing, and it is one of the darkest things I swear I've written.
People respond so well to it every time because it takes it a step further than I felt like most people expected me to go with it. I think if we can find a way to acknowledge our lines, or acknowledge where we put our boundaries, and then start having conversations with ourselves about why those boundaries are there, what those boundaries are protecting us from, and then slowly start inching over them in our writing, I tend to think that that's where the gold usually lies.
Joanna: And this is the heart of it, I think, is you talk there about the boundaries, and for many of us, we self censor.
We're like, well, I'm not going to write that because someone will judge me, my partner will judge me, my family, the reader, like anonymous people, but also people close to us.
How do we stop that? And then they might not even write it in a journal, let alone in a poem to publish or a book to publish.
How can we stop self-censoring? What is your process for moving that boundary so we can actually put stuff out there?
Stephanie: I actually had a really good conversation about this with Zoje Stage and Katrina Monroe at StokerCon. We were on a Monstrous Mother's panel together, so we were talking a lot about being mothers, writing about mothers, our own mothers, the whole kit and caboodle.
I think it was Katrina that said that she had heard a piece of advice years ago that she always tries to keep in the back of her head, and it was to write like your family or your loved ones are dead. And that is, I mean, it's fantastic advice, but it's really hard advice to swallow.
I mean, we can't censor ourselves in our writing or everybody's going to feel like that wall is up, right, and that the reader can access you or can't access the characters in the way that they're meant to, to kind of get the full picture of the story. But it's also incredibly difficult, because like you said, you know that these people are going to be reading or hearing conversations about your work.
So for me, for me personally, that is something that I have been trying very hard to keep in the back of my head as I continue writing now, but it took me a very long time to get to a point where I was okay with starting to cross over some of those walls that I built.
I would say I put out maybe four or five collections of poetry before I really felt like I started to take off a mask and show readers who was actually behind and what I was capable of.
I think the best advice here is that —
It's something that you have to practice. The more that you do it, obviously, the easier it's going to get. I would just challenge yourself every time that you're writing a story or a poem or working on a novel, take a brick out of the wall, every time try. Try push yourself. It doesn't have to be leaps and bounds, but just a little bit further, and see how that feels and sit with it.
Then pretty soon it's going to be muscle memory. You're going to feel more calm and confident. You're going to know how to talk about it. You're going to know how to really put it on the page. It won't be this scary, threatening thing anymore.
Joanna: Yes, I also feel it was my fifth novel, Desecration, which was when I was like, I'm writing this now.
But it's interesting, I mean, I agree with you on thinking that, you know, write as if everyone else is dead. But in reality, they're not.
I mean, my mom has said to me, “I can't read that. It gives me nightmares, and I don't know what I did to you.” You did nothing to me. That's not necessarily where these things come from. Although, you know, mothers! We could talk about mothers another time.
Well, I guess where do you think this comes from? I almost think that those of us who are into the darker things are maybe born this way. I don't know.
Where do you think the darkness comes from? Stephanie: Well, I know, for me personally, I felt like I could pinpoint it very specifically.
Joanna: Okay, great.
Stephanie: So I've told this story a couple of times, so I think my parents are used to it at this point. So my family is very, very much like the Addams Family. So like Halloween was always our Christmas. We've always been very spooky, my parents love horror, like ever all of my childhood things growing up were spooky and weird. I had a clown that sat on a swing like right next to my crib. It was very creepy. And I hated Halloween, and I hated horror because it was everywhere and I was terrified of it. But it was almost kind of like I didn't really have a choice, like I was gonna grow up to be Wednesday Addams, or I wasn't going to fit in the family.
Eventually, I think my mom started showing me what horror could really be. It didn't have to be jump scares. It didn't have to be slashers. I can remember the first time I sat down and watched Interview with the Vampire with her and was just fascinated by vampires and how romance could be kind of partnered with horror.
Or like the first time I watched Evil Dead and saw how comedy could be with it and how it also was having these like massive discussions about things that I desperately wanted to talk about but was afraid to, but I could talk about them under the veil of like a spooky horror movie.
Once I think I cracked that code, I recognized the potential for horror, and I just never looked back.
Like I think that it just gives us such a platform to have such difficult discussions, whether they're personal, political, emotional, whatever you want it to be, but to talk about them behind the cover of like a werewolf, or the creature from the Black Lagoon or Frankenstein's monster. I just love that. I feel like it's very freeing.
Horror doesn't judge you, it doesn't sugarcoat anything. It just is what it is. I think as a kid, it's so hard to just be who you are, and horror just gave me the confidence to do that.
So that's why I was so drawn to it, and I continue to think that's why I kind of have stayed here because the community on the whole is so welcoming, and so loving, and just, you know, they just want to play and they want to have fun, but they also want to have these really intense conversations that I think we need to be having right now. So it just continues to inspire me relentlessly, and positively, and all the other good adjectives that I could put there.
Joanna: Oh, that is so interesting.
I think, for me, it was maybe the opposite, in that I always had a dark little soul, but I was brought up in the power of positive thinking kind of thing. You're not sick, it's all in the mind. You just need to think positive, and you can do anything.
I always had to be positive and happy. I wasn't allowed really to be sad, or any of the things that might be considered darker emotions. So it's interesting to think where we came from.
But you said there that horror is not just jump scenes and slashes, and I totally agree with you. Like, I don't do either of those things. I don't watch those things. I don't read those things.
But you also said it is what it is. Horror is what it is. But you say that, and so many people have these wrong impressions of what horror actually is. Some of the stuff I've read, I mean, it feels to me very literary, very experimental, very kind of weird, to be honest, and that's maybe why it's not mainstream, as opposed to what people think it is.
What are some of the things that the word horror can encompass? Stephanie: Yeah. I often kind of chuckle too because when I see these conversations about what horror is and isn't, it feels like a reflection to me of like what poetry is and isn't.
I just think people are so desperate to put a label on things, and if something isn't this binary, black and white situation, like people start to panic. I always tell people, like when they ask me like, oh, who was your influence? Why did you start writing horror poetry? I always say I worshipped at the Church of Plath and Sexton.
I don't think that the majority of the readers and poets would say that Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton are horror poets. But to me, they were, and they unlocked something that I thought was so dark and powerful. It pushed me to kind of start having those conversations with myself.
So I guess to answer your question, I mean, horror and what scares us is going to be different for every person. Everybody's going to have a spectrum of what they think a genre is, what it can be, what it isn't. And ultimately, I think that's a good thing because it forces us to keep having conversations about our relationship with the genre, and where we want to push it, where we want to see it go.
I just don't think that we need to be so concerned about putting it in a box. I feel like with a lot of things in life right now, that's kind of where we're at. We want simple, direct words to describe everything. Like that's not the human experience. Humans aren't like that.
So I think we need to worry a little bit more about what things can be, how we reinterpret the haunted house as a metaphor for queerness, or how we look at the transformation of a werewolf, and how that can relate to sexual assault and have bigger conversations about what's going on. Like, those are the things that I think we need to focus on.
I watched a documentary series that they put on Shutter called Queer for Fear. It's a very short documentary about the history of horror and how it is positively, just completely gay, which I firmly believe that it is. It was so eye opening and beautiful and sad and wonderful, because it showed essentially how monsters were a metaphor for queerness. I think that we're at a point now where we can take that even further.
I think we need to focus on how we can keep building the genre, rather than trying to like stuff it down into that box and give it a name. Because horror is so much bigger than anything that we can talk about because it's different for everybody.
Joanna: It's interesting. I mean, monsters are pretty much always a metaphor for something. Yeah, I've actually written a monster novel called Catacomb, and I know what the monster is metaphor for. I haven't really talked about it, I won't talk about it.
But it's almost like, yeah, I mean, we kill the monster somehow, and maybe we have to keep killing the monster in lots of different ways, in lots of different books.
I think labeling is a problem because of basically Amazon, and the way we shop online, and the way we use these categories. I mean, even in a bookstore, what annoys me actually, I'm here in the UK, and it annoys me in a bookstore because I literally will go to the tiny, tiny horror section, which is maybe two tiny half shells, and it is just Stephen King.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Joanna: And maybe a couple of Dean Koontz. And then it will be really old books, where the authors are dead. Like Edgar Allan Poe, like you say, and it won't be modern horror.
But if you go to the sci-fi/fantasy section, you will actually find books that you and I might call horror. Like you mentioned vampires, I mean, anything that has a vampire could technically be horror, but now it's kind of, is it dark fantasy? Is it romantic fantasy or whatever?
So maybe that's the problem is we have to shelve these things somehow.
Stephanie: In the US right now, I've noticed that there's typically like three Barnes and Nobles that I will usually shop at, and their horror sections are booming now. It's so exciting because my experience was very much like yours for the majority of my life.
But I feel like in the last maybe two or three years, like there is a prominent horror section. I'm seeing so many of my friends books on the shelves, like I have booksellers who are like putting Mexican Gothic in my hands, and Malerman's Daphne and my hands. It's very exciting, but that's a very new development.
I think there's always been a stigma on the label of horror. Like, we've always been like the redheaded stepchild of publishing for whatever reason, but I think we're starting to see that break down.
I think booksellers and publishing are starting to realize how big that horror readership is. And also that people, maybe who haven't even previously been interested in horror, are kind of flocking to that now, especially—like I say post-pandemic, but I think we're still kind of in it in some way, shape or form—but you know, post-pandemic because it's therapeutic. Like, we have our own personal wars that we're all dealing with, and it's kind of nice to be able to see somebody else go through something scary that's not us. Like there's an anxiety transfer, that happens.
So I think the face of horror is starting to change a little bit. I think we're seeing people be a little bit more accepting and kind of testing the waters. Like, okay, if we start putting Eric LaRocca's like queer, violent horror fiction here, who will flock to that? And everybody flocked to it.
I think they're testing the waters to kind of see how well it works, and they're seeing how hungry people really are for it. So hopefully, that'll continue to change and we'll see it all over the place, with these sections being more recognized, and horror being talked about more broadly, I think we're seeing agents pick up horror and say they're specifically looking for it more. So I hope this isn't a trend, but rather just a new move in a very positive direction for all of us.
Joanna: That does give me hope because often these things start in the US and then move into other places. So yeah, that is really positive.
I also wanted to ask you, because you're a multi-award-winning writer and editor, so you see both sides of the publication process. What I have also noticed about horror is it can be pretty literary, and they're also often standalone because, of course, lots of people sometimes die. Sometimes, not all the time.
So I have really thought about this in terms of a lot more genre writers, so I write thrillers, as you know, I have a long running thriller series. And it's actually quite difficult to enter awards with later books in a series because they might not make sense as a standalone. I guess—
What are some of the things you see in award-winning horror fiction? And is, I guess, being a standalone one of them? And what are some of the differences between mainstream books and award winners?
Stephanie: I think the first thing that's most important in this is self-advocacy. I know I'm really bad at this, like I hate constantly talking about a project and marketing it, and I just feel like I'm kicking a dead horse and people are like, Stephanie, please just stop talking about what you're working on. But we have to do that, right?
We have to do it. Nobody's going to advocate for us like we advocate for ourselves. So I think that that's something that's gonna be uncomfortable for a while, but we have to just keep doing it until it's not uncomfortable, essentially.
I think it's really important to be aware of the opportunities that are out there.
Know the awards, know the editors, follow the editors on social media, try to build authentic relationships with these people. I mean, it's very obvious when somebody is trying to be your friend because they want something from you, versus you legitimately being like, “I'm such a fan of the work that you put out. Let me buy you a drink, and let's talk about it.”
I think building authentic relationships without the quid pro quo relationship is so unbelievably important, and it's such a huge problem with social networking. So I think that's something to keep in mind as you're growing and exploring and advocating for your work and trying to be aware of the opportunities out there.
So when you have a project and you eventually find an editor, I think it's going to look a little bit different if you're doing something in the indie world versus in the commercial publishing world, if that makes sense.
I think something to keep in mind constantly is that—I feel like this is going to contradict everything I just said—you don't want to work on a project with an award in mind. You know what I mean?
You want to be writing because you want to be writing, and because you need to write the story and telling the story is fun. And when you're doing that, again, it's going to be authentic to the reader that you're not putting in a checklist of things to try to get the Shirley Jackson Award, or to try to get that Edgar Allan.
So I think you have to be very honest and authentic with yourself. Then the questions that you have to start asking yourself are, how much of this am I potentially okay with changing? Is this vision something that's malleable? Or is this something that I really want to keep the way that it is?
Because when you go commercial, if you're writing like this bizarre or weird thing, one, it might not be able to be commercial, so your reach might not be as big.
But if you go to an indie publisher, and they love how bizarre and weird it is, and you know that this is the right fit, and that they are going to scream it from the top of the mountains, your reach might be smaller, but that word of mouth and once it finds that nice group of people, it will explode.
Think about what your goals are and what your personal artist statement is with that project, and constantly be having that evolving discussion with yourself from book to book or project to project so you can see where the best fit is. A commercial publisher may put it out, but it may not go to the right audience. Like more people might have access to it, but it might miss the people that the indie publisher could have directly targeted.
So I think it's a very complicated conversation, which I think is why it's so important, kind of like we were talking before, like you want to find your tribe, you want to find your people, you want to find a really good editor, you want somebody that you can trust to give you good feedback and that can kind of help have these kind of rolling conversations with.
Then I think the awards find you, honestly. Because again, if they meet the right readers, and they're in the hands of the right people, you'll get the return on profit, the return on interest that you're putting out into the publishing world.
Joanna: You talk there about finding your people, and you're really active in the horror community and the Horror Writers Association.
You mentioned StokerCon, before, and we were talking before the recording, and I was like I had a ticket when it was in the UK, but I haven't been. I've been a member of the Horror Writers Association for a few years.
But I wondered, what are the benefits for authors who are listening who might be like, “Oh, I don't know. I mean, I'd love to find my people, but how do I know?”
What are the benefits for authors to be involved with the community of writers, not just to be seeking readers? Stephanie: Yeah, there are countless, surely.
So I've been an active member of the Horror Writers Association for 10-plus years now. And I'm not being hyperbolic when I say this, like it has truly changed and enriched my life in so many ways.
It's also very different from when I attended my first World Horror Convention, like years and years ago, where it still felt a little bit cliquey. Like I was very shy, I didn't know exactly where I fit in.
Now when I go, as kind of somebody who's been to a lot of the cons and I see new people come in, like it is so welcoming and inspiring. Nobody's going to let anybody be sitting in a corner. They're going to bring you to the bar, they're going to bring you to dinner, they're going to bring you in conversations.
There's just such a general excitement to be around people who just get it and who know those feeling. So I think in terms of finding your people, you truly can't find a better convention, a better organization of people who are just going to be there to support you.
Beyond the like lovey-dovey approach to this, there are so many educational opportunities for new writers and for professional writers. The HWA offers so many different scholarships for poetry, for nonfiction writing, they have diversity grants, they have the Scholarship From Hell that they give out to fund somebody to go to StokerCon and get the hotels and everything.
They have a mentorship program where, let's say you wanted to start writing poetry, but like you don't know where to start, they can pair you up with somebody who's been working in poetry for years, and they can work one-on-one with you. They have stuff for young adult writing, like they just added a middle grade section to the Stoker ballot.
The HWA is getting more inclusive and more diverse. I mean, they have a mental health initiative where they're constantly having rolling discussions around self-care and how mental health is being depicted in horror.
I could go on and on and on. There are just so many facets of the organization that are there to support you, protect you, educate you, and just kind of mold you into the writer that you want to be. So I truly cannot recommend it enough. It has changed my life. It has given me so many opportunities. I've got editing experience for them. I got scholarships that funded certain projects and books that I've been working on. It's wonderful, just period. It's wonderful.
Joanna: You totally sold me! I guess for people listening, it doesn't have to be the Horror Writers Association, it can be another genre organization. Like wherever you feel, like you said, find your people, and I mean, it's the people who accept the type of thing that you write. So I'm not going to fit at a romance writing conference.
Stephanie: Me neither!
Joanna: Even though there is a crossover, you know. People do write horror-romance or whatever. But yeah, I mean, I think that's the reality. We're all weird, aren't we?
We're all weird in our own little worlds. It's nice to hang out with people who are weird in the same way. Stephanie: Yes. Or teach us to be weird in different ways.
Joanna: That's fantastic.
So where can people find you, and your books, and everything you do online?
Stephanie: You can go to my website, which is StephanieMWytovich.com. I have a blog that you can access from that page where I host poet interviews and I do a monthly writing recap.
I'm on social media everywhere as SWytovich. Then I also have a horror bookstagram account that you can find at thehauntedbookshelf. Then my books are available anywhere that books are sold.
Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Stephanie. That was great.
Stephanie: Thank you so much. This is wonderful.
The post Writing Poetry In The Dark With Stephanie Wytovich first appeared on The Creative Penn.
How can you build an author business for the long term, and not just for the launch of one book? How do you ensure secure cash flow and profits, instead of focusing on short-term spike sales? Joe Solari discusses key aspects of your author business.
In the intro, Kobo Plus expands to audiobooks in Australia & New Zealand; Thoughts on the changing publishing environment based on Thrillerfest Audios (well worth buying!), and you can book for Thrillerfest 2024 here; Letter to the FTC from The Authors Guild, American Booksellers Association and the Open Markets Institute on Amazon dominance in the industry.
Plus, my next book for authors Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words will be out on Kickstarter in October, sign up for the pre-launch here; Great examples of creative extras in Sara Rosett's campaign Murder in the Alps; and I'm on the Travelling Through Podcast on a walk and talk along the canal.
Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with Scrivener, ProWritingAid will help you improve your bookbeforeyou send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 25% off the premium edition atwww.ProWritingAid.com/joanna
Joe Solari helps authors build great businesses through books, courses, podcasting, as well as strategy and operations consulting. He is the author of Advantage: Harnessing Cumulative Advantage in the Winner Takes All Publishing Market and May I Have a Moment of Your Attention: How to Be Heard in a Noisy Market.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- Can every author learn to be a business person?
- Budgeting as an author and solving cashflow issues
- Business models for fiction vs nonfiction authors
- Managing the problem of scale as your audience grows
- Thinking longer term with asset creation
- Using reader data to make more direct sales
- The future of 50Booksto50k
You can find Joe at JoeSolari.com and more about his future conferences at AuthorVenturesLLC.com
Transcript of Interview with Joe Solari Joanna: Joe Solari helps authors build great businesses through books, courses, podcasting, as well as strategy and operations consulting. He is the author of Advantage: Harnessing Cumulative Advantage in the Winner Takes All Publishing Market and May I Have a Moment of Your Attention: How to Be Heard in a Noisy Market. So welcome to the show, Joe.
Joe: Thanks for having me on, Joanna. This is great.
Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you. As I mentioned before we started recording, we've kind of circled around each other online for years, and I'm so glad to finally talk to you.
Joe: Yeah, there's been some near misses. Like, oh, we may be at the same event, and then COVID comes or who knows.
Joanna: Absolutely. For those people who might not have heard of you—
Tell us a bit more about how you got into writing and business for authors. Joe: Sure, sure. The funny thing is, there's nothing you could have ever done to prepare yourself for what I do today, like this didn't exist 10 years ago. So it's funny to kind of look back and understand the process.
My background, I've got an undergrad in art from the Art Institute of Chicago. So I've got a creative background. I've got a master's in business administration from University of Chicago. So I have this strange mix of creative and analytical, and I've been entrepreneurial my whole life. So I've owned and operated multiple businesses.
What specifically got me into publishing, was my wife decided to write some books, some nonfiction books about styling. At the time, I was really busy with a startup business in the oil and gas industry, so I was like completely not even thinking about books, and she was having issues. This was like 2013/2014, so you remember how fun it was to try and get a book uploaded or do anything on these platforms.
She had some technical issues, I came in to help, and when I looked in her KDP account, there was $4,000. I was like, oh, this is interesting for a book about t-shirt and jeans to make $4,000 in a month. I need to know more about this.
I started listening to your podcast and I started listening to Mark's. It's interesting thinking back then, there wasn't a lot of stuff that I could find, most of the good stuff was actually coming out of the UK, people that were really kind of the leaders in the self-publishing piece. So that was where I was learning.
Then when I sold that business, I decided to write a book, because if my wife could, why couldn't I? It was a book about business for creatives.
And like most nonfiction books, it didn't sell a whole lot. Of the copies I did sell, it seemed like most of them were to this group called 20Booksto50k, and I had authors reaching out to me asking me questions.
So I went into this group, and at the time I think they were about 7000 people, which was huge, right? They're 10 times that now, and I started helping them answer business questions.
Where the real magic of what I do today happened was at that first 20Books. So I went to that conference, I was asked to speak there, and I saw this opportunity of there were authors that were making a lot of money—I had no idea that a fiction author could make that kind of money—but they didn't even have the basics of business strategies or structure set up.
So they were very tax inefficient, there was liability exposure, there was all kinds of things that me as a business person just made my skin crawl.
So I picked up the phone, and I was standing in Sam's Town, and I called my business partner Lisa, who's a CPA, and I said, “I'm at this conference, and this is what's going on. There's this amazing opportunity. I feel like I'm sitting on courtside for this amazing thing, this golden age of content unfolding in front of me. I think we could help these people by helping them organize their businesses.” And she's like, “Well, I'm up for it.” And I came away with three clients.
So today what I'm doing, the bulk of the work is Lisa and I are helping authors that are very successful to be better in how they operate their business and understand why—this is a big part of this—is why are they doing what they're doing today.
Not just like their love for writing, but like once you get successful, really understanding what your goals are in your life. Not using the goals of the industry, but like —
What's going to get you up every morning to really work on that business and write those books? Joanna: Oh, that's fantastic. I love that. I also was actually in oil and gas, but my last consulting job was with a mining company, but I also worked at gas companies in Australia. So It's kind of funny that we had that little intersection.
But I also came out of business of 13 years IT consulting, and I arrived as well, in sort of 2008 I started, but you know, really when indie started taking off.
I was really quite shocked by how little business information and knowledge there was in the industry. What's so funny is I also published a book called Business for Authors, and nobody bought it. Nobody. Like maybe 10 people bought that book. So it's funny that you also wrote the same book.
Joe: Yeah, and I sold it to the other six.
Joanna: Exactly. Maybe they bought both of our books.
Joe: They probably bought both. We probably duplicated the market.
Joanna: I'm sure we did because mine also covers things, you know, just covers things that you would get in like an MBA. Then what I realized is that many authors don't want to run a business.
So I actually repackaged some of that information and rewrote it as How To Make A Living With Your Writing, which is one of my top selling nonfiction books.
So what's so interesting was reframing things from running a business to making money. You and I would think, okay, that that seems quite similar, but so this is where my question is, which is, I have found that most authors they want to write, they want to make money, but they don't want to run a business. So I wondered—
Are some people just not suited to business? Or is this something that you think every single person can learn?
Joe: So what I've observed being around this, I think one thing is there's this kind of mythology that like, oh, well, if you're a creative, you can't be good at business. And actually, that's completely wrong.
Creativity is a huge part of entrepreneurship. You're taking something that doesn't exist, it's ideas in your head, and you're turning it into some type of solution or entertainment for people that they're prepared to give you cash for.
You're manifesting physical things into the real world from your creativity. And you're doing it because one of the things is you want to get paid. So that's a very creative process.
So I think one thing is just a mindset change of like, no, actually, the best entrepreneurs are people that are creative.
Then there's, well, I just don't like all this numbers stuff and these thing. Well, you have to look at that stuff as just kind of tools in a toolbox, that even if you're weak in, if you get some level of strength, you're going to be a lot stronger. You have to do this if you want to make money from your writing.
If you just want to write a book because it's in your soul, and it needs to get out in the world, and you don't care about selling it, you don't have to worry about the commercial aspects of your business.
But once you set that framework of, I want to make money, I want to make a living from this, whatever amount that is, then you have to start doing this. You've made a decision. You've started a business. You can't deny that fact, because you're expecting to bring money in, you're gonna have expenses and things you're gonna have to pay, and have a profit. So you can't not do it. It's inherent to the whole thing.
When you start to think about some of the stuff that I talk about, how those tools help you, then you become more successful. Maybe I should put it a different way, not that you're going to be more successful, you're eliminating a lot of the risks and the things that wipe out businesses.
The number one reason that most businesses fail — and this isn't just author businesses, this is across the board — is they run out of money. So what if you solve that problem?
What if you thought through budgeting and making sure that you had the money to publish the books you want to publish?
It may require you to save more money or take money out of your 401K or superannuation, whatever it might be that you have to do to do that. Those become business decisions that make your chance of being successful in publishing higher.
Joanna: I totally agree. And as you were talking, I was like, he's gonna say cash flow.
And, I mean, just earlier today, I paid some taxes, and I was working with my accountant for last month's accounts. It's like these are just things you do, and if you don't do them, then it is a hobby, basically.
Even if you're traditionally published, you still need to know these things because there's still money involved, and you don't want to end up out of pocket and essentially going bankrupt because you can't pay your bills.
It kind of drives me nuts when I hear people who say they just don't want to do any of that stuff because, like you said, it's kind of elimination of risk, but also, once you've set a lot of these processes up, it's not that big a deal.
It just seems like there's this big hump of knowledge that you need to know in order to set it all up, and then you can just get back to writing your books and kind of plugging it into the system.
Joe: Absolutely, and the other part of this thing is sometimes authors will think, well, this is kind of an author thing. No, it's a small business thing.
If you and I decided we were going to start an insurance company selling insurance together, and we might be the two best insurance salespeople in a company we are working in, and we then decide, well, we're gonna go start our own company because we're better than these other people. Like we may still be the best salespeople, but now we're also business owners, and we have to think about, oh, well, we got a secretary we have to pay, we have rent for our office, and we're not good in those things.
We can sit down with somebody and sell them insurance, but if one of us doesn't have those strengths to manage that stuff, then that's constantly going to be a distraction to what we're good at. Those things don't go away.
Like, the landlord will lock us out of our building if we don't pay his rent. The tax man will come and take our house if we don't pay. You can't deny these things have to be done.
Joanna: Like you said, we are just small businesses, we're not that special.
Let's get into some of the mistakes that authors make, and this is probably the one I would say is that we think we're special somehow and that the rules of business don't apply to us.
And yes, we need the mindset of creativity, and I do my affirmations like other people, but when it comes to accounting, and tax and business setup, I do all of that in a very practical way.
What are some of the other big mistakes you see authors making in terms of business? Joe: I think the big one we kind of touched on. I look at this as, okay, if I know that 50% of all businesses fail in their first five years, and I want to go through and identify all the high-risk items and reduce them, and the single biggest one is running out of money.
So do you make a budget for what it's going to take you, not just to get your first book published, but to get through seven to twelve books?
Because the reality of it is for your author career to get through to its breakeven phase, and to start making profit that can support you, that's really how long it takes.
I've got clients that are netting over a million dollars every year, but when you go back and look, they went through that same period of, they wrote their first book, and then they wrote another seven to twenty, maybe even more than that, before they found their voice and found their audience.
So like, if you're not thinking that you're going to have to go through that, then you're just unrealistic because everybody has to.
You have to get your product right, which is the book. Then you have to find the audience that's going to commit to that.
The other thing you touched on with the cash flow is that it's an incredibly difficult business when you think about how the payment structures work, especially if you're a big advertiser.
You have to pay that advertising immediately. You know, in some cases, they're charging your credit card every couple of days, and then you have to wait 60 days for that money to come in. You have to be able to get through those periods and continue to service your whole business, including paying you, the employee.
I think that gets to another layer of this thing, and that is letting go of some of the ideas of success in the industry.
Like we throw around the idea—and I'm guilty of this as well—like talking about being a six or seven-figure author. I mean, it's part of our language that helps us understand success. But you could sell a million dollars’ worth of books and be on poverty wages in this industry.
You could be spending all your money on marketing and advertising and promotion and barely take anything home. But still people are like, “Wow, look at how many books you're selling. Look at where you're ranking.”
Well, our model is how profitable your business is.
We have this thing we call Author Royalties Kept, so it's the idea of how much you take home out of every dollar. So most author businesses that I've looked at, and I've looked at a lot of big authors, they'll be somewhere around single digits to maybe 15 cents on the dollar, so 15% profit. Our average in our group is 44 cents.
You don't need to sell as many books and you make a lot more money when you start to design a business around the idea of profitability. So maybe I don't sell as many books, but I'm not just exchanging dollars for advertising dollars. I'm really focused on different metrics in my business around profitability versus top-line sales. That's a big one for me.
Joanna: Yeah, me too. I mean, I've always been more interested in the profit. We're gonna come back on that.
But I just want to circle back to when you talked about the seven to twelve books, to write those, and that people have this unrealistic view, and I still hear it all the time. You know, write the book and get a book deal and hit the charts and make a million and retire.
I remember thinking that myself when I wrote my first book, that's what I thought would happen. But I mean, the seven to twelve books model, I think you're talking more about fiction. The nonfiction model can be fewer books, but adding on other services or speaking or courses.
The models are quite different for fiction to nonfiction.
Joe: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I think it's funny because I'll get people that are writing a nonfiction book, and they'll come to me because they know the business I'm in and what I can do, and they'll be like, well, how can I make this book like a number one bestseller?
And I'm like, well, let's change the premise of this whole thing.
What do you want? What is the objective of getting this book out? Because if it's trying to get to be number one in the Amazon store, that's going to be really tough. Like, maybe you can pull it off in a category, but when you think about nonfiction versus fiction.
I explain to them, like, my clients have lists with 100,000 names on them. They sell hundreds of books, they've got a massive audience, and they're going to be launching on the same day you do.
So if you think you're going to beat them in the store on that day, you're crazy. But what do you want to do to get busy?
And then they'll say, well, really, what I want to do is I want to show that I'm an expert, and I really want to get speaking engagements, or about people see that I think about financial services in a different way and I want to manage their money.
Then it's like, oh, well see now, that's what we want to do.
We want to use the book as a funnel to bring those people into your world because Amazon really is just a search engine. It's the third largest search engine. We just happen to think about it like a store, but it's actually really a super archaic search engine that we have our credit card information in and we tend to buy stuff there.
So now you have a new platform where people can find you, and your book, if it's done right, is going to show you that you have this expertise in the space, and that you have a solution.
In my case, I always say that you should give them the DIY solution there. It's like, here's how you do it yourself, and then it becomes a funnel for the people that are like, yeah, well, you told me how to do it, but I want you to do it for me because you really know what you're doing, and I have the money to pay you to do it right the first time. So that's kind of my model.
I think there's things, you know, especially if we start talking about direct stuff, there's things that fiction authors can look into the nonfiction world and see, oh, yeah, there is other revenue streams here that I can tap into than just selling a book.
Joanna: Yes, and let's talk about the direct stuff and come back on what you said earlier around the cashflow problem with ads.
So let's say you spend your money on Amazon ads or Facebook ads, and then you don't get paid until Amazon sends you the money at the end of the 60-day cycle or whatever, but you have to pay for those ads earlier.
Whereas if you sell direct — so I'm using Shopify now — then you get paid immediately in a lot of cases, or within minutes, which I just find quite magical.
So thus your cash flow is much, much easier, plus your profit margin can be a lot higher on things like print books, plus you can do bundles, you can do merchandise, all these things.
So this is one of the big trends in the author space right now is selling direct. Now, I've been selling direct since I started, but in a small way. It seems like many authors are now starting to sort of pick this as a more primary method.
What are your thoughts on selling direct? How are you advising clients about that? Joe: Sure, and most of my clients, if they're not already selling direct, they have really active direct strategies.
I'm going to take a little bit of a detour here because I think it's even more important. Well, it's equally as important as the cashflow piece, the cashflow piece is really significant.
I'll give you some hardcore examples of data that we've seen with people shifting over to direct, but there's another thing that I think is even more significant in the world that we're in in publishing. That is by going direct, you get a one-to-one relationship with your audience.
This whole economy is built on what I call the reader-writer relationship. If there aren't writers writing stories and readers that are prepared to exchange money for those stories, none of this stuff exists. There is no publishing, there's no Amazon, there's no ads, there's none of that stuff.
That's the symbiotic relationship that the entire ecosystem is built on. We're the honey bees that pollinate all the flowers and keep the environment going.
The more we cut out middlemen, two things happen.
One is the profit piece, but the other thing is you can deliver the experience that you want to deliver.
And in the end, like books are a medium for an experience, right? Whether you listen to a book or you read a book, you know, you're telling a story, and somebody's experiencing that story.
The more that you have control over the things around that experience, so like when they come to your website, you can do things that you can't do on anybody else's sales platform.
It can be on-brand for you. Like, it can be all about your characters and story world, whatever you want it to be, you have 100% control over that.
And that, for me, becomes the most important thing to differentiate yourself going into this marketplace in the future is— How are people seeing you versus other people?
Oh, you write epic fantasy, and when I go to your website, there's all these cool pictures, and things about your characters. Your emails come to me, they're written by this old wizard that sees the whole world, and I feel like I'm more and more immersed in that world. Because for fiction people, that's an entertainment thing.
On the flip side, and you're doing both with what you have set up, but on your nonfiction side, people can come there and you can really clearly articulate to them what your brand promises around where you're gonna help them write.
Like, hey, I've been doing this for a long time writing books, these are the things that I can help you learn how to do to be a better business person and think of things creatively. or some of your other stuff like, hey, I went on this trip, it was really cool, here's pictures.
Some people just like reading about those trips. Other people buy that book because they're like, oh, I was thinking about this, let me read this book and understand, like, what do I need to do to be prepared? Like, all these things make that relationship better, and that's what your money comes from is your relationship with that audience.
Your creative content is worthless without people prepared to pay for it. Joanna: So interesting. I was thinking there back to when I first learned about the whole internet business side of things. And back in 2007/2008, there were a lot of sucky, scammy things. I mean, there still are, there always are.
Joe: That won't stop.
Joanna: Yeah, exactly. There will always be that.
But I was just really happy to be attracted to a group of people in the blogosphere, as it was known back then, which was all about people and the relationship. I remember being taught that traffic, you know, stop talking about traffic, it's people.
That's something that sometimes perhaps we forget, and you're exactly right.
I'll tell you what a problem is then for many of us, including myself, being an introvert, I know I find ‘peopling' quite difficult.
Let's just take one example, when you send an email to a bigger list who are engaged with you, you get a lot of email back. Now I'm saying this, and to people listening, I love getting emails that are wonderful. There's a lot of other email that is not wonderful.
But this is a problem, it's almost the problem of scale. One of the reasons I hear people say, “Oh, well, I'm just gonna use Amazon. It's just easier. I don't have to deal with customers. I don't have to deal with the relationship.”
So what are your thoughts on that? Because I definitely have this fear, which is if I scale, if I have more people who buy my book, say my fiction, particularly—
Then how do I deal with the problem of scale when selling direct? Joe: Yeah, I hear this a lot, and I'll come at this a couple of different ways.
So let's take email because I think that's one of the most powerful tools you can have for your marketing. And you think about it, what are we trying to do? We're trying to find people like to read stuff.
Well, emails are words, and you're an author, you're in the business of writing words. Why do you break out in hives when you have to write this email? Well, it's because you're trying to be a digital marketer. You're probably trying to get your someplace that you shouldn't be, like trying to sell stuff. And nobody likes to be sold, right?
We buy all the time. In fact, there's not a buying decision that I've ever made that I haven't completely rationalized no matter how insane it is, prior to me spending the money.
I think that's true especially for fiction, people that are avid readers, is once they read your book, and the book is what sells future books, they're most likely sitting around, like, just go write another book, Joanna. I'll buy it, and you just keep writing, and I'll keep buying.
It's that part up front where it's like we're trying to get people to try that book, and we're trying to get people to understand our brand promise.
If you instead come from that, from the perspective of, listen, I'm not going to be very personal in this, I'm going to make this about my story experience. So maybe you create an avatar or a special character that becomes your marketing person. That could be an actual character that's in your books.
Make it fun and make it part of your storytelling because if those emails just ooze with your creative style and your narrative voice, then every one of those emails gets people to buy in more.
Joanna: So for me personally, sending emails is not a problem. It's the amount I get in return that is the problem.
The problem of scale, as authors, you know, if you have a goal to sell millions of books, and you also have the “problem” of dealing personally, unless you then employ people.
But what you're talking about is the personal relationship side of things. So that's the bit that becomes unmanageable. Other people do it through Facebook or social media or TikTok, and—
What I feel is unmanageable for a lot of authors, is the need to interact with readers. Joe: Yeah, well, I always go to the quote from Godfather Two, you know, “This is the business we've chosen.”
Like, there's some things you're going to have to do if you want that goal. It's like, hey, I want to make whatever it is that I need to make a living as an author. Well, then you need to have an audience and you have to keep those people around.
Now, to your point, if you have the high-class problem that you have a massive list and mass amount of people, then you can hire somebody, even if it's on a virtual assistant kind of contract basis, and focus really on the idea of, how do I build a process that gets this person to respond in my voice? You have to think about this, like, okay, I'm not going to do this, and I need to help this person who is going to do it, do it in the way that is on brand.
What is my brand promise? What do people expect from my books when they read them? And if you can't articulate that, then how would you expect a virtual assistant to articulate that or execute it? So I think there's some things you can do, because that there's two parts of this, right? It's what happens with scale, right? So the other choice is don't scale.
Joanna: Exactly. Yeah.
Joe: And I think that that's an okay choice for some people. The other thing—this is a little bit of a tangent, but it's super, super important—is thinking that an author business just goes up and to the right in growth is insane.
It's just a fallacy. It's just a cyclical business. You were in oil and gas or mining, those are very cyclical businesses. It's driven by the commodity price.
In the publishing market, it's driven by multiple things. It's like people's interest in certain genres, pop culture shifts, your creative well filling up and drying out, where you are in series. All these things contribute to ups and downs in your business.
The idea is quit focusing on the highest high, and look at where you establish your plateaus. So after a launch, where do things settle out in your business? Is it higher than it was before? Your business is growing.
I think, and this comes from a lot of the marketing people out there, is like, well, there's gonna be this one launch where things just go and take off and go forever.
No, because I've got authors that have had those seminal moments where they write that book that brings in a 10x audience, but now the scales just changed, right? Their base is bigger, their highs are bigger, but there's still highs and lows.
If you build a business around the highs, then you're gonna go back to the earlier problems we're talking about. You're gonna have personal cashflow issues because there are always lows.
We look at the pendulum swing that we've seen with COVID, when COVID was coming, I looked at all my author's businesses and designed budgets of if they lost 20% of their sales. Because usually when you have something like that there's a business loss. Ironically, or strangely, author businesses, because they shut down, shot up.
Joanna: Yeah, we had a really good year. But then, of course, it leveled out again, right?
Joe: Well, the pendulum swung, right?
And now it's like, I can't sell books, what's going on? It's like, well, everybody's out of their house. They're sick of being in their house reading. So they're out. They may just be standing in the backyard staring at the sun. I don't know, but there are other things they want to do right now.
You have no control over that. You could spend as much as you want on advertising, you can try and white knuckle this thing, and you'll just burn up money. Understand that there are ups and downs.
Like you mentioned, you were in mining, the companies that tend to be the most successful are the ones that are really disciplined during the downturns.
Or I should say, that are really disciplined during the boom times and prepared to take advantage of the downturns. I think authors need to think the same way.
We're going through a period right now, and we were kind of talking a little bit about it before we got on the recording, is —
There's kind of one of these big shifts in the market that's occurring now. The people that are going to get through this may not be the ones that are at the top of the market right now. That's just how industry works.
I live in Chicago. Sears Roebuck was the biggest retailer, and everybody, in some respect, in and around Chicago had some affiliation with Sears. Amazon eliminated them. They're gone.
One time, the world's tallest building was the Sears Tower. It's the Willis Tower now. They may even change its name again.
To think that that's not going to happen to Amazon's business or your business, if you're not very deliberate in what you do, in my view, is a little foolish.
Joanna: Yes, so interestingly, a few years back now, Jeff Bezos was on the Charlie Rose US Show, whatever that is, and talked about how Amazon would be disrupted.
And it's so interesting, I mean, we're not necessarily there yet, but it does kind of feel with a lot of the pressures in the US with the antitrust side of things, the AI generated content.
And there, I'm not talking about real authors who use AI, but there's a lot of content flooding the stores, so it's even harder to be noticed in that big store.
The control of the experiences you mentioned, so you're not just advertising other people's books all the time. I mean, there's definitely disruption ahead. It's so funny, maybe we need to do a show on lessons learned from the mining business.
The other thing I was thinking as you were talking is this long-term thinking.
So when I worked in mining, they were looking at mining sites that wouldn't come on board for decades because it takes so long to generate an asset that will bring you money in the future, or that you hope will bring you money in the future.
I feel like this is another issue, perhaps more so, in the indie author space because people expect immediate results. Whereas actually —
To have a long-term business that works, you need to have that long-term thinking. How do you think authors can be like that and think longer term around asset creation and business rules?
Joe: Sure, sure. So I'll give you a really good example of this, and it's something that I talk about in my books, is the majority of marketing that you hear for authors today is focused on the one-click voracious buyer.
My best estimate is that that's somewhere between 5% and 15% of the marketplace. So most people are not the kind of person that's going to see an ad on Facebook and go right to Amazon and click and buy and then read through your whole series, right?
So just the idea that, let's say it's 15%, that means that 85% of the market, so what's that, like four times larger, you're not addressing unless you build a marketing system that addresses those people.
So that long-term thinking, is like, oh, yeah, when you look at all the studies, most of those people that do show intent to buy, buy something in 90 days or longer. Whether it's a car or house or a coffee pot or a book, whatever it is, and I don't have any way to address that because my whole marketing system is about me showing you an ad and you buying that book now, and I don't do anything else.
So if I build a marketing system for those other people, and I automate that where they're self-nurturing, and they're retaining, and they're doing things on their timeframe, that compounds in the background. And all of a sudden, my business takes off.
Then they're like, well, how did you do it? It's like, well, because I did all this background work to build this system and write all these emails and do these things that help people to understand my brand promise.
I spent a lot of time just getting to read a free book. I then nurtured them through my first series with emails, and I did all this stuff that then turned them into a customer for life.
So I think that that, you know, how often do you hear anybody talking about that? You've been around longer than me.
Joanna: Well, not much in the author space. But of course, the customer journey is much more commonly talked about in other industries.
I mean, even I think course creators, which many listeners do create courses, I think there's more of it there. It's possibly because of the higher profit margin, I think maybe this has something to do with it.
Let's say, you sell a course for $300, right, even if you're running ads on that, maybe you're making $250 after you take your costs out. With books, I mean, the profit margin might be higher, especially if you sell direct, but the actual amount is pretty low.
So I think maybe that accounts for some of the issues with authors thinking short term is that it's a volume game.
So you think I need to sell a lot of volume, so I need to do this, click, click, click, click, click, as opposed to think longer term.
I mean, one of the things I've become more aware of with Shopify direct sales is this customer value idea, which we haven't been able to measure really before.
I think that's part of the problem, this ownership of the data, the ownership of the relationship, is something that we've only had sort of one step removed through email, if someone signs up to email.
But otherwise, that's all belonged to Amazon, and Apple, and Kobo and all those other sites. So I think that kind of explains it. But obviously—
We need to shift our perspective in order to be more successful. Joe: Yeah, I'll give you an example of that.
So one of my clients, I work with JN Chaney, who's a wildly successful science fiction writer, very heavy in KU.
We're pivoting his business into direct sales, and an even bigger focus on audio. The conclusion we came to is we're going to do a direct audio store, audio only. We built that from scratch, had a massive list of superfans, and we did not touch that list.
We started from scratch because what we did as a design was, hey, we're looking for a completely different customer. We're looking for people that listen to science fiction and are going to spend a lot of money on audio.
These are the kinds of people that have no problem spending. And we know now from the data, because we're doing this on a direct site, they're spending up to $1,000 a year on audio, because we've targeted the right people.
That cost a lot of money and time to do that. We probably could have gotten a quicker result that would have looked cool and we could have been talking about it at shows if we just took his list and said, “Come over here and by direct audio.” But what we did is we designed an experience for people that said, “Hey, if you're into science fiction, and you're comfortable doing things direct, here's this solution for you.”
We know after the first book how many books is going to be written in that series, Jeff co-writes with a lot of authors.
So let's say we determined after book one, we're going to have a nine book series. When we launch book two, we launch also a bundle of books two through nine, even though those books haven't been written or recorded. And we give that as our best bundle discount.
So we're kind of like pre-selling the whole series. Our biggest customers will one-click buy that. Like that's what they want, and because of the technology, we know how to target those people. We can see those that buying behavior me and say, “Hey, new series, space opera. It's gonna be nine books, you interested? Here you go.”
Now look at how we just changed the economics of that business.
Now we're getting hundreds of dollars up front before we've even written the books. We're creating our own advances, and our customers are excited because they know they're going to have this series that's going to go for a while.
Most of these people are doing a lot of commuting or have a lot of time to listen, so like, this is the experience they want, and they're loving it.
I think that gets to the heart of what you were talking about of like thinking long term. Like—
What is it that you can bring to the market and to your customers? Amazon's not thinking about that, they've got their own problems.
Joanna: Yeah, and I mean, their business could be AWS and Ads. That could be where they are. Or could just be AWS or who knows what it's going to be.
Joe: Let's be real about this. So you're talking about what's broken, like the only thing that's making them money right now is ads. I should say it differently. The only thing that's growing right now is ads.
AWS is a mature business. They're slugging it out with Microsoft, and Oracle, and Google, like, that is not a fun business to be in now. They've lost some big contracts.
So and then there's their sales piece, they never made money selling product. I mean, I've been watching their results since its inception.
The only money that they've made selling stuff they've reinvested in China and India and lost it. So that makes a couple of things really hard for us as authors, is like, they're going to be very focused on getting more and more people advertising.
There's only so much space on that platform for them to sell ads. So are they going to consume more of your sales page? Probably. Is that the experience you want for your customer?
Joanna: Just for people listening, I have been talking about this for a few years now, but I feel like things have become almost more urgent as the change starts to speed up.
When I started this, which is why I've always sold direct, even of a small amount of my books, is independence.
We're independent authors. We should have always been building something that was ours. So what's happened now is that over the last 15 years that I've been doing this, the technology's got better and better and better and better. There was no way you could have built a direct audio store 15 years ago.
Joe: Not even 10 years ago. Five years ago you could if you wanted to throw a lot of money at it.
Joanna: Exactly.
And also, it is getting easier—I'd say it's not easy, as in, if you're going to do it yourself, you need to learn new skills.
But this is what's so interesting, I really feel right now that I'm almost learning an entirely new business, in terms of the products are the same, and I've got my backlist, I've got the product, but the way I'm now thinking about the direct sales first, it's really challenging to shift away from some of the things that have been ingrained in us for the last 15 years of being indie.
So I just want to encourage people listening, if the penny hasn't dropped yet, it might take a while. But I feel like what you're saying and what I'm saying what a lot of people are saying—
The ship is starting to turn. I mean, you must be seeing a lot more clients who are thinking this way as well.
Joe: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. So my approach to this is like, you know, you talk to any author, it's like, well, you want like all the readers, right? And they're like, yeah, of course. I want all the readers I can get.
It's like, okay, well, you've done a really good job in Kindle Unlimited. You're making more money than you could ever imagine there.
Those people have a value proposition that's working for them. They pay a subscription, they get the books they want to read, everything's working there. They are not the ones you're looking to bring on to your direct sales platform.
It's not just about moving people off, it's thinking about who are the customers that you don't have today that you could serve there better, and then build it that way. Build it to serve those people.
Then the other part of this thing, I think, where we get wrapped around the axle in the industry, it's like, well, it's an either or. It's like, no, it's —
It's not an either/or. How do you extract the value from the audience in sequence? So maybe the strategy is, for example, the first thing I do is I launch on Kickstarter, and I sell my books there, and there's a product there, then I move them to direct for a period of time, then I go wide.
Then the last place I go, is I put those books into KU and take them off my other platforms.
I like that strategy because what it's doing is it's saying, hey, I think my books are worth let's say, $9.99. That's when I'm going to sell them on Kickstarter, and I'm going to sell them for $8.99 on my website to give people a deal, and then I'm going to sell them at $9.99 over at these other places.
Then when I've kind of worn this series out or this book out, and I want to discount it, well, I'll go put it over in KU because hey, you know, Amazon's decided what I'm getting paid over there. And they say my book is worth $1.54. So they're not going to get it until I feel it's worth $1.54.
Joanna: Also, I think part of the setting things up for the longer term is, like you mentioned email, but I've got so many books now, it's having these funnels and the various links, so I want things to be on my store for the longer term.
But I think the point is what you just said, and I did that earlier this year. So with Pilgrimage, I did a Kickstarter, then I did direct only for my Shopify store for another two months or something, and then I put it out wide.
So I kind of did it in that order, which is the first time I've ever done it entirely that way. And yeah, I made far more money than I would have done if I just had released it the way I usually release things.
So I guess we need to be coming to a close soon, but just tell people what they can find on your sites. We'll come back to a conference thing in a minute. I don't want people to think that you're going to necessarily solve all these problems for people.
Tell people what they can find on your website and in your books. Joe: Sure, sure. So if you go to JoeSolari.com, that's my website.
There's a couple of things that I think would be interesting. First off, if they go to JoeSolari.com/AMA, they'll go to my Author Marketing Audit, which is a free 20 question audit that you rate yourself in these different areas.
These are 20 elements that I think are vital to an author's marketing. When they go through that, and you'll get a score, then if you want, you can sign up for an email, and I'll help you improve that score. What I know is, is if you work on these areas, these elements, and improve them, you will sell more books. And you'll build systems that are sustainable and address a lot of the stuff we've talked about.
That comes out of these books that I've written. So there's Advantage, which is pretty theoretical. It was like me understanding how the publishing market really works, and the dynamics of a winner take all market.
And then Attention is really like, well, how do you apply that stuff? So there's those kinds of things book wise, there's some core stuff there to help you do that.
One of the things that I offer is you can sign up for office hours with me. I do those on Thursday mornings, I have a couple hours. Even if you haven't written a book, if you want to set up a call with me, you can do that. I bring this up for two reasons. One, I've always offered that. Two is, this is an example for nonfiction people of a way of thinking about marketing differently.
So I'm on a podcast, and I offer people to set up calls with me. And you'd be like, well, why would you want to talk to somebody that's never written a book? It's like, because if I can help them solve problems and succeed, they have a higher probability of becoming the type of big-ticket client that I'm looking for.
I know this because it's actually happened where I've met with people at conferences, or through these calls, and they're just getting started, and I help them.
I charge a lot per hour, so these calls are not cheap for me as part of the business. And then a year and a half later, two years later, they come in and they hire me to work on their business, and now I'm charging that big rate.
And how I came to that conclusion is like, if I took that same money and gave it to Facebook to find clients, I would not get the same quality client. I would not get the same prospect, right?
So it's thinking about how maybe it costs more, but I get a better possibility of getting what I want in the future. So I think that's something also for your listeners, is like, you know, there's hours there to just connect with me and talk about their business.
Joanna: You have podcasts as well, don't you? You have a different audio option? Joe: I do, I do. I've got two podcasts. One where I talk to different people in the industry, then I'll put it out.
But I have another one that I do. I've got a newsletter that starts out as a paid subscription. So I do them in seasons, so I write 45 emails, it's all on a big kind of story-based topic thing talking about author business stuff. Those eventually, after they are done with the paid subscription, those get moved out onto the podcast.
My assistant takes that and uses a voice-to-text with my voice and turns it into a podcast. So I'm reusing that content over and over again in different ways so people can find it the way that they want.
Joanna: Are those all linked on your site? Or tell people where they can find those.
Joe: Just go to the site and start playing around. Yeah, it's all there. It's the easiest place to kind of figure out where you're at in your career and how I can help you. There's a lot of free stuff. There's also paid stuff.
My biggest caveat is if you're wondering what to spend money on as a new author, it should go to the product. It needs to go into the cover, the editing, to make sure that you put out a high quality product.
That needs to be before you spend money on anybody like me, or advertising, that's where your money needs to be.
Joanna: Absolutely. So I listened to some of your conversations with Craig Martelle. You've been doing stuff with him. That brings us to the very interesting news that—
You'll be taking over the Las Vegas author conference, rebranding away from 20Booksto50k eventually. So tell us about that and what you hope to achieve?
Joe: Sure, sure. So what Michael and Craig created is really special to me, because if you remember how we started this, I shared how I created this whole business out of an opportunity set that I saw at that show.
And I still believe this to this day, is like I'm sitting courtside for this amazing event of this golden age of content creation. We're just getting started, right?
You and I have been a little, hey, this is hard, that's hard, but in the grand scheme, like there's never been a time like this where people can actually find an audience and sell their daydreams and turn it into cold hard cash. So I'm still like pro get into this business.
So I've been friends with Craig since 2015 when I got involved with the group. Then I've always been at that show. Every year it's been on, I've been there.
And all the important relationships in this industry really developed out of that show. I've met my clients there, and then my clients have also met people there that had become either their co-writing partners, or maybe it was helping them get some information early in their career to give them that step up. It really has served an amazing service to the industry.
Michael's running a multimillion-dollar business that's unique in how it's set up. He's got only so much bandwidth. Craig, same thing. I've said this to him for years is if he quit doing that show, he would be making a lot more money as an author, but he's had this obligation to do that for the audience of authors.
So we've been talking about this for quite some time, and his health situation has escalated to the point where this makes a lot of sense. So that's why I'm doing this, is to make sure that what I got in 2017, that somebody can come to in 2024/25/26 and beyond and get that same thing.
So it's all in play now. I've set up a company, and we've signed the contract. So we now have the contracts for those future shows. This year, we're going to be doing the transition, and then in 2024, it'll be a new name. So if you want to know the new name, that's another thing. If you go to AuthorVenturesLLC.com, you can actually vote for the new name. We're running a survey.
Joanna: Awesome.
Joe: Yeah because that's a big part of this for me, is well I'm really well suited for the show management and taking the financial responsibility and optimization and all that business stuff that I love to do, the part that I want to make sure is in its DNA is the community, and the community being able to have the input so the show is what they want the show to be.
Like you've said multiple times here, this industry is changing so fast. And if this show doesn't keep up with that, then you know, it's adapt or die, in my view.
Joanna: Absolutely. Well, I think it's an exciting change.
You've got different skills, and there'll be different people coming, as well as the established community. So I think this is a really positive shift.
And obviously, who knows what the next few years are going to be like. But as you said, I've been doing this so long, and we've seen things come and go and change. So I'm really happy that this is shifting, as opposed to disappearing. I think that's a great result for the community. So thank you. I also know how much hard work these things are. I think you're bonkers, to be honest, but well done.
Joe: You're not the first person to say that to me. I've had that said to me in my house, on dog walks, I've had my clients say that.
One thing that anybody that knows me or has spent time around me, I love digging into stuff. I don't want to call it a problem, that's the wrong thing. It's not that it needs to be fixed, but it needs to be to that next generation of what it's going to be. I feel I'm really good at it, I have the capacity to lead people, and to get input and to do that, and that stuff jazzes me.
The cool thing about what I do today—I can write nonfiction, I can't write fiction—but I get to be working with some of the best people in the industry to create businesses.
There's no blueprint to follow, like we're building it as we go to take it to that next level. That gets me up every morning. That's what I love to do.
So this is kind of a much bigger version of it. I think that when you see some of the stuff that Craig and I have cooked up, and stuff that I've thought of, and the team that's already there, the volunteers are going to be doing now, 2024 is going to be crazy. It's going to be everything that you're used to with some stuff that's like, oh, of course, this is where we're going.
Joanna: Fantastic. So just one more time—
Tell people where they can find you online. Joe: Sure. So for kind of your personal author stuff, you want to learn more about me and how I can help you, go to JoeSolari.com.
If you're interested in learning more about what's going to happen with the new show, and there's all kinds of ways to express your interest if you want to volunteer, if you want to be on the list to know when the tickets open, you want to speak, you want to be at the reader event, you want to help us with the name of the show, go to AuthorVenturesLLC.com. And there are links there to go to all those things.
Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Joe. That was great.
Joe: Great to be here, Joanna. It's wonderful to finally get to hang out and talk shop.
The post Build A Successful Author Business For The Long Term With Joe Solari first appeared on The Creative Penn.
How can you create a book series that children love — and that you can expand into multiple streams of income? How can you offer a fantastic experience to schools — and get paid well for your time? Tonya Duncan Ellis gives her tips.
In the intro, investment firm KKR will buy Simon & Schuster [Publishing Perspectives]; Subscriber Surge Giveaways [Written Word Media]; Key Book Publishing Paths [Jane Friedman].
Plus, lots happening with Amazon. I would rather see my books get pirated than this (Or why Goodreads and Amazon are becoming dumpster fires) by Jane Friedman; Blockchain for provenance and copyright with Roanie Levy; “Every single one” of Amazon’s businesses has “multiple generative AI initiatives going right now.” [The Verge]; Amazon AI tool coming for writing product descriptions [The Information]; FTC antitrust lawsuit [Politico]; Amazon is “eliminating dozens of its private label brands” which may help “placate antitrust regulators” [Wall St Journal]; “Amazon will be disrupted,” says Jeff Bezos (in 2013) [Insider].
This podcast is sponsored byKobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to theKobo Writing Life podcastfor interviews with successful indie authors.
Tonya Duncan Ellis is the award-winning author of the Sophie Washington chapter book series and activity books, as well as a professional speaker.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- Beginning your career as a self-published author
- Tips for working with an illustrator
- Deciding what to write about throughout a chapter book series
- Creating additional products from your intellectual property
- Earning an income from professional school visits
- How to market and prepare for school visits
- Networking and co-promoting with other authors
You can find Tonya at TonyaDuncanEllis.com, on Instagram @TonyaEllisBooks, and on Twitter @TonyaDEllis
Transcript of Interview with Tonya Duncan Ellis Joanna: Tonya Duncan Ellis is the award-winning author of the Sophie Washington chapter book series and activity books, as well as a professional speaker. So welcome, Tonya.
Tonya: Thank you, Joanna, for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Joanna: We're talking about books for children, which is a really popular topic. But first up—
Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Tonya: Well, I'm a Houston Texas-based children's author.
I started writing from a very young age. When I was 10 years old, I won a writing competition at my school, and my teachers encouraged me to continue with writing. Back then I had never met an author or thought that that was within the realm of possibility for me to become an actual author.
I did pursue journalism. I learned about writing for newspapers because I thought that would be a great way to make an income and get a job in writing. So after college, I worked as a journalist for a while.
Then I worked in corporate America in business for a while in marketing departments. When I got married, I had three children and I was home with them, but I was able to do freelance writing for some magazines in my community, which I did for about 10 years.
During that time, I would read a lot with my children, and I had always wanted to write a book. It was kind of like a bucket list item I wanted to do.
And I said, you know, I could write a children's book that might be interesting for my kids because living here in Houston, we have alligators in our neighborhood, you'll see wild boar running around, there's all kinds of interesting things going on. I said that this would be a fun story that I could write just for my children, kind of a fun thing to do.
So I wrote the first book in my series, Sophie Washington: Queen of the Bee, and I shared it with the librarian at my children's school. And she told me, you know, you really have something here because it has an African American family going through just normal life experiences, not traumatic experiences, which are things you typically see when you have an African American protagonist in a lot of the children's books that are out. So she said, this kind of fills a niche.
She supported me and promoted me with having my first school visit. Then I started doing some community events with the book, and writing other books, and they've just grown.
Now I have 13 books in the series, and I've sold over 150,000 books. Joanna: That is amazing. We're going to come back on a lot of those different things. But I want to ask, first of all, about the series because you said you wrote the first book, and the librarian was encouraging, and now you've got 13. I feel like this is something that is important for success, is that one book is just not enough. But when you wrote that first book, did you decide you wanted to write a series? Or—
How did you decide to go into this whole series idea?
Tonya: I did conceive of it as a series because my children loved reading chapter book series.
And so when I came up with the idea for the first book, I said, I'll have a little girl from Houston. Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States and very diverse, so I wanted to show the diversity in the series.
So I came up with an idea of having a series, and my idea was maybe to have five to ten books, and it just kept growing. So I did think about it as a series when I was conceiving the first book.
Joanna: And did you ever think about pitching traditional publishing with those books? Or—
Did you always want to self-publish? Tonya: At the beginning, I just thought about self-publishing. I didn't know much about the process of pitching to traditional publishing companies, and I really didn't even imagine it growing as much as it did. It was kind of like a fun thing I wanted to do for myself. I'd always just wanted to write a book. So I didn't even think about approaching traditional publishers with these books initially.
Now, one of my books, book eight in the series, Sophie Washington: Code One, is about the children in a computer coding competition, and Scholastic actually bought rights to that book for a STEM program in 2021. So they did approach me with that.
When I started, I was thinking of myself as an indie author. And really, I started out with a hybrid company, and I see now they were on ALLi's watchdog list as a company to watch out for, but I didn't know that at the beginning.
I didn't know anything about ALLi or anything. And so when I started with them, as I started growing, I realized I need to learn all the elements of being an indie author of my own.
That's kind of how I found information from you, Joanna Penn, all of your educational materials on self-publishing. I ran across those, and I read all your books, looked at your marketing materials, and learned so much that helped me grow my series.
Joanna: Oh, well, I'm so glad to help.
And just so people know, you mentioned ALLi, that's the Alliance of Independent Authors.
They have a watchdog list, which has companies to watch out for, so I'll link to that in the show notes.
It's interesting because so many people start with those type of companies because I guess you're on Google, and they're the ones who are advertising usually. So I feel that's how people get there. We're not going to mention any names, but—
How did you go from working with one of those author services companies to deciding to do it yourself? Was it the money, or was it that you just got a feeling that you wanted to do it yourself?
Tonya: It was the money.
As my series started taking off, they weren't paying me all my royalty checks. I was getting frustrated. And also, when I started learning things from your materials, I wanted to do more with my own marketing on Amazon and doing different things. I wanted to make my first book perma-free.
I couldn't do those because they were listed as the publisher, and then I'd have to pay them every time I wanted to do anything.
So I realized I wanted my series to grow, and I couldn't continue with that. Then they started keeping some of my royalties. I said, no, we've got to put a stop to this. So that's when I took over the reins and learned how to do everything myself.
Joanna: So how did you resolve that situation? Because again, people email me all the time and say, I did this thing with this company, and now I don't know what to do about it. How did you get those books out of that situation?
Tonya: I had to have them write a letter. I just requested that they write a letter turning the rights back over. In my initial contract, it stated that they didn't have the rights to my intellectual property. So they wrote the letter, and then I took over from there.
Joanna: Oh, that's quite good then. So that's good that you checked that original contract and made sure everything was good.
So you get all those back and control everything. Just going back to when you're creating these books in the first place, one of the hard things about books for children is illustration, and you've got lovely illustrations. So how did you find that process?
How did you find your illustrator? And what are your tips? Tonya: So for me, my books are paperback illustrated chapter books with black and white illustrations, about 20 inside each book, and then they have the color cover.
Initially, I had a local artist in my area cover the first book, and she had never illustrated a children's book. The book cover was nice, but it wasn't exactly what I wanted.
Then for the second book, I used another illustrator who was an art teacher at my children's school, and I ran into the same issue because she had not illustrated a book that had been published.
So when it came time for the third book, when I was finishing it up I did go back to her, and she was busy with some other projects. So some friends of mine had a comic book series, and they had used my current illustrator for that, and I loved the images. He actually lives in India, so I said, well, let me see what he does with a third book, and I loved it. So I had him re-cover my two first two books in this series, and I've worked with him ever since.
I don't think that my relationship with him is typical from what I've heard from other authors. But what I do, is it's kind of like a pay-for-hire situation, so I have the rights to all the images.
With each book, I will send him a detailed list of what I want, how I want them to look, and I'll send them clip art as well. It's been a great relationship.
His company was called Massive Brain, and I feel like he can read my mind or something because everything that I want, he pretty much produces very quickly. The only problems, because he's in India, I had a wild boar in one of my books, and he put pigs. Like he might send back something with like foreign pigs, which look different, but then I'll send him the images. So that's how we've worked together through the years, and it's been a great relationship.
Joanna: That is good. So you're very clear on what you want, whereas I feel like some illustrators, it's more of a collaboration where the author might not be so clear. It sounds like you've communicated very clearly what you wanted.
Tonya: Right. Sometimes, like, for example, with the most recent book in my series, it's called Treasure Beach, I had given him parameters for the cover, but one of the other images he made looked so good, I said, let's make that the cover.
I do tell him exactly what I want. I tell him that they're in the classroom, they're in a private school, so they wear a uniform. So I tell him specifically what I want on most of the images.
Joanna: And then the stories themselves, how do you decide on the topics? So you've mentioned, I think, the spelling bee and the computer coding and the treasure hunt, I guess that you did there.
How do you decide what stories you want each book to be? Tonya: Well, they are about an 11-year-old girl from Houston and her diverse group of friends. So they're in upper elementary school, they're tween.
They deal with tween issues, like standing up to bullies, being true to themselves, making friends, playing with video games. So when I conceived the series, I came up with a list of ideas of topics that I wanted the character to do.
In one, she plays tennis. So I kind of had a list of five or six ideas that I wanted to cover. Each book teaches a lesson for the children. They're fun stories. She has a problem in each one, and then she solves them by the end. So I just kind of had a list when I started the series of five or six topics I wanted to cover.
Also, I'm a mom of three, and some of them are inspired by things that my kids do. For example, The Snitch is the second book and they're encountering a bully.
And my daughter had experienced being bullied at school, she and her friends, and they were afraid of being called a snitch more so than reporting this person that was bullying them. So I said that would be interesting.
Some of it is inspired from my kids, and I have been around children a lot as a mother, so I see a lot of different things that they're doing. That's inspired a lot of the topics in my books.
Joanna: That's interesting. Then coming on to the production process—
How are you actually producing the print books? Tonya: So I publish them print-on-demand through Amazon and Ingram Spark.
With Ingram, I'm able to get them in bookstores and order copies for school visits or different events. Most of my sales come through print, whereas I know that many indie authors get more sales with eBooks. I do have my books in eBook format, and three of my books are in audiobook format as well, the first three of the series.
Joanna: That's great. And I think, obviously, I've had other children's authors on, and there's a big difference between what you're doing, which is the black and white chapter books that are easier to do with print-on-demand, and the sort of full-color books that are aimed at the slightly younger kids.
I think what you're doing is the easier option in terms of printing. Because you do school visits, right? And then you can just order boxes from Ingram to take to schools.
Tonya: Exactly. Yes, that's what I do.
Joanna: You also have a lot of extras on your website. Your website is very professional. I absolutely urge people to go and have a look. It's fantastic. You've got these coloring pages, worksheets, you've got these activity books.
Why did you create all of these things, and any tips on those? Tonya: Well, that idea came from you, again.
Joanna: Oh, yay!
Tonya: Being a great publisher and utilizing all your resources. So after I had invested in my illustrations, since they're black and white, I said I could use these for coloring pages.
So I produced the coloring books myself on Microsoft Word. I just took all the images I had and made coloring pages, and I had my illustrator make a cover for that.
Then even with the activity book, online there's different websites where you can make seek-and-finds and crossword puzzles and things like that. So I have those, and writing prompts and different activities that I created for the kids, just to add many add-ons and make it fun and immersive for the readers.
I wanted to just do as much as I could to utilize the things that I have. I also have animated book trailers on my website for all of the books, and book discussion questions, so they can talk about the books.
Joanna: Let's come back to these trailers. But just staying on the product, so in terms of your sales because the activity books are paid products, and then the coloring pages and the worksheets are kind of free downloads.
Do the activity books actually make money? Are they a percentage of your sales now? Tonya: They're not a huge percentage, and I don't market those as heavily as I have the books.
But in particular, I came out with the activity book at the beginning of the pandemic and it was a way to keep the fans engaged, especially with kids at home. I saw more of an uptick of sales on those at that time.
They're not a huge percentage, I'd say they're like a 1%, if that, of the total sales. I haven't done as much marketing with those. Also, at one point, I even had Sophie Washington birthday, napkins and plates, because a couple of the fans had some parties. So I produced those as well.
Joanna: It's difficult, isn't it, because you feel like well, some of these things are worth doing and some of them are worth trying, and then others don't work.
Have you taken the activity books into schools, as well? Or do you just take the main books? Tonya: I take the main books. Now, I was doing a lot of live events, and even like farmers markets and different things like that, and I did sell a lot of the activity books, in particular.
I do have coloring books that are 100 pages of coloring sheets, even though I offer one or two free on my website. So those could be sold to younger siblings who weren't able to read the chapter books.
So when I bring those to live events, I do find them selling, and because I produce those completely myself, I didn't pay much for the cover, you know, the outlay to produce those was very minimal. So I do make a pretty good profit on them when I sell those. And talking to you, maybe I do need to promote those more because they're cheaper to produce.
Joanna: Than the books. Yes, cheaper to produce, but you can actually price them sometimes higher.
Tonya: Right. Right, exactly. So now talking to you, I may need to start pushing those more.
Joanna: This is what we have to think is how could—I mean, because I do work books, obviously for my nonfiction books—and again, they don't have as much content in them. They have no content, they have lines in and questions, but people pay for those because they want to do things themselves.
So it's kind of a different product. I feel like we forget these, and I love it that you're doing it with fiction. I mean, you know, your stories are fiction.
Let's come back on the school visits. So on your website, you have, again, a really professional school visit page with professional speaking rates and a brochure, which is fantastic.
I've spoken to a lot of children's authors, and they are pretty reticent to charge money, or they feel, I don't know, they feel funny about it.
How did you go about school visits in such a professional way? Did you always do it like that? Or have you kind of started charging over time?
Tonya: Well, when I first started out, I did free visits. And this is maybe in 2018, I did do some free visits in some schools in my area.
But I have a very professional presentation where I talk about my author journey, I teach children about writing, and even I have my presentations geared to helping them meet standards for certain tests that they have to take here in the US.
I'm teaching them different things, and I even do writing workshops. I feel like this is a needed service for the children.
I need to be paid for what I'm doing. So I started charging maybe after doing four or five visits. I'm also a member of a Facebook group called Create Engaging School Visits. So it's a forum where authors talk about how we need to value ourselves as creatives in our work, and not to sell ourselves short out here.
I don't feel funny about it at all because I've actually seen children inspired to write. One young girl who I met during a school visit, she wanted to write and her mother reached out to me, and I got her connected with a writing competition. She won $400, and now she's out going to different events, promoting her book, and doing different things.
These author visits can play a huge role in encouraging literacy with the children and inspiring them. Joanna: Yeah, I'm totally with you.
I mean, obviously, you prepare. Like you said, you have a professional presentation. And again, even just the look of your website, I think can make people feel it has that value.
I'm not saying that people who do things for free aren't offering something of value, it's just that we're creatives, as you say, and we need to value our own time and getting paid for these things.
You're actually doing a lesson, and your books might not get bought by the school, so getting paid for the visit is important. You've got this brochure, so—
How do you market to schools? Tonya: I send the brochures out to schools. I email them and send the brochure out.
Prior to the pandemic, I was doing almost weekly events, and I was meeting lots of school teachers and librarians, and talking to them about the series. So that was a great way for me to connect with them and book school visits. But recently, I've started with those brochures and sending out emails directly to the librarians.
Joanna: Are you still just focusing on Houston, or are you doing online stuff elsewhere?
Tonya: I've done virtual school visits. Houston is such a large community that I can stay pretty busy in my own area. I also got a booking agent who's in Austin, Texas, to try to get booked in some other areas outside my city, you know. So I tried to do that as well. And I'm virtual, so I am open. I can do virtual school visits anywhere.
Joanna: Yes. Well, that's what I thought, and also internationally. You know, I was talking to someone the other day, and I was like, have you thought about doing things to the UK? Because it's so funny, a lot of Americans say to me, ‘oh, I love your accent.'
And I'm like, yeah, because it's different to your accent. I hear your accent, and I think well, people will love your accent too. And when you speak to a different country, it's almost like you're almost naturally more interesting.
Tonya: Right. Exactly. That is true. It just seems more highbrow when I hear that English accent.
Joanna: I think that's quite funny. Okay, so just coming back to the schools. So you charge for the visit, which is fantastic, but—
How do you incorporate book sales into school visits? Tonya: I simply hand an order form to the librarian.
So once we discussed booking me to come in, I send ahead the order form, so if the children want their book autographed beforehand, I can have some of those ready. I bring extra as well, because inevitably, teachers and some of the other staff may want to purchase books as well.
I ask them also for the group sizes.
We talk about this space I'll be in, sometimes I might need a microphone. I always ask for help from an audio-visual tech person because, inevitably, there's going to be some kind of little snafu, and I'm not the best at setting up all the tech. I make sure to get there at least a half an hour early to get everything set up properly.
Joanna: I mean, I do professional speaking, and all of that is exactly the same. I mean, it's a professional speaking event.
Any awful mistakes, or lessons learned, or things that you would like to tell to people who want to do this type of thing? Tonya: Things have gone pretty well for me most of the time.
I would say be prepared with your presentation. I remember one virtual presentation I had, for some reason, I could not see the slides I had.
Fortunately, I had printed them out, and this was virtual during the pandemic—no, I hadn't printed them out, but I knew my presentation well enough that I could just talk through and handle everything.
I try to be prepared in case something goes wrong with your PowerPoint, or whatever, to make it engaging, especially with the children. So if something goes wrong, and you can't use slides, if that was what you had intended, you have something to engage the kids in some kind of activity for them.
Joanna: Yeah, I mean, that is a difficult audience. I haven't done things for kids, and I don't have kids, so that would actually terrify me.
Tonya: It's funny because for me, I'm more comfortable talking with children than with adults. I did a talk for The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators in New York earlier this year, and it went great, but I had way more anxiety with that than I have when I'm preparing to speak with the children.
Joanna: Maybe it's a different fear when it's with peers or people who were in the publishing industry.
It's a very different form of judgment than kids who might judge you by just thinking you're boring, or I don't know what else kids think.
Tonya: Exactly. And I did want to state again, when you talked about some authors may feel bad about charging, in the beginning, I started to feel resentment after a few times doing it free when someone asked me to do something free.
I said, you know, my work is valuable. I encourage all authors, if you've prepared and you're confident in your presentation, you've got valuable information to share.
You're providing a service, so you shouldn't sell yourself short. Joanna: Yeah, I think that resentment is a very good indicator.
I remember when I started out self-publishing and talking about things back in almost like 2008/2009, and I did a bit of consulting back then, and I started really low, like 99 US dollars for an hour.
I remember feeling quite quickly, I'm being too cheap, I'm too cheap, I'm getting too many bookings, and I'm resenting the time. So I put it up until I felt more comfortable, and then I just stopped doing it all together.
Did you ratchet up your fees over time until you felt like it was about what you were happy with?
Tonya: Well, after I joined that Create Engaging School Visits website, some of the other authors shared what they charge, so that gave me a feel.
There's also an author named Kim Norman, who has a book about school visits that's a great resource. Her name is Kim Norman, she has a book about doing school visits, and she makes over like six figures year doing school visits. So she gives all kinds of great information in that book. So that was helpful to me.
Joanna: Right, so that book is called Sell Books and get PAID doing Author School Visits, which is a fantastic book title, by Kim Norman. So that's great.
I do think that's important because it's all about multiple streams of income, and that's what you're doing. You've got the books, but you've also got the school visits.
Let's come back to marketing because many authors—children's authors, well, everyone—struggles with marketing. But you were in corporate marketing, you mentioned earlier—
What have been the most effective forms of marketing for your books? Tonya: I feel like the best thing for me was starting out locally.
And because I'm in a large market here in Houston, I did a lot of events and got a groundswell of support from librarians and teachers in my community.
Then they started sharing my work on Twitter and Instagram, so anytime I would do events, I would take pictures of the children with my book and get permission from their parents.
I was posting those on social media, and that helped get the word out about my book all around the world. That was a big thing that helped me in the beginning.
Another thing was getting lots of reviews, positive reviews for my books.
I made the first in the series perma-free and got a lot of bookings, and with it being free, I think a lot of teachers started reading it. That made them give my series to chance as an indie series, I think that got it some exposure.
So those are things, and I now also I have an email list. So I've been working on being consistent with that, and I think that helps, especially with school visits because people are seeing what I'm doing and I'm continuing to connect with them. I'll even put things about school visits I've done, and I've seen then I get some other bookings when I'm showing those in my email.
Joanna: Well, the email list is interesting because, of course, your email list is not full of 11 year old children.
Who are the people on your email list?
Tonya: Most of them are educators and parents or grandparents that are on my list.
Another thing, I had something called My Sophie's Club Ambassadors. So I invited them to be ambassadors for my brand and gave them Sophie Washington t-shirts and other little swag and perks.
They had to, as a condition of being an ambassador, post a photo of them with their favorite book and shirt, which helped market my books. Then the parents like seeing their children encouraged to read and seeing them promoted, because I do a lot to highlight children who are doing well and encouraging them with reading and literacy. So the parents like that as well.
Joanna: That's fantastic.
So you mentioned before the animated book trailers, and I did have a look at one of them on your site. They look great, but I have done book trailers myself, and I have found them to be expensive and not very useful.
How useful have you found your book trailers? Tonya: They haven't done that much.
My illustrator isn't too expensive. So that was something that enabled me to continue with them. So they don't bring that much money, or there's no way for me to even really measure that.
With the launches, I would have the trailer, so I just continued with it because it wasn't that costly. My illustrator took some of the images we already had, and kind of incorporated them. I write the scripts and give him the music to use. So it wasn't that costly for me. If it had been, I wouldn't have made them.
Joanna: I think that's a really important point for people, is some of these things that are more expensive aren't worth doing.
Whereas the things that were kind of free financially, like you said about local marketing, although they take time, they can actually be more effective. So what about things like advertising? Are you doing any paid advertising on Amazon or anything?
Tonya: I do Amazon ads. I just went wide with my books about four months ago because I had a company looking at buying my series, and I needed to get them wide. I had been on Kindle Unlimited, and I do Amazon ads. Those help with sales. I've also done ads through BookBub.
I've had BookBub Feature Deals, which has been helpful. Occasionally, I'll do Fussy Librarian or Bargain Booksy and different things like that, ads for my eBooks.
Joanna: What about networking and co-promoting with other children's authors? Tonya: That's been fantastic for me because I'm very active on Instagram.
And during the pandemic, I was part of a community called Own Voices Book Challenge, and it was a group of other children's authors. So we started building community, networking, promoting each other's books.
I also have on Instagram, an Instagram Live show called ‘Write This' where I interview different authors in the industry. I started it when I was selected to be in a group sponsored by the Highlights Foundation, because it was through Zoom, it was a group of other authors, and I wanted to get to know them, and it was difficult on Zoom.
I said, well, I could do an interview, then I can start talking to people and getting to know them. That's been a fabulous way of me building connections in my industry with other authors who promote me, I promote them, they may tell me about different opportunities. So networking has really played a huge role in my growth as well.
Joanna: I'm interested in the technical side. Obviously, we're doing this on Zoom. I've never done an interview on Instagram.
What do you use to do an interview on Instagram?
Tonya: It's really simple. You just go live on Instagram. So on your page, there's a button to push live.
Joanna: Just on your phone?
Tonya: Yeah, on your phone. It's through the phone, not your computer. Then they join me.
People do have anxiety when I've asked them to interview if they've never done it, but it's very simple. So I just click a button and it sends them an invitation, they click it, and they're on the screen with me, and then I interviewed them for maybe half an hour. Then I also upload the interviews onto my YouTube channel.
Joanna: Ah, okay, that's interesting. So you actually invite someone. You go live on Instagram, and then you can invite someone into the show, basically.
Tonya: Exactly. Then we're live on the interview, and then afterwards, I can save that interview.
Joanna: There we go. I haven't done one on Instagram.
To be fair, like I record all of these and we're not live so I can edit it, and I feel a lot more comfortable. There's no problem about any of that. I'm just not very confident with live video, so it's interesting that you're really comfortable with it.
Were you always comfortable [with live video] or is that something you've learned? Tonya: I've learned because I was nervous.
I remember when I would first go live, I would get everything perfect and do all this. I remember, actually my daughter who's a young adult, when I did my first live I did all this and then it didn't save. And my daughter was like, all you do is push a button. You know, I'm like, I'm so stressed, and it didn't even save.
I've gotten more comfortable. I've done maybe 30 interviews on there, and I've interviewed some top people in the children's book world. So I'm very happy with the interviews.
On one interview, one of my friends had a nosebleed while we were talking during the interview. So we were like, “ah!” but she covered it, and we just kept going. So different things do happen when you're live.
Joanna: Probably people love that. They're like, oh, that's just totally normal, right?
Tonya: Yeah. So it's been fun. I've enjoyed it because it's enabled me, and I'm sure you see this too, just to meet so many different people in the industry. So it's been a lot of fun, and I learn a lot from what they're doing.
Joanna: Absolutely. This podcast has brought me a lot of friends and contacts over the years. So yes, I think networking with other authors is so important.
There's so many things I want to ask you, actually, but let's get to the business side.
I feel like children's books have to have more investment because of the illustration usually, and because the number of books sold is usually smaller. Although, you've sold 150,000 books, so you're doing super well.
When did this become a proper business for you? When were you like, okay, this can be a good business as opposed to just a hobby?
Tonya: I think after I had my fifth book, and it started selling.
I had one child send me a picture of her dressed as the character, and I'm like, wow, this is part of these children's childhood. They love this. I got really excited and I felt just encouraged to push on.
And in one day, I sold 1000 books. I guess a school or something had bought a thousand of one book. So those type things have encouraged me that this is something that people want.
Still, the margin per book is not huge, and I have to continue with the school visits.
Then, I've been embraced by the industry. I'm a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. So they asked me to speak at their national conference with Jane Friedman on marketing for children's authors.
So those types of things encourage me and make me feel like this is my career, and I'm able to continue with this.
Joanna: You recently announced a traditional book deal as well. Tell us about that and how that happened. Tonya: Right. So I have a book coming out in 2024, spring of 2024, a picture book called They Built Me For Freedom. It's about Emancipation Park, where the first Juneteenth Celebration was held. It's here in Houston, Texas, where I live, the park.
What happened is that I was participating in a virtual SCBWI conference with a manuscript I had. I submitted it for a critique, and unbeknownst to me, it was put in for a competition. I just put it in just to get a critique from an agent just to see what they thought of it.
She met with me and said told me she had recommended it to win for a prize. I was like, what is that? She suggested I write picture books, and she also told me that I should get an agent. She wasn't taking new clients at the time, but she encouraged me to try to get an agent with that manuscript.
It did win in the competition, and so I just queried agents and ended up getting an agent within a couple of months with that manuscript.
In the meantime, I was intrigued when she talks about me writing picture books because I was saying, well, what? I really hadn't thought about it.
At that conference, another author who I admire read her picture book, and all of us were crying on the Zoom. And I was saying, wow, I want to write something like this. This is so beautiful and impactful. This is the kind of thing I want to write. So I started learning all I could about picture books. I also read that book, The Artist's Way, which tells you to take artists field trips.
Joanna: The artist's date.
Tonya: Yeah, take the artist's date.
So I would try to go to different places, and I happened to go to that park, and that's when lines from the book that I wrote came to me. I wrote the picture book, and this is before Juneteenth was a holiday, and I told my agent, this book, Juneteenth, is going to be a holiday. Somehow just from what I was hearing, I'm like, this is something people need to know about.
So she'd sent it out on submission, which is where you're sending it out for publishing companies to consider it, and it ended up selling. So that's how I got the deal. The other book never made it. My initial manuscript that I landed my agent with was rejected over 20 times, and we just kind of shelved that one. But the picture book did sell.
Joanna: Well, just for people who are not in the USA—
What is Juneteenth? Tonya: So Juneteenth is the time when enslaved people in Texas learned they were free. It happened two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. So people in Texas didn't hear that they were free until two years later, when General Gordon Granger came to Galveston, Texas and announced that they were free. So that was the time when all African Americans, enslaved people, were all freed.
The part that I'm writing about is where they held celebrations to celebrate. The park has had 150 year anniversary a year or so ago, and it's a beautiful space here in Houston.
Actually, the architect who did work on the African American Museum in Washington DC, he did work on some of the buildings here in Houston and the Emancipation Park. It has beautiful sculptures and artwork in the park. It's a gorgeous park.
Joanna: Why is it Juneteenth? I mean, it's in June, right? Is it like June the 10th? Or what's the teenth?
Tonya: So the teenth is the day. It's June 19th. That's why it's called Juneteenth.
Joanna: There we go. A lot of the listeners are not in the USA, so it's good to clear that up. So many interesting things you've got going on.
Even if your traditional books take off, will you still carry on with Sophie Washington? Tonya: Well, I have it set in my contract that I can continue with Sophie Washington, but I do have 13 books in the series, so I am pursuing some other traditional projects.
I actually sold another book after I sold the Juneteenth book, but it hasn't been formally announced, but to that same publisher. HarperCollins.
Joanna: Fantastic.
Where can people find you and your books online? Tonya: They can find me on Instagram and Facebook at Tonya Ellis Books, and on Twitter @TonyaDEllis, and also on the new Threads @TonyaEllisBooks. My website is TonyaDuncanEllis.com.
Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Tonya. That was great.
Tonya: Thank you so much for having me, Joanna. I'm honored to be here and thrilled to speak with you.
The post Publishing Books For Children And Profitable School Visits With Tonya Ellis first appeared on The Creative Penn.
How can AI tools help authors who struggle with energy and time because of disability, chronic pain, health conditions, post-viral fatigue, or other unavoidable life issues? Steph Pajonas explains why AI is important for accessibility and more.
Today's show is sponsored by my wonderful patrons who fund my brain so I have time to think about and discuss these futurist topics impacting authors. If you support the show, you also get the extra monthly patron-only Q&A audio. You can support the show atwww.patreon.com/thecreativepenn
S.J. Pajonas is the USA Today Best Selling author of science fiction, romance and cozy mystery, with over 30 books under two pen names. She also started the Facebook group AI Writing for Authors, and is one of the founders of the Future Fiction Academy, teaching authors how to harness the power of AI to revolutionize the world of fiction writing.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- Using AI tools to overcome brain fog and help brainstorm
- AI tools to help writers with disabilities
- How to stand out in a saturated market
- Generative search for creating a more nuanced search
- Using AI as a co-writer and having fun
- What is the Future Fiction Academy and how does it help others?
You can find Steph at SPajonas.com, FutureFictionAcademy.com, or at the AI Writing for Authors Facebook Group.
Transcript of Interview with Steph Pajonas Joanna: S.J. Pajonas is the USA Today Best Selling author of science fiction, romance and cozy mystery, with over 30 books under two pen names. She also started the Facebook group AI Writing for Authors, and is one of the founders of the Future Fiction Academy, teaching authors how to harness the power of AI to revolutionize the world of fiction writing. So welcome, Steph.
Steph: Thank you so much for having me, Joanna. I'm so excited to be here. You have no idea.
Joanna: Well, it's funny because you and I have been connected for probably a decade. We've been on social media and like comments and all of this, but this is the first time you're on the show. So first up—
Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Steph: I think that my story about writing is pretty similar to most people. I started writing at a young age. I really enjoyed writing fanfiction and screenplays when I was in high school. I did some co-writing with a friend of mine, and we really enjoyed coming up and using other people's worlds to tell stories. So that was a lot of fun for me.
Then when I went to university, I went to Michigan State University, I studied a field that is not really in use anymore, telecommunications. It's been usurped by the internet and everything like that. So I studied telecommunications with a minor in film. And when I was doing film studies, I did a lot of screenplays. I really wanted to be a screenwriter. I really wanted to write screenplays.
When I got to my final year of college, and I looked at how much money I owed for my student loans, I thought, oh, no, I really probably should get a job to pay all of these loans off. Then it was my senior year, I decided to take a basic HTML coding class. Back then it was like 1996/1997, and so I was doing basic HTML in Netscape, I think it was Netscape 2.0, and building websites in class, and I thought it was pretty fun.
I was like, this is fun, this could be the future.
I kept thinking that the internet was going to really boom. I had been part of the generation that had AOL, you know, and I was in chat rooms when I was younger. So I decided, right then and there, that I would learn how to make websites as a career and do that in order to pay off my bills.
So I graduated from college in 1998. I went to work in a small internet design firm in Detroit, or just north of Detroit at that point. Then they got bought by a bigger New York company. So I thought, hey, you know, I just broke up with a boyfriend, I could really expand my horizons by moving to New York. I have family in the New York, New Jersey area, so I would be close to family, so let's move to New York.
So I transferred to New York, and then that company did well for a while. Then it was the dot-com boom, and then it was the dot-com bust. I got laid off, and I went to work at HBO at that point. So I started working for HBO on hbo.com, and it was the heyday of HBO. It was The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, all the great shows back then. I was working with the team that helped build all of those websites.
So I was back in the entertainment business. I was like, oh, this is great, I love working for entertainment companies. I was having so much fun, and I did that until 2007 when I had my first child.
So when I had my first baby, we were living in Brooklyn, and everything was super expensive, couldn't really afford daycare, so my husband said, well, maybe you could stay home with her and our future second child, and then when they go to school, you can go back to work. And I thought, yeah, I could probably do that.
It wasn't much longer after they were born that I was realizing that the internet was just taking off, like all of my skills were becoming irrelevant fairly quickly. I could have kept up with them, but I was still thinking that my career might be somewhere in entertainment, somewhere around there. Then I saw KDP, I saw that people were self-publishing, and I thought, well, I've always wanted to write a book.
I've always wanted to turn my screenplays or my ideas into books, so I'll try that. So I wrote my first book, it took me like two years. You know, I think I went through like 12 revisions of that book, then I published in 2003.
I'm actually coming up on 10 years published now. So I took the long road, through the internet and through entertainment companies, to come back to writing. I'm really happy to be here, and I've since published about 30 books between my science fiction, romances and the cozy mysteries that I published.
Joanna: You said 2003 there. I think you meant 2013.
Steph: 2013. Yes, you're right. Sorry.
Joanna: Time flies.
Steph: I'm thinking way back to my time of building internet websites!
Joanna: Yeah, I know. It's crazy, isn't it, I mean, how time shifts.
It's actually really interesting to hear more about your background in internet and entertainment, and we'll circle back to that in a minute. I did want to ask about how many of your books are centered around Japan. I wondered if you talk about that because you're obviously an American. And yet, if people go and have a look at some of your series, they are very Japanese.
How do your travels come out in your writing? Why Japan? Steph: Yeah, so when I was late in college, I became interested in Japan. It was the time when Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke came out, I think it was right around that time that it was in the theaters. I was just amazed. I was like, this is such great storytelling, this is such beautiful anime, I really love this. So I started looking into Japan and beginning to understand a little bit more about the culture and the country.
Then when I went to my first job, to the internet company just north of Detroit, I met a friend Jennifer, who had actually spent several years in Japan. She lived in Hiroshima, and she was working there a lot. So we sat down, and we just started talking a lot. She was missing Japan, so she was telling me lots of stories of her time there. And I was thinking, yeah, this is a really cool place. I'm really interested in this culture and in this country.
So when I moved to New York, I thought, well, maybe I'll learn Japanese. That would be fun for me. I'll learn another language, and I will figure out if my love of this country will expand to something other than just pop culture. So I started taking Japanese language courses at the Japan Society. It's in New York City, it's on the east side over by the UN. It's a beautiful building, and they have a language program there.
I started going to classes and I really just, I loved learning another language. It was so much fun. Learning another language taught me more about the English language, too. So I was able to really expand how I was learning about language and understanding language at that point.
Then my love of the country grew from there. I started studying all types of parts of the culture, the history, I was watching movies, TV shows, like anything that I could get my hands on. Then we started traveling to the country as well.
So I'm a longtime Japanophile. I feel like I started falling in love with it in like 1998. I've been studying the language for a long time, I am not fluent, not even close, but it is fun, and I seem to have a pretty big vocabulary. When I listened to the shows, I recognize a lot of the language and the words. So I really love it.
There came a point in my life where I felt kind of removed from it. After I had my first child, I couldn't really go to the language classes anymore. I was sort of house bound with her, doing all the mom stuff.
So when I decided to pick up writing, I thought, hey, if I use my knowledge of Japan in my works, it will sort of bring me back to it. It'll make me feel closer to the country. It'll make me feel closer to the culture and the language again. It just helped me fall right back in love with it once more.
So spending the time, doing the research and looking at the history, I've learned so much just writing the books because I made parallels between my books and some ancient Japanese history. It just made everything come to life for me. I really just so enjoyed it, and I still do it now. So it's been 10 years of writing, and I still include a lot of Japan in my books.
Joanna: I love that. And same as you, I use a lot of my actual travels, and my imaginary travels, and transporting somebody to another place as part of the book. It's that kind of escape.
You were writing to help yourself escape, but we also write to help other people escape. I really love that, and people should definitely have a look at your books there.
So let's get into the AI stuff. And again, like I said, it's really interesting that you've come out of this background of technical stuff plus entertainment. Tell me—
Why and when did you become interested in the writing area with AI? And how has that developed? And I guess how do you use the tools now?
Steph: Well, you definitely have something to do with that!
Joanna: Yay!
Steph: Last year, April of last year, so that was 2022, I'm trying to get my years straight, everything is flying by.
April 2022, I got COVID.
Now, at that time, COVID was here in the United States, and it was a little bit like more than a cold but less than flu. You know, it wasn't too bad, especially for people who had been immunized, like myself.
I got COVID, it felt like a bad cold, and then I thought everything would be fine and I would just go right back to work afterward.
Instead, I had about six to eight months of pretty terrible brain fog afterward. I just couldn't think. I would sit down to write, and I would look at my document, and I would try to remember what I had written and what I wanted to write next, and I just couldn't. I couldn't hold all of that information in my head.
It was incredibly depressing and demoralizing to think I had written like 30 books, and now all of a sudden, I couldn't write anymore because of this brain fog.
At that point, I had already had a Sudowrite subscription for about a year because I think you had had Amit on your show the first time a year previously. So I had gotten a Sudowrite subscription the very first time when he was on your show.
I was like, this is great, this sounds like a really cool tool, I would love to use this and figure it out. I got the subscription, and I remember typing into it and trying to use the tools and not really understanding how they worked. So I let my subscription lapse, I put it on pause.
Then when I had the brain fog in the next year, I decided, well, maybe this AI tool that I subscribed to a year ago will help me with what I'm writing.
And at this point, it was late summer last year, and I had finally gotten to a point in the book that I had been writing where I'd gotten to like the 80% mark. It had taken six months to get to that 80% mark, when it should have only taken about two.
I sat down and I thought, well, I'll use these tools and see if I can get myself over the finish line and then go back and fix all the stuff that I tried to write during my brain fog time that just didn't come out right, it felt very flat and uninspired.
So when I started copying and pasting my work into Sudowrite, I suddenly realized how it all worked.
Like I had a scene in a marketplace on this planet that it was mostly Japanese, right? So I had the scene in the marketplace and I wanted some more description, so I highlighted the parts of the scene that I wanted more description for and I clicked the describe button.
And oh my gosh, it understood context.
I was like, this is amazing. It knows my world because the context of the words around what I had highlighted included Japanese elements, it gave me Japanese elements to in the describe function.
I was blown away by that. I was like, oh, I finally get it.
The light bulb went off, and I was like this thing understands context. It understands the words around what I'm trying to use.
Then suddenly, I was off to the races because now that I understood how the actual tool worked, I was like, I can actually use this for a little bit more than describing things. Like it is great at describing things using all the five senses and whatnot, but then when I reached my 80% mark where I had stopped, I thought, okay, we'll use the tools now to see if it can help me write and get me over the finish line so that I can edit and finally release this book.
So it was one of those things where I had a need for it. So I had the brain fog, I had the subscription already, due to you, you talking to Amit. So I thought why not use these tools because I have a need for them.
But it was like so revolutionary to see them actually work, and see how they worked, that from there, I was hooked. I was so hooked. I was like I'm going to buy a year subscription of this, and I'm going to use it, and we're going to I'm going to tell everybody about it.
It was interesting that when I finally started telling people about it, I was so excited about the tools and how cool they were, the amount of negative pushback that I got from that.
A lot of people were just like, “Oh, this is plagiarism. This is stealing from creatives,” etc, etc. So I thought, well, you know, I don't see it that way.
Now that I looked at the white papers as to how it all worked, understood how GPT-3 works, because open AI was much more open about their training dataset for GPT-3.
I went and looked at the white papers and I understand how it all worked, especially because I have this computer background. So I was able to put that knowledge to use to understand these tools.
I decided, well, I know that the tide is probably against me, but I'm going to go anyway. Joanna is doing this, a lot of other people are doing this, I'm sure that I can make some headway.
So I decided that I would be more open about it and start using the tools as they came along. And of course, as you know, like ChatGPT came along, I started using that. I use Anthropic and Claude. The tools have just blossomed since then. So I'm using all of these things, and now I'm doing it with a larger peer group as well.
Joanna: It's great that you had that light bulb moment. And again, I appreciate your technical background.
I have a bit of a technical background too. I feel like if, as you have done and I have done, actually look at how the technical stuff works, then many of these arguments we know are wrong, but this is an emotional topic.
So I was really, really pleased because, of course, I've been talking about this since 2016, and so I was super thrilled. I've had a lot of negativity, obviously, for years.
When you started the AI Writing for Authors Facebook group, I was so happy because I have felt very alone for years. I mean, people were telling me I was mad for quite a long time. I know I'm always early, and this has obviously grown a lot faster than I expected.
But yeah, so you started the AI Writing for Authors Facebook group, which now has over three and a half thousand members, which I think in itself is amazing. You also have really clear guidelines.
It's an AI-positive group, people can have questions, which a lot of people do, and everyone shares their knowledge, but it is AI positive, and obviously people have to apply. So I'll put the links in the show notes.
What I wanted to ask you was, coming back on your COVID experience, I also had about six months of difficulty after COVID.
What are some of the other health things, disability, and accessibility, that AI tools can help with? Because I feel like there are a lot of authors out there who are struggling, who could really use some help.
Steph: Yes, yes, and I have learned more about this as I've been running the Facebook group.
So the Facebook group started, and it was literally like me and three other people. It was like that for like a whole month pretty much. I never thought that anybody else would come in. And suddenly we started getting a trickle of people coming in. You know, like, a few here and then five there, and then suddenly it was like 10, and then suddenly I was waking up and there were 20 people every morning that I had to like let into the group.
So the group started growing and people started sharing their experiences using AI.
Without naming any names or anything, they shared with me that there were a few people who had —
brain fog from chemotherapy, from fighting cancer, or brain injuries to from traffic accidents. There have been people who have low energy due to autoimmune disorders, that could be anything from like fibromyalgia or anything else in the autoimmune category. I've seen people who have come in who find that the AI tools help them with their ADHD brain.
There's of a lot of ways that the AI tools help these people. Either it helps them to keep them on track, You know, you may be having a chat with ChatGPT about your world building or your characters, and you're really into it because it can go back and forth.
You can bounce ideas off of it. It can ask you questions, you can ask it questions, so it can sort of keep you on track. It is great if your brain is kind of scattered and you find that you might be better off to be focused on something.
There are people who are using the tools to help them flush out first drafts because sitting at the computer is taxing on their body.
They may have spine impactions, shoulder issues, any one of these other like physical problems with actually sitting at a computer for long stretches of time when you would be typing. They can instead move a lot of that time to sitting or lying in bed and using the tools on their phone, or having the time sitting at the computer, instead of being like five hours, it's one hour, and they use the tools to help them quickly write a draft that they can then go and come back to and edit more into their style and into their voice. But it gets out of the way like five hours of sitting at the computer and drills it down to maybe one.
So there's a lot of different ways that the tools are helping people with disabilities.
It's really, really inspiring to see people who come into the group who have said that they've struggled for years with trying to write their book because they can't sit at the computer, or they only have like 30 minutes a day when they don't have brain fog or they're not extremely tired.
Now finally, that time is productive because they're using the AI tool to help them get the words down.
It's like made my heart just so full and like bursting watching these people tell us about the stuff that they're getting done. It's incredibly, incredibly inspiring. It's one of these moments where I have no words.
Joanna: Yeah, and I am really with you on that. I think this really humanizes it too, and it's an angle we wanted to talk about because it's not really being talked about enough.
It's like everyone's talking in the negative way about, oh, well, scammers will do this, and people who want to plagiarize famous authors will do this. And it's like, I'm sorry, that's really not the vast majority of people, let alone authors, and the real authors who want to create the project on their mind in their heart. They're the ones who are struggling.
A lot of authors struggle with health issues, whether that's mental health, physical health. And I totally agree with you, I remember seeing one lady in there with sort of, I only have that one hour a day. And of course, it's not just the writing. It's like the other stuff we do, like writing emails.
It can help you write emails, it can write your Facebook ads, it can do this other stuff.
When I was reading that, I was like, oh, my goodness, that is so right. I had the same after COVID, I could do about one hour a day. It gave me a lot more compassion for people who have chronic fatigue and who have all these problems. Now, I'm fine now, but it gave me an insight into what can happen, and can happen to any of us at any time. I mean, you broke your leg a while back or something.
Steph: Yeah. So I broke my leg in 2019 rather badly. I broke like both bones and needed five hours of surgery, and I still have a lot of metal in my leg. I still have chronic pain from that.
I feel the time that I had COVID actually destroyed part of my short-term memory. I can't remember things from like one moment to the next, and I'm sure that's only going to get worse.
Joanna: I think that might be age!
Steph: It definitely got worse after COVID, so I'm gonna play a little bit of it on COVID. But yeah, sometimes you just need some help, and I don't see why you can't use these tools to get you a little further along on your path.
Joanna: Exactly. And they are tools. I mean, I've been using the Claude 100K model through poe.com, P-O-E.com for people listening, to really analyze my work, to figure out my tropes, and to write better ads, and to write questions. I mean, it's just amazing what we can do.
So let's take it from that other angle, because for me, the biggest use case—I mean, I hate the phrase use case, but it's very tech world, isn't it—but for me, it's almost like the joy of writing and the fun.
I don't know if I ever really had fun writing before AI. I now just have so much fun. I'm literally sitting here giggling away. I felt jealous when I hear people who co-write with other humans, and they say, oh, we have so much fun. And I'm like, yeah, I haven't had that before, even though I have co-written and I love my co-writers, but you know, it just wasn't a fun giggly process.
Now I literally am giggling away with Claude a lot, and it is fun. So I wanted to point that out to people listening, the positive ways to use this.
So what can you say on that [positive] side, as well?
Steph: Oh, yeah, I'm having so much fun with these tools as well. There have been times when, you know, it'll come up with a twist I hadn't thought of. It will surprise me with some little bit of dialogue that's really, really funny. You know, like, sometimes Claude could be really funny, and it's great to watch it come up with some things.
I hear a lot of criticism of the AI tools that they're built on lots of human language, and human experience, and so it's only ever going to be as creative as humans. Well, I mean, I'm a person, I'm 47 years old, I've had a fairly good life experience so far. I've been to a lot of places, I have a college degree and whatnot.
Yet still, I've sat down to brainstorm with ChatGPT once and we were talking about Arthurian legend. So I was talking, I was chatting with ChatGPT about the Arthurian legend, and at one point, I just said, “Well, what are some other long lived legends from other cultures that I could draw on for the story?” And it gave me this epic poem, Orlando Furioso.
I had never heard of it before. I was like, what is this? This seems really interesting, and it was really a cool story. So I was like, “Tell me more about this poem. I had never heard of it before.” And ChatGPT told me all about it.
Then I went off and I did my own research about the poem because I was looking at it and I thought this would be a really cool backdrop for a story. And so like, I didn't know anything about Orlando Furioso, and all of a sudden, ChatGPT gave me ideas I hadn't thought of before. It really, really, really sent me in an inspired tack, you know, something different to look at.
Those kinds of moments happen all the time, right? Those kinds of moments, they can happen with the AI tools, they can happen if you're on Wikipedia and you're clicking on links.
I can't tell you how many rabbit holes I've gone down on Wikipedia, just clicking on links and learning about stuff.
It's just another way of approaching information, approaching data in a way that is fun and inspiring. I definitely love working with them. It's just so much fun. Every single day, I'm having fun working with these tools.
Joanna: Yeah, me too. And in fact, it's almost like I can't wait to get back to it. Which again, I've not really had before.
Writing is hard, you know, writing a book is hard, and it's very worthwhile. So yeah, I'm really loving it. What's funny, of course, is people say, oh, but it lies. And we're like, yeah, these hallucinations are actually creativity.
Steph: They're great for fiction writers.
Joanna: They are really good. Yes, so as you say it's using lots of going backwards and forwards.
I think the very nature of the chat interface also changes things because, as you say, it sparks an idea, so you might ask another question. Then what it will come up with will spark something else, and then you'll go off and have a look, and you might come back later. So it's almost like the creative process can go a lot faster, in the same way that it would be with a collaborator. That's kind of how it feels.
I mean, obviously, copyright, legal issues, all of these things are concerns, but I have done lots of shows on that already.
So we're just gonna skip that because we believe the same thing, and I've covered it before. So people can go back and look at those.
One of the other main concerns that we hear is that —
Authors are worried that the proliferation of AI tools will mean a bigger flood of books and that discoverability and book marketing is going to become even harder in an already saturated marketplace. How are you feeling about this? And what are your thoughts on this?
Steph: Okay, well, I have a few thoughts on this. I definitely think that the market is going to take care of a lot of the books that are coming into Amazon, to any one of the other stores, the market usually takes care of that.
So readers find the stuff that they like, they keep buying from those authors, and then those books rise in the ranks and they do really well. Then the stuff that is not so great falls down and it doesn't get discovered.
If you want your books to be discovered, I figured there are a couple of different ways you can use AI tools in this regard.
You can use them for helping you with social media, you can definitely use them to help you write Facebook posts, if you're still on Twitter, you can still have them help you write some tweets, like series of tweets about your book, or the themes within your book, the characters in your book. You can use the tools for ads, like coming up with ad copy for Facebook or Amazon ads. They can help you really turn out like a lot of ideas very quickly.
So it lets you get in there and start testing those ideas quicker than possibly other people who are agonizing over those like 30 words you put in an Amazon ad. So it gives you a chance to like really pump out like a lot of ideas really quickly and then hash through them and get your idea out to market as quickly as possible.
Plus, if you are a person who really loves content marketing, like I know you do, Jo, I also have been a blogger since like 2003. So that is definitely since 2003, that's been like 20 years that I've been blogging.
I blogged first as a knitter, I had a knitting blog for many, many years. I shut that down at some point, and then when I became an author, I decided to have another blog that I would use also for marketing myself.
If you want to write for your blog, or maybe Medium, or you want to do a Substack, any one of these things, you can use AI tools to help you come up with ideas to write about. You can tell it your genre, like let's say you're a cozy mystery author, you could go in and say, “Give me some ideas. I want to write about cozy mysteries. Give me themes within cozy mysteries that people might find appealing, Give me some ideas to write about.”
It can help you come up with ideas and help you come up with SEO-optimized posts for your blog, for wherever you want to write.
I just feel that being visible to our audience, being out there, being ourselves.
You can be human and use AI at the same time. So it can help give you ideas, and then you can put your spin on it as a human to write about those things and get people to come to you.
So I find that as long as you're out there, and you're creating content that is applicable to your genre or your brand, that people are going to find you.
They're going to enjoy what you're talking about, they're going to enjoy the kinds of things that you write about, and then therefore, you're gonna be in their minds when they go to buy. So I just feel like you can use the AI tools in order to help you come up with these ideas so that you can be more visible to your audience.
Joanna: Yeah, absolutely.
In fact, I'm finding with the Claude 100K (through www.poe.com) I'm kind of analyzing my books, and it's really helping me understand my tropes.
For example, I have always said I don't write romance, and what I have found is that most of my books include second-chance romance as part of the subplots. I'm like, this is crazy, because I'm married for the second time, and my second time romance.
So like, in my ARKANE thriller series, Morgan Sierra and Jake Timber, the agents, there's this sort of tension where they never get together. Then it's the same in Desecration, and I didn't even know. It was the AI that kind of told me, yeah, these are the tropes in your book. And I was like, oh, my goodness, how did I not even know that? That's hilarious. I'm learning a lot about my own work.
I think generative search is going to change things and make search more nuanced. So I have almost given up on any other form of book discovery.
So now, say, I'll be in Claude, and I'll be like, “I'm looking for books that are action-adventure thriller with religious elements,” like mine, obviously, “and I want a female protagonist and written by a female author and set in Rome,” and maybe, I don't know, a historical mystery.
I'll give it such a long list, and then it will give me some options. Then I will go and I'll say, “Okay, I like this, but I'd like a subplot with this kind of thing.” So I'm actually having a chat to find books. This is not possible at the moment.
We're so hamstrung by sort of keywords and categories, and I feel that generative search will mean much more nuanced search in the future. We're not there yet, but I think we're getting there.
Steph: I feel like we're so close to just uploading our books to one of the stores and having it take a look at what we've written and then have it do all of its metadata on its own. Wouldn't that be amazing?
Joanna: It should have been that. Why can't it not be that? It already has our books. We do upload our books!
Steph: Like why can't it just look at it and say, “Oh, I see second-chance romances and religious themes,” and then just optimize your book for the search. I don't understand why that can't happen right now without us having to go in and choose keywords.
Joanna: Yes. So I would just encourage people that I really think —
Within the next six to twelve months, we're going to see a real change in search, where it's going to become so much more nuanced and granular. All of those of us who have been writing cross-genre books for forever will suddenly find more readers because people want these things, but they can't even search for them right now. So I'm actually very encouraged about discoverability. I'm really hoping that this solves the problems.
Steph: You and me both.
Joanna: Yeah, exactly. Okay, so just to come back to the other things you're doing.
You and some other AI-positive authors have started the Future Fiction Academy, which is fantastic. I mean, even today I sent someone in your direction because they email me and say, “Oh, I really would like some help with how to use these tools.”
What is the Future Fiction Academy and how are you helping authors over there? Steph: Okay, so Future Fiction Academy, I started it with a few other people.
Our leader is Elizabeth Ann West, and we have a few other people on our team, Christine, and Karen and Leland.
Basically, we're all AI positive people. I think that Elizabeth has probably been using them the longest out of all of us, with Christine probably. And we've been using the tools as part of our workflow for a while, and we decided that we wanted to be able to teach other authors to use these tools, but they need to be able to use them now, the way that they are now.
So when we started the Future Fiction Academy, we sat down and we thought, how are we going to teach authors how to do this? Because if you try to create like an evergreen course, it's just not going to work. The things we're doing today weren't possible two weeks ago.
There were things that we did two to three weeks ago that are completely obsolete now. So if you try to do a course, even like a six-week course, I was thinking even six weeks, like you could get three weeks into the course and something major could happen, and all of a sudden you're scrambling.
So we decided, instead, to do lab hours with our students. So our model is built around the fact that we have eight live lab hours in one week.
We sit down with our students on Zoom, and we go over the latest tools, we go over how to use those tools to write, we go over how to use those tools to brainstorm and world build and build characters. Then we'll sometimes even just look at something brand new that has come out like that day, and we'll sit down with the students and we'll play with it. We'll figure out the ways that it works. Maybe we see how it breaks, and so we try something different. It is a very sort of like off-the-cuff what we're doing with students.
Then we archive all of our labs, and we have them all in Teachable. So if you can't make any of the labs, you can go and watch something from the week, and you can learn something new. So we decided to try this different platform for teaching because we need to be on the cutting edge all the time. We can't miss something.
So we have about 100 students now, which is really great. They're coming to labs, we're all learning together, we have a Discord server where we talk a lot about like what we're working on, what we've come across, new tools we've seen. It's very cutting-edge, we're on the cusp of everything that's happening. It's been so much fun. It's kind of exhausting sometimes too.
We'll get to the end of the week sometimes, and we'll meet just the five of us, the founders, and we'll look at each other and we're like, oh my god, I'm exhausted. It was such a week in AI. Like some new thing will come out.
When Claude 2.0 came out, we were exhausted by the end of that week because we were teaching classes, and we were talking to people about it, and we were doing interviews, and all of a sudden the week was over, and I was like in bed, just horizontal, I couldn't do it anymore.
So the Future Fiction Academy, we're just trying to make sure that we're staying ahead of the technology.
We're teaching authors the ways to use AI tools in ethical ways. We're making sure that people are using the tools in an ethical fashion so that they feel that they are doing things the right way. It's been so much fun. I'm hoping that we will just keep going, and going, and going, and learning these new tools. I can't wait.
Joanna: Yeah, and again, this is exactly the right thing. I mean, I have an AI course that went with my book from 2020 about this, and that was really more principles of how a lot of these things work and thinking about bias and thinking about ethics and all of that kind of thing.
But what you're doing is the actual showing people the nuts and bolts, and you're exactly right, that you have to do kinda these live labs.
Also you mentioned play, the word play. This is the word that I think is so important. I feel like authors—like, okay, let's say uploading a book to Amazon KDP, there is a way to do it, and it's exactly the same, and let's face it, it's been the same for pretty long time.
So you can do a video on how to do that, and it will sit there. But exactly as you say, I mean, you log on to something and it has just changed. Like when I logged on to Poe, it's got the new Llama model, it's got some of the other models—I was like, oh, I wonder whether I should try this—and the 100K model just popped in and all this stuff.
I think this is the attitude, it has to be playing with it.
But of course, a lot of people aren't confident enough. So I really appreciate what you're doing. So yeah, I'm very much sending people to you at Future Fiction Academy. So tell us—
Where can people find you, Steph, and also any other AI resources, the Facebook group and that kind of thing? Steph: Okay, great. So I'm Stephanie Pajonas. I write as SJ Pajonas, and I'm online at SPajonas.com.
And then Future Fiction Academy is also online, you can find our website, which I also built, I love building websites still to this day, so that's at FutureFictionAcademy.com.
We have information there about our labs, any upcoming stuff, any upcoming events we'll be doing, including we have a new free course, actually, on generative AI. It's all about the basics of generative AI and how it works, where all the information comes from. So it just gives people the basics. I feel like the basics are pretty easy and evergreen at this point, so we decided to have a free course on that to help people understand all of that.
Then the Facebook group is AI Writing for Authors, and if you put that into Facebook, you should find it.
Right now, I'm making sure that everybody who comes into the group is a writer. So if you apply to the group, and there was absolutely nothing on your profile that tells me that you're a writer, please just message me and let me know, please, because I definitely deny a lot of people who either don't answer the questions, or don't agree to the rules before they come in.
But if they're not an author, then I kind of wonder what they're doing there. But they could have a pen name, or they don't do anything on their main profile, and that's totally fine. You just need to message me and let me know.
There are plenty of people I also denied. I try to keep those people at bay so that they're not just coming in and spamming and selling stuff to our group because, I mean, our group on Facebook is very AI-positive.
I try to keep the atmosphere in the group fairly positive and welcoming. This way people can come and they can feel secure there. So definitely come check us out. Let me know if there's nothing on your profile that tells me that you're a writer of some kind, you don't even need to be published, it's fine. I just want to make sure that you're a writer, so you're coming in and wanting to learn the tools. So those are the major places you can find me.
Joanna: That's fantastic. I check Facebook far more often because I learn from people in the AI Writing for Authors group, and I know some people who have actually come back to Facebook in order to be part of it. I mean, they left and then they're like, oh, no, this is too good to miss. So yeah, you've done a fantastic job, and you, and Elizabeth, and the team there. I think we're only just beginning on this interesting journey. So thanks for all you do, Steph. I really appreciated your time.
Steph: Thank you for having me, Joanna. This has been great.
The post How AI Tools Are Useful For Writers With Disabilities And Health Issues With S.J. Pajonas first appeared on The Creative Penn.
How can you shift your mindset in order to reach more readers with your books? How can you leverage the tools available for authors to sell more copies? Ricci Wolman from Written Word Media gives her tips.
In the intro, The Hotsheet useful newsletter; Book publishing is broken; In the US, the Federal Trade Commission is about to launch the antitrust lawsuit against Amazon [Politico] and a thought experiment; The Authors Guild trains authors on AI tools, and so does the IPG, and so does Publishers Weekly. Google rolls AI writing into Docs and Gmail.
JFPennBooks.com is live — use discount coupon LAUNCH for 15% off all books in all formats until the end of August 2023. Catacomb is available on my store and also everywhere else.
Today's show is sponsored byDraft2Digital, where you can get free ebook formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Get your free Author Marketing Guide atdraft2digital.com/penn
Ricci Wolman is the founder and CEO of Written Word Media, a marketing platform that empowers authors to market and sell their books. Ricci has been in the self-publishing space for nearly a decade. She holds an MBA from Harvard, and is passionate about using her marketing powers for good.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- Creating a positive attitude towards marketing
- Separating ourselves from our art to become business-minded
- What Written Word Media offers authors and readers
- Ad stacking — what it is and why it's so successful
- Price differences when marketing different genres
- The many aspects that make up the marketing ecosystem
- The future of selling direct while utilizing promo services
You can find Ricci at WrittenWordMedia.com and you can use my affiliate link here if you fancy checking out the Membership while supporting the show.
Transcript of Interview with Ricci Wolman Joanna: Ricci Wolman is the founder and CEO of Written Word Media, a marketing platform that empowers authors to market and sell their books. Ricci has been in the self-publishing space for nearly a decade. She holds an MBA from Harvard, and is passionate about using her marketing powers for good. So welcome back to the show, Ricci.
Ricci: Thanks, Joanna. So nice to be here.
Joanna: Oh, yes. So I wanted to take you back a little bit. You started out in banking and then moved into corporate marketing.
Tell us a bit more about why you wanted to start your own company, and why in the author space? Because frankly, there are more profitable businesses.
Why do you care about books and marketing? Ricci: Yeah, absolutely. So I would say the entrepreneurial thing came first. I always knew I wanted to start and run my own company, it was just a matter of when and how. So that had always been in the back of my mind, even as I was going through my different corporate jobs.
I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to do that within the books and book marketing space, due to really just luck in a personal story, which is that my mom was self-publishing a book. This is all the way back in 2009/10 ish, when self-publishing was fairly new. And being the tech-savvy daughter in the family, I was helping her get her files uploaded and learn how the KDP platform worked.
My background was in marketing, as you alluded to, and so through the process of helping her publish her book, it became very clear to me that there was a lack of resources for authors when it came to marketing their books. That's how Freebooksy was born, which was our very first promo site. It really just started, honestly, as a Facebook group. And that has now grown to the Written Word Media platform.
So it's been a wonderful journey. I myself am an avid reader. I'm a big believer in books. So it's a confluence of events and a lot of luck that brought me to an entrepreneurial trajectory within the books and self-publishing space.
Joanna: And certainly, I jumped on board with Freebooksy really early on, and over the years, we've become friends. I was just listening to you there, and I've known you for so long that I'm used to your accent, but just—
Tell people a bit about your background and what your accent is, in case they don't realize. Yes, absolutely. Well, right now, at this point in my life, it's very blended.
But it started out as a full-blown native South African accent. That is where I was born and raised, from Johannesburg. I lived there all the way through my initial schooling. I came to the States when I was 17 for college, and this is home now. It's quite a crazy thing, and now I've spent more of my life and time in the States than I had in South Africa.
Some of that time was in New York and Boston, now I actually live down south in North Carolina. So it's a blended South African/American with a little touch of southern in it, if people are trying to place it.
Joanna: I love your accent!
Let's take it up to the level of marketing in general, because many authors struggle. It probably is, apart from actually writing the book, which is one struggle, many writers also struggle with marketing.
I feel like there still is this feeling of, “if my book is good enough, then readers will just find it, that somehow quality will out.” I feel like that's almost a defeatist attitude.
How can authors reframe marketing to be more of a positive choice, something even creative and worth investing in? Ricci: Yeah, and I wish that were true, that a book that's fantastic and good enough would somehow rise to the top without any marketing.
That is not true, and it's not true of really any product or service or idea, really, that's out there in the world.
Even some of the most amazing ideas need some marketing behind them so that they can reach a critical mass of people to make an impact.
Ricci: The first thing I would say is for authors to understand that this is true for everything across the board, to not take it personally. It's not necessarily just around books in the book industry, this is just the way that it is. It does take some effort to get a spotlight and put some attention on your work.
The other thing I would say is that there's a mind shift that needs to happen. And as somebody who owns my own business, I've struggled with this as well.
When I first started Freebooksy and Written Word Media, I felt a little cringy about marketing. I think that's part of it for authors as well. It's like, well, I'm not a salesperson, I'm a writer. And for me, it was like, I'm not a salesperson, I'm just trying to offer a service that helps authors.
So how do you reframe that from being, hey, I'm pushing or trying to sell, to something that's more positive? And the truth is, is that —
The book that you have written is going to bring a lot of joy to the readers who are the right fit for it, and I think that's where it would be helpful for authors to focus. Instead of thinking about marketing as, hey, I'm trying to sell more of my books, think about marketing as a way to reach more people and impact more lives, and that the people are out there waiting to read your book, but they don't know about it.
You're actually doing a service to them by helping them discover the book that you have written.
That's on the mind shift piece of it. The first element is you have to get comfortable psychologically with selling and marketing your book. Then the second piece is, okay, now that you're comfortable, what channels and tactics do you choose in order to get your message out there?
Joanna: Yeah, we'll come back on that.
It's interesting, you mentioned there that marketing has to be done, and it's true for any product, any service, any idea.
I feel like this is something that authors struggle with, because on the one hand, we feel like we're artists and creatives, so we don't want to think that our book is the same as any other product. Like you said, it's a mind shift, which I completely get, but it's almost like—
How do we separate ourselves from the art to become a business person? Ricci: Yeah, I understand that perspective, and it is challenging, but you can even look at some of the artists within other mediums. Painters have art shows, right. They get galleries to pick them up, and they have art shows, and people go to those art shows to see the work.
So in every realm of creativity, there is an element of marketing.
Otherwise, people would be creating wonderful works, whether that be art or fiction, and it would be sitting in a room at home or sitting in a drawer in your desk. So it does feel maybe not a natural place to go, but I think trying to zoom out and understand that it is part and parcel of being an artist is also showing your work might help authors feel differently about it.
Joanna: Yes, I mean, for me, people often ask how I balance my time. What I tend to say is —
In the mornings, I do creative work, and in the afternoons, I do marketing and business. I just call it business, which is everything to do with marketing, getting it out there, and accounting and all of these things, interviews like this, and other stuff like that. So I almost divide my time into two, and that helps me almost divide my head into two, around how I need to separate the artist and the business person.
Ricci: Absolutely, and I think for each author, it's going to be different. It's a spectrum, right.
You can spend 100% of your time writing, and if that's all you want to do, that's okay, but then you need to hire somebody to wear the business hat and do the marketing.
Or you might be an author who, like yourself, Joanna, is fine with the 50/50. Or you might be somebody who the marketing comes very naturally to you, and you actually love it, and so you want someone to spend 75% of your time on the marketing, and only 25% of your time on the writing. So I do think it's a personal choice, and it's very specific to each author, and their personality, and what they feel called to.
Joanna: So you talk there about hiring someone, and of course, that's one of the things we do with Freebooksy, Bargain Booksy, and what Written Word Media does is essentially we're paying for marketing services.
You were last on the show in 2015, which is kind of crazy. I didn't realize it been so long.
Ricci: Me neither.
Joanna: I know, it's crazy. Time flies.
Written Word Media has moved on a lot since you were last on the show in 2015. So if people only know Freebooksy and/or Bargain Booksy, why don't you tell us like—
What is going on at Written Word Media? What can authors and readers find? Ricci: Yeah, so we have grown and evolved a lot since 2015. And what I'm going to share with you is the metaphor that we share internally about what our vision for the platform is and how we're building that out.
So if you think about where we started and when we chatted in 2015, we had a few promo sites, Freebooksy, Bargain Booksy, and probably Red Feather Romance were the most known or the ones that were around at that time.
The promo sites are just a super effective way to market your book in a time-efficient manner.
So what we do is we go out there and we aggregate groups of readers, and then we put your book in front of readers that are most likely to purchase or download the book. So very similar to Book Bub, we just happen to have a family of brands that do that, we don't have one single brand like Book Bub.
The way to think about that is we had one really successful ride — promo sites — that work well for authors and authors really enjoyed riding.
And over time authors have come to us and said, hey, I need help with other types of things.
So what our vision is we want to build out this theme park for authors that has a lot of really fun marketing rides. The key point here is fun. I know marketing is stressful and daunting for so many authors, and so what we're trying to do is take that piece away and bring the joy back to it. So everything that we do, every product that we launch, has that in mind. How can we make this easy and fun for authors?
So we have, if you think about a theme park, we have our promo sites as part of it, where we have Freebooksy, Bargain Booksy, Red Feather, we have Audio Thicket, we have NewInBooks, and we're actually starting to bring on partners. We now have Hello Books and Fussy Librarian.
So we have this really robust corner of the park that's all around promo sites, and if you just want to run a promo in one of those newsletters, there it is, easy peasy.
We've also built out a section of the park called Reader Reach. This is all around Facebook and Amazon ads.
So if you want someone else to run your Facebook ads, your Amazon ads, you would come to Reader Reach side of the park. One of the things that we really love about that product is that we do everything for you. So the creative, the ad copy, the targeting, and we're able to leverage a lot of the audiences that we have and the data we have to actually be more effective at running some of those ads, then maybe an author could do on their own.
Over time, what we're hoping to do is to continue adding different rides, different areas of the park, that authors need and are going to find fun and exciting. So if you want to come into the park, you can walk right in and go to any section of the park, jump on the ride.
We also do have the equivalent of a VIP pass, which is our membership program. So you can sign up to be a gold or platinum member. (affiliate link)
With that program, that gives you preferential access to some of the rides, it gives you access to rides that we're testing, so any kind of beta products that we have, it gives you access to a bunch of discounts for other vendors in the space.
So you can picture that as there's a Reedsy (affiliate link) kiosk, and if you want to use Reedsy, they're going to give you a coupon because you're using Reedsy because you came in through the park. Then you also get discounts on every ride that you ride, to the point that if you use your membership well, you actually make back a return on your investment.
So if you buy gold membership for $125, and you ride enough rides, you actually get $250 back in value.
So that's a way for us to say thank you to authors that really want to stay in the park and ride everything. It's also a way for authors to say, hey, I love what you're doing, I'm happy to pay an annual fee. Then we're taking that and reinvesting it in building a bunch of new rides for the future.
So that's the vision, which is very different from when we chatted in 2015. So the last thing I'll say about the rides is that there's one experience that we have built very recently, and that's the promo stacking experience.
I'd love to talk about promo stacking in more detail, but —
One of the most effective marketing techniques is for authors to have a concerted marketing strategy around a price drop or a discount. So instead of just running Freebooksy, you run multiple promo sites.
That tends to be quite time-consuming and arduous to organize, and so one of the experiences we've put together is promo stacking bundles.
So you can walk right to that section of the park that's all around promos, and tell us, “Hey, I'm going to run a five day promo,” and we'll put all the elements together for you. So we're super excited about that experience. It's the first time we've done something like that. So far, the reception by authors has been very resoundingly positive.
Joanna: Lots to unpack there. I love the theme park. I think it's hilarious, actually. I mean, I think it's great that you're so enthusiastic and your team is so enthusiastic about marketing that you've made it a theme park. I think for most authors, it's like marketing is not fun, but if you can make it more fun, then I think that's a great selling point.
I mean, the ad stacking, in particular, I think is interesting, and I joined the membership just a few months ago.
One of the things I like, and we'll come back on ad stacking, one of the things I like is almost the reminder to myself.
You do get emails, so if you run a Freebooksy or a Bargain Booksy, or one of the rides, you'll get an email which says, “It's been 90 days since you last ran an ad. Do you want to do another one?” And I actually find that really simple thing very useful because time just flies, and I'm like, okay, it's time to reschedule, which I think is great.
I was going to ask you, because I think other people might be thinking it—
If you run something every 90 days, how do we guarantee that there are new readers? How are you refreshing your readers on that side of things? Ricci: Yeah, that's a great question.
So for us, marketing is fun. I think you've hit the nail on the head there, in terms of, we think theme park, we think fun. This is what we do day in and day out, and everybody's really excited about marketing.
What we do consistently, day in and day out, is continue to build our reader audience. So, much of the membership fees and what you're paying for promos gets reinvested into marketing to build up the lists.
The reason that we recommend waiting 90 days, or at least 60, is we want to make sure that we have enough new readers on there so that you're going to see great performance every time you promote with us.
So I'm not going to share our secret sauce of how we get those readers, but what I can tell you is that we are adding tens of thousands of new readers every month.
We literally track it on a weekly basis how many new readers are added to every single promo site, to make sure that we're hitting our targets. We have a slew of different marketing channels and a team that is focused on doing that every day.
Joanna: And then I guess the other question, because this is a global show—
Is this primarily US-focused? Or what can people expect around the international side? Yeah, so the homegrown Written Word Media sites are primarily US-focused, but we have been candidly lacking in terms of an international audience, and that's where this partnership with Hello Books comes in that we're super excited about.
So about a month ago, we announced that we have the strategic partnership with Hello Books. Hello Books is now a ride inside of the Written Word Media park. We are actually managing all of the kind of back end, we're running the ride for Hello Books.
Ricci: Hello Books has a much more diverse audience. There are, of course, US readers, but there are a lot more readers from the UK, Canada, Australia. It has international reach.
So the goal is to continue to grow that audience with a focus on the international readers so that we can provide full-service marketing for authors who want to reach all audiences, not just a US audience.
Joanna: And then still drilling down into what's available, people write different genres, and each of these offerings is genre specific.
What have you found are the best-performing genres? How are they broken down? Ricci: Yeah, so the way that we think about it is, we don't play favorites with genres, but there is a natural demand curve when it comes to genres.
So romance, mystery, fantasy, sci-fi, those are all very popular genres. So the audiences that we are able to build there tend to be very large, and so when you go into buy a promo, you'll see that the pricing for a promo for those genres are going to be more expensive. They're only more expensive because you can get back that return because the audience is so large.
Ricci: Then there are other genres which are just as valuable, but tend to maybe be less popular in terms of the general audience, like literary fiction, or children’s, or LGBTQ. So we also build out those audiences, but when you go into purchase a promo, those will be cheaper.
So let's say you spend $30 on a promo for lit fic on Bargain Booksy, the expectation is you will make that back in sales. Because the audience is so much bigger on mystery, if you spend $80 on mystery, you'll make that back in sales.
So we're actually able to configure our pricing to make sure that no matter what genre you're publishing in, you are going to get a return, but there is of course disparity in the number of readers who are interested in each particular genre.
Joanna: What about non-fiction? Ricci: Yeah, non-fiction, I would say, is squarely in the middle.
In terms of audience, non-fiction is trickier because there's so many sub genres within non-fiction. So calling non-fiction one genre is a little anathema because within that you might have biography and memoir, there's self-help and how-to, there's cookbooks, there's history.
What we've done is try to break down non-fiction into the top three or four sub-genres of non-fiction, and then we go and build those reader lists on those specific interests and, as well, price it up accordingly.
I will say, non-fiction, especially business, is probably the one genre where there is so much more author supply than demand. So there are a lot of books being written in that genre, but there's not as much demand from readers. Not because readers aren't interested, but just because there's so much to choose from.
So if you're interested in reading business books, maybe you read one a month, but there are probably thousands out there that you could be reading. So we do find that to be kind of the most mismatched genre in terms of supply and demand.
Joanna: That's interesting because as a non-fiction reader, I'm quite different to a fiction reader.
And Written Word Media specializes in digital, but with non-fiction a lot of people read in print, or even hardback, and also, I think pay top price rather than necessarily looking at promo sites.
So I think it's just a totally different market, although personally, I'd like to do more non-fiction promotions. I feel like the market is quite different to the voracious fiction eBook reading market.
Ricci: That's correct, and what happens in non-fiction is you tend to get these breakout books, and then they stay on the charts for much, much longer.
This is a trad book, but I think Atomic Habits has been on the top charts of non-fiction for years now. And it's like, there are lots of other really amazing books around habit building and productivity, yet, James has a kind of a lock on that market.
So the non-fiction tends to have more of this momentum somehow, where it's really harder to knock some of the kings and queens off of their pedestals there. So it's more competitive somehow.
Joanna: Yeah, just different. Let's come back to the ad stacking.
Back in 2014, I can't believe it so long, I was part of the Deadly Dozen, twelve thriller writers organized by Diane Capri, a fantastic author, and we hit the New York Times list and the USA Today list.
And we used essentially, the ad stacking design, which as you mentioned is sort of multiple promotions on different days during the week of measurement of the bestseller list.
It's so interesting because almost a decade later, ad stacking is still a good idea.
So maybe you could explain a bit more about what it is. And I guess since this is about marketing in general—
What are some of the other sites that authors might put together or some of the other things they might do if they wanted to make a run on a bestseller list? Now the USA Today is back, by the way.
Ricci: Yes. I saw that. Yes. Thank goodness, we need as many bestseller lists as possible. So I was glad to see that. Yeah, your dirty dozen promotion.
Joanna: Deadly Dozen.
Ricci: Sorry, Deadly Dozen, of course. Your Deadly Dozen promotion was super successful because I think you all, I think it was 12 authors, did such a fantastic job of executing on promo stacking.
Another kind of analogy that I try to use when educating authors about this is to think about the last time you were maybe sitting in a symphony hall or going to see a Broadway show, and you're sitting in the audience and the orchestra down front, they start tuning just before the show.
So you might hear a cello or violin, and you hear it and you kind of look up for a minute, and then you go back to talking to the person next to you. Maybe a drumbeat goes, you look up for a minute, then you go back to the person sitting next to you.
But then when the whole orchestra starts together, that first note, everybody looks up and a hush falls on the audience. And that, to me, is what promo stacking is.
If you promote on just one site, you are going to have a small impact. You're going to get some people who look up and say, okay, there's that book, that's interesting. But if you have this concerted effort that all happens together, you get this burst of activity that grabs everyone's attention, so that the promotions themselves actually give you results that are greater than the sum of its parts.
Having each one of the instruments and the orchestra playing together is so much more powerful.
So that's why, we're just the beginning stages of this, but we're really going to be trying to build out as many different promo stacking options as possible for authors that we have found to be successful.
The promo stacking, generally, authors are choosing between three or five day runs. The reason that it's kind of maxed out at five is just because of the price drops through KDP.
If you're actually using KDP Select and their price drops, five is the maximum that you can drop your price. So it's not necessarily that five days is optimal, but it's just kind of where the industry standard has come to.
What we found to be most effective is you want to email, email, email. So email your own list, use promo sites, as many as possible to get your book out via email to readers, doing any kind of email list swaps with other authors that you're friendly with.
Then what we also like to do is put a baseline Facebook ads campaign, like a five day Facebook ads campaign that runs over the whole five days to give you some foundational sales which smooths out some of the highs and lows that can come from the different emails.
So if you were to go to the site today, and you go to our promo stacking interface, what you'll see are some three and five day promo stacks. We've already put those elements together for you. The Facebook ads, plus say, a Bargain Booksy, and Hello Books, and an eReaderIQ.
Or if you're doing a free book, it's Facebook ads, a Freebooksy promo, a Fussy Librarian promo, and maybe one other thing. So the goal is that we'll continue to expand the different elements that can be incorporated into those promo stacks, but we already have some really compelling ones out there.
The last thing I'll say on that is the thing that I'm most excited about is, I have done promo stacking before, as I said, my mom has books. So I have gone to every different site and set these promo stacks up, and it takes hours. It takes hours of coordination, I have a spreadsheet, I'm figuring out my dates, I'm going to each site, I have to put my payment method in every time. Some of the sites don't confirm until a few days later, so you think you've got your stack set up, and then they write you back and say, sorry, that day is not available. Then you have to kind of reformulate everything.
The reason that we've picked this as one of the first places to go for experiences is because it is so painful, and it is so time-consuming. And we've structured it to take all that pain out.
So you come to us, we're booking on all the sites, the minute you book, it's guaranteed those dates are set, you check out once. Something that used to take maybe 8 to 10 hours, now can literally take five minutes. I'm a big productivity person, always looking for shortcuts, and so this promo stacking tool that we have is the ultimate shortcut for authors.
Joanna: Yeah, it is fantastic.
What I do want to say, though, it's obviously not free. It is a product that people are paying for, this service.
So I think maybe we should talk about what it is good for. For example, a brand new author, their first book, no reviews, possibly not the way to make their money back, although of course, you do have NewInBooks as one of the sites.
What would be your best recommendation for booking these types of spike marketing campaigns with the ad stacking? In order that people can see the sell-through and can at least hopefully make their money back?
Ricci: Yeah, and our goal is always for authors to get that return back. So we're always monitoring results and setting our pricing accordingly. So your question is a really good one, and it depends is the answer. It depends on where you are in your author journey and what your goals are.
So if we're starting with somebody who has a newly published titled, and you're trying to build reviews, and you're trying to sell some copies of the book, get some traction.
The other element here is you do have to educate the algorithms, Amazon being the most important one, but slowly but surely Apple and Google, this is on eBooks specifically, are starting to take a little bit of share. For that type of title, I would recommend a free run.
For a free run, you don't actually have to do it for that long. You could do a one-day or a three-day free run where you set your book to free. And what'll happen is you'll do a promo stack, you'll see a spike in downloads, and if you're in KU, which most of the time you will be if you're doing a free day, you actually get paid out on any reads that you get even when your book is free.
I really love that element of it for authors who are exclusive, or at least exclusive when they first launch the book, and then maybe you pull the book out after.
So free is good. It also generates a ton of reviews, and it teaches Amazon very quickly who the right readers are for you.
When we talked about that symphony, you're trying to get the attention of readers, but you're also very much trying to get the attention of the retailer where your book is being sold, and that's one way to do it.
Once you get the attention of the retailer, once the algorithm figures out, hey, this is a book that has traction, this is who the audience is, it will start doing some marketing on your behalf.
It starts to show it in books you might like, it starts to send emails to readers, including that title. So you know, free for a newly published title tends to be very powerful.
Free is also very powerful if you have a series. And if you put book one as free, it really helps your read-through. So you see a lift in sales of all the other titles in your series, so we love that.
If you're looking for just a straight return, where you have a title that's kind of the baseline sales are a little lower than you'd like, that's when doing a 99 cent or $1.99 promo over a five day period would really help you to climb the charts again, spur some activity, get this halo effect going for increased visibility.
Then after the promo, you should be at a higher baseline level of sales than you were before.
Joanna: Yeah, I think the main point is you've got to know what you want to achieve, and then do your promotions around that.
So we're certainly not saying just jump in and pick something, you really have to think about your marketing strategy. Then of course, it's a regular event.
So I'm always building my own email list, but I also use various Written Word Media campaigns to do little spike campaigns through the year. So I guess that's the reality of the author life, is these things happen month in month out. Whether it's ongoing marketing, ads, spike marketing, content marketing, like we're doing here—
There are just lots of things that make up that marketing ecosystem. Ricci: Absolutely, and I think sometimes, especially if you're getting started, or even if you've been doing this for a really long time, you can be a little unsure of what the best strategy is. We would be happy to help with that.
We have a team of experts who are looking at this all the time for different authors. So if you were just to write into us, there's no charge for this, and you can say, “Hey, here's my book, these are my goals.” We do this all the time, so we would tell you, “Hey, here's some suggestions on some marketing tactics that might work.” So info@writtenwordmedia.com, you write in, or you're right on our Facebook page, we'll help with that.
Joanna: That's great. I appreciate that. I hope some people take you up on that. That'd be great.
I do want to ask you because, of course, I've been wide from the start. I mean, I've been doing this since before there was KU, like your mum. I mean, there was no KU back in 2009/2010 when your mum started, or 2008 when I started.
So one of the trends that I'm part of, and many authors are doing now, is selling direct. It's become more and more of a thing over the last few years. I've got my Shopify stores, I've got two now. So I wondered how that might work in terms of Written Word Media in the future.
Can we have our theme park marketing services with selling direct, as well as all the big retailers? Ricci: Yeah, absolutely. We're very excited about this trend for authors selling direct and taking ownership as much of the customer experience, you know, reader funnel as possible.
I'll come back to direct links in a minute, but the first thing we tell every author is build your email list.
Like having your own email list, it's the best asset that you can build, and the sooner you start building it, the more successful you're going to be because the quicker it's going to grow.
Putting a link to sign up to your mailing list in the back matter of every single one of your titles, that's the first thing you should do.
That's also where you get a ton of value from running promos because as people read that book, they then come on and they sign on to your list.
Once you have a list, you can then direct people to your store. We tried this actually, we were very excited about allowing our readers to go directly to author stores. So we rolled this out earlier this year, and we had some authors try it out, and what we found is that the website experience does need to be robust for this to work.
So I think, Joanna, I've seen your stores, like they're fantastic, right? There's a great reader experience, you go on, it's easy to navigate, you can check out easily. It's on Shopify, it's a tech site that makes all of this very easy. That's the dream.
We're finally at a point where the technology is there, and the readers are actually willing to check out on a place other than Amazon or their top five websites because they already have an account with Shopify and they get that nifty little number to put in, or their credit card information is already stored in their browser. So we're at a point where those two things have actually finally come together, which they had not been that way in the past.
The final piece of the puzzle, though, is that authors need to be thinking about the reader experience and making sure that it's seamless. I think a lot of authors think about their experience. They're like, I'm excited to sell my book, I can make more money, so I'm going to throw my book up on here. And they expect readers to convert the same way that they would on Apple or Amazon or Google.
But the reason that all those sites take 30% is because they spend so much time on the user experience and increasing that conversion. So if you're going to be taking more of the profit, you do need to be spending some time on the experience.
So what we ended up doing is we actually rolled this feature back because our readers were complaining that when they got to the author's website, it was too difficult to check out.
They thought they bought a book, but then they're like, I don't know where my book is, I never received delivery of it. So this is something that's on our list to see how we can help authors get their websites to a point where we could then open it up again, where we could send the readers that we do have directly to their websites so that those purchases could happen there.
Joanna: Yes, and I mean, obviously, you've been going now for a long time, and hopefully the business will carry on.
I see this as really the beginning of perhaps the next 15 years of indie, where there will be a rise in all these stores. But I completely get the technical side of things, when you're building something as you are, it all has to work. So yes, interesting times, but good to hear that you're looking to do that in the future.
Is there anything else that you see in terms of trends and things for authors on the horizon, or anything else you wanted to point us to? Ricci: Yeah, I mean, obviously, AI is the big thing. There's a lot of buzz around that and how that's going to impact publishing. We have an optimistic view of AI.
We see it as a productivity tool that can help authors write more quickly, and that can potentially help authors save money by having some of the first pass edits have their titles complete.
I do think it remains to be seen what the impact is going to be, and there is some concern around flooding of the marketplace with AI titles. So I think that's a trend, you know, I don't have any solutions or big insights around that, but that's definitely a trend and something we're monitoring really closely on our end.
Then yeah, just echoing what you said about authors really taking ownership of their businesses, the trend towards owning all aspects of your business and not being as reliant on the third party platforms.
I do think they will always have a place, those third-party platforms. The way that we think about it is, as an author, just like any business, you need to have diversified sources of revenue.
So the more you can have, the better off you're going to be. You just don't want to be dependent on one, but it's not like any of them are good or bad. You know, it's agnostic. You just want to have as many as possible to de-risk your business, because that's what authors are, they're businesses. Whether they be micro businesses or macro businesses, they are businesses at the end of the day.
Joanna: Fantastic.
Where can people find Written Word Media online? Ricci: Yeah, you can just come to WrittenWordMedia.com.
That is the jumping off point for anything that you would need. We do have a really great blog. We have just a fantastic team of people here at Written Word Media who, as you can hear, are very passionate about authors and marketing and all things publishing, so you could check out that blog. That's also where you can learn more about our products and services and membership.
And like I said, if you have questions or if you want help around marketing strategy, shoot us a line at info@writtenwordmedia.com, and we will be happy to chat with you.
Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Ricci. That was great.
Ricci: Thanks, Jo. Wonderful to be here again.
The post The Marketing Mind Shift And The Power Of Ad Stacking With Ricci Wolman first appeared on The Creative Penn.
How can you write fast but also make your creative process sustainable for the long term? How can you collaborate effectively with other authors in your genre? Dan Willcocks talks about his creative and business approach.
In the intro, Draft2Digital acquires SelfPubBookCovers; Different types of creative energy [Self Publishing Advice]; Twitter becomes X [The Verge]; TikTok text posts [The Verge]; What AI can help you do in 30 mins [Ethan Mollick]; Discovery Writing with ChatGPT by J. Thorn; Claude 100K model on Poe.com; Facebook AI Writing for Authors.
Please join my shadow survey for my next book: www.jfpenn.com/shadowsurvey.
Plus Catacomb is available now! Walker Kane didn't believe in monsters … Until they came for his daughter. Buy now on my new store, www.JFPennBooks.com – use discount coupon LAUNCH for 15% off.
Today's show is sponsored by Ingram Spark, which I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 40,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries, and more.It's your content—do more with itthroughIngramSpark.com.
Daniel Willcocks is the international bestselling author of over 60 books, including horror, sci-fi, and nonfiction. He's also an award-winning podcaster, author coach and speaker, and runs the Activated Author community.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- Tips for being a prolific writer
- Reasons why authors write darker books
- Scheduling separate times for writing different genres
- Creating a successful co-writing relationship
- What is a series of standalone?
- How to manage your time when you juggle multiple projects
- Optimizing your strengths to best run an author business
- Ambition and working to reach long-term goals
You can find Dan at DanielWillcocks.com, join his author community at ActivatedAuthors.com, and listen to his horror podcast at TheOtherStories.net
Transcript of Interview with Daniel Willcocks Joanna: Daniel Willcocks is the international bestselling author of over 60 books, including horror, sci-fi and nonfiction. He's also an award-winning podcaster, author coach and speaker, and runs the Activated Author community. So welcome to the show, Dan.
Dan: Thank you so much for having me. I am incredibly excited to be here. Before we start, I will say that this is a big moment for me because I've been listening to you since I started my author journey in 2014. So I'm glad we finally got here.
Joanna: Ah, 2014. It seems so long ago now. But fantastic, so you're almost a decade and you've done a lot. It's very exciting. But first up—
Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Dan: I've always been interested in reading. Writing was never something that I kind of foresaw as a career because I never thought it was achievable to become a writer. It just wasn't a thing that was on my radar, but I've always studied English, I did some writing and things throughout university.
It wasn't until the Christmas of 2013/2014 that I was gifted from a Secret Santa, a book of Stephen King short stories. And I was reading through these, and at the time I was a nonfiction proofreader and copy editor, sorting out other people's work, and I was reading these stories just going like these are—like I didn't understand the medium of short stories very well, and obviously, if you're going to start anywhere, start with Stephen King. This collection, each story was so individual, and unique, and in depth for such a short amount of time.
I kind of just started putting fingers to keyboard, and around early 2014, I then discovered KDP. I had an old stage play that I'd written for university that got nominated to go to the Edinburgh Fringe. I thought, oh, let's experiment and see if I can turn this into a book. I had no expectations of what that would look like. A couple of weeks later, I ended up with this book in my lap.
Then I started thinking, well, if I can do this, well, maybe I can write a short story.
And I ended up writing a novella called Sins of Smoke, that I ended up publishing in October of 2015. That went to number one in the horror charts. That whole experience of just putting stuff out there, I was like, this is fun. I just want a book that's on the shelf for me. It kind of ignited a bit of a flame, and it was very quickly after that that I started collaborating with people, founded Hawk & Cleaver. It just kind of accelerated from there.
Joanna: Give us a little bit of an update in terms of where you are now because it's a long way to go from a stage play that turned into a novella, and 60 books across multiple sub genres. So tell us—
How did you transition into writing so many books, and podcasting, and everything you do now? Because it doesn't just go from, oh, I wrote a novella and it hit number one in the charts, and now I'm full time and everything's all good.
Dan: Yeah, well, everything that ends up big starts incrementally.
So after that first book was launched, I ended up reaching out to another indie author who wrote a dark sci fi book. It turned out that he was joining forces with two other authors, Ben Arrington, Luke Kondor, and they’re very chatty with a guy called Matt Butcher. They were starting with Hawk & Cleaver.
We jumped on a Zoom call during Christmas 2015, and we were like, you know what —
We love writing the same similar things. Maybe we can do this together, help promote each other, and do it all under this unified brand. I suggested that we create an e-magazine, we each write a 1000-word short story once a month, create an e-magazine, and we can publish on Kindle because I knew how to do that. Then that could be a way to build up a bit of an audience while we were all writing other things.
Luke Kondor had a bit of a background in podcasting and suggested we made it a podcast. So we started writing this podcast, we got narrators in, Luke did a lot of the original editing.
And that podcast became The Other Stories, which launched in 2016, and now has hit 10 million plus downloads over the past sort of seven years.
Along the way, I was working a full-time job until 2019. I developed a practice of writing every morning, of putting out content, of just making it a priority for me to do alongside the rest of my life.
So every morning, I would get up and I'd write those words. And, as I said, incrementally over time, I ended up publishing one book that turned into two, I then collaborated with Michael Anderle in his Kurtherian Gambit universe and wrote five book series in that universe.
I then went on to do three years of ghostwriting. In 2020, I wrote 26 books in a single year. So like, it all comes back to those humble beginnings. In the beginning, I was writing 200 words a day, ish, like every other day.
Then I just got so absorbed in it and really kind of did a lot of self-development, a lot of mindset work, which came on to form the foundation of the Activated Author community that I run.
Yeah, there is a lot to look back on and go, I have done a fair bit now. I podcasted for several years as well, and done well over 250 episodes across different podcasts. If you just chip away a little bit each day, in the end, it all adds up.
Joanna: Yes, well, I'm very impressed. People say I do a lot, but you do even more. You also have your family, so you're a busy guy.
Let's get into that word count because you said you were at 200 words a day or every couple of days. Now, I realize that some people don't write every day.
I don't write every day, I tend to binge-write. So when I'm working on a project, I'll binge write. Other people obviously have family issues, health issues, mental health issues.
So we're not saying you have to write every day, that's definitely not what we're saying. But, in terms of you have a book for authors coming out later this year—
Dan: Yes.
Joanna: Which is 50,000 Words in 30 Days.
Give us some more tips for being prolific.
Dan: Well, as you mentioned, it's about finding the pace of what works for you. I think there is some really good advice in your community, and there is some more toxic advice.
I do think that the whole write everyday ethos, like you say, can work for some people, but I think sometimes it puts people off and makes them think they're not going to be a writer because they can't keep that pace.
So a lot of what I do when I'm coaching and working with authors is really trying to —
Figure out how your life looks, how you're set-up, because people have jobs with different schedules and routines — as you say, you've got family, or you might have financial limitations, health problems, like not everyone can hit that pace every day.
So to be prolific for you, which is the key thing because you should never compare yourself to other people, is to understand who you are, what you do, and to find out the word counts that will fit you.
So if that's 100 words a day, awesome. If that's 2000 words a day, great. If that's 5000 words on a weekend, then that sort of works for you. I think you need to be confident, own it, and be comfortable in those word counts.
As I say, there is a lot of advice out there that is somewhat toxic. Like I do know authors that write 13,000 words a day. I, personally, cannot hit that consistently. I've had big word days, but every time I have a big word day, it burns me out, and then I do nothing next day.
It's really connecting with who you are, giving yourself that grace to be a bit slower if that is your pace.
There are people in my Activated Authors community who write 1000 words a week, and that's fine. That works for them, they publish books.
Myself, I've kind of gone from being a regular writer to being, as you say, a bit more of a binge writer with projects. So if I'm in a project, I can definitely hit some bigger word counts, but then I'm sort of done for a few weeks. Getting to know yourself is certainly a big tip.
Another really good tip is —
Prioritize your writing. Make an appointment with yourself. Make a date with yourself to say, at this time, at this date, in this place, I'm going to write.
That was something I had to do when I was first starting out because I had a full time job, and the only time that I could fit in writing was half past six in the morning, and then at seven, I'd have to get up and get the little boy ready and get ready for work.
So that was something that I committed to myself. I said to myself, this is happening, I want to publish books, and this is what it's going to take for me.
Then I think the biggest piece of advice I give, and it's normally the starting point of anytime I'm in a consultation or coaching someone, is—
You need to ask yourself why you're doing it. Because if you are writing just because you think it's a quick way to make money, you're going to burn out quickly and the work probably isn't going to be worth the reward.
If you're like me, and you love telling stories, I love the idea of leaving a legacy, I love reaching out to readers, it becomes a compulsion that I now can't stop, then you're creating a sustainable way to keep on going.
Then on those days when it's really, really, really hard, and you're waking up bleary eyed and your alarm is going off, and you just can't be bothered today, like you kind just go, well, why am I doing it?
And you might see that book a few months down the line, you might see yourself looking back on yourself when you're 80 and thinking, you know, I made the most of this day. But having a really good reason as to why you're doing it is ultimately the fundamental component of how you create a sustainable career.
Joanna: I laughed there when you said those people who think it's a quick way to make money. You and I know that this is not a quick way to make money!
Dan: No, no. Nine years in and I'm still trying to make money.
Joanna: That's the thing. I feel like, well, people listening to this show understand, if you want to write you'll write.
If you want to do it full-time, that's a different thing. Obviously, both you and I do a lot of different things other than just write.
But I did want to ask you, because you write dark stories as do I, but also like me on your nonfiction stuff, you're a happy, upbeat person. If people meet you at a convention or something, you're always smiling, and that's you and me as well, but we have this other side.
Tell us more about why you write darker books and how you tap into that. Dan: I love this question because it's definitely something I've been trying to verbalize and pin down and work on myself. In the beginning, I didn't really know. I just wanted to tell darker stories, I didn't know where it came from.
Over time, what I've come to learn is that horror writers tend to be some of the loveliest people you'll meet. We were just speaking beforehand that I've just been to StokerCon, which is a convention purely made of horror writers, and it was one of the best times I've had at a conference. Everyone was lovely.
I think there's a few reasons why it's so cathartic to write horror. One of them being that there aren't really any limits to what you can write, and as someone who kind of likes to go through life sampling from every table, and just experimenting, and seeing all the different colors on the spectrum, having not to worry about what you're writing is quite a nice experience. It's freeing. So when you're writing your prose not worried about swear words, you're not worried about sort of graphic material, it's just a place to play.
The other really thing good thing that I love about it as well, is it is a place to exorcise your demons. I think a lot of the reason that horror writers are really nice people is because they put all of their demons onto the page.
One thing I certainly do is anything that's worrying me, any sort of tough times I've had, any sort of trauma I've been through, I then use that to fuel the stories. In a way, it's kind of its own therapy, which is, as I say, just a really nice way to work through that in your mind and to put things down.
So, I mean, there are a number of reasons. Like, who doesn't like playing with monsters and ghosts? Who doesn't like just going to the darkest edges of what's going on? But yeah, there's definitely a personal element of just therapy as well for me.
Joanna: I agree with you, I think just put putting the demons on the page. You're exactly right, like lovely, lovely people, horror writers.
Dan: Yeah. Ironically.
Joanna: It is kind of ironic, but it makes sense when you think about it. Do you write under different names?
Do you find that you separate your time differently with fiction and nonfiction? Dan: So I haven't, purely because I didn't want to over stretch what I was doing with different pen names. I don't know if maybe I should have for certain projects. but where I am at the minute, it's all under one name.
I am looking at a different style of horror, which I'm contemplating a pen name for, but I haven't yet made that decision. That's mostly for sort of marketing purposes, in the sense of like it's a middle grade horror, a lot less dark, a bit more pacey, whereas like some of the stuff I like to write is a lot more wayfaring and rich prose and very, very dark. So I'm potentially contemplating those two different audiences, just to make it a bit easier to sell those books.
As I said, I've not really made a decision on that yet because part of the reason that I choose to write is because I want to share the stuff that I do. So putting myself behind a pen name, because this would be a totally different name, putting myself behind the pen name, I kind of feel like I'm hiding, and I don't necessarily want to do that. Then I understand the marketing value as well. So once I figured that one out, I'll let you know.
Joanna: It is tough. I mean, I published the first two or three novels under Joanna Penn and then realized that I needed to, for my audience, but also for myself. Like I do kind of schedule different time slots, you talked about that, making an appointment with yourself. I make Joanna Penn appointments, and J.F. Penn appointments. Like I've got my Catacomb monster book here on my desk, and that I have scheduled time for J.F. Penn editing. I wouldn't be able to do this interview with you after doing that kind of session. So I really have to split my time.
But I did want to ask you, because you've mentioned collaboration, and Hawk & Cleaver, and you mentioned Michael Anderle and the collaborations. Now, I have co-written a few novels and other books, and I do find it really hard.
Give us some tips around collaborating and co-writing and how you do that. Dan: Yeah, I think it all starts with, again, that question of: why you're doing it? What is it you're hoping to achieve from the collaboration?
And sort of the second biggest thing to go into a collaboration with is understanding that it's not going to be your book. I think a lot of people go into collaborations, and they're like, I'm going to be able to write my story faster because I'm working with someone else.
What ends up happening is this beautiful magic in which you create an amalgam of both styles of writer, the story kind of takes its own phrase, and you really have to put your ego aside and say, look, this project isn't going to be typically how I process things because there's two people involved.
So as I said, there's the question of why.
There are also many, many different ways to collaborate. So I've done collaborations with Luke Kondor, incredible writer, check him out Lukekondor.com. But I've done collaborations with him in which it was 50/50, in the sense of we worked on two novels at once, I wrote the first draft of one, he wrote the first draft the other, and we kind of switched back and forth between drafts. So the story was very much both of our hands very much in that story.
The collaboration with Michael that you mentioned, he'd already built a world, he knew what that timeline was, there was a bunch of rules that you had to stick to so that the rest of the books made sense. Then I was allowed to create my own little sandbox in that world and play with it myself, and then there was just that approval at the end to make sure that it fitted where it needs to go.
Then I've done a collaboration with J. Thorn and his American Demon Hunter series.
[Me too! American Demon Hunters: Sacrifice, written on the train from Chicago to New Orleans]
That was taking his characters, and his location, and writing their story for him with my ideas.
There are all these different ways to collaborate, and it doesn't even have to stay within the writing zone. It could be one person writes, the other person edits. It could be one person does all the writing, the other person does all the marketing. I think the key to collaborating really is being open and honest with each other and being transparent with what you want because the minute someone lies or someone misleads the other person, that is where it all starts falling flat.
So if you can't meet the deadline, but you say you're going to, that's an issue. If the project isn't entirely in line with the things you want to create, and you feel like a collaboration will just make it happen quicker, that's a bad idea. I have seen some collaborations go south very quickly, and that has mostly just been because the expectations of each author are different and they haven't had that initial conversation.
I wrote a book, back in 2020 I published it,Collaboration for Authors, and within that I had all these different sections for the different stages of collaborating with another author.
What very quickly happened was all of the pages about the setup, before you've signed anything or agreed anything, ended up being half of the book. The most important thing you can do is figure everything out upfront, like go into detail on finance, marketing, writing timelines, any problems you might foresee, because if you can do that before you've fully agreed and committed, then half of the problems are gone.
Joanna: That's interesting. Of course, I've also co-written with J Thorn in that same universe.
Dan: Who hasn't?!
Joanna: We wrote Risen Gods together, and also Co-writing a Book together. It's interesting, I've written some nonfiction co-written, and on the one hand, I like it, and on the other hand, I find it really hard because, as you say, we're control freaks. We like our own stories.
Here's another point is that, yes, I agree, you have to get your contract sorted upfront, but then the money is split between two of you, or however many you do. So I basically have found that those books don't make me as much money, so therefore, I don't promote them as much.
How do you deal with the business side of co-writing? Are you just so prolific it doesn't matter because you have so many books?
Dan: Yeah. I mean, the collaborations aren't the ones that made me the most money. I mean, obviously, the books I did with Michael have been very, very helpful because he's a giant in the space that he's currently working in.
There is definitely something about having two names on the cover that can put people off. I'm not sure about the psychology behind that or what that is. I have seen quite a few authors who, if they are collaborating, will generally create a pseudonym or a pen name for themselves, so it looks like one author, but it's actually two or sometimes three.
So yeah, I mean, I will say that they're probably not the most lucrative in terms of making money and earning that back. I've been publishing books pretty much solid since 2014, so having that regular rhythm, that regular schedule definitely helps. I
‘m doing a lot of work at the minute with creating a series of standalones within horror that will keep the read-through going between different books, to hopefully also help increase somebody's income.
I mean, collaborations are there a lot of fun, but yeah, each one is absolutely different. Some can be more of a struggle than others. And also, yeah, I will say as a warning to anyone, the admin side of it is a bit of a headache.
Joanna: Yeah, although thanks to Draft2Digital who now have payment splitting.
I did that with Mark Leslie Lefebvre for The Relaxed Author. You mentioned there a series of standalone in horror, which everyone's like, what? What is the series of standalone? Explain that because, of course, in horror, a lot of books are standalone because like a lot of people die, there's no one left.
What is a series of ‘standalone' books? Dan: Well, so I've been trying to get my head around this for the last sort of two, three years. I wrote a serialized novel in 2020 that turned out it was six novellas that I released one a month and started building a bit of an audience. Then like you say, at the end, everyone dies. So where do you go from there?
I've kind of just been doing a lot of looking into how people sustain horror series because there are examples out there of people who have kept series going. So you can look at The Shining and then Doctor Sleep as kind of a sequel, very, very short series. You can look at things like R.L. Stine's Goosebumps, which are obviously aimed at much, much younger readers.
There are a lot of examples of authors out there that are creating standalones, but within either a brand or a universe. So there's Jeremy Bates.
Joanna: Oh, yes.
Dan: Yeah, I think it's like the World's Scariest Places or something. He's got a bunch of books in that series, and even though they're all standalone, the branding tells the reader they're written by the same author, they're in the same sort of tone, they have a uniformity on the stories without each story being connected, which I think is a really, really smart way to do that. So that's something that I'm creating and playing with at the minute.
I'll say this, because I've already seen a few other people doing this, I thought it had a really unique idea, but every idea is unique when you do it yourself. But I mentioned, obviously Goosebumps is a series of standalone, and so one of the things I'm working on at the minute is a Goosebumps-inspired series for adults. So for the much more sort of older horror reader, a series of interconnected shorter novellas—I say interconnected, not story wise—but branded together so that they're written in a very particular style, readers know what they're going to get, they're a much faster pace reads.
As I say, when it comes to these, it's definitely the branding that's going to be the most important thing to sell that to people. So you know that if you pick up book one, you could pick up book eight, and you'll still have the same experience, but an entirely different story.
Joanna: Yeah, it is tough. I was actually looking at Jeremy Bates's books because my book is called Catacomb, and whenever you have a one-word title, you're going to overlap with someone else's one-word title. He has one of his World's Scariest Places, or whatever it is, is Catacomb. Yeah, I've read a few of his books, and they're fantastic. So I do think we can all look at series options, so I like that.
We mentioned at the beginning that you do a lot, and you do. So I wondered, how do you manage your time? Because I know it can be hard to juggle so much, and I would say as someone who is a few years ahead of you, that one of the things that has happened to me is I have had to drop things over time because I realized I haven't got time for everything or I need to spend time on the things that are really the main thing that I need to do.
How do you juggle everything? How do you manage your time? Dan: So it's very fortuitous timing that you ask this question. But I'll say before I kind of dive into the reality of the situation, so I've kind of got two thoughts on this that have changed over the last couple of years.
The first one is, productivity comes in seasons. So what I have found is that there are certain points in which I am incredibly productive, and 2020 was definitely one of them, and I can't think why that might be. So that was very productive.
Then I also see my own productiveness as a bit of an accordion. So what I mean by that is that I will generally slim loads of stuff down until I feel that I have capacity.
Then over time, I'll gently take more and more and more on until I'm sort of right stretched out, can't take any more, and then I squeeze it all back in and try to slim it out so I can focus again. So I do do a lot, and one of the things I'm definitely trying to do is slim down on that. I know that you've been a big proponent of books that sort of encourage ‘no' and slimming back, and I've read a few of those.
A perfect example of why that's important is that I actually ended up in hospital in March of this year, having a stress/anxiety attack, which I thought was a heart attack. That was a combination of work, that was a combination of personal life circumstances because there's a lot going on in the personal life as well.
This kind of comes back to what we're saying about your life and your way, because —
Everyone has their own capacity depending on what it is they're doing, and I pushed mine a bit too far. So there are lessons learned, and I think one of the things that I teach a lot is the idea of going narrow and deep on a subject, rather than wide and shallow on about 10 different ones. My problem is I'm just an incredibly ambitious individual. So I will get very excited about an idea, and I will just run with it.
I know that you're a proponent these days of the Clifton Strengths model, and two of mine are Activator and Ideation. So I will come up with an idea for something and I will want to execute it straightaway. I will get incredibly excited about that idea, and I will just go for it. What I'm learning is that I need to slow that down and really kind of put some brakes on myself, contemplate what it is that I'm doing, and whether or not that serves a bigger goal.
Even over the past few months since the incident at the hospital, I've incredibly narrowed down what my big goals are because I've realized that I can't do it all. And more importantly, I shouldn't do it all, especially if I want to make this a sustainable career and not end up back in hospital again.
So creating very, very stringent, like one big goal, two big goals, at most three big goals, and then creating small pathways to get to those without getting too distracted, which is, again, for people like me, incredibly hard.
This is also one of the reasons that I created the Author Activation Matrix, which is a free resource people can download it on the activatedauthors.com website.
It's because I was giving a lot of thought into what the different areas of life as an author are, so not just about the writing, but about the health, the social life, all the different components of what makes you you, so that you can try and put those in balance and try and keep pushing forward without hurting yourself. And again, speaking as someone that has been there, I find it incredibly useful.
Joanna: Yes, and thank you for talking about that.
I think it's important for us all to talk about that. I mean there aren't many authors who are professionals who haven't had some kind of these incidents.
I mean, for me, it was more that I ended up with a really bad shoulder injury from the posture that we sit in, the kind of hunched posture, not just from writing, but from 20 years in IT as well. So like this morning, I was working out with my personal trainer, I do weights twice a week, I do walking and things.
You include health on one of the aspects of your activation matrix, so that's one of the things.
What are some of the other things that you think are important for authors to consider? Dan: Well, so the five categories I've got down here are: general, health, social, authorship, and outlook.
So general is kind of encompassing just feelings, and how you are on a day to day. So there's things like mood in there. There is gratitude. How grateful are you for the things that you currently have? Are you taking time to be appreciative of what you do have rather than what you don't? Things like joy are in there. I've even put finances in there because finances, as you no doubt know, massively affects that underlying level of tension and anxiety you might feel on a daily basis.
Under health there's things like hydration, nutrition, exercise, sleep, even just going outside and getting some sunshine. Then there's the social element that's got like how are your relationships with your family, with your friends, or with any partnerships that can be romantic, or important work partnerships.
There's a section for authorship, which is how creative do you feel? Are you doing stuff for self-development? How's your publishing? How's your marketing? That's a bit more sort of boiling down into the operational logistics of running your author business. Then outlook is just as simple as how are you currently feeling now and how optimistic or pessimistic are you for the future that you've got coming up?
So it's quite holistic, but what I do is I've got each category labeled 1 to 10. Then as you go through, you circle what number you're on, where you feel you are in these particular areas, and then at the end, you get given a score.
The idea isn't to win or lose the score, it's literally just to give you a baseline of where you're at so that you can look back in a week or two weeks’ time and say, okay, I've taken action on this one, my number is improving, that means I'm paying attention to the areas that I'm letting drop.
Joanna: It's interesting. I like the Clifton Strengths because the focus is more leaning into our strengths. The matrix you talk about, obviously, there'll be some numbers we're weak on. We cannot be strong on everything.
What kind of person are you? Are you an optimize your strengths or fix your weaknesses person? Because we can't do everything.
Dan: No, I think I am definitely optimize my strengths is where I've kind of gotten to. I mean, I got this principle from Gary Vaynerchuk and some of the stuff that he said all over his Instagram all the time with his incredibly thick accent. But yeah, I like the idea of leaning into the things that you do well in.
Sometimes that's difficult, especially if you're running a solo author business. Obviously, you've got to be able to cover a lot of different areas, and some that you might not be as good in. But if you can afford it, if you can get the help, or even if you've got sort of volunteer partners or collaborators that can help you balance out what those weaknesses are, then that will help you create a more sort of rounded experience.
I mean, something that I found incredibly useful, and this is going a bit more back to the day job, is a model that I came across called the T-shaped marketing model.
The idea was that you create, similarly to the activity in the author matrix, you create a baseline of all the different categories that are critical to your business. So it could be finance, it could be marketing, it could be writing, and then you give yourself kind of a score in terms of like along the line. It's hard to do by my audio only, but people, check out the T-shaped marketing model.
It highlights what you're strong in, and anything that you're weak in you can then look for other people to bring in to inflate those to bring those up so that you've got a bit more of a rounded business that you can then run. So yeah, I tend to lean into my strengths a lot more, but when I can, I do try and educate myself on the things that I might be a bit weaker in.
Joanna: Well, you do have marketing under authorship. I feel like this is a non-negotiable weakness that authors have to sort out you. You actually can't leave that. Sorry, everyone. I mean, you can hire people, but you can only really do that at a point in your career where you can afford it.
As an author of fiction and nonfiction books, give us some of your tips for marketing both of those. And how are they different? Dan: I mean, there are some similarities, and there's definitely like a lot of differences.
My fiction tends to center around, like one of the big things is my reader magnets. I've got a number of those for different series, different books that I've put out. I do a lot of newsletter swaps.
I'm very, very prolific on Story Origin as a resource, which I highly recommend to anyone looking to try and build up their mailing lists and just get readers into their funnel. I do a lot of swaps just to stay connected with other authors and to reach new readers. A lot of the fiction stuff, it has to be regular, you have to be putting out newsletters somewhat regularly. Again, whatever that looks like for you. So it could be monthly, weekly, bi monthly. So all these different strategies and rhythms and times to create the fiction promotion.
One of the big things is just keep writing good books because if someone enjoys the reader experience, then hell yeah, they're going to buy another book from you.
If they reach out to you, absolutely write something back — Because nothing pleases a reader more than actually hearing back from the people that they enjoy reading from.
Then nonfiction, it's somewhat similar, although I tend to do a lot of things like this, you know, podcasts, hop on different interviews, network and speak to different people.
If I'm at events, I'll speak to different people and try and see what they've got going on and see if there's any sort of cross-promotional opportunities.
I have the Activated Authors Podcast, which I run with Samantha Frost. We're on a little bit of a hiatus at the minute, but we run that pretty much every week, discussing all the different areas of author life. We sometimes have interviews. I do think podcasting is a very, very good vehicle to bring people into a nonfiction environment.
That's one of the reasons I created Activated Authors was because, well, I say I created it, but the community basically begged me to make it happen. But you know, running something like a podcast or doing small events or challenges and things, it gives people a chance to get to know you, to hear your voice, to get familiar with you.
I'm sure that you're more than familiar with this, the amount of time someone will come up to you and they'll know who you are, so they talk to you like an old friend, and you've never seen that person before in your life.
Any opportunity to connect with people, to reach out, to just get a bit of exposure and share who you really are, it's fantastic for nonfiction. What I kind of say with my brand in nonfiction is I prioritize authenticity, honesty, and just the reality behind the author journey.
So Activated Authors is all about supporting authors, no sort of screens, no smoke screens about what it is to be an author. We're very honest, we all support each other, and it's kind of a wonderful environment to be in.
So the thing that I find in marketing is there are very, very general principles which everyone knows. It's just everyone's very reluctant to put the work in to make it happen. Because obviously we want to be writers ,and that's kind of why people get into the writing business in the first place.
Joanna: You're right. I mean, at the end of the day —
The email list still rules. Dan: It reigns supreme.
Joanna: Yes, exactly. I did want to come back on something you said earlier.
You talked about being ambitious, and you've obviously been doing this now almost a decade.
Tell us a bit more about ambition because I feel like a lot of us have ambition, and we might be just slightly ashamed of it, especially being British, it's just not done to talk that way. Americans are fine, but we struggle.
Talk about ambition and how you're weaving these longer-term ambitions into the short-term need to make money. Dan: Yeah, I mean, that's a big question.
I ended up doing a lot of sort of self-development work around what would have been 2013 through 2017. That was a mix of reading a bunch of nonfiction books, people like Gary Vaynerchuk were very inspirational for that. Brene Brown, Glennon Doyle, Elizabeth Gilbert, like all those books are like fantastic for helping you, I guess, come to terms with your own ambition and the fact that this is your life to lead.
I think, without going on a whole sort of soapbox, one of the big disadvantages of especially being British, is the school system is bred to teach you to comply and that anything outside of the norm is unwanted, unacceptable, and kind of something to be ashamed about.
I kind of came around to it, probably in my late teens, maybe just a little after, but the idea that I'm only going to be here once, I'm only going to live on this planet once, if what I believe to be true is true.
I try not to hold back from anything that I want to do. Part of that is, well, there's many kinds of components that, but one of them is accepting that you're probably going to fail to begin with, or that things are going to be hard when you first learn them.
Over the years I've taught myself guitar, piano, juggling. I'm learning coding for video games and things at the minute. I taught myself how to write novels and scripts and short stories, tried painting, tried drawing. Like I've tried a lot of different things, even if I've sucked at it, just to give it a go and to understand. I mean, I've literally bought a little crochet kit at the minute so I can try and make my kid a crochet Buzz Lightyear because I want to see if I can do that skill.
It's accepting that you're not going to be good to begin with, and it's got to take work, and that's just part of the process.
And because I'm very much gotten to the point that I, you know, we all fall prey to it sometimes, but for the most part, I don't compare myself to other people. I'm hyper aware that my journey is different to anyone else's. Number one, Individualization, back to the Clifton Strengths. I'm so aware that my journey is different that it really doesn't bother me what other people think of me.
I've gotten to a point now where I can experiment and write a stupid story and put that out there. A couple of times, I've done some live writing in which I've written the first draft of a story just in front of people and let them see that. I shared my first ever first draft of my first ever novel with people inside Activated Authors because that was done from 2014. That's nothing to do with me now, like I've put in the work.
So ambition comes from, I guess, a desire to live a life well lived.
Also, in order to do that, you have to just be very, very aware that like no one can tell you no, only you can tell you no. You know, in a way without getting arrested. But you're the only one that can really stop yourself from doing things. So again, like I've kind of taught myself small bits of languages, and I want to learn more of that, I played lots of different sports, but it's an ever-evolving journey. I just want to have fun, and I want to see what I can do in the time I have.
Joanna: But—
Do you have any specific author-related ambitions? Dan: Yeah, I mean, I want to win a Bram Stoker. That would be awesome. Which is a weird one because I'm not fueled by approval, but I think I need a goal in that regard. Kind of go on that journey, as I say, I've recently just come back from StokerCon, I sat in the Bram Stoker Awards this year, met a lot of nominated authors, spoke to a few award-winning authors.
I'm putting in the work to find out how that happens, and to see what that looks like, and anything that I can do to make it.
No matter what you want to do, there is somewhat a path to there. I mean, you'll struggle if you're—not to say that this hasn't happened—but you'll struggle if you're four-foot and you're trying to dunk in the NBA. So there are certain limits to ambitions, but for the most part, there's a path to try and get to where you want to go. The hard part is figuring what that path is and allowing yourself to stumble along the way.
Joanna: Absolutely.
Dan: So yeah, I definitely want the award. I've got a few ambitions to speak in bigger venues and bigger arenas and just to try and spread the message of a lot of the stuff that we had spoken about because I think it's hyper-important.
And honestly, a lot of people don't talk about the tougher times and the realities of being an author. I kind of hear too many interviews where people are like, “Oh, yeah, my first book went amazing. Now I'm writing every day, and it's wonderful.” Because I'm like, you're lying. There's something that you're holding back that for some reason you're scared to share.
Joanna: I mean, a lot of that is the historical way. I mean, I think on this show, we keep it real!
Dan: A hundred percent. And that's why I've listened to you for nine years.
Joanna: I think people come back because of the difficult times as well. They're going to get different things here. Thank you for sharing.
So where can people find you, and your books, and your podcasts, and everything you do online? Dan: So there's three main places for me. There's DanielWillcocks.com. There's ActivatedAuthors.com for anyone who wants to come over and see the author community, which I have recently made free. So if any wants to jump over into that, that's at that website. Then for some nice horror every Monday into your podcast feed, that's at TheOtherStories.net.
Joanna: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Dan. That was great.
Dan: Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity to come on.
The post Writing Fast, Collaboration, And Author Mindset With Daniel Willcocks first appeared on The Creative Penn.
How can you use what you're scared of to write better stories that resonate with readers? How can you acknowledge your shadow side and bring aspects of it into the light in a healthy way that serves you and your customers?
Michaelbrent Collings talks about his experiences — and you can do my Shadow Survey here (before 31 Aug 2023).
In the intro, The Inner Work of Age by Connie Zweig; different kinds of direct sales [Wish I'd Known Then]; QuitCast on productivity and burnout with Becca Syme; 7 success factors for neurodivergent and cognitively impaired self-published authors [Self-Publishing Advice]; Outcomes of an AI Future [Moonshots and Mindsets]
This podcast is sponsored byKobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to theKobo Writing Life podcastfor interviews with successful indie authors.
Michaelbrent Collings is the multi-award-nominated internationally bestselling author of over 50 books across horror, thriller, fantasy, sci-fi and more, as well as a produced screenwriter and speaker.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- Writing from the shadow side of the self
- Bringing your fears and guilts into your writing
- How to bring your shadows to the surface in a helpful way
- Differences in what we find appropriate based on culture and upbringing
- The underlying hope when reading and writing horror
- Hiding our shame in our shadows
- Tips for overcoming self-censorship
You can find Michaelbrent at WrittenInsomnia.com and his Bestseller Life course at BestsellerLife.com
Transcript of Interview with Michaelbrent Collings Joanna: Michaelbrent Collings is the multi-award-nominated internationally bestselling author of over 50 books across horror, thriller, fantasy, sci fi and more, as well as a produced screenwriter and speaker. So welcome back to the show, Michaelbrent.
Michaelbrent: Hello, Joanna. It's always so fun to hang out with you.
Joanna: It is. Sixth time on the show, it is a record!
Michaelbrent: I'm looking forward to a coat, a Letterman's jacket of some kind. Just something, you know, with my name on it and The Creative Penn across the back, so I feel like a legit rockstar.
Joanna: You really are. And over the years, we've talked about writing hooks, and book descriptions, how to reboot a flagging author career.
We've also talked about writing with depression, which is a very popular episode. Also, how to write fast and how to write horror. So we've covered a lot, and today's discussion kind of covers elements of some of these things.
We're just going to jump straight in because at the moment, I'm working on this book about writing from the shadow side of the self, and you came to top of mind for someone who does this.
Michaelbrent: Because I'm best viewed in the shadows, so that's my life.
Joanna: Not at all, but you've been so open about some of this darker stuff. So I wanted to start with—
What do you think is part of the shadow side for you? Michaelbrent: Well, for me, there's a lot of stuff. And I tell people that they look at me, and every time I'm on a show—not with you, but with other people that I don't know—and I get through and they're like, “Oh, you were so nice.” Like they were expecting me to be doing voodoo during the show, or chanting in the background, or like I was going to reach through their screen and make a wallet out of their face skin or something horrific.
So much of it is just upbringing.
Like my dad was an expert on Stephen King, he was literally the world expert on Stephen King for 20 years. So I tell people I grew up with screaming and typing in the next room. That's what I went to bed with, and that changes a person, you know.
So part of its that, and part of it was I just had a tough time of it when I was young.
Some of that was self-inflicted, I was kind of a snotty kid. I'm this little, tiny kid, and I'm a genius. Literally, my mom was taking me to college in sixth grade so I could have math class there. And I let people know it.
So I'm sitting there as like the worst kind of nerd that you've ever experienced, and people reacted to that. So because of that, I didn't have a lot of friends, and it took a long time to figure out how to kind of overcome that part of myself that was so low self-esteem that I needed to tell everyone how great I was. But really, it was a function in self-inflicted wounds that caused me to kind of cave in.
We also had mental health problems in my family that made things difficult.
There was a lot of stress in the air. Despite there being a lot of love, there was also a lot of challenges. So being kind of small, feeling helpless, despite the fact that I was pretty smart, and it just compressed into this one little package that was like, I'm going to write some stuff to make me feel better. And my first story, I can remember, was about killing my brother. So obviously there was some dark crap in there.
Joanna: It's interesting having siblings. I'm the eldest of five siblings, and I have one brother who's quite close to me in age. I do remember almost trying to kill him many times. I would kind of flip him upside down when he was smaller than me. I don't know what it is about siblings. I mean, have you watched Succession?
Michaelbrent: No, I haven't. That's on my to do list because I've heard so many good things about it, and it's got such good people in it.
Joanna: It's possibly the most violent show on TV without physical violence, as in between siblings it is incredibly verbally violent. So it's interesting.
I guess family is one of those things in our shadow, like the things that come up around family and, I guess, guilt around feeling that way.
Do you think guilt around family sits in the shadow? Michaelbrent: I think so, for sure. I mean, again, like even in my description, I was like, “and it was self-inflicted,” because you look back on your life, and so much of life is built around regret.
You know, I don't want to become my parents, and so I'm going to do everything I can to avoid that. And despite all that, I turned into my father anyways, and I feel bad about that. Or I feel good about it, and it's great because it turns out that he was wonderful.
You know, as you age, your perspective changes, and then it switches immediately to like, oh, I must have been really crappy to my dad, and I want to avoid these mistakes I made with my children. So I'm going to push them a certain direction that's less about their life lived than the life I regret living.
You know, we focus our regret into our family lines because they're generational hope for the future. You know, it's like I want to leave something wonderful behind, so I'm going to make sure my kids don't suck as much as I did. Of course that ends up twisting them up terribly.
Joanna: You mentioned your kids, obviously, you talked about your dad and your brother.
Fear of losing family is one of my tropes that comes up in my writing. It's often about sisters. I have two sisters, and doing things for family who are in jeopardy. So I mean, you have kids, and some of them I think are quite young, but yet you do have children in jeopardy in your books.
So how do you bring those fears into your writing?
Michaelbrent: I think the one thing that you have to be careful with, before we say anything else, is —
You don't want to turn your books into therapy. The one thing that every therapist has in common in the whole world is they require payment. So if I'm going to therapy, I pay my therapist, and that's fine. But if I write a book, and I use that for therapy, and then I turn around to the therapist and say, “That'll be $4.99 or $9.99,” or whatever the price of the book is, they're going to be like, no, no, that's not how it works.
I think taking the core of the things that worry you and the things that terrify you, and turning that into the basis of a book is a tremendously good idea because we tend to be worried about kind of universal things when you drill down.
The danger comes when you're just using it exclusively as a self-improvement vehicle. In that case, you're going to be really self-indulgent, and long winded, and people aren't going to care.
So when you get down to it, yeah, families are incredibly important because every single person has one. I mean, they either have an actual one that they live with currently that they love/hate, because there's always that stuff bound up no matter how good the family, or they have the family they wish they had. You know, the people that are orphaned or abandoned or what have you, they can't help but look around at the kind of nuclear examples around them and say, “What if I had had that? Why didn't I have that?”
There's so many questions that are fundamentally human nature that are really rooted in where did I come from and where am I going. And that's, by definition, kind of a familial question. So those things matter tremendously.
My wife and I lost a child years back, and that became the root of one of my most terrifying books, which is called Apparition. And it's not terrifying because it's the greatest book of all time, but just the concept is that there's this thing out there that makes parents kill their children.
It's like a demon, and it consumes the blood and the fear of the children, and then it withdraws and consumes the madness of these parents that realize what they've done. I wrote that in large measure as a way of kind of working through what I was experiencing, having just lost my own child.
Joanna: Which is an awful experience, but just on the writing side there, you said, don't write for therapy, and yet you wrote this book as part of dealing with that. So where's that line? How do you know? Or—
Is it Write in grief, Edit outside of it? I don't know.
Michaelbrent: Yes. Yeah, I think that's really part of it. So much of what we write has got to be for ourself, it has to be fulfilling and enjoyable.
I've written just for the money, and I can do it, but it's really 10 times harder. I wake up late in the morning, I don't want to get started, because it's just a job. It's just digging a ditch, you know, and I'm using my mental processes instead of my physical ones.
At its heart, if you want a long-term career, if you want to have a career that you enjoy day to day, you have to enjoy the process.
Part of what we write has to, on its surface level, be about the writer. it has to be something that I find fulfilling or interesting.
In the editing process—and there's two editing processes—there's one that the end where you put all the bells and whistles on and you make it beautiful.
But there also has to be one at the beginning, which is, here's an idea—this is my personal opinion—but there should be an editing process at the beginning, which is, this is something I'm interested in, is this universal? Is this something that will speak to other people, or is it just about me?
If it's just about me, I'll write it and then put it in a drawer because that is therapy, it's something I'm working through.
If it starts out universal, or if I can figure out a way to broaden it somehow or to narrow it and make it more applicable to others, then that's where kind of the preliminary magic comes in.
So with this book Apparition, if it had just been a dad kind of thinking like, “I'm going to write my journal about what it feels like to lose a kid and how hard that is. There's a lot of sadness, and at the end I realize I'm not quite so sad anymore.” You know, that would not be a book that maybe grabbed people.
I had to say, well, how can I kind of discuss what I want to talk about, which is this horrific event, in a way that's going to be useful and helpful for me, but also make it enjoyable or useful or helpful to others as well.
So before I even started writing that, there was definitely an end in mind, which is this is going out into the world and it can't just be, Michaelbrent stars in a Michaelbrent book about Michaelbrent saying woe is me, Michaelbrent. It just wouldn't work very well.
Joanna: I mean, there are other things, you mentioned mental health, and obviously we've done a show on depression. I wrote a bit about suicidal thoughts in my book Delirium and also in Pilgrimage, a recent memoir.
I feel like mental health issues are also something that you tackle in your life, but also in your writing. So how does that side come into your writing?
Michaelbrent: It's like any other part of you.
So for those who haven't heard the other shows, I have major mental health problems, I have major depressive disorder, suicidal tendencies and psychotic breaks. And that's just, it's me, it's my reality. So, you know, if I lose an arm in an accident, I'm going to type differently from then forward, and it's just necessity based.
This isn't losing an arm, but it does lock up certain parts of my brain, and it unlocks other ones, which is nice. You know, I do a lot more of my own editing than most people do successfully, simply because people are like, how do you do that, and I go, well, you have to start out with a deep disdain for yourself.
I'm not in love with my work because it came from me, and at my heart, there's this broken thing that's like, oh, everything you do sucks. And that's a really good place to come from for a self-editing path, or working with an editor.
I just sold a pitch a while back for a series to a national publisher, and every time they came back with a note, I could tell they were worried I was going to fly off the handle. And instead, I was like, my problem is I didn't think of that. My only issue with your suggestion is it's so good, I'm worried you're going to tell people you came up with it. So long story short is —
You find a way to live with who you are. That's a really important thing to do as an author because what we're doing is creating these communities. We're telling stories that bind people together.
I would hope that if we're choosing that as a livelihood and as a vocation, that we're binding people together with good ties. We're saying, here's the reality, some of us are broken, but here's the other reality, we find ways to go on.
So, of course, as someone who deals with mental health problems day to day, I'm going to include those in my stories as much as a way of saying, hey, they're survivable, as anything else.
Joanna: As you're talking there, I don't think your mental health problems are in your shadow because you absolutely acknowledge them. They're part of your life. Like you said, it's just who you are.
Perhaps that isn't part of your shadow. Perhaps that used to be part of mine, as in I didn't used to talk about having thoughts like that, about, say, suicidal tendencies, or whatever. I didn't think that was acceptable. so I didn't talk about it.
If we deny a part of ourselves, that's what goes into the shadow. So this is an interesting question then. Are there things, I guess, that are in your shadow or that you've brought out from your shadow?
Perhaps we can't even acknowledge these things if they're deeply buried. But are there things perhaps you've dug out over time?
Michaelbrent: Oh, sure. And I love the shadow analogy because, you know, what a shadow is, it's just an unexamined outline.
I mean, if you look at what a shadow really is, it's a place where your outline has gotten in the path of something and made it a little darker. You've had this interesting interaction between illumination and whatever is standing behind you.
That is very much like so many of our problems, they're self-inflicted, in that, instead of dealing with them, we avoid them. Dealing with them doesn't mean they go away or they become less powerful.
Like I said, and like you said, I deal with my mental health stuff. It's not like I woke up one morning and was like, oh, my gosh, I'm depressed, and now I feel better. I was like, oh, my gosh, I'm depressed, and now at least when I feel like opening a vein, I can be like, hold on a little bit, this will go away, hold on a little bit, this will go away.
It still affects every part of my life, but I think the danger is denying the reality of those things.
The danger is looking at a shadow and saying, “Oh, that's not me. Oh, that couldn't be me. Oh, look how warped that shadow is. That's definitely not mine.” We've all walked down the street at sunset and seen our shadow stretch eighty-two feet ahead of us. And we look at that and go there's no way that giant tall guy is me or that weirdly chubby guy is me at noon, or whatever.
And they're all us, they're all aspects of us that depend on the direction we're facing and what part of life we're examining.
If we're looking towards the light, there's less shadow. If we're looking away from it, which is the job of a horror writer, in some respects, is to look at evil and discern it and describe it, then there's going to be a lot more shadow apparent in our field of view.
It really isn't about whether the shadow exists or not, or whether it's us or not. Yes, it exists. Yes, it's us. It's kind of the direction we're pointing, and if we can clarify the line between where shadow ends and the rest of kind of reality begins.
Joanna: You totally avoided the question!
Michaelbrent: I did, because, well, because I think the question was: is there anything that we bring out of that shadow and make into ourselves or is there things that we can't bring out? And I don't think there are things that we can't bring out.
I think there is a question of—
If I bring this out and then spread it around, is that going to be helpful or harmful? I feel like there are creators out there, be they artists, authors, whatever, whose whole thing is like, well, this is my muse, and even though it's destructive and hurts people, I'm going to cast it around because I feel like doing it. And I find that to be, in any other business, that's a sociopath and we avoid that person. And in our business, it's like, oh, they're following their muse, how wonderful.
I think we can talk about anything, but I think it behooves us to care for its effect on those we speak to.
You and I were talking earlier about, I just sold this series idea, and it's a middle grade series. It's actually quite dark, it's got a lot of horror to it, and I'm continually talking to the editors going, I think we can talk about anything to kids.
Children survived the Holocaust, we can discuss anything with kids — but the way we discuss it matters.
So when my two year old comes up and says, how are babies made? You know, we've all heard that, “When a mommy and daddy love each other very much, they stay together, and magic.” It's like just very kind of vague. And it ends with, “And come back in 10 years.” Then we tell them more as time goes on.
It's never a lie, but we tell them the story in a way that they'll understand and be uplifted and benefited by.
I remember my parents telling me about sex, and I just had bad dreams that night because the whole process sounded horrific. So I needed to know about it, but it's just a question of how and the moment we choose to tell people. So yeah, I think there's no such thing as something so dark that we can't talk about it. I definitely think that there's darkness that we have to be careful with.
Joanna: Yeah, and
I think some of the things that go into the shadow are the things that we are told are not appropriate. I remember being at school, I think I was around 11 years old, and I wrote an essay, and it's funny you talked about murdering your brother, because I had to choose between my dad and my sister being beheaded. I still remember it. It's in my mind, I can picture it.
Michaelbrent: Joanna Penn, people. Legit darkness!
Joanna: Well, it was this awful choice. So my dad and sister on one side, and my mom and my brother on the other side, like being boiled alive in one of those cauldrons. And my parents divorced, and it was all about choosing between family, which is a terrible choice, a sort of Sophie's Choice idea.
I wrote this essay, and my teacher—these days, they just report you to the school counselor or whatever, but back then this was the 80s, you know—
My teacher said that was entirely inappropriate to write a story like that, and I should be writing something like Black Beauty.
And so I really feel like from that young age, I was essentially told that it was unacceptable to think these darker thoughts and that I could only write in this sort of happy, happy way.
I think I had probably 25 years of pushing inappropriate, darker writing into my shadow before it came back out again. So did you have that, “this is inappropriate Michaelbrent,” or have you had to deal with that? Or—
Has it always been fine for you to write about these [darker] things?
Michaelbrent: I was very lucky, in that I had parents who not just encouraged me and supported me, but gave me what I think is a really healthy outlook on appropriateness and inappropriateness.
We were watching the John Carpenter movie, The Thing, and we're watching it oddly enough in my church, and because I'm a church-going person, we have this thing called family home evening. So on Monday nights, the families were supposed to get together and have a little church, like a scripture or something, and then you have an activity and a refreshment, some kind of brownies or whatever.
So we're doing that, and we had our scripture, and then dad's like, and now we're going to watch Aliens and The Fly. So like our family home evening devolved into this, you know, we're going to watch scary movies.
And for one of the scary movie, it was The Thing, and I don't want to do a spoiler alert, but the movie is like 45 years old. The alien, that's the bad guy, that's the antagonist, can assume any shape and its individual parts are self-sufficient. So they're burning this person who they've determined is one of the alien mimics, and as they're burning it alive, its head pulls away from its body, sprouts legs and scuttles off.
That's happening on the VCR. I'm like nine years old. My mom pauses it and stands there and goes, “You're about to hear a word. I want you to pay attention to the word,” and then she unpauses it and one of the guys goes, “You've got to be effing kidding me.”
And she pauses it again and says, “That is the only circumstance under which I want to hear that word come out of your mouth. If a guy's head has just pulled off and sprouted legs and locked away, you are allowed to use that word.”
It was funny because she was making a point about not saying certain things, but the lesson we all got that was a much better lesson, I think, which is that there's no such thing as a bad word or a bad thing to say.
Nobody's ever said a word to another person and had blood erupt from their ears because that word is an inherently harmful bunch of sound, you know, that hits us and causes an explosion in our brains. You know, it's not a scanner's kind of a situation. What we do have are words that we use inappropriately, or that say bad things about us or about our beliefs, or are harmful to other people.
So, again, with the shadow moments, my parents were saying that it matters how you tell the stories.
It matters what you're trying to accomplish. Are you trying to spread your pain to others? Well, that's not a good thing. Let's not do that. Are you trying to deal with your pain? That's a fine thing.
Are you trying to deal with your pain in a way that's more universal and can maybe help other people? That's an excellent thing. So I actually received very little pushback.
My dad, because he's this Stephen King expert, he's got tens of thousands of books in his home office, and he arranged them by appropriateness for my age. And he walked me in and he said, “If you can reach a book, you can read a book.” He had put the, you know, the naughtier, scary ones on the top shelf. So I pull out a stepladder, and I'm reading, you know, It, at age 10 or whatever.
Joanna: Great book!
Michaelbrent: It's just a fantastic book, but it wasn't exactly what he envisioned.
But he walks in, and he catches me do it, and he's like, well, okay, so the alternative now is we're going to talk about these books. I think that was so much more helpful sitting down and going, “What did you pull out? Why did you think it was good or bad that they did this? And how is that going to change your life?” I think that was a much more healthy approach.
So if we bump into somebody and they tell us something dark and deep, and we react with horror or with disgust, that is not only harmful, that borders on the criminal.
You know, there's this huge debate over whether we should have more gun control, and I'm not getting into that here, but I am saying, I don't think we're going to stop seeing mass casualty events until we have a little bit more of a forgiving attitude when people choose to share.
You know, if somebody says, “I'm a neo-Nazi,” and my first response is, “Get away from me, you scum!” Well, I've just excised from that person's life any chance of improvement.
What I should be saying is like, okay, let's sit down and talk about this, and let me see if I can help you. I'm not saying that we should forgive forever and allow people to run rampant, but I do think there's this really kind of harsh attitude that's become prevalent, where you better have been born with the proper attitudes and ideas and had them since day one. And if not, you're a bad person.
For me, I'm like, I want to look at 20 years ago, see all the stupid things you said, and all the dumb things you did, and then meet you now and say, wow, you've become incredible.
I think that only comes when we allow people to make those mistakes and allow people to engage with that shadow part, to say, hey, I have this darkness I don't understand, how can I deal with it? Maybe not fix it, because some of them aren't fixable, but how can I deal with it? How can I turn it from a weakness into a great strength?
Joanna: It's so interesting that you mentioned swearing, because I hadn't even put that on my list of what might even be in someone's shadow side.
But it's so funny because—and it's American, sorry, the British people just don't care about this stuff. But I mean, my original books, when I started writing fiction, I had some swear words in because I swear, and most people I know swear as part of life. So that was kind of a character thing.
Then I got these reviews from Americans who were like, you know, they don't mind you killing people in terrible ways, but a swear word is very, very bad.
It's so interesting. It's like you say, we're not going to talk about politics, but there are obviously some very big things that people agree with or disagree with which people react against.
I wonder if is it just culture and upbringing, if the things that we think are wrong are because of how we've been brought up. Because clearly, there are many Christians, for example, in the USA, who believe completely opposite things based on the same book.
Michaelbrent: Oh, yeah, for sure.
Joanna: Then the things that a religion, or a family, or a culture says is wrong, if we think that that gets pushed into the shadow because it's not acceptable.
For me, swearing was fine, but talking about death was bad. Whereas for you, talking about death was fine, but swearing was bad. I mean, that's kind of crazy.
Michaelbrent: Right? It's well, and again, it was like my parents, I will admit, I have said an F word or two in my life. And my dad actually wrote an entire article on the F word, it was great, about why we say it and why it's so powerful and stuff like that. It's fantastic. It's such a good article because he's an English professor, so he wasn't just sitting there musing in his basement, it was part of his job.
What you say brings such an important point to light, which is the things that bother me are nothing to other people and vice versa.
That's why I think it is so important that we have, first of all, a cautious outpouring of our shadow, that is trying to be aware if it's going to be harmful to somebody. Be it through cursing, or be it through sex, or whatever, you know, there's people out there.
I'm not saying give everyone exactly what they want and pander and stuff because sometimes the best thing we can do is push people a little bit.
But just that base awareness that we're part of the human race, and really, I do believe the biggest job of any artist is to create community. That's what we do with our stories, is we build groups.
A lot of it does have to do with upbringing, a lot of it does have to do with culture and environment, but if I go into it at least with the attitude of like, oh, Joanna had a part in her book about—and I say this, because like, I know you and you wouldn't do this—but she was just ripping on the belief system that I have and saying it's stupid and dumb and everybody who's in it is an idiot.
Well, I've tried to teach my kids that when you run across somebody like that, who has that base disagreement, they probably don't really think that about you, they think that about whatever they've heard about something, and that's very different. That's like judging the entire horror genre by a specific horror movie poster. The movie posters tend to be pretty grim and dark and scary, and just with despair and terror as their only feature. That's a very one-dimensional view of horror. Horror has this whole broad spectrum of cool stuff to it.
So whenever we run into something that we don't understand or that we deeply disagree with, rather than saying, “Oh, well, that's crazy,” which is an easy label to apply, which means I no longer have to engage with you because you make no rational sense.
Most people make a lot of rational sense, it's just based on a series of events in their life that are so radically different from ours that we have no framework for understanding them. The job of good humans is to get together and build new frameworks together, you know, hopefully, when we're doing what we should be.
So again, it all comes down to that we're never going to be able to pull out all the evil in our souls, in our base biology, and just be like, all that's left is just Kumbaya and love. That's not how nature functions, at least as we have it, absent some pretty big changes.
What we do have is an ability to empathize. We have the capacity to sympathize. We have the basic concept of communication. That's something that's wonderful. That's what we do as writers that are looking at darkness, is we go, hey, when you're talking about darkness, you're not just talking about events in a vacuum, you are talking about shadow.
That means there's a real person casting it, there's a real person who, first of all, might be blocking some light off, but also that means they're standing in the light somehow.
You know, nobody is 100% evil. So let's find that shadow, let's dig it out, let's bring it into light and make it an acceptable part of them by teaching them how to deal with it or how to function with it.
That's one of the best things horror does at its most basic level.
You know, I have so many people who write me talking about how horror is so hopeful for them. I had this one email years back, this lady said, “I'm going to the hospital. You don't have to respond. I'm dying. It's my final visit to the hospital, and I will die there, and I'm taking your scariest books because they give me hope.
So much of horror is that even if everybody dies in the end of the book, you close the book at the end and the reader lives on. The reader has become this survivor by proxy. I think we need more stories that teach people that.
Not that you're debased and awful for liking this, but you, unlike the people in the book, made it through and came out different and hopefully better.
Joanna: Yes, I find that your books—I haven't read all your books, you have a lot of books! — but I've read a lot of your books—and there's hope, and it's the human versus the monster, external monster or internal monster. Usually there's a bit of good that wins in the end, or the light in the darkness or something. That's what I like about the horror genre.
I think what's interesting, as well, is that —
What's in the shadow doesn't have to be evil, or horror, or any of that. What's so interesting, for example, about romance and erotica, but even just romance, is that people will potentially hide that they read stuff like that.
I remember meeting some indie romance authors, you know, 10-15 years ago now, and being just amazingly surprised because having been to a sort of literary course at university, and my mum was an English teacher, being told there are certain books that have value and others that don't.
Michaelbrent: Oh, right.
Joanna: You know what I mean?
So I think what's in our shadow are the things that we might be ashamed of, or feel guilty, or hide, or that type of thing.
I feel both you and I are completely open about the things we're talking about. It does occur to me that it's very hard to do an interview on the shadow because it is the things we hide.
Michaelbrent: Yeah. Oh, for sure.
Joanna: But it's definitely not just horror, is it? Because I mean—
Some people will hide their interest in other things. Michaelbrent: Yeah, and I think that's one of the wonderful strengths of horror is it shows like, hey, it's reality.
You know, you can't have the sun shining without some shadow in places. Wouldn't it be a funny life, if every place that there was a shadow we ran away screaming? We'd all be screaming all the time because we live in a world that's not just constant brightness, it's shadow.
That would be a ludicrous way to live, but that's kind of how sometimes, again, we insist others act. It's like, you better not have made a bad joke on Twitter 25 years ago, or you and I can no longer be friends. And I'm like, that seems like running from shadows. That seems like a ludicrous way to survive, rather than look at the person who's casting the shadow and go, “Oh, that shadow is really funky and weird looking, but it turns out this is a beautiful person.”
My wife is the most gorgeous person I've ever met, inside and out. I will admit, the first time I saw her that my very first thought wasn't like, I want to get to know her, it was that is the prettiest girl I've ever seen.
And she casts just as weird a shadow as me, as a frumpy, balding guy does. We all have these problems. We all have these issues. I think most of them stem from places that can be turned to, or already are, quite good.
Joanna: Let's try and give some practical tips then because I really feel I turned a corner maybe seven, eight years ago when I wrote my book Desecration … it's almost 10 years ago now. And it's kind of like, I stopped self-censoring.
Well, I didn't stop, but I started down the road of talking about the fact that I like graveyards, for example, or I like corpse art and all of that kind of thing. So I was able to start talking about it as I started to write about it.
What tips can you give authors to get over self-censorship and tap into that shadow side? Michaelbrent: I think one of the biggest ones is, first of all, find the right audience.
You know, if you are talking to someone who is visibly uncomfortable about your subject matter, you don't have to convert them to the gospel of horror.
Like, I don't like erotica. I never going to like erotica. That doesn't mean I think all erotica writers are evil people or I can't speak to them or anything like that, but it doesn't mean if someone's pitching me an erotica book, I'm not going to be interested. If all that person wants me for is pitching their erotica book, that's going to become a tiresome relationship very quickly.
So if you have a friend and you're like, “Oh, I'm writing this book, and it does feature graveyards and corpse art,” and they start wiggling around visibly uncomfortable, you can ask them, if you're close, be like, “Am I making you uncomfortable, and why?” And maybe that's a great growth moment for both of you to discover more about each other.
If this is like somebody you met yesterday, and you're never going to see them again, maybe that's not the right person to sit down and be like, “Let me tell you why you're wrong to be uncomfortable about this, and why it's awesome.”
I feel like so many of the mistakes that we make involve inflicting our point of view on people who are neither prepared nor interested, and might be at a different time.
You know, so many people have come around to horror because they went to a panel that I was on, and they were like, this guy's funny and so I’ll read one of his books. And then, oh, it's scary, I didn't realize it'd be scary because he makes a lot of jokes, but okay, I'll keep with it. And now they're a horror lover, you know. It's approaching people at the right time.
If you don't want to be ashamed, don't talk to somebody you know is going to shame you. I'm talking about if you love something innocuous that's harmless. I love romance, so don't talk to the big burly marine who has already stated bluntly that romance is for wimps and idiots. Maybe go find a community that supports it first. Then you can become friends with that burly marine, and as you become friends hope he comes to respect you. And while you're out shooting together, because you do that, you're like, “Yeah, this is just like a scene in my favorite romance book.” And he's like, “What?!”
Joanna: I was going to say that they all love romance.
Michaelbrent: Yeah, and that's me bluntly stereotyping as someone with a huge number of friends who are Army and Marine and stuff. But I'm making a silly analogy that we're all humans.
The problem is usually it's less about subject matter than it is about timing.
So if you want to break out of that and not feel ashamed, well, first of all, recognize it's part of you.
And you can be ashamed of it if you feel like it's down and grim and nasty and genuinely evil stuff. And in that case, seriously, seek help. Like, you might genuinely need help with something. Not even because it's bad, but because you have something horribly broken in you that's wounded needs help with. But if you're looking at it, and you're just ashamed because none of your friends like it.
I have a really good buddy who's a contractor, and he is a hardcore gamer. He loves D&D, and we go to Comic Cons together, and he'll dress up and like a full cosplay outfit with like a bustier and stuff like this. He's like full steampunk.
He doesn't wear that to the job site because he just knows the reaction is not going to be helpful. So he went out and found a second community, and it enriched his life because now he gets to do the job stuff he loves and he's got this community he loves.
So look at the difference between something that's evil, and something that you just haven't found the community to share with. Those are very different things. I think most of us get caught up in a confusion between them.
Joanna: I agree. I think being open to that. I mean, when I've spoken at things, I'll say, “Okay, who in the room likes graveyards?” And it's usually about 30% of people in a room. And this isn't a horror convention or anything. And I'll be like, “Okay, you'll probably like my J.F. Penn books.” Like, there's just a thing that we have in common. I've just found that's a really good way of doing it.
The other thing I was going to say is, I mean, a lot of erotica writers and some horror writers, a lot of romance writers, will use a pseudonym as a way to almost protect their ‘normal' life. You use your same name for everything. But as you said, you go to church, you're a family man, you're writing middle grade.
Have you ever thought about writing under a pen name? Michaelbrent: Not really. I mean, I did for a while when I wrote some Western romance. I used Angelica Hart, but it wasn't like a shame thing. It was just women writers sell better in that genre.
I actually ditched it because women were starting to write me, and like this 40-year-old divorced woman was like, “You're my best friend, and nobody else understands me, and those men…” And I'm like, oh, she's going to kill me when she finds out. So I ditched it because it was just too hard being two people for me.
If you feel like you have to be protected that way, that's a rough situation. I've never had massive amounts of blowback.
I have very often had confused looks. Like in church, I used to teach, I used to be in charge of the Sunday school for my congregation. A new person would come in, and I'd be talking to them after Sunday school, after I gave a lesson, and they'd be like, “What do you do?” because it comes up. And I'd be like, “I write scary books.” And they're like, “Like Harry Potter?” You know, that was kind of their default, like Harry Potter. And I'd go, “Yeah, sort of, but like, Hermione gets really mad in the middle of it and blows Harry up and then sets fire to Ron.”
They were so taken aback by that. And I, of course, did it for effect and as a laugh. I'd chuckle and I tell them about, like, the scariest book I've ever read was this one about this guy gets nailed to a tree.
Joanna: Yeah, there's some horror in the Bible!
Michaelbrent: Right. And so again, it's timing and it's understanding. And I'm going like, whatever you think of when you're thinking about horror, person who hates horror, that's probably actually not what I write because most of us actually overlap a lot.
Another thing my parents taught me was don't ever be ashamed to raise your hand and say, I don't understand. We worry about doing that because we worry about looking stupid. And they're like, 80% of the class has that question. You're going to have 20% of the class that thinks you're stupid, and 80% for whom you're the hero for finally asking the question that they needed asked.
I find it's very much the same in literature. I'm going to write a book all about graveyards, but, oh, I don't know if anyone know people love graveyards.
As soon as you said graveyards, I was like, those things are cool. It wasn't because I think of zombies and I think of evil, you know, the evil dead coming out. I just think they're beautiful. Actually, when we're traveling and I see a graveyard, we will very often stop off and enjoy kind of the vibes and the feelings there. There's so much love in a graveyard. So for me, it's not a dark place at all.
So you find that overlap and you realize, oh, the horror lover and the horror hater, they both love graveyards. They love them, maybe for slightly different reasons, but there's still that huge commonality that we can talk about.
If I try and sell the horror hater on a horror novel, he's going to say no, or she's going to say no. But if I say, “Hey, I wrote this book about this cool thing that happens at a graveyard and it turns into this thrilling adventure.” They're like, I'm totally in. So again, it's a way we present it as much as anything.
Joanna: It's so interesting, isn't it? But maybe these things come up over time.
For example, I was mentioning to you before we started recording that I'm coming up to, oh, no, I am actually 48 years old.
And I almost feel that age — I mean, we're fine with death — but I think age, and maybe you're used to mental illness, but I almost feel like physical illness, old age, the things that change us as we get older, being a woman going through hormonal changes and the stuff that comes up at this time —
These are all things that just suddenly appear in the shadow and that you didn't even have to acknowledge until they start happening to you. Michaelbrent: Yeah.
Joanna: And that maybe that's part of why we write is that we deal with these things as they come up by writing.
Like in my memoir, Pilgrimage, I talk about a lot of this stuff. And almost by writing it, it comes out of the shadow, and now it's out there, and it's fine now.
I can talk about it because it's out there. But do you think that's why, I mean, horror writers are, I think, psychologically very healthy because they kind of take the things out of the shadows, put them in the light, put them in a book, and it's kind of done.
Is that how you think it is for you?
Michaelbrent: Yeah, I think so. And I think you're right, it is for most horror writers. Most of them are very well-adjusted.
Everyone has demons, the difference is the demons that horror writers have, we make them sing for their supper. We don't get rid of them, we just harness them and make them kind of useful.
I think what you said is so incredibly important, you know, about aging. I'm going through that too, like, I just can't sleep through the night anymore, simply because I have old injuries that have cropped up.
And I've always had a bad back since I was in my early 30s, and it's just impossible to sleep in one position anymore. That's really rough, and it's terrifying because it's like, well, I thought I understood the way my life is, and now, I'm not assured that I can pick up a shopping bag today. And that was kind of a thing, you know, I could do that. That was a basic idea.
We write about these things as a way of defining them. As soon you describe it, you have to use words to do that, and those words have definitions, so you've defined the problem. If you look at the word define, I mean, the literal etymology of it has to do with placing boundaries around something. So we've contained our terror within this definition.
I don't understand aging. Well, I'm going to write about it, and now I do understand it. Maybe not fully, maybe not completely, but I understand it enough that it's just not as terrifying for me, or I understand what will always be terrifying about it. I wrote a book called The Deep because I'm scared of the ocean.
Joanna: You know I love that book.
Michaelbrent: Thank you. But the ocean is so scary. And I wrote it, and I was like, well, my conclusion is the ocean is still scary, and so I will avoid the ocean. But I can deal with that, you know, I moved to a landlocked area, and I'm fine.
I say it in jest, but that really is part of what we do. We're figuring out our boundaries, we're figuring out where we can go mentally and physically, and we're like, well, I'll enjoy the areas that I can enjoy, and the other areas, I will avoid them. That's just healthy living.
I do think horror does that a lot. For the authors, they're like, I'm going to talk about the stuff that terrifies me until it no longer does. I feel like that's part of why I've managed to write so many books, is I'm just scared of a ton of things.
Joanna: I think it's super healthy to keep writing about these things.
So you have written a lot of books, and you also help authors a lot through lots of different things, you do lots of speaking, and you've got a new course for authors at Bestseller Life.
Tell us a bit about that course and how it can help authors? Michaelbrent: So it's at bestsellerlife.com, and it's about becoming your own best story. That's the slogan, “Become your own best story,” or the logo or motto or however you want to say it.
It came about because during COVID, my wife and I share computers, and so we get each other's Facebook interests popping up, and she started getting all these ads for people teaching her how to write or to how to be a best seller because I'm constantly learning that stuff and taking classes and courses and trying to improve.
So I was like, oh, send them to me, I'm always interested. And the great majority of them, you go to their Amazon page, and it's someone who's written like three books, maybe, and has a total of eight reviews, maybe, and has sold maybe 10 copies, you know. So I finally was like, I'm going to build one that's real, based on all the stuff that I know. So essentially bestsellerlife.com, it is a full suite of information that's like, this is how Michaelbrent does it from start to finish.
So it includes my writing methods, my marketing methods. It's still being built out, I update it weekly.
The biggest job of an artist and an author and a creator is to make the world better and bringing people together and helping stuff. You know, you put 100 artists or 100 authors against the wall and say, “What's the secret to your success?” and you're going to get 100 different answers because we all approach it differently.
There are still principles that work, and so that's what bestsellerlife.com is about is those principles and fundamentals that will help you kind of build your platform, and build your audience, and jumpstart your writing, and get it so you're on to the next level. So you can become your own best story and be satisfied with not just where you are, but where you're going.
Joanna: And just to be clear—
Is that just for people who want to write horror, or is it for any genre? Michaelbrent: No, that's any genre. And again, I've written literally everything except erotica. If you can name a genre, I have done it and done reasonably well in it.
So it does have specific genre breakdowns in some of the classes, but a lot of it is just marketing that works across the board. I even provide my marketing copy and the things that I specifically use, with breakdowns where I'm like, here's what I do. Obviously, you can't write an ad that's about Michaelbrent, that wouldn't make any sense, but here are the elements that I use, and here's how you can hopefully adapt them to you wherever you are.
So yeah, I wanted it to be across the board super helpful to anyone no matter what they're writing, because again, I'm not talking about specific metabolisms, as much as I am like, here are general principles that work. Then I break them into, and here's how I specifically do them to this effect, and hopefully allow people to empower themselves a little bit more.
Joanna: If people want to try your fiction, where can people find all of that online? Michaelbrent: Easiest way is just to type the word Michaelbrent, all one word, because I'm the only Michaelbrent in the world. That'll bring up my Amazon page, and my Facebook page, my website is writteninsomnia.com. Written Insomnia is stories that keep you up all night. You can go there and check out my stuff, but just honestly, the easiest way is to Google Michaelbrent because there's just one.
Joanna: Well, thank you so much for your time again, Michaelbrent. It's been great, as usual.
Michaelbrent: I love being here with you, Joanna. My only regret about ever coming on a show with you is that we're not neighbors because I would totally hang out with you.
Joanna: In a graveyard!
Michaelbrent: Yes.
The post Writing From Your Shadow Side With Michaelbrent Collings first appeared on The Creative Penn.
What are the pros and cons of traditional publishing vs self-publishing? How can you combine multiple options for a more creatively satisfying — and profitable — author career? Rachael Herron gives her tips.
In the intro, Power Thesaurus and editing tips for audio; How Writers Fail — Kris Rusch; Finishing energy; Sidekick for Shopify; Shadow Survey (please complete before 31 Aug 2023).
Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with Scrivener, ProWritingAid will help you improve your bookbeforeyou send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 25% off the premium edition atwww.ProWritingAid.com/joanna
Rachael Herron is the internationally bestselling author of more than two dozen books, including thrillers, romance, memoir, and nonfiction about writing. She has taught writing at both UC Berkeley and Stanford, and now teaches authors online with courses and coaching, as well as through her podcast, How Do You Write.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- Combining traditional and indie publishing
- Deciding which route to go with each project
- The locus of control with indie publishing
- Publishing a series — indie or trad?
- Pitching an agent as an already independently published author
- Differences in money between indie and trad publishing
- Tips for developing author friendships
You can find Rachael at RachaelHerron.com where you can find her latest course and Magic Query Letter.
Transcript of Interview with Rachael Herron Joanna: Rachael Herron is the internationally bestselling author of more than two dozen books, including thrillers, romance, memoir, and nonfiction about writing. She has taught writing at both UC Berkeley and Stanford, and now teaches authors online with courses and coaching, as well as through her podcast, How Do You Write. So welcome back to the show, Rachael.
Rachael: What a treat to talk to you, Jo. It's just a delight, as always.
Joanna: You were last on the show in 2018, talking about Fast-Draft Your Memoir. Now obviously, lots has happened since then, which is kind of crazy.
So give us a bit of an update on what your author life and your business look like now. Rachael: Okay, so first of all, five years, oh my god. And second of all, when Fast-Draft Your Memoir came out, I have not listened to that episode since we recorded it, but I remember you saying, I'm going to write a memoir, and I'm not ready to do it yet, I'm not ready. Look at you now.
Joanna: Yes, well, for people who don't know, my memoir, Pilgrimage, came out earlier this year in 2023.
Rachael: It's lovely.
Joanna: Thank you.
Rachael: It's lovely. So yeah, so that had just come out the last time we chatted. Since then, I was thinking about this because five years is a long time, especially in the last five years.
So since then, I have published two thrillers, one was called Stolen Things, and one was called Hush Little Baby. Both of those were from Penguin.
I got the rights back to, I think I counted, I think it was a total of eight books. So seven novels and my first memoir, A Life in Stitches, I got the rights to all of those back.
Those have been subsequently self-published, indie published by me.
I just sold a new book, which I was talking to you about recently, so that is actually going to be my new genre of paranormal women's fiction. So that's out there. And my wife and I have moved to New Zealand, so it's been a busy five years.
Joanna: It has. It has, absolutely. We're going to come back on the New Zealand thing.
But I mean, obviously there you've got traditional publishing, you've got rights back, you indie publish, you do all these different things. I wanted to talk to you because you've got this new course out, How to Publish Your Book in Today's Market, which I think is super useful because it seems like there are more choices than ever, and also a lot of people like yourself, you're mixing and matching all these things.
So talk a bit more about how you combine traditional and indie publishing, both practically and also the mindset. How do you know what to do with each project?
Rachael: Oh, it's such a good question. So I wrote the book that just sold, it's not coming up till 2025, thank you traditional publishing, but that is the paranormal women's fiction, and I wrote it with the entire intention, 100% intention to self-publish this as the beginning of a series.
I had the idea, I was in love with this idea, I was in love with the idea for a series. It was really one of the most joyful projects I've ever written. I had no intention of offering it to my agent.
Then when I got done writing it, I thought, well, this is really great. I love this book, and I don't want to do a series.
I was just kind of exhausted by the thought of starting a series. I have written series before, and I just get kind of burned out on them. So I offered this one to my agent, and I'm in that fortunate place of being able to do that, but it was a very frank conversation with her. I said, like,
“If you can sell this for an amount of money that I'm cool with, fabulous. And if not, I'm going to happily self-publish it.” So that's the way I thought about that book, but when I start thinking about a book, overall, I like to decide in advance as much as I can. I really surprised myself with this one by giving it to my agent.
I've finished this memoir about moving to New Zealand, and I am not offering that to my agent. Period. She doesn't know that yet. I know what I'm going to do with this. I have a plan in place.
It's based on Patreon, I wrote these as a collection of essays on Patreon. I'm going to Kickstart it as the full book. That's all thanks to you. Thank you, ma'am, for doing that to me.
I'm going to Kickstart it, and then I'm going to launch it into all of the places that I usually do. And having that solid plan in place feels really good to me. I know that this is a book I will be able to sell. I know how to sell on my own.
Then there's another memoir that has been completed and finished for about a year now, and it's a recovery memoir, and honestly I don't know as well how to sell that one. My agent has been helping me revise that one.
So that one, I leave on her desk, and she's going to handle trying to get that sold. But again, if she doesn't sell it, if she can't sell it, then I will happily indie publish this because —
I like being traditionally published for different reasons that I'm sure we'll go into, but I love being indie-published for so many more reasons. But I do like to have both. Joanna: Hmm, gosh, so much to unpack there. Okay, we're going to come back on the series thing, and the money thing, and the agent thing. But we have to tackle the emotional thing which you've just said, which was: ‘I like being traditionally published, I love being indie.'
So can you talk about why you feel that way emotionally?
Rachael: Oh, you're going right for the gut here. I think it has to do with the way I want to control things and the way I want things to go in my dream world.
When I have a book that is traditionally published, I always, always, always expect it—because I think writers are just these hopeful unicorns—I expect it to rise to the top and to sell a bajillion million copies, and when it doesn't, and we're talking about a traditionally published book, there is nothing I can do.
I mean, I can obviously do my own author marketing, all of the things I can do. But I can't change the cover, I can't change the categories that they have chosen for it, I can't update or change anything.
It leaves me feeling kind of frantically unsettled, to the point that now I've traditionally published enough that I used to experience what a friend of mine recently called ‘a crash' after your book comes out, like two weeks later, you're like, oh, what have I done? How can I help this book sell more?
I don't experience that with traditional publishing anymore because as soon as it comes out, the day it comes out, I kind of kiss it goodbye forever. I cannot affect this book anymore. That's the only healthy way I can hold onto that side of my career.
In indie publishing, that unicorn hope never dies.
If it is not selling the way I want it to, there are things that I can do, that I can play around with, that I can change, that are under my control. And for some reason, the idea of not selling a lot of books because it's my fault, because indie published, is much easier for me to handle than not selling a lot of books in traditional publishing where I have no control. Does that make sense?
Joanna: Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Psychology talks about locus of control as being a reason. Like people are happier when they have some locus of control over whatever it is, whether it's choosing something in your job, which is basically what this is for us, it is a job, and being able to control stuff. We just feel more empowered. I love how you combine things.
So I want to come back on this idea of series. So you had originally designed this paranormal women's series, which as we know, is normally the thing that we do as indies.
We write series because we know that it's a longer-term game, that you're going to do promotions on the first book, and there'll be sell through and we know how that works.
When you decided it wasn't the series, that's when you decided to do traditional for this book. So can you talk more about this? I mean—
Is there any point in trying to pitch series books to traditional publishing at this point? Rachael: Oh, what an interesting question. I think that selling series right now to traditional publishing, from what I have seen, is something to be careful about. When we presented this book, when my agent shopped this book, she didn't say that this has series potential.
It was bought by Grand Central Publishing Hachette, and when I was in conversation with the editor, it was a conversation between the three of us, my agent gently said, “So do you see this as something that you would want another book in a series from?” Because we had said this is just a one book deal that we were talking about.
The editor said, and this is kind of mind-blowing, the editor said, “Well, you always have a fall off to the next book in a series. So I don't think so. I think if you'd like to pitch us something in the same world, or also magical realism, or the paranormal angle that you've got here, but it doesn't have to be in the same town, or anything like that, we'll take that.” And that to me, was a very traditional publishing answer.
Yes, as indie publishers, we all know that the first book will get the most reads, the second book will fall off. However, the person who goes from the second book goes to the third book and the fourth book and the fifth book, and that's where the long tail money comes in.
I'm not sure that they are thinking like that right now. What I think they're doing, and what I'm happy to play with them in the sandbox for, is they buy books from writers and they hope that this will be the big hit. It's pitched as Queer Practical Magic meets The Parent Trap. And maybe it'll blow up, but maybe it won't.
The other thing is that when I was making this decision, this calculated decision, number one, the series idea was kind of falling away from me.
And number two, I had a couple of very serious conversations with some people that I trust saying like, look, paranormal midlife women's fiction is a small niche, and queer paranormal midlife women's fiction is not even a niche. I couldn't find anybody else writing in it. And yes, I could be the outlier and blow up if I indie published it, but I could also just find eight readers.
I didn't want to invest that time in creating a series that I wasn't sure I could really outright market in the best way I could possibly do. So I enjoyed the heck out of writing the whole book, and then was just so happy when it sold because I don't have to do things like covers, and the stuff that I do enjoy doing.
They didn't give me a bajillion million dollars, but they gave me enough money to basically say, yeah, I don't have to think about that book again.
I'd already had it developmentally edited and copy edited. It was ready to go. So the edits that I will do with that editor are really minor because she loved the way it landed on her desk because it was ready to go.
Joanna: I think that's fantastic. I mean, I've been thinking about this. I've had these standalone book ideas for years now, and with the indie model, I just can't make that work. It's so funny because this is exactly what I was thinking around like, okay, well, maybe these are the ones that I do pitch because I've done some standalones, and I know how hard they are to sell in the indie space, but maybe these are the ones to pitch.
So obviously this is an entirely selfish conversation. People listening are just listening to you coaching me!
But I think one of the things that comes up for me and comes up for a lot of indie authors, however successful they are, and I guess I almost feel that my platform and my sales may be at the point now where it's even harder, and I'm even wondering whether to pitch under another name. So the question is really—
What do agents and publishers think of indie authors at this point? And when we're pitching should we like double down on what we've done as indie? Or should we just focus on the book?
Rachael: I love this question. I think that if we are indie-published writers who have books out there, I think we need to focus on the book itself in the query letter, if we're trying to get an agent. Focus on the book itself, to the exclusion of the book. We want to keep the query letter as simple as possible, and you want that agent to want the book.
There is one exception. And honestly, Joanna, I would say that you would fall in this exception.
If you have books that have sold tremendously well, so not like a hundred copies a month, but thousands of copies a month or more, or if you have a sizable platform, that's when I would put it in the query letter. But if you are querying agents, and it's just your book, and you have a bunch of indie titles out there but they're not blowing up like lightning, I think the least said, the better.
Then when that agent is in love with your book and you're on a phone call with them, that's the time to say, “I'm also indie-published. I've had success with this and this. I haven't had success with those three books, but I really liked that series and maybe I'll revamp it.” And of course, an agent who is interested in you will Google you, and your books will come up.
Things have changed so much now in the world. We would not have had this conversation five years ago. They've changed so much now that—
Agents absolutely know that their authors are making more money with their indie titles. They know that they are, and editors know this too at traditional publishing houses, they know that they need to bring their best game, their best self, to this party too. If they love your book, they're going to want you.
That said, I think there was a question in the questions that you sent, like when would you not mention a book? Or would you ever pitch a book that was already out there? That's something I wouldn't do.
If this is a book that you've already published by yourself, you've self-published it and it's done reasonably okay, or it hasn't done well at all, I wouldn't pitch that book to an agent because what they will do is look and say, like, okay, so maybe they've had a thousand sales of this book, but that's a thousand sales I can't get for the editor to whom I sell this book. So they want to see something else from you.
And again, the exception to that is if you have self-published something that has I'm absolutely blown up, agents will be knocking on your door and they will want to sell that book for you to a traditional publisher.
Joanna: Yeah, it feels like some of the authors, like Hugh Howey would be the classic one, or Andy Weir with The Martian, like they were a decade ago now, those early authors when indie was new. In the Kindle store, they did get the sort of print-only deals, and some authors are still getting those. But as you say, most indie authors who are then doing hybrid, writing new series or new books, like it has to be new, basically, when you pitch.
Rachael: There are some exceptions. My friend AK Mulford, who was in New Zealand, but now she lives in Australia, she came out with two adult fantasies, and they did so well that she was approached by agents, and then she was picked up for those books and another series, and a multimillion-dollar deal with Harper Voyager. And she was absolutely brand new on the scene. She published one book, and then I think that was four months later.
Joanna: That was TikTok, right? That was a TikTok deal.
Rachael: Yeah, she's a TikTok media perfection person. So you're right. They had that going on.
Joanna: To be fair, that's a platform deal.
Rachael: You're right.
Joanna: She could have written anything.
Rachael: You're absolutely right. That is a platform thing. But the thing about agents nowadays is, like I said, they know what they're competing with. I've told my agent flat out that I make more money every year from my self-pub titles than what I make from New York.
So I think that they're looking and they're hungry, and they're also scared. Agents are scared, editors of traditional publishing houses are scared of how publishing is changing every year, just like we're all frightened of a lot of things.
I always think that writers are perpetually like the sky is falling in the sky, and the sky is never actually falling. But they're also feeling that. So does that help, or did I just like confuse waters?
Joanna: Oh, no, no, that's good. I think the point is that this is confusing. And every time we say, oh, this, then there'll be an example of something the opposite. So I think the point is that there's always opportunity if you're looking
Let's talk about the money because I feel like it's really important, like you said, to say agents are scared. Agents get paid a percentage of the money that their author gets paid.
This is important to remember for people because we're so obsessed with our own business, which is as it should be, we forget that these are business people who are trying to make their own living. So maybe you could talk about—
How is the money different between indie and traditional for you? And when is it a good deal for an agent? Rachael: So agents across the board are almost always going to get 15% of what you make. If it is a foreign deal, if you're making foreign money at all, then they get 20% because 5% goes to their foreign sub-rights agent. So they're making 15% of what you make, and they want to make that money for you.
For the first few years of my career, obviously I wasn't indie publishing yet, all of my money was coming from New York. I had some good years with some bigger deals, and so I know that when my agent got those checks, she was happy. My agent got a check today, she got the signing portion of that traditional deal, which means the money goes to her first, she takes out the 15%, and then she sends me a direct deposit into my bank account.
So how the money works in traditional publishing is you get an advance. And it has been that they have been splitting this up into smaller and smaller chunks.
Both of my thrillers were parceled up into four different chunks of money. So say I got $40,000 for a book, parceled into four chunks meant that I got $10,000 on signing the deal, $10,000 on what's called delivery and acceptance, which means after I'd done the edits that they wanted me to do, and the editor had said, yeah, these are good, then that's another $10,000.
And then I got $10,000 when the first version was published, which for me was hardcover in both cases. Then another $10,000 a year later when the paperback was published. Or if the hardcover did so badly that it never went to paperback, I would have still gotten that payment a year later.
That's difficult because that's $10,000 every once in a while, minus the 15%, minus taxes. You're really taking home about 45% of that. It's not that much. But this latest deal that I just signed actually came in two payments, on signing and delivery and acceptance. So I'll get those full moneys this year because the book is already done and deliverable, and I've already signed. So that's kind of nice.
In indie publishing, we have that gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous long tail of the money that just keeps coming in. And I am in that wonderful position that you are in too, of just having a large backlist. It means that I can make a good amount of money every year just by continuing to sell to new readers as often as I can.
Every year on the very first episode of the year on my podcast, How Do You Write, I do this incredibly awful and awkward and just feels terrible conversation about how much money I've made the year before and where I made it. I do it because I believe in transparency, and every year it makes me feel a little bit weirder. I should have looked these numbers up to have them right at the top of my head, but I think I made about $80,000 last year from books, and I want to say that $60,000 were from my backlist.
I hadn't had a new indie pub book out for more than a year. I haven't done anything. These are just my backlist books continuing to sell. I have an amazing assistant who does things like apply for BookBubs for me because I would never get around to doing it, but he does those kinds of things. But otherwise, that money's just kind of rolling it. Whereas New York is a lot more unpredictable.
Joanna: Yeah, and I think that's important. It's almost the difference between spike income, so you get a big payment, but you don't necessarily know when it's coming in, and big may be relative.
With indie, it's a smaller amount (each time), but it is pretty much every month. I feel like it's more, not a salary because we're not employees, but it is more like a salary in that it's coming in, and you know how much is coming in, and you can pay your mortgage with that eventually, when you have enough of a backlist.
Okay, so I want to come back on agents because you've been working with your agent a really long time.
You've got a really good relationship with your agent. But for people starting now, I mean, it feels like if you are un-agented, then new agents who might not have a big list might be a more obvious partnership because they're kind of hungry. But then also, people want an agent with good connections and who knows what they're doing.
What are your tips on finding an agent and pitching an agent? Rachael: I have so many tips.
I love the whole process of pitching to agents. The query letter, it is something I actually used to coach people on. I don't do it anymore, but I have this thing called a Magic Query Letter, basically form, that I'm happy to give to your listeners.
Because the thing about query letters is they can't stick out, and they can't take too much time for the intern to read. Because agents for the most part are not reading the slush pile, which is that inbox of query letters. It's an intern who is trained to read until the word that makes her delete the email, and they're getting 300 a week, 400 a week.
Your only job with sending a query letter is to not allow her to find any word that makes her want to delete it. Then by the time she gets to the end of your email, she's like, oh crap, I've got to ask for a partial on this because I don't hate anything. So it has to be a little bit formulaic.
It has to be simple, the query letter. And the thing about agents is, like exactly what you said, of course, we all want that agent who is incredibly high-powered and knows everybody in the industry.
My agent, Susanna Einstein, we started working together in 2008. I was her second client, and her first one was dead. She was representing a rather famous author's estate because she was a sub agent for a larger agency. I did not know who she was, I had run out of agents to pitch that I was just desperate for. I had my perfect list of 10 agents that I would die to work with, and they rejected me so quickly or I didn't hear back from them.
Then I took like maybe the next 10 who were like they'd be okay, I could work with them. Total rejection. I just kept going until I was in agentquery.com or querytracker.net, which are free places you can go and look for agents who are looking for your genre.
And I was now just pitching pretty blindly. What I would do is I would go to their website, and I would make sure that they really were an agent and they weren't a scam, and that they were representing books that looked like my book could fit in there somewhere with them. Then I would just send an email query out and I wouldn't care.
That's one of my biggest tips: Don't get your heart set on a particular agent. The most brand new green agent could be the one that you work with for the next 15 years who becomes your friend. Susanna is now the head of her own agency, she is high powered, she knows everybody in the industry. But we really grew up together.
Also, the thing about signing with an agent is it's not that big a deal if—I mean, it would hurt—but if you got one and you just didn't like working with them, you can drop them. It's a business arrangement.
The only time you can't do that is if you're working with an agent, and they sell your book. They've sold your book forever, you can't take that book away from them, they will get 15% of that book for the rest of time.
We also have to be, and you're so good about talking about this, we have to be savvy with our businesses.
In this new contract that I got, I had her ask them if they would change some of the rights reversion clauses. And that was awkward because what I was asking Susanna to strike out of this contract was a line that said something like, “If you ask for your rights reverted, we have the right to refuse you if there are 150 copies of your book in the warehouse. We also reserve the right to reprint your book, 150 copies or more.”
So what that was saying to me was that they could just say, “Oh, Rachael wants her rights back. Go ahead and print 150 copies and put them in the warehouse, and now she can't have her rights back.”
Joanna: They don't even have to prove that to you. It just makes it difficult.
Rachael: Well, HarperCollins had told me, because I wanted a bunch of my books back from them, and they had told me, “Well, there's still 120 copies in the warehouse.” I said, “Fine, I'm going to buy those.” And I bought them, and then they had to send them to me, which was the worst.
Why that's difficult with Susanna is that that's me saying like, if this fails, as so many of my books have failed in the traditional publishing world, I will come back and I will get these, and then you won't get the 15% anymore. Once I take them back from the publishing house and I self-publish them, she is cut out of the whole deal, which kind of makes me feel terrible as her friend, but as a business person, that's just the way it works.
Joanna: Yeah, exactly. I've done a lot of shows on contracts, so we will just say, watch out for your contracts. There's lots of stuff on that. I mean, of course, you talk about this in the course in terms of being careful with the legalities.
I just want to come back on there, you mentioned the word ‘failed.' And I also want to mention ‘ego,' because I still feel like in the early days, people used to call indie vanity publishing. And it was like, oh, you're so vain, you want to print your own books.
Now I feel it's the other way around because it's like, you're so vain, you want your name on a book in a bookstore. And that's fine, because we have to acknowledge the ego.
I feel like as writers, ego and self-doubt coexist. There is a sense of ego, and we should be proud of that, and ambition and all of this kind of stuff. But you also mentioned failure, and disappointed, and you mentioned the word crash after a publication. This is a tough roller coaster. And in fact, some of the unhappiest authors are those whose books come out and then don't perform.
Can you talk a bit about what does failure mean as a traditionally published author? How can people deal with that, as well as kind of holding onto the dream of ego?
Rachael: Yeah, well, I'm kind of an expert in what this feels like. I love what you say about the dream of the ego.
And I will always tell anyone who listened that I wanted to be a traditionally published author because I wanted the ego boost of walking into a Barnes and Noble and seeing my book on a shelf and I didn't put it there. And that is an absolutely valid thing to want.
It is a great thing to move toward, if that is something that motivates you to keep writing and to keep getting better at your craft.
In terms of quote, unquote, “failure or failing,” when you are given this advance, it's a bet that the traditional publisher is making on you. They're saying, I bet you make this much money. If you make this much money, that'll be a good thing. We're going to make the money up that we gave to you, and we're going to make some extra money.
When you do that, then you can go back to that traditional publisher and say, “You know, that last book, I made you some money. Here's another book. Would you like to make some more money with me?” And they say, “Well, sure. It's a good book. You made us money. Let's do it.”
Then there are the times where they give you an advance, they make a bet, and you don't make back the money.
So for my Penguin thrillers, Stolen Things did great. It earned out, it performed the way they wanted it to, and I made royalties on it above and beyond my advance. Hush Little Baby, the next book, which is to be very honest, my favorite book and the best book I've ever written that is currently published, I looked this up before we started chatting today, I have sold 2500 copies of it. That is not a lot in terms of traditional land, and I cost them money. So they don't want to work with me anymore.
I always joke and I say that I've gotten fired from all of the publishers. I haven't gotten fired, but what that is, is that my agent goes back and says, “Would you like another book from Rachael?” And they go, “No, thanks. We're good. We've done that.”
And I think in terms of my ego and my own choice to deflate ego, I laugh about it. I say it's failure, and I say I've been fired, and it kind of covers up the sting of it a little bit because there is definitely a sting. I jokingly say that I have PTSD, and the P stands for publishing. It's not easy, and I still want to keep doing it.
Joanna: And as we said before, you also do indie. So you kind of have both of these things.
I love that you're planning to do the Kickstarter, you have a Patreon, obviously, you do courses, you have your podcast, you have all kinds of things. And I think this is the important aspect of your business, is you don't just rely on sending a book to traditional publishing and then expect that to be the only thing.
That seems to be when people struggle is if that's the only thing they have.
It feels like the secret to being an author success is having multiple streams of income. Rachael: Yeah, it is.
Also, I love that for myself because I am the kind of person who was basically born an entrepreneur. This is what I've always wanted to do. I think I had three businesses before I was 12 years old. They made $7 total, but I love doing this.
The thing that is hard I think sometimes, is talking to people who they want to write this book, and then they want to get an agent, and they want to sell it for a bajillion million dollars, and then retire to their private island. And you and I both know, that's not the practical reality.
We have to be thinking about how we can support ourselves in other ways. Whether that is multiple income streams on the writing side, or do you have a supportive partner that can help you while you do this, or do you work a full time day job, or a part time day job, while you support this desire and longing and yearning to be a writer. Because I think that the people who know that we want to write will do anything for it. We'll do anything to get it done, and knowing that that's okay.
I worked for the first 10 years of my career, so from 2006 when I finished my first book that was sold, to 2016, when I retired from my full-time day job, I worked both jobs 80 to 90 to 100 hours a week. I had to. I wasn't making enough money not to.
Joanna: I remember when you were a dispatch officer.
Rachael: Yeah, I was a 911 dispatcher. I lived in the firehouse, and I was there for 48 to 72 hours at a time. I do not miss staying up all night and napping in the firehouse!
Joanna: Yeah. I mean, we do what we do. I mean, the first five years I wrote while working my day job. And of course, now I kind of see this podcast and my nonfiction almost as the day job that support my fiction. Although my fiction does reasonably well, I still like having good multiple businesses.
I do want to ask you about New Zealand. We're almost out of time. And what's really interesting, so you and your wife moved to New Zealand from the USA, which is a really big deal.
A lot of people are lonely, just wherever they are in the world without even moving, and it looks like you've done a really good job of connecting with community.
So I actually wondered if you had any tips on making author friends in a new place or in your existing town if you haven't tried before? Because I remember my early days in Brisbane when I started writing, I couldn't find any author friends and authors seemed very remote.
I had all these friends in my existing life, but I wanted to kind of move into this new life, and I just didn't know how to do it.
How have you developed these relationships? And any tips for people on building a network of author friends? Rachael: I love this question because I think it can help anybody who's feeling like they want more of a writing community, which I think is one of the most important things that we need as writers.
When we moved here, I was incredibly deliberate. I was also, I think we talked about it, I was terrified. It was the scariest thing I've ever done, selling the house and everything we owned, and leaving my family and all of my friends, to move around the world. So I was incredibly intentional as soon as we got here that I wanted to make friends, and COVID made that a lot trickier because Omicron got in right after we did.
My goals—or actually the decisions that I made—I had two of them in my mind, I wanted to be brave and I wanted to be picky.
And together those two things, in terms of finding writing community, I think has worked so well for me, and I see this working with my students too. I would go to writing meetups, I would go to writing groups. There's the Romance Writers of New Zealand, I don't write romance very much anymore, if at all, but I knew that that was a place where writers would gather, so I went.
I was brave because I am truly an introvert and peopling makes me want to die sometimes, but I was brave and I went to these.
Part of that bravery extended to making my mouth say the really scary words, which were, “I just moved here. I'm really scared about making new friends. Would any of you like to have coffee with me?” And that, as a, you know, I was 49 then, I'm 50 now, that is not easy to say out loud. People respond so well to that kind of honesty because they felt that way too in the past.
Then number two is to be picky. Like I had a lot of coffee dates with a lot of amazing people, and I liked them all a lot. Like I went out to coffee with nice, nice people all over the place.
But I fell in love with a small group of writer friends that those were just the ones I knew they were my people. They were my people. And for them, I was also brave. You know, I would say, “Can we please hang out again? Can we do this again?”
So we've been here now two years, and I have this group of writing friends that we go away on retreats together for four days to little houses all over New Zealand and we just write together. It's paid off, the bravery plus the pickiness.
If you go to a meetup in your small town, there's going to be seven people. And the guy named, I don't know, George, is going to be old and kind, and he's not going to be your best friend. Then there's going to be a woman who creeps you out, just don't make friends with her.
And then there will be a woman or a man that you can just feel it. And those are the ones you need to be brave about and say, “Do you want to go have coffee and talk about your book? I would love to talk about my book with somebody like you.” Doesn't that sound terrifying?
Joanna: Oh, I completely get it. I call it a kind of ‘friend dating.'
And you mentioned deliberate. You do have to be deliberate. These things don't happen by accident because otherwise, we just stay in with our laptops in whatever space and we're in our head. And then we don't have any friends.
So I think you've done an amazing job of putting yourself out there. And I know, I mean, you get migraines, and I get a lot of head pain as well from people. But we have to do this, otherwise, it is lonely. Yeah, so I wanted to encourage people that way. But we're out of time—
Tell people a bit more about the course, How to Publish Your Book in Today's Market. Also, you mentioned a query letter form, which you offered, so you have to talk about that too. Rachael: Oh, absolutely. So the course is How to Publish in Today's Market.
And it will always be today's market because I will always keep it updated, but it's the difference between traditional and indie publishing. I think it's 22 modules, and it goes through everything you need to know about traditional publishing, and how to write a query letter, how to write a synopsis, how to format things.
Then it goes into everything you need to know for indie publishing, or at least as much as I can fit into one course. It talks a little bit about marketing, but not too much. There is a little bit about it, but it talks about finding cover designers, and how to find a good editor, all of those things.
I do not talk about AI because I just send everybody to you. And thanks to you, I am obsessed with GPT-4, and I was just using it earlier to help me figure out this Venice book that I've been trying to figure out for years. It's helping me with that. It kind of feels like your Shadow book, I think that's the one. ChatGPT is helping me.
So that course is available over at RachaelHerron.com/publish. And it'll be there. And the Magic Query Letter, your listeners can get for free just by going to RachaelHerron.com/magic. And it's got all of the instructions you need in terms of formatting, and what to say, and how to say it, and how to make sure that that intern cannot delete your query letter, and they will ask you for that partial or that full.
Joanna: So also, just tell people about your podcast as well.
Rachael: Of course. It's called How Do You Write. I'm about 370 episodes in, and I am obsessed with process because I'm always looking for the magic bullet that will finally make writing easier for me. And it doesn't exist, but I really love to talk with writers about it. You have been on the show, and yeah, How Do You Write is available everywhere.
Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Rachael. That was great.
Rachael: Thanks, Jo. What a joy.
The post Your Publishing Options With Rachael Herron first appeared on The Creative Penn.
How can you exploit the unique in your stories, as well as amp up the conflict? John Gaspard gives writing and creative business tips based on movies and TV.
In the intro, Meta launches Threads, the new Twitter-like app — you can follow me @jfpennauthor; Possible Podcast episode with Ethan Mollick; Moonshots and Mindsets podcast about De-extinction; Copyright and AI with Kathryn Goldman; plus, adapting Catacomb to a screenplay, and I'm speaking in Paris in Oct.
Today's show is sponsored byDraft2Digital, where you can get free ebook formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Get your free Author Marketing Guide atdraft2digital.com/penn
John Gaspard is the author of mysteries and nonfiction film books, a podcast host, and film director. His latest book is The Popcorn Principles: A Novelist's Guide to Learning from Movies.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- How to “exploit the unique” to help our books stand out
- Ways to add more conflict, regardless of genre
- Creating a satisfying ending for your readers — and when cliffhangers are a good option
- Contracts and the importance of reading the fine print
- Thoughts on the best way to get your book onto the screen
You can find John and his books at AlbertsBridgeBooks.com and listen to his podcast Behind the Page: The Eli Marks Podcast
Transcript of Interview with John Gaspard Joanna: John Gaspard is the author of mysteries and nonfiction film books, a podcast host, and film director. His latest book is The Popcorn Principles: A Novelist's Guide to Learning from Movies. So welcome to the show, John.
John: It is so great to be here. I'm such a fan. I'm going to try not to fanboy out on you.
Joanna: Oh, thank you so much.
John: The podcast has been so helpful for me as I've gone along this journey. You do a great job.
Joanna: I appreciate it. So first up—
Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and filmmaking. John: Sure, I was given what was called a regular eight camera, which was a windup camera, when I was a teenager. I started making movies, and those grew into feature-length movies.
Even as a teenager, I was making things were 90 minutes long, with dialogue and sound and all that. And I quickly learned that if you're going to make movies, you have to write movies. You have to know what it is you're going to shoot.
So I started learning how to screen write, I was very lucky right out of high school to be able to take some screenwriting courses from a guy named Frantisek Daniel, who was one of the founders of the American Film Institute and a really good screenwriting teacher.
I just started making low-budget or no-budget feature films where I would write, I would shoot, I would edit, I'd direct. As it turns out, if you're going to be a novelist, that's a really good way to learn how to write a scene and how to structure something, how to put pace into what you're doing, and only write the things you need.
Because when you're writing a screenplay, if you write a scene you don't need, that means getting up at 5 am and casting it and shooting it. It's a real pain when you get into editing and find out you didn't need it. It's a little bit easier as a novelist because you can just hit delete and you're done.
So I did low-budget movies in my spare time and worked for about 30 years in the corporate world producing videos and meetings and events.
I did some writing for a TV series called Lucky Luke, which was very big in Europe. I took all that I had learned about making low budget movies and then interviewed about 60 filmmakers and put out two filmmaking books. Over the years, I've actually spoken to probably 100 or so filmmakers.
Then I segued into writing novels because it was a little bit easier. Making low budget movies, there's a lot of lifting involved, and a lot of early mornings and late nights. So I'd always planned when I got close to and into my retirement years that novels might be the way to go. As I was learning how to do that—
I realized there are just a lot of crossovers between creating a low-budget movie and self-publishing. More so today than ever before, the path we go down to do each of them are quite similar. I found that there were a number of things that I was doing as a novelist that were based on things I'd either learned from making a movie or I'd learned from interviewing filmmakers about their movies.
One of the things that I'd learned in my corporate life, listening to business speakers, there was a guy named Joe Callaway. And Joe Callaway would talk to different companies about how to improve what they were doing. He would use examples from other industries, and he would always end it by saying, “What's your version of that?” And that's what I'd been doing with the things I'd learned in filmmaking. I'd look at an idea and I'd go, okay, what's my version of that in the world of novel writing?
Because of that unique crossover that I have between those two worlds, I've been asked to talk about it a lot, and I put together a lot of notes on it. That became the book, The Popcorn Principles, which is 25 ideas that filmmakers use that you can adapt and adopt for your own novel writing to make them better. You're not going to learn how to write a novel from the book, but you are going to get some ideas, I think, on how to make your novel better.
Joanna: I like the way you've set it out. They're quite short chapters, but they cover a whole load of important stuff.
So we're going to pick a few of the craft things, and we're going to come back to the business side. But from the book, you say, “Exploit the unique.” So what do you mean by that?
“Exploit the unique.” How can we find those unique aspects that can help our book stand out? John: I always think that people downplay what's going on in our lives when it comes to writing, that everybody has something that is unique about them that they should add to the book because it's unique to them.
I have a songwriter friend who wrote a song years ago about a breakup, and it became one of her most popular songs. I asked her why, and she said, “I don't know. These aren't song lyrics, they are a police report.” By which she meant it was something very personal and very specific. And because it was personal and specific, it became universal, and people loved the song.
So you have to ask, what's my version of that?
What do I have that is personal and unique that will make my story universal? In the book I quoted Jasper Fforde, who's one of my favorite writers. He writes the Thursday Next books and other great comic fantasy books. And he said, and I'm going to quote him here,
“Readers are interested in the way a writer sees things; the unique world-view that makes you the person you are, and makes your novel interesting. Ever met an odd person? Sure. Ever had a weird job? Of course. Ever been to a strange place? Definitely. Ever been frightened, sad, happy, or frustrated? You betcha. These are your nuts and bolts, the constructor set of your novel.”
I looked at movies that had done that same thing, that had made it very personal and had kind of, by doing that, created something that everybody was interested in.
There's those obvious examples, Clerks, the Kevin Smith film from the late 90s, where Kevin worked in a convenience store and dealt with odd customers all day, and he wrote a movie about working in a convenience store and dealing with our customers. It was hit because it was very personal to him, but everybody could identify with it.
There's another filmmaker named Tom DiCillo, who wrote and directed a movie called Living in Oblivion. And that was the trials and tribulations of a film director in a low budget movie. It was basically what had happened to him on his last movie. So he had very specific things in it, but because they were specific and real, they were universal and people glommed onto them.
Then there's the idea of just stuff in your everyday life that you should be taking notes on.
From the movie world, my favorite example is George Lucas. When he was editing a movie before Star Wars, I don't think it was American Graffiti, I think it was THX 1138. He was working with the editor and the editor said to the assistant editor, I need reel two, dialogue two, meaning he wanted the reel of edited dialogue from the second reel, so the second reel, the second dialogue track. But that's not what he said, he said, I need R2, D2. And George Lucas went, oh, that's interesting. So he just pulled something out of his life.
Another fun movie example is, I had a chance to talk to Dale Launer. Dale was the screenwriter for My Cousin Vinny. And in My Cousin Vinny, Joe Pesci and Marissa Tomei have a really interesting relationship, in that throughout the movie, I don't want to say they argue, but they debate on any point that one of them raises. Did you turn off the faucet? Yes, I did. How do you know? And they drill down to it. And that becomes an important feature at the end when she's giving her testimony.
And I asked Dale Launer, how'd you come up with that relationship? And he said, “I didn't, it's just two friends of mine and that's the way they are. And I love that, and I took it, and I put it in the story.” And we all have that, we're just not maybe willing or looking to take that out of our own lives and drop it in.
Joanna: I mean, sometimes I guess people worry about putting people they know into their writing, so kind of avoid that.
The other thing that springs to mind is that many of us have a lot of books. So I'm currently writing a book, which is like novel number twenty, or whatever it is. And I feel like in our beginning books, there's a whole lot more of that, and then as time goes on, maybe our imagination stretches or things change a bit because we do use a lot of what we know. So, I mean—
How does this spin into a long-running series? John: Well, I think it just comes down to being observant.
I mean, you're right. I remember hearing a screenwriter talking about how hard it was to write her second screenplay because the first one was, she said, it was like going to a cocktail party and telling every great story and being a hit. And then at the second cocktail party, you've run out of things to say.
It's just really a question of, well, A, letting your characters grow. That's a huge part of it.
And also just constantly being on the lookout for what's going on with me. How can I use that? I mean, when I wrote the second book about Eli Marks series, I was at the time, kind of out of the blue experiencing these weird panic attacks having to do with being in a situation of height, being anywhere near a balcony or anything like that. I don't know where it came from, glad it went away, it was a pain while was going on.
I absolutely used that because it was something that I could write about, effectively and realistically.
It was also a great little twist for Eli, that all of a sudden he has to deal with this along with everything else. No one has ever come up to me and said, “Was that you? Did you have that?” Nobody cares. They just want to read the story and enjoy it. So it's just a question of constantly being alert to the things around you that would help your stories and asking yourself, what is my version of that?
Joanna: Absolutely. So one of my favorite shows is Succession, which I know is kind of popular among some people and other people just don't care for it, but I consider it one of the most violent shows on TV.
I have an interesting family, with various relationships. I mean, the family relationships in Succession are the conflict, they are brutal.
But compare it to a horror movie or something with a huge body count, and that's not what we mean by brutal. But in terms of conflicts, Succession is all conflict, all the time. You say in the book —
“If you don't have conflict, you don't have to drama.” Can you suggest some ways we can add more conflict, regardless of the genre? John: Sure, but first, I have to say we tried Succession and gave up because it was just so mean. We went, you know, yes, there's a certain degree to which we can watch things that are horrible. I remember James Blatch said you've got to watch Happy Valley, but beware, it's grim. And I went, well it's called Happy Valley, how grim could it be?
Joanna: I couldn't watch Happy Valley.
John: It's a ride. It's not a Happy Valley. As it turns out, they're being sarcastic about that.
You know, TV and movies are a really good way to learn about how to create conflict, particularly when you see it done, I don't want to say badly, but when they do it lazily. We're currently working our way through the Inspector Lewis series right now, and I've noted, as has my wife, a couple of times when Inspector Lewis wants to interview someone how rude they are to him.
Now, I know there's a certain Oxford thing going on there and hoity toity people and all that, but if the murder police come to you want to talk to you, it seems unlikely that you're going to say, “I can give you five minutes.” It's just not going to happen. Yet, they do that all the time because it creates conflict and it gives you drama. They can't think of anything else to do to have conflict in that scene. I understand that that's a long-running series and you got to come up with stuff.
But one of the things that I found from making movies was as I learned to write scripts better, I learned from my actors, because really good actors, when they walk into a scene, if you haven't put it in the script, a good actor will make up a reason for why they're there or why they want to leave or what they want. They will put an intention in. They'll create an intention.
If they're working with another great actor, that actor will have their own intention. And if you're lucky, that creates an obstacle between the two. It really helps if you've written it for them, and you've given them that sort of thing.
The example I use all the time, because it's just a masterclass, is just about any scene in the West Wing seasons 1-4.
Aaron Sorkin has a thing that he prays at the altar of intention and obstacle. Every character in a scene has an intention, every character has an obstacle. And if you watch the series, you can see that in every scene. Every character in that scene, even if what they want is not to be in that scene, they have something going on that they want and something that's stopping them from doing it. And it goes from, you know, I hope to stop World War Three, to I wish I could teach the president how to use the intercom system. And it runs that whole gamut.
When you're writing, make sure that everybody in a scene has something they want and something that's stopping them. With my Eli Marks series, it's easy because it's first person. So I always know what Eli wants. It might be generally if he wants information or he's trying to figure something out, but sometimes it's as simple as he wants a piece of candy out of a bowl and he can't figure out how to get it. Or he wants to get out of the couch that's hard to get out of.
You also have to know what everybody else in the scene wants and what's stopping them. A lot of times with Eli if he's with his ex-wife, what she wants is for him to go away.
You just have to know what everybody wants and what's stopping them from getting it. And like I say, it might be harder do that in novels and figure that out how they're doing it, but you watch some procedural detective stories, you can see immediately whether or not they have cleverly set up the tension going on between the people in a scene.
And I think the important thing here is you don't always have to reach for like a fight scene.
Joanna: People think conflict has to be war, but it can be emotional war. There doesn't have to be any sort of physical altercation. I mean, you are a mystery writer, so you mentioned murder. But I mean, there's plenty of conflict in smaller stories, right?
John: Absolutely, just think about any family gathering.
Joanna: Yes, that's why I like Succession. I just sit there going, oh, my goodness.
There's a lot of truth in the family dramas that are like the ways that we might have more conflict in our real lives, as opposed to like, I write action-adventure, so I blow stuff up all the time, and I kill people and there are monsters. And that's not actually conflict that I experience in my real life, apparently.
So there's so much in the book, but I did want to ask you about endings because you suggest that we like a satisfying ending to a story.
I agree, but I have heard many authors say their sales figures suggest that readers are more likely to buy the next book if there's a cliffhanger, even if they're complaining as they buy the next book. So this, to me, seems like a conflict, as we mentioned.
What are your thoughts on endings? John: Well, good for them. I'm glad that's happening. I just have to mention the 3 Fs that you brought up on a recent episode were so helpful for me. The freedom, fortune or fame. I'm definitely a freedom guy. So do I care whether or not to read the next book? Yes, I do. But I don't want to provide something unsatisfying to that end.
Looking at movies and how we can learn from them, the Back to the Future movies give a perfect example, I think, of how to do a cliffhanger and how not to do a cliffhanger.
In Back to the Future I, Marty returns to present day. Every single emotional beat in the story has been tied up, every callback has been called back. I have a whole section in the book on the importance of planting callbacks and paying them off, and there's no better example of that in the world of movie scripts than Back to the Future. It's a brilliant script, and they pay everything off.
At the end of the movie, Marty has returned home and the story has wrapped up to a point where you as an audience member are super satisfied. It was just great because everything tied up very nicely.
And then, boom, Doc Brown appears. The DeLorean looks a little different. He says, “We've got to go, your kids are in trouble. We've got to go back to the future.” And they hop in the car, and Marty says, “There's not enough road to hit 88 miles an hour.” And Doc Brown says, “Where we're going, we don't need roads.” And boom, it says, “Coming soon, Back to the Future Two.”
That's a perfect cliffhanger ending because you've emotionally satisfied all the beats. The audience is completely happy, and now you've set up, hey, there's going to be another adventure, would you join us?
Now let's flash ahead to Back to the Future Part II. At the end of the movie, Marty's on a dark and deserted road, everything is lost, he can't get where he needs to go. The time machine is broken.
A car arrives with a guy from Western Union, who says, “We've been hanging on to this telegram for 100 years. We were told to deliver tonight.” And Marty opens it and it's from Doc Brown, you have to come back to 18-whatever it is, and help me. And Marty says oh my goodness, and he runs down the road to try to find the present-day Doc Brown. And it says, “To be continued in Back to the Future Three.”
When I was in the theater watching it, because that's how old I am, people yelled at the screen some words that I'm not going to use here. They were very upset because that was a bad cliffhanger. None of the emotional beats had been resolved.
It was literally just the first half of a movie, and we didn't tell you it was going to be the first half of a movie. Now you got to watch the second half. So when you're crafting your cliffhanger, look at it and say, am I doing a Back to the Future I? Or am I doing Back to the Future Part II?
Another really great example from around that era, maybe a little earlier, is the Three Musketeers Movie that Richard Lester made. It was going to be one long movie, and they realized that they could stop after about 90 minutes. Everything was pretty well resolved, mostly. D'Artagnan was now part of the group and everything was cool. They would just take the rest of their footage and make The Four Musketeers, which is its own fine standalone movie.
They didn't even do a cliffhanger, really. They just said there's more to come, and people were fine with it. Everyone was fine with it, except for the actors who'd been paid for one movie. I think they ended up suing the producer and saying you have to pay us for two movies. But it was, again, a case where the emotional beats had all been satisfied, the audience was happy, and they're okay with a cliffhanger because it just is inviting you to the next adventure.
I've only done it once in my writing. I have a new book coming out this summer that's a prequel to my Eli Marks series, with Eli at age 13. It's 10 chapters, and at the end, I think they're emotionally satisfied. And then at the end, he gets a postcard from someone saying, “I have an idea for you for an adventure we could go on. I'll tell you more later.” To be continued. And I'll find out if readers are okay with that, but I think I hit all the beats and then tied everything up before I did that.
Joanna: It's really hard. I mean, I guess the advice is you just have to judge it by your book.
I mean, I try and do this, but most of my books have a proper ending, I think. I mean, I like a proper ending. But then I know if a book is in a series, like an episodic mystery, similar to you. But then I also do have a fantasy trilogy, my Mapwalker Trilogy.
Mapwalker fantasy trilogy by J.F.Penn
I wrote the first book as a standalone, and then it turned into I thought it was a series, and then it turned into a trilogy, which is the discovery writer way of doing it. And the trilogy, each book is fine, but the trilogy is a clear ending to a character arc.
So I don't know–I think we just have to figure it out per book.
And just see what happens along the way and what kind of response we get. Maybe it's genre-specific as well. I think fantasy readers are far more sort of okay with long running arcs.
John: And trilogies and that sort of thing. And particularly if you branded it as book one of three, then they kind of know they're in for three books.
Joanna: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, that's interesting.
So you mentioned the actors that are suing the studio, and as we speak, there is still a strike, the screenwriters in the US are striking. And we're, I guess, also at a point with AI and things, where people are really thinking about the fine print of contracts.
You have a section in the book about reading the fine print of contracts. What are some of the lessons you've learned? And how can we both make the most of our intellectual property—because we do need to do deals if possible—but we also need to not screw it up, basically.
John: Yeah, I know. It can be hard. There was a film called What Happened Was by a filmmaker named Tom Noonan. Noonan would be probably best known as an actor. He was the Tooth Fairy in Manhunter, which was the first Hannibal Lecter movie, and he's played a lot of villains, but he's also a playwright and an actor. He made a little movie called What Happened Was, which was a two person thing, which he did as a play, and then he shot the movie. He did it very cleverly.
He knew a lot about movies and about distribution. And as he told me, he said, “I screwed up. There was one line in the contract for distribution, and I screwed up. It was the line about who pays the actors when the movie makes money. And normally, it's a distributor, and I didn't notice it. So every time the movie made money, I had to personally pay the cast.”
Even though there were only two actors in the movie, him and another actor, but he had to pay them out of his own pocket. And that's an example of someone who's very knowledgeable about what he's doing, who just screwed up. He didn't have another set of eyes look at the contract and thought he knew what he was doing.
I'm one of those people who started out with a traditional publisher and then bought everything back and am now self-published throughout.
But when I was given my first contract for the Eli Marks series, I had sold screenplays at that point, and I had sold other books in the nonfiction world. So I had a pretty good idea of what the contract would look like and what I needed to do with it.
I know there is a lot of bubbly excitement when you get a contract to have somebody publish your book. I mean, it's very exciting, but you have to set all that aside and go, what are they really asking for here? Because in the case of my contract, they were asking for a series, and they wanted to contract me for three books. And I didn't want to do that. I am a freedom, right?
I wanted to do them when I wanted to do. I'd spent 30, some years writing professionally and wanted to have control of when I did stuff. They also wanted first right of refusal on my next book, and I changed that to you can have first right of refusal on the next book in this series, but not beyond that. They wanted foreign rights, which I gave them, but I put a cap on it of a couple of years. They didn't do anything with it, so I took that back.
When I did my audiobooks, I emailed them to just let them know I'm doing the audiobooks. And they said, “Well, okay, we'll give you permission to do it.” And I emailed back and said, “Look at the contract, you don't have the rights to the audiobooks. I took those back, those are mine.” So you just need to figure out how much you want to give away.
Think of a publisher like you would think of your book cover designer. Who's going to own what parts of the whole process that you're letting them take hold of?
It's hard in that first flush of, “Oh my god, I found a publisher, a real publisher who wants to publish my book,” to set all that aside and go, well, where am I going to be in five years? What am I going to want to do in five years? And look at the contract that way. And probably if you've never done it before, or if it's more than two pages long, hire an attorney who knows something about the book world to look at it.
Many years ago, I was contracted write a situation comedy for our local PBS station. And I was paid, I think, $1,100 to write that script, which is a lot of money back then. And I ended up paying $1,500 to the attorney to get the contract right. And so you go well, you're down $400. And yes, I was down $400, but if I hadn't done that, the thing I would have missed was that in their version of the contract, it was up to me to make sure all rights on everything, everywhere were cleared. That is an easier thing for a TV station to do than it is for me.
So yeah, I didn't make any money on it, but it was a much better contract, and I was happier going forward. It also had a revision clause, so I was able to use the sitcom later on.
I remember being on a panel at Malice Domestic a couple of years ago. It was right after lunch and we were sitting there waiting for the people to come in. There were writers on either side of me and one said, “I just met with my publisher and signed for the next three books.” And the other one said, “I just met an agent and signed with her.”
And I just thought, I hope you didn't literally just sign. I'm glad you're excited, but please sit on it for a while, and think about it, and look at it because the movie world is full of examples where people didn't read the fine print and regretted it forever.
Joanna: Yeah, well, just to recommend another book, Hollywood vs. The Author. I don't know if you've seen that one. It's an excellent book full of some pretty famous authors and some pretty big mistakes that they made.
But just to mention there on the agent, one of the first agents who offered me a contract, basically, it was years ago now, and it was in my earlier days of self-publishing, and the agency contract was that we will take a percentage of all your self-published work, as well as the books that they bought.
Their opinion was they were building my brand, therefore, they would get a percentage of everything under my brand.
And I was like, ah, no, that clause needs to be removed, and they wouldn't remove it. So even though it was really early on, and I hadn't really made much money as an indie, I was confident that I could make this into a business.
I didn't sign that deal. But it's so funny, sometimes I do think about it because I know some of the other authors they represent who've done incredibly well. And you do wonder, don't you? But like you said, it's about freedom.
I did want to ask you, just coming back to the low-budget thing that you said earlier. This is a really interesting thing because I did pitch my Mapwalker series at a screenwriting thing to an agent.
And he said, “Look, this idea is very, very expensive. The project you're talking about is super expensive, you should pitch something that would be cheaper.” So given that you've done these budget movies, like why is this important?
How can we write books that could be turned into cheaper movies? John: Well, you know, that was then, this is now. Because of the use of CGI and green screen, things that used to be really, really expensive, aren't as much anymore. You can do big movies all in a studio.
Look at The Hunger Games. The Hunger Games is an expensive proposition, yet a studio had no problem putting up the money to do that. And the reason they didn't have any problem doing it was it was a hit book.
This is one of the few areas, I think, where being a traditional publisher makes life a little easier for an author if you're trying to get a movie or a series made out of your book, which is that big publishers have departments that all they do is they sell rights and they look for deals like that. It's much harder to do if you're on your own and, you know, an independent author. How do you get it out there?
But as with The Hunger Games, as with Harry Potter, as with Louise Penny having done Three Pines recently, the cost of doing it is secondary. It might even be tertiary, might be way down the list. What they're looking for is how pre-sold is this idea. How well-known is this property? Because they want it already marketable. They want to just tag onto existing fans with it.
Steve Martin had a joke in his early act that said, I'm going to teach you how not to pay taxes on a million dollars. First, get a million dollars. And the same thing is true here —
I'm going to teach you how to make your bestselling book into a movie. First, write a bestselling book. And that's really kind of the most likely path, is the more popular your book is, the more likely someone's going to be interested in taking it and making into a movie.
However, there are ways around that in the movie world. I'll just recount one example, which was that there was a filmmaker who had written a script for the actor Campbell Scott. Campbell Scott is the son of George C. Scott and Colleen Dewhurst, and an excellent actor in his own right. He'd written a great little low independent, low budget independent movie called Roger Dodger. It was perfect for Campbell Scott, but he had no way of getting a hold of Campbell Scott, and agents don't generally want to forward stuff for things that aren't going to make them a lot of money.
He lived in New York, and he knew that Campbell Scott lived in New York, and he just carried that script with him everywhere. And one day in a coffee shop, he ran into Campbell Scott. He struck up a conversation and he said, I've written a script just for you. He handed him the script, and Campbell Scott read it, and said, let's make this movie.
So if you've written something for someone specific in mind, if you can get to them, that might be a path.
The most surefire direct path is to write a bestselling book and they'll come knocking at your door. I know there's all kinds of scams online, like, “Pay us and we'll get your book in front of producers who want to make movies out of it.” Those are scams. It doesn't work that way. It absolutely doesn't work that way. But if you know someone or know a way of getting to someone who might have some interest, by all means, approach them.
It really is on that scale of fame, fortune or freedom. I think you really have to have the fame value strong to want to go that path because you really have to get a bestselling book out there to get that kind of interest.
Joanna: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, we had Johnny B Truant on a few months ago now, and he was talking about his book Fat Vampire that's become Reginald the Vampire, which I think got renewed for a second series. And that is an example of an idea situation, where some dude was looking at Apple books and saw this and the title really caught him. So that was an idea book, and they didn't really have any relationship, but eventually made it into that.
It's such a lightning-strike situation, isn't it? I mean, even if you have a bestselling book, not all bestselling books get made into TV shows or films.
So yeah, it's kind of interesting. The other thing you mentioned is about knowing people. So I've had people say to me, “Oh, you should come to Cannes.” You know, come along to Cannes, you go to the parties, and you meet people. And I'm like, yeah, I'm an introvert, that's really not going to happen. It's so funny. So I guess the question is—
Should we just give up the dream and focus on trying to make our books sell better? John: You know, I think that's the way to go.
However, if it's that important to you, if that's what you want to do is get your book into that lane, then put all your energy into that.
There's also a flip side to that, and I'll go back to Louise Penny on that, because I heard her speak somewhere, and she was talking about the first time she sold the rights to her Three Pines series. It was a heartbreaking story because the people who bought it didn't understand it.
They didn't know what they bought, they didn't understand that Three Pines is driven by those people, those characters. What they made was not what she had written, and it sort of broke her heart, although obviously, the books are still there.
Joanna: I'm sure the money helped!
John: The money probably helped a little. I don't know how large a check you need to write to make Louise Penny impressed at this point.
But you need to keep that in mind. The Reginald the Vampire story is a great example because he's talked about how he was invited to the set, and got to see some stuff, and they did run the scripts by him, but his first objection was he didn't like the title. And they said, yeah, well, sorry, that's the title we're using.
It's going to be like that throughout the whole process, unless you are someone who, like Dennis Lehane, who is a novelist and a screenwriter and can become the showrunner on something he's written and can really shepherd it through. You're going to be handing it off to people who probably 50/50 chance they're going to be on the same wavelength as you.
What you see up on the screen is not necessarily what you thought it was going to be. Joanna: Yeah, but I mean, on the other side of that, I heard Lee Child talking about the first Reacher movie with Tom Cruise. And he had to talk about this so many times because, of course, Jack Reacher is like six foot four, whatever it is, six foot seven, and Tom Cruise is not.
And Lee Child basically said, look, whatever, I'm selling more and more of my books. Then the TV show of Reacher is fantastic, the character is exactly right.
I do want to come back on this because, like you said, that was then, this is now. That agent said to me, you should write something cheaper, like a low budget horror movie. And hilariously, my new novella, it's a long novella, Catacomb, is exactly that. It's a low-budget horror monster book. So I'm really thinking about it because it's very visual.
With AI, we've got these wonderful tools coming out at the moment. We've got, obviously Midjourney, and I'm doing loads of images in Midjourney, Adobe Firefly, and also RunwayML. I don't know if you've seen this, which is generative text to video. So generative video is now a thing.
You mentioned making low-budget movies, and now people are doing that and putting them on YouTube.
What do you think about book trailers or short films that then advertise a book? Do you think that's going to be a way to go or are we looking at a future where it just splinters, everything splinters so much?
John: I think that's a great way to go. What screenwriters today are facing, and the pandemic had a little something to do with this, is that when they go on to pitch a screenplay now to a studio or producer, they are expected to have a deck and to talk through the project with a deck, with visuals, to really bring it to life. That's new. They didn't used to have to do that, and now it's kind of expected.
It helps because sometimes when you're talking to people at the other side of the table, they are not necessarily the most creative or most imaginative. And if you can show them, here's what the sky city is going to look like, or here's an idea of what it looks like, and here's what the monster looks like coming out of the lake. Well, at that point, in their mind, the movie is done. Yeah, that's perfect. Let's do that.
You can do the same thing with your own book into a trailer. I had a short story in the Eli Marks series that I had turned into a comic book, because it was kind of perfect for comic book. And I realized I had essentially what's called an animatic. I had all the frames of what would have been the movie, except nothing moved, but I was able to make moves on them and make it look like a semi little animated movie.
That's a great way to sell the Eli Marks series. People get into it by going, oh, I see what he looks like, and I see what his magic store looks like, and I get the sense of humor. The guy who did the audiobooks did the voice, and so they're hearing what is now the voice of Eli Marks, in everyone's mind, as my narrator.
I can certainly see, after I finish taking your course next week on how to do this, trying to create something a little more elaborate with AI to help pull people into the Eli Marks series, whether it's just getting them to read the book, or listen to the podcast, or hear the book. And maybe someone will get excited and say, hey, that would make a great series.
Joanna: And it's so funny because—It's much easier for people to imagine something if you give them a visual.
I mean, that's why book covers are so important. But the reality is that none of these agents or film people, they're not going to read the book. I mean, they might not even read it ever. It might just be something that goes into the script machine and then comes out the other end as the script, as opposed to the book that they read.
I feel like we get too romanticized around the book itself as the only thing that can communicate our ideas. Whereas sometimes, like you mentioned, a pitch deck with some slides and some visuals, that can be a much better way. So yeah, I do feel like authors need to try and turn their books into more images in order to get the attention if film and TV is something people care about, because of course, it's a visual medium.
John: Right. But one thing I would warn them about with AI, and I've seen a couple different posts on this, is now you can take your book and put it into this program and it will turn it into a screenplay. And it's not going to turn your book into a screenplay. It's going to take your words and put them in a screenplay format.
Joanna: Yeah, exactly. I totally agree with you. Yeah.
John: When Emma Thompson wrote her version of Sense and Sensibility, I remember her saying that somebody said, “Well, you had this book to start with.” And she said, “Well, yes, but if there's more than three lines of dialogue in the finished movie that are in the book, I'd be surprised.”
As an experiment a couple of years ago, because it was COVID and there was nothing going on, I took the first book in my series and thought, if this were a streaming series, what would the first season be like if it's just this first book? And I took the first book, which is called The Ambitious Card, and I broke it into five episodes and did kind of a beat sheet on it. Then I sat down and said, I will write the pilot. I'll just see what that 60-page script looks like.
Yes, it's the story. You bet, it's the same story. Is the dialogue the same? It is not. It wouldn't work in the screen. Are the scenes the same length? They are not. To make that leap, it might help if you have a third-person novel, makes it a little bit easier, but you still have to make everything visual. I mean, everything visual.
I remember reading a script once from a student, and there was a line in it, something like, “Our main character crosses the street, thinking about going to the laundry.” Like, well, okay, how do we do that? How do we do that? The degree of changes you have to make, just to kind of even still make it the same as the book, are enormous.
It isn't just an easy leap from the page to the screen. Joanna: No, absolutely. I went down the rabbit hole of screenwriting a few years back and decided in the end that it is basically a job that I wouldn't want to do. What I wanted, and again, it may be the freedom aspect, is I would love to license my books for film, TV, whatever, but I'm not going to write the script. I won't even try.
[Update: Hilariously, after this interview, I decided to adapt Catacomb into a script … so watch this space for an update!]
In fact, someone even said to me the other day, I think it'd be easier for us to pitch this if you write a draft of the script. And I was like, no, I'm absolutely not going to do that.
Because, like you said, it's an adaptation. I feel like we're too close to the material to adapt it well, whereas someone coming in from the outside can just look at it and go, well, chuck that, change that, do that, the other. So definitely adaptation rather than just straight use AI to turn it into a thing. I totally agree with you there.
John: Yeah, that's not going to work. And one of the things I realized in my twenties, because like I said, I was very fortunate. I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, middle of nowhere, but I got to study every week with this fantastic screenwriting teacher, who was world renowned and respected, he just happened to be teaching at a college here for a year. And I was learning from him how to write a screenplay.
I spent the next few years writing what are called spec screenplays. Here's something I could sell, here's something I could sell. I quickly realized that just because you've written a screenplay and you're trying to sell it, doesn't mean it'll ever sell. And even if it does sell, doesn't mean they're going to make it.
It's such a long process, and I just went, you know, I used to make these myself, why don't I take what I think is my best spec script, rewrite it so I can do it for $30,000, get all my actor friends together, and over four weekends, we'll shoot it. And it's just like I said, the process for becoming a novelist and screenwriter are the same. You can either keep asking people to do this thing, “Hey, would you do this? Would you publish this? Would you represent me? Would you, would you, would you?”
Or you can go, I'm just going to do it myself. And that's what I want to do is make the thing. I don't need to have a book that's on the bestseller list, I just like a book where I occasionally get an email from readers saying, “Is there another one? I really want to read another one?”
Joanna: We're fun creatives. We just can't help ourselves creating more stuff, which is awesome. So the book is great.
Where can people find you, all of your books, and everything you do online? John: Well, you can find The Popcorn Principles and just about everything at our book website, which is called AlbertsBridgeBooks.com.
And you can listen to the Eli Marks Podcast, where you can hear every season as a different book. You'll hear the whole audiobook, plus interviews with cool people like The Amazing Kreskin, Teller of Penn & Teller, and people like that. And that's called Behind the Page: The Eli Marks Podcast.
Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, John. That was great.
John: Thank you.
The post Writing Tips From The Movies With John Gaspard first appeared on The Creative Penn.
Four years ago, in July 2019, I put out a podcast episode that went through the 9 disruptions I saw coming for authors and publishing in the next decade. It turns out that most are happening faster than even I expected. In this episode, Nick Thacker and I discuss some of the main points.
In the intro, I go through other aspects of the nine ways (notes and links below), the USA Today Bestseller list is back; TikTok moves into eCommerce [The Verge]; and Orna Ross and I discuss generative AI for authors on the Self Publishing Advice Podcast.
This podcast is sponsored byWritten Word Media, which makes book marketing a breeze by offering quick, easy and effective ways for authors to promote their books. You can also subscribe to the Written Word Mediaemail newsletterfor book marketing tips.
Nick Thacker is the USA Today bestselling author of over 40 books, including thrillers, action-adventure, and nonfiction. He also helps indie authors through his courses, coaching, and also by working with Draft2Digital.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- Enthusiasm for AI tools as part of the creative process
- Collaborating with AI as an author
- Using AI for tasks outside of your “zone of genius”
- How Draft2Digital may handle the explosion of content
- The future of generative search for book discoverability
- Creating audiobooks with voice clones
- Copyright issues around AI-generated content
- How to stay positive and what to focus on
You can find Nick at NickThacker.com
Overview of the 9 disruptions Here’s the overview. These are in no particular order. Click here to read or listen to the original episode. You can also find more podcast episodes, articles etc here on my Future page.
- Non-fiction books, blog posts, and news articles will bewritten by AI [discussed with Nick below]
- Copyright law will be challengedas books are used to train AIs which then produce work in the voice of established authors [discussed with Nick below]
- Voice synth technologywill replace human narrators for mass-market audiobook narration [discussed with Nick below]
- Voice searchwill disrupt text-based SEO and if you don’t have voice content, you will be invisible. [In the intro, I mention that I think generative search will likely be more disruptive.]
- Translation will be performed by AI— for books as well as other content. [In the intro, I mention my own process with Deepl.com, as well as Google's Translation Hub, and Meta's new translation model.]
- Content will explode exponentially, andAI discoverability and marketing toolswill help navigate the tsunami [discussed with Nick below]
- AI-augmented creativitywill develop and more people will want to be writers. I mentioned ‘centaur publishing,' and suggest you check out AI Writing for Authors to find thousands of authors already experimenting with new ways of co-creating with AI.
- Print publishing will shift into a green, sustainable model withAI-assisted micro-print-on-demand. London Book Fair 2023 focused on sustainability, and even talked about carbon emission labeling for books; plus The Society of Authors Tree to Me
- Expansion of mobile reading +micropayments enabled by 5G mobile and blockchain technology+ four billion new people online = explosion of reading. Subscriptions have certainly cannibalized sales of ebooks and audiobooks, leading to the rise and rise of selling direct. On blockchain, while the crypto crash of 2022 has stopped the speculation, the work of building blockchain solutions continues. The EU IP Office launched a blockchain for registration, and the WIPO is looking at it. As discussed with Roanie Levy on blockchain for copyright registration.
Transcript of Interview with Nick Thacker Joanna: Nick Thacker is the USA Today bestselling author of over 40 books, including thrillers, action-adventure, and nonfiction. He also helps indie authors through his courses, coaching, and also by working with Draft2Digital. So welcome back to the show, Nick.
Nick: Thank you for having me again. It's a pleasure.
Joanna: Yes, indeed. Now you were on the show three years ago talking about writing action-adventure. But tell us a bit more about what you're up to now and—
Give us an update on your author business because you do lots of things. Nick: Thank you. I do. Yeah, I still write action-adventure. I'm still definitely pushing books out as fast as humanly possible. You’ve got to feed the beast.
But over the years, including three years ago, and before, when I first got started writing, I think you know this, I was a marketing guy. I came out of a marketing background. So I never had a very organized or formal way of putting my nonfiction, let's call it knowledge, together until about maybe six months ago.
So I've started putting all that together on a website called Book Career in a Year, which is just me teaching, coaching, training, whatever. So I have courses and books and things like that, that are all nonfiction related. Teaching authors how to be authors, teaching authors how to write, publish, marketing, market their books, that sort of thing. So Book Career in a Year is where all that lives.
As you said, I do still work for Draft2Digital. I believe I had just started then, maybe three years ago, when last we talked. I'm loving it. It's a great company full of great people. I knew this before I joined, but working there for the past, I guess it's four years now, has really showed me that they really are authors first, authors forward. If authors don't win, we don't win. So I love that mentality that they have there. Hopefully, I'll be there for a long time because of that.
Joanna: That's great. I think, inevitably, those of us who write fiction will start writing nonfiction and try and help other people at some point. It just seems to happen that way.
Let's get into the AI disruption topic of today. It's funny, you said there you put out books as fast as humanly possible, but we are talking today about collaborating with AI.
First up, at the beginning of the article that I would have talked about in the introduction, I said:
“Humans are innately creative, and in this new AI-powered world, we can create even more than we ever dreamed possible.” And I want to talk to you because you're also enthusiastic. So why are you so enthusiastic about AI for authors and the creative process?
Nick: I think there's two main answers for why I'm so enthusiastic. One, I believe I'm an optimist. I really do think, generally, the best for humanity. I think we strive, and obviously we make mistakes and we falter, but I think we're on a trajectory taking us to better places.
Two, I figure if we're going to have robot overlords take us over like Skynet, we might as well just embrace it now and be good to them and nice to them and hope that we get killed last. That's a little bit tongue-in-cheek of an answer, but truthfully, I think it's the first one.
I think the optimism I have carries over into this realm of AI as well because I feel like we haven't even scratched the surface of what's possible. That excites me. Joanna: Yeah. And just to give people listening some other things there.
So Marc Andreessen just recently posted an article, really long article, Why AI Will Save the World. So I'll link that in the show notes. Also, Mo Gawdat's book, Scary Smart, which really talks about we're raising the AIs on our writing. Although you and I blow things up, kill people, [in our books!] but you know, we are trying to be nice to the AIs.
Nick: Right, Right. Exactly. I think it goes back into that. I think part of the way to be optimistic about this is to realize that we're not really seeing what Ray Kurzweil calls artificial general intelligence (AGI). I mean, we're not there yet. And while I believe this could be a route toward that, I'm not worried about that. We don't have to get into the details of why or why not.
What we're seeing, of course, and this is probably what we'll talk about today, is these are large language models, these are generative AIs. They're not really artificial intelligences. They're just trained on a corpus, on a body of work, and they spit out the next most likely outcome when we give it a prompt. So I'm not terribly worried that it's going to turn into this sentient being that all of a sudden starts bossing us around, yet.
Joanna: I agree. And there are lots of them, I think this is another thing.
Today I've been playing with ChatGPT-4 and also with Claude from Anthropic, and these are two models built differently that behave differently with the same prompts. So this is what's so interesting.
But let's just put a couple of my predictions together.
Number seven on my list was: AI-augmented creativity will develop. And number one: nonfiction books, blog posts and news articles will be written —I said, by AI—but I would now change that to say with AI. So clearly this is happening, but—
What are your thoughts on AI-assisted creativity? And how are you using the tools? Nick: I fully agree with your predictions. I think we are there in some small way, specifically with the nonfiction. I don't know why, but it seems like it's easier to use AI for nonfiction, or at least it seems more believable when we use it for nonfiction. When I say nonfiction, I don't really mean the narrative nonfiction. You know, this isn't going to write a Malcolm Gladwell diatribe, right?
It's going to write, like you said, blog posts, news articles. These things that are factual based, we can feed it a few facts, and it can spit out a news article.
And this I think becomes eventually the new kind of BuzzFeed, where it's—sorry, Buzzfeed—the lowest common denominator of writing quality, just to get information out into the internet. I think that that's an easy box to check. I think we're there already.
Joanna: I want to come back on that because BuzzFeed did win the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting back in 2021. But I know why you use that example because that's what we think when we think about BuzzFeed.
I also think this brings up what people think about AI content, which is that it is just kind of regurgitated stuff, let's say crap. But a lot of it isn't, and I guess that's what we're thinking about as AI-assisted creatives.
How are you using these tools as a writer and a marketer, without outputting a load of crap?
Nick: The way that I use these tools is adjacent to writing, is the way I think of it.
So I will use ChatGPT, it's my favorite right now.
I use GPT-4 most of the time, and I use it to produce things like book cover blurbs or marketing promotional materials. So I can give it a prompt that says, “I wrote this book, here's the blurb that you just wrote, and I would like you to give me five tweets or a blog post about what this book is about.”
Of course, I then go and read it and make sure it is accurate, make sure it's what I want to say and tweak it a little bit.
This saves me so much time because, for me, I'm not in that headspace, I'm in fiction mode. So I want to get in there really quickly, you know. I've written this book, and I want to upload it and publish it, and oh shoot, I gotta come up with a description and all that. So I'm not in the right headspace. So ChatGPT, specifically, for me, helps do that kind of thing.
On the fiction side, I've also played around with tools like Story Engine from SudoWrite, to just help generate some creative ideas.
I think the challenge is, or the problem we run into as authors, is we kind of try these things thinking, well, once it gets better, it'll just be able to do all of this for me. We'll just say, write this book about, like you said, a bunch of people shooting each other and killing each other. And then it's going to say, okay, great, here's 90,000 words on people killing each other. But that's not where we are right now.
I don't want to use these tools like that because that takes away what I like to do. That takes away what I want out of my writing career.
I will use it to generate ideas. So for example, Joanna, in my current work in progress, I wanted to think of the book in terms of a series of set pieces, like in Hollywood when you make a movie, you have these big set pieces, these big action scenes. And I wanted to think in terms of set pieces, but I'm not very good at coming up with set pieces. My set pieces end up looking like Michael Bay, where it's just, okay, we'll get in another car and then it'll blow up—
Joanna: But we love Michael Bay!
Nick: I love Michael Bay, don't get me wrong. But again, I think he probably might write for Buzzfeed, before they won a Pulitzer.
I asked ChatGPT to come up with some possible set piece ideas, and it spit out five or six really good set piece ideas. There were 10 total, and some of them I just threw out, they weren't very good. They were like, here's a car chase and the car blows up — but some of them were really good.
I had never thought of, okay, I'm in Moscow, let's go into the subway system, which I now need to research to make sure it exists, and that they can have the chase scene in a subway car. Well, that's something I've never done before. That's really cool.
I'm going to write that personally, as Nick. I'm not going to ask ChatGPT to write that for me.
I want to use these tools to speed up the process of brainstorming and the process of planning because I want to spend my time writing. Joanna: Great example there. I think asking these tools for lists of ideas and combining different things too.
I was doing this earlier, and I said, “I've got this character and this character and this character, and they are all of these different things. They are an archaeologist and a builder and a whatever, and they're in this situation. Give me 20 ideas for interpersonal conflict that could come up based on these backstories.” So this is an example of a complicated prompt.
It's so funny because on the one hand, we say, ‘oh, it's just regurgitating what comes next,' but actually, when you ask it for creative ideas that combine different things.
Or for example, I asked it for book marketing ideas related to nonlinear and non-obvious industries, and got ideas for things like what the fashion industry does for marketing and what all these different random industries that we don't know anything about really, and what they do for marketing.
So I guess what we're trying to encourage people to do is, yeah, I mean, let's just take away that whole thing about, ‘oh, don't let it write your book for you.' Like all the other things is what it's really for, right?
Nick: Right. I think that's what you and I have been saying when asked and when we talk about this stuff. And I go to conferences, and I can be talking about email marketing for an hour, and I get a question about AI at the end. I think it's that popular and that important for us as creatives. So you're exactly right.
I think if there's any bottom line, it's that don't ignore this tool because you think it's going to replace a job or you're worried about helping our future robot overlords.
Use the tool for the things that you are either spinning your wheels on or wasting time doing, or that you just don't need to be doing because it's not the most creative outlet for your genius. Joanna: Yeah, I mean, even you mentioned email marketing there. I did actually earlier ask for 20 different headlines to put in an email about a particular book.
I gave it the synopsis of the book, and then I said, “Give me 20 different headlines that will make people want to open the email.” I mean, again, we are so bad at this kind of thing that asking for help is a good idea, right?
Nick: Right. And I've had it draft those emails for me, too. I said, “Great, I love number 1, 3, 7. Please write the subject line and the email first draft.” And then of course, I go back, I read it, make sure it's accurate, make sure it says what I wanted to say.
A tool like ChatGPT, and some of these other ones that have a quote, unquote, “memory,” they know based on at least that chat thread, what you've told it in the past.
You can give it a style guide, you can give it a tone. You can say, “Okay, this is who I am. This is how I write. You've read all my stuff. Can you write this email in terms of how I might sound?”
And a lot of times it gets it pretty accurately. Now to be fair, I'm no Cormac McCarthy, right? My style is pretty much just, ‘and then the man got shot in the neck.' That's not terribly verbose, I guess.
Joanna: And this is a tip as well.
I don't advocate using prompts that include another author's name [or artist's name for images]. So I will never say, “Write me this in the style of Cormac McCarthy,” or in the style of Nick Thacker. Yeah, I mean, it's the same, right? And with images, with everything, there's no need to even use anyone's name in any prompt. You need to think a lot more about the kind of output you want. You also said it's a first draft that you then edit, you check it.
We're not just generating and then publishing, right?
Nick: Correct. Correct. Never. I've tried, I would love for it to be good enough to do that. Even if it were, Jo, I think there's something about—again, it comes back to that creative process. It may one day be good enough to write a whole Nick Thacker novel for me.
And we can talk about whether that's good or bad, ultimately, ethically, whatever. I don't care because I'm still going to write my books, unless they tie me down and say you can never write again.
I think that's what I'm getting at here is I'm going to go over that stuff, I'm going to read through that stuff, not because I don't trust it—I mean, that's definitely part of it at this point of the game—but I also want my voice to be in there, I also want it to be from me. So I'm using this as an assistant, almost. I would say I use it as an assistant for things that are, I'm going to say, not important. That word probably carries more meaning than it needs to.
An email to my list, I'm not saying that my list isn't important enough to hear from me, but I am saying that it's not important enough to spend two hours crafting the perfect email because it's just going to get lost in the ether. I mean, 20% are going to open it in the first place, right?
So it's just not the most important task that I do during the day. So I'm going to use ChatGPT for something like that because it can spit out something that's very, very good. Certainly good enough with a little bit of tweaking and crafting. Then I've spent 15 minutes total, and I can send it out to my list and move on to the things that they are paying me for, which is writing more books.
Joanna: Yeah, actually, there's a good book called The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, and he talks about the —
Zone of Genius — You should really spend the majority of your time doing the thing, not necessarily that you're a genius in, but that you feel only you can do. And exactly what you said, writing in your voice, writing Nick Thacker novels, is actually part of your zone of genius.
Whereas—I mean, you are more market-y—I mean, certainly for me, writing email headlines and all of that, writing sales copywriting, writing ads, this is definitely not my zone of genius. So that is definitely using different tools.
So I feel like maybe that makes a difference. This applies to generative AI for images too. So I've been doing images, but then I give them to my cover designer because it is not my zone of genius to create book covers.
Nick: Exactly. I do the same thing. I've got a book cover designer these days, I used to do my own covers. But again, when we talk about things that even if I like doing it, I'm not the fastest, and I'm not the best at it. And when I found somebody who was, and affordable, then I just said, you're going to do all my book covers from now on.
When we talked about the AI thing, we came to the same conclusion that, look, I can sit over here—me, Nick—can sit over here, use something like Midjourney, and say, this is kind of what I want you to do.
I don't have to spend any of my time designing something that's going to look horrendous, you know, and then give it over to my cover designer. He can immediately see like, oh, I see what you're trying to do here, let me go take this and run with it.
Joanna: Yes, and it's so funny because with my cover designer I used to be say, okay, I've got this book coming, this is the title, this is the genre, here's like four different things that are in it that might work for some ideas.
Then she would send me like a whole folder of stock photos, and I would go through the stock photos and say, yes to that vibe, no to that, yes, yes. So I would spend time doing all that. Now what we do is, like you said, I go on Midjourney, I generate a whole load of images myself, and I send them to her. And I say this is the whole vibe, and then she puts them all together into a cover.
So this is what's so fascinating.
It's changing our processes, but we're still trying to stay in the zone of genius. I mean, you and me, because we're action-adventure, my ARKANE series and your books, they're quite similar. We like the high-concept explosion action-adventure stuff. And it is very visual, so it's fun for us to do the visual stuff, isn't it?
Nick: It is, and I like to say that we, over time, we're in a groove, we're writing and we're producing, it's very difficult to realize that we've gotten into a rut.
And what I mean by that, which was exactly what you said, is my set pieces all started to sound the same, all of my descriptions started to sound the same, all of my action scenes started to kind of blend together. It didn't matter, you could take one out of this book and put it in another book, change the character, and it was the same thing.
AI has been a huge boon for that because, again, I can use a visual tool like Midjourney, I can use a text tool like ChatGPT, and both are going to give me some ideas that I can then use in my own book.
And again, I'm not going to lift it and put it in. It doesn't work that way. You know, that probably would be great if I could just take it and say, good, here we go. We're just so far from that, and I don't even know if I'd want to do that for reasons I said before.
Joanna: Yes, well, that brings me to my number six of my list, which is:
Content will explode exponentially, and AI discoverability and marketing tools will help navigate the tsunami. So it really feels like we are about to enter this prediction. You and I have both said, we're not going to just generate and publish, but some people are. There are going to be a lot of these types of books.
Now, I wanted to get your opinion. First of all, you work for Draft2Digital as one of the many things you do, and Draft2Digital publishes books.
So how will Draft2Digital manage this explosion of content?
[You can also hear Dan Wood from Draft2Digital talking about this in a previous episode.]
Nick: Very carefully. I can't give details, but we are going through this daily.
We have probably the best customer support team on the planet. I mean that. They are in the front wave of that tsunami, or I guess they're on the shore as the tsunami is coming. I don't know where to go with the analogy, but you know what I mean.
The tsunami is the AI, and they're standing on the shore looking at it, trying to protect all the rest of us from it. It's happening now. It's already happening. They're doing the best they can.
Our policy at Draft2Digital is always authors first, and we want to support authors. However, we also want to make sure that we're supporting authors, not AIs. Not because we're all anti-AI there.
It's a tool, that's how we approach it, but we want to make sure that we're not getting bombarded by crap, as we said earlier.
It's just very challenging. It's very challenging because we don't have, and you know this, there is no tool that can predict something was written with AI. If there are too many false positives, up to 50%, I think, or more with some of these tools, and that gets into some people just not writing very well.
But it's also, I can put my book that I wrote 10 years ago, when AI didn't even really exist like this, through one of these tools, and it will spit out 30% of it was written by AI. So we can't trust these tools that quote, unquote, “predict” that something is written with AI.
So as a company, we don't really have an automated way to find this stuff. We have to vet it all manually. We've got some ways that we're doing it internally, and we're trying to figure it out as we go, but it is challenging. It's very challenging.
Joanna: Yeah, well, I should say, the Bible, and Jane Austen, and all these books that are massively represented in the training data definitely come out as AI-written.
Nick: Are you trying to claim that God is not an AI? Because that might actually fit.
Joanna: Well, who knows? We may be in the simulation!
Of course, Dan Wood from Draft2Digital was on the show a few weeks ago, and we were talking about this then. Basically his point was, look —
If you use AI to make good books, and you're writing them in your voice and you're using it as a tool, then we'll be happy with that. So if you're a real author doing real things with real tools, then that's all good. If it's just another spammer, scammer uploads a load of crap, which there are those books around, then again, regardless of the tool, Draft2Digital doesn't want to publish bad books.
Nick: And that's hard because we don't also want to limit an author who hasn't quite figured out their own voice. They're not using AI, but they just sound like it. You know, so there's things like that that are just it gets a little squishy.
But we're doing our best, and the people that we've got on staff are the best at what they do with finding this stuff, and looking for this stuff, and trying to do exactly what you said, which is support authors, without supporting the race to the bottom of quality.
Joanna: Yes. Yeah and I often say —
Double down on being human. If you are someone, including me, I have published so far as we talk, just one short story that has generative AI texts in it as part of it, and a cover as well: With A Demon's Eye, which was a few months ago now.
But if that got blocked by Draft2Digital, I would email the team and say, “Look, This is me.” And I mean that you guys know me, but if it was someone else who had never emailed you or didn't have a personal friendship, then I would do that.
I would say, look, email the team, explain the situation, explain what you did, and just connect with the Draft2Digital team as humans. And that kind of proves that you're not just a spammer, scammer uploader, right?
Nick: Exactly. Do that with Draft2Digital. Do not try that with Amazon. We actually do have humans working for Draft2Digital, unlike…
Joanna: Yes, exactly. No, you're right. I mean, the Draft2Digital team is much more approachable than the KDP help, for example. But I do think the same applies, we do just have to prove that we are humans, and they will be more of this.
I did want to come back on the AI discoverability because I have found something very cool, which is—
I'm using Bing to discover books. So for example, I tried to compare my search on Amazon with my search on Bing. And if people don't know it's Microsoft's search engine, but it's powered by GPT-4.
I basically said, “I'm writing a book, I'm researching stone carving. Give me some nonfiction books around stone carving.” And it gave me a whole load of books. And then I said, “Okay, I want fiction books that feature stone carving as part of their plot or their setting.”
I compared these lists with Amazon and with Bing. And my goodness, the Bing one was so much better. It gave me really quality results.
Whereas the Amazon one was full of ads, and it was full of nonfiction books. It really couldn't find me fiction novels with elements of stone carving.
[Note: You can use Bing Chat powered by GPT4 through the Edge Browser, and then go to Bing.com and click Chat button.]
Nick: Yeah, Amazon has always been a search engine. And yet, I've said this from day one, I think you and I talked about it three years ago, that discoverability was the biggest sore spot I have with Amazon, or the biggest lack of development that's going on there. I love that Bing has an option. I mean, I detest Bing, but I might actually have to use it because I trust your opinion.
Joanna: It's well worth getting on. So for people, like I'm a Mac person, and I downloaded the Microsoft Edge browser.
Nick: You're less of a Mac person now because you did that. I hope you know.
Joanna: I know, but I love Bing. And actually, Bing answers the other question which people say, oh, well, there's no point using these things because it's not connected with the Internet.
But now you can do ChatGPT-4 browsing with Bing within the app. And you can also go on Bing, which is powered by GPT-4.
If you want actual citations for the things you're researching, then just go on Bing Chat and try it there. Also, Bing chat is free, whereas GPT-4 through open AI you have to pay for.
Nick: Yeah, in order to not get throttled and that kind of thing.
With the discoverability, I've always thought, we have this device called the Kindle we read at night, and I'm talking about myself here. And because of data and my Kindle being connected to the internet at all times, Amazon knows exactly how much I read every night before I close that and go to sleep. Amazon has that data. They know what time, they know what time zone, they know what type of thing I like to read, and they know how long I read.
So this was a prediction I made probably five or more years ago, but I said I hope one day we'll have a discoverability engine that is suggestive. Like, I open my Kindle at night before I read and it says, “Hey, I know you like to read for about an hour and a half before you fall asleep. Here's a story that fits in that timeframe. You'll be able to finish it by then. And it's in the genre you already like.”
Joanna: Well, actually, as we record this, on The Verge on the 15th of May 2023, there was an article saying Amazon is building an AI-powered conversational experience for search.
They are looking to reimagine Amazon search with generative AI. Very interesting, could definitely disrupt the way we've all been working. But equally, it's going to be what we need because I'm now using Bing.
Nick: Exactly. I think it might be too little too late, but I'm not surprised at all. That sounds exactly like what a company that is data-backed, like Amazon, should be doing.
Honestly, I mean, if you're a shareholder, this is what you want them working on. Even as a consumer, I don't have a problem with ads. I don't have a problem with somebody telling me what to buy because I just recognize that that's a reality. We just live in a reality where we're going to get bombarded with ads, fine. I'd much rather have them be things that I want. Hockey gear or new phone or something like that, that's interesting to me.
We're certainly at a point, at a juncture where the data that the world has on Nick Thacker is enough to suggest things for me to buy that I'll actually like. So I'm sort of eagerly awaiting that moment. And that goes to what we're talking about with Amazon.
I would love to get on Amazon, and actually have the recommendations be things that I want, not just, “Would you like to reorder this, that you ordered these sponges three months ago? You can reorder that, and then also here's eight new books in the genre that are from authors you've never heard of.”
Joanna: I think the difference is really this chat mechanism. So with the Bing experience for finding books to read, it's going backwards and forwards. It's like, “No, actually, that's not quite right. How about…”
So I did it with action-adventure, and then said, “You've given me a list of only male authors.” It was a classic Clive Cussler, and all this, Wilbur Smith and everything. And I was like, “Okay, I need female authors with female protagonists, written in the last decade, and with archaeological elements.” Obviously, I was trying to fish to see if it would bring up mine, and it did. And also, I found some other authors to read I've never known about.
So I kind of have this hope that this will disrupt the—and I know a lot of people do write to market. I don't, but also I don't want to read to market. I don't want to just get a whole load of books that have been written to the same things. And I'm kind of hoping that this type of generative search will help readers find different kinds of books. I'm not sure how that's going to disrupt things, but as a reader, I'm pretty excited.
Nick: Sure. Yes, I think there are definitely some downsides to any new technology, but I think I'm with you. One of the big upsides here is discoverability seems to always have been largely missing for us, as indie authors, especially. Hopefully this will help.
Joanna: Yes, absolutely. So we kind of talked there about how Draft2Digital is going to deal with it. But you're also Nick Thacker, author.
How worried are you as an author about this tsunami of content? Are you thinking of changing the way you're marketing? Or how are you thinking about this? Because many people are just worried their books are going to be drowned out.
Nick: Sure. I think that is a big concern. I'm not worried about it.
Look, I think the key here is if you're starting this now, you're starting this journey now, you hear me say all this stuff and you might think doom and gloom, it's not. I think the key is the same key that was true for all of time, and that is engaging with your reader. And that's not tongue in cheek, that is literally the strategy that I still use. That is all you have to worry about, ultimately, is engaging with your reader.
Finding readers is going to look different, and how you might talk to them is going to look different, but if you have nothing else to go off of, start emailing people who read your books, and start building relationships with these people, because they're humans just like you.
And there is a connection point that you can make through email, social media, whatever it is that you decide to choose, whatever works for you. And by strengthening that relationship, you are going to be successful as an author.
Of course, you still have to write books, you still have to publish and do all those things.
All the marketing tactics will change, and all the tools will change, but what won't change is writers are writing books that readers want to read. If you are one of those writers, there will be readers for you. It just all starts and ends with engagement.
Joanna: Yeah, and also, I'm going to call it. I think write to market is done as a business model. Not right now, but in the next couple of years.
Because if you do write to market, generating a book to market will be easy.
But something that's your own voice, that is your own unique idea that is based on just your creative, unique brain that comes up with stuff.
I actually think that this will mean a renaissance in far more original work because we will have to stand out in different ways. Then you will find, like you said, you start your email list. And yeah, it's going to take some time, but—
I think I trust in the discoverability tools.
I mean, I've always said, and again, we're using Amazon because they're the biggest data driven kind of company, but Amazon has had our books, has had the text of our books since as soon as we published.
So why the hell do we have to put in seven keywords? Why do we have to do these ridiculous things when with sentiment analysis and with all of this, they could deliver books based on much more granular and interesting things than just keywords.
I kind of see this as a disruption, and therefore my call to people is, yes, connect with people, but also write the books really of your heart and the things that are driving you to do this. And yeah, I think that will make people stand out.
Nick: I think it will. Here's my prediction, I don't think it'll be Amazon that comes out with this discoverability tool. I think you're exactly right, because the content is going to explode exponentially, really the only way forward is for discoverability to also explode exponentially. Because otherwise, then we have no idea how to wade through any of this tsunami of crap we've been talking about.
I do believe that we will find discoverability tools. I don't think Amazon is the one that's going to push that forward, at least with books. It doesn't seem to me like they're interested in innovating anymore in the book side.
We've seen Kindle Unlimited payouts changing, sometimes going down over time, when we predicted they might go up, things like that. I don't know that it's going to end, I'm not saying again, doom and gloom, but I would love, personally, and this isn't just me as a Draft2Digital guy,
I would love another store to build something that actually works as far as discoverability goes. Joanna: Well, I'll give you another one. That is the Shopify plugin for ChatGPT. So I also did these experiments with the Shopify plugin.
And for example, I asked it for books on how to write a novel and then used the generative search on the Shopify app within ChatGPT. Woohoo, it came up with my books!
You can click on them, and it goes straight to Shopify. So it was another reason I went with Shopify, because of the sort of future-facing stuff they're doing.
[You can find my books at www.CreativePennBooks.com]
I think there are going to be some very cool new ways of doing stuff. And hey, look, it's about time, because I feel like our business model has been stagnant really for a while.
I know disruption is hard, but I think there's going to be a lot more cool stuff ahead, rather than being worried about it. Nick: That's really what I want people to hear because as I said, I'm an optimist.
Yes, I can acknowledge and recognize that there's downsides to any new technology, but I'm not focusing on those things.
I'm focusing on the future and what is possible for my career, for your career, for anyone who's getting started in this.
I love authors, we need more books. And this is a tool—I say this, meaning AI and whatever comes in the future—will be a tool for us to be able to do that. And I'm hoping, again, we've been talking about the discoverability side, I think that needs to come with it.
I think what you said with Bing, Shopify, some of these tools that are already out there experimenting with this, we're getting closer that every day.
Joanna: Indeed. So let's talk about three on my list. I said:
Voice synth technology will replace human narrators for mass-market audiobook narration. And I did expand this and basically say, that's for mass-market audiobook, but that there would be more of a stratification of audiobook rights.
So you might have a human-narrated edition, and then an AI-narrated addition, which is what I've done for my own books.
You are doing some interesting things with AI audio. So tell us about that.
Nick: I'm doing the same thing you're doing. I saw this technology become a way for me to get books produced that never would have been produced in audio format. That was it.
I'm not anti-human narration, I'm not saying I don't like human narrators and they should all be out of jobs, but I would never have produced some of my books because they just weren't cost-effective.
AI technology gave me the ability to do that, and to offer that to my readers for a much lower price than what I would have to charge for a human-narrated version.
So just like you, I said, well, I'm going to have two different price points. I don't think one necessarily will cannibalize the sales of the other. Meaning somebody can pay for the bespoke premium human-narrated version for $15, $20 $25. Or they can buy the AI-narrated version for $7 or $5 or $1, or whatever it is. I have found that both sell just fine.
Joanna: Well, that's interesting.
Tell us what tools you are using for that because there are a number of different options. And also, how are you selling them? Nick: Yeah, so I was working with a company called ElevenLabs. I say was, I'm still working with them, I still use them. Early on in their development, I was—I wouldn't say consulting—but chatting with the owner and the main developer of that company, trying to build a tool where I could upload an entire manuscript and have it spit out a book narrated in AI format. They're not quite there yet, but their tool is still very, very good.
One of the things that they were heavily developing was the ability to vocal clone.
Similar to like, I think you taught me about Descript having their vocal clone feature. ElevenLabs has one as well, it's better though. It's very, very good.
And so I tested it with my own voice, they gave me like a vocal clone premium version or whatever that would be called with them, and I've been producing a lot of my books read by Nick Thacker, but it's my AI audio voice. It's been really cool, because it's certainly good enough. I mean, it is me. It's based on tiny little pieces of audio files. It's literally my voice, I just didn't sit down in front of a microphone for eight hours to produce it.
Joanna: That is really interesting. Give us a title of one that people could go find and where they can find it, and if there's a sample so they can have a listen.
Nick: Yeah, so if you go over to where I publish all my books on Conundrum Publishing, conundrumpub.com is the website. Go find my book and there's a sample right there on the page.
You'll be able to hear what this sounds like, you can compare it to how I sound right now, because it's again, it's my voice reading it. I'm sure we can drop it in the show notes if you want.
That's my voice, but I didn't sit down and read it for eight hours. I think that's really powerful because, again, and I'm going to get into the whole don't be exclusive, especially with something like ACX or Audible, because now I can also produce a version of that read by a real human narrator, somebody I like and that can do voices and can really act, you know. That's what's missing from something like this, and they can go do that. So I can sell both of those, as long as I'm not exclusive to Audible.
Joanna: Just to explain that to people, and it also is the same if you've signed a contract with a publisher, that it's story rights. You're often signing story rights.
Whereas what we want to do is if you sign a contract, you might want to sign human narrator rights or a specific, you know, just stratify the rights instead of all audio.
So yeah, if you've signed an exclusive contract with ACX, you cannot produce an AI version, even though it might be a different voice, it will be a different voice, because you've signed away the whole project, essentially.
So this is such a good point, and I love this stuff. I'm going to go listen to a bit of that because I'm very interested. Now, I have said to people I've been excited about a voice clone too, but then I have also said it, and this is me, this is real you, real you and me, that this is not voice cloned. And at the moment I'm kind of like —
I don't want to do a voice clone now, because this is me doubling down on being human. If you hear my voice, it is actually human me. Even though originally I said I wanted a voice clone. So I'm actually quite conflicted about this because of kind of protecting that, but you're clearly over that.
Nick: Well, you know, it was never an issue for me, but I can completely respect that it is. And that's what I think the challenge is, is we want everything to be so black and white. You know, black or white, it's either this or this. It's unfortunately, or fortunately, it's both. I understand that there are ethical concerns with the way a lot of these bodies of work get their body of work. That's something that we're dealing with, that's something that in the United States, Congress is looking at.
So there are certainly ethical and moral concerns here. But, for me personally, and I do think this is a personal choice, I don't have a problem with having a vocal clone of my voice. That is not the same as Nick Thacker saying everybody should go have a vocal clone of their voice. That's a totally different thing.
I can absolutely respect that you don't want one or that you're still dealing with the pros and cons. Go for it, absolutely. Have those concerns. For me, no, it was never an issue. I don't have a problem with it.
Joanna: That's interesting. And I know ElevenLabs have updated their terms and conditions where you have to warrant that you own the voice that you want cloned, because of course, all of these technologies can be used in bad ways. I have heard a lot of people say existing law protects us from bad actors, as in people will do bad things, but existing law actually covers it.
So one of the other things I said, my number two in my list was:
Copyright law will be challenged as books are used to train AIs, which then produce work in the voice of established authors. And the same with images. And of course, that is actually happening right now. There are lots of court cases on it. But yeah, how were you thinking about this? Because obviously, we're both using these tools.
How do you feel about the whole copyright law?
This is not a legal discussion. This is just our opinion, obviously.
[For a discussion with a lawyer, check out this episode with Kathryn Goldman on AI and copyright.]
Nick: Yes, thank you for saying that. I am not a lawyer. I'm not even adjacent to lawyers in any way. I'm not a lawyer.
Here's the deal, I was a musician. I still am, but I went to school to be a musician, trained as a musician. I was neck deep in all this copyright discussion as it came to things like sampling, taking a song from someone else that has been recorded already and using a small bit of it in music. In the United States, at least, that was about all I could keep up with, there was constantly a debate about whether you could use this amount of somebody's music or this amount or this or that.
My takeaway from all of that was, and still is, copyright law will always be challenged. That's why we have copyright law.
The goal is to protect the integrity of the intellectual property and the copyright that that copyright holder has. That's a good thing, I believe that it should be challenged.
That doesn't mean that all AI needs to be banned or all AI needs to be allowed. I think it's a gray area, and that's the really challenging part is that until we have some not just laws and legal structure, but some court precedent, some case precedent, about how we're handling individual situations.
We, you and I, who aren't lawyers and who are just using these tools, can't really make—I don't want to say uneducated, we can make educated guesses—but we can't really make a good prediction as to where this will all land 10 years from now, or 15 or 20 years from now.
Joanna: I mean, the US Copyright Office essentially says it's how much of your project has your authorship. So for example, I am saving pictures of my prompts, I'm saving my edits, I'm saving my drafts, I'm saving my versions, I've got evidence that this is my authorship.
Also, I do for AI voice stuff, I have banners that say this is AI-narrated, I have author's notes. So I feel like there's a lot you can do to show that you're trying to be on the right side of the law. Plus, as we said earlier —
Do not use anyone else's name or IP in your prompt. Nick: Have some integrity, of course. That's baseline. I would ask you, how will you prove that? Because you have the screenshots, those can be faked. You have samples of prompts that you use, those can probably be faked as well. And I'm not saying that you're doing any of that, of course.
Joanna: I have actual photos of my actual handwriting because all my edits I do by hand.
Nick: Well, still. Again, that's why I said case precedent. We can have laws that say you have to have a statement if we're using more than 50% of AI tool to create it. but how do we define 50%? Is it that you prompted an AI tool, and then edited the feedback?
Well, how much of it did you edit? Or did you just use it copy/paste? And how do we prove that? Because again, we don't have a good tool to detect AI use in fiction, and I don't think we ever will.
So there's all these questions that I think will be very challenging to answer. I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong, I love that you do that. And we've had this conversation before, you and I, about how much of this to be open about and not. There's all kinds of things going into this, and it's a very, very squishy gray area.
That's why I say I just I don't think we can make a decision on whether or not to use it 100% or 0% at all, until we've got not only case law and legislation, but also the court case precedent. People have been tried and accused, basically, and more than one, because it's going to make a difference.
Joanna: Yes. I think at the end of the day, we're saying:
Use AI tools responsibly and ethically. Nick: Yeah, don't be a jerk. If you wake up in the morning and go, I'm going to go be a jerk today and I'm going to use AI to do it, you're going to go to jail.
Joanna: Nobody listening is going to do these things, anyway. We all want to do the right thing. But also being part of the change, if people like us in the community are part of the change, we can actually shape things around what is ethically correct and good for the community, I guess. So we're almost out of time, but—
Any final thoughts and encouragement for people in this time of change? Because there is a lot of fear.
Nick: I want to encourage you, actually, and hopefully this will encourage people listening.
But last time you and I talked, we were at a conference here in Colorado Springs, actually, and you are at the forefront of this, and you are someone we should all look up to because you're doing these things in an ethical way as much as you can, as much as possible. That's visible, we see that, and that is the way forward. So anyone listening, follow Joanna. Obviously, you are because you listen to this podcast.
People like you are going to be, just as you said, the ones at the forefront of how do we approach this stuff ethically, legally even, and you are setting a good example as a role model in this community of authors. So I appreciate you for that. I think more of that is what we need from every indie author on the planet who has a platform.
Joanna: Thank you for that. I do think people are afraid, potentially, of putting their head above the parapet because then you get shot at.
Nick: Of course. It's messy being on the top, for sure.
Joanna: It is. I appreciate you, and obviously Dan Wood was on the show from Draft2Digital, and everyone who is talking about this. As I said, I think —
If we can be part of shaping the future, this is going to help a lot because we care about creative quality. We care about authors and creatives making a living. So as you said, we just care about authors first. That's the way forward.
Nick: Absolutely. And when it comes time for legislation in whatever country to look at what's happening, they're going to look to what's actually happened.
So if we're not talking about this, if we're not showing how we do this, they're not going to have anything to go off of. But I believe they will. They're going to see you, they're going to see me, they're going to see Draft2Digital, all the people that are doing something and talking about it in the industry. Hopefully, they'll listen to us, but that's all we can hope for.
Joanna: Indeed.
So where can people find you, and your courses, and your books, and everything you do online?
Nick: Thank you. I am at NickThacker.com. And that is in a constant state of disarray, but I think I've got the homepage nailed down that has links to all the other stuff that I do.
So if you're interested in my fiction, it's all there from one link away. And if you're interested in the nonfiction, The Book Career in a Year stuff, that's all there too. I would recommend starting there. And of course, I'm on all the places. If you like Facebook, I'm on there as well. You can find me on any of those.
Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Nick. That was great.
Nick: Thank you for having me again. Hopefully we'll do this again.
The post 9 Ways That Artificial Intelligence (AI) Will Disrupt Authors And The Publishing Industry. An Update With Joanna Penn And Nick Thacker first appeared on The Creative Penn.
How can fiction authors use Sudowrite to assist with writing tasks they need help with? What functionality does Sudowrite have that will be useful to different types of writers? Amit Gupta gives his tips in this interview.
I use and recommend Sudowrite as part of my creative process. You can try Sudowrite through my affiliate link: www.TheCreativePenn.com/sudowrite
Amit Gupta is a science fiction writer, entrepreneur, and founder of Sudowrite, an AI-powered creative writing tool.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- What is Sudowrite and how can it help authors
- Using Story Engine to write faster
- How to train AI tools to write in your voice and style
- Dealing with criticism of using AI as a writer
- Possible legal issues when using AI tools as a collaborative approach
- Should authors discuss their AI usage?
- The changing view of AI tools as they become mainstream
You can find Amit and more about Sudowrite at Sudowrite.com
Transcript of Interview with Amit Gupta Joanna: Amit Gupta is a science fiction writer, entrepreneur, and founder of Sudowrite, an AI-powered creative writing tool. So welcome back to the show, Amit.
Amit: Thanks, Joanna. Happy to be here.
Joanna: So you were last on the show two years ago in June 2021, when we talked more about your origin story. So we're just going to get straight into the topic today. So if people don't know—
What is Sudowrite? And how can it help authors? Amit: Sure. Sudowrite is an AI writing partner for authors.
It's the first AI tool built specifically for writing fiction.
My co-founder, James and I, we're both writers ourselves, we began experimenting with writing with AI back in 2020. Initially, we built it to help us with some of the problems that we encountered ourselves, like getting unblocked or, for me, suggesting rich, evocative description, or automatically rewriting passages to improve pacing or conflict or tension, that kind of thing.
Over time, it's grown a lot as people have suggested new ideas. We have thousands of authors who are always kind of suggesting what we should be doing with it. So now, it also helps with a bunch of other things, like creating or fixing outlines, or writing dialogue, or even taking writers step by step from idea all the way to first draft with AI assistants.
So the way we think about it, musicians, photographers, filmmakers, other artists all have had powerful tools like Photoshop, or Final Cut Pro, and so on, to execute on their creative vision for decades now. And our ultimate goal here with Sudowrite, is to create something just as powerful as those tools, but for authors.
Joanna: It's so crazy, because two years ago when we last spoke, ChatGPT had not launched. So AI for writing wasn't so well known, although I've been covering on the show for many years.
How have things changed in the last six months or so, since AI for writing has pretty much gone mainstream? Amit: Well, as you know, two years in the AI world is like 20 years in the real world. There hasn't been a moment in the last couple of years of AI development that hasn't been exciting.
The release of ChatGPT was definitely a big one because it opened up so many people's eyes to what a powerful tool AI could be. It also had a big effect on our business.
Initially, I think we had some fear, because ChatGPT was out there. It's pretty good. It's not as good as Sudowrite, but maybe it'll be good enough for people who don't know the difference. So we were really kind of interested to see what was going to happen. What we found was that as authors tried ChatGPT, some of the people who are initially skeptical began to see how it could help with their workflows, too.
Many of those people went on looking for something purpose-built for fiction. So that's when they would invariably find their way to us. It literally doubled our growth rate overnight. Now there are five times as many authors using Sudowrite, today, as were six months ago.
The other thing that's changed with the release of ChatGPT, and so much of what's been going on in the last six months, is the level of energy and attention around AI and writing.
And you alluded to this, it's really gone mainstream. There are a lot of fears when ChatGPT came out, whether it would take people's jobs, would it replace people, would students use it instead of thinking for themselves? And those fears are still out there, of course, but I think we've come to see that some of them at least were a bit hyperbolic of the doom and gloom variety.
AI is absolutely changing the world, but we're also adapting to it. In the best cases, I think we're taking advantage of it to do more. So Sudowrite, in particular, and I think ChatGPT too, are both are being incorporated into writing curriculums at the high school and college level now, which I think is really exciting.
And large language models, like those that power Sudowrite and ChatGPT, are being woven into so many of the apps and services we use every day to help them work better. So I think it's, I mean, obviously only the beginning, but I'm incredibly excited for all the change that's yet to come in this year and next.
Joanna: And obviously I'm with you. And it's encouraging that I mean, again, with teachers, there was this initial, ‘oh no, all the students are going to cheat.' And then it was, ‘oh, okay, then we'll just teach in a different way.'
Also, students have to learn these things because of their future. I mean, it might not be the things we're using, but there will certainly be something.
I love that you've used the word ‘partner.' I guess the word ‘copilot' has been used in many cases. But one of the big fears is, as you mentioned, ‘AI will take my job.'
It's so funny when you think about it from our perspective, because we know about this. But it's like, my job and my life, it's not one thing. Maybe you can explain how we should be breaking down what we do into smaller tasks. And then thinking, as you said, about the workflow—
What kind of tasks can Sudowrite help with? Amit: Sure. So I think every writer has got something about writing that they struggle with.
It could be writing description, like me. Or one of the things I also struggle with is getting an idea for a world and then figuring out what's the conflict in that world, and what's the way it's going to emerge once the story begins, like what happens. And once I know where the story's going, I'm great to write it, I actually enjoy that.
So every writer's got their pieces of this puzzle that don't quite work as well as they want them to.
Well, I should say, not every writer, I know there are some who don't, and for whom it just flows out like music without stop or interruption. And I know this because my partner is one of these people, and I envy her so much. But everyone else, all us mortals, have something that we get stuck with or something that we have trouble with.
I think the trick here is figuring out which are the parts of writing that are uniquely us or uniquely our own. Where are the parts that we bring our voice to the story?
Where are the parts that are draining for us, and that are really holding us back that stop us from finishing? And how can we get AI to help us with those parts? So that's kind of where we've been focused with Sudowrite.
Initially, it was really about getting unblocked and having a collaborative partner that could bat ideas back and forth. As we've developed, we've added all these other parts of the picture because different writers have different struggles.
So writers can pick and choose which are the features that are going to help them, and which are the parts that they just want to do on their own.
Joanna: And again, it's so funny, because I feel like some people say, ‘oh, the writing is all just crap because you just click a button and output a book, and it's terrible.' And it's like, seriously, why don't you have a go with this stuff?
I mean, I feel like having been playing with all kinds of tools now, I don't think I'm any faster in my process. I mean, I may get faster at some point, but I find myself going deeper.
So for example, on Sudowrite, using the describe function, the metaphorical stuff that it comes out with, I often will kind of be like, ‘oh, that's amazing.' It doesn't suit this particular piece of writing, but I'm going to write it down because I want to think about that more.
I find the ideas that it comes up with generate more ideas. It's almost like a creativity booster. Amit: Yeah, totally. And like you said, I think some authors find that it helps them go deeper and build a richer, more grabbing a story.
And other authors are really focused on volume, they really need to get the next book out. So they're using in very different ways, I imagine, than you're using it.
Joanna: Well, another difference is I'm a discovery writer. I write out of order, I kind of write this scene and this, and then I use Scrivener, and I put things in different orders, and then I try to figure out what goes in the middle.
One of the interesting tools that Sudowrite has just put out is Story Engine.
So tell us a bit more about that function—I'm finding it fascinating—and how it can help authors.
Amit: Sure, yeah. So we're always talking to authors using Sudowrite. We do these weekly conversations over Zoom, we teach free AI writing classes every week.
One of the things that we hear from them over and over, especially from our most successful and prolific authors, was that they'd finish a book, they'd put it up for sale, and then the very next day, their readers would start asking them for the sequel. They just literally could not keep up.
Story Engine is helping these types of authors [with a ravenous audience] write dramatically faster. They're able to get to that first draft two to three times as fast. And in some cases, it's taking them days instead of months.
What we didn't expect with Story Engine is how helpful it would be to authors just starting out. So people who started novels and set them aside time and time again are telling us that Story Engine got them over the finish line. They were able to finish that book that dreamed of writing. Those types of stories really get to me.
But what is it? What is Story Engine? So we think of it as an entirely different approach to writing.
Story Engine takes you step by step from your initial idea, those scratch pads or napkin scribbles about what the idea is behind the story, the germ of the story, to fleshing out a synopsis, to bringing to life with characters, to building a plot, to beating out each chapter. And then finally, to actually writing the first draft. It's highly interactive.
At each step in this process, you write what you know, you can get the AI to fill in gaps, and you can revise what it provides before moving on. It's actually really, really fun, but very different from how I think most writers work. The way I think about is if you're the type of writer that puts together character sheets and story bibles, or Excel sheets of plot lines and character arcs, or the type that hates planning, Story Engine is like a version of that planning process that feels a whole lot less like homework.
So you do all this setup, you kind of architect it, and when you get to that final step, you've already planned out your whole story.
Now you get to write it in collaboration with the AI. It can write a few beats. You can stop it and edit them, give it some direct and tweak some settings, and then incorporates those changes as it continues to write. So we found that as you get better working with it, it can write more and more of the prose for you, in your voice and style.
I like to think of it like architecting a story. You're creating the structure, bringing the elements together, and then directing its construction. But you don't have to pound every single nail or lay every single brick, only the ones that you care about.
So that's kind of in a nutshell what Story Engine is. It's been a whirlwind since we launched it. It's been kind of exciting to see all the new writers flooding in to use it. It's been challenging just to keep up.
Joanna: Yeah, and it's so interesting. Again, as a discovery writer, this is not how I write.
But what I've really found with Story Engine is it has kind of helped my brain think about things in a different way.
And I'm someone who loves to learn. And also, I have read so many books on plotting over the years, like I've read all the books, I've done so many courses, I've been to classes, and I think I'm someone who doesn't read instructions, so I don't take instruction well. I kind of learn by doing. I found with even just playing with Story Engine, I was like, ‘oh, this is how it can work.'
I want to go back to it. I found that my brain needs to kind of figure it out. And I think that's another tip isn't it, don't expect to just come into Sudowrite or any AI tool and just, bing, it works. I say bing, Bing being another AI tool, of course.
But you know, suddenly everything's in and you don't need to do anything else. That's not it.
It's very iterative. You have to learn how to use these tools. And I guess playing and not taking it too seriously are important.
Amit: Yeah, absolutely. And I think we've really discovered that some people are willing to put in that work right at the beginning and figure it out. And some people are trying a few tools here and there. Like they'll try description and get those metaphors out and then slowly they’ll learn the rest of it.
We also encourage them to take the classes. We now have weekly classes multiple times a week, where we show you how to use the product, show you how to get it worked into your workflow so that it works the way that you want.
We also have people in our community who hold author hours multiple times a week, where they share how they use it. So I think those classes are a great way to understand what this type of tool can do for you. And of course, there's YouTube videos and documentation and stuff like that, too.
Joanna: Which is great, because I remember when we first met a few years ago, and I was like, I really think you need some videos. You put it out there, and it was so early. But it's wonderful to see the growth. I want to come back—
You said it will write in your voice and style. So how is that possible? Explain how that works. Amit: Yeah, sure. So the way it used to work was that you'd have to describe your style. And yesterday, we pushed out a new feature where you can put in up to a couple thousand words of your writing, and from that writing, it distills down your style, the elements of your style.
Then it'll show them to you, and you can take that description and edit it or just use it wholesale. But basically, that description becomes a reference for the Story Engine.
So maybe you're someone who uses very punchy dialogue or very short declarative sentences, or whatever it is, it will suss that out from what you gave it, and then it will use that as it writes prose. So it tries to mimic the voice that you've got.
Joanna: That is good. This is the other thing, I mean, you have to know what you want.
And I feel like people listening, I mean, we're authors, we're writers, we genuinely know what we want on a big scale. Like we know the story, we know the kind of vibe we want, we know the tone, and eventually we figure out our voice. So it doesn't change any of that, and I think that's really important, isn't it?
You drive the tool as the author. As the creative director, you are driving. So it's not like it's taking over.
Amit: Yeah, exactly. I think you're still very much in control, setting tone, direction, giving feedback, and revising wherever it's necessary.
Joanna: So the demo of Story Engine, particularly on Twitter, attracted a lot of negativity.
Many of us who were AI positive writers, that's how I describe it these days—I am AI positive, and this is an AI positive show. But many of us have received criticism. I know you and James have had to deal with this.
How do you deal with the haters and stay positive about the impact of AI for creativity and writers? Amit: Yeah, so you're right.
When we announced Story Engine on Twitter, some writers reacted with fear. I saw a lot of claims being made, things like that we trained our models on authors' writing without permission, or things that were completely untrue.
It was pretty hurtful. If I'm being honest. You know, James and I spent the last couple years making something to empower writers, and we wanted to help them take advantage of AI instead of being replaced by it.
And even though I could tell myself, oh, this is negativity coming from a place of fear, it was hard not to take it personally.
I think what helped for us, especially after that first day or two, was just seeing how much support we were getting from our own community. We have thousands of writers using Sudowrite now, and they've been unequivocally encouraging.
We hear so many stories of how Sudowrite and Story Engine are changing their lives for the better. One writer told us that she's not an emotional person, but she literally burst into tears the first time she used Story Engine because she'd been blocked for years and had felt hopeless, and Story Engine finally got her through it.
Another person wrote in, he's a newer writer, a man in his 80s, and he told us he started writing his first novel, and it had been on his bucket list. He had had a stroke, he'd retired, and two months ago, he found Sudowrite. Now he's 20,000 words into that novel, and he says he couldn't have done it without it. So those stories are really exciting. I think those are the kinds of stories that we'll hear more and more of, and those help us stay positive about the effect that we're having on the world.
Joanna: Yeah, and I think that's one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you again, because I feel like people assume that people who found tech companies, like yourself, are a particular type of character.
And yet, when I talk to you, I feel like here's another writer who cares about the creative process, who is, yes, more technical than me, but is excited about creativity and technology. Thus, we have a lot more in common than we don't.
I feel like this is so important, and that what I don't want to happen is what happened when I first became an author back in 2007/2008, when there was this, ‘self-publishing was evil, self-publishing was a load of crap,' a tsunami of crap, it was called. This is also being leveled at AI. It's like, well, all the stuff being generated is going to be so terrible.
How long do you think it's going to take before all of this calms down? Amit: It's a very good question. I think given the types of people you've had on the show, I think you probably have a better answer than me, because I think you've got a broad perspective on all the different sides of this type of issue.
But for me, I'd say things are moving so quickly, and the next version of Microsoft Word, the next version of Google Docs, Gmail, all these tools have the same [AI] models under the hood. They're not tuned for fiction, but they're going to be able to write prose for you. They're going to be able to write business documents and stuff. Even the next version of Windows has a sidebar that's going to be following you from app to app, like a little version of ChatGPT always available.
So I think that it's going to become ubiquitous. I think more and more people will use these tools, and they'll just become a part of how we use computers and how we create. I think it's going to happen very quickly. I think especially the Windows, and Word, and Google Docs implementations coming this year will make a huge change.
Joanna: I agree with you. I think this is moving so much faster than the self-published versus traditionally published thing, which probably took about five years.
It was 2012 when I first got to speak at a conference where I thought, okay, yeah, this is really happening. So it was five years. But as you say, once everyone is using AI within Word, within PowerPoint, Google Docs, all of this stuff, and all the designers are using Firefly, Adobe, this kind of thing, it just becomes more normalized. I totally agree.
Just coming back to when you mentioned the guy with the medical issues. I've heard also from a lot of people who have long COVID, or who have various issues like chronic fatigue where they can only work an hour a day.
But even myself, like I don't have those issues, but —
I suddenly feel like I might be able to create all the stories I want to create in my lifetime. Which before I'd kind of thrown out as I will never be able to write all the stories I want to write. Now I feel almost released around what I can do. So I feel like that's the exciting part of it.
Amit: Yeah, totally. And I think it just gives me so much joy to think about people like this man who wouldn't have been writers before. They just wouldn't have gotten over that hump. And so it's people like you who can get more of your stories out, and people like him who might never have been able to tell their story at all, who now can.
Joanna: Well, in fact, my mom who's in her mid 70s, I helped her write some romance books a few years ago, and then basically she stopped writing because it's too hard for her to be on the computer for very long. So again, she's an example of someone who like only has maybe an hour before she just can't deal with it health-wise. So I'm like, okay, once I've figured all this out, I'm going to show her and hopefully she'll be off again.
I did want to come back to—like you and I, we're so AI positive. But we do need to address a couple of issues that there are legal cases underway around the impacts of copyright, both for the inputs of the training data and for the output, and whether it can be copyrighted under the name of the person who generated it.
What are your thoughts on the input side of the copyright discussion? Because, of course, Sudowrite is built on large language models, and thus is potentially using this input.
Amit: Yeah, I'm glad we're talking about these issues.
I think it's very important that as a society, we come to an agreement on how we want to treat copyright and copyright for training for these types of models. It seems likely to me that we'll see differences in policy across nations.
For instance, I think the EU will have a different stance than the US. And I saw recently in Japan, there was movement to protect all rights to train models. But ultimately, we need a system that fairly rewards everyone involved. I think it needs to be a standard that operates at a systemic level, at the level of government, or at least at the corporate level for anyone running a sufficiently large language model.
In terms of copyright, I'm not a lawyer, but I believe the current stance is that something generated completely by AI, with no or very, very minimal human involvement, cannot be copyrighted. And that seems pretty reasonable to me.
Our tool is heavily oriented towards collaboration between author and AI, kind of a creative back and forth, so it gives the writer a lot of involvement and say over the final product.
Given that every major creative tool, like we were just talking about Microsoft Word or even tools like Photoshop or the tools you might use to edit this podcast, a lot of these things are now using generative AI.
Having an AI creative partner will quickly become the norm rather than the exception. I think we'll start to see a lot more clarity around these issues. It seems very unlikely to me that someone using Microsoft Word the way it was intended would find it impossible for themselves to copyright the piece of work they create.
Joanna: I totally agree with you. So for example, I love Midjourney.
I have great fun on Midjourney, but I don't consider those images that I create to be my copyright or copyrightable. I mean, like I just did one earlier, it was a kind of macro, incredibly detailed macro image of a blue ring octopus swimming under the ocean. And it was stunning, I mean, absolutely stunning. And I did not take it, it was generated. There was barely any human involvement in this photograph, or not photograph, this generated image.
But when I write with these tools, so when I use Sudowrite, when I use ChatGPT, it is so collaborative, and so much backwards and forwards.
My ideas, it coming back to me, me thinking of some other idea, editing the words, putting them back in, adding some more, editing by hand, putting it back in again.
Like, I just cannot see how anyone could ever question that this is not like my writing. What's so crazy are these things we're seeing every day, which are, “this tool can detect AI writing,” and authors are worried that if they publish a book on Amazon or any of the online stores, that it will be marked up somehow and there'll be penalized. So what do you think about that?
If authors are using AI tools in a collaborative approach, are there any issues there? Amit: I don't think so.
I mean, first of all, those detection tools don't work well. I think there's been a number of studies where they've tried to see how accurate they are, and they seem to have a lot of false positives and false negatives.
It's hard to say what will happen in the future with this type of tool, but if you're taking output from ChatGPT or any kind of AI tool wholesale and just slapping it onto a page, probably you're doing something that you shouldn't be doing anyways. You shouldn't expect it to be totally okay.
But if you're working with the tool and creating something new and putting yourself into it, I think it's very unlikely that it's going to be picked up by a tool like this.
As for what Amazon is going to do, I mean, Amazon's impossible to figure out. Who knows what Amazon's going to do. I think Amazon has always put the needs of profits and the needs of their customers above anything else.
So they're very good at squeezing everyone else to make their customers happy, and then to make their shareholders happy. So if people are using AI to write books that customers love, Amazon will probably be happy with that. If they're using AI to write books that customers hate, Amazon will probably be unhappy with that.
I think it ultimately comes down to if you are creating something that is worthy of being read. Are you creating something that people want? Joanna: Yes, and this is the crazy thing. I mean, the people listening to this, the people who care about this, you and I and people listening, we want to make good art. This is what we want to do.
And the people who are not worried about this stuff are the same as the plagiarizers, the pirates, the scammers who already don't care, and already have been doing all this stuff. So I mean, and of course, this is the issue.
There will be a whole load of push button crap that comes out, not necessarily from Sudowrite, obviously, but certainly using some of the other tools which aren't so themed around fiction or whatever. And as you say, those are the ones that should get flagged.
I just brought up the US Copyright Office, the United States Copyright Office, has guidance around AI. And essentially they say, a work containing AI-generated material will also contain “sufficient human authorship” to support a copyright claim. So a human can ‘select and arrange AI-generated material.' So essentially, it's that the resulting work is an original work of authorship.
I think this is a mindset shift that I have had to go through with these tools, which is, suddenly it is more about this back-and-forth relationship than just the straight, ‘I write every single word and that is my job.' It's like my job is creating the very best possible version of the thing in my mind.
Amit: Yeah, yeah. I mean, in some ways, it's always been the job. It's to have this creative vision and to execute on it. It doesn't matter if you use pen and paper, or a typewriter, or Microsoft Word or Sudowrite, it's your vision and you have to find the way to get through the struggle and to get it down on the page.
Joanna: And then I also wanted to ask you, because as I said, I'm very unstructured. And I found writing with GPT-4 to be as chaotic as my brain. Whereas I feel like Sudowrite suits things once I know what I'm doing. And I wondered, you mentioned a bit before, that it does suit those people at the beginning of the process.
How can different types of authors use Sudowrite? And do you see that some people might just suit other different tools? Amit: Yeah, well, I think it's so exciting that we get to live in a time with so many amazing tools for authors. ChatGPT, Grammarly, ProWriting Aid, or other forms of AI beyond Sudowrite.
I think every writer has parts of their writing they struggle with, and for some, it's the things we've talked about before, whether it's like description, or dialogue or pacing. And for some, it's keeping in flow or getting feedback or staying motivated. I think every writer is going to gravitate towards the tools that help them with the pieces that they struggle with.
With Sudowrite, in particular, I think that Story Engine is being used in a lot of creative ways that we didn't expect, which has been really cool to see. I think we have this incredible community now that is constantly sharing tips for how to use it and how they use it.
We originally intended as something that would get you from the start to the finish, but we didn't have a good entry point for people, for example, who already had something in progress and wanted to use a tool like this. And our community has hacked it to make it work for things like that. So now we also teach how to do that.
Similarly, we originally made it just for novels. People are using it for short stories. We originally made it for kind of this structured start to finish, going through the flow that I outlined before, step by step. And now people have come up with ways to do it completely out of order and just start wherever, with what they know, and fill out the rest as they go.
So yeah, I think there's a lot of ways to use these tools, as you've probably experienced with both Sudowrite and ChatGPT. There's a lot of flexibility there.
It really comes down to how you can be creative to find the ways to use it and to make it useful to you. I also encourage everyone to join the communities out there. Our community is great, but there are a lot of other AI writing communities out there now too. And people just have so many suggestions and tips and ways that they're using these products that we don't even know.
Beyond all that, I think even for those writers where the writing just flows out, like my partner, and they don't need an AI tool, even for them, we've found that many have told us Sudowrite can make the writing process a bit less lonely. So that's fun to see as well, just that it can be a partner. It can really feel like somebody who's there along for the ride.
Joanna: Yeah, and I must say, I was one of those people who loved having written. Like, I did struggle, especially with fiction, I find fiction, or I did find fiction, so much harder.
I've really found in the last six months since playing with all these tools, I'm really excited to get to the page because I have so much more fun. And I just delve down these ridiculous rabbit holes.
I think part of the feeling is that when I did everything myself, I was super, super careful. Like super careful not to head off down a rabbit hole because every word was precious, and every word was hard won.
And now I feel like, oh, I could just play in this direction, and then if that doesn't work, I can play in another direction. Or sometimes I'll be like, give me a load of ideas as to what could happen next. And then it's like, oh, this is cool. I guess I'll go here now, and I didn't think of that. So I feel like the fun aspects, it is so much more fun now.
Amit: That's cool. Yeah, that's awesome to hear. I think for me, too, it's a little easier for me to kill my darlings when they're not the darlings that I came up with myself. So if the AI comes up with an idea that I think is very good but it's not right for the story, I'll kill it. If I come up with an idea that I think is very good, man, it is hard to edit it out.
Joanna: Yeah, this idea of abundant creativity and abundant words, just feels like a big shift.
One thing I did want to ask you, so personally, I have used Sudowrite for over a year, 18 months, and in the end of the books where I have used it, I have a statement of AI usage.
And I've said, I've used Sudowrite, I've used Amazon ads, I've used ProWriting Aid. I put everything in as to what I use. And this has suddenly become something controversial to kind of use an AI statement of usage. Some people say it's just like Microsoft Word, so why would I have to tell anyone? So what do you think?
Should people be disclosing their AI usage? Do readers care? Amit: I don't know. It's a good question. I don't think there's any moral obligation to say what tools you use to create something. Obviously, as a creator of one of these tools, I'd love for people to say that they used it.
Do readers care? I'm sure some do, and I'm sure some don't. I think it's up to every author to choose how they want to represent themselves in the world, especially at a time where I think there's a lot of confusion about how we should or should not be using them. So I don't think I can make that judgment for others, but I think that it'll probably become a moot issue in the year to come.
Joanna: Yeah, I agree. And I feel like maybe it won't be something I do in the future, but I have an author's note in every book, so I just put a whole load of stuff in there anyway.
And I've literally had nobody comment on it. I do think the people who do care right now are things like magazine, short story competitions, some publishers, some author organizations are starting to. This kind of stuff, I just don't know. I don't think they know what they're doing. I don't think most of them have tried it.
Also, we've seen this in the visual art world. Some AI-generated images winning competitions, and then people finding out it's AI and being very upset about it. So that's I guess another reason I'm deliberately open about my usage. I mean, I wonder in a year's time, will we be having competitions for AI-positive writers? Or—
Will everything have moved on and it won't matter how you write? Amit: I think eventually everything will move on, but I don't know if it's going to be in a year or longer.
We're already seeing some AI specific competitions. I think you were mentioning those genre of fiction sci fi magazines, I think there are now some magazines that are doing competitions just for AI fiction.
But I think in a year or two, probably it just isn't as novel as it was before, so that sort of thing doesn't happen. It's just part of the toolset. It's just part of how you write or how some people write.
So it seems very novel today, and I think there's a lot of interest and excitement around it. But yeah, I just don't see it lasting when these tools become ubiquitous.
Joanna: Well, just kind of taking things further, we're writers, so we love words, we like writing, but of course, readers buy our books.
And I'll tell you one of the things I'm thinking about is, as we're seeing the text-to-video happen, like RunwayML and things like this. Even Midjourney, like I am on it like a lot every day, generating pictures of characters. And I definitely feel like some of my time is going into that kind of creativity as well.
Do you think that this type of fun creativity will take up kind of more hobby time? It's like this is a hobby as well as more serious. It is fun to create stuff with these tools.
Amit: Yeah, I mean, we're artists, right? So we love to create.
Some people really like to stay in their lane stay very narrowly focused on the particular art form that they love, and some people like to dabble on all sorts of different things and bring them together.
I think we are seeing new people trying to create visual art because the tools have made it easier. So people are using Midjourney and other things like that. And we're seeing new people try to create written art because the tools have become easier and made it easier for them to enter. I think both are really exciting.
I think that certainly you might see some people who thought of themselves as writers become something else. Maybe they start to think of themselves as storytellers in a video form. I think the reverse might happen too. Y
ou're going to see people who never saw themselves as writers dabbling in writing and then discovering that that is the thing they really love. And of course, you'll have people who want to do it all, and I'm excited for them too. I think all of it is good.
I think as long as you're creating, and you're expressing yourself, and you're creating good work, it doesn't matter what format you're putting that stuff out in. It just matters that you're creating.
Joanna: And obviously, we're not touching on marketing because Sudowrite isn't for marketing at the moment, but I am really excited about things like book trailers and sort of generating all that. Now, you did early on do images, and I created some images with the tool you did. And I think you've now put some of that back.
How do you see some of these other multimodal things working with Sudowrite in the future? Or are you going to concentrate on text? Amit: Well, we really want to concentrate on the needs of long-form writers. So I think that long-form writers do need to create images, like you said, for book covers and other marketing materials.
So it's possible that we'll add features like that in the future. But we also want to stay focused on the things that we can do better than anyone else.
So when we started working on image generation last year, we were competing with Midjourney. And we just liked what Midjourney was doing better than the stuff that we were able to do. So we decided to focus on the text.
We would love to bring in some of those tools in ways that are really customized and built purposely for writers, but I don't think we want to do anything just for the sake of doing it.
So yeah, I think if we can think of a way to bring something really unique and useful for authors, that's a multimodal interface, or a way to bring video or imagery into their process, we'll definitely look at it. And if people are asking us for it, we'll definitely get it. But we want to be careful not to do it just for the sake of novelty.
Joanna: I was also wondering about developmental editing because the benefit of developmental editing is to have someone give an overview of the whole book. So given that the whole book can be in Sudowrite—
Is the developmental side of editing something that you're looking at? Amit: Yeah, I think that's definitely something we want to do. And we've had some experiments along the way, where we have like a feedback tool that's more geared towards a chapter or short story.
And we have a tool called Shrink Ray that will take an entire novel and condense it down to different formats, like a logline and a summary and one page treatment, that kind of thing.
We definitely want to look at the developmental editor side of things. I think there's a lot we can help writers with there. There's a lot of unique challenges for narrative fiction there. I think that the models are now getting to the point where we can do some really interesting things in that space that we couldn't do just six months ago.
Joanna: Yeah, I mean, that's to do with the amount of input you can put into the model, right? I had a play with the Claude Anthropic, Claude 100k, which if people don't know, is another model. [Note: You can access Claude through Poe.com.]
And I use this short story and asked it for developmental edits and things, and it was really interesting to be able to get that from a machine. And editors listening are like, what? But then translators use AI, and we use AI for line editing, so I don't want anyone to be scared of tools. I think this is just a natural thing. It seems to me that it would be a great direction for Sudowrite to go in.
Amit: Yeah, definitely. And I think like you said, the context window of these larger models is one piece of the puzzle. The other piece, I think, is just the variety of models that are now available. So Story Engine wasn't possible for us to do last year, but it's possible this year because we can combine GPT-3, 3.5, 4 and multiple versions of Claude to bring this puzzle together.
Even some of those older models—older, you know, two years old or whatever—but they're actually better at some things than the newer models.
So some part of this multistep pipeline that we have for Story Engine requires an older model, because it performs better at one piece of this. So I'm really excited as more and more models come online, as some of the open-source models get better. I think it opens up a lot of possibilities for what we can do with them.
Joanna: Yeah, and it's funny you say that, because of course, the older models have more of what people call hallucinations. As in, they make stuff up.
And of course, that's what fiction authors do. So we kind of want the weird stuff. I do remember playing with, it might even have been GPT-2, I can't remember, but like some of the stuff was so weird.
Now everyone is like, we don't want it to make stuff up. We want it to be always exactly right. And it's like, well, what about if you want more creative stuff? So yeah, I like that you're combining all these different models. We could talk forever, but we're out of time.
Where can people find Sudowrite online? And how can they reach out to you if people have a question? Amit: Sure. Well, they can find Sudowrite at Sudowrite.com. And they can always reach out to us by emailing hi@Sudowrite.com, or find us on our community Slack. We're there every day listening to feedback from authors and making the product better.
Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Amit. That was great.
Amit: Thanks for having me. This is wonderful.
The post Using Sudowrite For Writing Fiction With Amit Gupta first appeared on The Creative Penn.
How can you stand out in a crowded market of non-fiction books? How can you build a business around your central topic?
How can you deal with failure to move on to success? Stephanie Chandler shares her experience and tips.
In the intro, HarperCollins and KKR make bids for Simon & Schuster [The Hotsheet]; more details from the Indie Author Earnings report [ALLi]; Thoughts from SPS Live; Photo of my boxed set (in a box); Amazon launch their Generative AI Innovation Centre. My books related to this interview: Career Change, How to Write Non-Fiction, Your Author Business Plan, Public Speaking for Authors, Creatives, and Other Introverts.
Today's show is sponsored by Ingram Spark, which I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 40,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries, and more.It's your content—do more with itthroughIngramSpark.com.
Stephanie Chandler is the author of multiple nonfiction books, a professional speaker, and CEO of the Nonfiction Authors Association and Writers Conference.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- Changes in publishing and marketing for nonfiction authors over time and what still works
- How to stand out and build your community
- Content marketing and long-term marketing strategies
- Deciding what nonfiction book to write—should you stay in your lane?
- Letting go, quitting, and moving on
- Dealing with failure and using it to find the right direction for your writing — and your life
- How nonfiction authors can leverage their book to generate multiple streams of income
- The Nonfiction Authors Association and how it is useful to authors
You can find Stephanie at NonfictionAuthorsAssociation.com
Transcript of Interview with Stephanie Chandler Joanna: Stephanie Chandler is the author of multiple nonfiction books, a professional speaker, and CEO of the Nonfiction Authors Association and Writers Conference. So welcome back to the show, Stephanie.
Stephanie: Joanna, it's so fun to chat with you. Thanks for having me.
Joanna: Just an introduction to the audience, back in 2007 I read your book, From Entrepreneur to Infopreneur, which helped me decide to start my own author business.
You've been teaching nonfiction authors about marketing since then, but it has been a decade since we talked last in 2013 about book marketing. So for those who don't know you—
Tell us a bit more about you and your background in books and marketing. Stephanie: Yes, thank you for referencing. I love that we have that connection through that book.
I am a Silicon Valley refugee, I left in 2003 and I opened a brick-and-mortar bookstore here in Sacramento, California, and thought I was going to write novels in the back office. It turned out I was a terrible fiction writer, I just did not have the imagination. It was devastating because when you spend your whole life wanting to write, it was just really disappointing.
I didn't know what to do next, but I kind of took a U-turn and discovered how much I loved nonfiction and the fact that it blends that ability to teach, which I've always wanted to do. And I hated running the bookstore, by the way. It's not nearly as romantic as it sounds.
So I wrote my first book, it was a business startup guide. I had an agent call and tell me, I like what you're doing but nobody knows who you are, you need to build an audience. And I started a website called Business Info Guide, and this is back before blogging was a thing. So I was creating new articles, which is very tedious back then, and every time I created new articles, I was attracting more website traffic and I was building this email list.
So a year after the self-published business startup guide came out, I had the idea for From Entrepreneur to Infopreneur. I sent proposals to three publishers, and Wiley gave me a book deal. So I was beyond thrilled. I was walking the talk, I was selling digital products off the website, and building an email list, and creating workbooks and eBooks. I mean, before eBooks were a thing, right? Ebooks back then were PDFs.
It just kind of evolved from there. I ended up signing with an agent, I sold a couple more books, and then —
I got really turned off by traditional publishing and the lack of control. I had titles change, I had book covers I didn't like. One publisher called and said, we want you to remove a chapter, we don't care which one, we're trying to cut costs. And I thought, oh my gosh, I'm never letting that happen again.
Meanwhile, I'm speaking at writers' conferences, and I am wondering why isn't anybody talking to those of us who write nonfiction. I was at a conference with 350 people, and from what I could tell I was the only business book writer there.
So in 2008, I started my own publishing business. I took back control of my publishing rights, and started working with nonfiction authors exclusively.
Then in 2010, I launched the Nonfiction Writers Conference.
It was a three-day event, entirely online. And back then we were doing this by teleseminar. Remember that, Joanna?
Joanna: Yeah, yeah.
Stephanie: Right. And three days on teleseminar, which was unheard of, and I didn't know if people would come, but they did. And each year after, we'd run the event, and people would say, well, how do we keep in touch when this is over? I'm so grateful for that because it led to the launch of the Nonfiction Authors Association in 2013, and I built a community.
We launched in May of 2013, and in October my husband died unexpectedly. And it was just absolutely devastating. I kind of checked out for a year, and I had one assistant helping me run things. And despite being almost completely disengaged for a year, the community grew. I thought, you know what, we're onto something. There is a need for this community.
So when I returned a year later, I really got involved in the community, and we've just continued to grow from there. The conference has grown from there. And it's been a wonderful ride ever since. This was the 10 year anniversary of the Nonfiction Authors Association this year, and it was our 13th Nonfiction Writers Conference. So it's been an amazing ride.
Joanna: I'm so sorry about your husband, by the way.
Stephanie: Thank you.
Joanna: I mean, it's just awful.
But coming back to business things, it's amazing how you—well, and this is what's so great, like I said, you and I've been connected for all this time, and you've just taken one step at a time into new opportunities. I've done the same.
We've both ended up with quite different businesses, but it has been successful for both of us. But there's been a lot of change. So I guess you mentioned a bit about trad pub and going indie, but—
What have been the biggest changes you've seen for nonfiction authors in terms of publishing and book marketing since you started out? Stephanie: Oh, my gosh, so much has changed.
I mean, I think back to remember when we thought eBooks were going to overtake print books, and there was all this frenzy around that. And now we've got AI coming out. Just this morning, there was this news story about Paul McCartney and The Beatles may be able to release new music using John Lennon's voice because of AI. So that's been really exciting. We didn't have social media, or podcasts, or any of these things, Joanna, back when you and I were starting.
Then there's tremendous competition. There are more books released every year now than ever before.
I mean, some people are saying there are a million titles being released a year. And Amazon has, quite frankly, made brick-and-mortar less relevant, like it or not. So I honestly think —
Book marketing is easier because we have more tools. If you have a really focused plan, if you carve out a niche for yourself and focus on building community, there's actually a lot of advantages to the change that's happened.
Joanna: That's my attitude, too.
You have to make the most of whatever situation, but yeah, we had nothing. It's so funny, people are like, oh it was so easy for you back then when you published in 2007. I'm like, hell no, it wasn't. That's so crazy.
But just a couple of things to come back on. So first of all, traditional publishing. You advise a lot of nonfiction authors.
For authors who want to go the traditional publishing route, when is it a good idea for them? And what should they weigh up, whether to go traditional or to go indie?
Stephanie: Yeah, so my feeling on traditional publishing, I've been fairly soured over that experience, just because my personal experience wasn't great. I also understand that it is a goal for a lot of people. It was certainly a goal for me to be traditionally published. I found that to be very rewarding, but today it's different.
So my advice is, if you have a book that has broad appeal and belongs on brick and mortar bookstore shelves, and it's a real goal for you, then it may be worth considering.
It is harder than ever to get a book deal.
You really have to come to the table with a platform, especially in nonfiction. So if it's your goal, I think that it's worth making the effort.
Go through the exercise of writing a book proposal, whether you plan to traditionally publish or not, it's such a great exercise to help you get focused on your book, and then give it a timeframe. So give yourself six months, and if nothing happens, if you're not able to get an agent or deal by then, then maybe you return to self-publishing.
Honestly, Joanna —
I think self-publishing makes a lot more sense for 90% of the nonfiction authors that I speak to. It's faster to market. You're going to do all the heavy lifting anyway, it's a myth that these publishers are doing all the marketing for you.
So you can make more money per copy, you maintain all the control over your work, and that was really important to me. So I personally think it's a much better path for 90% of authors.
Joanna: That's interesting. And then the other thing you mentioned was the amount of competition. You mentioned a million books, but I think with the rise of AI, also translation and all kinds of other things, there are a lot of books. There's more books than anyone can read every day being published.
I've been thinking about this around the value of curation. So in the old days, I got your book back in 2007 because a publisher, Wiley, put it on the shelf in Australia, where I was living at the time, and that's where I found it.
But now we're in this very busy world, so the importance of curation. I mean, like you mentioned this podcast, for example, I'm a curator with this podcast. I pick you to come on the show because I value you and your expertise.
How can authors either start curating and guiding things themselves, or contact people who are curators to try and stand out? Stephanie: I love this question. So really, Joanna, what you've done with your podcast is build a community.
And I think this is a key, especially in the nonfiction space. I am still a huge believer in content marketing. I feel like every author should have at least one piece of foundational content, whether that's a podcast, a blog, or a video channel on YouTube.
I think that it's really important to be producing content and building out your website so that you're attracting your ideal target audience and building a community around that. Without that you're kind of just flailing in the wind. Then certainly you can also leverage sites and podcasts and things that also reach your target audience.
So for example, I talked to nonfiction authors about what trade associations do your target readers belong to. Can you go and speak at those associations? Can you contribute to their blogs? Can you contribute to their magazine or newsletter?
So you want to find out where your target audience is spending time to reach them, and then bring them back into your foundational content and really build that sense of community.
Joanna: Yes, I think this is going to become more and more important. Although, you mentioned AI before and I kind of hope that AI will help us surface our books, or will surface our books in a much more nuanced way.
Like I've been using ChatGPT to surface quite nuanced things. Like I asked it, “What kind of books are on the shelf of this character who is a Vatican Exorcist? What kind of books would be on his shelf? Give me a list of 20.” And they were all nonfiction, but they gave me a ton of other books to read that I wouldn't have found otherwise, which I think was really interesting.
I feel like people despair over this volume of things out there. but I also feel that things will change as we get better tools.
We never despair, do we? There's always something new. Stephanie: No, and I'm so with you on that. I think there's a lot of fear around AI. There's still a lot of fear around social media for a lot of writers. And there's also trends, trends come and go. You know, in the US, we may be getting rid of TikTok any day now. [NY Times] So I think that it's exciting.
I also feel the same way about AI, I view it as a potential tool that really helps us. How exciting that The Beatles could potentially release new music as a result.
I am not worried about copyright infringement. I think that there are so many rules and laws in place that will protect us from that, if that becomes an issue. So I think we should look for opportunities within these new technologies that are coming on board.
Joanna: For sure. So you mentioned TikTok there. And as you said, there are some states in the US banning it and various government things, but TikTok wasn't even a thing when we spoke like a decade ago. Personally, I don't use it.
I'm still a Twitter girl from way back. But I guess the point is that these marketing tactics change all the time, but some of these strategies do last for the long term. So, I guess you've mentioned content marketing, but—
What are some other long-term marketing strategies that you advocate? Stephanie: I will tell you, I am such an advocate of build your email list.
You mentioned Twitter, we had a Twitter account that evaporated overnight a couple of years back. We lost 70,000 followers overnight for no reason. It's not like we were violating policies or anything like that. I spent months trying to get a hold of someone at Twitter to get it back. It just evaporated. So social media, to me, is rented real estate.
It has absolute value for those who use it well, but I would much rather focus on building my email list. That is part of that community-building process.
That is an asset that you own. Nobody can take away your email list. Even though we borrow a tool to deliver emails, you own that database. That's also where you have a really engaged audience.
So to me, email marketing will always be one of my favorite strategies, and doing things like contributing to those sites that reach your target audience.
Also, Joanna, I've become a big fan of Amazon ads. I realize that they're challenging for a lot of people, but we're seeing some really cool success stories in the nonfiction space. Author Mark Paul, he's a memoir writer, he has sold 45,000 copies of his memoir using nothing but Amazon ads. He has no platform whatsoever. So I think there are some strategies that have some great long-term value if we learn to use them well.
Joanna: It's funny you mentioned Amazon ads there and memoir, because Amazon ads are essentially keywords and categories. And I know some other memoir writers who do very well with Amazon ads because so few memoir writers are competing for those keywords. Most memoir writers are not interested in the technological platform side of things. So that's really interesting.
But coming back to the email list there and the asset that you build, I also wanted to mention backing things up. You mentioned losing your Twitter there. But I mean, we can all back our email list up on the sites that we use. As you mentioned, I mean, since we first connected I think I'm on my fourth email provider.
Stephanie: Yeah, I mean, for sure, protecting your data. I also think of, when you talk about backups, I just had a catastrophic computer issue with data transfer, and the people that did it completely destroyed my data. So backups just make me want to say please go get Carbonite and/or Dropbox or both, because I now have three times of redundancy on my data.
Thankfully, I was backed up and I was able to get that data recovered. But yeah, I think our tools are so important. And like you said, if your tool is no longer working for you, there are other options out there. So having those tools make our jobs easier.
Joanna: So let's just take a step back to the creative side, because one of the things that I have as a nonfiction writer and I know many people do, is I have so many ideas, or there are so many things I could write about. Should I stick it all in one magnum opus?
What are the top challenges for nonfiction authors when it comes to deciding which book to write? Stephanie: I hear this all the time. And I think as creative people, I relate to this as well. I mean, there are so many things I would love to write about, but is it in my lane? So this is the conversation I have with authors, is get your lane figured out first.
Really focus on one niche, if you can, because that will make this marketing job a whole lot easier.
And Joanna, you straddle different markets, and so it's challenging.
Joanna: Don't do it!
Stephanie: Don't do it. Right, exactly. And I've heard this from so many authors who've really established themselves in one niche, and then they release something totally different, and they're disappointed that it falls flat. You literally have to build two different platforms for two different topics.
So my advice is —
Think about what you're most passionate about and ask yourself, is this something I still want to be writing and talking about in five or 10 years? Because if it's just a passing fancy, and it's because you happen to know it that you want to write about it, that may not be a great focused strategy if you really want to build a career as an author. If you're a hobbyist and you're just having fun, go do it.
But if you really want to build a career around your authorship, then I think it's important to choose a niche.
Joanna: And I mean, I joke ‘don't do it,' but I feel like this is a personality type. I am someone who cannot just do one thing.
I mean, even like this podcast, I tried to give it up so many times and come back to it. I mean, this might even be episode 700 by the time it goes out, which is kind of crazy. But what's so good is I have just covered different topics over the years. I mean, if people are like, well, I don't want to focus on one thing, or I don't want to stay in my lane, or I want to have multiple lanes—How can they deal with that?
Because you know, creativity is what it is.
Stephanie: Yes. well, if that's what you want to do, you really have to build marketing plans for both lanes.
So you need, maybe it's one focus per site for one audience, and then a separate site. I mean, if you're writing about dog training, and you're also writing about parenting, there's very little crossover there.
I went through this myself, Joanna, because remember, I started writing business books. I had a business website, I had corporate sponsors, I was speaking on growing your business, and then I was really drawn to working with authors. There was some crossover there, but at one point, I just had to make the decision —
Did I want to keep managing two different entirely different paths? Or did I want to let one go? And I chose to let the business one go. It was a big decision. I made a lot of money in that space, but this is where my passion was.
So if you're very creative, and I'm with you, I need to constantly be doing different things, I get bored very easily. But you want to just make sure you have a plan to reach those audiences. Again, if you want to build an author career.
Joanna: So you mentioned there that you let go of that other side. I mean, I do have these two main brands, Joanna Penn Self-Help for Authors and JFPenn, which is my fiction. But even with my fiction, I do loads of different genres, and I have a memoir as well, Pilgrimage, that we put out earlier this year. So I kind of do all these things.
But I mean, this letting it go, I'm really interested in how you came to that decision.
So can you talk more about how you made that decision, how difficult it was, and what was the process?
Stephanie: Oh, my goodness. Yeah. So letting go of that was really tricky. Honestly, I've let go of a lot of things over the years. I mean, I let go of a six figure Silicon Valley career to open a bookstore, and then I sold that bookstore. It was just exhausting to run it.
Letting go has actually been part of my career path for many years. I realized that I don't operate well when I'm overwhelmed and stressed out. So there was that critical point where I was running the business site, and I was starting to run an author site and it was just not fun.
So I think that we're supposed to have a little bit of fun as we're building our businesses. Maybe that's not the only goal, but it certainly is one of my goals that I want to enjoy getting up and coming to work every day. Otherwise, I might as well just go back to corporate America and get another soul-sucking job.
So letting go was a decision I wrestled with for a very long time. Ultimately, it just made more sense, because I had to ask myself those questions.
Am I still passionate about talking about how to build your small business? No, I had lost my passion.
Am I passionate about working with nonfiction authors? Absolutely.
I really thought about life purpose, and I really find purpose in helping nonfiction authors because I feel like I'm helping them live their purpose.
So I just asked myself a lot of really important questions, and then took the leap and invited people to come along with me. Some did, and some didn't. And I've never regretted those choices to let go of things, ever.
Joanna: I mean, I left my corporate job, as well, to become an author. But it's difficult, isn't it? I know some people listening, they might be wanting to do that, too.
How do we have the confidence that something is going to rise from the ashes of letting something go? Stephanie: I love that. So I think that it's really important for me, planning has been key.
Before I quit my Silicon Valley job, I built a massive business plan for that bookstore. I had it evaluated by consultants, and I built a marketing plan, and I did a lot of planning around it.
Now, of course, nothing ever goes according to plan which you learn that kind of hard way. But I had contingencies, I had savings. Same thing when I gave up the business site. I had savings, I had contingencies, and I had a plan. I think that a plan removes a lot of the fear, and if you have that kind of clear path.
I'm somebody who likes to see things in writing. I love a checklist. I love just seeing projections and numbers. What can be done here? What's the potential? If you build a plan, you can absolutely do what Joanna and I have done, and leave your job. But you have to get really clear about what that path is going to be.
I have a great success story I can share with you if you'd like to hear. So Dana Manciagli was a Microsoft executive, a VP, and she called me up maybe five years ago, and she said, I'm going to quit my job and become a job search coach. And I was like, are you sure? Like, is that really what you want to do? should we narrow that down? Do you want to be a job search coach for executives? Nope, this is my path. This is what I want to do.
She wrote her book, she got herself a column writing for The Business Journals, which was a national publication at the time, and then she built training courses, Joanna.
She built a how-to-get-your-job course, a self-study digital course that she sold for $1,000 a seat to unemployed people. She got 50 people to buy the course out of the gate. So that was her first launch.
Then she went back and said, I love supporting veterans. She created a course for veterans coming out of service into civilian life. Then she went back to companies and said, why don't you sponsor seats in my course for veterans coming out of service? I'll sell it to you at a discounted rate of $600 a seat. She's doing multiple six figure deals, selling seats in her digital course to companies to donate to veterans.
Joanna: And actually, that really brings up a good point, which is you mentioned that this lady wrote a book, but that was not the thing, actually, that turned into her business or her service.
So maybe you could talk about how the nonfiction author ecosystem and business works?
Nonfiction authors don't just make money with book sales or change lives with book sales. What are the other ways? Stephanie: Yeah, it's so rare that somebody actually makes a living from their book sales.
What I love about nonfiction is our books make a difference in the world. So you're teaching something, you're inspiring people with your personal story, whatever it is, and that book becomes a tool. So that book gave her credibility in the job coaching space. So it's a credibility builder. It truly is a business card if you want to be a speaker.
You can build a business fully around your book. That could be consulting or coaching, those online courses which I feel are hotter than ever.
You can get paid as a speaker. You can create companion products, toolkits, workbooks. I love workbooks, as a reader, as a writer, I'm a huge fan.
I created a workbook for the Book Marketing Mastercourse that I teach. I've been teaching that for several years now, and my students kept saying, this book stands alone. So it is going to be another product that will be released as a book later this year. That is yet another marketing tool for me, another way to reach new readers, people to attract to the association and my courses.
So you create these revenue streams, almost like veins that are spidering out from your book, and it's by following the things that you enjoy doing. I love teaching. I love writing. So I'm able to build this very sustainable, fun business by doing the things that I love to do.
Joanna: It is interesting. And I mean, just to say, like this podcast, I mean, I've sold a lot of nonfiction books, but this podcast goes out to more people than buy each of my books.
Sometimes we think, ‘oh, this book is the thing that will change people's lives,' but sometimes it's the other things we do. Whether it's, like you said, speaking at a conference, or a podcast interview, sometimes it's just one line that might change someone's life. So I feel like that's the other angle, is that we have to consider that our message goes far beyond the book, and not to just be wedded to the book being the only thing.
Stephanie: Well said, and completely agree.
The book might be the heart of your strategy, but you need to build your strategy around that with that foundational content. Whether it's your podcasts, or your blog, or your videos, which by the way, all get posted to your site as blog posts, which drive traffic to your website. So yeah, it's building around that, doing the things you love.
When authors come to me and say, oh, I'm gonna launch a course because this is the hot thing to do. And then I'll say, well, are you interested in actually teaching? Does that appeal to you? Well, not really. Well, then that's not probably your best choice.
Let's choose a revenue stream that you will actually be excited to do because that passion also comes through to your audience, as well.
Joanna: Let's just come back to what we talked about earlier about standing out and the competition in the market.
One of the other issues with nonfiction is, I mean, you mentioned the lady with the career coach, that like career coaching or helping people find a career, this is not original, it's not an original thing to do. And then authors are like, oh, I've got this idea, but there are so many other books on this topic.
How can people write a book on a topic that's been covered before, but make it something only they can write? Stephanie: Oh, yes, great question. So there's tons of competition. And then there's a lot of authors, especially new authors, struggle with that imposter syndrome. But there's other people doing it, and they've been doing it longer than I have. My perspective is, you know more about your subject than your target audience knows. So you have your unique perspective on your topic.
I think it's essential to study your market, see what's already out there, and how are you going to do things differently. I could have created another community for general writers, right, and had a ton of competition.
But I narrowed that focus because that is where my passion lies, and there was a need in the market for it. Therefore, my books are able to stand out a little bit. So look at what's already there and how you can contribute something unique and different to that conversation.
I say niche, niche, niche all the time. I really believe if you narrow that focus, you can actually reach more people.
Joanna: And it's often related to who we are, and our personal story and our voice.
I mean, you and I, we don't know each other very well. but we have similar interests, and we think similarly in many ways. But even just the fact that I am British, and you are American, this actually creates quite a big difference between us, in terms of our experience in our life.
So even if we write a book on exactly the same thing, we will always bring a different angle. I think people forget this, that they are special just because of who they are.
Stephanie: They are. And Joanna, another real-life example comes to mind. I have a friend Karl Polytec, he decided to become a consultant for people who own IT businesses. This is a tiny niche. People who own IT companies, computer technologists. Now, he could have become a general business consultant and helped people grow their businesses, but he decided to focus on IT companies. And he is basically a rockstar in this niche.
He puts himself on tour, he speaks all across the US and the UK, has got a really big following in Australia. He's done this because he has narrowed his focus, and he has a few others in his field that do the same thing, but guess what, they're all friendly, just like you and I are.
I don't view anybody as a competitor, because like you said, we all have something unique to bring to the table. I'd so much rather work together than work against anybody.
Let's honor the fact that people are all attracted to different things, that we all have different perspectives, and there's always room for a new voice in a genre that even could be very crowded. Joanna: I wanted to come back to the mindset stuff and the deeper side of things, because you mentioned impostor syndrome earlier.
Another thing stopping people, well, for me, it's always been fear of judgment. So what will people think of me? But the other thing that people have is the fear of failure.
I want to come back to your bookstore experience because you left this corporate job, you bought a bookstore, and basically, you failed. You failed at that career.
And I say this as someone who also left my corporate job, originally to start a scuba diving business. I don't know if you know that about me. I started a scuba diving business, and then I tried property investments.
So I have also failed at other careers before I found this one. So it's not just like, ‘oh, leave corporate job, make a success as an author.' That's not how it's been for either of us.
How do you deal with failure? Stephanie: I think failure is part of being human, and it's also part of this process. I mean, I think about book reviews, right. You're never going to get 100% perfect, great book reviews. Nobody's ever going to love everything you put out in the world. I remember early on arguing with a book reviewer on Amazon.
Joanna: Never do that!
Stephanie: Yeah, I'd never do that now. But way back then at the beginning, this guy had written a rave review for one of my books. Then the next book came out and he panned it, and I was so devastated and hurt by that. So I've really had to evolve from that fear of failure and fear of letting people down.
You know, one of my Silicon Valley careers was as a technical instructor, I used to teach software classes and develop courses, which by the way, it was a skill that's really come in handy today.
But one of our rules, when we taught a course, was we would drop the bottom 10% of reviews. And if you saw trends in the 90%, the top 90% of people saying there's an issue with your course, or delivery or whatever, then you would address it.
You're always going to have, you know, 10% is a high number, so maybe 5% of your audience isn't going to agree with you. At some point, you have to accept that.
Then you have to just be aware, failure is going to happen. I've launched courses over the years that fell flat. I mean, there's been countless failures, but there's also been countless wins.
Focus on the wins, and don't let the failures bring you down. Read Brené Brown, like she's my favorite author because she really helps you overcome a lot of those fears.
Joanna: It's interesting. I mean, my first book was called How to Enjoy Your Job or Find a New One. [Later rewritten as Career Change]
It was a classic leaving corporate book, and that failed miserably. That was back in the day, as you said, before eBooks.
I printed 2000 books, and I basically sold about 100 of them and put the rest in the landfill. I mean, it was a super failure in so many ways. But the lessons I learned helped me decide to embark on this career. So we learn the lessons.
I always wonder if when we fail at something, so for example, my scuba diving business also failed, but what I learned from that was I don't want to run a scuba diving business.
What I learned with my first failure of a book was that I want to write books and I will figure this out.
Can failure and then the decision to carry on almost be a signpost that this is the right direction? Stephanie: Yes, yes, it can.
And, you know, I think about that bookstore and how much we struggled to build it that first year, but what it led me to do was learn how to do online marketing.
I learned about search engine optimization and how to advertise online, and that helped make the store profitable. At the same time, that became a skill that I would use still to this day. Learning that I was not meant to be locked in a single box of a space for eight hours a day was a huge lesson, that I didn't like talking to the general public every day, and being robbed, and having just all kinds of crazy things happen in a retail business.
So I often like to say my path found me. And I think part of that is listening to the failures and listening to the wins.
I never set out to be a speaker. I really didn't want to be a speaker. I was exhausted from doing all of that in my corporate career. Then the books come out and you get asked to speak, and you realize, oh, gosh, okay, I'm gonna have to learn to be a good speaker.
So listen to those lessons and take them in stride. And things like overspending when I ran the bookstore. I overspent on I can't even tell you how many print ads and things like that.
Then I learned about internet marketing and how I can optimize traffic to the website. It was a game changer.
So I think you're 100% right. Those failures help lead you to the next step. And letting go of things help lead you to the next step, so that you can focus on what you're feeling more called to do.
Joanna: It's so funny, too, because when I printed all those books back in 2007/2008, and I did all the things were told to do, I did the press releases, I got on national TV in Australia, I got in the national newspapers, and I did sell like 100 copies.
And that's when I also went, screw this, I'm gonna learn digital marketing. Later that year, I set up this website, and then started a podcast, got on Twitter. And again, I was like—Why am I spending all this effort for so little return?
I think there's a better way of doing it. So I think you're totally right. But it's so funny, our journeys have been quite parallel.
Stephanie: Yeah, because we've had the same failures.
Joanna: Yeah, we really have. And it's so funny, because that brick and mortar thing, because obviously, I mean, the scuba diving business, same as you. I mean, I was renting a boat, I was paying insurance, we were buying fuel, and, I mean, talk about the costs of filling up a boat with fuel before going out for scuba diving — there was the weather. And that was another thing, I was like, I am not running a physical business again. Like you, I was like I am not going to run a business that's dependent on the elements.
Stephanie: Absolutely.
The freedom that we create with online businesses is just phenomenal. And the brick and mortar thing, Joanna, I always flashback to a book signing that I did with the Chicken Soup for the Entrepreneur’s Soul.
This was years ago, right, but they had put us ten steps inside the local Barnes and Noble, we had local media coverage that morning, it was a Saturday morning, it was amazing. And we thought, oh my gosh. There were, I think, three or four of us who had contributed to the book, so it was a huge launch.
And in three hours, we sold eight copies. I swore from that day, I will never do another bookstore signing again. So, you know, another failure. A lesson learned, right? That's not the way to sell books. Go speak to an audience and sell 50 copies at the end of your presentation. That's a way to sell books.
Joanna: Yes, well, I still haven't done a book signing or any kind of signing, actually, outside of my own events. So I totally agree with you. And I heard that from people, so I didn't even bother trying it.
We're coming to the end, and given that we've been doing this so long, and we mentioned AI earlier, but it feels like we're at the beginning of perhaps the next 15 years.
It's been 15 years since I read your book, From Entrepreneur to Infopreneur. And I feel like this may be the beginning of the next 15 years of change.
Like it feels to me like 2007/2008, the early days of eBooks and digital publishing and social media and all these things, and now another change. Many authors are concerned for the disruption and all kinds of stuff.
How can authors have the right attitude to surf the wave of change, rather than drown in it? Stephanie: Ah, you know, I think fear. Fear just ruins so much fun for all of us.
So rather than fearing AI and all the trends that are coming, I really believe that we should look for the benefits and the opportunities within these changes and ride that wave, rather than getting drowned by it.
I'm seeing a lot of fear in our author community around what's happening in AI and these things. I just would rather look at it from, how can I leverage this? Like you said, finding a list of books from it. There are so many great ways that we have even yet to learn how to use this technology.
We've also seen so many trends come and go. Social media sites, hello, Myspace. You know, what happened there? So I would much rather just try to stay on top of what's happening and be open to how it is going to benefit us moving forward.
Ebooks, like I mentioned, we were so afraid eBooks were going to take over the market. And now they're a must have, and you should absolutely publish an eBook if you're publishing a print book. And we learned from that, we learned that not everybody wants to read eBooks. Now audiobooks are growing, that audience is expected to continue to grow massively over the next 10 years.
Look for the opportunities and take advantage of them so that you don't get left behind. Joanna: Yeah, I think so. And as we've done, you pivot when you need to pivot.
If you fail, you try something new. Yeah, I mean, things will disappear, but you will find the way forward. I mean, I think that's probably a lesson from both of us, isn't it?
Things happened that we didn't want, that we couldn't control, and yet, we're still here.
Stephanie: That's right. Blessings in disguise. Lessons in all those failures. Just keep moving forward.
Joanna: What is the Nonfiction Authors Association, and why might it be useful for authors? Stephanie: Well, thank you for asking. I'm really proud of this community.
We are just focused on educating authors. We have a massive database of templates, checklists, reports, recordings. We even have legal agreements. We send out media leads every week.
Our members are getting all kinds of interviews as a result of that, podcasts and blogs. We have a private Facebook group. We recently launched nonfictionbookclub.com, which is so much fun. So we're able to now promote our members over on that site as well. And then of course, we've got courses.
Joanna, I don't know if you're aware of this, we created basically a professional certification program for book marketing, book publishing, and book publicity. As you're well aware, there really are no industry standards for these things.
We have professionals in our community, virtual assistants, book coaches, things like that, who wanted to have specific steps to build a marketing plan, specific steps for helping an author publish. So we created professional certification.
Then of course, we have our annual conference completely online, done by Zoom now, we're no longer on teleseminar format. We had Cheryl Strayed open for us this year. We've had Anna Quinlan, Don Miguel Ruiz, Seth Godin, Martha Beck. So we work really hard to serve the needs of our community. I'm just really proud of it. It's a lot of fun to build this community.
Joanna: Just two questions on that. So what genres? Because nonfiction is so big. I mean, it can go from, like you said, the business book to the memoir. And also, is it global? Or is it just US?
Stephanie: For sure, we're global. And, I mean, on average we're seeing eight or nine countries coming to our conference because it's online, and they can do that without travel expenses.
Then as far as nonfiction genres, we cover the gamut. I would say, from our surveys, we've learned that a lot of people are writing health and wellness, business books, certainly memoir, narrative nonfiction. We have historians, we have a lot of spiritual type books. So really, the gamut is represented here. And we try to serve everybody within their subgenres of nonfiction.
Joanna: Fantastic. And then what about you personally?
Where can people find you and everything you do online? Stephanie: Yes, thank you. So really, you can find me within our social media. Although we have a social media manager, I'm the one that responds to comments. I always want to stay connected to our community.
You can find me through nonfictionauthorsassociation.com. I'm actively engaged there. We have a very active Facebook page where you can connect with us there as well. It's just so fun to talk about all of this, Joanna. Thank you so much.
Joanna: Oh, well, thanks so much for your time, Stephanie. That was great.
The post The Craft And Business Of Writing Non-Fiction Books With Stephanie Chandler first appeared on The Creative Penn.
How can Bookfunnel help authors reach more readers, sell more books, and sell direct? Damon Courtney outlines features of Bookfunnel that you might not know about.
In the intro, Hello Books and Written Word Media have joined forces for promo stacking; Call to Action (CTA) tips [ALLi]; my free Author Blueprint; Bundle for writers [Storybundle].
Plus, Paul McCartney is using AI to create a new and final Beatles song [The Guardian]; Boosting creativity, AI, and book cover design [Damonza]; Storytel has invested in ElevenLabs and the possibility of voice switching [Publishing Perspectives]; The Ethical Writers Guide to Harnessing the Power of AI: Using AI with Integrity – HJ Philips; my live AI webinars.
Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with Scrivener amongst other software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 25% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna
Damon Courtney is a fantasy author, entrepreneur, and founder of BookFunnel.com, which I consider one of my must-use tools as part of my author business.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show notes
- Damon's journey to creating BookFunnel
- The struggles of sharing Reader Magnets and ‘side-loading' before BookFunnel
- How to use BookFunnel for list building
- More BookFunnel features — Gift a Book, ARC delivery and Print Codes
- Author Swaps vs Group Promotions
- Tips for using BookFunnel for direct sales
- The benefits of going wide with audiobooks
You can find Damon at BookFunnel.com
Transcript of Interview with Damon Courtney Joanna:: Damon Courtney is a fantasy author, entrepreneur, and founder of BookFunnel.com, which I consider one of my must-use tools as part of my author business. So welcome back to the show, Damon.
Damon: It's so good to be back. I can't believe it's been as long as it has. When was last time we did this thing?
Joanna: It's like almost a decade or something ridiculous.
Damon: It is a decade in indie publishing, right? It's probably two decades in indie publishing since we last talked like this. Of course, we see each other frequently. We just saw each other back in February in Colorado, but me being on the show and chatting like this in an official capacity.
Joanna: Yes. And I mean, like you said, you are at a lot of author conferences. I wanted to make sure people know a bit about your origin story as well, because unlike a lot of the service companies that work for and with authors, you're an author yourself. That's how I originally met you all those years ago.
Tell people a bit more about you and your background in writing and tech, and why you're also a book geek as well as a tech geek. Damon: Well, we'll go all the way back to the tech thing first because that really came first, which was I actually started programming and writing computer code when I was seven years old.
My dad brought home this really old ancient computer, especially ancient by today's standards. It was called a TRS-80, but we call them a Trash-80 in the tech world. It plugged into your television, and it had no hard drive and had no disk drive, it had no nothing. You just wrote code into it. It came with this giant floppy book that you could learn to code with in a language called BASIC.
Everybody else kind of toyed with it, even my dad, and then just kind of left it sitting there on the living room floor. I was the only one that was like, what is this thing? So I've been doing tech for my really my entire life.
I became a reader, probably around the age of 12. I had a fantastic librarian when I was in sixth grade, who introduced me to The Hobbit, and The Black Cauldron, and all these amazing fantasy books, which were always my thing. While the other boys my age were playing Cowboys and Indians, I was playing Knights and Dragons. But I didn't have any books to read, I couldn't find them.
I remember going to the card catalog—that was a thing, for you younger kids—there was a card catalog in the library. I remember literally going to the card catalog and opening up ‘D' and looking for the word dragon and then going to ‘W' and looking up wizard, because that was all I knew how to do to find the things that I wanted to read.
So the tech thing really came first, and then the reading, and then becoming a lifelong reader.
I mean, just absolutely. I still read every single night. That's my wind down when I get into bed. I put the kids to bed, I get in bed, and I sit and I read every single night. Now eBooks, I don't read paper anymore, everything I do is on eBooks. But that started all of that.
The writing thing really came about because of indie publishing. So I'm going to admit some of my geekery, I play Dungeons and Dragons, and I have my entire life. I have been what we call the Forever Dungeon Master. So I've been the dungeon master of my group, the same group, for about 30-plus years now.
I mean, being a dungeon master is just writing stories, right? You're writing stories that you play around a table with a bunch of other people, but that's really what it is. You're writing stories, you're making up stories, for other people to experience.
So there was always this sort of secret dream that maybe one day I could be a writer. I remember looking it up and trying to read about it and learning about the process by which a book was published. You basically query it and you send it out into the world and they reject you a billion times. Then maybe if you're lucky, and you spend 10 years toiling away at it, you might get someone to finally anoint you and approve that your book was good enough. I thought, well, I have absolutely no interest in doing that.
Part of my tech background is that the beauty of being a computer programmer is if you want to make something, it doesn't require any other person in the world.
It's you and a computer, and you can just sit down and start hacking out code, and you can make these amazing things. That's where BookFunnel started, and we'll get to that in a second. But that's been my whole life.
If I wanted to do something in code, I could just sit down and start making it. So when indie publishing really blew up, which was around 2010, that's when I got my first Kindle, I lucked out. I was looking for a book to read, I found a fantasy book that was on Amazon for $2.99, and I'd never seen a book that cheap, right? None of us had. Books were $20-$25 if you wanted to buy a book, maybe $8 If you wanted a mass-market paperback. I was like, three bucks, sweet.
So I picked that up and I read it, and I say I lucked out because it turned out to be, now, one of my favorite authors who I'm a super fan of. It was just a fantastic book, and I got to the end of it and the author's note, and started reading the author's note and went, wait, what? You can just publish your own books with this? That's not a thing. Then you start Googling it and looking it up, and holy crap, it really is a thing. You can just like put books up on Amazon and publish them.
That started the wheels turning. Like, well, I mean, you've always wanted to write a book, why not you? You can write a book. Why don't you give it a shot? So that was like the long journey. You know, starting off in tech, being a programmer, being a lifelong lover of books and fantasy and reading, and then eventually leading to ultimately writing and publishing my own fantasy books.
Joanna: Wait, you have to tell us who that author was.
Damon: His name is David Dalglish. He actually went from indie, and he's now traditionally published almost exclusively. Although, I think he has put out a few indie books. So that's a little disappointing, not because I'm disappointed that he went traditional, but him going traditional means I only get one book a year from him, when he used to publish like four to six books a year. So that is where my disappointment lies.
That said, I actually just finished his most recent book. So I'm a David Dalglish super fan, right? I will read every book that he publishes now because he's one of my favorite authors. I discovered him through indie publishing in the indie world. I just finished his most recent book, and it's just as fantastic as it always is. He's a fantastic writer. And that's always my journey, anytime I finish a book or a series.
I actually just finished a 16-book fantasy series, and I read the entire thing. I'm one of those, if I start, I have to go all the way to the end. I mean, unless I'm not enjoying it, then I'll stop. I'm no longer a book martyr. I used to be a book martyr, and I'm like, well, I started this book, I don't like it, but I feel like I should finish it just to show respect to the author. Now, I'm like, man, I don't have time for that. So I just finished a 16 book fantasy series, and as soon as I finish as series, you know, it's always the same. Okay, what is the next either series I can find or the next author I can fall in love with so that I can read all of their books.
Joanna: My husband is also a fantasy reader and listener, he listens to a lot of audio, and he's the same. Like each audiobook has to be at least 40 hours, and there has to be a hell of a lot of books in a series for him to be interested. So you fantasy listeners and readers, you're difficult to please.
But let's just come back to your own books. So you published how many books? And then—
Why did you start BookFunnel? Damon: So I published three books. And I started BookFunnel because I'd actually published the second book of my trilogy. So I tend to be, or used to be, I'm a little better now, but I tend to be a little flighty.
You know, I have these great ideas, and it's all part of my ADHD, but I started writing these books, and I made myself a promise that if I was going to publish. So I finished the first book, I had it professionally edited, and I really liked it, and I wanted to publish it. But I sort of made myself a promise that if you publish this book, you're going to have to finish the trilogy.
At that point, especially in indie publishing, I'd run into several cases where I started reading a series, I fell in love with it, and then the author just fell off the planet. They stopped after book two or book three, and we never heard from them again. I did not want to be one of those authors, knowing that I have an absolute tendency to be one of those authors.
So I said, okay, if you're going to publish this first book, you're committed to three, because it's a trilogy, and we like our trilogies in fantasy.
So I published the first book, and I was getting ready to publish the second book, and I'd had a few sales. Back then you could just put a book out for 99 cents, and you could get sales. So I'd had some sales, and people were reading the books, and I was like, okay, well, how do I find more readers? I was listening to Joanna Penn, and I was reading Hugh Howey's blog and Joe Konrath's blog, and like all of the people at the time.
The whole idea of list building and getting your own mailing list so that you could contact and talk to your readers directly was really coming into its own. People were starting to talk more about it. Then thus beget the Reader Magnet, which back then we didn't call a thing. It was just a free story or a free book. And I was like, oh, I can do that. I could write a short story, and then I give that away, and people get on my list. That's how I can work on selling these books more.
At that time, I wasn't thinking, well, I'm going to go build more software. I was actually, at that point, I was thinking, I wonder if I could leave the software industry and become a writer full-time. Even though I love software, right? It was never a case of I absolutely hate my job and I would just love to be a writer so that I can get out of this terrible drudgery. I love writing code. But it was sort of like, wow, but I mean, being a writer, pretty cool, right? You know, to get to tell these stories.
Of course, I had notes, and reams and reams of notes of all of these things, and these ideas, and the world-building because we're fantasy authors. So we just spend gobs of time building worlds that sometimes we don't even write the books. So I had started this idea of like, oh, I'm going to build my list, and I'm going to write a reader magnet, and I'm going to put that out there. Okay, so how do I deliver the reader magnet?
I signed up for your list, and I signed up for Joe Konrath's and I signed up for Hugh Howey's, and I signed up for all of these, the biggest authors at the time, some of whom obviously are still huge. It was like, “Oh, thanks for joining my list. Here's your ePub. Here's your mobi. Good luck and God bless.” And I thought, you know, I'm a techy guy, I know how to get the book onto my Kindle, that's fine. But I don't know that average people are going to figure out how to do this.
Joanna: Just to interject there, many people listening won't remember this. It was like—
We spent however many years it was trying to figure out sideloading the devices. That's what we used to call it back then. It's so funny now, that's what we used to talk about. And no one talks about this anymore because of BookFunnel. So it's kind of amazing that you managed to sell this. I mean, we used to have this download page, and it would say, “If you have a Kindle, click here, and here's the thing.”
We would always get these emails that were like, “I've got an old Samsung, whatever, and I can't get the file on.” And it was a nightmare. It was so much of a nightmare to people like me, it just became like, oh, why do I bother? I feel like it's such a huge thing, and like you said, most people cannot get files onto their devices. Even now, if people try and do it manually, it's a struggle. So yes, coming back to what you decided to fix this problem.
Damon: Yeah, that was it. So my wife will tell you that I think I can solve every problem with software, because that's my hammer, right? To every carpenter with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
But I tried this, and I was like, I think I could solve this. Let me try this. I have a Kindle, I have an iPhone, let me play around with this and just see if it's possible. And I started to see how it could be done. How you could, at the very least, with the most common devices like Kindles and iPhones and iPads and Android phones. Like, okay, if you could cover all of those, then you're going to get 90% of the way there. Sure there's Kobos, and there's Nooks, and there's Sony Readers, and there's Tolino Readers, and there's all kinds of other stuff, but if you could get most of it covered, I think you could make something that would work.
So I started building it, really initially, just for my own books, for my own reader magnet delivery. Because I was at the time, remember, I was still thinking I was going to be a famous writer, and building my list and giving out my reader magnet was going to be the way that I did that. But the more that I started to build the tech, the more that I realized, oh, this is really good. Like this actually works, it gets the books to most of these major devices. I thought that other people could use this too.
I started to see the other authors, I would hear them on podcasts saying, like, “Oh, I love building my list. I love having my list and talking directly to my readers, but man, dealing with the support is such a pain in the butt.”
And I was like, oh, wait, I think I could solve that problem. That's where BookFunnel was born, was to solve my own problem.
I personally think all the best software in the world is built by people who wanted to solve their own problem first, and then thought, hey, maybe other people would like this too. If you set out from, hey, this is a great idea that can make me lots of money, I don't think you have the passion for it, and you don't have the insight into why do people need to do this.
So we launched BookFunnel, and our initial—I'm sure you can find it on like the way back archive—our first homepage was all about solving this problem of tech support and delivery, and delivering the files to readers devices.
Because at the time, that was the problem that BookFunnel was built to solve. But two years on, we had to rewrite our whole website because new authors that were coming into the indie world didn't know this was a problem. That's because all of the biggest authors had already signed up for BookFunnel and were using it. So nobody talked about it anymore. Nobody talked about the sideloading problem. So people would get in and be like, “Oh, I don't know why I need BookFunnel. Can't I just attach an ePub to an email?” And people would go, no, no, no, don't do that.
Joanna: Have fun with that!
Damon: Exactly. You can do that, sure. You're going to have a grand old time supporting all of those readers.
Joanna: Okay, so let's fast forward to now because, obviously, things have developed over time. And why I particularly wanted to talk to you was, quite recently—I will come to Shopify and selling direct a bit—but I was like, oh, why can't I do this? And I emailed you or one of the team and said, “Can I do this?” And you were like, “Yeah, you could do this this way.” And I didn't even realize that I could do that.
So we want to know all the things that BookFunnel has turned into that can help authors today.
As you said, you have great insight into what authors need, not just because of your own experience, but because like we'd said, you're at every conference and you talk to a lot of people. You're very friendly and approachable, people should definitely chat to you. So let's start with the list building.
Where are we today with how authors can use BookFunnel for list building? Damon: So again, originally why I built BookFunnel was I was trying to build my list. So the delivery was the problem that we were solving, but very, very quickly, once we solved that problem, which we put out our first version, we didn't know what we didn't know, and as an engineer, we think we solved all the problems and this couldn't possibly be confusing for anybody.
So we put out the first version of BookFunnel and very quickly found that I was wrong about a lot of things, but within a few months, we had worked all those issues out.
So once we felt like we had solved the sideloading problem pretty well, the very next thing is like, well, great, but how can BookFunnel help me build my list? Because I'm already out there doing all these other things, wouldn't it be great if BookFunnel could help with that. So that was why we built it.
The first thing was just getting people to understand that you've written this reader magnet, you've put it out there into the world, and you really need to start pushing it everywhere.
Put your reader magnet at the back of every book, every short story. Everything that you publish should have a call to action that says, “join my list.” Every email you send, your signature should say, “Hey, join my list. Get a free book.” You know, putting all of that stuff out there, and obviously using BookFunnel as the delivery.
Then we started to build features around that. Initially all BookFunnel had was what we call a download page, which was, we didn't accept the readers email address, we didn't do anything but sort of give them the files and then walk them through their devices and instruct them on how to get the books there.
We very, very quickly realized that we needed to be in greater control of the collection, mostly because in the beginning, a lot of people didn't know how to even build a website or a web page, or what we call a squeeze page, which is sending them somewhere from the back of your book to get signed up.
A squeeze page is one where they can't leave the page. There's no other links that take them somewhere else because if they can, they might click on something else. And it's great, they start browsing around your website, but really what you want is like, I got your eyeball, I want you to sign up for my newsletter right now while I got you here.
So we built that. We built signup pages very, very shortly after we launched all of our initial products because authors wanted us to do the signups. Then it became a whole rash of, well, we have to integrate with MailChimp and then MailerLite, and now we integrate with like 15 different email services because people just kept asking. Well, what about ConvertKit? Have you guys heard of SendinBlue? Like, we get those emails all the time.
All the features that we build at BookFunnel come directly from our authors. When our authors email us and say, “Hey, you know…” You talked about the experience that you had, we get that all the time. Anytime I go to conferences, people will come up and they'll say, “Oh, you know what I would love to do with BookFunnel? I would love to do this thing.” And the answer is, you can do that. Or, “You know what would be great? If BookFunnel had a feature that did this.” We have a feature that does that.
The problem that we have is that when we launch our features, we call them feature grenades. So it's not a good thing at all, and it's not at all how you should run a business.
But we create a new feature, we write a blog post, we send it out, we throw it at everybody, and then we run away and we never talk about it ever again. So if we built something three years ago, it's likely that we haven't talked about it since the initial blog post that announced that feature. So every one of our users can be forgiven for not knowing that we do something that we do, because we're not really good at going back in and talking about those things after the fact.
Joanna: Well, then this is a kind of rapid-fire section where you're going to try and give us a sort of rundown. I mean, perhaps mention some of the things that you're surprised people don't use more of, or things that I know I've asked for as well. Audiobooks are a big one, so we can certainly come back to that. But ARCs are something I know people worry about.
Tell us some of the things that people can use that they might not expect.
Damon:
The first feature we built after the initial delivery was ARC delivery, Advanced Reader Copy delivery, — which is very different than just sort of general delivery. You know, somebody writes a reader magnet, and you put it out there into the world, and you're giving it away to everybody who signs up for your mailing list. It's the loss leader, it's the thing that you're giving away.
Now, of course, I want you to sign up for my list, but if somebody turned around and shared that link and gave it to somebody else, it's not the worst thing in the world. You might gain a new reader out of it, somebody who read your reader magnet and then falls in love with your writing and goes and buys the rest of the series.
Not so with ARCs, especially if you're a very popular writer. If you're a big writer, your books are likely to get pirated almost instantly because there are so many fans that love your book. Sadly, you would think they are fans wouldn't be out there pirating your books. I will say from our evidence, it's usually almost never your ARC team. It's always once the book actually gets published out into the world. But there's so many people that are waiting for it, that it's out there.
So for ARC delivery, we knew that what authors wanted was something that was going to be a bit more secure.
So when you have a link, even just a sign up link, and say, “Hey, sign up and get my ARC.” If somebody shares that link with somebody else, well then somebody else could also sign up. And technically you get their email address, but now they've got your brand new book that you weren't really intending for them to get.
So when we built ARC delivery, we built a feature called certified mail, that you give us the email addresses, we email every single reader their own unique individual download link that is protected from them sharing that with other people. We have lots of different features that are built into that. One of the features that we just launched last year was what we call restricted delivery.
Over the years as BookFunnel has gotten bigger, we built our own app for Android and iOS, we built our own cloud reader where readers can read eBooks in their browsers, audiobooks, and all of that sort of stuff. But what restricted delivery does is lets you restrict the delivery of that book to only reading within BookFunnel's platform. So they can install our reader on their iOS or their Android device, they can read in our browser reader on pretty much any device in the world.
The reason that's really, really good for ARC delivery is I don't want this book getting out to everyone in the world until I'm ready for the world to see it. This book is really intended for my small 60 person, advanced team. And you know, I trust my team, they're a great team, but I really don't trust them completely. And I'd rather that this book not get shared out into the world, or worse, get pirated before I've even had a chance to publish it. So the needs of an author who's putting out an advanced copy are very different than somebody who's putting out a reader magnet that's there for public consumption.
So the kinds of features that we built into certified mail for ARC delivery were all designed around this idea that you don't want this book escaping out into the world until you're ready, until you're ready for that book to be released.
Then as far as other features that we built, we have a super simple feature, but I love it, it's called ‘Gift a Book.' It really is just selecting a book that's on your BookFunnel account, give me an email address, you can create templates for all the different kinds of emails that you send, and then you just, boom, send them a book. It's sort of like certified mail, but for one person. It creates a unique link to that book that is just for that person to download.
Then of course, it tracks everything that they do. So if you're looking back at your gifts, you can see, oh, hey, they got their link, they downloaded their book, they are reading it on their Kindle. Like you have all of the data available to you.
We have a lot of nonfiction authors that use that because if you're at a conference and you're talking to somebody and you say, “Oh, you know what, I think my book is perfect for you. Hey, what's your email address? Let me send it to you.” And you just pop up your BookFunnel account on your smartphone and bop, bop, bop, tap in their email address and boom, you send them a copy.
You can't do that with anything else in the world, right? You can try maneuvering your way through Amazon's system of buying a gift copy for somebody and kind of sending it to them, but it really sort of sends them a gift card which can be used to buy other things.
Joanna: You can't gift across countries. So this is an important point. I mean, you're in the US, a lot of your customers are in the US, but I'm in the UK. Sometimes US authors will say to me, “Oh, I'll just give you a copy on Amazon.com.” I'm like, no, you can't, because the gifts don't work.
This is another thing about BookFunnel, it's truly international. And this is an international show, so we like to think of products that are global, as opposed to specifically for the USA. So I think that's really important too, is that you really are offering like a global service.
Damon: Yeah, we get the question sometimes. We have absolutely zero geographic restrictions.
Everything that you send through BookFunnel can be read by anyone in the world. If they can get an internet connection, they can get a book from us.
And so yeah, our Gift a Book feature, it really is just a simple feature. Give me the email address, you can put in their name, but like I said, it's kind of nice because you can track everybody that you've ever gifted a book to. You can see if they got it, you can follow up with them after the conference and say, “Hey, it was lovely meeting you. It looks like you haven't downloaded your copy. Here's that link again, if you wanted to grab a copy of the book. It was so great to meet you.” Like, it's just such a great little feature, but it's super, super simple.
We built that at the same time that we built the ARC delivery because I'd already built all the tech for sending out little short private links for everybody on your ARC team.
And I thought it would be really cool if people could just send one at a time because I had, even in my very short author career, had bumped into people where I thought, you know what, I bet they would like mine. They were like, “Oh, I love fantasy books,” and I'm telling them about the books that I've read, and I think that they would like my book. Well, I obviously don't carry copies with me in my back pocket. And I thought oh, hey, I'll just email you a copy. Even with BookFunnel, initially, that wasn't possible. I could maybe find and copy and paste a link and open up an email in my mail app and send it to you, but it wasn't as simple as, let me get your email address, click, boom, you've got a copy.
We have authors using the templating that you can build and gift a book. They have templates for like birthdays, so when their readers have a birthday, they just go in and say, Gift a Book, select the birthday template, here's a free book, and they just send them off and away they go. It's such a neat little thing.
Speaking of carrying books with you, we have a feature called Print Codes. We call it Print Codes because we specifically designed it so people would use it in print, but you can really use them anywhere. We have authors that are using them a ton now for Kickstarter delivery and fulfillment. But what Print Codes are is you take your book, you go into BookFunnel, and say, “Hey, generate 100 unique codes for this book.”
Each one is a little nine digit code that's unique to that person. You generate those codes, you go off and you print them, and you put them onto the back of the business card or a bookmark or a postcard or something like that.
Now when you're standing around talking to somebody or you go to a conference and you've got a table set up, and somebody says, “Oh, I love your books.” I can say, “Oh, great. Let me give you a copy of my reader magnet, or let me give you a copy of the new book. Here you go.” And you hand them that little card, and that little code on the back of the card is unique to them.
They can go and use it, redeem their copy of their book, and then that's it. The code is dead, and it can't be used again. So we call that carrying your eBooks in your pockets, right? Because that was not something that authors could really do, certainly not easily. You know, you have these great eBooks, almost no author is carrying just random copies of their paperbacks in a bag slung over their shoulder. But how nice is it that you can just carry a few business cards in your pocket, and now you can hand people a copy of your eBook.
Joanna: What about the author swaps and the group promotions? Because I know that some people are using that to work with other authors. So I guess tell us about the feature, but also who it's good for, because I have tried it before and different levels of authors get on differently, I would say. So let's also give some advice there.
Damon: Sure. So we built two major features. The group promos came first, and that was that you are wanting to work with other authors in your genre, find other authors in your genre, who they have a list and you have a list, and we both write space operas.
So your readers are already predisposed to like my books because I write space opera, and my readers are probably going to like your books. We're always fond of saying in the business, that it's not a zero sum game. You know, readers don't just read one book and go, well, that's my book for the year, I guess I'll have to wait till next year to read that Joanna Penn book. Like, they don't do that. If they're readers, when they finish one book, they're going to go on and say, what's the next book that I can find?
So they're going to read all of your books, and when they're done with all of your books, they're looking for someone else to read. And as we all help each other, I can offer you up some books that you might like because these other authors are also indies in my genres. So group promos is just that. We're all joining together and working together because we all write in the same genre.
When you talk about who is it really for, any author can use it. You do have differing levels, and as you go through the group promo board on BookFunnel, which is just a big giant board that's separated out by genres so you can kind of see what is available and what is recruiting in your genre as you're looking for other authors to join in, you will find some that are geared towards bigger authors. Authors that either have a bigger list, or have more books, a bigger back list sometimes there'll be looking for because they're looking for authors that are a bit more established to introduce their readers to.
Then other times, you'll find promos that are really built and catering towards newer authors. Sometimes they're sort of all over the place.
If you take 20 authors, and all 20 of those authors, even if they have a small list of only 100 readers, well, that's still 2000 readers that everybody's going to get introduced to if we all work together, and we all send it to our small, tiny little lists.
Usually what group promos end up with is you'll have a few tentpole authors that have much bigger lists, but are willing to share their lists with other readers. Because even if you've only got 100 readers, some of those readers on your list have never heard of me, and I'm just trying to get my reader magnet in front of as many readers as I can possibly get it in front of because those people read my magnet.
And then if you're doing your job right, your reader magnet leads into your series, and then people are going to go on and read the rest of my series, if they like it. If they don't like it, well, then they weren't going to be my fan anyway, and that's okay.
You want to get your books in front of as many readers as you can because you don't know how many of those readers are going to take you up on your offer and then become readers. Then you don't know how many of those readers are going to go on to become super fans, people like me that when I become a superfan that's it, I'll buy every book you've got for the end till the end of time. So that that was group promos.
Author swaps came along later, and it's really just a one on one. So we like to consider them like a bit more personal.
If I'm going to swap with Joanna Penn, and I'm going to tell my readers, you'll love this book series by Joanna Penn, then I probably want to make sure that your books are good. There's a little bit of vetting because it feels like a more personal recommendation if you're recommending just one person. If you're saying, hey, I'm in this great promotion with these 30 other space opera authors, nobody's expecting you to have read all 30 of those space opera authors' books.
So we sort of layer it and say, if you're just coming into list building, if you're just joining BookFunnel, you probably want to look at group promos first because you can be a bit more anonymous and you can work yourself and with other authors in your genre. You can also build your list a lot faster.
Group promos are going to build up your list very quickly. Author swaps are going to be a little more slowly, but you're going to be able to reach authors' audiences that may not want to participate in larger group promos. They want to do more targeted things.
Joanna: Absolutely.
So let's go on to direct sales because I was using BookFunnel for Payhip for eBooks. Then you moved into audiobooks, which are kind of a game changer for many of us because audiobooks I feel have become more difficult to make a lot of profit than it used to be.
When you sell audio and eBooks direct, you can make more profit. So I'm now using Shopify, and I built everything to integrate with BookFunnel for eBooks and audiobooks. The thing I mentioned earlier, for people listening, was that I wanted to sell a bundle. So three eBooks or multiple products within one Shopify product, but multiple BookFunnel products. And I could set all of that up, which was very exciting to me.
So talk a bit about direct sales, why you've gone into that, and any tips. Damon: So we launched direct sales in September 2017, so two years after BookFunnel launched. Even though the very first week that BookFunnel had existed, we got our first email saying, can BookFunnel deliver sales?
Joanna: It was probably me!
Damon: Probably. I bet I could go back and look and find it. I mean, we had not even had our doors open a week, and people were saying, can you deliver sales? So there was always this thing, sort of like, oh, yeah, that would be really cool. But we still had a lot of other features to build.
We did launch direct sales two years later, in 2017. I really built it because so many authors kept asking for it, but I'll be honest, I didn't think it was going to be successful.
I truly believed that readers really just want to buy from Amazon or Kobo or Barnes and Noble, or wherever they're comfortable buying from, and that they weren't going to buy from your store. So I almost built it out of protest, so that people would just leave me alone and stop asking me for it. Like, fine, here's your direct sales, and you're not going to get any sales, you're never going to make it.
I'm happy to say I was proven very, very wrong.
Even in the early days, we launched it and within a few weeks, we'd already had several thousand sales from authors websites. And I thought, how was that possible? And it's possible because I was just completely wrong. What I was wrong about was that there are some readers and, you know, I'm trying to be diplomatic, there are some readers that are very loyal to their platform. They only want to read books on their K-shaped device or A-shaped store, and their loyalty lies with the retailer.
There are lots of readers though, like me, I don't care where your books are. My loyalty lies with the authors that I fall in love with. And for them, if you are selling direct and it's easy for me to get the book from you, I will absolutely buy from your store. I would much rather that my money be going directly to the person who is producing the thing that I love.
So again, I was really wrong about that. And I'm happy to be proven wrong because —
Now direct sales is one of the largest growth features that BookFunnel has, as more and more authors have gotten into it. That came about because I think more authors were willing to try it after we launched audiobooks.
So we launched audiobooks a little over two years ago.
It's still in beta because I haven't written the building software, if we're just being completely honest. But when we launched audiobooks, and again, that came about because people kept coming up to me at conferences and people kept emailing and saying, “When is BookFunnel going to do audiobooks? Oh, I'd love to use BookFunnel for audiobooks, is that a thing you guys are working on?”
Audiobooks was almost like writing an entirely other BookFunnel. A lot of the things that we'd already built for eBooks did not translate into the audiobook world. An eBook might be one megabyte. An audiobook might be a gigabyte with 180 different files and chapters. So it was a very, very different beast.
Audiobooks had been blowing up for years, but more and more people kept asking us about it. So when we finally launched it, we didn't know what people were going to do with it. We didn't know like, oh, are people going to start doing audio reader magnets? Or what do they really want all of this for? And what they wanted it for was for direct sales. And the reason is, as you noted, it's all in the money.
If you publish a book on Amazon, or any of the other stores, but let's just take any given store, right? Most of the stores take 30% to 35% of your sale and you get the rest. So you put your book up on Amazon, you're within their magical pricing range, and you get 70% of the list price and they get 30%. Most authors are okay with that. I think we all wish it would be lower, we'd all would love it if it were lower than that even. But given the pound of flesh that traditional publishing has taken from authors for 100 years, I think we're all okay with a 70/30 split being pretty decent.
It's not so when it comes to audiobooks. On Audible, if you're not exclusive, they take 75% of the sale. And it's even more, I don't want to get into the math calculations, but most people—
Joanna: You can't even set your own price. So it's really very, very small.
It's why going wide with audio, to me, is like a superpower. It's almost the only way to make a really good profit on audio is if you are wide, which I am.
Damon: And we've seen more and more authors who were willing to go wide with their audio because of that. So back at the beginning of last year, in January, we started getting a lot more people asking us for that specifically. They would literally join BookFunnel and go, “Yeah, how do I set up audiobooks? How do I do direct sales?” Immediately, those two questions would come out of a lot of the newer authors who are signing up.
More and more really big authors, authors that had been Audible-exclusive for a very long time, were suddenly asking us about direct sales.
I couldn't really explain why. I mean, I was happy about it, but I couldn't really explain like, what was the impetus? What was the catalyst that sort of set that thing in motion?
From what we learned later from some of the authors after talking to them at conferences about why they had started to move in this direction, was back in January of 2022, or for Christmas in 2021, Audible did not change their pricing, they changed the way they advertised their pricing.
So previously, if you went to audible.com, they really push the signup for $14.99 a month, and get one credit, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's been their big push for a long, long time. But as of Christmas in 2021, they started pushing the sign up for pay one year in advance and get all of your books for $11.99 a piece.
They've had that forever. You could pay for a year in advance, and they would give you a break on the credit from $14.99 down to $11.99. But they started pushing that yearly subscription harder than they were pushing the monthly, where they used to push the monthly subscription. Well guess which price Amazon pays your 25% on? It's not what they price the book at, it's what the reader ultimately spent to get the book. So if the reader is on a monthly subscription, I give you 25% of $14.99, but if the reader bought yearly credits, I'm giving you 25% of $11.99.
So now your cut is even lower, but I'm in great shape because I'm Amazon, I'm Audible. I now have you locked in for an entire year, which I would much rather have you sign up for one full year, and pay me hundreds of dollars in advance, then have you go along at 15 bucks a month, but maybe decide to cancel halfway through the year.
So we suddenly got an influx of authors whose revenue went down because they were selling just as many books, but now they're getting their cut of $11.99, not $14.99. But audible was still sitting pretty.
So yes, direct sales and audio really started to blow up more as authors realized—I don't want to be impolite—but how much they were getting screwed. Like Audible is taking so much of the money.
The thing about an eBook is you could probably put out an eBook today for 50 bucks or 100 bucks, even if you bought a premade cover, you could probably put it out for 50 or 100 bucks. So putting it out there in the world and then getting 70% of every sale back is a really good deal. That's not the case with audiobooks.
Even today, it's still pretty expensive to develop and produce audiobooks. So it's like the more expensive thing that you have to create is the thing that they're taking the lion's share of the profits on.
Joanna: Yes, and just to be clear to everyone listening, you can listen to my audiobooks on whatever device you fancy and whatever platform.
I would just rather you bought direct. But yeah, so BookFunnel doing direct sales has been fantastic. So we've mentioned Shopify, WooCommerce, Payhip.
Any other platforms for direct sales? Damon: Gumroad we added last year, which we hadn't had from the beginning, but we added them last year. I really like their platform. ThriveCart was one that several authors were asking us for.
So Shopify will build your entire store, and I will say of all the platforms, Shopify is absolutely the most complete. Their system of plugins and extensions where other people can make all the cool things that you can just kind of buy and add into your site, and then of course host your website, can really give you an all-in-one complete solution. ThriveCart is not that, but ThriveCart is really good at driving direct readers directly to a landing page that has upsells and what they call bump products and things like that.
Joanna: It's super exciting to see all the things you're building. The direct sales, you mentioned the audio, all these exciting things. But of course, you are a technologist, you go to all the author conferences, and you anticipate the future or build as you go. What are you excited about in terms of what's coming?
Are there any new features that you might be developing? Damon: Well, I mean, we were just talking about direct sales, and I would say the thing that most excites me both as a technologist and an author and a reader, is putting more power into authors' hands to control their own careers. We all started as indie authors because we wanted that power to publish our books the way that we wanted them.
I'm with you, I love the authors that are putting their books on all the platforms. We have some authors that are only, like they're exclusively selling direct from their website. You can only buy their books when you go to such-and-such.com and you buy my books.
I don't necessarily agree with that. I don't see any reason why you can't have your books on Kobo, and Amazon, and Barnes and Noble, and all the places in the world. Wherever readers can find you is the good place.
For me, it's so exciting to see authors taking back their careers and saying, I am in control of where my books go, I'm in control of selling them. And of course, taking all the profits, that's the exciting part, but it's also taking all of the data. I know who my readers are, I know where my readers are coming from. They're on my list.
I can see a direct line from somebody who's on my list, who clicks on my link, who then buys my three book boxset. Like I can make all those connections. Like I can see that person bought the eighth book in my series. Nobody's buying the eighth book in your series who's not already a huge fan of your work. People drop out at the second or third book if they weren't interested in your books anymore. So having that data and knowing more about your readers means that authors are in control.
As far as like the techy things that I'm excited about were, you know, we built our own—so if you haven't seen the BookFunnel app, it's actually really incredible.
We built it, initially, because we needed audiobooks. Sideloading for audiobooks is not a thing, like you can't just drop a bunch of mp3 files into the Audible app and listen to an audiobook. So we knew that we were going to have to build our own app in order to facilitate audiobooks.
At the same time, we made our app the best eReader experience. We built our own eReader from the ground up. Like I built the whole thing because I'm really, really picky about my readers, and I want to read exactly the way that I want to read, and I don't want the book telling me how I should read my book. So we built our own eReader.
We built, of course, the audio player. Then we also made our app the best fastest way to send a book to another app, to do the sideloading piece, which is what BookFunnel was built for.
So we didn't build our own app and then abandon the concept ofsideloading eBooks. That's what BookFunnel was founded on. We actually made it better.
If you download our app and put it on your iPhone, you can send books to Kindle in just a few taps, it's like an instant. You don't have to email them and forward them and do all of this garbage. You can just send them directly from your BookFunnel library straight onto your Kindle device.
So the more that we build out our own tech, the more that BookFunnel is actually just like giving indie authors the ability to own their future.
The more that we build our own stuff, the more that we own our own future. That stuff really excites me, from all the way back and being a kid and typing, “10 PRINT, HELLO, 20 GOTO 10,” and building my own code and making my own things.
You know, I'll be honest, it worried me for a lot of years that if Amazon decided that you could no longer sideload books to a Kindle device, like if they just decided one day that that's not a thing they want to mess with anymore, BookFunnel probably wouldn't exist.
So many people wanted to read on their Kindle apps and whatever else, that it felt like that would just be a crushing blow to what we do. Now we have millions of readers that read their books in our app, that listen to audiobooks in our apps, and I feel like we are in far more control of our future. And by that token, giving authors more control of their future.
Joanna: Fantastic. And that is what it is all about for indie authors. So how can people get started with BookFunnel, if they're interested?
Where can people find you and the team online? Damon: BookFunnel.com. We try not to be too clever about it. Getting Started, just sign up for a BookFunnel account. Our cheapest account is $20 a year. It doesn't have all the features, a lot of the things that we talked about, but you can deliver direct sales. For just 20 bucks a year, BookFunnel will deliver all of your eBook sales.
I would probably recommend trying the midlist account, which is $10 a month. Try it for a month, sign up for 10 bucks. If you don't like it, we'll refund your money 100%. We don't want anybody using our service that doesn't find it useful or who doesn't need us. But we think that we're pretty useful, we're a pretty useful service. That has been our pricing since we launched in 2015. We've never gone up on our prices because I think it's really important that every author be able to use our service.
Joanna: Fantastic.
If people want to meet you in person, what conferences are you at this year? Damon: So I'm actually going to be—I know that this podcast is going out pretty quickly—I'm going to be at the Self-Publishing Show Live in London. We're actually taking the whole family. I'm flying my whole family to London and we're doing a tour of Great Britain. So I'll be in London, and then I'll be at NINC, Novelists Inc, in Florida in September. Then I will be at the big 20Books show in Vegas. I think that's it for conferences for the rest of the year.
Joanna: Fantastic. Always lovely to talk to you, Damon. Thanks so much for your time.
Damon: Thank you so much for having me on.
The post How Authors Can Use Bookfunnel To Read Readers And Sell Direct With Damon Courtney first appeared on The Creative Penn.
What are some of the most effective ways to market your book? What strategies have remained the same despite the rise of new tactics?
What are the best ways to reach a Christian audience? Thomas Umstattd Jr. gives plenty of tips in this interview.
In the intro, Freedom, fame, or fortune — what do you want as an author?; Built to Move: The Ten Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully by Kelly and Juliet Starrett; and my AI for authors webinars, plus Audio for Authors: Audiobooks, Podcasting, and Voice Technologies, and money books.
This podcast is sponsored byKobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to theKobo Writing Life podcastfor interviews with successful indie authors.
Thomas Umstattd Jr. is the CEO of AuthorMedia.com, an award-winning professional speaker, nonfiction author, and host of the Novel Marketing Podcast and the Christian Publishing Show.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- The fundamentals of marketing fiction
- Content marketing for fiction
- Utilizing the nonfiction themes beneath your fiction for marketing
- The hallmarks and history of Christian publishing
- Why readers choose certain genres
- Tips for pitching a podcast
You can find Thomas at AuthorMedia.com and listen to his podcasts at NovelMarketing.com and ChristianPublishingShow.com
Transcript of Interview with Thomas Umstattd Jr. Joanna: Thomas Umstattd Jr. is the CEO of authormedia.com, an award-winning professional speaker, nonfiction author, and host of the Novel Marketing Podcast and the Christian Publishing Show. So welcome to the show, Thomas.
Thomas: Thanks, Joanna. It's great to be here.
Joanna: Oh, yes. It's exciting to talk to you. But first up—
Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and podcasting, and now running a business for writers. Thomas: So back when I was in college, I started writing a book, as many college students do. I went to a writers' conference to sell my book, and I was in the marketing session, and the lady speaking was like, “You've got to start a blog. You've got to have a website.” All of the authors were terrified, like, how do I do that? I've been building websites since I was a kid.
I met a real author there at this conference, and I was like, ‘well, I'll build your website for free, no problem.' So I built her website and she told all of her friends, and I started charging them. And pretty soon I was going to conferences and selling websites because everybody was interested in my websites. None of the agents were particularly interested in my book at the time.
So by the time I graduated from college, I had started a website business. At our peak, we had 12 people building websites for authors all over the world. We built the MyBookTable plugin to help make our websites better. We eventually allowed and sold that to people who weren't buying websites from us, anybody could use that plugin to add books to their website.
So my way into the publishing space was actually from the technical side. I was the nerd at the conference who would give the tech talks, rather than on teaching on craft or something like that.
Joanna: But you have got books, right? Tell us about those.
Thomas: I do. So I wrote a blog post about dating and relationships that went viral. It got a million views in around a month.
A lot of the people reading that article wanted me to write a book about it. I was like, I don't know if I want to write a book. I've been working with authors for years at this point, and I knew how much work it was. So I thought I got out of it by calling everyone's bluff, and I said, alright, if you raise $10,000 on Kickstarter, then I'll write the book.
So I put the book on Kickstarter, and they raised $10,000. So I was like, well, I guess I have to become an author now. So I wrote the book, and it ended up having a big impact. I'm glad I did it, but yeah, writing a book is a lot of work. I have a lot of respect for authors who are willing to walk that journey.
Joanna: Well, it's so interesting that you say that because you and I are also podcasters.
You have two shows, I have had two shows, but I've cut back on my second show. But you've been podcasting on Novel Marketing since 2013, so a decade now. You said that it's a lot of work to write a book, but a decade of podcasting is a lot of work. So I guess—
Why did you decide to get into podcasting? Thomas: It's interesting because the reason I got into it was to help sell websites, but it turned out, I really enjoyed podcasting.
So I don't build websites anymore. I've spun off that business and sold the plugin business. Now podcasting is the business. I just do the podcast and courses.
I always loved listening to talk radio as a kid and being able to talk into a microphone and to teach online, either through courses or through podcast is really enjoyable for me. I love that ‘aha' experience that people have.
So yes, podcasting is a lot of work, and it's become even more work. You know, as you raise the production values of your podcast, you have a bigger team, and there's more cost and more labor that goes into it, but it's worth it in the end. The end product I feel like is worth all of the work.
Joanna: That's so funny because it's just me right now. Then I use some AI tools, and then I have one VA who does the blog post, the show notes. I've actually reduced to that I don't really have a team anymore. I've gone the other way. It's so interesting you say that. So I mean, we all use the tools we want to use.
But I do want to come to the topics on the Novel Marketing Podcast. Although, I feel like you do cover things for fiction and nonfiction authors, a lot of marketing crosses both.
What are some of the fundamentals of marketing fiction that have remained important over the decade? Thomas: It's interesting because you and I have both been doing this long enough to see fads come and go and often come back. Like launch bonuses, we've seen that come into fashion, go out of fashion, come back into fashion. So it's interesting, like what has stayed effective for this whole time? I would say —
The most important thing is writing books that readers want to read. A lot of authors see marketing as this thing that you add to a book at the last minute so that it can find its audience. It's like sugar that you sprinkle on the top of a cookie. If you really want people to eat the cookie, if you really want people to read the book, you need to bake the sugar into the cookie. The cookie itself has to taste good.
You need to write a book that resonates with readers, which means knowing who your readers are and crafting the book to be the kind of book that they not only want to read, but want to share with their friends.
If you don't do that, none of the other things matter because you can't fix a bad book with good marketing.
There's no amount of money that you can spend to make people want a book that they don't want. You can't change other people. This is useful knowledge for marriage, but it's also useful knowledge for marketing.
That's not our job. Our job is not to change people into the kind of people who liked the book we wrote. Our job as a writer is to write the kind of book that people already like. It's much easier to change your book than it is to change another human being or tens of thousands of human beings.
Probably the most powerful technique back when I first got started was having an email list, and —
The most powerful technique now is having an email list. That has not changed. I was a marketing director for a publishing company for a time. In the midst of the podcast, I was still doing the podcast, but a publishing company brought me in. That was a really great experience because I had access to all of their marketing data. So I'm approaching it as a marketer, and I'm doing all of these experiments, and I learned some things that kind of blew my mind.
One was that Facebook did not move the numbers. Facebook activity didn't sell books at all. And this was back in 2015/2016 when Facebook was still like people thought it worked. I was like, I'm not seeing these Facebook promos moving the sales needles at all. The other thing that we saw was that email really did. An author with an email list sold so many more books than an author without an email list, especially at launch, which then gives them that momentum to carry through often for months ahead of time.
I would say probably the next most important thing, again, that hasn't changed, is owning your own platform.
So if you're a chicken, the food is free at the chicken coop, but the reason the food is free at the chicken coop is because you are the product being sold. So if you're unhappy with Facebook, there's no one to talk to because you're not the customer of Facebook, you are the product that Facebook is selling to somebody else. They're selling your attention, they're selling your time to advertisers. If you want to have effective marketing, you need to be willing to be the customer, to pay.
Facebook will talk to you, if you spend enough money on advertising on Facebook, suddenly you get a contact person, a customer success manager or an advertising consultant, and the whole game changes. So I'm not saying that Facebook advertising should be the tactic for you, but —
If you want to be effective in your marketing, you need to see it as something you spend money on, rather than just time. The idea that, oh, I can create funny memes and share them on social media and that will make me famous, I just have not seen anyone show numbers that that is the case.
Joanna: That's so interesting, because again, you and I are podcasters. And this is content that takes time, doesn't cost that much money, you know, time is money, but it is a very different form of marketing to Facebook ads.
I've been hot and cold on Facebook ads for a long time, and I've recently gone back into it because now I have my own store, creativepennbooks.com. Conversion ads with Shopify and Meta, Facebook, actually is like something entirely new because we were never able to do conversion ads with Amazon or any other place.
So you really talked there about if you're going to do the marketing you need to pay, but you and I are both using content marketing for, I guess, nonfiction-based businesses. What are your thoughts on content marketing? I mean, I agree with you in terms of the don't bother posting memes on Facebook or whatever, in terms of selling books, but—
Is there still a case for content marketing for fiction? Thomas: There can be.
Podcasting is interesting because it's a very deep medium of communication. Your listeners have your voice in their head more most weeks than they have their own mother's voice in their head. Like that's a really powerful place of influence. And you're listening right now, you're like, is that true? Like, when was last time you called your mom? How long did you talk to her? How much time do you spend listening to Joanna Penn?
That's an incredibly deep source of connection, but it's not super wide. Podcasting is the least viral of all of the mediums. It's hard to share. You have some great quote and I want to share it with a friend, there's not really a good, easy way to do it. Sure, there's some tools. If someone's really tech savvy, they can clip the audio and send it, but it's way too much hassle.
So when somebody starts listening to a podcast, they tend to keep listening, but it doesn't spread very much. Whereas the blog version of your podcast is much more shareable. You send an email, you can copy that link and send it to a friend. So podcasting is for deepening the relationship. It's an engagement tool. It's not a very good attraction tool.
So if you think of marketing, you have kind of three phases. You have attracting, engaging, and converting. Getting people to know who you are, like you, and trust you. Those are the three steps.
When I'm kind of troubleshooting an author's marketing, often the first thing we're trying to figure out is where is it breaking down. For most authors, their challenge is in that first step, the attraction step. People don't know who they are. If they did, they liked them. Like, wow, you have a great podcast or wow, you have a great book, but getting the word out in the first place is the challenge. That tends to be the most cash-expensive mechanism.
There are free ways to do it. I'm not paying you to come on your podcast, and some people are hearing my name for the first time. So guesting on podcasts can be effective, writing guest blog posts can be effective. And it can be effective for a novelist.
There's more podcasts focused on specific genres now, which is what the superfans listen to. The kind of fans taking risks on new authors and new books are listening to a podcast about military science fiction or Amish fiction or whatever that micro-genre is.
If you can be a guest on that podcast, it can help introduce you to a new vibrant audience of potential superfans. Joanna: It's interesting, you mentioned military sci-fi, and my husband listens to a lot of podcasts, as do I, and he now is now listening to Jack Carr's podcast.
He's a military thriller author, actually ex-military, and he's interviewing other people who are military writing books, fiction and nonfiction. I thought it was really interesting because this guy is a really big-name thriller author in the niche, and yet he's doing a podcast that is around his author brand as such, that also relates to his fiction, which I thought was really interesting.
It's what I kind of tried to do with Books and Travel, which is interview people who use places in their novels and their nonfiction, but it morphed into more of a travel thing for travel people. So I kind of got that wrong.
When I was thinking about this idea of podcasting for fiction, I was thinking around, is it best to go after the nonfiction themes that lie beneath your novels? So for me, it's religion, history, European culture, that kind of thing. I heard Jack Carr's gone after military, and that could have been military sci fi, but it's actually, for him, military thriller, not military romance, or anything like that. So what do you think about that idea?
Thomas: It can work. And the question determining whether it will work for you and for your genre is: does my genre have an otaku? So this is a Japanese term for like somebody who's obsessed with something, it's like fan, but like stronger than fan. So the classic example that Seth Godin shares, and I forget which book, but he talks about how hot sauce in America has an otaku. There's hot sauce magazines, there are hot sauce TV shows and YouTube channels, and people are really into hot sauce.
There is no ketchup otaku. Ketchup is very popular. In fact, arguably, ketchup is more popular than hot sauce on a per ounce or per kilogram basis, except everybody just eats Heinz ketchup. Like everybody's got the same ketchup. So if you wanted to do something around ketchup, people are like, oh, that's boring. But if you're gonna be like, I'm gonna have a podcast about the spiciest hot sauces in the world, and if you can eat them while answering interview questions, right, you'll get millions of views.
Joanna: On YouTube, for sure.
Thomas: Oh, it exists. It's called The Hot Ones. He gets celebrities on, and he tortures them with hot spicy wings, and then ask them hot questions, and you'll get to watch famous people cry. It's quite fun. But that show wouldn't work if they were eating ketchup. The same is true with certain genres.
So some genres, they just don't have that kind of fan base. People buy them and read them, but they do it quietly. They don't talk to each other about that genre. And also, does that genre connect well with a nonfiction topic? So an area where it does work well is Christian books, Christian nonfiction, Christian fiction.
C.S. Lewis, one of the most famous Christian authors, he writes a book Mere Christianity, and he makes the case that Jesus is either Lord, he's a liar, or he's a lunatic. Then he writes Narnia, where Lucy comes back from Narnia and tells everyone about Narnia. And the professor says, well, Lucy's either lying, she's crazy, or she's telling the truth about Narnia.
He's taking that same nonfiction argument straight from his nonfiction book and embedding it into his fiction book, and they both support each other, both in a marketing way and in a messaging way.
Joanna: That's great. Well, let's come to Christian publishing because you also host the Christian Publishing Show.
Some people might be Christians listening, but might not publish Christian books. Then there's people like me, I'm not a Christian, but I have a Master's in Theology and pretty much all my fiction as J.F. Penn has religious elements, a lot of religious history, Christian in particular, as well as my recent memoir, which is called Pilgrimage. So one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you was about this Christian publishing niche.
What are the hallmarks of Christian publishing? What are the kinds of genres that sit within that for fiction and nonfiction? Thomas: So Christian publishing and Christian books are different from other genres in a very interesting way.
Back in the 1950s, the big publishers stopped publishing Christian books, and a lot of the bookstores stopped carrying Christian books. So the reaction of Christians, particularly evangelical Christians and conservative Christians in the United States, was to create their own bookstores and their own publishing companies, and even their own distribution companies.
So Christian books, while they look like a book, like any other book in terms of like size, and printing and technology, they're in almost this like parallel universe of distribution channels, retailers, all the way up to the publishers.
In that way, they're more like comic books, which are the same. Comic books have their own printers, they have their own stores. I don't know how it is in the UK, but here in the States, you go to a comic book store, and it doesn't have any normal books. It might sell Magic The Gathering, or it might sell Warhammer figurines, and there's tables to play board games, and there's all these comic books to buy. It's its own subculture, right? Somebody might spend $50 a month at a comic bookstore, and no money at a Barnes and Noble or on Amazon on traditional books.
Christian publishing, when we say Christian publishing, what we're referring to is that kind of conservative evangelical side of publishing that got kicked out in the 50s and 60s. Now, what's interesting is that with the Left Behind books in the 90s they were brought back in. So the Left Behind books sold a billion dollars worth of books.
Joanna: I was one of those readers. Absolutely.
Thomas: And not only were bookstores happy to carry Left Behind and give them prominent feature, but even Walmart would sell Left Behind books. They'd have a big bin of Left Behind books in the 90s. So then Christian books got kind of invited back into the mainstream a little bit.
There are actually fewer Christian bookstores now than there were back in the 90s because there's no way for an independent bookstore to be able to compete with Walmart if Walmart's cherry-picking the most popular books. That just doesn't work that way.
The subculture, the readership, is still separate. So if you want to write for that “Christian market,” you're not actually writing for Christians in the sense of people who assent to Christian views, what you're really writing to are those conservative, kind of holiness-minded Christians that are a little bit separate.
They tend to be—and again, these are marketing generalizations, not universal observation—but they tend to be more rural, more small town, maybe some in the suburbs, but kind of the farther away from the city centers, a little bit less sophisticated with technology, a little bit less online.
So if you're really trying to target them, they're not as online, they're not super online all the time.
The biggest force in Christian publishing right now, in terms of book sales, are homeschool book fairs — which are these kind of rolling book fairs that will move from town to town. Authors will go to these book fairs once they've established a reputation, and it's not uncommon for an author to sell $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 worth of books over a weekend, cash on the barrel since it's not tracked by BookScan. You know, the NPD Group doesn't know these numbers. It's just handing cash for a book or swiping a square credit card.
It's not just books for kids, it's this whole community of conservative homeschoolers who are creating books for each other and buying those books in very large numbers.
The authors who are big in that world, often people don't even know who they are, but they're making, in some cases, millions of dollars a year, reaching this very different, very separated target market.
Joanna: It's so interesting to hear that and, as I said, I did read those Left Behind series. I think the spiritual warfare books were what kind of brought me into writing the types of books I do now and why I think about angels and demons and all of that, because that's what I, as a teenager, that's what I was reading about.
On Amazon, though, talking about the online bookstores, there are categories of things like Christian fantasy. I don't where Left Behind sits —is that Christian fantasy? Or is it post-apocalyptic Christian fantasy because the rapture hasn't happened and that's what the books are based on? But just coming back to the genres—
What genres sit within that Christian category on Amazon and can people sell well online? Thomas: Yeah, so that's what's interesting now because it used to be Christian bookstores would screen, and they would make a decision what is and is not a Christian book. You could call yourself a Christian book, but if the bookstores don't stock you, then you're not a Christian book. It gave companies like Lifeway a lot of influence. But on Amazon, anybody can put their book into a Christian category.
Actually Alex Newton, with K-lytics, I was working with him to add a report for Christian books, and he had to go a whole level deeper in his analytics because a lot of the Christian categories on Amazon are five subcategories down. There's Religion and Spirituality: Christian: Fiction, and then there's dozens or hundreds of subcategories underneath that. Many of them are genres that exist in the general market, right. So there's Christian fantasy, but there's also regular fantasy.
There is one genre that's uniquely Christian genre, and that's Amish, which is a very big genre in the United States. Millions of copies are sold every year, and that is a uniquely Christian genre. There may be some secular authors who started writing in Amish. And what's interesting is that these are not books by the Amish or for the Amish.
Joanna: Yeah, I was gonna say, because they're not very technological.
Thomas: So I can explain real quick why Amish is really popular. I think this helps you understand how to write books that people want to read, because if you understand the pain that somebody has that your book is addressing, your book will be far more resonant.
So there was this concept that was developed in the 1970s called future shock, which is like culture shock, but in your own culture, where everything's changing so quick around you that it's disorienting, and everything is really different. We've been experiencing future shock, right. The old people are constantly complaining about, you know, “back when I was a kid, things were different.” But that's a real psychological pain.
If somebody is experiencing that pain of change, an Amish book, which takes place in a world where nothing ever changes, is a kind of beautiful respite. It's a break from the frenetic pace of technological and cultural change, and that's why that genre isn't a fad. It's been around for 10-20 years at this point, and it's because it's touching that point of pain, that future shock pain.
So once you understand, oh, there are psychological pains that cause people to want to read, once you can identify that for your reader, and in your genre, suddenly, going back to what we talked about the beginning, you've written a book that people want to read and won't shut up about. They're like, oh, my goodness, I was in pain in this way—and they may not articulate it consciously—but now I read this book and it made me feel better. I was depressed and this book made me feel encouraged. I was hopeless and the book gave me hope. Right, whatever it is that your book touches on, once you can put your finger on the pain, suddenly your book becomes alive for that reader.
Joanna: It's interesting. I really started reading thrillers when I was really miserable in my corporate job, and I just wanted to escape.
I wanted something fast-moving that I could escape into, and I really love explosion movies and all that kind of thing. So I don't know— Is that the same thing as what you're saying, the psychological pain? Or could you give some more examples, because I think people will be interested.
Thomas: Yeah, that's exactly it. So somebody who's bored may look to thrillers for some adventure.
Fantasy is often really popular with people who are struggling with mental illness. Not that everyone who reads fantasy has mental illness, but particularly for depression and anxiety, it's really encouraging to read stories of people who have hope, who are making a difference, who are acting, and who are doing scary things.
What are the quintessential elements of fantasy? It's big monsters, big bad guys that get defeated in the end.
You don't read an epic fantasy to find out how it ends, you know that the bad guy is gonna get defeated in the end, but you read it because you want to spend time in that world.
You want to spend time escaping from the world that you're in, the mundane or the boring or the stressful, and spend time in Middle Earth or spend time in Hogwarts or whatever that world is. The different worlds will resonate with different people differently.
I actually have a whole episode kind of breaking down different genres and why people read that genre, and like the social triggers, psychologically, that caused them to want to read that genre. I just barely scratched the surface because every genre has a reason why people want to read that kind of book.
Some genres go in and out of fashion, which is really fascinating. Like Westerns aren't nearly as popular now as they were 50 years ago, 70 years ago. So that's fascinating for me as a marketer, and also as a reader, to watch those trends.
But also to ask that question of like, what is it about this book that makes people want to read it? Because it's really easy to be like, oh, people who read that kind of fiction, they're crazy. Like, that's really intellectually lazy. They're not crazy, they're just different. If we can understand how they're different, we can understand the world a little bit better.
Joanna: Absolutely. Well, then an interesting question with book marketing in the last six months, what we've seen is the removal—coming back to Meta, Facebook, and some of the other ads—the removal of things like religious preference, or religious orientation, sexual orientation, gender, a whole lot of things have been removed from our targeting in various advertising mediums because of Apple's privacy changes, which is kind of interesting in many ways.
In some ways, it's really great because it means more privacy, and in other ways, as marketers, it's difficult because I thought, well, Christians like pilgrimage, I met loads of Christians, I'll see if any Christians like my memoir Pilgrimage, and I wasn't able to use that as a preference in my ads.
What are your thoughts on other ways of marketing if we want our books to reach people who are Christian? Is it a case of specific Amazon keywords or other keywords? Or what are your recommendations there?
Thomas: Yeah, they're kicking us out again. Christians are specifically discriminated against on Facebook. If you write a romance, you can target similar romances to your book, but if you write a Christian romance, you can't.
Joanna: To be fair, it's not just Christians, it's all religion. All different religions.
Thomas: That's true, but the other religions don't have a genre attached to them. You can have, say, Muslim elements in your romance, and you can target other romances that have Muslim elements because they're not published by a Muslim publisher. And so there it is, in a sense, kind of uniquely targeting Christians. You can't target like Muslims as a category, but you could target books, potentially, that have Muslim elements in it.
What's interesting is it's constantly changing because there are certain keywords or certain brands that a lot of Christians will like that some authors will target.
So like Hobby Lobby is really hot right now. So Hobby Lobby is a craft store in the United States. It's the one that's very popular with Christians, and so Christian authors will target fans of Hobby Lobby. But you're also grabbing people who are in fan of quilting, and maybe they're not a Christian, they just like Hobby Lobby on Facebook. So you have to start thinking outside of social media.
I will say, starting in 2016, Christians often started pivoting off of social media, and especially starting in 2020. It was very clear we weren't very welcomed, especially to have conversations about Christian topics.
So a lot of the online conversation has moved to invite-only smaller Telegram, Signal, and to a lesser extent, Discord channels. So it's not that Christians aren't on Facebook, they're still there, but a lot of the conversation and a lot of the time has moved off of Facebook. So it's not as effective of a tool, even if you could target them.
You can still use Amazon ads. So Amazon will let you target Christian keywords, and be related product on Christian books. So it's not like all of the tools are turned off. But Facebook, particularly, has become pretty hostile to any kind of Christian marketing. I have to kind of be really clever and trick it into placing your ads in front of your audience.
Joanna: Yes, I must say with my book title, pilgrimage is a pretty keyword-specific book. So it's going to be very interesting who has been finding it.
But our titles can have different words. I mean, some of my book titles are the same as the Left Behind titles because there are some really good words that tap into some religious themes and stuff like that.
We mentioned email before, what about the big email lists for marketing?
I mean, things like BookBub and other email lists sort of marketing things.
Are paid email services something that you think is still worth doing? Thomas: Yes, and it still works for Christians.
BookBub has at least one, if not multiple Christian categories. I think has a Christian nonfiction category and at least one Christian fiction category, and that responds really well.
Christian podcasting is actually really vibrant. There are more Christian podcasts than any other kind of podcast by a large margin.
If you look at the chart of podcasts per category, Religion and Spirituality: Christianity has, last I've looked at the numbers, like twice as many podcasts as the next most popular category. And you're like, why is that? It's like, well, every church puts their sermons as a podcast so that the childcare workers can listen to the sermon later on during the week.
There's thousands or millions of churches that have a small podcast feed in addition to a lot of standalone Christian podcasts. So it's actually a really powerful mechanism that is completely outside of social media control because nobody controls podcasting. It's a technology, not a company.
It's censorship-resistant, as we like to say in podcasting. Not only that, but a lot of Christians learn how to subscribe to a podcast to get their church's sermon podcast. They're sick or they can't go to church on Sundays, so they download the episode on a podcast. So both guesting on Christian podcast, but also advertising on Christian podcasts can be very effective.
Email is still very effective. It's very forwardable. Christians live in communities, so if you can get one person in a church to like your book, there's a chance they'll tell all their friends at their church about your book.
So there's still virality, especially if you bake it into the book itself.
If you put elements into the book worth talking about, people will talk about the book. So you still can do it, but you kind of have to set aside the sort of techniques that work for genres that target very online people, at least to a certain degree.
Joanna: I love that. In fact, I was just thinking there about Christians who go to a church that does sermons every week, which is, I guess, most churches. People are used to listening to someone talking about a theme for a certain amount of time, which really suits the podcast format.
So I can see why people would want to go and listen either, obviously to their own pastor, but also to other people's churches. I mean, they might want to go listen to a sermon on a particular topic or Bible verse or something. So I can see actually why this is so good.
I did want to ask you, therefore, if there are Christians, or other people listening, who would like to pitch Christian podcasts or any podcasts, in fact—you and I both get tons of pitches.
What are your tips for pitching a podcast, especially for fiction authors? Thomas: The most important tip is to listen to the podcast before sending your pitch. I know it's time-consuming, but Joanna, you probably get 99 pitches for every one that you say yes to. Maybe more than that.
Joanna: Oh yeah, it's a ridiculous number.
Thomas: And the key to fishing is that the bait needs to fit the fish. If you're trying to catch a catfish, you're gonna use different bait than if you're trying to catch a salmon.
The only way that you can adapt your pitch to the podcast is to have listened to that podcast first. It's very obvious getting a pitch that they have no idea what the podcast is about. Whoever did this just got a list of podcasts on publishing or whatever, and then they're sending the same pitch to all the podcasts and just swapping out the name, or sometimes not even swapping out.
Somebody sent me a pitch just the last week, and they're like, I really like your podcast, and it had some other podcast's name. It's like a copy-and-paste fail right here.
There's this idea of like, well, if I just do it enough, some of the podcasts will say yes. What you'll end up doing that way, is getting kind of the most obscure, the smallest podcasts that maybe no one's ever pitched before. Those might actually say yes to you.
There is some advantage to going on a very new or very small podcast because it gives you a chance to practice on a new audience, but it's not going to be effective in reaching a large audience because the podcast is new and has a small audience.
So listen to the episode first and then listen for how that podcast host is trying to thrill their audience.
When you craft your pitch, craft it in such a way where you demonstrate, ‘hey, I know who you are, I know who your audience is, I know what your audience wants, and I can help you give them that.' If you craft your pitch that way, suddenly people are like, “Oh, thank you, I needed a guest for Thursday, and you would be a good fit.”
You have to actually do the work to demonstrate that you're a good fit. They're not going to spend 30 minutes researching you to see if you're a good fit. You've got to do that work yourself.
Joanna Penn with Audio for Authors
Joanna: The value to the audience is always so important.
And as you say, we both get pitched for ridiculous things. Like a credit card thing, I'm like, really? Why are you doing that? Or someone who says, “Oh, I watched your podcast of this interview and I watched the video of it, and it was amazing.”
And I'm like, yeah, there was no video, so you just blatantly lied. I mean, that's the thing, the scattergun approach doesn't work. But let's say someone listening does a pitch, they get an interview—
What is the best way to deliver value to the host and the audience? Thomas: The first thing I'd recommend is to buy a good microphone because you as the guest, you are half, maybe more depending on the format of the show, of the audio quality. So if you come to that podcast with bad audio, you are lowering the overall audio quality of the podcast significantly.
It's no longer expensive to get a good microphone, it used to be. Back when we were starting, Joanna, there were not a lot of microphones available, and the ones that were available weren't very good.
Back 10 years ago, the Blue Yeti was considered a good microphone. It's not a good microphone. But back in 2012, it was pretty good. It was maybe the second or third best microphone. Now there's probably 30 microphones better, and in some cases, cheaper.
Joanna: Can I ask you what microphone you use?
Thomas: So well, I use the Shure SM7B, it's a very expensive microphone. This isn't the microphone I recommend for an author getting started. For somebody getting started, I recommend the Samsung Q2U, which is a $20 microphone, it looks like a stage mic, or for $100, you can get the Q9U, which looks like a podcast microphone. It's a dynamic microphone, it's blind to room noise and road noise, unlike the Yeti, which is very sensitive to room noise and road noise. You don't have to treat your room if you're using a Q9U or really any dynamic microphone.
What's nice about the Q9U is that not only is it a dynamic microphone, but it's a dynamic microphone with USB, so you can plug it directly into your computer, and it also has XLR. So if down the road, you want to get a mixer or a board and get a fancy setup, you don't have to throw away your microphone, it can scale with you. Let's say someday you do want to get the SM7B, which is the $400 microphone that all the big podcasters use. Well, you can then put that Q9U as your backup microphone for your guest, you can still use it. So it's a purchase that scales really well.
Joanna: I'm still using a Blue Yeti for both this podcast and my audiobooks. [Click here for my sound booth setup.]
This is my podcasting setup
So I would say that you can make the most of any equipment, but as we established earlier, you do have a higher quality production than I do.
Thomas: To be fair, I didn't know you were still using a Yeti! I'm not trying to single you out.
Joanna: It's really funny. Like, it's actually really funny. For people listening, I think you can make the best of whatever you've got.
Use a separate microphone and earbuds. But the main tip is having a microphone is better than nothing because, you know, how many people come on and don't even have a separate mic, they just talking to the computer. The other thing I would say is earbuds, so you can separate the input and the output because that is the worst kind of annoyance, I find.
Thomas: Absolutely. And it also reduces echoes, having headphones or earbuds is critical. This actually really illustrates a good point, you don't care which microphone that Joanna is using, you care that what she has to say is useful and helpful, right? She's useful and helpful every week, and so you keep listening. That really is the most important thing.
Yes, a different microphone, less room noise or whatever might help a little bit, but if you're not useful and helpful, it doesn't help at all.
You have to thrill the audience. That's the first most important thing, both as a host and as a guest. So if you can convince somebody that you've got the information or the story that will really thrill their audience, they may put up with you not having a good microphone. But have something, don't talk into your laptop. Your laptop microphone is really bad.
Joanna: Exactly. The other thing that I've sometimes found is that people will be hesitant about sharing aspects of their book. Obviously, if you're talking about a novel, you don't want to do any spoilers, but I always have the attitude—
You have to give as much away as possible in order to give value. And then if people are interested, they will go buy the book, right?
Thomas: Yeah, there's this view that if you blog your book ahead of time, people won't want to buy the book. And that's like saying, oh, if you release the story of the movie as a book first, people won't want to go watch the movie because they already know how it ends. And you're like, that's crazy.
The people in line at midnight for the movie are the people who already read the book for the movie. I was at the midnight showing for Lord of the Rings, not because I wanted to know how the movie ended, but because I knew how the movie ended and I wanted to be there for the movie.
So yes, giving people a sample, the experience of reading something on a screen or listening to something on a podcast and then reading it in a paper book is very different. Brandon Sanderson's first Kickstarter campaign, the one that raised $6 million or $7 million, was for a book everyone had already read. It was a 10th anniversary edition for $250.
No one was backing that Kickstarter campaign to find out how The Way of Kings ended. They were backing it because they already own The Way of Kings, they bought the cheap paperback, it was split in the middle several times because they'd read it two or three times, and the idea of having a nice leatherback copy was appealing. And yes, I'm willing to spend $250 for a nice copy of a book I already own. So if you thrill people with your story, they'll want to buy it in multiple formats.
Joanna: For sure. I think we could talk forever, but we're out of time.
Where can people find you, Author Media, and your podcasts, and everything you do online? Thomas: So you can search in your podcast app, the one you're using right now, for Novel Marketing, and then the Novel Marketing Podcast will come up.
Then if you want to listen to my podcast, Christian Publishing Show, just do a search for Christian Publishing Show. You can also find them at NovelMarketing.com and ChristianPublishingShow.com.
Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Thomas. That was great.
Thomas: Thanks for having me.
The post Novel Marketing And Christian Publishing With Thomas Umstattd Jr. first appeared on The Creative Penn.
Memoir can be one of the most challenging forms to write, but it can also be the most rewarding. Marion Roach Smith talks about facing your fears, as well as giving practical tips on structuring and writing your memoir.
In the intro, Amazon's category changes [KDP Help; Kindlepreneur; Publisher Rocket]; Book description generation with AI; Thoughts on New Zealand and how the river forks; AI is about to turn book publishing upside down [Publishers Weekly]; Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
Plus, Japan and copyright for AI training; Microsoft rolls out Designer to Teams; Google Docs text generation with Bard [Ethan Mollick]; Photoshop and generative fill [NY Times]; Drug discovery with AI [BBC; Alpha Fold]; Amazon generative search job listing [Venture Beat]; ChatGPT official app; My webinars on using AI.
Today's show is sponsored byDraft2Digital, where you can get free ebook formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Get your free Author Marketing Guide atdraft2digital.com/penn
Marion Roach Smith is an author, memoir coach and teacher of memoir writing. She has online courses on writing memoir and hosts the Qwerty Podcast about memoir. Her books include The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- Discovering what to shape your memoir around
- The writing process of memoir
- Deciding on the structure of your memoir
- The importance of the title to convey your book's message
- Fears faced when writing memoir and how to overcome them
- How to know when your memoir is finished
- Traditional vs. indie for publishing your memoir
You can find Marion at MarionRoach.com
Transcript of Interview with Marion RoachJoanna: Marion Roach Smith is an author, memoir coach and teacher of memoir writing. She has online courses on writing memoir and hosts the Qwerty Podcast about memoir. Her books include The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life. So welcome back to the show, Marion.
Marion: It's a joy to be here, particularly to talk about your fabulous memoir. So I just want to get that in real fast.
Joanna: Thank you so much. You were last on the show, and we were talking about memoir, in July 2020. A lot has changed since then. So for those who don't know you—
Tell us a bit more about you and your writing background, and why you are so passionate about memoir as a genre.
Marion: Well, I've learned that —
Memoir is the single greatest portal to self-discovery— and I've learned that in my own career. I was a young New York Times employee when my mother got sick with a disease that no one understood, it's now understood to be Alzheimer's disease, and I wrote about it extensively.
After that, in the 40 years of my career since then, I've written a lot of pieces of memoir, all of which allow me to explore things that I didn't actually understand when I sat down to write about them.
And I do understand them a bit better now. I genuinely now believe, having worked with people for almost 30 years on their memoir writing, that everybody benefits from it.
So I, in COVID, have had the great opportunity to meet a lot more people because a lot more people decided to write books, op eds, essays, long-form essays, and even just blog posts in COVID, and do a lot of exploration.
What I've witnessed has been really informative. So I think this introspection, this global introspection that we were plunged into, has resulted in a lot of good copy.
Yes, it's been tragic. Absolutely. But your book is an example of the time taken after the plunge to see what we really think. I think that that is the best up-to-date I can give you, is that there's good memoir out there, and there's lots of it.
I'm teaching a lot of it. I did record all of my classes during COVID so people could have them on demand. That's probably my news. But mostly my news is that I think that people have spent time thinking, and I'm deeply grateful for it.
Joanna: Yes, I did want to ask you about the pandemic. I mean, I wrote Pilgrimage in the pandemic. It did feel like that chance to pause.
And also, for me, it's always this idea of memento mori, remember you will die. Is that a common thing with memoir? Not just with the pandemic, but in general, is it sort of confronting our mortality is why we almost want to write these things? I mean, with you, you mentioned with your mum, I mean, that was a mortality moment facing Alzheimer’s.
Is it fear of death or thoughts about death that makes a lot of people write?Marion: Well, as you know, there's nothing like a deadline, Joanna, and we all need them. I do best, literally, when the thing is due in two hours. I can whip it out better than if you give me two weeks.
So what COVID brought very clear to all of us is that we're all on a deadline. I think that whether it was conscious or unconscious, the memento mori idea is positively motivating. I need to get this out.
And that's what I saw was an astonishing amount of input worldwide from people. I did hear from people all over the world, and this is one of the few things we've shared is the global recognition that we're all on a deadline.
Joanna: I'll tell you one of the things that I have heard from people and that I felt myself is, well, but what does it matter?
When we sit down to write these things, will anyone care? You know, there's all this stuff going on in the world, should I write this? How do we get over that sense?
Marion: We share our humanity when we write memoir because this is not autobiography. This is not the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday version of your life, which really, very few people should have to be exposed to.
I don't want to read your date book. I want you to do the curation from your life, to show me your transcendent change, just the way you do in Pilgrimage, in your beautiful new memoir.
You show us what's at stake in the beginning, that you're discontent, that you've got a real issue that you would like to walk through.
We get to see that transcendent change as you generously pluck for us, from your total experience, just those scenes that we need to see, and to witness transcendent change. We're not reading your book because of what you did — albeit three remarkable pilgrimages. We're reading your book for what you did with it.
That's what the humanity piece of memoir does so beautifully. It allows us to witness your transcendent change. Always a memoir writer should keep this in mind.
We are reading your book for our own feeding, our own ideas of transcendent change. Your book gives us the sense that we can change, that we can evolve, that we can have a portal, walk through it, and come out with a new consideration of life. So people do care, written well like yours is, we change reading it.
Joanna: You talk about that transcendent change, and this is definitely something that I was struggling with the shape of the book, in terms of I had loads of material and I didn't know what it was going to be.
So I had the notes from my walks, I thought maybe it was some travelogues, or some guide books, and then I had these essays about my travels. I thought this sort of bubbling up from the bottom up is what I was thinking, that somehow it would turn into something. But as you say around the change, I didn't know that it might even be a memoir until I realized my own personal change from the beginning to the end of the process.
Jo Frances Penn with PilgrimageSo can you give us some more examples of what that transcendent change might be? I mean, transcendent change seems life-changing or something massive, but it might be smaller things, too.
What are some things that people might find in their own lives to shape a memoir around?Marion: It's a great question, because it doesn't have to be a bummer, it doesn't have to be misery based, and it doesn't have to be huge.
It can be an absolutely huge story set in a war where you have some effect on that, but more often than not, it's the small stuff of life that changes us.
The recognition that I am going too fast, and that if I don't learn to meditate, if I don't learn to bring a little zen here, I am going to be that person who is trying every day to demand from others what they simply cannot give to me. So that small change.
If you've ever witnessed a type A person trying to learn to meditate, it's torturous, right? Because what do they do? They buy all the meditation apps, and where do they listen to them? In their car while they're driving. It's like, no, that's not going to work. And it makes for an amusing, but also universal, peace.
So you can learn to love a dog. You can learn to love a garden, that it came with a house that you just bought. I always say to people —
If you write from one of your areas of expertise at a time, you will never run out of things to write. You will have a writing life if you say to yourself, what do I know after what I've been through with the caregiving of my mother? What do I know after raising twelve dogs? What do I know after going on three pilgrimages? What do I know after living in this world with a sick child?
Those are each separate pieces. They're either blog posts, essays, op eds, long form essays, or books.
People can write 8-10 book-length memoirs in this lifetime if they write from one area of their expertise at a time, and stop writing that autobiography that begins with their great-great grandfather and ends with what they had for lunch today. That is a book you're never going to finish because there's always lunch tomorrow, and no one's ever going to read.
So everything is memoir if you look at it from one area of your expertise at a time. How did you learn to accept your illness? How did you learn to love that dog that your sister insists you must care for while she goes off in the army and fights? But you know you don't want that dog, and we know that your sister knows that you need that dog more than you need anything. Small stuff, areas of expertise, you will never run out of things to write.
Joanna: I love that. And yet, this is also the problem with me. I had like 100,000 words, and the final book is I think less than 30,000. I mean, it's crazy.
There was a heck of a lot of writing that did not go in this book, and may never go anywhere. So is that how it works for most people? Or what are the pieces that will go into this? Is it just a case of sitting down and writing it end to end, and I just did it wrong? How do people come at a memoir?
Marion: You did it absolutely right because you did curate so that the book moves. As soon as a reader knows something, they don't need to be told it again.
In an alcoholism memoir, we don't need 19 scenes in act one that show us that you have a drinking problem. Once you've established that with the reader, we now want to know what the drinking problem's effects are.
Do you make bad decisions? If you make bad decisions, do they include people you hang out with? Like you can take it a few more steps, but I just don't need to see 19 scenes of you in different bars. And you think ,oh no, but they're different bars. No, the message is the same to the reader, “I have a drinking problem.” Now we need to see what choices you make after that, and then we need to get out of act one because now we want to know if you can sober up.
So you did beautifully curating, simply stating for us in your act one what the issue is, what the problem is. You use this beautiful German word, which I'll probably mispronounce, but fernweh, the longing for far-off places. How do you pronounce that, by the way, Joanna?
Joanna: Yes, I mean, almost. Fernweh.
Marion: Fernweh. So you've got that combined with this collective grief that we've got, this global grief, and you stated definitively that you couldn't control the pandemic, but you could walk out the door with your backpack.
That was a very good selection amid probably other things that are going on your in your life, which you said, well, we don't need all of those. So you made this curated attempt. So you did do this perfectly. 100,000 words makes perfect sense to me.
I frequently say to people when I'm teaching memoir writing, first you have to pack a trunk, the kind of trunk you might take to camp for two months. Then we're going to turn that trunk into an overnight bag, but I have to see the trunk to be able to select which sweaters are going to go with you and which are not.
Mostly people write big and then we sculpt it down after that.I call it the vomit draft, that first draft, that 100,000-word behemoth.
And you know, you should treat it like a vomit draft. I mean, it's going to be stinky, and it's going to have everything in it that you threw up on this one topic. Then we get it down to the overnight bag. And you did that exactly right. I didn't feel there was repetition. I felt as soon as I knew something you moved on. And that's exactly your assignment as a memoir writer.
Joanna: It's so interesting, though, because, I mean, this comes down to the editing process versus the writing process.
That introduction and the epilogue, they're the last things that I really wrote, or I rewrote, and rewrote, and rewrote, until I did have a clear opening and closing to the arc of the character, which was me.
But coming back to how other people can write their memoir, I mean, you've been giving us questions.
So is it a case of just starting? I mean, you mentioned essays and things.
How do people get started with a memoir?Should people start writing little essays or little journal pieces on things they're thinking about? Or is it that they almost give themselves questions around various aspects? Or, for example, with your mother, is it journaling while someone is going through suffering and then looking at that later? How are people writing that main meat of what turns into the trunk?
Marion: Well, those are a couple of great questions that allow me to really reflect on what we're doing here.
So first of all, your comment about how you wrote the intro and epilogue last, that is some of the best advice you can give to memoir writers. If you write your introduction first, you're going to be forced to write the book to that. And you don't even know what you know, until you write that big 100,000 word vomit draft.
You think you're writing a book about mercy, and suddenly you're writing a book that's all about the particulate matter that goes into mercy. That's a very different thing. So you want to wait till you've written a first draft to ever write your introduction and your epilogue. I just wanted to say that you did that exactly right.
In terms of starting out, in terms of are you going for the snippets that you have in your journal, or are you answering big questions, I would say that —
Memoir is always based on a question. Can I sober up? Can I live in this world the way it is? Can I completely and absolutely love this child who is so ill and who is going to require my time in a massive way? How am I going to navigate with love and care through this experience?
So, frequently it begins with a question. Sometimes, however, it begins with keeping a journal on something.
You know, you just got a garden journal, or a knitting journal, or a journal of a caregiving experience, and you find that you really are quite interested in the process of your own change. So you go back and you look at those journal entries, and maybe you do start with a personal essay.
I genuinely believe that testing your material on the public is a great idea. Op-eds, opinion pieces that appear in the newspaper, are great ways to attract the attention of an editor or an agent. They're also great ways to hone your argument, and every piece of memoir is an argument.
What I mean by that, I don't mean argumentative. I mean, it is a state for the record, stating for the record what I know after what I've been through, what you're willing to share with someone.
So, frequently a piece will start with a recognition. “I think that dogs do things for people that people can't do for themselves.” Oh, what an interesting place to write from. Or that closure is a myth, or that grief is a process that must be gone through slowly in order to go through it. If you rush it, you're going to stay in it forever. I think I know that.
So you can start with a question, you can start with a conclusion, you can start short with an op ed or an essay, you can call from your journals, but you have the ability to enter this process anywhere along the line.
A small piece is a perfect place to start, as long as you don't start with that intro or epilogue, because that will confine your work and curtail your discovery, and there's lots of discovery of memoir.
Joanna: Yes, absolutely. And it's interesting, you mentioned testing ideas there, and I started my second podcast, Books and Travel, in 2019 just before the pandemic.
It gave me a chance to do solo episodes around reflecting on various travels. They were essentially sort of mini-essays about various places I've traveled and the effects of those travels.
So I had originally thought that—talking about titles—the original title was Untethered, and it was about finding a home after traveling around the world.
Then I wrote and did the solo episodes, and it just didn't hang together. This idea of how it hangs together, the structure of a memoir, I mean, Pilgrimage is both a journey, a sort of A to B journey, the moving across the world, but it's also an emotional journey. There are other memoirs that are these sorts of essays within a theme.
What are your thoughts on trying to decide what the structure of a memoir should be and finding models in that way?Then we'll come back to titles.
Marion: So the structure of a memoir should always be taking an idea from here to there.
From when you could not do something to when you could. From when you did not know something to when you did. From when you had to shed something to when you shed it, and how life got better. Everyone takes on too much, just go from here to there.
So that's your basic structure, and those are your bookends. From when I didn't know something to when I did.
So what you want to do is to consider how would I best portray my here to there via my argument. Would it work to do it in shards? Little, tiny, half-a-page-each pieces. They're not essays, they're really like patches. And because I'm having a very disjointed experience with this problem, those might work. In other words, that might support the argument. These are just little ideas that I have about this very big problem I have. So that structure might really support the argument.
Essays sometimes support the argument best, a series of essays that still run from here to there. From what's at stake, Act One, to what I tried, Act Two, to what worked, Act Three, is the way I think of the three acts.
The essay structure can work very well because they are self-contained. They allow the reader to sort of pop a lozenge in their mouth and let it melt and then pop another one in. That sometimes works for some arguments.
But in your case, and going from this, ‘what's at stake' all the way through, works beautifully with the narrative, the way you did it, combining the Pilgrimage workbook with it, giving us a sense that we're learning along the way, including the references that you do.
It's very well annotated, as it should be, because you're backing it up with a lot of material about the places you've been.
Structure should be something that furthers the argument. What best furthers the argument? So, you know, little shards to essays to narrative length chapters that work, included with a workbook, it makes sense the way you structured it.
As to the title, I get why you started with Untethered, but you worked to Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways.
This tells us, the reader, the potential buyer, that there is going to be this exploration of pilgrimage, that there are lessons that are learned, that you did this alone, that you're a woman, and that there's an ancient aspect to it. The delivery on this title is excellent.
The title itself does a great job of pulling the reader in. There's something there for everyone.
So I think that you did a terrific job of moving from untethered, which you present in Act One as your problem, right? You are untethered. We get it, you needed to do something in this pilgrimage. Nobody goes on a pilgrimage lightly, I don't think. So the untethered gets in there, but it just isn't stated in the title.
Joanna: Let's talk more about titles because it was really hard. I mean, originally it was Untethered: Travels in Search of a Home, which included a lot more about, for example, my mum taking us to Africa and moving to Australia and New Zealand, and none of that made it into the final book.
I mean, like you said, it actually does start with being untethered and finding a home by the end. So the whole thing is already there.
I've been writing 15 years now so I did think about keywords when I was doing my title. This is obviously difficult, especially if people are writing a memoir, it's a very emotional topic.
[If you need help choosing keywords for your title and metadata, check out Publisher Rocket.]
What are your recommendations around deciding on a title and combining the keywords with the emotional side of things?Marion: I love that you brought up keywords because we are selling a product.
And people get so emotional, they say, “Oh, my publisher is treating it like a like a widget.” Well, yeah, they are because they want to sell it. So we need to have some recognition of that.
When we're choosing our title, it's best to think about not being pretentious, and not being too literary, and not trying to communicate too much over the heads of the person who's in the bookstore or online.
And instead, think about what are the reader is looking for. Not that you want to just always cater to your reader, but you want to consider your reader. This title allows us to know what the promise of the book is, which is deeply important.
I remember in my first book, I was 26 years old, I was with, at the time, the greatest editor in New York. I was so lucky. I actually fought with her to put a ridiculous title on my first book. I wanted a quote from Emily Dickinson because I loved Emily Dickinson, and I wanted to call the book The Hour of Lead. Now, let's just be honest, that is terrible idea. What is that about, and you know, with some really esoteric subtitle because I wanted to be taken seriously. Well, that's not my publisher's problem. That's my problem, right?
So don't try to solve your problems and become, quote, “legit” with the title. Instead, what does the book cover? What does the book do? What is the promise in the subtitle of the return on investment for the reader if we read this?
I'm going to learn the lessons you learned solo walking three ancient ways. I'm also going to get this great exploration of what pilgrimage really is.
And I must tell you, I found myself deeply considering the idea of pilgrimage, even from my own armchair, and the transcendent change that happened. So I think that the title needs to be considered, but you absolutely don't go over the heads of your reader.
Joanna: It is super difficult. So talking about one of the emotional sides of the process is fear.
I mean, I had so much fear in this process, mainly fear of judgment, which I always struggle with, about what people might think of me because of what I've written. There are some mental health issues in the book.
I guess I was just scared of what people would think of me and some things that I haven't shared on this show, even though I podcasted throughout the last few years. So that's my big fear — fear of judgment.
What kinds of fears do people face when writing memoir? What are your tips for overcoming them?Marion: Well, memoir has consequences.
The consequences may be as simple as that you did not include your sister. And depending on your sister, she might not take that well. But if the story covers some period of time, and it's about a transcendent change that isn't, in fact, part of your story with her, then she doesn't need to be in the book gratuitously.
So one of the first consequences is limiting the scope of a story. You may leave out your husband, you may leave out your parents, you may leave out your kids. So not everybody's going to like that. That does obviously touch into judgment.
There can be consequences if you write about something that can be potentially litigious or actionable. In other words, in abuse memoir, we have lots of experience with people who change their name, change the name of the people.
I always recommend that you don't just change the names, but you find a more literary way. Give the people diagnoses, you know, maybe call the person the abuser, call your mother the complicit one, call your father the deaf who didn't hear your pleas. Think about ways to do this. And I don't give legal advice ever, but at least get the story on the page before you change your mind about writing it, and change the names to something that's a bit more literary.
But there's all this fear, right?
Fear of judgment and doubt keep a lot of people from writing. So what I always say to them is, there's so many reasons not to write. There's kids and houses and jobs and dogs that need to go to the vet. Let's take fear off the table.
And let's do that by getting involved with maybe one, or a small group of people, who are invested in your success. In other words, in a writing group, with a writing coach, with a developmental editor, with a one-on-one person, so that you can just not tell anybody else that you're doing it, not tell the family that you're doing it, get the job done, and let's see what you've got.
Then when you're going to take it to market, there will be fear of judgment. You were very transparent here. You talked about your failed first marriage, you talked about your mental health, you didn't tell us everything, but we don't need everything.
And what you did instead of us judging you, was you allowed us to be with you. You allowed the kind of transparency that makes us feel that we're sitting together next to each other having a talk, as opposed to you preaching to us which I cannot tolerate, or being really dogmatic, which I cannot tolerate in a narrator.
So the fear, we should try to take it off the table by through several devices. Certainly changing the names if you need to do that. Certainly writing to only a very small audience that accepts and is invested in your success. And then the fear of publication and the fear of rejection is going to be there, you are, after all, taking something to the market.
Here's the deal, you need to bring the best possible writing to this because this is a book, and it will be judged by its writing. So if you bring the best possible writing, you tell the truth, you make a product that you can live with and standby, you're doing what writers do every day, which is contributing to a conversation that we all need to have. So maybe you can raise your sights knowing that you're doing this good thing and contributing to some major conversation and it'll blow past some of that fear.
Joanna: Yes, because I guess there's the fear of writing, itself. Even when it's just you on your own, and the people who have deep trauma to get through, there is fear of just bringing that even to the page, versus the fear of putting it out in the world when other people will see it and potentially read it. Although perhaps not as many people read these things as we would kind of like, as well.
Marion: Well, the deep trauma thing is a very good point. I'm glad you brought that up. Because what are we asking a memoir writer to do when we ask her to go and write about a past trauma? Are we asking her to reanimate it? Are we asking her to relive it? Are we asking her to stand coolly back from it and have a look from some distance? And every memoir writer will answer that question differently. I've asked every memoir writer that I've interviewed on my podcast that question, and they all have different answers for it.
I believe my own answer to that question is I'm not asking you to relive it. If it is a trauma, you probably should have some kind of counseling while you're writing it because any number of things could come up.
What we're looking for you to do, is to tell us the truth and to show us the transcendent change. So right in there is a key to how to get this done. You get to choose how the story goes from here, and that is not something that maybe you got to choose before if you are the victim of some trauma. Maybe it's been told to you, maybe it's been labeled in a certain way. Now you get to get your hands on your own story. I hope that the invitation of that allows people to enter it.
I'm not saying you get to make up an ending, but you do now get to choose when this thing is over. That's a very powerful thing.
I've noticed it with a lot of MeToo memoir that I've handled is that people get their voice back. One of the things that's taken when someone violates the territory of your body is your voice. So to get your voice back, I have been happily reduced to tears, constantly, over the last five, six years, editing MeToo memoir, watching people get their voices back. So my invitation to everyone is —
Use your voice. You'll be astonished at what it'll do for your life.Joanna: It is a very powerful process to write this and understand — like you mentioned, at the beginning, it's a portal to self-discovery.
But one of the big questions is really when is a memoir finished, in terms of when is the book finished?
I felt I understood when it was, it was when I returned from my Camino de Santiago and I realized that I'd come home, and it was like I've been through the character arc. But it was only once I'd been through the character arc that I realized it, and then I could write the memoir. So is that the feeling that everybody gets?
How do you know when the book is finished?Marion: I think there's a variety of feelings that people get.
And some people, you know, when I wrote my first book, there used to be these things called safe deposit boxes that you had at banks where you kept your valuables locked up. And I used to go down, this is true, to the bank every day with my pages and put them in the safe deposit box. Less, you know, my apartment buildings should burn down. But it was the day that I got to carry them all home when I was finished.
I'll never forget walking up Columbus Avenue in Manhattan, carrying my, whatever it was, first draft, 325 pages, and holding it to my heart and knowing that I had something. Nothing in this earth has ever quite come close to that first feeling.
But when is a memoir finished? Well, a memoir is finished when you've proved your argument. And this is a really important thing to remember, many, many, many memoirs will be finished 15 years ago, in terms of the chronology of your own life. It'll be done when you did experience that transcendent change and you can show us the proof of that.
Yours, you wrote right on the heels of an experience, almost writing it in real-time. But it's still done when you've proved your argument. It's still done when you've discovered what you've discovered about home. You're still done. So you can move on to your next book. So it's done when you've proved your argument.
Joanna: I was just imagining you walking along the street thinking, oh, my goodness, don't get mugged or fall over I drop it, or I mean, that just seems crazy now!
Like everyone — backup your work in multiple places, email it to yourself. That's terrifying.
But yes, in terms of just the size, because that book that you mentioned, that's a lot bigger. I did notice with mine, I mean, I'm quite happy with the length, but there was a point where I thought this should be longer, like this should have more in it.
Is there a length that people should be aiming for in terms of word count?Marion: So it used to be that the rule was don't even think of handing something into an American publisher anything under 75,000 words. Happily, that's no longer the case. There are still old-time editors who like to have the heft of a book, but what I've seen, especially in this generation of younger writers, is much shorter copy. I think it's the Twitter influence. I think it's a lot of this social media influence.
I think that the people who write miniatures in America, we have people like Lydia Davis, and people like Abigail Thomas, who have written books that have very short, sometimes half a page is a chapter. So there's the exploration of that that's really warranted. So I encourage people not to set a word count in their own minds and hearts. That doesn't mean that you're not going to run into an agent or an editor along the way who says it's too short.
I don't feel that your book was too short, I felt that your book was digestible and it happened right in the timeframe it should happen, and it was the right length. But you really, really, really want to, again, prove your argument and see what form fits that argument best. It might be shards, might be short chapters, it might be long narrative chapters. But I worry less about word count these days than I used to.
Joanna: Well, you've mentioned editors and publishers a number of times. And I mean, I'm an independent author, so I was always going to go the indie route for this.
I know memoir writers who have traditionally published and who have chosen to go indie because of the control aspect of such a personal project.
What are the pros and cons of choosing a particular publishing direction for a memoir?Marion: I'm so glad you brought that up, because yes, of course, you've always been indie, and I've always so admired that about you. You do a great job with it.
I think this is the greatest time in the history of writing for writers because there are choices. There's independent publishing, which we no longer call self-publishing, thank goodness. It is independent publishing, meaning you have total control.
You can design the cover, you can make typeface decisions. I mean, I've seen brilliant typeface things these days, you know, in typography, but also how the layout appears on the page. Including a recipe, or including a poem, or including a picture, you have so much more control over what the book looks like. You also have control over how the book is distributed and where it's distributed. I think for those people who are entrepreneurial, this is the absolute way to go.
This hybrid publishing, which is a mash-up between the two, where you put some money into it, and you also get the benefit of the distributor of the publisher. We have a bunch of them now. Well, we have more than a bunch, we have so many of them proliferating in the United States.
Then there's traditional publishing. In the US, that means only the Big Four, which they're referred to, that everybody knows. There are advantages and disadvantages. You have to keep in mind that with traditional publishing, the liability is entirely on the publisher, so they want their money's worth.
If they gave you an advance, if they're going to incur the entire cost, they're also going to extract the most amount of money per book until you ever see any money, if you do, in royalties.
In hybrid, you get royalties faster. And an indie, you're in control of the money. So depending on what kind of person you are, I think that you've got options. The only thing is I always say to people is do not think because you're going with quote, “traditional publishing,” that you're going to get a big advertising and tour budget. Those days are long over for almost 99% of the writers.
You're still going to have to do the promo yourself, meaning writing those letters out to magazine publishers, or online places that you can publish. You're going to do all that work yourself, you are. So if you're going to do it anyway, why not indie publishing? So I think this is a great choice. It depends on the person.
Joanna: I mean, if people do want a traditional publisher, I mean, the sort of famous one in my head is Wild by Cheryl Strayed, which sold a gazillion, or I guess, Eat, Pray, Love was another famous one that got made into a movie. So people think, oh, if I just get a publisher then that's what will happen to me. I mean—
Are traditional publishers even looking for memoir now?It just seems, unless you're famous already, that it's difficult in that way.
Marion: Yeah, I still see lots of book sales. I've got 70-something books on my shelf of people that have worked with me who have published, and they've published in these various realms, indie, hybrid, and traditional. So I know it's possible.
I just had on the podcast, somebody who actually lives in the UK, it was her first memoir, and she sold it, and she sold it big. She sold to a big publisher and got a big, wonderful advertising campaign for her book.
So I think I'm pretty sure that it's going to be the value of the writing, and that's what's going to sell it. I do not see any diminution of memoir sales in this country. I'm getting approached by publishers every day with huge lists of memoir to have on my podcast. I think that you've got to study the market and understand the territory, but then you've got to do the best writing you can possibly do to sell a book.
Joanna: Maybe it's also about the topic or the question, as you've mentioned, underlying the story. So I remember it was back in the 90s, it was ‘mis-mem,' the misery memoir, where there was a lot of like abused children type of memoirs. Then like you've mentioned MeToo, and that, I guess we're still in that moment.
There are also different themes that I guess come up when people tackle that in a memoir.
Obviously, we're not going to write something to market with a memoir, but perhaps that also has an impact on whether publishers are interested.Marion: I think so. I mean, it's the job of a writer to understand what's coming in the ether. That's just true, right?
Writers react, that's our job. And that is the first piece of information I give to writers. Writers react. You are supposed to be reacting, in essays, op eds, long form essays and books, reacting to what's going on in the world, what's in the ether.
So the question was at the beginning of COVID, are we going to want to read books coming out of COVID? Are we going to want to read a COVID diary of someone else? Or are we going to leave this whole thing behind?
Well, interestingly, yesterday, and this kind of timestamps this, but let's just say recently then, the Pulitzer Prizes for fiction went out in the United States and a book that is absolutely a bummer, but is a wonderful bummer, their retelling of a Dickens story, won the Pulitzer Prize. It is positively and absolutely not a book that you don't have to work through. It isn't just joyous. So that's interesting to me.
In other words, the public's appetite for a bit of misery is still very rich and very accepting even though we've all been through three years of misery. We didn't just emerge saying, I only want to read happy stuff, that's it, no more bummer. Well, so we have to respond, right? Writers respond, and writers react.
So think about what it is that we might be interested in at the time that you can get this book published, to some degree, to some degree. That doesn't mean you write entirely to the market, but what will be talking about? What will we be thinking about? That, I think, is your greatest consideration in terms of the outside market.
Then you've got to remember, and I say this to the writers I work with every day —
You better love the work because there is no controlling the market. Things happen in the world. I have so many friends who had books coming out in the spring of 2020 whose books never saw the light of day because COVID stopped the distribution of books. That does happen. So try to love the work every day, because you don't know what the market will bear.
Joanna: Absolutely. And I guess circling right back to the beginning, it's well worth it to write a memoir. I mean, it's crazy. This has taken me longer than any of my other books, and yet it's shorter, and yet it feels like it was three years or more of my life. And yet, it's so worth it.
It doesn't really matter about the sales, it's a brilliant project to do anyway.Marion: I think it is.
I think that the great writers of the world, the Virginia Woolf, Zora Neale Thurston, Emily Dickinson, whoever you love, James Baldwin, Charles Dickens, they're the Amazon. But we are the tributaries, we are contributing, we are definitely trickling into the conversation.
So write. Contribute to the conversation. We share our humanity in memoir, and it is absolutely life-affirming, and I believe in it with all of my heart.
Joanna: Brilliant.
Where can people find you, your books and courses, and your podcast online?Marion: How kind of you to ask. I'm at MarionRoach.com. That's where the Qwerty Podcast is housed. I run the transcripts of it. It's also everywhere podcasts are available.
The books and everything else are available at MarionRoach.com. It's just a joy to talk to you, Joanna. I'm just delighted. And the book is wonderful, so I hope you sell a billion copies of it.
Joanna: Well, thanks so much for your time, Marion. That was great.
Marion: You're welcome. Be well. Talk to you again soon.
The post Writing Your Transcendent Change: Memoir With Marion Roach Smith first appeared on The Creative Penn.
What are the crucial linchpin moments in your novel and how can you keep a reader turning the pages? John Fox gives fiction writing tips in this interview.
In the intro, writing and publishing across multiple genres [Ask ALLi]; Pilgrimage and solo walking [Women Who Walk]; My live webinars on using AI tools as an author; Cowriting with ChatGPT: AI-Powered Storytelling by J. Thorn.
Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with Scrivener, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 25% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna
John Matthew Fox is an award-winning short story writer, a developmental editor, writing teacher and blogger. His latest book is The Linchpin Writer: Crafting Your Novel's Key Moments.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- Writing a book based on a blog — what needs to change?
- Linchpin moments and why they are important
- How to write emotionally moving stories
- The difference between scenes and chapters
- How to write wonder
- Writing better endings
- Using AI tools when writing fiction and editing
You can find John at TheJohnFox.com or on TikTok @johnmatthewfox. John has courses for writers here.
Transcript of Interview with John Matthew FoxJoanna: John Matthew Fox is an award-winning short story writer, a developmental editor, writing teacher and blogger. His latest book is The Linchpin Writer: Crafting Your Novel's Key Moments. So welcome back to the show, John.
John: Thank you, so wonderful to be back.
Joanna: Yes, indeed. Just in case people don't know you—
Tell us a bit more about how you got into writing and publishing.John: I started my blog way back in the day, 2006, just to join the literary conversation. And over time, it evolved from a blog on literary news and commentary into more of a craft blog, just helping writers with their novels, short stories, children's books, any sort of fictional storyline.
Now, I've been editing for quite a while for authors, doing developmental edits. I offer courses, both on-demand courses and live courses. I'm starting up a publishing branch, which is self-publishing assistance, I like to call it. Not traditional publishing, not vanity publishing, but something in between.
Joanna: There's certainly a call for all of that. Your courses are great. I think you've got some fantastic information on your site.
Is this the first nonfiction book you've done?John: Yes, it is. I had the short story collection, and then the nonfiction book just came out in October, so it's relatively new. I've been getting lots of feedback from writers who have been enjoying it and using it to write their books and revise their books. Those are lovely emails to get.
I guess I'd been helping writers in one way or another for a whole decade through emails, and articles, and developmental editing and whatnot. So I'm like, well, why don't I try to put down some of the things that are most helpful for writers. Why don't I try to put that down on the page?
I have a good amount of stories about the writing life as well, so I thought I'd include those so it's not just cut and dry, boring, do this and do this craft information, one, two, three. I think it has been helpful for writers. It's been a joy to interact with them on another level.
I do think nonfiction, in general, is a lot easier for me to write than fiction is. There's so much imagination that has to go into fiction, and so much plotting and characterization. Nonfiction, man, I just sat down and wrote it. It just spilled out so easily, so it made me enjoy the process of writing quickly.
Joanna: We'll get into the book in a minute. I know a lot of people listening, they might also have years’ worth of blog posts and articles, and you have a lot of really well-crafted articles on your site.
How did you turn some of those into a book? Or did you start from scratch? You know, because a while back there was this sort of ‘from blog to book, just output your WordPress files into a book format.' And it's like, no, that's not how you do it.
Did you use elements of your blog articles and rewrite them? Or did you start the book from scratch? What was that process?John: I definitely started from scratch because if you know anything about how to write for online media, it is just vastly different than writing a book.
You definitely can't take that blog post and just throw it in a chapter and be like, alright, I'm good. It doesn't work like that at all.
So what I did is I took topics that had been really important to my readers, certain topics that I'd written a post on, and then I just wrote on that topic, but completely from scratch.
I don't think I used a single sentence from the blog inside the book. It's all new stuff.Then there was some stuff that wouldn't work as blog posts, like, I don't know, like writing about wonder or writing about emotion, like that's stuff that people aren't going to search for. It's really difficult to write a blog post about that, but they work really well inside of a book.
That's probably because not a lot of authors talk about them or not a lot of authors like study those topics. So the book gave me a lot more latitude to go into areas that I hadn't been able to cover with the blog.
Joanna: I think that's good advice. I do think starting from scratch is a good idea.
Okay, let's get into the book. So the book is called The Linchpin Writer.
What are these linchpin moments, and why are they important?John: So linchpin refers to these little pins that go inside the hub of a wheel so it doesn't fall off the axle, right? That's the original term, and then what it's become is a term that refers to like really key people or objects or ideas inside of an organization.
I think a linchpin moment inside of a book is a make-or-break moment where the reader might stop reading, or if the reader doesn't like that particular scene, it's going to ruin the book for them.
So they are the most key places in your novel where you absolutely have to get them right. So as writers, we should probably concentrate on those places more and make sure we really nail them.
It's stuff like when you became a writer, it's a death scene for a character, it's stuff like romance, or a particularly climactic romantic scene. It's describing a character for the first time, or ending a chapter, or ending the whole book.
All of these are really critical moments whereas the writer, you've just got to nail it, you got to nail them to make your reader happy.
Joanna: Well, first up, you mentioned a linchpin moment for an author, and I think that's really interesting.
In the book, you say, “when they became a writer,” and I find this a very interesting phrase, “became a writer,” because to me, these days, there are a lot of different routes to market. I mean, someone might be a blogger for a decade, that makes them a writer, but that doesn't necessarily make them an author. Someone might have millions of Kindle page reads, or millions of views on Wattpad, but no physical book, and these days, obviously no traditional publisher.
What do you mean by a linchpin moment for the author? And how might people measure it?John: I don't think the medium is very important, right? I mean, if they just have millions of eBook reads, or millions of reads online, that doesn't matter to me as opposed to a print book. I feel like if you're writing, you're a writer. And if people are reading your writing, in whatever form, then you're an author. You know, I don't think it's super, super complex.
I think, ultimately, writers feel nervous about calling themselves writers because there's this crisis of confidence inside yourself.
And I'd say just, hey, summon up the inner confidence, like you are writing, you're putting words down on a page, they will find readers if they already haven't. So just call yourself a writer and feel confident about that.
Joanna: Easier said than done!
And actually, I do think this is important, because I've been talking to a lot of people, and after the pandemic, including myself, we haven't necessarily been writing a lot because of various reasons, mental health reasons or burnout.
There are a lot of people, myself included, who make a good deal of money from backlist books. So actually, you can still be an author and not be an active writer. So actually, I think these definitions become important when your self image is based on these things.
John: You mentioned people taking breaks or not writing for a time, and I actually think that's key to being a writer. I think a healthy writer takes breaks.
I mean, after my first book, I didn't write any fiction for a while. I think I probably, I don't know, I was burned out, or the book didn't launch with the fanfare I expected it to. I had to recalibrate my expectations for being a writer and come up with a new project to work on. To me, that's not an aberration.
You're not failing as a writer if you're not writing for a time period. Life happens. Parents get sick, children are born, like, it's fine to take a break from writing. I think writers end up having ideas and coming back to writing at some point, that's what makes you a writer. I think people shouldn't feel ashamed just because they're not writing for a period of time. Like, that's part of the writing process.
Joanna: I like that because one of the most common questions I get is, “Oh, so you say you're a full-time author, but how much time do you actually spend writing?” As if that's the thing that will make a difference to being a full-time author.
Let's move into the book, so someone is getting into their novel. You talk there about some of the linchpin moments, now for me, with fiction, the opening of that first chapter, really is a linchpin moment.
What are some tips for getting the linchpins of the beginning right?John: You're absolutely right. That first chapter is one of the biggest linchpin moments because, you know, you don't write it right, and suddenly the readers sets your book aside and never returns to it.
So in the book, I talk about four different steps that you want to get in that first chapter. One of them is characterization.
I think you have to deliver a character which is set apart from other characters, who seems unique, who is doing something a little bit out of the norm, something strange, something that attracts us to a character and makes us think, yeah, yeah, I'd like to go on a journey with them.
Another thing I think that's really important for the first chapter is your energy or your tone.
This comes through just the type of sentences you write, what you're talking about, whether there's a chase going on, whether there's conflict on the first page. Like, what is the feeling that the reader gets from reading this first chapter? Is it grim and dark? Is it ebullient and exciting? You know, you're setting expectations for the rest of the book.
I feel in many ways that —
The first chapter is a promise to the reader. You're telling them, “Look, this is what this book is going to be like. Here's the style of writing. Here's the character you're going to fall in love with, or hate.” And you want to fulfill that promise for the rest of the book.
I think a third thing would be some sort of mystery. It doesn't have to be a classic mystery, like who done it, like who killed the butler. Just any sort of question that the reader has about, oh, what happened in this character's past? Or what is going to happen in the near future? Something that makes the reader wonder about the storyline.
Then I'd say the fourth one would be emotional resonance. What does the reader feel like in this chapter?
If your first chapter doesn't make them feel something, whether sorrow or happiness or jealousy, like any emotion that you can evoke from the reader. If you get at least one strong emotion from the reader in your first chapter, there's like such a higher chance that they are going to continue reading for the rest of the book.
Joanna: Yes, that beginning really has to signal the genre, and I have to know that, yeah, that's a book I want to read. I guess it should also tie in with the cover.
I feel like I sample a lot of books based on the cover and the description, but then a lot of the times I start the sample, and I'm like, oh, that's not what I expected. So I guess that's a hint for people around book marketing, is these things have to work together.
It's not just a great cover. It's the cover, and the blurb and the first chapter. Right?John: Yes, if I had to choose between an incredibly beautiful cover that sort of misled readers to what the book was about, and like a pretty plain basic cover that actually matched what the content of the book was, I'd choose the plainer cover, right?
Because the cover is also a promise to the reader about the genre, about what's going to happen in the story, about the characters if you're showing a character on the cover. Like all of that stuff is setting the reader up so that when they get to your book, they're prepared to read it.
Joanna: It's interesting, you mentioned emotional resonance there. This is all tough to get in the first chapter, right? So I mean, you can't really put everything in one chapter. But I was thinking about Colleen Hoover, I mean, her books really are so popular because she is so emotional.
What are your tips for writing these emotionally moving stories?Because not everyone wants to write gritty romance.
John: When I talk about emotions, I'm talking about like any emotion, like making the reader feel anything, from anger, to sadness. I mean, it definitely doesn't have to be romance. So I think there's some common mistakes that writers make when they're trying to make the reader feel something.
The most common mistake is just showing a character feeling that emotion. Like the best way to get your reader to cry is not to show a character crying, that actually doesn't transfer. Like we can see a character crying and be like, oh, like, okay. But if you show them in a situation where we think we would feel sad, then we're going to feel that sadness, whether the character is crying or not.
For instance, I was just reading The Great Passion by James Runcie about Bach. There's this poor kid who goes to a music school, he's starved, he's beaten, he's bullied at this all boys school, and I like really felt bad for this kid. Like he's just going through the worst experience at this boarding school. Now, I didn't need him to like cower in his bed every night and cry for me to feel that emotion as a reader. I felt that emotion because there was a situation that was terrible for him, and I pitied him.
So I think it's important to focus on situations in your book that are sad or happy or jealousy-inducing, or whatever, rather than just characters feeling that emotion.
Joanna: I mean, is curiosity an emotion? That's what I want in a first chapter. I want to feel curious about an open question.
John: I think my point about mystery probably fits best with the idea of curiosity. You know, there's something that you don't know and you're interested to learn more. Absolutely, that's key for a first chapter.
Joanna: Then I was also just thinking about James Patterson. Obviously, he's famous for writing incredibly short chapters. You think about James Patterson's books, reading one of his chapters is a masterclass. In fact, he has a Masterclass on it. But he manages to get all of that in one chapter.
John: I think he does a great job with starting chapters and ending chapters. You know, both of those are some linchpin moments in your book. How do you get the reader in? Do you start in the middle of a scene? And then where do you end to make the reader turn to the next chapter?
I think having short chapters makes readers feel smart because they feel like they're reading faster. It also gives these really bite-sized narrative bits that always make you want to turn to the next one because it's very low obligation. Because sometimes if you read a long chapter, and you're like, well, I don't want to start a whole other giant chapter, but if it's a really short chapter, you're like, well, just one more, and just one more, and just one more. You know, it's tough to stop reading.
Joanna: And actually, this is a good tip that you mentioned there, splitting the scene between chapters.
I think we write in scenes as fiction authors, but when we structure a book, we structure in chapters, and they're not the same thing.
Maybe you could explain the difference between a scene and a chapter, and how we could maybe create a linchpin moment by splitting a chapter.John: Well, I think writers often think that the end of a chapter is the end of a scene.
And the best place to end a chapter is at the beginning of a scene, when characters arrive, or when some new information happens. Because then if you split it right there, the readers like, oh, well, I want to turn to the next chapter to continue this situation. It's very non-instinctual to end a chapter that way, but I think it's the best way to end a chapter to keep the reader reading.
As far as the difference between scenes and chapters, it depends on how long your chapters are. You might just have one scene or a couple scenes per chapter. I mean, you could structure in so many different ways, like a chapter could be in a singular place, but there's like three different scenes within that place.
I think what's key for scenes is making sure there's a reason why you're breaking that scene. A really good reason to break the scene is because you want to skip the boring parts.
You know, sometimes my authors that I edit for, they'll have a scene and it sort of feels like the end of a scene, and then they'll do like connective tissue. They'll write, like, “and then this person went there,” or, “then they did this,” or something like that.
And I'm like, no, you should cut that whole section, put a little asterisk in there, and just start once they're already in the new place or once they're already in the next part of the action.
So what scenes allow you to do is to cut all the boring connective tissue and just focus on the absolutely best parts of your story.
Joanna: I guess, just to be basic about it as well —
A scene is a character in a setting, performing some kind of action for a reason. That's just a basic description. Is that how you describe it?
John: Yes, I would describe it that way. Sorry, I feel like I always jump to something I haven't heard before. I feel like I'm often giving advice to authors who, I don't know, maybe have a little bit more experience under their belt.
So yeah, that's a great basic definition of a scene. In a particular place, doing something, there's some conflict happening, there's some tension happening. There's some dramatic action.
Sometimes, like a character just sitting by themselves thinking really isn't a scene, right? Something needs to happen, they need to do something, they have to talk to someone, there has to be conflict with someone, otherwise the scene doesn't really work.
Joanna: Absolutely. So let's get to some of the other things. You mentioned wonder. There is a chapter on wonder.
What do you mean by wonder? And what are some examples and ways to write it?John: Man, sometimes when I'm reading a book, I just have this experience of laying the book down and sitting back and being like wide-open-mouthed and being like, woah, like, this author is so good. Usually they've described something that's just incredibly beautiful, or like a crazy scenario with bioluminescent waters that just like wows me.
I love those moments as a reader where I'm just flabbergasted about how cool this book is right now. So I wanted to think about, as writers, how can we create those moments?
And I think it's really important to give like otherworldly senses. If you're writing something like sci fi, or fantasy, or even literary, I think it's easier to get to those otherworldly moments because you're writing such fantastical stuff. But I think it's equally possible in realism or historical or romance, because the job there is to take everyday life and make it feel strange or wondrous to the reader.
Like how can you take something which the reader experiences every single day and make them feel it in a new or different way? I think that's really the job of the writer is to take these experiences and make the reader feel something and experience something that they haven't before.
Joanna: So how do we do that? Is that through sensory detail or through metaphor?
John: I think you can do with metaphor if you are describing extremely different things. I read this author once you described a flock of birds rising up from a tree all at once, like a net. And I've always loved that metaphor. And every time I see birds rising from a tree, I see her metaphor. Now I see this very thin mesh net rising up and falling down.
I also think you can do it through description. I feel like description is one of the main ways to create wonder. If you describe something really well, especially if it's something strange—like I'm thinking of Cormac McCarthy describes all these men riding through the desert between the US and Mexico, and there's like little lightning bolts, little frictions of electricity that sort of are running all over their clothing. So it's completely dark, but there's these little blue flickers all over their bodies and the bodies of the horses. And I just imagined that and thought, wow, that's really crazy, and really beautiful. Yeah, that made me feel wonder.
Joanna: That's interesting. I mean, the examples you've given are more literary fiction, really. Are you expecting that in genre fiction?
John: That's a good question. I guess it depends on the author. I do think you can feel wonder at a romantic relationship. You can feel wonder at like the beauty that their love is finally coming together, something like that.
I think if you're writing like a historical novel, or something that's more commercially based, describing like a bustling street with all the wares and people selling things, like that sort of level of description I think can make the reader be like, woah, like, that's a really cool place. Like, I'm glad I'm reading about this book because it's transporting me to a new location and giving me all this fun information about this.
So any type of world-building you're doing or anything where you're introducing the reader to something that's strange to them, I think can create wonder. I think that applies for commercial books as well.
Joanna: Me too. It's interesting because a lot of my book research is around trying to make these moments, because that's what I look for in books, and trying to kind of think what would my readers really love reading about. So I try and find cool settings or cool things that I can write about that make people go, wow, that's really awesome.
So I think, just on that though, some people find that difficult. I was going to say about book research, you don't have to make it up from your brain, you can go on to YouTube. Like I wrote a scene in my thriller End of Days, which was about this Appalachian snake-handling church. I watched YouTube videos and took loads of notes, but I mean, it's just like a ‘wow' situation.
I'd see what these people were doing and I'd just try and capture that in writing. So I guess that would be a tip. You don't have to make these moments of wonder up, you can go looking for input into your brain.
John: That's exactly right. Yeah. I mean, snake handling is real, like it happens. And yeah, to watch that actually happen on the page, I think would definitely inspire a sense of wonder.
Joanna: And then we talked about endings of the chapter, but the ending for the whole book is also really important. I mean, personally, I really need a resolution in my ending. Some people like cliffhangers at the end of a book, I do not.
How can we write better endings?John: Well, whenever I have an author who tries a cliffhanger at the end of their book, they almost always do it a little wrong.
So let me give a little piece of advice on that. You can include a cliffhanger at the end of the book, but it has to be like a sort of minor storyline cliffhanger, if that makes sense. Like you have to end the book with some sort of resolution to the main problem or conflict that's been happening for the whole book. Right? You can't leave a cliffhanger about that.
So as long as you end the book and satisfy the reader on all the levels, all the mysteries that they were wondering about, all the major plot points, as long as you satisfy all those things, then I think it is possible to give like a tiny cliffhanger at the end of the book.
The trouble is when people try to make like some major part of your story, not resolve it, and leave it as a cliffhanger. No, no, no. No one's going to read the next book because they feel so unsatisfied with this book.
So usually when I recommend cliffhangers, it's not at the end of the book. Usually they are for the ends of chapters. I feel like that's the proper place for cliffhangers.
I feel like your sole goal at the end of the book is not necessarily to set the reader up for the next book, but really to make sure that this book resolves well and leaves them with a good emotional feeling, and that way they will read the next book.
Joanna: And also —
Be surprising, but not too surprising. I always use the example of Stephen King's Under the Dome. I'm not going to give any spoilers, but I read all the way through that book, and then when the ending happened, I was like, that was the wrong ending. I don't know if you read that one, but I love Stephen King.
John: No, I haven't. I haven't read it. But I like what you said about surprising. I tell people it needs to feel both inevitable and surprising. Like when readers get there, they have to think, of course, it couldn't have been any other way, but also, they couldn't have predicted it. And those are two very contradictory things.
If you're setting the reader up for the ending, then the danger is they're going to guess it, and it's not going to be surprising. But if it's almost too surprising, the reader is going to feel like that doesn't feel real, I don't believe your story, you just did that to mess with the reader. So it's really holding both of those things in your hands when you're writing an ending, both surprising and inevitable.
Joanna: Well, it's interesting because it is hard to write a novel, and many of us use various tools to help us when we write.
There are plenty of books, obviously yours, I've got a book on How to Write a Novel, and then there are books that can help us with plotting and emotion and blah, blah, blah. And now, as we record this in April 2023, we have tools like ChatGPT, which is AI-powered.
Now, you came on the show in 2021, and we talked about NFT books. You have definitely kept up with the tech and you've actually got some blog posts on how novelists can use ChatGPT.
Tell us how you think novelists, and authors in general, can use these tools and your thoughts on using AI with fiction.John: I think all writers are underestimating the way that AI is going to radically change writing.
I think very, very few writers have really grappled with the enormous sea change which is going to happen. And not like enormous sea change which is going to happen in five or 10 years, the enormous sea change which is going to happen in like six months or a year.
I'm talking about people writing a book in a week with the assistance of AI. I'm talking about basically all copy editors and proofreaders being put out of work because AI is going to do your copy editing and proofreading. I mean, those are the big-level things, but there are tons of small things as well. Everything from if you're having trouble describing a certain place, like ask AI to describe that place for you.
Maybe you don't like how they write it so you rewrite it in your own voice, but then you can also get AI to write something in your own voice.
Describe how you want it to be written. Like write it more colloquially, or in a breezy tone, or write it in a gritty 1920s style noir tone. You can get AI to mimic all these styles of writing as well.
I mean, I just wrote a post on 26 ways that writers can use AI, and it's everything from writing the summary of your book, to writing your query letter, to describing things in your book, to developing your characters. I mean, it's like Google on crazy steroids is the best way to do research, that's for sure.
The one thing I've discovered it can't do is give developmental advice, though. It's great at copy editing, it's not so great at line editing. But when I asked it to developmental editing on a chapter in a novel, a short story or a children's book, it gave really bad advice.
Joanna: Well, that's at the moment, I mean, we are recording this in 2023. So if you're listening in the future, that may not be true anymore because it's about the context window of how much you can feed it. In GPT-4, it's a lot bigger.
So you could pretty much do a novella now with GPT-4, which is in the paid version, because the input is a lot bigger so it has a lot more it can review. But of course, a full-length novel, you can't put 100,000 words into the chat box for it to think about.
[If you're interested in this, check out ChatGPT 32K, and also Anthropic's Claude with 100K. Both of these are expensive at the time of publishing this, but costs will keep coming down.]
John: No. I mean, I've been using ChatGPT-4 and it wouldn't even allow me to put 16,000 words in there, and I have the paid version. So I don't know.
Joanna: The playground, the API.
John: But the problem isn't putting enough in there, the problem is when I ask it to critique point of view, it can never say like, “You're doing great with point of view. Point of view is great.” Like it's mimicking what a developmental editor does, so it says, “Oh, you're in limited third. Here's what you can do to change it.” Sometimes that's not the problem, right?
So it's a little weak on problems of judgment and taste. While it's really good at following the rules, which is why it's amazing at copy editing.
But you're absolutely right. Like this is the first iteration, like, we're only at the beginning, what's going to happen in a year? In three years? In five years? Like, the exponential growth is going to be pretty crazy. It's going to get smarter much faster than we think.
Joanna: Personally, I feel like I'm excited, and I feel like it's an augmentation of what I can do. I can move much faster with the help of GPT-4.
One of the cool things I've been doing, I was just checking to see if you've put it in, I don't think you have, is that I can actually interview a character who is a certain thing that I don't know much about.
More on my thoughts in this episode on the ai-assisted artisan authorSo for example, I've got an urban explorer in my next novel, and I said, “You are Maxine, who is this urban explorer in Edinburgh. Using your knowledge of platforms and chat rooms and things, respond to my questions as if you are Maxine.” And this was so good, because you know, we struggle to write the dialogue in the voice of a character we might not know that well.
In the past, authors have written character bios and stuff like that, but this is actually almost channeling the voice of someone and it's coming back with words that I wouldn't have used myself because I didn't know them. And I'd have to do a heck of a lot of research to find the right words. So this kind of channeling of characters is really interesting.
John: Oh, that's brilliant.
Joanna: It's really fun. It's really fun as well.
John: I mean, the ability to talk with your character, that's so cool.
Joanna: It is very cool.
John: You might not even use what they actually say, but it's giving you their language, it's giving you their perspective, like it makes it much easier for you to write them.
Joanna: Exactly. And then I've been using it for loads of things, like coming up with different monsters, combining different monsters. I'm writing a monster book at the moment, it's called Catacomb, it's a standalone horror book.
And coming up with, what are the different monsters in these different cultures? And how could we combine them together? And what could be the names? Like names are really good as well. What are the names that mean this or that or the other?
John: Yeah, yeah, I've played around with world-building aspects as well. You know, Tolkien took decades to create all the languages and everything of Middle Earth, and I can say, “Hey, create a language that mixes Sumerian, Turkish and Pawnee Native American dialects. Like create the alphabet, create the 100 most common words.” Then get DALL-E or Midjourney to draw you a map of your fictional land.
Like, it's so easy to have all this stuff generated now. And you're like, oh, wow, now I have a language, and a culture, and land, the species, the languages, the cultures. You can just ask ChatGPT to make all this stuff up, or to give you five or ten examples, and then you pick the one you really like.
Joanna: Well, it's interesting, because you mentioned Midjourney, and I'm doing a lot of generative art as well. And there's a new word that people are using, which is synthography. I don't know if you've seen this. You know, like photography is pictures that you generate with the device and synthography is pictures that you're generating with AI. And I was thinking about this with how writing might change using these tools.
Given that you are an editor and you see people's work, how do you expect books to change with AI?John: I think revision might become easier. Like, say you have a character and I tell them, like, you know what, this character's dialogue is really flat on the page. Okay.
And they can go back to ChatGPT and be like, “Okay, well, here's all the examples of this character's dialogue in my novel. Take an excerpt from every time this character speaks and tweak it in one way.” Make it a little bit more slangy, or make her sound like she has an accent.
You can just give the character some dialogue, and then you can just take all those revised bits of dialogue and put them back into your novel. And suddenly, you've done a revision which could take a really, really long time and be tough to figure out, and it's done pretty quickly.
Joanna: Yes, I mean, even incorporating the ideas like asking for twists. Like I've been saying, “Okay, so this is how I think this plot is going to go. Give me ten other ways that the characters could behave in this situation that would be plot twists.”
And it's coming up with things that I haven't thought of that are better ideas. Then I'm like, okay, cool, I'm going to use that idea instead of what was originally my idea, and that makes the book a lot more twisty, in this particular example.
I think having a co-pilot for ideas is also really powerful.John: Yeah, yeah. I suggest something pretty similar to that, and I couch it in terms of like writer's block. Say you're stuck in the middle of your novel and you don't know what to do.
Well, you could have ChatGPT summarize your novel up to that point or you can write a summary and then say, “Yeah, give me five different ways the story could develop from here. Make sure to add a plot twist and a surprise,” and something like that. Like you can direct like, alright, these are the type of narrative developments that I'm looking for, give me suggestions. Yeah, a couple of them are dodgy, but there's almost always at least a few that you're like, oooooh, that sounds interesting.
Joanna: Okay, well, we're almost out of time. But you also had another blog post where you said, “When will AI start writing novels?”
And you've said, they will write novels, not great novels, but readable novels. I kind of disagree. I think that the quality of what we're even seeing now with us driving is great. But again, you're an editor—
Will you know if someone gives you a fully generated novel, or even one partially driven by a human?Do you think you'll know?
John: That's a great question. I don't think I will know. I don't know. And remember, we're right at the very beginning of this technology. I mean, think about in two years or three years, I really do think that AI will be able to put together an entire novel. What I mean by maybe not a great book is I mean, you know, there are some books that, geez, and I guess I am thinking of literary fiction, where it's like the density of language and everything is quite astonishing.
I feel like what ChatGPT will be best at, and other AI programs will be best at, is looking at ones that are based on models, looking at books based on models, whether like plot models, or characterization models, and hitting all those plot points. I think that very soon we're going to see entire books written by AI.
I think humans will act more as editors. They'll go through and be like, “Okay, look, AI. That one chapter didn't work for whatever reason. Rewrite it.”
And so you're giving feedback, you're almost acting like a beta reader for the AI program, being like, redo this part, redo this part, let's change the ending to this. But in general, the AI will be doing most of the heavy lifting of the sentence writing and the plot development and everything, and you're just guiding it.
Joanna: It is interesting because I think people will choose the way they'll create depending on how they're feeling. So I definitely think you'll do different things depending on what you want to achieve. And as humans, we still want to create. I think that's the basic thing.
So people listening, you'll still write how you want to write. We're not saying that this is the way it has to be, but it's another way to create.
In the same way that I love taking pictures with my iPhone, I'm not a painter, and I love using Midjourney. I don't draw. I think as a writer, I still hand write in my journal, I still type on my laptop, I still dictate, and I use AI. So you can use all these things to create what you want. I guess that's how I see it.
John: Yeah, I think a lot of writers aren't going to use AI because they get a lot of pleasure out of doing it themselves. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I mean, I get a lot of pleasure out of coming up with something out of my own brain rather than having AI do it for me.
That doesn't mean you can't still use AI as a great tool to help you with revision or to help you with idea generation, and then you actually do the writing of the sentences.
You just got to navigate those sorts of relationships for yourself.
What I don't get is writers who are like, oh, like, I hate all AI. It's like, well, do you use Microsoft Word? Like, there's like spelling and grammar correction on there already. Like you've already been working as a hybrid author with technology for the last 20 or 30 years. This is just better software, so I don't think you should hate it. You should use it to whatever extent that you want to use it.
Joanna: Fantastic.
Where can people find you, and your books, and your courses, and these blog posts online?John: So you can Google Bookfox or the URL of my website is TheJohnFox.com. The name of my book is The Linchpin Writer which you can find on Amazon. All my courses are on my website. Then of course, I'm on socials. I'm mainly on TikTok, but also on Instagram and YouTube as well.
Joanna: Well, thanks so much for your time, John. That was great.
John: It was a pleasure talking with you, as always.
The post Crafting Your Novel’s Key Moments With John Matthew Fox first appeared on The Creative Penn.
How can we write about places that inspire us in an authentic way even when they are not our own country? Tony Park gives his tips for writing setting, and also outlines how his publishing experience has changed over the last two decades.
In the intro, KDP printing costs are changing from 20 June; plus, join me for AI for Writers online webinars.
This podcast is sponsored byKobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to theKobo Writing Life podcastfor interviews with successful indie authors.
Tony Park is the author of 20 thriller novels set in Africa, as well as the co-writer of several biographies.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- How Tony's publishing experience has changed over two decades
- Splitting territories when licensing your rights and tips for rights reversion
- Tips for writing setting and how it incorporates into all aspects of your book
- Research and avoiding stereotypes
- Writing outside of your own country and personal experience
- Balancing writing a compelling story with advocating for a cause (without lecturing)
You can find Tony at TonyPark.net
Transcript of Interview with Tony ParkJoanna: Tony Park is the author of 20 thriller novels set in Africa, as well as the co-writer of several biographies. So welcome, Tony.
Tony: Oh, Joanna, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. I really appreciate it. I'm a huge fan.
Joanna: Thank you so much. First off—
Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing.Tony: Look, it might sound a bit cliche, but it's absolutely true, that the only thing I ever wanted to do in life, from the time I was a little boy growing up in Sydney, in Australia, was to write a book.
My family weren't particularly well off, and my mum was working two jobs and used to leave us in the library after school. I just thought, wouldn't it be cool if this could be your job to write books. Of course, as we all know, listening to this podcast, it's not like you can wake up one day and say, okay, I'm going to write a book, and publish it, and away we go.
I loved writing as a kid. I wasn't any good at English or maths at school, and so I pinned my hopes on writing. After I left school, I got a job working in local newspapers, and that cemented my love of writing. Then I just tried and tried and tried. I had a number of false starts over the years as my life progressed. I'd wake up early in the morning before work and try and start a novel. And I'd try after work, and I couldn't really focus.
This went on for years and years. Too long, I think I waited too long to get serious about it. I got married, and got a mortgage, and real life intruded and everything.
The two biggest challenges I faced were time, right, that everybody faces, you know. But a place was what eluded me, and I know we're going to talk about that a bit later on.
All I knew is I wanted to write a novel. I hadn't even really thought long enough to think where I was going to set it or when I was going to set it. When I was about 32, 33, I went to my wife and I said, “I've got an idea. How about I leave work and you support us for six months, and I'll try and write a book?”
Joanna: Nice one!
Tony: And to my utter astonishment, she said, “Yes, go for it,” because I think she was sick of me, you know, going on about how much I wanted to write. And so I did.
I left work, and I wrote a book. I bought a couple of books about how to write books. I wrote this book like textbook style, like I plotted it meticulously, I had character profiles, and a timeline, and chapter breakdown and everything.
The place I picked for it was wrong because I made a fundamental error.
I was writing a book that I think I wanted other people to read, rather than something I was passionate about. So I set it in the Australian Outback. And there was one tiny problem, I've never actually been to The Outback.
Joanna: Even though you're Australian.
Tony: Even though I'm Australian. I'm a city boy, you know, I was living in the suburbs.
I took six months, I wrote a book, and I failed spectacularly. I didn't enjoy the process of plotting. I didn't know that you could not plot, that you could just make it up as you went along because I had no formal training. And I found it very mechanical and very boring.
[More on discovery writing here!]
Around about that time, my wife and I went on a holiday to Africa, which was supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime trip. Instead, we got hooked on Africa and went back the following year, and back the following year.
On my third trip to Africa, we had a long trip, about four months around Southern Africa, and I had another go at writing a book because I once more had time. I'd had to go back to work, but I once more had time. And here I was in a place that I had kind of started to get to know, and was amazing and inspirational and fascinating, and there was so much going on here.
I thought, I could write a book set in Africa. And instead of plotting it, I'll just make it up as I go along. So it was set on a fictitious tour around Africa, as my wife and I were travelling around Southern Africa. Each day as we moved camp, I just wrote another few pages and made it up as we went along, and just copied the landscapes that we were in into the text.
I sent it to a publisher, and the first publisher I sent it to, Pan Macmillan Australia, published it. And my publisher said you can write the books in Africa. And here I am 20 years later writing the books in Africa.
Joanna: I love the story. There's so much to learn from that. So 20 years later, and we're going to come back to Africa and the setting thing, but you said 20 years later, you're still writing and publishing. But of course, things have changed in 20 years. One of the things I picked up from your website is that you also run Ingwe Publishing.
Tell us how your publishing experience has changed over the last two decades?Because things have really changed and you have too, obviously.
Tony: It's massive the amount of change. Yeah, my life has changed, it has moved on.
Technology has changed. Everything has moved on. And I think like, you know, when we talk about those days, it seems like a long time ago, is that people would pin their hopes on getting a commercial publishing deal. And I did, and I was absolutely thrilled and over the moon when I got it.
A funny little side story, I was in the Australian Army Reserve for 34 years. I was actually in Afghanistan. I was deployed there in 2002 when I got the email from my publisher saying, “Hey, good news. Open this email, we're going to give you a publishing contract.” And I couldn't even have a beer to celebrate because we were on the dry out there.
So I was really thrilled to get a publishing deal. I thought that was the be all and end all. And over the years, I had some limited success, it started to grow.
My primary market was my home market in Australia, even though these books are all set in Africa. It is a thing, it's almost like a genre of its own, African fiction. I had some success getting commercial publishing deals in the UK, and later in the US, but the books didn't do particularly well.
I had gone from this high to thinking, “Oh, no, why aren't I selling many books there?” And that really started to affect me quite badly. Then things changed dramatically, you know, over the last few years, and I learned so much. Not least of all from your podcasts and hearing from other authors who were independently publishing.
Of course, 20 years ago, when I was first publishing, there was quite a bit of stigma attached to self-publishing. You know, it was called vanity publishing, because you had to be very vain, and you had to be very rich to do it. You'd have to print thousands of copies of books, and then pay a distributor to try and get them in the shop. So it was this hugely involved, expensive process.
I have found in more recent years, that what made more sense for me was to kind of do a civil sort of deal with my UK publishers and the distributors and say, “Look, guys, it's not really working for both of us,” because it wasn't.
I was losing so much, because I had an agent at the time, I was losing so much on all of the in-between cuts that come out of a royalty. It wasn't worth it. I was down to about 30 pence per book, I think I was making, you know.
So I set up Ingwe Publishing, Ingwe means leopard, and took back my rights. I was then able to start exploring print on demand and eBook self-publishing, and indie publishing.
And I found that for my sales in the UK and US, which I'm very proud of, but you know, I'm not selling hundreds of thousands, or millions of books, I make a really, really good second income out of it.
I think having your own imprint and taking control of those matters, not just from a business side of things, but from a personal side of things, has been really rewarding and fulfilling, far more so than chasing those kinds of overseas publishing deals and trying to define yourself by those sorts of deals. Which they quite often aren't really in the interest of an author.
Joanna: So you're, I guess, what we now call a hybrid author, in that you still license to traditional publishing in Australia?
Tony: And South Africa. Australia, New Zealand and South Africa are my commercial markets, or traditional markets. Yeah.
Joanna: Okay, that's really interesting. And so just for people listening, that's English language that you have split into territory.
So you're not signing contracts for World English, you're splitting the territories.Tony: Absolutely. And I made so many mistakes when I started out.
Like I was so pathetically grateful to my publisher, and I still am, you know, but I had to look at this now as a business. I wouldn't say I didn't read my contracts, I didn't really understand them that well, maybe.
But yeah, I was willy-nilly signing over English language rights worldwide. I then had to go back to my publisher and say, “Look, I'm going to start doing my own thing. So I need you to please give me back all those worldwide rights.”
The same thing went for audio. I've been really interested to hear you talk about changes in the audiobook world. I have a good relationship with an audiobook publisher, with Bolinda, in Australia. And I now keep my audio rights to myself, and I do with them what I want to.
I think too many authors that chase that commercial publishing deal are so grateful, that they think I'll do whatever you want to, you know, I will give you anything that you possibly ask for. And of course, that doesn't make sense.
So yeah, I'm a hybrid, I guess is the best way to talk about it. I really enjoy doing my own thing. Of course, it is such an amazing, constantly changing environment that we live and work in. It puts a lot of onus on authors to stay on top of that, but I enjoy it. I enjoy kind of the buzz of the business side of it.
Joanna: I think that's a good tip as well. I mean, you do have to enjoy the business side. I think you can learn how to enjoy it. I mean, like you said, you didn't start out that way, you just learned it over time. That's important
Just a question on the process of getting your rights back. So there'll be people listening who have signed those contracts, maybe a while back, or even more recently, and now they're like, oh, dear, I shouldn't have signed that.
Give us a few tips on the process of getting rights back.Tony: Yeah, well, I think if you have a good relationship with your publisher that certainly helps. And I was lucky, I always had a good friendly relationship. I never at any stage got the feeling that they were ever trying to rip me off or pull one over on me or anything like that.
It was more a matter of saying to them, “Look, I signed over all my English language rights. You had a go at getting me some foreign translations deals or foreign publishing deals, maybe a UK deal because I was based in Australia, and it didn't work. I would like to take those back.” I didn't have any resistance for that.
Certainly, when there's no money involved, there's no resistance. In the case of one of my earlier books, Pan Macmillan Australia got me a publishing deal with Pan Macmillan UK. That book was in print for a year or two and didn't do particularly well. They didn't want any more of the books. So then when I said, “Can I have all my English language rights back?” they didn't really have a leg to stand on. They had tried to get me a UK deal, it didn't work.
So I had to do it in writing, it's quite an involved process. I've got to do it in writing, and then the rights people within the publishing house have to do an amendment and send that back to you to sign.
Where there's money involved, I'm also looking at taking back some rights from the UK from a publisher that still distributes into South Africa, which is one of the deals I did in the past. And if I want those rights back for South Africa, I'll have to pay for those. They will calculate that based on my annual sales and any advances that are still outstanding.
In my personal experience, if there's not really any serious money involved in it, publishers are very reasonable on this kind of thing.
Joanna: Yes, it's interesting, isn't it, that paying for things. I actually recently paid out an audiobook narrator in order to get the rights back for an audiobook. I mean, it's funny, because when we sign these things originally, we have a certain thing in mind, then years later, we're like, okay, I've changed my mind. That's fine. So it's good to know, and people listening, you can go back and renegotiate contracts. That is part of it.
As you say, trying to be less emotional is probably the best idea. Like whose business interest is it in and try and think about it from the publisher's perspective as well.
Try to come to a business arrangement, not an emotional thing. It's good to know, or at least be interested enough, to read about copyright and how these contracts work. It's kind of fun once you once you get into it. It's really interesting.
Let's return to Africa. So hopefully people can hear from your accent that you are Australian, and obviously you mentioned it before. But your books are set in Africa, and you live between Sydney and South Africa.
So tell us a bit more about the books and how you weave in your fascination with Africa and how you write setting when you're not from this country. You set it in South Africa, obviously Africa is not a country, South Africa being the country.
What are your tips for writing these settings? And why Africa?Tony: Yeah, well, why Africa, I think because there's that great adage that says, “Write about what you know,” but I think write about what you're interested in.
And this is a continent that continues to fascinate me, you know, more than 20 years since I first visited here because it's always changing. There's so many different cultures, so many different countries. The countries that I write about within, broadly, Southern Africa, have also changed dramatically in some cases over the last 25-26 years or so.
So there's plenty of inspiration there, which is important. I'm passionate about things like the continent, wildlife, and also social issues that are going on in some of the countries that I write about, and the politics. That's my hook, I guess, and that's what I'm interested in.
When it comes to setting, it's crucial because a lot of the people who buy my books I'm sure just buy them because they're set in Africa. I know so many of my readers who will just read every Wilbur Smith book or every Rider Haggard book or they'll read everything that they can possibly find set in Africa. Perhaps they've lived it. Perhaps they're an expat who's moved to the UK or moved to Australia, and part of them misses their home country.
So there's an interest in setting. Setting becomes like a hook for someone to buy a book, so it's very important. I have come up with a few tips. I did a presentation on it recently.
The first thing I'd say about setting that I've learned is —
You have to make setting work for you. You have to give it a job. It's not just window dressing. It's not just describing a lovely location or just to anchor a character in their scene.
Setting can show us how a character is thinking or what they're feeling, and that'll be colored and enhanced by the environment around them and how they view it.
You know, say a character is up or happy, they'll revel in the rich beauty of the Savanna landscape, the wildlife, and they'll be fascinated by the heritage and the people. But if they're down or facing adversity or in danger, then you weave in things like the laden skies, the dirty streetscapes, the tatty old buildings, or that lion lurking in the long grass with the chilling golden eyes as a portent of doom. So you give your descriptions of location and setting a job, I think is something that I've learned over the years.
Then setting and place, they're more than just the physical description of the landscape. I think people can fall into that trap of waxing lyrical about what the area looks like.
But of course, it takes in things like the history of the place, the politics and culture which go to the mood of that particular place and setting. It's the people in the street, the music that's playing, the public art or graffiti, the food on the streets, or the absence of food, what people are drinking.
When it comes to people, the different cultures, fashions, languages, and backgrounds of people are crucial in the sort of books I write. Quite often, these are sources of conflict as well as kind of celebration and enrichment in the countries that I live in. Quite often, things like culture and politics are life and death matters in the background of where I write my books.
Then of course, there's the natural world. The wildlife, the birds, reptiles, the environment and the state of the environment, the problems with the natural landscape, which certainly are things that I touch on with things like poaching and environmental issues, and climate comes into it.
So the third thing I would say to people is—
When you're writing place, use all of the key elements of writing, not just description. Also use narrative and dialogue because with the narrative you can weave in a little bit of the history and the impressions of the streetscape and the country from your character's point of view. Certainly use the description, this is your excuse to exercise your skill and your flair in describing a scene, painting a picture. That's good, but also use dialogue.
I always say to people, a simple example is, rather than say it's hot or come up with some metaphor for how hot it is, just have a character say, “I'm melting.” So work in a bit of dialogue into the setting.
If I can just continue, the fourth one, I would say, I always love to tell people, “Show, don't tell.” I don't have any tattoos, Joanna, but I always tell people when I'm giving writing courses or instruction that if I was going to have tattoos I would write, ‘Show, don't tell,” on one hand, and I would write, ‘Trust the process,' on my other hand to sort of keep me motivated each day. I think show, don't tell is a good thing to keep harping on about it and to keep bringing back.
So when it comes to describing a setting, show us, let us feel it. Drop us in the middle of the bush or the marketplace —
Engage the senses, at least a couple of them at a time. I mean, let's have your character smell the street food cooking, or the musty dirty laundry smell of an elephant, because that's what an elephants smells like, like if you've left your washing too long in the hamper and it's all dead. Get that sort of thing in there.
There's some good advice that I picked up from Stephen King's book, On Writing, which is I guess if I could say, my Bible. I hope I don't offend anyone by saying that, but it's my go-to book is Stephen King's On Writing. He talks about zooming in on the little things. Don't just say the birds were singing, but give us the name of the bird and what its call is. Show us Charlie's doll in the rubble of the burned out building.
In some of my books, I pick up the most amazing things as I travel and research. I put in one book, Safari, that's set in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I had a character drinking Guinness and Coca-Cola, which is a particularly popular drink in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A few people messaged me after that saying, “Do people really drink Guinness mixed with Coca-Cola?” And they do. Stephen King says a few well-chosen details will stand for the rest.
The final thing I want to say about place is something I've learned the hard way — You've got to get it right. This is our job, you know. We have entered into a kind of contract with the reader where if they want to be taken to another place, they expect it to be done accurately and faithfully, particularly if they've lived there themselves.
If you're lucky enough to go and visit a place that you want to set your novel in, to travel as part of your job as a writer, that's great, but you have to make sure that if you've got characters that are living in that area, that the places and the experiences are relevant to them.
Just a very quick example of that. I read a crime novel not too long ago by a very big name, a world-renowned crime writer, who had obviously been to Sydney, to my hometown, and they've obviously had a very good time there because this author had a character, an Australian character, who was a policeman, a Detective Sergeant who lived in a place called Brighton, which is actually called Brighton-Le-Sands. It's not called Brighton, so that was a mistake, he kind of abbreviated that. But this detective sergeant couldn't meet the lead character because he was taking his son sailing that afternoon at a place called Rushcutters Bay.
Now Rushcutters Bay and Brighton are at two opposite ends of the city. And Brighton is on Botany Bay, it's a very good place to go sailing. So why this detective sergeant would be taking his son to Rushcutters Bay sailing in the afternoon didn't make any sense. I have yet to come across a cop that owns a yacht in Sydney.
Joanna: Maybe in Auckland.
Tony: Maybe. I've yet to come across one who probably wasn't crooked that would be able to afford membership of the Rushcutters Bay Club. So they're all these like jarring references. The descriptions were probably spot on, but it's about context, right?
It's about getting things right, and it's about context. And I would say to people, as I do whenever I'm talking about research, the same thing goes to place, is visit these places, read about them, learn about them.
The best way to research or to capture place accurately, particularly if you're not from there, and this is the situation I have found myself over the years, is talk to a local.
Spend your time finding a local, online if you have to, and just ask them a few questions about their hometown and what it's like.
So sorry, that was quite long, but that's my five basic tips.
Joanna: Good tips there, but you know, I'm going to have to challenge you. Yeah, we have to talk about the ‘elephant on the podcast,' which is, at the end of the day, you're an Australian and you're writing about Africa. You're also a white guy. And obviously, there are a lot of white Africans, but there are also a lot of other people in Africa.
One of the things in this current writing climate is a perspective on writing authentically based on your own background.Now, and also like you mentioned before, African fiction being a genre, and you mentioned Wilbur Smith, who, again, someone from the outside. So how are you addressing this? Has it come up for you?
How are you addressing it? And what are your recommendations for people?
Tony: Yeah, it sure has. And it's a really, really good question. It's very topical, very relevant as well, too.
Also it can be a tricky one because people will say, you know, you can't appropriate a particular culture or a particular race or something like that to write about if you're not from there. And yet, on the same hand, I don't want to be criticized for only having like all white guys in my books because that's not reflective of my readership over here in South Africa anymore.
The interesting thing is, there's two strands to it, publishers are certainly becoming more aware of it. So my South African publishers will do a sensitivity read these days. They're looking at sort of cultural aspects, any issues to do with race or background and those sort of things, which is good.
The other thing that I've found, from a personal point of view, my books have changed over the years in line with my experience. So my earlier novels tended to be about outsiders who found themselves in Africa, tourists or people visiting for work or something, who then got themselves in a bit of trouble because the books are thrillers, or got tangled up with poachers or something like that, because that was my experience, I was learning at the time.
As time has gone on, and I live here now most of the year, my circle of friends has grown. My readership has changed because South Africa has a really good vibe about it at the moment. Publishing is doing well and changing as socio economic standards and demographics and things changed here in South Africa. So there is a growing affluent, middle to upper class, I guess you would say, here of African people that has kind of emerged in the last 20 years or so.
They have more leisure time, more time to spend going visiting national parks, more interest in reading fiction. There's quite a boom here in African women's fiction here at the moment, which is fantastic to see. And what I'm finding is my readers here in South Africa are from the various African cultures, from the Indian culture, from the English-speaking South African culture, from the Afrikaans-speaking South African culture, and they're my friends. So I feel like a need I have to tap into those cultures and reflect them in my writing.
So I go out of my way to do my own sensitivity checks. You know, it's a really important thing to say, and it's not to be glossed over because when I have seen when I've done a bit of mentoring, and if I've seen other people talking about some of the cultures, I want to ask them, “Have you actually checked a lot of this stuff?”
It's not good enough to go online and say, I'm going to have somebody speaking a few words in an African language. This is a mistake I've made. Well, this was a mistake that was caught before publishing, but I had a book set in Zimbabwe called African Dawn, which is a bit of a sweeping saga over 50 years of Zimbabwe's tumultuous history and all the politics and conflict that have gone on in their country. And I'm lucky, I've got quite a few Zimbabwean readers.
I got a lady called Takram Woodsy who was living in Australia to check this book. And thank goodness I did because I had things like I had a character greeting another character, she was a female character greeting an older male, and she says to him ,”Kanjani,” and Kanjani is hello in Shona. It's like in Australia it would be ‘G'day' or ‘How's it' or whatever. And she said, no, no, no, no, no, you can't do that. She says, she has to say ‘Mangwanani baba,' which is ‘good morning, father' in the formal tone and with a term of respect, because it just jarred her to the core. And she says, you can't do that. And here am I waltzing around Zimbabwe saying Kanjani to everybody I meet.
You've got to have a little bit of knowledge. And the other thing, Joanna, is a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Again, it's about research and researching place.
I don't even like really do a lot of research when I'm writing. If I don't know something, like a piece of language, or even a technical thing, like how to stitch up a wound or fly a helicopter or something, I just leave it blank, and just put ‘check' in my manuscript, and then I read search retrospectively. So after I've done the first draft, I'll go out and find a person.
I've had about six people read my forthcoming book, a book called Vendetta, which is set partially in the 1980s in South Africa, when the country during the apartheid era was engaged in a war in Angola.
And I've had quite a few people read this book for accuracy and sensitivity because the best way to research is talk to people. I am 100% convinced of that after 20 years, that that is the best and most accurate way is to find a subject matter expert, or someone from that culture or community, to read and check your work, if they'll do that. I find people are very generous. It's probably more work than reading lots of books and researching online, but the human element is just crucial for me on that sensitivity side of things.
Joanna: And obviously, you love the research process, too. I mean, that obviously comes through in what you're saying. I also love the research process. So I think research and respect, respect for all of these different cultures. Of course, Africa, particularly every single African country has so many different groups as well.
You can't possibly know all these things, whoever you are, you cannot know everything. So yeah—
Respect and research. I think that those are really good tips.Tony: It's a beautiful way to put it. Yeah, I must say that's a really, really good way to put it.
Joanna: I certainly encourage, as you do as well, we encourage people to write about things outside of their own culture and experience because, like, why would we be fiction writers otherwise? It would be so boring. But yes, those are some ways to avoid trouble.
I also want to ask you, you've mentioned the wildlife, and you've said that your books include social issues, politics, the environment, and many authors want to bring attention to causes they care about, but equally, these things can turn into like a lecture. And it's like, oh, gosh, not another book bashing on about the environment when I just wanted a thriller.
How do you balance writing a compelling story and then advocating for things that you want to bring attention to?Tony: Yeah, another really, really good question. And I think there was something I read, it might have been in Stephen King's book, that the story is king. I don't know whether that was a play on words, but you got to keep the readers turning the pages.
Whether it's comes to describing a location, or history, or having to give some historical background, if you get too bogged down, the reader is going to stop turning the pages. And the same thing goes for causes as well.
I am passionate about those things that I mentioned about wildlife and some socio economic causes and politics, but I am acutely aware that within my readership, there are people on the polar opposite sides of these issues. I don't want to alienate anybody for commercial reasons, but I want to kind of be honest.
As I said, I did work as a journalist for a few years. I don't think there's an awful lot from having worked as a journo that really helps you to write fiction, but I would say the two exceptions to that are dialogue, because you kind of get taught and used to putting words in people's mouths as a journalist. You get used to capturing spoken speech in a written format.
But the other thing is balance. And when I present an issue, say rhino poaching, which is an issue that comes up in a few of my books. Rhinos are killed for their horn, and it's a big problem here in South Africa because this is, unfortunately, where the last most of the world's rhinos live here. So this is kind of Ground Zero.
There is an ongoing debate in Rhino conservation about whether or not to legalize the trade in Rhino horn. I have my personal views. I'm actually opposed to it, but many of my friends are vehemently in favor of it. And so when it comes to an issue like that, I try to weave in both sides of the debate. Again, in a respectful manner, as you say.
So I will have a character who is kind of pro-trade, pro-legalization in trading rhino horn, and I'll have one who's stridently against. I'm sure that, I hope at least, that the pro-trade people look at their character and feel more sympathy for them than they do for the other one. And the same thing comes with politics as well, too, because like I said, politics is a life and death business over here in some countries.
Joanna: For sure.
Tony: And so, I am not kind of afraid of stating things, but—
I try to approach it as I would if I was a journo: objectively, with balance, and respectfully. So you don't go into a diatribe about why this particular policy or politician is bad, but you try and show the effects that their policies have had on an individual person. Like Stephen King says, zoom in.
So if you see people obviously poorly dressed, they're starving, they're perhaps begging for food, and you see a politician driving past in a brand new Mercedes Benz, you don't have to be told there's something wrong with that scene. You show, don't tell. People reading that will nod their heads and say, yeah, that's accurate. That's pretty well how it is in some of the countries that I write about. So you fall back on the good old show, don't tell.
My editor and publisher are very good at putting little notes in the side of the margin saying, “Stop downloading, Tony. You're downloading information.”
Joanna: That's the problem when you love research, right? I want to tell you everything.
Tony: It's the classic trap, isn't it? And we've all fallen for it.
Joanna: But then I would say as a reader, like I grew up with Wilbur Smith as well, and Rider Haggard, and I actually loved that. I'm sure you've heard me talk about how I went to school in Malawi, and so sort of reading about Africa, and that's how I came to know of your books. Connecting with you is quite thrilling for me because I've seen your books for years. So that's quite kind of cool, you know. That's because of reading books set in Africa that I've done since I was a child.
Tony: Fantastic. Yeah. And I think if you look at someone like Wilbur, who is unfortunately passed away, but the books of his that I like the most were those early ones set in the 70s and 80s, when he was writing a lot about contemporary Southern Africa and the issues that were would be at the time. And I think that's what strikes a chord with people, as well, because it's a funny continent as you've been acutely aware. There's lots of problems here. There's crime, and corruption, and political mismanagement, and poverty, and health issues tend to be exponentially worse here.
The interesting thing about this continent, it comes back to the people, is that I think if there's one thing that struck me that's greater than the scale of problems that people face, and you would have no doubt scene this yourself, it's the ability of good people, more often than not at the village level or the grassroots level or the volunteer level or the park ranger level, to just come together and do the most extraordinary things. They go out of their way to get their children in education, sacrifice so much so that the next generation will be better off.
In the case of rangers in the anti-poaching area, they literally put their lives on the line to protect wildlife. That's the sort of thing that I like to capture because that's what kind of inspires me. That's what I used to like reading about in some of those other African books as well too, that kind of raw effort at the grassroots level of people to sort of do the right thing.
Joanna: The other thing, I mean, you're talking a lot about the historical aspects of Africa and South Africa, but I mean, things are obviously very different now as well, in that it has one of the biggest mobile economies, that leapfrog idea of tech where everyone's using mobile payments and mobile, not even banking, just mobile apps for money.
And we were reading this article the other day about blood delivery by drone, like the drone deliveries in to places in Africa is really exciting. And we can't do that here because different regulations and just overcrowding and things like that. And, of course, Nigeria is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.
So I feel like another issue is how people are thinking, and like you say, if they haven't visited places. How do we avoid the stereotypes? Because I feel like books written about like 1980s South Africa, for example, that's just not the reality of what South Africa is now. And any of these countries have just changed so much, and I'm sure there are still some people living in some areas where it hasn't changed.
How can people avoid writing stereotypes about place?Tony: Yeah, well, I think when it comes to travel, like if you're lucky enough to say I'm going to go on holiday to South Africa to research as well, one of the problems is you might end up cocooned.
You might end up stuck on the luxury private game reserve or something like that, and you won't see what's going on outside in the big wide world. I'm not advocating that people, you know, go out to areas where they might not feel safe or comfortable, but it does go to talking to people. That's something that I keep coming back to is that my best source of research is human beings, is talking to people.
To give you an example about not falling into stereotypes as well, too, is during lockdown, I read a book called Blood Trail. Blood Trail is like a couple of my other books about rhino poaching, but it's about a particular aspect of that struggle is that poachers, and sometimes Rangers, will enlist the help of traditional healers, sangoma, to give them talismans, or medicine, or potions, if you like, that they believe will increase their chances of surviving in the bush. Whether that is they're a Ranger or whether they're a poacher, they will buy a potion that will make them invisible or will turn them into an animal to avoid detection or to avoid being shot. And these are serious, serious beliefs.
Now, many people will just dismiss this out of hand. And to those sort of people that say, well, that's a load of nonsense, I'd say, have you never prayed? And there's a wonderful saying that there are no atheists in foxholes. People do turn to religion and other belief systems in the context of high-risk, high-reward environments. And that can be a war zone or it could be going out in the bush trying to kill a rhino and being against armed Rangers.
So the way I got around that, and the way I did my research for that book, was to have some pretty in depth conversations with some friends of mine about their belief systems. And in the course of doing that, I was able to get so much rich information about their current attitudes to politics and how the country was going, just by conversations.
I think one of the great things about being a writer, and it sort of is the same as being a journalist, is that you kind of have a license to ask the most in depth and personal questions of people. And that's the best way to avoid stereotypes because you're getting the information straight from the person's mouth and from the heart.
I was able to learn so much more about some of my friends by asking them, “Hey, do you believe in traditional medicine? And would you use it yourself and why?” And again, I found so many parallels with Western culture, and our belief systems, and superstitions and things like that. So that's how I try and avoid it. You know, it's that human contact, that human element.
Joanna: Fantastic. Well, there's so much we could talk about, but we're out of time.
Tell people where they can find you and your books online.Tony: I've got my good old website, which is www.TonyPark.net. I do sell wide, as we said, everywhere outside South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. So yeah, I'm online, on print, audio, and eBook everywhere. So TonyPark.net is my home base.
Joanna: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Tony. That was great.
Tony: Thank you so much, Joanna. I really appreciate it. And can I just say again how much I enjoy your podcast. I think we talk a lot about social media, and I love through social media that I have a direct conduit to my readers and we can have a genuine conversation with each other. And podcasts such as yours and others I've learned through your podcast are so great because now as authors we can have that same level of communication with each other and learn from each other. So thank you for everything that you do.
Joanna: Thank you.
The post Writing Novels Inspired By Place With Tony Park first appeared on The Creative Penn.
What are some of the common mental health issues that writers face? How can we use writing to help us process our problems, and turn our life into art through our books? Author and mental health therapist Toby Neal shares her thoughts and tips.
It's Mental Health Awareness Week here in the UK with a special focus on anxiety, which so many of us experience in different ways. Get 20% off The Healthy Writer, The Relaxed Author and The Successful Author Mindset on my store using discount code: HEALTH.
In the introduction, Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity by Dr Peter Attia; Menopausing by Davina McCall; Ultimate Guide to Selling Print Books Online [ALLi]; TikTok publishing? [TechCrunch]; Google rolling out generative AI, Duet for Workspace; Generative Search, Marketing Against the Grain podcast; Did we consent to our data training generative AI? [The Author Analyst]; Writing memoir & Pilgrimage.
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Toby Neal is the award-winning USA Today best-selling author of mysteries, thrillers, and romance, with over 40 titles, as well as writing memoir and travel. She's also a mental health therapist, which is what we're talking about today.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- Common mental health challenges for authors
- Tips for dealing with post-COVID anxiety
- Dealing with the overwhelm of social media
- Journaling as a tool to help process and make sense of our lives
- Writing as a way to turn life into art
- Tracking self-care
- How to find a community of like-minded people
- Working through fear of the future and how to weatherize your author business
You can find Toby at TobyNeal.net
Transcript of Interview with Toby NealJoanna: Toby Neal is the award-winning USA Today best-selling author of mysteries, thrillers and romance, with over 40 titles, as well as writing memoir and travel. She's also a mental health therapist, which is what we're talking about today. So welcome back to the show, Toby.
Toby: Thanks so much for having me again, Joanna.
Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you about this really important topic. And before we get into it, we should say, this is not medical or professional advice. Please see your medical professional for your situation.
So you've been on the show several times before, so we're just going to jump straight into the topic. As an author yourself, and someone who helps authors with mental health challenges—
What are some of the most common challenges that authors face in this area?Toby: Well, I see that most authors who are working in the field at full-time to semi full-time are struggling with isolation, a lot of times anxiety and overwhelm.
Many authors have triggered episodes of depression based on the sales of a book, rejections, etc. There are a lot of sort of cyclical challenges that we face in this creative field.
Joanna: So interesting. We're going to talk about some of those.
Let's start with anxiety because I feel like it can manifest in different ways. I love that you say cyclical there. I mean, chronic self-doubt, fear of failure, perfectionism, imposter syndrome, and it can end up in panic attacks. Lots of anxiety, really.
What are some of the things that you've seen or even experienced yourself? Any recommendations?Toby: I don't think we can tackle this topic without talking a little bit about how COVID and the isolation of the last few years have sort of exacerbated the challenges for not just authors, but everyone. And they've also exacerbated the dearth of professionals that are available to help. At least in my area of rural Oregon, you can't find a therapist, even if you are begging for one.
A lot of people left the field, and there's just been a gigantic situation with isolation. And whatever your challenge was going into COVID, it might have gotten amplified. I feel that that is something we just have to mention.
So circling back around to the issue of anxiety. Another one we see a lot now is fear of leaving your home, which is agoraphobia. And because we spent so much time in our home, getting out can become something you have to begin to overcome again. And what if you gained weight? And what if you don't like yourself right now because, you know, of that COVID 10 pounds or what have you?
All of those things get to be, like I said, amplified by the last few years. And we're not entirely out of the woods with that.
Joanna: I mean, it's interesting you mentioned fear of leaving home and agoraphobia. I feel like anxiety, and depression, and many of these words we use in mental health, people are like, “Oh, I don't feel that. It's not that bad.”
Like, certainly for me, when you say agoraphobia, I'm like, “No, of course, I don't feel that.” But equally, I had to really get back into expanding my comfort zone. That's kind of what I'm calling it. Maybe a light version.
I think maybe a lot of us have light versions of these things because we're not talking necessarily about things that need medication here. What we're talking about is things that play a part in all of our lives.
So I have to actively, and I'm someone who travels, right. It's like, oh, it would be much easier to just stay at home, but I have to push myself out there.
What are some ways that we can deal with some of these things? Whether we call it anxiety, or whether we call it stress.Toby: Stress, or just, you know, getting out of our comfort zone, what became comfortable during COVID, you know. I kind of forgot how to put makeup on and how to dress and basic things like that. My hair, it's a mile long and hasn't been styled in forever. All of those things become something that you kind of have to put your big girl panties on and deal with.
I'm going to talk a little bit about a couple of tools that I feel are really helpful and easy to access for anyone. One of them is called tapping, Emotional Freedom Technique. I use an app on my phone called The Tapping Solution. I am not an affiliate, so I'm going to always say if I'm an affiliate of something.
I am not an affiliate of The Tapping Solution, but it's got a wonderful library of these different scenarios that you might face with anxiety, from turning your day around, to ten days of gratitude, to increasing your immune system. What tapping is, is a sequential series of pulse points on your face and hand while repeating different affirmations.
So what's really nice is the people on the app have this lovely mellifluous voice and talk you through first owning the anxiety that you have, and then turning it around to an affirmation. And meanwhile, you're doing this little tapping sequence. It's very noninvasive, you can learn it in five minutes.
I can't say enough good things about it because I've seen it have actual lasting clinical benefits for clients, as well as being completely accessible to the general public. So again, The Tapping Solution and tapping, or EFT. You can look it up online, there's all kinds of YouTube videos also.
So that's one tool I want to mention to everyone. And it cannot just be anxiety, but whatever that you want to work on. Like I've often worked on, I have a sugar addiction, releasing my attachment to sugar. And really trying, when we get into other tools, for me, diet and exercise are huge in managing mental health.
So I am a clinical therapist licensed in the state of Hawaii to do therapy, and I have all those degrees and what have you, but at the core of it, I'm a person who has struggled with an abusive past growing up in an alcoholic home, overcoming a lot of trauma, and trying to heal myself. All of that led me to become a therapist, and ultimately, a writer, which was always my dream from the beginning. So that's kind of my background.
So I'm not like speaking to you from a place of “oh, I have it all figured out.”
I struggle, and I'm in the trenches right with you trying to use these tools. So I want to share the ones that have been particularly helpful. Another one I love is hypnosis.
And when I was trained in clinical hypnosis, my teacher said, “All hypnosis is basically self-hypnosis.” We basically allow our minds to open us to a suggestion, and then we engage with that suggestion. Hypnosis is a super powerful tool along with tapping.
I, for my clients, sometimes I will work with them to create a list of beliefs and affirmations that they want in their lives. Then I'll use my special hypnosis voice to use their own words to create a hypnosis recording that they can listen to over and over. And we've had lots of people see really big breakthroughs with that.
You can get your hypnosis done online. There's all kinds of things you can buy. The Calm app even has some in it. Like if you want to listen to different hypnosis for sleep, or hypnosis for getting rid of sugar or whatever. So I want to mention these because to me, tapping and hypnosis are hacks. They just like cut through the need to talk about the problem and get right to the solution. Does that make sense?
Joanna: I really love that. I've tried hypnotherapy for phobia and I've tried cognitive behavioral therapy.
Also, there are other apps, non-sleep deep relaxation, for example, yoga. I mean, the ones that you've suggested, and I think this is the overwhelming thing that I feel with mental health and probably with physical health, is you can dismiss things and roll your eyes if you think, oh, that's too woowoo or that's not going to work, but just try things out.
And if they don't work, try something else because the reality is that it all goes up and down all the time.
There is a place for medical help if that is something you need. I felt my mental health was greatly improved by going on HRT as a midlife woman, and that was one aspect of anxiety, depression, that kind of thing. [I recommend reading Menopausing by Davina McCall if you want to understand more about this.]
You can't just let it carry on. I think that's what I would say to you. Like we have to deal with this. This is our lives, isn't it?
Toby: Right. It does.
What we know about mental health issues is they can start small and then they can build.And the mind is an amazing thing. It's plastic, it's expansive, it can be incredibly resilient, and it can also be very resistant, and it has a tendency to catastrophize and always to go to the dark side.
If you look at our evolution, it's clear that fear and anxiety were there to keep us safe. Then fear of a large dog then generalizes to cows and deer and goats and all these things because your mind is trying to keep you safe. And pretty soon you're afraid of any large animal, you know.
So that's why you need to nip it in the bud when you see something getting out of hand. Like, for instance, hoarding is another thing I see a lot of after COVID. We surround ourselves with stuff and somehow think that's going to make us feel safe or like we have what we need, but it's a black hole. There's never going to be enough stuff.
The hoarding is a form of anxiety, in case people wondered. It's not a lack of willpower, it's a branch of anxiety. Many people need like a clinical intervention to, A, get rid of the stuff and, B, have the wherewithal to dig into what does the stuff represent. And that can be mental stuff as well as physical things that we're collecting and surrounding ourselves with.
So my advice is, at this moment, is:
If there's an area of your life that's causing you concern, don't waste time and allow it to grow and expand and generalize. Because that's the way the mind works, that's one of the predictable ways that phobias grow and populate. They get bigger and they get more, rather than smaller, unless you do an intervention of some sort with yourself.
Joanna: Yes, and it's being aware of what's going on.
So just a very practical thing around social media, because the internet has brought us many good things, and also many bad things. And one of those things is the kind of doom scrolling that some of us get into, or the constantly checking, whether that sales figures or whether people have liked a certain post or you know, every day checking ad spend, all of that kind of thing. Now, you can do this in a healthy way, but also you have to be aware if you're doing it in an unhealthy way.
How do you, personally, as an author, deal with overwhelm of what other people think on social media?This is definitely something I struggle with.
Toby: It's tough, it's tough, because I'm right in the trenches with you. I have a very large platform, I have, for the most part, lovely, lovely, loyal fans. And I wish everyone could have a fan group because my little fan group on Facebook is a place where I go, and I created rules in the fan group to make it a safe place, not just for me, but for everybody who's in it.
I basically limit my social media exposure and my news exposure. I'm very not on the grid with any of that. And I only do what I have to do to maintain my presence as an author in the areas that I see as useful.
Again, everybody's going to find that to be different. For me, Facebook has been the platform where I focus most of my energy. My fan base is older, that's the platform they're on. That's the platform they're comfortable with. So finding where your readers are and creating a niche for them around that can be also really lovely for you.
So when I have a down day, maybe I'll say something, I'll throw something into my group. This is so sad, I mean, I'm just like admitting my own weakness here. But I'll be like, “Which character is your favorite in my series?” and then I just wait for the fans to pop up with their little stories. And of course, I do a giveaway, usually, you know. “Just enter to get a mug and tell me which is your favorite character.” And that will boost my mood and my self-esteem, and they're getting a prize, and they're happy.
So there's ways to harness it, you know. But for me, it's really all about limiting everything and just keeping my phone off a lot. I have no notifications enabled whatsoever on any device. I try to control my access.
There will be the inevitable harsh review, some of them will penetrate my filters, and usually I'll do a giveaway to counteract that.
Joanna: I love that, turning it into something positive. And yes, I'm grateful for the Patreon supporters of this podcast. I also have a folder in my email which is nice fan mail folder, where people send me emails that make my day.
Sometimes I'll even print the good ones out and put them in my journal because it feels like it's too easy to pay attention to the negativity when most people are silent. Like the silent majority is not commenting at all, but we seem to remember the negative so much.
I did want to ask you specifically, so a lot of your background is in Freckled, your memoir, and that book you put a lot of your family in it, you put a lot of your struggles in it. And with your other memoir writing and your travel writing, you're putting a lot of this out there.
A lot of people have anxiety around putting their personal stories out there, so how have you dealt with this?Because you've also had some negativity around that memoir, haven't you? So how have you dealt with that?
Toby: That's a really good question. I kind of come back to the core reason why I do it. And that's what I have to keep returning to over and over again when I'm feeling vulnerable. So Freckled is actually my best-selling book out of 40 plus titles. It's sold close to 75,000 copies in full price at almost $9 apiece, and it sells in print as well.
I think it's because two reasons. One, it's a very unusual book. It's written about growing up in the 70s in Hawaii, and I wrote it in an unusual way. So it's a very immersive experience for the reader. I age up the writing, and it's in first person present tense, and you're just in Hawaii having all these experiences with me, until it ends when I'm 18. So it's a very unusual memoir.
It was totally mind-blowing for my relatives who had no idea what was going on in our home, and what were the situations we were living in. They all thought it must be so much fun in Hawaii, and really, we were homeless and camping on a river, and eating boiled chicken feet for food, and wearing dyed clothes because my dad was having a paranoid episode, and there was all these things going on.
So I had my aunts and different relatives contact me, like we had no idea. We would have helped if we had known. And I had to work through all of this feedback from people.
So yes, if you're going to write this kind of book, you had better be prepared. My mom, who was also the most strong supporter of the book, also got to read an early draft, but somehow didn't grasp what would happen when the book was public.
And later, she got very, very upset with me, and we went through a really difficult period of working through where she felt super vulnerable and exposed and like, did I do that for revenge and all these things.
So I'm not going to downplay that. That is a risk.
What keeps me going is this calling that I felt in my heart to make art from life. So to me, memoir is making art from your life. It's not therapy, it's not your personal journal, it's not your story, per se, just throw it out anyway. It is a curated art form that you work very hard on, if it's going to be any good at all. And you do that because you have a desire to make art from the life that you've had.
So that's why I do it. Not for money, not to hang my family out to dry, but because what I believe is that when you make art from life, you bring healing to others.
You draw back this curtain for everybody who has suffered silently in an abusive home with alcoholism, or put on the happy face of the achiever, because that was my role as the oldest child was to go out into the community and achieve, achieve, achieve, no matter what was going on, so that the family looked good.
So when we draw back that curtain, we heal others. We give others permission to tell their story and to bring air onto that wound.
Joanna: It's interesting that you say that a memoir is not therapy but writing itself can help us. I've kept journals since I was about 15. I have them here in my office.
Some of my many journals!And I mean, when I read some of my journals from—I'm married for the second time—when my husband left me, when I read those journals, I don't even recognize that person. And I've never published those words.
This is an important thing, right? You can write for therapy, but that doesn't mean you have to publish it.
Whereas what you did there was turn your therapy, once you had processed it, into a memoir. How can the act of writing, even if it's in your journal, help us?
Why does writing help us process things?Toby: It's the act of becoming aware of being aware.
And when you think about thinking, that meta work, we draw back a little bit from being in our lives, to assess our lives. And in therapy, and in CBT when I was doing therapy full time, CBT cognitive behavioral therapy, is the best practice recommendation for anxiety and depression and even trauma. So what you need is a tool in order to capture your thoughts and look at them and evaluate their validity.
I love what Robert Fulghum said. “Don't believe everything you think.” That is a central premise. It's a central premise of therapy. Don't believe everything you think. And a journal, and the act of writing, is a way that you can capture what you're thinking, and then do a little bit of a pullback and go, “Is this true? Is this real?” That is the process of therapy and CBT is evaluating your thoughts and for their truthfulness.
Even when you're doing it really formally, you use a form of journaling that is like tracking. You have:
“Situation: going to the grocery store.
Thoughts: everybody thinks I'm fat, my hair looks terrible, when I go through the aisles, they're judging me, and there's germs.”
Right. So then over here, “Likelihood those thoughts are true: probably 15%.” You have to rate the amount of percent that you give to the truthfulness of those thoughts.
Another way to look at the situation. Yes, there are germs, but I can use hand sanitizer. Yes, I don't look my best right now, but most people are also at the store to just buy food.
Joanna: Nobody cares!
Toby: So see the four-column structure I just gave you, that is the CBT form of tracking and writing that you would use in therapy. But I have a different form, and like you, I've been a lifelong journaler.
And those are going back to the Morning Pages, Julia Cameron's The Artists Way, that's just barfing it out on the page. You know, “Here I am today with all of these things, and this is what's on my mind.” And all of that it is still valid.
Writing is a way that we make sense of our lives. We write to know more deeply, to remember, and to understand our lives. And for me, that form of writing is separate from memoir.
Memoir is for public consumption, but what I write about in my private time in my journal, that is for me to make sense of myself, and of the world, and of the experience I've had. And you know what? Now it's sort of to remember because I still have some lingering effects from long COVID and memory has been impacted. So I want to write every day so that I don't forget.
Joanna: That's interesting. And yes, the reasons why we do things change over our lives. And it's interesting, I'm more of a binge journaler, so when I was going through that divorce, there were books and books and books. I might have had four whole journals across one year, when I was going through processing things. I would write multiple times a day.
Then when I'm going through happy periods, like at the moment, I only journal like every couple of weeks.
I feel like it's almost like it builds up inside me until I feel like I really, really must go and sit in a cafe and write my journal because I feel like that is something I need to do every now and then.
I think this is important, especially as professional writers, because there's this pressure that all the words we write are publishable, but it's just true.
Toby: No, there is the garbage and luggage, we called it when I worked for a social service agency.
And when we had morning check-in with our employees, the head social worker would say, “What's your garbage?” You know, the garbage is the ‘blah' and just get it out onto the paper and release it. But luggage is, “What are we taking with us? What do we need to work through? What is the ongoing theme that we need to take action on?”
So I wanted to say a few words about the ways that we need to keep going with self-care. I actually do tracking. If I could show it to you, you'd crack up. It's on the side, I call it ‘the routine.' So on the side, I've got written down five sun salutations, 2 x 15 kettlebells, 45 minute walk, no alcohol, no sugar, spirit time, 1500 new words, supplements and rest. This is all written on the side.
Then I have Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and every day that I achieved doing that activity, I've given myself a little sticker or a smiley face. Or if I didn't do it, like, oh I had that glass of wine. So I'm trying to cut back on alcohol, I feel like it makes me fuzzy and unproductive the next day, even a small amount, but I love a nice nightcap. So it has been a rough habit to give up.
I don't give myself a censure if I don't make it, I just give myself the tracking cute little stickers. So I go and buy them online or I buy them at stationery stores.
This stuff works. Even when you're a therapist, and you know this is behavioral reinforcement, and I know I'm giving myself behavioral reinforcement, I still get motivated by seeing a row of the cute little stickers. Spending money on myself to buy the cutest ones, and I only get those when I'm like, oh, I made it through a week of no glass of wine at the end of the day.
So I highly recommend that if you're trying to build a habit, and again, these self-care activities are habits that we need to deliberately add to our lives or take away from our lives. When we take something out, we've got to put something in.
So again, instead of alcohol, I substituted an expensive bubbly water with a slice of lime, which I had to go buy, and I got the experience of that special drink, and so forth. If I didn't do anything, then I'm having a rougher time replacing the habit. Does that make sense?
Joanna: For sure. And the stickers, I've always done sticker charts. And in fact, now I use MOO.com to print my own stickers with my own meaningful images.
Toby: How fun. You know, it's brilliant. That's what we need is fun.
We need to treat that inner child self of ours with respect, with love, with nurture. And it is more lured out to play than flogged with punishments. So for those of us in a creative field, it is a tough, tough thing to make a living doing creative work.
Whether it's painting, or music, or writing or any of the arts, dance, what have you, it's a rough way to make a living because you're counting on that inner child to be able to keep performing. It can only really do that when there's a nurturing environment, and the only person who could really do that is you.
So those are my little confessions, is that I, quite frankly, use behavioral reinforcement on myself. When I get those words, every 500 words, I get a sticker. So I've got a separate chart for that because sometimes it's rough. It's real work. It's a job. You know?
Joanna: I think what's important too is that you—and you have a lot of habits on that list. I mean, I also have various stickers for various things. I also have a logbook.
So my journal is separate to my daily logbook, and in my logbook I write down what I've done. So you're on my logbook for today, this discussion. And also, if I'm feeling something particular, or like you said, I mean, I also try to reduce my alcohol, but I really like a drink. So I will actively choose to drink on occasion. Like if you and I were hanging out, I would hope we would have a glass of wine.
Toby: We absolutely would.
Joanna: Exactly. Or if I'm going out for lunch with Jonathan, I'll have sticky toffee pudding, or something like that. So it's that 80/20 rule, I guess.
Can we live in a sustainable way 80% of the time, so that 20% of the time we can indulge or do other things?Again, like exercise or our physical health, I walk almost every single day, but sometimes it just doesn't work out or whatever. So that's okay, it's not like I beat myself up.
You mentioned a nurturing environment, and obviously, we have to look after ourselves first.
But you and I are also very lucky, and we've chosen this life, but we have supportive partners and we have friends, like you and I. We've met each other through the community. So if people listening, if they don't have that supportive environment or author friends—
How can people find a community or attract other like-minded people and have that online?So how can you do that if you're just starting out and don't have friendships like we have?
Toby: I would look for an online group that already existed. There's various Facebook groups with different kinds of author gatherings, so that's a great place to do it. Or Discord, or one of those other online social media type places is a great place to just start looking for like-minded people.
I also just moved to a new state and a new town. And I really determined that this time, because I lived in a place for about four years and did not get connected with my community at all. I felt like I was going to be there temporarily, but there was actually no data to show that I was going to be there temporarily. My own attitude and withholding. So again, we create our own self-fulfilling prophecies. We ended up leaving there, and I was glad that I hadn't put the time in to invest in new friendships.
Then we came to this new town, and I decided two things. I was going to get involved with my community, and I was going to start volunteering in person again. It's so easy to do everything online again. And now we're coming out of COVID, it's time to be IRL.
So the first thing I did was joined my Rotary Club in my town. And not because I felt like “my people” are in the Rotary Club, they couldn't be more different from me, you know. I'm there, kind of sort of hippie-ish, the writer, and these are very staid, upstanding, retired, local kind of power brokers in my town. The mayor is in my group, and things like that.
What I wanted to do was, I want to be a part of this community, I want to show my face, I want to get to know people, and I'm using my background as a therapist to become a court-appointed special advocate.
So I work with children in the foster care system. And this is, again, a volunteering thing. I had to go through this big, long training. Many times, I was like, oh, this is too much with my writer business and my travel. I can't, people look out on me, and then I was like, no, I need to be in contact with people who need me and people who remind me how fortunate I am.
That is really key to mental health is like there's always somebody worse off than you, and it doesn't hurt to be reminded of that, to be called out of yourself to go and give.
And so I think for anybody who's struggling with depression, get a pet, get an exercise routine, and start doing something in your community that's giving back. Because staying in that little cocoon of your own negative thoughts and that dark place that can pull you under, it's just going to snowball.
Joanna: That's great. I feel the same. I'm like, we do so much online and in our own heads, and it's almost remembering that you have a physical body.
You are a physical human, not just a brain. Because sometimes we're just brains online. I mean, you and I right now, we're not looking at each other. So we're two brains connecting over the internet.
Toby: Isn't that a wild thought?
Joanna: It is a totally wild thought.
When we write books, it's a brain connecting with another brain through the medium of a book.
So we overemphasize that because that's our strength, but yeah, we need to remember we're a physical body, and therefore keep the physical body healthy by exercising and healthy eating and meeting other people in a body. So yeah, I think that's really important.
But we're almost out of time. I do want to ask you a question. I can't go an episode without mentioning AI.
And one of the biggest issues right now in the community is people are very afraid. They're already burnt out, overwhelmed, too much to learn. Now, there's an anxiety about the author career and all of this changing technology.
How are you navigating the challenges? What is the career going to look like for the next decade? And I mean, you're not retired, you're still writing, you have an author business.
How can we think about the future and acknowledge the fear, but also move through it?Toby: I think it's really key to get to know the thing that you're afraid of. So for me, I am exploring AI actively. I have been fooling around with Sudowrite and got a membership with that. And I'm getting to know what does it do, what doesn't it do. And then again, there's the ChatGPT, which also has a learning curve to it.
So I think the key to the fear around AI is to get to know the tool before you judge because when we're afraid, we're reactive, we're defensive, our minds are closed, and we become prickly, and anxiety builds. So that's one aspect.
The second aspect is look at what has happened in other creative areas, such as the music industry, it's all accelerating. And you can sort of see where things might go. There's streaming constantly, there's tons and tons of material available for pennies. All of that is very fearful for authors. What you can do instead is dig into your niche.
So for me, that has meant moving to web-based sales, and a reader subscription plan on Substack where I'm writing to my audience who are paying direct. I know you use Patreon, I've chosen not to use Patreon, I'm using Substack and my website.
What I'm doing is digging deeper into my loyal fan base because that is going to weatherize me to the cheapening of everything.Right now, if you are an author whose main income is coming from Kindle Unlimited and that kind of subscription model, I would be nervous about it because there's going to be even more schlock added to the mix. It's going to be even harder to get that visibility that's all important.
So now is a time to connect with your readers in a personal way and give them opportunities to support you.
Create ways that they can give you money direct. They can buy from you direct, they can support you with a subscription, that kind of thing, because readers want to do that. Just like they support the musicians that they love, they will support writers that they love too.
So that's my two-pronged approach. Get to know it and dig deeper into direct sales and direct contact with my reader base.
Joanna: That's fantastic. That's multiple streams of income, which we love.
Tell us a bit more about your books, and where people can find you and your Substack, and connect around coaching if they're interested.Toby: Definitely, it's all on TobyNeal.net. And if you're interested in talking with me about setting up your own hypnosis, recording or talking about coaching in any form, or coaching plus mental health, look for the author coaching tab on my website.
I write police procedural mysteries, thrillers, memoir, romance, and an ongoing travel and life blog on Substack called Passages. So you can look up Passages and follow along and see in real-time as I'm writing a third memoir, which will be crafted from these travel experiences and life experiences.
So again, TobyNeal.net has it all. And that's my tip is weatherize your business by focusing everything on what you can capture. Your newsletter, your email address list, and your website for direct sales because those are the ways that you can weatherproof your writing business going forward.
Joanna: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Toby. That was great.
Toby: Thank you.
The post Making Art From Life. Mental Health For Writers With Toby Neal first appeared on The Creative Penn.
AI tools can generate words, but the human intention behind it, as well as the skill of the author, drives the machine. Stephen Marche talks about the creative process behind Death of an Author, 95% written by AI, out now from Pushkin Industries.
Today's show is sponsored by my wonderful patrons who fund my brain so I have time to think about and discuss these futurist topics impacting authors. If you support the show, you also get the extra monthly patron-only Q&A audio. You can support the show atwww.patreon.com/thecreativepenn
Stephen Marche is a Canadian novelist and journalist. He's also the creator of Death of an Author by Aiden Marchine, a novella written 95% by AI tools out now from Pushkin Industries.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- How Stephen co-created Death of an Author with various AI tools: ChatGPT, Sudowrite, and Cohere
- The importance of specificity in prompts and why those who know what they want, and have experience with writing and different forms of literature have an advantage
- Why the intellectual process is more important than the mechanical process
- Why co-creating with AI tools is like being a hip-hop producer
- On copyright: “I am its author legally, but a machine wrote it based on my instructions.”
- How authors might approach co-creating with AI if they want to work with traditional publishers
- What remains the same despite advances in technology: “Creative AI is going to change everything. It's also going to change nothing.”
Death of an Author is out now from Pushkin Industries in audiobook and ebook formats. The press release also has more details about the process, and there is an Afterword in the book where Stephen goes into more detail. You can find Stephen at StephenMarche.com
Header image created on Midjourney by Joanna Penn.
Transcript of the interviewJoanna Penn: Stephen Marche is a Canadian novelist and journalist. He's also the creator of Death of an Author by Aiden Marchine, a novella written 95% by AI tools out now from Pushkin Industries. So welcome to the show, Stephen.
Stephen Marche: Hi, how are you?
Joanna Penn: I am good. So first up, tell us a bit more about you and your writing background and how you came to become interested in AI.
Stephen Marche: Well, am I speaking to a robot at this moment?
Joanna Penn: No. No!
Stephen Marche: Okay. I just had a sudden sense that I was, I don't know why but like, I've become more skeptical of these things all the time.
I've been writing my whole life and I've written novels and so on. But the beginning of AI writing for me was actually a piece I wrote in 2012 for LA Review of Books, which was Against Digital Humanities. And you know, as I was sort of critiquing digital humanities, Which I still, I mean, I don't think I changed that critique at all.
I started to know about some really cool things that were happening, and I became very interested in them and very fascinated with them, particularly with, at that point it was programming around R, and it was analytics mainly, but then in 2017, I wrote an algorithmic story for Wired, like we used computer models to generate. We created our own program, Sci-Fi Q, me and a computer scientist to make that. Then with the birth of the transformer, of course, which changed everything in this field, I began to work on other aspects of it.
I wrote a 17% computer-generated horror story for the LA Review of Books in, I think it was 2020. And then an auto-tune love story, where I used Cohere to build these bots, to create stylistic bots. Then I would each generate one sentence of a love story, and I published that in Lit Hub a couple of years ago now.
But then when Jacob came to me with the Death of an Author idea, it was of course just a completely different scale of things, and I was fascinated with what it could do. And it was sort of a much broader project than any AI fiction I'd ever worked on before.
Joanna Penn: Wow. So you've been involved in this for over a decade now, but of course, as you said, things have changed and it does also sound like you're quite technical, like our programming and things like that.
So most people listening are authors and writers, but they're not very technical. So I wondered whether you could explain —
How did you co-create Death of an Author with AI tools?Stephen Marche: Well, I mean, I would say that like I'm not technical like that. I mean, that would be a gross exaggeration of my abilities.
I mean, I did learn to program in R briefly, like, I mean, to say that ‘I can program in R' is like saying if you can plunk out Mary had a little lamb on the piano, that you know how to play the piano. Like I knew I did it just enough to know what it involved. Right.
And I would not say that I have a major technical facility in this stuff at all, but with Death of an Author, I did have access to three technologies really that I had used before in which I used, so one was ChatGPT, the big one that everyone talks about and which really has sparked the interest in this, right?
Like before ChatGPT, I had a great deal of trouble selling articles and essays about AI to publications. They just weren't interested right? After ChatGPT — it has since become the most important story in the world really.
But, so I used ChatGPT to create very specific blocks of text. Then I would take those blocks into Sudowrite, which is a stochastic writing instrument. Do you know that? Do you know Sudowrite? Have you ever used it?
Joanna Penn: Yes, absolutely. Amit has been on the show as well. [I also have a tutorial on Sudowrite for fiction.]
Stephen Marche: So I've used Sudowrite before to do things. I wrote a piece about them for The New Yorker.
I used the shorten button, the add detail button, and I used the customize button a lot to reshape the text. I mean, almost everything was in that process. I tried other large language models, like I tried character.ai and I tried a bunch of other ones because people were sending me like, ‘come check out our stuff,' because I'd been writing about it and I really didn't find anything comparable to that except for Cohere.
Cohere is a large language model out of Canada. I've done other critical and creative work with them before and I used a different system for them. I created prompts and then I framed those prompts and then I got the prompts to generate images.
I wanted the book to have good lines in it, like lines that really stood out because ChatGPT is not as good at that. ChatGPT is good at creating functional prose, but for real beauty, which you want in a novel, I felt I needed other techniques and Cohere was really that. All the good lines in the book come from Cohere.
Joanna Penn: I think that's fascinating. So just coming back to ChatGPT, because a lot of people listening have tried it and they're finding that they can't even really create blocks of functional prose. And mainly it's because they don't really know how to prompt.
Even at the beginning, they might say, ‘Write me a novel about a guy in a dungeon' or whatever, and so they're just writing one line or two lines.
How can people start creating with more specific prompts?Stephen Marche: Well, the key is to be incredibly specific about what you want, right?
The thing that's fascinating about writing prompts for writing is that you have to actually understand what you want, which I mean very few people do when they set out to write a novel, right?
So it would literally be, write a paragraph in a mixture of simple and compound-complex sentences with variable lengths between the sentences in the style of —and then maybe five or six adjectives to describe the style containing the following information, colon, and then the information, and then it would generate something.
That was unwieldy. And then you would take it into Sudowrite, and use that to change it and alter it till you got to something interesting. So much like the prompts for text to image, the longer the prompt, the better the reaction. But the prompts and literature have to be incredibly specific about syntax and grammar and substance and style, like very, very specific.
I mean, to me that's what I got. Other people have had different experiences, I'm sure, but that to me is the key. Whereas the Cohere system where you train it on prompts actually doesn't require that same level of control. I mean, it does when you create the prompt, but if you train it on like 15 examples of great images, it does produce great images, which is another method.
Joanna Penn: And when you say images, you mean like metaphorical images for it to come up with text?
Stephen Marche: Yeah. Correct.
Joanna Penn: So, just coming back to ChatGPT, because I've written nearly 20 novels and so I actually asked it to write in my voice, as my fiction voice, and it actually did a really good job. Did you try prompting it as you?
Stephen Marche: No, I mean, I'm a very incoherent personality, right? Like, I mean, my books are just really, really different from each other, and like they're incoherent basically.
There's nothing I would say that I could identify as specifically mine, right? And also I'm writing in a particular genre, right? Like the murder mystery. And that requires a different approach than one that I would use to say the piece about the coronation that I just wrote for The Guardian or the novel that I wrote that was about werewolves and billionaires.
Also, I think when you're using this technology to write, you have to understand the limitations and run into the limitations, right? I mean, that's true of every literary form, but in this case, there are certain things that ChatGPT is good at and there are certain things that it's really bad at, and you want to not do the bad things and go towards the good things.
Joanna Penn: Yeah, I totally agree. I'm co-writing a horror novel at the moment with GPT4 and it's interesting because I'm doing a lot of editing, as you mentioned, that the prose is not what exactly what I want. I wondered whether you found that it just wasn't any faster, that in fact, it was a slower process?
I wonder with fiction, actually, it might be a slower process, but a more interesting one.
Stephen Marche: Well, I think this is still being, I don't, nothing is slower or faster. Right. I mean, people thought that having a computer would make it more able to write faster, right?
We no longer have to handwrite things and then have them type set —
It's the intellectual process that's the effort here, not the mechanical processes that are at work. So, no, I don't think it's any easier. I mean, this is why the discussions about the WGA being like, this is gonna replace screenwriters. I'm like, who are you kidding?
If you think an executive can just go to ChatGPT and say, write me John Wick 5. Well, that's a bad example because John Wick 5 is pretty the same as John Wick four. Yeah, well, John Wick 4, it easily could have been written by a machine, right? I mean like, there's no life in it whatsoever.
But like the idea that they're gonna be able to do that is just totally ludicrous. Anyone who's used this machine for 10 minutes knows that, right? So I think what the real question here is, what can it do that people can't do?
Because you have to remember that the world is already full of overproduction of texts. It's not like we need to automate the process of writing fiction. Like the question is, what can this process do that nothing else can do? And that's a really interesting question to ask.
Joanna Penn: Or address our own limitations or help us have more ideas. I mean, I find it gives me loads of ideas and different directions and it really is like co-writing. Did you feel that?
Stephen Marche: Well, it was interesting because there was a balance between control and I guess how I thought of it was like the alien speaking. Like I got the alien to talk. That's how I sort of feel about this tech, right? Is that I got an alien to write a novella.
And the point where I felt the alien meant something, I thought those moments were extraordinary to me, like very aesthetically powerful where, because most of it is just me controlling this machine, right?
When it created things that I would never have thought of, when it created images that I found beautiful, even though no human being had ever written them, there was a kind of, I mean, the word majesty occurs to me. There was something awesome about it, like in the old sense, like you just felt in contact with some larger force, if you will. And I think that's very exciting to me.
Although what ChatGPT to me can do so well is it can imitate voices. Right, and like I think if I were to think of a project that would naturally be written by AI, it would be something like Dracula, Bram Stoker's Dracula, which it's a collection of documents, right? A collection of ships logs, and letters, and letters from lawyers and all these incredible formulaic forms that contain different information.
And it is unbelievable at imitating voices, at imitating formulaic forms of language, and that it can do better than any human being. There's no writer alive who can get as precise as it can in its imitation of modes of speech.
My aha moment with this technology was when I got Sudowrite and I asked it to finish Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and it created a completely believable conclusion to that famous unfinished poem. It was able to do that in a completely coherent way.
I think actually recovering lost texts is another. Particularly like the unfinished Austen books and unfinished PG Woodhouse books where there are very clear stylistic parameters. I absolutely think this technology is gonna be used to do that.
Joanna Penn: I mean, you've mentioned beauty a couple of times and awe. Some people are saying, oh, well, we'll be able to tell, or readers will be able to tell when something's written with AI. What do you think about that?
Will people be able to tell something is written with AI? Will they care?Stephen Marche: I would hope that some of it they would know and they would recognize and that, and they would be okay with it. But the truth is like, do you know that a text is spell-checked? Like I guess you do, but most of the time you just forget about it there.
There's a famous thing about CGI in movies where it's like, oh, CGI is so bad. But of course, the CGI that's bad is the CGI that you notice, right? And then it does look bad, but actually 95% of the time you're using CGI, and nobody notices it and it creates effects that could never be gotten with just a camera.
So, I mean, this is just another tool. And once we get over this fear spiral that we're in, we are in basically a panic spiral about AI right now, we will start to realize this is a tool. It's not gonna replace anyone. Just in the same way that Photoshop did not replace designers. In fact, it just accentuated the capacity for designers to create. We're gonna realize that this is neither as scary as we think, nor as crazily transformative as we think.
Joanna Penn: But it does change the job. I think that's the thing. I mean, the definition of a writer has been outputting text in a certain direction. But if these tools can output text, which they do, do we play more of a director role or an orchestral role? Directing the orchestra of these tools rather than the making words role?
[My take on this is in my solo episode, The AI-Assisted Artisan Author.]
Stephen Marche: Well, it's curatorial, right? I mean, that's how I think of it, right? Like it requires a familiarity, like when I was using this, the reason I was able to use it so effectively is because I did a PhD and I know that they made me do my special field examination and they made me read everything in major in English literature from 900 AD on.
And so I know the history of style and I know how things stylistically work. So when I go to Sudowrite, I can say, okay, I want this to sound like Dickens and then filter it through Ernest Hemingway, and then you get to something that might actually be good.
The closest analogy I come to is hip-hop producer —Where they have this enormous familiarity with popular music and this scholarship ultimately around popular music, and they use that in ways to recombine and reconfigure the music in a way that is pleasurable to people.
And in a sense, it is a different task. Like you're not playing the guitar anymore, instead, you're using a Moog or whatever. But on the other hand, like the end result, for an author is an output of texts, that's for sure, but they are also the editor of their own texts.
The difference between a great writer and a good writer is not necessarily what they output, but what they cut and what they know is bad and recognizing what's good when you see it, and that is totally unchanged in this process, as you know.
Joanna Penn: Absolutely. So coming to the book, you have this great afterword, which I highly recommend everyone read after the story. And in it you say:
“I am its author legally, but a machine wrote it based on my instructions.” So this idea of legal author, I mean, the aspects of copyright are very difficult with the legality of the training dataset, fair use, plagiarism. So I know you get this question all the time, but what should people be feeling about this? Like should they not do anything until all the legal cases are settled, or what do you think?
Stephen Marche: I really don't know. I mean, I think we're in a really new state here where it's going to be worked out.
Ultimately, I think I am the creator of this work and I have a moral right to it, like, and everyone understands. The legal dimensions of it are really strange and have yet to be worked out, but I'm just a writer. I'm just going to go do what I want to do and pick up the pieces after the fact.
A and that's my strategy. So it is a totally gray area right now, although, I mean, I think you've read Death of an Author, like no one else is entitled to that work other than me. Like, everyone knows I made it.
And so ultimately that's going to be recognized on some level. And the people who say like, it's plagiarism and it's stolen, and they don't know what they're talking about. They haven't used this tech for five minutes and, and they're just wrong.
So I don't know. I mean, on the one hand, it isn't a very confusing moment. On the other hand —
New technologies always bring with them new, complicated realities. I mean, it took a long time for people to figure out who owned a photograph, right?
And like, was it the person whose photograph was taken or the taker of the photo? You know? So I don't know. It's all gonna be worked out in the future by other people than me, but I'm not particularly worried about, at least the intellectual realities of it.
Joanna Penn: I like that you say, “I made it” and, and that is absolutely right, and of course, if you compare the finished product with any other finished product, you can see that it's not plagiarized.
And so I think many authors think that these tools are some kind of database where lots of things have been put into it, and when you are writing it pulls out exactly the words that other people have written, but that's kind of a misunderstanding of how the technology works, isn't it?
[I recommend reading Monica Leonelle's article on What is AI and how is it being used in publishing for more detail on this.]
Stephen Marche: Well, I mean, technically that is how it works, but the truth is that we don't know how many parameters there are in GPT4. We know that GPT3 is at 175 billion, so I mean, when you use Palm, it has 540 billion parameters. Let's take that as a start.
That's more variety, that's a level of transformation that is literally inconceivable to the human mind. So I mean, anytime a human says something, it has been said before, like the sentence I just said, somebody has said it has been said before, but that doesn't mean it's not mine. Right. That doesn't mean I didn't create it, right.
These debates around it, I think they're written out of fear that people think this is going to replace writers. And I mean, it's just not like the idea that this is gonna replace the considered judgment of language. What this is going to really replace is rote linguistic tasks.
So if you have to write a letter of recommendation from a professor for a student, I don't know why you wouldn't use ChatGPT. It just does it so much better and all. That's entirely a formula to start with, right? Like so it fulfills the terms of that formula. The human intentionality is what we register through language, and that's not going anywhere.
Death of an Author is very much a work of my intentionality. No one else could have done it. No one else would've done it, right? So the mere means of application are not necessarily even relevant.
Joanna Penn: Absolutely. But it's interesting, and I obviously, I agree with you and I've already also published a short story co-written with GPT3, With a Demon's Eye.
What's so interesting about what you've done, it's been published by a publisher, and so this is kind of the next question, which is a lot of authors who work with traditional publishing don't know what to do because they've signed contracts or they are going to sign contracts.
Maybe traditional publishers won't accept work where there's AI involved.
How do you think authors should approach the publishing industry when co-writing with AI?Stephen Marche: Well, I mean, this is not informed advice like, it's not like I really understand the legalities of this, but I would say make sure you get yours right.
First of all, be clear. You should be very clear with any publisher that you deal with, that you're using this technology, and make sure that they're okay with it.
And if they're not, then you shouldn't use it. But I actually think the specifics of how this is going to be used are really like if you're using this to write, say like a historical biography of somebody and you just like randomly put it into ChatGPT and have it cough it out and then don't edit it, it's going to be poor and everyone's going to know it.
And that's not what you should be doing anyway. So, I don't know. I mean, that's such a non-answer. I know, but like, obviously be honest.
Also, if you are using ChatGPT in a way that is creating meaningful work that only you could create, which is the only kind of work that I'm interested in, then you should be paid for and you should have a right to it.
Joanna Penn: I certainly agree with that. And I mean, you mentioned the fear spiral and the panic spiral. I mean, how long will it take to dissipate? I mean, in a way we had a similar thing like over a decade ago with ebooks and all the internet kind of disrupting publishing thing, but eventually, it was embraced.
So will this be the same, do you think it'll just take a couple of years to settle down?
Stephen Marche: I don't know. I mean, the doomism really is, it's just such a human response. Like first there's greed, then there's fear, and then there's fear, and then there's greed. Like I have a piece coming out in The Guardian about this pretty soon.
I think the fear will probably dominate for a while, but on the other hand, I'm just going to make this stuff and see where it goes. Do you know what I mean? Like there are people doing this work and there was a lot of fear of photography and there was a lot of fear of hip-hop. It took hip-hop practitioners took a long time before they were considered serious artists, right, and or even artists at all.
And the same thing is true of photography and at the same, but that was real. Like that created something beautiful. So, I don't know. I mean, the discourse has gone completely off the rails, I think. But on the other hand, I have hope. You know, I'm not a super hopeful person, and no one's ever accused me of being optimistic before.
But I also think as this stuff gets used, like, one thing about the hype machine around AI is that it uses doom as a promotional mechanism, right? Like they, Silicon Valley does this all the time, like crypto's gonna end central banks. We should prepare for a world where governments don't control the flow of money.
Well, actually no. Like actually that's nonsense, right? And like WeWork is gonna end commercial real estate and actually WeWork didn't end commercial real estate, Zoom ended commercial real estate, or, I mean, there are a million examples of this kind of hype and around AI.
I've been reporting on this stuff basically since 2017, and I've heard that the trucking industry was going to disappear, that China was in possession of a trillion parameter, large language system that had shown superhuman abilities, and I really have come to a place where I have two rules.
One is if I don't see it, I don't believe it. Like I don't believe it until I see it. And the second rule is when I see it, I believe it. So if it does something, I want to see what I can use it to do. And that's my only way of staying sane. I mean, that's the only way I can stay sane with this stuff because there's just so much hype and nonsense.
Joanna Penn: Yes, and I mean, I say on this podcast often, please go and try it before you leave a comment saying that it's all ridiculous and useless. It's not even that hard to try anymore, is it?
Stephen Marche: No, I mean, well, you can just go to chat.openai.com. It's not complicated to use and I mean, I think five minutes after using it, you sense, okay, wonderful things are afoot. Like really crazy things are possible with this, but it's not a superhuman consciousness.
You don't feel bad turning it off. Like it's a tool like, like a pocket calculator or it's a thesaurus. You know what I mean? Yeah. And like it's just a hugely powerful tool and potentially transformative, But yeah, I find the doomism just exhausting and pointless.
Joanna Penn: Me too. And in your afterword you do say:
“Creative AI is going to change everything. It's also going to change nothing.” So you have mentioned, I guess a few things that won't change in that the humans will still be needed. What else will remain constant? Because of course we're only at the beginning, these tools will become more powerful, but what will remain constant?
Stephen Marche: Oh, the understanding, the value of something that's written, the value of a good paragraph in a good sentence. The sense of an intended personality behind language.
I mean, that's, people go to language for a lot of reasons, but when they go to artistic language, for lack of a better word, they go there to feel a human being behind it. And that is absolutely not going to change. Like there, I mean if you're looking for mechanized language, you can find that too.
But I think one thing to remember is that all of this is at the service of human urges that are very foundational, and which have not really changed since the epic of Gilgamesh.
To be recognized, to be seen by people who are not with you. And to have your own soul explained to you. And none of that has changed. Like I mean, I just don't think it's changed even one millimeter.
Joanna Penn: It's interesting. I mean, the AI artists now, or the people using AI for art have a new word, which is synthography. I wondered, because you've mentioned art and beauty, do you think we will move towards a new art form in this way, and do we need another word?
Stephen Marche: Yeah, I mean, I think we do need another word. What's the word they're using?
Joanna Penn: Synthography, like photography, but synth.
Stephen Marche: Synthography. That's not bad. I mean, right now, I think we're still at the cannibalization stage of this art form. Like you're using it to write novels. I'm using it to write novels in short stories.
The really interesting thing will be what it's actually used for, right? Like, because it took them a long time to figure out what photography was for after it was invented.
One of the things interesting about the printing press is that it almost took 200 years after the printing press for people to come up with the idea of using it to have a continuous narrative voice, which we think about now is like the defining feature of print.
But that didn't happen until almost 200 years later after the technological invention. So, you know what this is actually for and what new forms it would be in. Like what is the true usage of a creative chat bot? We're still in a very primitive stage with that, and I think after we find out what that is, then we'll come up with a name for it.
But yeah, the interesting work that's going to come out of this is going to be new, and it's actually probably gonna be a bunch of new things. So it is interesting to see.
Joanna Penn: Interesting times indeed. So where can people find Death of an Author as well as all your other books online?
Stephen Marche: Just go to pushkin.com to get the audiobook, or I think you can buy it as an epub now on the website. pushkin.fm, death of an author.
And then all my other books are just wherever you get your books.
Joanna Penn: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Steven. That was great.
Stephen Marche: It was a pleasure.
The post Intentionality, Beauty, and Authorship. Co-Writing With AI With Stephen Marche first appeared on The Creative Penn.
What are the implications of generative AI for the indie author community? How can we make choices for our own creative business while respecting the decisions of others? Dan Wood (Draft2Digital) and Michael Anderle (20BooksTo50K, LMBPN) and I discuss our recommendations for the way forward.
In the intro, Ingram Spark offers free title setup and revisions (up to 60 days); Findaway Voices cuts Spotify distribution fee; Lessons learned from selling a million books; Go Wide or Run Away or Amazon Fail by Kris Rusch; Reputation Revolution Podcast; Pilgrimage is out on every store and in every format; Cover design split testing with Pickfu; A Note from the Author by Kevin Tumlinson.
This podcast is sponsored byWritten Word Media, which makes book marketing a breeze by offering quick, easy and effective ways for authors to promote their books. You can also subscribe to the Written Word Mediaemail newsletterfor book marketing tips.
Michael Anderle (LMBPN), Joanna Penn (The Creative Penn), and Dan Wood (DRaft2Digital) at London Book Fair, April 2023Dan Wood is the COO of Draft2Digital, which helps authors self-publish alongside excellent support.
Michael Anderle is the award-nominated internationally bestselling author of more than 40 urban fantasy and science fiction novels. He's also the co-author of many more with other authors under his company LMBPN Publishing. Michael is also the founder of the 20 Books to 50 K Facebook group and community.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- Why generative AI offers opportunities for authors
- Michael explains his audacious publishing goal and breaks down how it could be achieved across multiple formats and languages, along with the help of generative AI
- Tackling some of the fears and anxieties that authors have — flood of content, quality, marketing competition, copyright, and more
- Will books co-written with AI be flagged or banned from the distributors?
- Why you shouldn't use author or artist names in your prompts
- Uses for AI in marketing
- Making your own choices — and respecting others whose choices might be different from your own
You can find Michael Anderle at LMBPN Publishing, and Dan Wood at Draft2Digital and on Twitter @danwoodok
Transcript of the discussionJoanna Penn: Dan Wood is the COO of Draft2Digital, which helps authors self-publish alongside excellent support. Michael Anderle is the award-nominated internationally bestselling author of more than 40 urban fantasy and science fiction novels. He's also the co-author of many more with other authors under his company LMBPN Publishing. Michael is also the founder of the 20 Books to 50 K Facebook group and community. So welcome to the show guys. Hello.
Both: Hello. Thanks for having us.
Joanna Penn: I'm excited for this talk. So Dan, let's start with you.
What are you most excited about in terms of generative AI for authors and the publishing industry, and what are you playing with personally?Dan Wood: I'm very excited by the opportunity to use some of the large, large language models to help authors when they are stuck. It's like having a writing partner that you can run ideas off of.
And with ChatGPT and some of the others, you can just say, you know, I'm thinking this, give me like three or four scenarios of how this might play out. I think that's very cool. Like many other people, I've had just a ton of fun with products like MidJourney to make images and just making outrageous images and seeing how they turn out.
I think when you think about what that could do for helping authors communicate with their cover designer and help them understand their vision and then the cover designer coming in with their knowledge of how the cover should look for that genre, and typography and all those good things. I think it just makes communicating between artists a lot easier.
As far as what I'm playing with, for me, my job, I came from a very technical job originally and my role at Draft2Digital has largely been around people's skills and managing and all of that.
And so I've had a ton of fun just playing around with the way in which you're gonna help you code. I was never a programmer by trade, but I did learn it in college and so it's enabled me to just kind of play around with little projects that I thought would be fun. I've used it for helping me write marketing copy because I hate writing, like doing marketing speak. So it's helped me with my job some.
And then like I'm looking at how it might help some of our younger members of our team with things like Excel, because it's very powerful at helping people write things like macros for Excel. They used to take classes and classes to learn how to do all the different things Excel can do, and now you can basically tell ChatGPT what you want it to do and it will come up with a macro for you and that's just awesome.
Joanna Penn: I love that you mentioned fun there because I definitely have a lot of fun. And you also said ‘writing partner' and I really feel like I'm co-writing with GPT4 now for sure.
But Michael, let's come to you. So at 20 Books Seville where we all met up and for that conference you talked in your keynote about how AI developments have enabled you to think much bigger as a publishing company — and as I always say to you, your ambition is hella bigger than mine and I really appreciate that.
Tell us what you said at 20 Books Seville about the 10,000 books in a year in case anyone hasn't heard that and why you are excited about AI. Michael Anderle: Goodness gracious. So one of the things that people probably either know or don't know about me is I got in trouble six years ago for saying that someone could put out 20 books in a year. And it caused a kerfuffle.
And now people need to understand, I didn't say necessarily the 20 books in a year. What I said was 20 books to get to 50K a year. And now I say, I have a big audacious goal of getting to 10,000 books produced. And that all of a sudden became a big kerfluffle. I guess they didn't understand some of the ramifications of that.
But when I'm looking at things, I am looking at my competition. And for me, unlike perhaps a lot of people, for me, my competition is Delray, my competition is Penguin Random House, and they have the ability to put out hundreds, if not thousands, and tens of thousands of books. And that's where I kind of look at this and I see the opportunities.
Now. LMBPN has already been down the path. We've already put out 350 books in one year. You know, we've already challenged, if you will, the mid-tiers. The next challenge for us are the biggest guys, and I believe that with what's going on, AI is going to allow us to do that. A lot of the things that Dan had mentioned before come into play.
How do we allow in all of the aspects of our publishing business to run way more efficiently? How do we get out the pieces that don't work well, whether it's an Excel spreadsheet or whatever it is, and AI is gonna allow us to do that.
I completely agree with the aspects on the creativity. I've done well over a hundred series. Not too many people can claim that. I have had to go down the path of how do I get the next idea? Stephen King talks about ‘read every day.' Well, when you're writing as much as I wrote for the first few years, you don't read every day, I did suffer the well of what the hell? What do we do next? And AI has engendered creativity and enthusiasm for new ideas.
I understand that a lot of writers have aspects of writing they don't like. One of mine is I don't like to create really engaging universes before I start writing. I tend to find the universe. However, if the universe was created before, I have learned by using AI that it engenders explosions of dopamine hits on my creativity of, that's a genius idea. I can put that into the book.
And so there are so many things that it facilitates. All the way up to other aspects, and so I think there's something for everyone in AI. If you choose not to use it, absolutely fine, but from the standpoint of going after a Penguin Random House without trying to get 5,000 employees, all of a sudden I see it as viable.
Joanna Penn: Well, I think that's maybe what confuses people about you though, because you are an author, you are one of us, and you have your books that you've written yourself and with other people. And then you also have these audacious goals that you are competing with Penguin Random House. So this goal around 10,000 books in a year — which is a goal, not an actuality right now for sure — but is that the publishing head, not the Michael author head?
Michael Anderle: Yeah, it is. Because I mean, one of the things, and let's talk about the publishing side head, and we spoke about these things. I think most people say, okay, that's 10,000 books in English. And it can be, I'm not saying it couldn't be, but I'm also saying, The whole thing I express is all stories from the company.
And this isn't LMBPN by the way. LMBPN is strictly human first.
10,000 books can be all stories and all modalitiesWhich means e-book, paperback, hardback. Then you go to audio, which can be synthetic audio, synthetic multicast audio. It can go to comic books, graphic novels. story scripts. It can go all modalities and all languages, all modalities everywhere, which means around the world all at once, which is obviously a digital manifestation.
And so when you do that, even if you took 10,000 books and you divided it by five modalities, which be easy to accomplish with the ones I just announced, and 10 languages, which also easy to do, that's 200 books. 200 times, five times 10 is 10,000. And a lot of people don't want to either clue into that.
And over the last seven years I've tried to explain to people at times and either fear, anxiety, or overwhelm, I mean, there are a lot of honestly justifiable reasons of why someone could react in a perhaps negative way. But I'm not here to explain everything, I'm here to provide a hint of what can happen. And some of the things that I say aren't because I think they can happen is because I know it can be accomplished.
And so, but I'm not gonna sit here and tell people, this is what we've done, this is what we've accomplished, this is what I know we can do. And after I've put that down, I watched the responses for a little while, and then I ignored them. You know, mentally, emotionally, it just really wasn't worth it.
But I did see one of them where someone was trying to ascertain, and I got a little annoyed because I'm like, we haven't put out one AI-written book yet, period. And I'm like, where are they getting off go wondering about these things when they have no understanding that this is what I'm goal oriented toward.
Joanna Penn: Absolutely. I think that's interesting. And there are a lot of fears and anxieties. So Dan, you've been immersed in the author community for so many years now, and you understand a lot of this, and we've read it in the comments around things, but we also hear it in the community.
What do you think are the main fears and anxieties around the implications of AI for writers?Dan Wood: That really is like the heart of why I wanted to be here and why I thought it was so important when you suggested that we do this discussion that it happened is there's a lot of fear, there's a lot of uncertainty.
Some of it has to do with people being afraid that they can be replaced. We're seeing that in the artist community. We're seeing it in the narrator community, and we're now seeing it in the writer community. Because I think there was a certain assumption among authors that AI could replace jobs, but that it would never come for creative jobs.
I think people are perhaps worrying a little bit too much because I think what really, yes, the large language models can generate text, but really the things that really get to the hearts of readers are the things that are unique, like the human struggles. And that's always gonna take a human component, I feel like.
I feel like we do need to take a stand and say we're seeing the same sort of rhetoric being used in the same sort of people trying to force us into black and white of there is only one way. There's AI. You use AI and you're wrong or you are completely human and that's just not the case.
It very much reminds me sometimes of the rhetoric that was used by traditional authors about indie authors 10 to 15 years ago and they're like, ‘oh no, this is gonna ruin reading. It's gonna ruin publishing because there's just gonna be too much content.
And I think what we've seen from the indie movement is that there's never enough content to keep up with what, how much readers want, and how quickly readers can read.
I think everyone has a choice. I don't think anyone has to use AI to help them with writing, but you can. And we should be accepting of people using AI as a writing tool. You might choose not to do that, but you might want to think about using AI to help you with your marketing copy. Cause those, they're things that people complain about all the time. They're like, I just wish I had somebody to do this.
And they don't realize that generally, that's what traditional publishing was providing. And they were having to pay a salary for people to do those things that they didn't like to do. And technology has enabled the indie movement to happen to where suddenly an author could also be a publisher and take care of all their business needs.
That's all technology. I guarantee you. I've hated that we've started talking about it and calling it AI, because I think that's very misleading. It's machine learning.
Draft2Digital, Amazon KDP, the only thing that enables us to work with so many authors is that we're using machine learning to help us with reviews. There's just no possible way our business models would work if we had to read every book to review it.
And so we're using tools and so you as an author are gaining through what we're now calling AI, and you have been, for 10 years, you've been using things like spell check and Grammarly that are AI, that took away some things for editors to do, but there were other jobs available for people.
And if you are willing to transition, jobs are still gonna be there. Like they're gonna change. There are things that we could not have dreamt of, like people getting paid to play video games on Twitch or YouTube. Those are things that technology has enabled.
And so yes, there are fears and uncertainty about all of this, but I think there's going to be room and humans are going to be a vital, important part of any creative endeavor going in the future.
Joanna Penn: Absolutely. And I agree with you on the rhetoric and it can't be AI or no AI because there is no ‘no AI' in the world that we work in online. I mean, even people listening to this right now on a podcast player, whatever they're listening on is, is all kind of AI-powered these days. So like you say, we need to dial down the negativity in the rhetoric on this kind of thing and be more accepting of people.
But let's carry on with some of the concerns because one of the things I've read from people is that “readers just won't want to read books that are AI-generated.” We are all planning on using elements of humanity in our books anyway. Like it's not, they're not AI books about AIs or anything like that. But the criticism is that people will be able to tell because the writing is somehow soulless.
But I'm co-writing GPT4 and I can tell it's not that. But Michael, what are your thoughts on this kind of anything that involves AI in the writing process will be soulless and will be able to tell?
Michael Anderle: I guess the first thing I would say is:
We already have millions of human-written books that are soulless and people can tell because they don't buy them, they don't read them, and they don't continue with them.And so I think we've already been down this path. The question, which I think is at the heart of where Draft2Digital is too, with Dan's comment related to machine learning, crap isn't going to go up. What you're worried about is people who understand how to use the large language models and the generative pre-trained capabilities in order to create quality work.
If you can't create quality work with GPT4 at the moment, that's actually on you. It's been done. I've seen it. We've edited it, we know it can be done. So that's not the question. Crap's just not gonna get sold.
Joanna Penn: Absolutely. Well, I guess that does come back to Draft2Digital and Dan obviously representing the company as well.
So one of the other things that people are saying is, oh, “you'll be able to tell and things will get machine banned.”
So you mentioned there about the tools that you have that kind of make sure certain books get through. I know people are worried and that they're, but if the authors who want to use elements of AI, myself included, some people are worried that those books will get flagged and banned and other people would like them to get banned on the way in, or there are rumors and they are rumors about books being banned from Amazon, either with AI text or AI images.
Will books that use AI as part of the process be banned or flagged during the publishing process?Dan Wood: I think one of the things we discussed while we were in Europe together was that we really don't think there need to be a lot of rule changes and that's something that we're communicating with our partners and they're still trying to figure it out as well.
So the retailers, the library systems, the subscription services, essentially we want good content and we don't ask someone if they use a ghostwriter. We don't ask someone exactly how they made their content.
We have tried all the different tools to at least try to identify if something was AI assisted. None of them have a good success rate. And that seems to be the academic consensus is that. There will never be a great way to detect things are written by these large language models because they are very, very good and there are a lot of humans to write very, very poorly. And so what we are looking for is just quality content.
Like I mentioned, we're scanning books to look for things that we know the retailers have told us they're concerned about. In our system at least then we have a human look at it and apply that judgment that only a human can. That's the way it scales. Like there has to be a level of scanning all of this.
Often what we will have people from, I would call the scammer community, or perhaps, and this is a separate community entirely too, the low content community or the passive income communities, that will try to just post a bunch of content. They will be very repetitive in nature and we generally will reject that kind of content because this content's readily available on the internet, like when those answers are out there. So if someone is just coming around along and using GPT to generate things that people can find easily with internet articles, we don't want that content. Our partners don't want that content.
If you're trying to make quality content and something this unique and appeals to a reader base, we will always take that. And I don't see that changing ever, and it really doesn't matter what tools we used to make it.Joanna Penn: Okay. Well let's talk about another thing that is not legally decided yet, which is around the copyright side of things.
So, Michael, as a businessman with a number of businesses, you are very careful about these things. What are your thoughts on the copyright aspect of works created with AI, even though there is no legal ruling on it?
If we are publishing these books, then we have to think something about it. And you also do foreign rights licensing, you do all these kind of things.
So we are signing contracts or using terms and conditions that are legal contracts.
[Check out this episode with intellectual property lawyer Kathryn Goldman for more in-depth discussion of AI and copyright.]
What are your thoughts on the copyright aspect of books co-written with AI?Michael Anderle: Well, this is an interesting aspect and I have looked at it and I've spoken to one of our lawyers yesterday, actually at length and another lawyer over in Amsterdam at the 20 Books Holland.
And so I ask them aspects of this, and I understand that a lot of people, and my belief is that some who have fear of anxiety are trying to hide behind this, but the reality is easily explained this way. Let me ask the question to both of you, we both agree that the law says right now that if you use a Midjourney image, you cannot copyright that Midjourney image. Is that correct?
Joanna Penn: Unless you change it in some way to make it more specific.
Dan Wood: It's confusing. For me, being risk averse and what I know about the law right now, I probably would not recommend people use Midjourney images on their covers. But I think it's fine to use for a number of other things like social media posts, but I think there are some very strong arguments to be made that you probably can and probably won't have a legal problem if you do.
Joanna Penn: I have a cover that is on Draft2Digital, With a Demon's Eye is a Midjourney image that my cover designer then turned into a book cover.
So I am on that side of it. So, Michael, carry on. Where are you on this?
Michael Anderle: So let me, in general, just that y'all, you actually answered this very specifically, which I think is awesome, but in general the answer is no. You can't. Right? Just in general without the specificity that you're talking about.
Now, let me ask you the question. If you as a Midjourney person say, give me Batman in this amazing pose with something behind them, and you take that image of the dozens that you do and you put it on a t-shirt and sell it, do you expect to get a takedown notice from DC comics or somebody, a very clearly worded, you have broken my copyright?
Joanna Penn: Yeah, for sure. Because that is someone else's character. Do not use Disney prompts or Marvel prompts or any of that for sure.
Michael Anderle: And there's your legal answer for all of it. It's the same for words because if you, if a human created it, you are legally protected if a human created it.
So the aspect in talking to the lawyer, and I'll go just a little bit more into this because once again, people should go and connect to their own lawyers. They should get their own. But generally speaking, the individual words that are in your book right now, you may not copyright. If I pull out three, bush, building, you can't copyright those.
So at that level, or even concepts, tropes, you cannot copyright tropes. If you have a book that basically says a woman went here, she got attacked, and then this guy came in, tried to save her, but she kicked his — you know, whatever. You cannot copyright the overview of what's going on.
It has to be what they call materially, materially similar. So even in those aspects, you can't copyright those things. But you actually, when you start creating a character, right? So why don't you as a human, create your character?
Dan Wood: I think it goes back to that idea that we have laws for all this already.
There's still things that have to play out in the courts. There are, I think at a certain level there are things that are problematic about the image generators because they did just scrape the web in general without a lot of supervision against scraping content that is copyrighted.
So that's kind of some of my qualifications earlier was why I don't necessarily trust it to use it on covers is because there are a few prompts where there's such a small number of images that fit that, that it's trained on, that it will generate something that's almost identical to an image that is under copyright.
But yes, I think what you're saying as far as we've already got loads of precedent and case law for those things that are created by a human. And then it doesn't really matter what tools they use to put that out in the world. And I can't come along and make something that looks like a character of yours.
And I mean, it does get squishy with, if I come along and give a prompt that is “give me a book in the style of this particular author,” if they are in the public domain, that is certainly legally fine. Is it ethical? Maybe not.
Michael Anderle: To clarify that one, the way I understand where we are at the moment is if I try to build a large language model on the aspect of James Patterson, which is completely doable right now. And then I try to build thrillers and compete with James Patterson, I am going to be probably screwed in the courts period.
Now, if I were to say, not try to train something and I go in there and I build a thriller and I say, Hey, write this in the voice of James Patterson, I'd probably still be incredibly shaky ground if I chose to say something like, all right, I have this thriller, and give me the dialogue of Elmer Schnitz and the description of J R R Tolkien, it's a little bit vague.
However, if I come in and say, and this is what the lawyer kind of said yesterday, he said, but if you go in there and say, “Hey, write me a thriller in the style of the 1950s bestselling pulp writers,” you are really not gonna have that much of a problem, cuz what are they gonna say?
Joanna Penn: Well, and this is what I wanted to come back on.
My overwhelming recommendation with people for images and text is: Do not use any names in your prompts. Do not use an artist's name for images. Do not use an author's name in writing. So I'm using like you are an award-winning horror writer, although I've also used my own name and my own name brought out some pretty cool stuff for me.
But ethically, just in general, and coming back to the Midjourney image where my book with the cover is selling on Draft2Digital and elsewhere, that is a character cover. And again, no artist's name was used in the prompts. It's a combat photographer, a female combat photographer that then my cover designer edited and changed. So, I don't see any problem in that.
This is a really important point because one of the reasons people want to use these images is because there are no stock photos of some of these things. So for example, fantasy characters of color, or for me, like a female combat photographer, there was no such character existing in stock photography.
I know images are slightly different to words, but I think our whole point here is don't use names in your prompts. Don't use other people's IP in prompts. I mean, that's what it comes down to.
Dan Wood: Yeah. I very much agree with that.
Joanna Penn: Right. Well. Let's come on to another fear that people have. Now, we have mentioned that, Michael, you said that the good stuff will rise to the top and Dan said the same thing. Things won't be rejected because of AI, but let's think about marketing because I mean, People say, oh, there's no competition, we're all here being nice to each other.
But let's face it, more books means more competition. And for example, bidding on keywords is a very specific example where there is a clear winner for every auction of keywords on a platform. So in that case, there is some competition.
What are your thoughts on how AI might impact marketing? Dan, you said it in a good way in that we can do social media posts and blurbs and stuff like that. What are some of the other potential ramifications or things that people are worried about?
Dan Wood: I do think very much that people are worried about there just being too much content and that is, making it very difficult for their marketing and very difficult for them to stand out in the content.
I think that they're underestimating how the different retailers will use AI to help them curate and help readers find books that they really love. And so I think generally, when people are very scared about how it's gonna impact marketing visibility, it has to do with the idea, there's just gonna be more content without thinking about the ramifications of the technology and how it will improve discovery in general for marketing.
I feel like there are very few places in our industry where it is truly like a fixed pie, where, you know, KU by far and by KU, I mean Kindle Unlimited. If one author's doing better, then it does mean like there's only so much money in the pool.
As far as the general book community goes though, the more authors the better because authors are readers and authors read a lot more books than your typical non-writer.
So the more people we get into the author community, the more people are buying books, the more people are reading. And so I think that is all good.
I think AI will make your marketing spend go further. The AI tools will probably be able to help people do Amazon ads better. They'll probably help people be able to do Facebook ads better.
We'll have new tools that we've never seen before because the different language models right now help people with a moderate understanding of coding and programming develop things very, very quickly. And that's something that within the industry, there's just not enough developers because developers tend to go on to jobs that pay a little bit better, and there's just not as big of the margins in books to draw the top talent.
And so now I think we're gonna see people like people like me and Michael that have some knowledge of how to write programs, but didn't love it and had a problem just sitting down and writing a program from scratch that we'll be able to make new and exciting, innovative things.
Michael Anderle: I meant thought about this a while ago when Dan was saying something.
Using ChatGPT for sales descriptions / blurbs is useful for book marketing.For all of you authors who hate to do blurbs, please raise your hand. You know, you can physically do it in the safety of wherever you're at at the moment. If you have not tried any of the large language models, try this. Go in there. Grab three blurbs from bestselling authors that are in your genre. Tell GPT I want you to take these blurbs and let me know when you are ready.
Paste the first one. Hit enter. Paste the second, hit enter, paste the third. Hit enter. And then say, write me a blurb where and give it information about your book. And then you can thank me in the morning. Now, if you don't wanna use AI, you won't be able to do this because you're not for it.
But I hate blurbs. I created a methodology to write blurbs years ago based on something that I'd looked at on just the way that they would do their little way. But I go and grab three of ours, paste them in, because I had this happen to me two weeks ago. I needed to do a book nine blurb. I hadn't done anything in this particular series for two months, and could not remember what the heck was going on.
And I went and pasted in seven, no, six, seven, and eight, and I, and then I looked back and say, okay, here's the core of what this book is about. I pasted, Hey, write me a blurb, blah, blah, blah. This is what happens. Go. And I had my blurb in a minute and I'm like, fantastic. Looked at it, made sure it was right, sent it on. Happy camper. Happy happy camper. And so from the marketing perspective, that's just one example of how AI can help us in other areas.
Now, related to your cost-per-click things, I've come to the conclusion a year and a half ago that Amazon's taking us on a pay-to-play just like Facebook did years ago.
It's no different. Therefore, I looked at what we were doing at the time, which is about 300 books a year and still is. And so I looked at that and I said, okay, pay to play, they're going to slowly take the money that they give us. That's very similar to what Facebook did, and I'm like, we're gonna have to leave.
So the whole question, in my opinion, the whole question related to KU versus Wide is going to play out because at a certain quantity of books, you can't play in Kindle Unlimited is my assertion. So if we were to use what I just said, and the aforementioned 10,000 books, 97% of them would be wide.
Out of the 10,000 books, 97% of them would be wide.Joanna Penn: So Dan, what do you think about that? Because obviously, Draft2Digital is all about wide publishing.
Dan Wood: I 100% percent agree. The unlimited model takes care of a lot of things and it certainly is exciting to a reader and readers have gotten used to things like Netflix and Spotify that give them kind of all-you-can-eat for a certain amount of money, but those models kind of break down.
Like the early days of Netflix were incredible, but now everyone is realizing and walling off their content and their own subscription service, and so now there are dozens of subscription services and we're all getting sick of paying. You know, I have to have a Paramount Plus account, I have to have a whatever they're calling HBM Max these days. I have to have Spotify, I have to have Netflix, blah, blah, blah.
I think we're also seeing Amazon is under new leadership and that leadership doesn't seem to care as much about books as perhaps the previous one did. We're seeing more and more people go wide. We're seeing the pandemic really helped ebook adoption take off in markets and other languages where it hadn't been.
Most people had not tried an ebook before, and so we've seen growth outside the English language market over the years, and I think AI is just going to be more fuel on that fire as it makes it easier for both English language content to be available in some of these other markets, but also for those authors in those markets to reach the broader English language market and to to do their own translations.
I think as more as authors are able to do more formats, that helps their author career.
The great thing about the indie movement is that it allowed for much, much greater diversity of content because what was getting published before was largely groups of people from the same basic backgrounds.You know, people who had connections to New York publishing, people who had connections to London publishing, people who had connections to Sydney publishing. Generally these were affluent people and publishing has always favored the affluent.
Even within the indie community, you have a leg up if you've got the money to spend on a good cover, if you've got the money to spend on editing upfront, you're gonna have an advantage.
And then when you have the money to spend on marketing upfront with AI, I think it will level the field even greater for all those authors who are just starting out so that they can have a competitive product that can be in all formats. They can get more bang for their buck with their ad spend.
Joanna Penn: And I think if people are concerned, what we are really saying is new tools are going to emerge. If old ones stop working, new ones will arrive.
AI will enable new marketing tools for book discovery.In fact, what I did the other day, I really wanted some more Dan Brown style, action, adventure, religious thrillers, like my own ARKANE series. I was like, okay, so there must be more authors out there other than just the ones I keep finding. And so I went on ChatGPT and I was like, these are the types of books I like What are 20 other books and authors I should check out?
It gave me a list and they were all guys, which is normal because Action Adventure is a very traditional, it's a lot of the old guys like Wilbur Smith is dead, lots of old dudes, Clive Cussler, all of that. And so I was like, well, how about some books by female authors or books that have been released in the last decade and it gave me a whole load more.
And then I said, I want books that make me feel like this way. And talked more about the emotional side of the books I like to read and some with architecture in, and that's why I actually had a chat around finding books to read and it gave me a whole load of new authors and I was like, this is fantastic.
This kind of discovery that you can chat to book discovery is brilliant. And first my marketing brain went, how do I tell it more about my books? Like this whole thing around, ‘oh, we don't want our books in there.' Well, it's like we do perhaps, I mean there's Google Bard and there's Bing and all of this. But that's what I was thinking. I was like, there has to be something that will do this. We have to encourage people to chat to find more books.
Dan Wood: I know for me, using any of the retailers for discovery kind of got unwieldy because the way in which they list things is not the way that readers think or talk about books.
I started going to Reddit for all of my, you know, I would follow the different subreddits that were genres that I liked for recommendations. And watching how they describe books is fascinating to me. And it's like, I think every author should be looking at that.
The cool thing for us is that those large language models were trained on Reddit. Now Reddit is starting to respond and realize the data trove they have and trying to protect that, but there's a lot of information out there to help you find a particular trope or feeling or author that's much better than the discovery platforms for books that are out there right now.
Joanna Penn: So I guess what we're saying is there'll be a lot more things coming along the way.
So there was one other thing I did wanna mention because we're almost out of time and that is that we don't want to see more polarization. And we touched on this a bit before, but when we were in Seville, we were like, this feels like the first AI-centered conference that we've been to where it was a mainstream topic conversation.
Your opening speech touched on it, Michael. And then there was a session on Midjourney towards the end, so it was like a bookend of the conference.
So, how do you think the author community is going to shake out with the discussion on AI? Because again, I remember when Joe Konrath's tsunami of crap blog post came out back in like 2012 whenever it was, and that was when the indie versus trad thing was there.
[I have an episode talking about the ‘tsunami of crap' argument and how it pertains to AI-generated content in this episode on responsible use of AI.]
And then of course there's the KU versus wide, and none of this should be so polarized. Michael, given your position in the community side of things, how can this shake out so we can all move on?
Michael Anderle: Well, that's a really good question because we do need to realize that some of the individuals that are being, what I would consider negative, have a vested purpose in being negative.
There's a value to them to be against AI, and so just recognize that sometimes the individuals that are saying things that they're trying to get you to act in a certain way that is not in your own personal self-interest.
Just read, get out there, and make your own decision, and just realize you're an adult.You might have to go against something that people want to vilify you for. My whole purpose of saying what I did was that, you know, throw the arrows my way, it's not going to do anything to me cause I'm gonna ignore you anyway. Just like I've ignored everybody who is upset with me for the last seven years because I don't get on social media.
I'm not personally trying to ignore you. I'm just not there. I'm rarely on social media because I have a business to run. I have authors who need to be paid and I, they need marketing, and I'm in those conversations and I have Robin Cutler who grew Ingram Spark and she's running the publishing side. I have conversations with her and guess what? It doesn't leave me time to sit on social media and wax poetic about whatever's going on. I'm here to grow a business.
So if you wish to sit there and wax against something, yes, you might be hurting somebody that's right next to you who could really hear the message and it could help them grow.
And just, the reason I wanted to start 20Books is help somebody make enough money in order to feed their kid to be able to buy some Enfamil. And if I'm going to say something about AI and make it okay for them to go check it out, then so be it.
Joanna Penn: Dan, obviously you and the folks at Draft2Digital go to a lot of conferences and you go to more traditional conferences as well, not just indie.
So how are you going to deal with this, and how do you think it will shake out?
Dan Wood: Yeah, I have been going to a lot of conferences. I have many, many friends in the author community, and I have friends that are scared to let their friends know that they're using AI and that they're experimenting with AI.
And that's why I wanted us to talk and I wanted to make sure that there are people speaking out for them because —
Some of the rhetoric is awful and we should really try to give each other as a community more grace. We have the opportunity to make something much better than traditional publishing ever was. And we've been great at sharing how to succeed in so many other aspects. But we always, there seems to be something like the indie versus trad, the KU versus wide, where we let it divide us for a couple of years and people say awful things and we need to get past that.
Something we've talked about is Draft2Digital has been working with Apple on their digital narration product. It's a great opportunity for authors that have just never had the money or the technical know-how to get their books made into audio.
Out of that, I've been in contact with thousands of authors and I have gotten emails back. They were just like, I can't believe, how dare you. How can Draft2Digital support this? I think it's fine for you as a person can decide. I don't want to have anything to do with this. Like, that is the great thing about being in indie is —
You get to control your business. Trying to tell someone else how they might run their business, I believe is neither good nor is it helpful. I believe it's also a waste of your time, like all this time that you're spending on social media complaining, you're trying to hold back a flood and you just can't do it. This stuff is going to happen. Legal things may slow it down a little bit, but for the most part, you have to change with the times.
Things will never again be like that 2012, 2013 period where you could just put a book up on KDP and it had a good chance of getting discovered. Things will never again be like those first, that first year of Facebook ads where nobody knew how to do it and so the people that did got huge visibility. Things will continue to change.
The people that will be successful are the people that will try to change with the tide. Michael Anderle: There there was a comment, Joanna, that I read yesterday. ChatGPT has a hundred million users. [Note: That was in January, so it's likely a lot more now.]
Just look at that right there. And they got it in four months that, you know, so the fastest growing software usage and things all across the world, it is here. If you believe it isn't. That's not actual reality.
Joanna Penn: So, I feel like part of the reason we wanted to talk was to try and make it a more AI-positive or at least AI-curious environment for people to be exploring this type of technology and be able to talk about it with other authors without being completely shut down.
And there are other communities being started because people feel unwelcome in different ones and like we don't want end up completely splintered. We've all been doing this way too long to end up with a splintered community.
I enjoyed the 20 Books Seville more than a conference I've been to in a long time. Like I felt really part of what this movement is becoming and it's very exciting.
So, Michael, I have booked my ticket to Vegas, but 20BooksVegas, as you know. I haven't been to that one before, because I'm such an introvert and it just seems so big. But I'm I want to be part of this movement.
What can we expect at 20BooksVegas around AI?Michael Anderle: So you asked me this at 20BooksSeville, and I had to call Craig because everyone knows because I say it on stage, Craig is the one who runs the 20BooksVegas situation and he said that he already had three classes on it already.
I suspect more will be done and we can certainly do an opportunity and an Ask Me Anything with you and myself there if you're up to it and we can make something happen. And so, it's going to be part of what's going on.
Joanna Penn: Well that's great and Dan, you are coming?
Dan Wood: Yes, I will be at 20BooksVegas, and I think I've been at every 20Books event except for Edinburgh.
Joanna Penn: Fantastic. So tell us where people can find you and everything you do online — although individually, you are not particularly contactable!
Michael Anderle: Certainly for the fiction books because that's the only thing that we do, got to LMBPN.com for all of that.
If you would like to see about getting published with LMBPN, we actually hide that quite a bit, but if you look at the bottom left-hand corner of the main page, there's an opportunity there for you to get involved.
Dan Wood: Probably the best is the Draft2Digital blog, or we have our Self-Publishing Insiders Podcast that you can check out. I am personally on Twitter @DanWoodOK and I share a lot of information about the publishing and AI stuff that I find interesting that I think could be helpful to some of you if you are into that sort of stuff.
Brilliant.
Joanna Penn: Well, thanks both of you for your time. That was great.
Dan Wood: Thank you for having us. Thank.
The post Generative AI And The Indie Author Community With Michael Anderle And Dan Wood first appeared on The Creative Penn.
What is the AI-Assisted Artisan Author? How can we use AI tools in our creative and business processes while still keeping our humanity at the core of our books?
As generative AI development continues apace and new possibilities emerge every week, the focus of AI discussions in the author community has been centered around productivity gains and high-volume output; copyright, plagiarism and piracy; and the fear of losing the artistic human aspect of being an author.
But there is much to be excited about if we can move past fear and doubt, and approach these tools with curiosity and a sense of wonder. We are only at the beginning of the opportunities of AI for wider society as well as for creativity and art, and it’s important that authors, writers, and other creatives be involved in order to shape the future as we want it to be.
In this article, I’ll outline the concept of the AI-Assisted Artisan Author, which is how I intend to surf the wave of change ahead, rather than drown in the deluge.
Today's show is sponsored by my wonderful patrons who fund my brain so I have time to think about and discuss these futurist topics impacting authors. If you support the show, you also get the extra monthly patron-only Q&A audio. You can support the show atwww.patreon.com/thecreativepenn
Joanna Penn writesnon-fiction for authorsand is an award-nominated, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller and dark fantasy author asJ.F. Penn. She has sold almost a million books across 169 countries and 5 languages. She’s also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker. Her latest book isPilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- Acknowledge the risks and understand the human response to change
- How generative AI has made me re-examine my self-definition
- Adopt an AI-curious attitude
- What is an AI-Assisted Artisan Author (or A4 for short)?
- Create beautiful books and products
- Double down on being human
- Write the books only you can write and include personal elements that can only come from you
- Foster connection and community with other humans
- Sell direct so readers connect you, the human, with your books (and other products)
- How to move forward
You can find more future-focused episodes here.
Acknowledge the risks and understand the human response to changeI have been talking and writing about the possibilities of AI since 2016, when AlphaGo beat Lee Sodol in what many consider as the first creative AI move. I have covered the topic as it relates to authors regularly since then and even written a short book on the impact of AI on authors and publishing.
I am the technology advisor to the Alliance of Independent Authors and helped formulate a submission on AI and copyright to the UK government in January 2022.
I am an optimist and AI-positive, but I also acknowledge the many questions and issues humanity must work through. There are risks and dangers associated with AI, in the same way that there are with other transformative tools that humanity has developed, and many smart people are working on how to figure out the way ahead.
Former head of Google Brain and co-founder of Coursera Dr. Andrew Ng, describes AI as “the new electricity.” Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google Alphabet, said that AI “is the most profound technology humanity is working on. More profound than fire, electricity, or anything we have done in the past.”
Fire, electricity, and indeed the internet have huge benefits — and can also destroy lives. But we have adapted and they are an essential part of modern life. Do you want to live without fire, electricity, or the internet? These are Tools and Weapons: The Promise and Peril of the Digital Age, as covered by Brad Smith in his book, written before the emergence of generative AI.
Yes, there are risks — but there are also incredible opportunities. I focus on creativity, specifically writing here, but if you research any sector right now, you will see incredible potential emerging with AI tools.
Let’s face it, things are not all rosy and wonderful right now. Humanity has some huge challenges and we could use the help to solve issues that are way too complex for us to figure out. For example, DeepMind’s Alpha Fold is revolutionizing biology, which in turn will accelerate solutions for healthcare issues; and there are many applications for AI in helping to mitigate or even solve climate change [BCG], as well as re-imagine education [UNESCO] and other industries. Pick an area you’re interested in and research how AI is being investigated for future developments.
Of course, there are also legal ramifications around fair use, copyright, and plagiarism, which may take years to work through. I covered these in more detail recently in my interview with intellectual property lawyer, Kathryn Goldman. But technology always emerges ahead of regulation, and the latter will come, in the same way that laws around driving and internet safety emerged after those technologies started to be used more widely.
People always resist technology. That is human nature.In Build for Tomorrow, Jason Feifer gives many examples of how people have reacted to change. Bicycles were considered damaging to society, and books were considered dangerous for women. US Founding Father Thomas Jefferson even said that novels were “poison [that] infects the mind.”
Cars were known as ‘devil wagons,’ and “people on the side of the streets started throwing rocks at [those in cars]. Oftentimes, bystanders would yell, ‘Get a horse!’”
When I was growing up in the 80s, TV was rotting our brains and computer games caused violence in children. Now we live in a golden era for TV and the gaming industry is bigger than music and movie industries combined [Gamerhub].
In the creative sphere, Feifer reports that musicians initially resisted recorded music, seeing it as a threat to their live performances, but then pivoted into embracing it when they began to make money from recordings. As I write this in May 2023, there is controversy over Heart on my Sleeve, a viral hit song created with the AI-synthed voices of two human artists, with debates over the ramifications for copyright and fair use legal frameworks [The Verge].
But some artists are embracing the change, with musician Grimes saying on Twitter, “I'll split 50% royalties on any successful AI generated song that uses my voice. Same deal as I would with any artist i collab with. Feel free to use my voice without penalty. I have no label and no legal bindings.”
The development of photography might be the closest comparison to where writers are now. As The Guardian notes, “For 180 years, people have been asking the question: is photography art?” It uses a machine to capture an image, and you don’t have to learn the skills of drawing or painting with a brush to create a finished picture. Some considered photography cheating and unfair on those who take longer to create by hand. Since anyone can do it, it’s essentially worthless, and it certainly can’t be considered art.
But now, of course, photography is considered an art form and people pay for beautiful photos to put on their walls. They visit galleries and exhibitions to see photos, and they buy photobooks and prints. The skill in photography is the choice of subject, the expert use of both the camera as a tool and the subsequent post-processing software, and the deeper human meaning behind the image.
Obviously, some photos are not art. Some are functional, some are just for fun, some are personal, many are worthless. Nevertheless, photography remains and the argument that it’s cheating and unfair to those who paint or draw by hand has largely subsided.
But photography is once again in flux. The winning image of the prestigious Sony World Photography Awards was later revealed to be created partially with AI.
There is even a new word being adopted by some: synthography, defined as “the method of generating digital media synthetically using machine learning,” [Wikipedia] and the same arguments are being raised all over again.
Technology moves on, and you get to choose how best to achieve your creative vision by utilising new tools, or remaining with existing methods.
But I know this goes deeper than semantics about what art is or is not. There is much more at stake.
How generative AI has made me re-examine my self-definitionWhen people ask what I do, I say, “I’m an author and a podcaster.” I write books and I record and publish audio, although I also do some professional speaking and teaching as well. Enough people pay me through multiple streams of income that I can make a living this way (thank you!) and I have been a full-time author entrepreneur since 2011.
This self-definition has worked for me — until just over a month ago, in March 2023, when Open AI released GPT4 (in the paid version of ChatGPT).
I’ve been trying out various AI writing tools for several years and, while interesting and useful, nothing has blown me away in terms of quality. I have happily used many of the tools in various ways without having an existential moment. Earlier this year, I even used Sudowrite and other tools to help me write my short story, With a Demon’s Eye.
But when I started co-writing with GPT4 (and it really does feel like co-writing), I had a moment of reckoning.
It is a step change from what has come before.
Based on my ideas and my structured prompting and using my own J.F. Penn fiction as examples to guide voice and tone, I was able to output words much faster than I could write them myself. I was so engrossed in the story as I prompted and GPT4 generated, that I enjoyed the experience far more than writing alone. It was so much fun that I was desperate to get back to the page to continue turning what was in my head into reality.
As science fiction author Hugh Howey recently wrote,
“The most impressive thing about Chat is the most difficult thing for any writer: the ability to spin out words. To do the work. With Chat, paragraphs pour out like rain.”
Of course, a rain of paragraphs, and thousands of coherent words, does not make a story that readers will love, or an engaging non-fiction book. A lot more goes into the process of crafting a finished book. But ‘outputting words’ has always been an important part of the job and what is a writer if not someone who can turn thoughts into words on a page by typing or dictating or hand-writing?
The problem is how we have defined ourselves — and that needs to change in order to move forward.
As Jason Feifer says in Build for Tomorrow, “We are not what we do. We are why we do it.”I spent some time reassessing my self-definition, and perhaps this approach might help you too.
I help writers and authors with my non-fiction books, courses, speaking, and my podcast as Joanna Penn. My mission at The Creative Penn has always been to empower authors with the knowledge they need to make decisions about their career, to write and publish and reach readers in a more effective way. I want to be useful and I have always loved reading self-help. Early on, I wanted to be the introverted British Tony Robbins!
The Creative Penn Podcast has now been downloaded over 8.5 million times across 228 countries and I have wonderful Patrons who support the show, and people often email me or tweet me or leave a comment to say how much the show has helped them. Many of you have also said that you tune in for my introduction just as much as the interviews, and find my personal take on the industry useful.
While text and audio generated by AI can certainly help you with practical tips and information on writing craft and business, it cannot bring my personal experience or share the emotional rollercoaster that is the reality of being a human author.
My recent midlife memoir, Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways, is an even better example of a book that cannot be replicated by AI. The words could be duplicated, for sure, but it’s going to be a long time before an AI walks the Camino de Santiago and shares that emotional experience in such a personal fashion!
What about my fiction as J.F. Penn?I write thrillers, dark fantasy, and crime.But that is not enough.
Plenty of other human authors can deliver books in these genres, and even if you don’t believe AI can do this now, then check out AutoGPT and generative story apps and consider where we will be in a few years.
AI tools can absolutely do that. And if you don’t agree that AI tools can do this now, how about in a year or two years’ time?
Why write fiction then, if readers can get their stories elsewhere?
You’re a writer. You know why!We can’t help ourselves.
Writing is how I figure out what I think. For non-fiction, it’s what I think about the more practical things, and in my fiction and memoir, it’s the deeper aspects and fundamental questions of life. My fiction has underlying themes of good vs. evil, memento mori (remember, you will die), and whether there is more than just this physical realm (Is there a God? What about demons and angels? What lies on the other side of the veil?)
I’m writing this article because I need to work out my approach to co-creating with AI tools and figure out the next steps in my author career. Sharing my words as I work through this might help you.
I write fiction as I have this constant flow of story ideas. As I walk through the world, my mind constantly spins off into fantastic adventures and dark corridors that I want to get onto the page and into the world. I am overflowing with story ideas that I have yet to share and more arrive every day. Some of the stories that make it into book form touch other people and provoke deeper thoughts, or at least an escape for a while.
At heart, I write fiction for the old me. The Jo Penn who worked a corporate job for over a decade and who read thrillers and crime and dark fantasy to escape a job she hated. I read on the commuter train every morning, with lunch most days and on the way home as well as in bed every night. I still read fiction every day for pleasure and fun and escape in a different way, but back then, it was my lifeline.
So hell yeah, I’m going to keep writing — but since I intend to use AI assistance across my creative and business processes, I need to shift my idea of what the job of an author is.
The Merriam Webster dictionary defines author as “the writer of a literary work (such as a book), and also “one that originates or creates something.”
The latter half of the definition works perfectly if you want to embrace AI-assistance. You can use AI tools through the creative process, with your ideas as the origin of the story or the non-fiction book, your hand-crafting through multiple prompting layers, your guidance and editing shaping the final version of whatever you want to create.
So yes, I’m an author and a podcaster — but I am not someone who just outputs words in text or audio format. It is the purpose behind the words that matter and the connection I make with other humans that has an impact.
As Joanna Penn, I help writers with inspiration and information based on my human experience as an author. As J.F. Penn, I help readers and listeners escape their lives for a time into a world of imagination, and explore the deeper aspects of human life through my themes.
I already use tools and services in my one-person, multi-six-figure business, and going forward, I intend to expand my use of AI tools to help me achieve these goals in different ways.
If you’re still with me, and want to do this too, how can we move forward?
Adopt an AI-curious attitudeToo many people are making pronouncements about AI in the creative sphere without trying the tools — or without trying them again, since there are developments every day and the tools are changing and improving at high speed. An opinion you held last week may now shift based on new developments, so question and test your assumptions.
Too many people are stuck in panic and fear and/or avoidance — which I completely understand as I have had those feelings too — but we need to move forward into curiosity and adaptation, as generative AI is not going back in the box.
Every week more companies roll out these tools in workplaces around the world. Just look at the pace Microsoft is releasing OpenAI tools into their Office products, and yes, that includes MS Word, which many authors use for writing. This is driving acceptance and awareness of AI tools in the workplace far faster than previous product iterations.
The biggest tech companies in the world — Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta — are rolling out generative AI tools for creativity, search, and office admin functions.
Huge multinationals are embracing these tools. The Wall Street Journal reports that accounting and consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers is pouring $1 billion into generative AI and using GPT4 with Microsoft Azure to transform their business and client offerings. Law firm Allen & Overy is just one of the legal companies embracing AI to help draft legal documents, as reported by WIRED.
Even if the popular tools we use right now are shut down because of various legal cases over fair use and copyright, others will emerge built on top of new models created from appropriately licensed work.
For example, if you don’t want to use Midjourney because you’re concerned about its dataset, then check out Adobe Firefly, trained on Adobe’s copyrighted works. Since the tool is integrated with Photoshop, many book cover designers will soon be using it.
If you don’t want to use GPT4, then it won’t be long until you can fine tune a model built with proprietary data on Amazon’s AWS Bedrock using the Titan model. Since it only needs 20 examples to fine-tune the Foundation Model, even individual authors could use it with a backlist. Imagine what a publishing company could do with thousands of genre-specific books.
You are already AI-assisted and you already use AI tools as part of your daily life and your author business.
If you use Grammarly or ProWritingAid for aspects of editing, Google for research or Maps for navigation or email with auto-anti-spam, Amazon for publishing or advertising or shopping, Facebook or TikTok or Twitter for social media, Spotify for music discovery, or Netflix for TV, you are using AI-assisted platforms and tools. Even if you only use Microsoft Word, it will soon be enhanced by generative AI with Co-Pilot.
You can go back to writing by hand on paper and avoid AI altogether, or you can take a breath and follow your curiosity.
Experiment.
Try out the tools (many of them are free or cheap) and see how they might help you create what you could only dream of before.If you are AI-positive or at least AI-curious, check out the Facebook groups AI Writing for Authors, and AI Art for Authors, which are full of great tips and tricks and recommendations for various tools and prompts to get started.
You can also get ideas from The AI Author Assistant by Elisa Lorello, or check out tutorial videos like Elisabeth Ann West’s videos on Sudowrite, or join J. Thorn’s newsletter about the impact of AI on creatives at creativeaidigest.com, or check out Monica Leonelle's essays at The Author Analyst.
This is the beginning of a new form of creativity, and everyone is finding their own way. We are all new at this.
Try things out and find your own process, in the same way as writers have always figured out their own way of doing things. You can learn from others — and people change their process every day right now as new options emerge! — but in the end, it’s your brain, your ideas, and your creative vision.
It’s also a great way to continue learning the craft of writing. In the same way that experienced artists construct the best prompts for AI art —
The better you are at writing, the more deeply you understand the craft, the more you can prompt the AI tools into what you want to generate — and of course, edit the output with your creative vision in mind.While you experiment, I recommend that you don’t use other author or artist names in your prompts, whether for words, images, music, or voice. While this may not legally infringe on the originator’s intellectual property rights for doing so at the moment since the law is not certain, it crosses an ethical line (in my opinion) and you are far more likely to plagiarise if you use someone else’s name in a prompt. These are powerful tools, so let’s use them responsibly.
[See the Alliance of Independent Authors Ethical use of AI for other guidelines.]
After all, you are creative. You are an author.
You want to create something that is uniquely you, so use your writing to prompt and fine-tune. You can use samples of your writing in your prompts even if you have never published anything, so just give it a go.
What is an AI-Assisted Artisan Author (or A4 for short)? An artisan can be defined as “a worker in a skilled trade, especially one that involves making things by hand,” or one made “in a traditional or non-mechanical way using high-quality ingredients.” [Oxford English Dictionary]
I tried to find a better word than artisan and no doubt some will argue with my use of the term, but I think it works because I intend to personally oversee and hand-craft my books and products while also incorporating AI writing and creativity tools into my process.
Some will choose to use AI tools in a high-production model, but that is not the only approach.
I aim to produce books of higher quality and work with the tools to go deeper into my themes and write in an ever more personal way than I have done before. As Anais Nin said, “If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.”
Because it’s not about the production of words.
It’s not about the paragraphs pouring out like rain.
It’s about meaning and connection.
Jay Acunzo summed this up on Twitter recently..
“A bright line is being drawn between creators today.Some think the job is to create content. Others know the job is to create connect. When you learn to matter more, you need to beg for attention less.Keep making what matters.”
So how can we do this?
Double down on being humanI often talk about this as a concept, but what are some ways you can practically demonstrate your humanity even as you use AI tools as part of your process?
Write the books only you can write and include personal elements that can only come from youIn Futureproof, Kevin Roose explains more about how he leaves handprints in his work as a reporter.
“I start every reporting assignment by figuring out how I can put my unique stamp on it, and not have it feel like a generic story that any other reporter (or any piece of AI software) could have written.”
As authors facing the same question — If a bot can write this book, what’s the point?
The goal is to make every book resonate with your humanity even as you use AI tools as part of your creative and business processes.
If you’re writing non-fiction, fill it with personal stories, not just tips that could come from anyone. If you’re writing fiction, explore the personal themes that keep you awake at night, or delight you and make you laugh, or help you escape into another world and inspire a sense of wonder. It’s a call to center your humanity and put more of yourself into your work.
I know how hard this is. Fear of judgment is my deepest struggle — with my books, with my podcast, and especially on controversial topics like this!
I was scared to publish my darkest book, Desecration, for fear of what people might think of my darker side. I was worried when I published The Successful Author Mindset, as I shared snippets from my diaries around the reality of being a writer.
Even after 15 years of being an author, I was terrified of publishing Pilgrimage as it laid bare my midlife depression, and thoughts I hadn’t even shared with my husband, let alone the wider world.
But that’s what we need to dial into.
AI tools can generate unlimited words in very little time, and never tire, never stop. But that doesn’t matter.
Your books are your ideas. Your prompts. Your curation. Your editing.
Your creative direction.
However you create — with or without AI tools — it’s more important than ever to find your voice and reach readers as one human connecting with another.
Create beautiful books and productsWhile digital products (ebooks, audiobooks, online courses) will continue to be important, generative AI will result in digital abundance, which will drive revenue down as there is so much supply.
Scarcity, therefore, becomes ever more important, and as such, I am excited about creating beautiful physical products (alongside the usual formats for my books).
While I read every day in ebook and audiobook formats, my bookshelves are full of beautiful hardbacks that I spend more money on. My most expensive book is an oversize edition with full-color images of Carl Jung’s The Red Book (which partially inspired Stone of Fire). Others include Death: A Graveside Companion, Heavenly Bodies by Paul Koudounaris, Dark Tourism by Rebecca Bathory, Lost Cities Ancient Tombs, and Anatomica: The Exquisite and Unsettling Art of Human Anatomy. If you like the sound of these, you might enjoy my fiction as J.F. Penn. Yes, I am a dark little soul!
I produced my first beautiful hardback book this year for my Pilgrimage Kickstarter, with silver foil on the cover, a flyleaf cover with a silken finish, full-color photos, and premium paper. (You can buy the hardback on my store, CreativePennBooks.com, also available in other formats).
I am proud of all my books, but this is the first physical product I have made that I truly love. While the content of the memoir is available in all the usual formats in all the usual places, this premium physical product is both an expression of my desire to make something beautiful for a book of my heart — and also makes me a decent profit. This satisfies my artistic and my business sides and helps my books stand out.
I intend to do more beautiful books and I have loads of ideas about future projects, potentially working with AI-assisted artists as well as my existing team. I will still publish all the usual formats on the usual platforms, but I will also be doing more special projects on Kickstarter and selling direct-only products from my store, CreativePennBooks.com
In this way, I can “Leave handprints,” as Kevin Roose suggests in Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation. “What will make us stand out is not how hard we labor, but how much of ourselves shows up in the final product. In other words, elbow grease is out. Handprints are in.”
[I also recommend Kevin’s podcast, Hard Fork, with Casey Newton, which offers weekly insights into AI developments.]
Foster connection and community with other humansYou can also use AI tools for marketing, and even some of those authors who are adamant about not writing with AI are using it for social media and marketing copy, character images, advertising, and more.
But even as we use the tools, we have to ‘leave handprints.’
Share aspects of your personal life that would be hard to replicate consistently over time by a machine. Yes, there are deep fake photos and there are photo-quality AI images of people who don’t exist, but you are real, so share real photos on social media or your website, preferably of your face so people can see you. In this vein, human me will still present this podcast until I tell you otherwise, even though my voice double gets better every week.
Of course, you need to protect your boundaries. I don’t share pictures of my husband on social media, but I share enough pictures of random things regularly that you know I am a real person with a varied life. It’s not just all about branding, or on-message photos like the kind generated by fake media purely for sales purposes.
Be a human with a physical body Attend events in person so you can meet and connect with other humans. I know this is hard. I’m an introvert with a touch of social anxiety. I’m overly sensitive to sound and light, and find crowds and noise difficult. After 20Books Seville recently, I spent a day in bed recovering in silence and darkness and then I had to leave London Book Fair early, spending another day in bed, this time with a headache that completely shut me down. [Thanks to everyone who sent me tips on how to manage my energy better!]
This kind of person-to-person connection is critical, and increasingly so as the digital world becomes even more pervasive. People do business with people they know, like, and trust.
After 15 years of building a digital, scalable, online business, I am now searching for ways to be more physical, immediate, transitory, and in-person. Less scalable, more personal.
Of course, it can be expensive and impractical to travel to events and conferences, so try arranging a meet-up locally with other authors, or organize a reader event at a local library. Or consider how else you could do something in person. What might intersect with your books/stories/world?
Sell direct so readers connect you, the human, with your books (and other products)When you choose to buy direct instead of through a big brand store, you connect with the creator.
When you sell direct, you have a closer relationship with the buyer. You get paid more quickly and you can email them over time, fostering the relationship — and yes, encouraging more sales!
The same happens with Kickstarter or other crowdfunding platforms. You connect with the author/creator more directly and you are choosing to help them create and make more of a profit.
For more on this, check out my resources and interviews on selling direct, including how I built my store and lessons learned from my first Kickstarter campaign.
You can buy my books in all formats at www.CreativePennBooks.com (or at your favorite online store, or order at your library or local bookshop).
These are just some aspects of doubling down on being human, and I’m sure more will emerge as this industry changes and shifts over time.
As Jason Feifer says in Build for Tomorrow:
“Do not panic. Do not focus on what is lost. Focus instead on what can be gained.”Fifteen years ago, I embraced a new form of publishing, as one of the first generation of indie authors to use ebooks and digital audio as well as print on demand.
I originally self-published back in the days when it was seen as ‘vanity’ and a bad decision that would destroy your reputation. Now it’s seen as a valid choice for business-minded authors who want to write and publish the books they choose, own and control their intellectual property, connect with readers directly, and make a full-time living as an author.
I didn’t know it would turn out this way when I first self-published in early 2008, just a few months after the Kindle and the iPhone launched in late 2007. All I knew was that I wanted to join this exciting movement full of authors experimenting and forging their own path on the back of a new wave of technology.
I’ve experimented and tried new things along the way, pivoted and shifted, and grown since then — and I am still here, still writing, still creating, still running my own business.
In many ways, I am a successful author.
But as Aidan McCullen says in Undisruptible: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention for Individuals, Organisations, and Life:
“When individuals are at their most successful, we are also at our most vulnerable. We become so preoccupied with optimizing, enjoying, and defending the competitive advantage that made us successful today that we neglect to prepare for tomorrow.”
Indie authors are successful right now, but the old model is shifting, and I need to change in order to be successful in the next 15 years of my author career. I am only 48. I have a lot of life left in me (touch wood!)
At 20BooksSeville recently, someone described me as one of the ‘old guard’ of indie because I have been doing this for so long. I’m grateful for the last 15 years, but I don’t want to be the ‘old guard.' I want to be in the vanguard of this new exciting movement full of authors and creators forging their path on the back of this next wave of technology.
I’m experimenting and playing and trying new things. I’m pushing the boundaries of my existing creative process and slowly, I am shifting into being an AI-Assisted Artisan Author. How about you?
Let me know any questions or thoughts in the comments, or Contact Me here, and please be gentle. We are all still working this out together!
If you found this useful, please consider supporting the show at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn or BuyMeACoffee.com/thecreativepenn
P.S. Could you tell which words were generated by GPT4 and what was all me? Does it matter if you found it useful and/or thought-provoking?
P.P.S. Human me wrote every word, but again, does it matter as long as you found it useful and thought-provoking?
The post The AI-Assisted Artisan Author With Joanna Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.
How can we build a creative life based on following our curiosity? What are some important attitudes to hold that will help us with a sustainable life and career? Kevin Kelly shares some Excellent Advice for Living.
In the intro, author newsletter tips [BookBub]; Mark Dawson's 20+ year writing journey; Thoughts on 20Books Seville and London Book Fair with me and Orna Ross [Ask ALLi]; HarperCollins is testing AI-generated content, reported by Jane Friedman [The Hotsheet].
Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with Scrivener, ProWritingAid will help you improve your bookbeforeyou send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 25% off the premium edition atwww.ProWritingAid.com/joanna
Kevin Kelly is the New York Times bestselling author of multiple books, including The Inevitable, Cool Tools, and Vanishing Asia, as well as being a Technologist Senior Maverick at Wired Magazine and co-chair of the Long Now Foundation. His latest book Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- Following your curiosity for an interesting, long-term, project-based career
- Experiencing different cultures and the creative process
- Creating art as “imperfect beings”
- Letting your author voice emerge instead of finding it
- Reasons for optimism for writers with generative AI
- Why 1000 true fans is still relevant
You can find Kevin Kelly at KK.org or on socials @Kevin2Kelly
Header image generated by Joanna Penn on Midjourney.
Transcript of Interview with Kevin KellyJoanna: Kevin Kelly is the New York Times bestselling author of multiple books, including The Inevitable, Cool Tools, and Vanishing Asia, as well as being a Technologist Senior Maverick at Wired Magazine and co-chair of the Long Now Foundation. His latest book Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier. So welcome to the show, Kevin.
Kevin: Oh, I'm really delighted to be here. I really appreciate you inviting me. Thank you.
Joanna: Oh, no, I'm excited. And there is indeed a lot of excellent advice in the book. So I've pulled out some particular quotes for writers to explore further. And the first is:
“Draw to discover what you see. Write to discover what you think.”What part has visual art and writing played in your life? How do you balance creation with consumption?
Kevin: That's a great question. I, for some reason, have been a maker, which is what we call it now, all my life. I didn't call it that when I was growing up, I was just a kid who liked to make things, and not just little things, but larger things. So I made a model train layout with plywood with, you know, a little city and lights and things when I was probably 10ish, maybe.
Then I went on to make a nature museum when I was 12. I found a book at the library about how to make a nature museum. And I was doing collections and making exhibits, and I went on to make other things like that. I don't know, it was just something in me that wanted to make stuff.
I got into art as a kid, and I almost went to art school after high school, which I should have done, but I didn't. So it's always been a part of how I see things. I eventually kind of gravitated to photography because it was a combination of my other love, which was science. So it's kind of technical and art at the same time. And when I started, you had to do the chemistry, and go into the darkroom, and do the magic chemistry, and so it's very technical. And that was very much a part of me.
I would go out to photograph to see. I mean, there was something about doing the art that enabled me to see things. Partly, it was an excuse to see it, and partly, it was that act of trying to look and see. Then when I was drawing, I realized that most of the effort was actually to see the thing. It wasn't the hand, it was your eye trying to see something, and then you could transfer it to your hand.
Later on, when I started to write, it was the same thing. I don't have an idea, and then I try to express it. It's quite the opposite.
I don't even know what I'm thinking. I don't know what my idea is until I try and write something, and that act of writing it kind of puts the idea into my head. It's very weird. It's sort of like I try to think what I know, and I realize I don't know, and I try to get somewhere. And that act of trying to write actually creates the idea, so that's what I meant by that.
Joanna: Well, we call that discovery writing. That's what we call it.
Kevin: I'm a discovery writer. Okay, I didn't know that. Thank you.
Joanna: Some people in the writing community call them ‘pantsers.' And that is a very American word, obviously, because in England, pants is underwear. So we kind of adopted the word ‘discovery writer,' because you know, that's better than pants.
Kevin: I don't get the pants reference.
Joanna: Writing by the seat of your pants.
Kevin: Ah, okay. I think discovery writing is more apt. That is definitely my style of writing. I don't write as much fiction, but I would even imagine I'd probably do the same when I write fiction.
Joanna: Oh, good. It's interesting, because you talk there about almost changing your process over the years and changing the way you see and you learn to write by writing and figure out what you think. But I wondered how your writing process, in particular, has changed over the years because you've written some very different types of books.
Like The Inevitable, I've got it here in hardback, and I quote it often. It's about technology, it's about art as well, but it is mainly about technology. And then Vanishing Asia, of course, is a photo book. And I wondered, how has your writing process changed?
How do you decide on what book to write next because they're so diverse?Kevin: Yes, you're absolutely correct. The Vanishing Asia book, which you mentioned, does have 9000 captions. There are some words, even though there are 9000 images as well, but that was a matter of, you know, its labeling rather than creative writing. Although I had to condense a lot of information about a picture into a few words.
I tend to write telegraphic, and as I've gone on it's become more important to me. That's one of the things happening with this Excellent Advice book, which was me trying to make it as telegraphic as possible. I somehow enjoy that process of trying to distill something down to as few possible words. I don't know whether that was my background editing.
I'm a more natural editor than a writer, let me put it that way. My natural tendency is to edit. I'm comfortable editing. I am just in pain trying to write that first draft, and it's just excruciating.
I work with writers. So I work with writers who love to write.
I don't love to write, I love to have written. And so I'm much more comfortable in that kind of distilling something down and removing words, rather than adding words or making up words.Over time, I'm not sure how I would say it's changed. So maybe, one, is that kind of appreciating the distillation process. It's a piece of advice which I put into the book, which is this idea that all professional writers get to where you have to generate lots of bad stuff, first drafts that you're going to throw away, but know that. And I didn't know that in the beginning. I didn't realize that you would do that.
That seemed kind of like a waste, or a failure or something, that you would generate stuff that you would throw away, knowing that you're going to throw it away. I mean, that's the difference. And so now I understand that I'm just going to write a whole bunch of stuff that I'm just never going to use, and that's sort of the point of it.
That took me a long time to understand that. And that's true for anything I make now. I just assume I'm going to get there by making prototypes, going to make different versions of it as I go along, knowing that I'm not going to save the initial ones, that I'm not going to hold on to them. That changed over time where I understood that. So it's much more about the process now, rather than about the artifact.
Joanna: And with your photography, because I mean, you started taking pictures in Asia decades ago when digital photography was not as it is now. So now you can take millions of photos and then spend the time editing, but originally, you would have had to take fewer photos, I guess.
So is that maybe part of why your process has changed because you do have this abundance? And that must make editing also a lot harder.
Kevin: You're absolutely right. So when I started off 50 years ago, 1972, photographing in Taiwan, Japan, and I had precious rolls of film, which had 36 exposures in a roll. And the cost of that developing and buying the film, in today's dollars, is about $5. So imagine each time you clicked your camera phone it was $5. That really tends to focus what you're going to shoot at.
So that habit of really trying to sort of edit in the camera, they were calling it, where you spent much more time thinking and moving about and pretending you're photographing, but not actually photographing, that kind of slows you down.
And that habit, I still maintained even as I went to digital of trying not to take a lot, and really trying this decisive moment idea of like waiting for the right moment and then taking as few as possible.
I'm not the auto motor. There's a motor-driven mode in a lot of cameras where you just ‘click, click, click' and then later on you pick out the one that you like.
I'm still much more trying to time it myself, kind of like as if it was film. So I think it's true, that model of trying to minimize the things and trying to edit in the camera as much as possible, is an old school version. There's really no reason not to take a lot of pictures, they are all free. But to me, there's a different joy in it.
Joanna: And then just staying on Asia, because another quote from the book says:
“Expand your mind by thinking with your feet on a walk, or with your hand in a notebook. Think outside your brain.” Which I really love. So how have your travels in Asia, in particular, being so many different cultures, helped you think outside your brain? How has Asia changed you?
Kevin: Well, the way that Asia changed me, I mean, it's just so immense, it would be an entire book in itself. Because I went to Asia from when I was very, very young, I was 20, and I had never been outside of New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts. And in the 70s, early 70s and 60s when I was growing up, it was a very, very different world, a very different America, and I had never eaten Chinese food in my life. I had never held chopsticks in my life. It was a very parochial world.
So going and winding up in Taiwan in 1972, it blew my mind. It just was so utterly different from anything I experienced in suburban New Jersey. And there was an openness, meaning that everybody was working out on the streets, so everything was visible, their sense of privacy was very different. You could kind of walk into anything without any objection, or people will be welcoming. People did things differently. It was just mind-bogglingly different for me.
That was the beginning of it, and I just kind of went on to most of the Asian countries from there, photographing, but also learning. I mean, after I was done, I awarded myself an honorary degree in Asian studies because there was so much. And the diversity within Asia is much greater than even from any Asian country to America, really. It's just huge. From Turkey, to Japan, Siberia in the North, down to Indonesia. It's just vast.
So I learned from those things, primarily, this idea of the benefit of otherness, of having differences, of thinking different, and having a different way of doing things. Because we are now in a world where we're connected all the time with each other 24 hours a day. And yet, the engine of all the innovation, and even the wealth, is coming from being able to think different.
It's harder to think different when we're connected together. And I find that traveling, it being physical, having those hurdles that your body has, and being outside of your head and actually immersed in the world, and using your hands to do things, it ignites different ideas. It ignites ideas that you can't get just by thinking about things.
This is one of the reasons why I preach embracing technologies is because we can think about what these technologies are going to do, but we have to use them and do them in order to actually see what they're good for and know what they're not good for.
So engaging in the physical world is the ultimate trip, and it's the ultimate way to make something happen. And it's the ultimate way to learn and to understand what's happening. So I think the value of travel, we should subsidize it to the youth because it is so so valuable.
Joanna: Yes, I have another podcast called Books and Travel, and it's definitely one of my obsessions. I was wondering whether you have — this is something I struggle with, which is being at home. In that when I'm home, I am always planning my next trip. And so whether wanderlust is just part of us as a character, our innate, and that's just from curiosity, or whether you think you'll ever stop traveling?
Have you found ‘home' or is your home everywhere?Kevin: Well, I was shocked, utterly shocked by COVID because for two and a half years, I did not travel anywhere. And I mean, I was a rolling stone until that point.
And the shocking thing was I did not miss it at all. It was like if I never got on a plane again, I'm perfectly happy. It was so weird because I would not have ever predicted that. I haven't actually gotten back to the level of wanderlust. And so it turned out that I was happy not traveling.
I didn't hate it, it wasn't that I was burned out, it was just like, oh, okay, well, can't travel, that's alright, we'll make stuff at home. And so that was something surprising that I did not know about myself, which was that I was going to be happy not traveling.
I've picked up again, a little bit, but not as much as anywhere near what I was doing. And it's been fine. So I don't know what that says. I'm not, as you know, as obsessed with finding these little corners of the world that are special. I'm maybe figuring that I've done a lot of that, and it's okay. And now I'm kind of doing other things. So for me, that was a surprise for myself.
Joanna: Was that at the time you were doing the Vanishing Asia books?
Kevin: Yes. Yeah.
Joanna: So maybe with that, you were kind of virtually traveling every day because that was such a huge project.
Kevin: Yes, yeah. I had a half a million images that I was going through and editing. And I did the layout and design for all 1080 pages. Each page has a different design and I had to color process, or you know, basically touch up every single one of those 9000 images. Yeah, there was a huge amount of work.
So yeah, I could have been satisfied, my wanderlust could have been satisfied by reviewing all these images, some of which were taken almost 50 years ago. So that could have been a large part of it.
Joanna: It's interesting. And then I wanted to ask, another quote that I really liked was:
“Only imperfect beings can make art because art begins in what is broken.” And that really made me stop and think. So how has being broken impacted your art?
Kevin: As I said, superheroes and saints don't really make art. Mother Teresa, Jesus, they weren't doing art because there was nothing to complete. So it's our incompleteness. It's our kind of search for things, this yearning to restore something in some ways, that I think is this fundamental thing of making the art, the expression.
My definition of art, there's lots of definitions, but mine is cool and useless. It's things that we make that really aren't practical in that first-order sense. They're kind of existing just because, and that sense of that they're there for us, the primary audience is ourselves.
So there's a question that we have that we're kind of answering. And we may not even know what the question is, but we're making an answer to it. And so if you don't have questions to yourself, if you're perfect, you don't have questions about yourself.
And so the art is kind of a way of trying to answer a question that you're not even sure what it is. And for me, that's what it is. It's kind of my inner self talking to my conscious self, or making itself conscious and aware. And so there's a lot of subterranean work going on because I'm imperfect, and I see the same in other people as well.
Joanna: Well, it's interesting, you say subterranean. I mean—
Do we even know what it is that is broken in ourselves when we make our art?Kevin: We often don't know. My basic stance is that we are totally opaque to ourselves. We don't have great access to our own inner self, how our minds work and why our minds work. Some people use dreams and other things to try and access that, or therapy, and art is certainly in that same category. And we use other people's around us to help us understand ourselves.
I mean, even on a kind of a scientific level, we don't understand how we work very well. We don't understand how our minds actually work. And so this is another tool in trying to access our inner workings and what makes us tick. And if we're lucky, maybe by the end of our life we have a slightly better idea than when we began.
Joanna: Yeah, hopefully. Well, it's funny because there's kind of an obsession in the writing community about finding your author voice.
From what you're saying there, it's potentially we might never really find it, but that it might emerge.
Kevin: Well, so I have some other advice in the book about kind of the journey, which I think is close to last week, which is like basically, your goal is to be able to say on the day before you die, that you fully become yourself.
So we want to kind of like become all that we can be, we want to become what is possible, what we're kind of arranged to be, all the talents and geniuses that we have. Everybody's is different, like we have a different face, we have a little slightly different arrangement to things.
For me, my goal is then to try and, another piece of advice in the book, not be the best, but be the only. And that is kind of coming to where you are doing something that only you can do, and that's a very high bar.
It's a very high bar because it requires some kind of self-knowledge and knowing what you are better at than most people or any other people.
For most of us, that will take all our lives. It will take all our lives to get to the point where we have a grasp of what it is that we do much better, if not better, than anybody. And there may be some people who are prodigies, who very early in life can see and know themselves well enough that they know what it is that they can do better than anybody else, but most of us, it's going to take a long time.
So it's a process, so it's never done. That's another piece of advice. Like basically, you're getting lessons all your life, and if you're still alive there's another lesson to come.
I don't see our lives having destinations, I see these as journeys, and we're always going to be working on it. And if you're alive, you're still trying to become yourself.So it's a direction. I think that that's one of the reasons why I say, another piece of advice from the book, is that when you're starting out, it doesn't really matter where you start. Particularly for young people, don't get too hung up on your first job or your major or anything, because it's very, very, very rare that anybody stops or ends up where they started.
Most of the remarkable lives that you would admire, people that you might respect, heroes that you have, they started somewhere way, way, way far from where they from where they are.
And any remarkable person's life is meandering, full of detours, and setbacks, and sharp turns. So it doesn't really matter where you begin, as long as you're kind of going in a direction and making progress, in the sense of becoming more of who you are.
So that's my advice to young people is just master something. You've got to master something, that's the platform. But it doesn't really matter too much where you start.
Joanna: And it's interesting, again, looking at everything you've created as a maker. And the things you've started, in many ways, they're not related in some way. I find that fascinating.
Does curiosity drive everything you do?Kevin: Yeah, I'm always trying to surprise myself. So I did a piece of daily art every day for a year, I used Procreate and made and painted and drew a piece of art every day, and it's on Instagram, and Twitter, or on my website. If you look at them, it's like, there's no style, no theme. I would try and surprise myself.
So I would sit down, and like I would have literally no idea what I'm going to draw today. Then I would like to try and get an idea. I wanted to surprise myself with something that I didn't know how to me.
So my projects are a little bit like that too, where I guess I do have a fear of repeating myself. But that's really mild, it's more of understanding that there's so much to explore and trying to use each opportunity to draw as opportunity to learn. So I'd say, oh maybe today, oh, I had this idea of a map, I'll try to make maps. I don't know much about maps, so I'm going to learn. You know, so I'm going to be learning about how to make a map as I try to make a map.
So that's why I'm a total addict for YouTube because this is the learning machine. So my art for me is learning about the world, learning about myself. And I try to keep moving in different kinds of projects to maximize and optimize my learning.
Joanna: It's interesting, given your different projects, and as I said, I've been following your work really since 2006, 2008, around the 1000 True Fans post. And I've always been like, wow, that's a completely different project.
And in this author community, a lot of the listeners, we do have to kind of please certain people. And you've got these books, but one of the tips in the book is:
“If you can avoid seeking the approval of others, your power is limitless.” And I read it and I was like, well, that's great, but as authors, we need approval from agents, editors, publishers, readers, critics. So how do we put that need for approval aside to just create these things that we want to create?
Kevin: Yeah, it's a weird balancing act, this work, particularly the work of authors, but works of artists and creators. It is a really weird balancing act between ignoring what everybody else says and paying very close attention to what everybody else says.
The reason why we have people in our lives, family, friends, customers, readers, clients, colleagues, is to help us see who we're becoming before we are, to help us to see who we are, because it's impossible for us to do this journey alone.
As I said, we're just so opaque to ourselves. We need others around us, including readers and publishers, to help us see, to understand, because we cannot understand ourselves by ourselves. There's a little kind of recursive loop that you get caught up in, so you need that outside perspective all the time. But we don't want it to be binding, to imprison us, to prevent us from moving or progressing.
So there's this weird thing, I think it said somewhere else in the book that you need three things to really create something really great, which is the ability to never give up. And secondly, the ability to give up when it's time to give up and move on. And then your friends and family around you to help you discern the difference between those two modes.
So there is this sort of inherent paradox in creating where you want to use the feedback and the signals you're getting from readers or publishers. At the same time, you have to be willing to ignore those at certain times. And it's that art of making those compromises.
You're not always going to get it right, and that's, again, another piece of advice about why, if you're going to be creative, you have to do it iteratively.
You have to do it on an ongoing basis, you have to do it lots of times, because you're not going to get that mix right. Sometimes you're going to be incorrect and wrong about ignoring what people say. And other times you're going to be wrong by paying attention to what they're saying. So that's the value of professionals and others who do this on an ongoing basis because you can keep trying, and over time, you'll get that balance correct.
Joanna: Yeah, it's really hard. I guess it's seeking approval after you've already made it, as opposed to during the making of it.
Kevin: I think you put it very, very well. So yeah, while you're making it, you don't want the editor or anybody around making judgment. And then once you've made it, you may abandon it as well, which is fine, because that's part of the process. And then at that point, yeah, you don't care.
There's another bit of advice, too, which was when someone is telling you that something is wrong, they're usually right, but when they're telling you how to fix it, they're usually wrong.
Joanna: Unless they're an editor, of course.
Kevin: Well, yes. I have a maxim to myself, which is the editor is always right. And I believe that both as an editor and as a writer, is that I generally will follow the advice of the editor. Very rarely will I just insist and push back.
But generally, my default mode is the editor is right because I value that outside perspective . You want to find someone you trust, but they can be incredibly helpful. And of course, while I was editing, I believed the editor was right. So yeah.
Joanna: Yeah, that's great. And I think it is about finding people who you trust to listen to, which I love.
I want to move on to the AI stuff that's going on because you actually wrote a piece in the last Wired Magazine about generative AI. And you're now posting AI-generated art on Instagram and Twitter @kevin2kelly, and I've got you on my feed, so I have a look at that.
AI_ART #DailyAI #ImadeAIart pic.twitter.com/QFbRGqfI26
— Kevin Kelly (@kevin2kelly) April 17, 2023One of your pieces of advice is: “Don't bother fighting the old, just build the new.” Which I thought was great.
What are you enjoying about this AI-generative art phase in technology?Kevin: Well, partly I'm exploring. If anybody sees the feed, they'll see like every day, it's like, again, I'm trying to surprise myself. Like, I'm just trying to do something weird and different and take advantage of the fact that my drawing skills are very limited.
And here's this machine that can do tremendous drawing, so what can I do if I've been able to amplify my abilities to render things. So it's mostly exploring to see what is capable.
I get pleasure out of the images. And this was one of the things that I kind of realized, working on Midjourney or something, is that most of the images being created, have an audience of one. It's like having your own little museum and you're just seeing the beauty of these images. It's like, wow, I just really enjoyed it. And that's simply just to see them. No one else may ever see these again, but that's the genius of this thing is it doesn't matter.
I just get the pleasure of seeing these cool images. And they do take time to generate, and they almost take as much time as if I was really good drawing and I was drawing them, to get a really good one. You can get any image instantly within seconds, but to get a really, really good one that you just kind of want to stare at, and look at, and enjoy, it will take up to half an hour.
So I'm learning that process. It's a little bit like photography. You know, the painters in the 1800s were very concerned about photographers because they said all you do is push the button.
Anybody who's a photographer knows that photography is not just pushing the button. There are a whole lot of other things that go on to make a really great photograph. That's the same thing we're finding about AI art. It's not just clicking, it's like you're a photographer, you're kind of hunting for things, you're moving through this latent space of possible images, hunting for things and looking, and kind of setting it up, and you've got your bird blind, and you're kind of waiting there to see what comes up.
There's this engagement and this sense of hunting for these things and discovering them and kind of co-creating him. That's what I enjoy as well. And that process of, okay, just one more, I think I'm getting close, wait, it's almost there, wait, wait, oh, I got to shift over.
So the process of the creative process is that work as well. And I just enjoy discovering these things and kind of finding a little corner that nobody has ever been to before. That's the thing, you make these little worlds, and you're there, and you're kind of discovering what's in this world. And there's never going to be anybody to go back to that because it's almost impossible to get there again. That's kind of fun.
Joanna: Yes, and I've been having a lot of fun on Midjourney as well. But like you said, you're a photographer, I mean, I do take photos, but I don't consider visual art to be a medium where I'm any kind of expert.
But a lot of people listening, I mean, we now have obviously chat GPT has gone mainstream, but we also use tools like Sudowrite, and there are tools for writing as well. So what are your thoughts—and obviously, this is the beginning, this feels like day one for this kind. And you also say that the future is decided by optimists, so I like your positive spin.
Are there reasons for optimism for writers with this kind of generative AI?Kevin: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It's really great. I think right now the current framing for these chat bots, and we'll call these maybe image bots, Midjourney and Dall-E and Stable Diffusion.
So the image bots and chat bots, so these bots, right now the best way to think of them is as the universal intern. They're interns. They're capable of doing a lot of stuff, but you need to check the work. You can't release it by themselves. It's like, it's embarrassing, and people will see it and they'll begin to notice. Already people are becoming very sensitive to say, well that's an AI-generated image, I can just tell.
Also, again, going back to the prose and the writing, is if you don't push the bots, they're going to generate something very, very bland and middle of the road. It's kind of the wisdom of the crowd intelligence. It's based on the average of humans, and so they tend to predict what the next word an average human would say. That's remarkable, and it's useful.
The point is that a lot of this stuff is useful. Summaries, research, suggesting the details of a scene, generating names, maybe a punch line, it's all really great stuff. But it's like the intern doing work, you still need to add your voice, your angle, the bots have problems with continuity, they have very short attention spans. They can do the scene, okay, maybe, but anything longer, they have kind of dream logic at work.
So there's currently just lots and tons of problems, that even though on first draft is kind of amazing, it's the interns report, its interns help.
And I mean, I'm using it all the time, and I have tons of friends who are using these in many different ways as interns. So like they're saying, okay, intern, give me some headlines for this blog post. And the intern will give a bunch of headlines, and there will be one kind of pretty good, and I'll just tweak a little bit.
So that becomes sort of a habit, where you're giving the intern all kinds of stuff, and maybe they're making a first draft that has some points. Or vice versa, you're doing your first draft and sending it to them to proof. I've had some friends who are putting scripts in and saying, “Where are the plot point weaknesses in this?”
It's like having another pair of eyes, another brain working with you.They will get better, but we will get better at working with them. And I see this as a partnership. Some of these might get big enough that you feel like you have a co-writer, which is great.
And so what we're going to be able to do is actually make the best human written stuff slightly better, and a lot of stuff will be written where there's nothing writing right now. And so that's good, it's like the images.
A lot of the images are being generated for where there is no art being made. It's where they're already blank. I'm using a lot to make pictures for my PowerPoint presentations, or my assistant does her dreams, and every day she creates a dream for her newsletter. And there were no images before, so now there are images, and that's sort of one of the things we're going to do is we're going to have better writing where there was no writing at all, and some of the best can be a little bit better.
Joanna: Well, it's interesting because creation for the sake of creation, which we've talked about, and making our art. But it's interesting, given that you wrote 1000 True Fans back in 2006, whenever it was, and it feels to me like we're back there again. Especially with the mass amount of content that will be created now with generative AI, is that in order to make a living this way, in order for me as an author, to make a living as an author, I still need to come back to my 1000 true fans.
Has 1000 True Fans been true for the last 15 years? Or do you think things have changed?Kevin: So just to maybe rehash it for those who may not be familiar with it, the idea is that if you, as a creator, and you can be a writer, but you can be a photographer, or sculptor, songwriter, anybody who's creative, you're kind of an individual, and that with the new technologies which have since come along since I first wrote it, like Crowdfunding, Kickstarter, or Patreon, all those kinds of things, and other tools, that with this new technology, you could have direct engagement with your audience.
Then if they were true fans and could give you a certain amount of money per year and you got all the money, you got to keep it all, you didn't have to share it with a label, or publisher, or studio, then you need far less of an audience in size.
You didn't need a million people, you didn't need 100,000, you need something in the 1000s. That would be able to give you a living. If you could get your fans to pay you $100, and you had 1000 true fans, and they were true, crazy, loved everything you did, bought everything you made ever, the hardcover, the softcover, the audible version of it, and you can get $100 directly, then with 1000, you have $100,000. And that was the theory.
When I first proposed it, there was really nobody doing it at the time. But these new tools have come along, and there are tons and tons of people who have a livelihood, a living, not a fortune, but a living, with fans in the thousands.
And I think the technology has continued to make that better, easier, broader. Social media has helped that process because the idea is that if you only 1000 true fans, and let's say your interests, your niche, is one in a million, only one in a million people are going to find the same passion and fascination that you have with some weird thing, maybe it's that you write crime novels for left-handed skateboarders. I don't know, I'm making something up.
So there's one in a million people who really are into that, but with several billion people, that's 1000. That's 1000 potential people in the world who are going to love your stuff. So the hurdle, the challenge, becomes matchmaking, finding them, having you find them and having them find you. And that's where social media has helped in that process. We're still inventing other tools for discovery so that you can find those 1000 true fans and they can find you.
Having said all that, what we also understand is that this option is not for everybody. It's a full-time job, or it's a half-time job. I mean, it's like there's a lot of work tending fans, and true fans, and a lot of creators don't want to do that. They just want to write or they just want to paint and they want to photograph, they don't want to tend fans on social media.
So all right, well, then they would employ publishers and editors and all that kind of stuff. And that's fine, so it's just an option. And there are people who shouldn't be doing that, they're just not cut out. They don't have the personality to interact with fans. So we have other options.
I've always said that this is just a possibility. It's a good place to start. Also, by the way, lots of people will start this way, get going, and realize, hmm, this isn't really what I want to do, but I now have enough visibility that I can transition into something with more of an institutional process, and that's a perfectly fine path as well.
So I think the tools continue to make this option more viable, a better choice, particularly for those who are beginning, and something that can serve more people around the world.
Joanna: Brilliant. You mentioned possibilities, and certainly, I've found that your work has expanded my possibilities over the years. So we're out of time—
Where can people find you and your books online?Kevin: Thank you for that. My website is my initials, KK.org. On the socials, I'm Kevin2Kelly.
Some of my books are actually posted for free, my first book is completely online, I think my first and second books are there. I have a newsletter every week called Recomendo, where we recommend six cool things. All kinds of stuff to read, to watch, to go to, to use. It's free, called Recomendo.
So yes, I'm still producing stuff, working on a next project about a desirable 100 year future, a world of high tech that I want to live in and maybe other people do too. So that's my optimism at work.
Joanna: I'm looking forward to that one.
Kevin: And right now, this book will come out in May, Excellent Advice for Living. There's about 450 of them, and they're kind of little, tiny, tweetable things as you could hear, but they're short.
I wrote them for myself, primarily first, because I like to have little things that I can repeat to myself to remind me. I'll take a whole book of advice and try to reduce it down to a single sentence. Like I'm just opening up the book at random right here. It says, “Work to become, not to acquire.” I keep reminding myself that. You don't want more things, I want to become something. That's what I'm aiming to be. So yeah, I had fun writing it. This advice is really for anybody young or young at heart, and I hope you enjoy it.
Joanna: Oh, well, thanks so much, Kevin. That was great.
The post Excellent Advice For Living With Kevin Kelly first appeared on The Creative Penn.
How can publicity form part of your book marketing strategy? How can you research the best media and craft a pitch or a press release that might get you and your book some attention? Why is publicity still useful in an age of pay-per-click direct advertising? Halima Khatun shares her valuable tips and experience.
In the intro, Alliance of Independent Authors Indie Author Income Survey results; Experience of book to TV show [and previous episode, Johnny B Truant's creative pivots]; Michael Anderle expands on his AI-assisted goals [20Books To 50K Facebook]; Loop earplugs.
Plus, Build for Tomorrow: An Action Plan for Embracing Change, Adapting Fast, and Future-Proofing your Career by Jason Feifer; The future of publishing is now on the Dialogue Doctor podcast; Content vs connection [Jay Acunzo on Twitter]; Why I'm focusing on being an AI-assisted artisan author; Death of an Author, from Pushkin Press.
Today's show is sponsored byDraft2Digital, where you can get free ebook formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Get your free Author Marketing Guide atdraft2digital.com/penn
Halima Khatun is the award-winning author of romantic comedy novels, including The Secret Diary of an Arranged Marriage. Today we're talking about her nonfiction book, Priceless Publicity: How to get money-can't-buy media coverage for your business.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- Halima's writing and PR journey
- Finding the “story behind the story”
- Pitching your story from different angles
- Balancing PR and protecting personal stories/privacy
- Tailoring your press release
- How to prepare for an interview
- Is PR worth it?
You can find Halima at HalimaKhatun.co.uk
Transcript of Interview with Halima KhatunJoanna: Halima Khatun is the award-winning author of romantic comedy novels, including The Secret Diary of an Arranged Marriage. Today we're talking about her nonfiction book, Priceless Publicity: How to get money-can't-buy media coverage for your business. So welcome to the show, Halima.
Halima: Thank you for having me, Joanna.
Joanna: I'm excited to talk about this topic. But first up—
Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing, and also PR.Halima: I always wanted to write. There was never any other creative outlet or any other career option for me, even when I was growing up. So I sort of lived in libraries when I was younger.
The funny story I always share is at the age of 12, I actually wrote a book, believe it or not. 60,000 words, a coming-of-age children's book, which I thought would be the next JK Rowling with a slash of Stand By Me for girls. It didn't do any of those things. I remember sending it to Penguin and the likes, thinking they're going to love it, they're going to bite my hand off. They didn't. And I was 12, and probably had a bit more work to do.
As I grew up, I parked that idea because I always thought writing isn't really—being an author—isn't really a career, per se. You know, you get the people that make megabucks, and then there's everyone else.
So I did what I thought was a sensible option. I still wanted to write, so I went into journalism. I did broadcast journalism for my post grad. And I did ITV and BBC, and that was great fun, but I quickly realized that it's less about the writing and more about getting stories short and snappy and to the point, and camera angles, etc.
So I navigated to what they call is the dark side of PR, which basically is sitting on the other side of a journalist. So my job was then to bring stories to the media. So I'd be on the other side, and speaking to clients, trying to really find the story behind the story, if that makes sense.
So I did a lot of healthcare PR. So for example, if I was speaking to a hospital consultant about a procedure, that might seem like quite a dry subject. So what I would do is I would find a case study, a patient who had the procedure, and talk about how their life had changed from how it was to how it is now. I'd go into the national media, the regional local broadcast media, and I really enjoyed it to the point that I still do some private consulting to this day.
I then went freelance. So I set up as a limited company, and I had my own clients, with a view that—I laugh now—with a view that it'd be great when I think about having children, having a family, I could work around them. I had this notion that children nap, and then I had my babies.
So I didn't quite do as much, but one of the beauties, and I think it came full circle, with my circumstances with not really working as much in PR purely because of time when I had my daughter, I revisited this idea of writing a book.
The idea of The Secret Diary of an Arranged Marriage came to me because I found that nobody had really written about it.So there's already a fixed narrative in the media, often the term arranged marriage gets interchanged with forced marriage, it gets mixed up.
And I thought, why don't I write something that's like the ‘brown Bridget Jones' and show the funny side, and the cringe-worthy side, and really give a nuanced picture. And people loved it. That was the best thing.
So I didn't know anything about self-publishing. I assumed I'd go to agents and go the traditional route.
I quickly realized I didn't want to spend years shopping it around and sending query letters.
I kind of stumbled upon this whole amazing world of self-publishing, and how you can actually be in charge of your career and your author career.I learned the notion of you're not just an author, you're a business owner when you have books and you self-publish because you're in charge of every aspect of it. I really got my teeth into that.
So that was one book, and then I did The Secret Diary of a Bengali Bridezilla, and then there was a third book, and now I'm working on the fourth. All while I raised my children. My daughter is now five and my son is two. And luckily, my husband has taken them out while I'm doing this podcast. You know, got to keep it safe. You don't know who's going to scream while I'm in the middle of talking!
So the Priceless Publicity idea came about because firstly I thought, I've built my career in this. And one of the beauties of being able to do my own PR was I thought, well, I've done it for clients all these years, why not get some publicity for myself, for my books?
It was a no brainer because one of the things, for me personally, was I had a little bit of impostor syndrome when I self-published. I think a lot of authors do because you don't have that gatekeeper and that sort of validation of, even if it's a small press, oh, it was published. You know, it was published by somebody else in the traditional route.
I didn't have that, and I thought, I really want it to stand up alongside traditionally published books. So I set about generating my own PR.
So I wrote press releases around the angle of the story. I talked about my backstory being a mom at the time. My son was a newborn and I was nursing my daughter before he was born, writing the draft. And then I published it the month before he was born, which was crazy, in hindsight. The idea was that I had all these different angles to pull apart.
And it did great.
I generated lots of media coverage and regional coverage. I was on the BBC. BBC Radio, they had a whole topic around my pitch, which was around arranged marriages. Are they outdated? Are they misunderstood? And I was on a panel with other people.
I think for me, it sort of culminated in a full page spread in Good Housekeeping, where I was talking about my career as an author and how I kind of had this almost second career trying to write a book when I was much younger, gone into PR, and now doing this. So I just suddenly thought, when I was going through the self-publishing process and learning about all the different nuances, I saw a lot of parallels between independent authors and business owners, because we're constantly told, you have to think of it like a business for it to thrive.
I remember in my PR career, when I'd gone solo, when I'd become a limited company, one of the things I started doing was training up business owners because they wanted to learn about how to do their own publicity because they couldn't afford me on retainer. They couldn't afford a PR agency that charges four figures a month, five figures a month. They needed something that they could do themselves, in their own time, while running their business.
So for me, it was almost a lightbulb moment. And I thought, I generated this great PR that I felt leveled me up with traditionally published authors, and I didn't have this hang up of kind of, “oh, it's self-published, people will think it's not as good.” Because if it was good enough for a journalist to publish stories about my books and me, it was good enough to stand up there and be read.
The other thing is I noticed that I was getting traction and recognition through PR.I know that sort of PR is seen as a bit woolly and a bit vague because you can't necessarily quantify it the way you can pay per click. However, it was one of those touchstones of marketing. We talk a lot about seven touchstones, and it was that sort of recognition and sort of planting that seed that you're out there, and you have a book that people started recognizing.
I remember one of the reviews on The Secret Diary of an Arranged Marriage was someone saying, “I bought this as an impulse buy after reading about her in Good Housekeeping.” And I was like, well, it works, you know. And I thought more people need to do this because as authors, we juggle a lot of hats, and there's a lot of focus on social media, and rightly so, TikTok is blowing up. But actually, and when I say traditional media, it's not just newspapers and magazines anymore. I mean, I'm on your amazing podcast talking about my book, that is me PR-ing my book.
So actually, there are so many different outlets.
It's about having the confidence and the tips, and the know-how to be able to get out there and pitch with confidence to a journalist, and find the story within your business, within your books, and what you probably have under your nose and don't realize. I thought more people need to know about this. So that's why I wrote Priceless Publicity.
Then on a personal level, it was also really nice for me to marry my kind of new career as an author with my career I built over the years as a PR consultant, and putting them together to really help others. It's been quite amazing. It does feel like it's come full circle on my journey.
Joanna: That's fantastic. There's so much in what you just said that I want to explore further.
So you've mentioned a couple of times the story behind the story. And having done some of this myself and seeing other people—well, I get pitched all the time, obviously, I get pitched every day.
And one of the most common pitches is, “I've written a book. Can I come on your podcast?” And like it could be any book, like without even thinking what my audience is about.
Can you explain what ‘the story behind the story is'? How can an author go beyond “here's my book?”Halima: Well, there's a few things. I think the first thing I wanted to say was, I think with a story behind the story, “I've written a book” actually can work for some media outlets.
And the reason I say that is because I think authors forget this, but your book is a product. So if for example, you went to your local press and said, “I've written this book, and it's about X, Y, Z,” they would be interested because essentially it's launching a new product.
You might think, “oh, but it's just a book.” But actually, mobile phone, I always use this example, but mobile phones have been around for decades now, but it still doesn't stop iPhone bringing a new one out and then getting coverage off the back of it. So for certain outlets, it is worth remembering that your book is a product, and that's a story in itself.
The story behind the story, now there are different ways of looking at it. So for me, the example from my fiction books, the story behind the story was I had an unusual writing habit. I was a mom, and I was literally nursing my daughter and writing the first very rough draft of my book on my iPhone notes.
To this day, that's my initial method. I take walks with my son in his pram, and I'll dictate to myself, looking a little bit like a crazy one walking down the street. But that works for me, and that was quite unusual because it was the human interest angle. It's kind of writing against the odds in a way, because you know, I still don't have the seafront office working on it, but it is kind of showing the different ways of doing things.
Joanna: Can we just be more specific on that one? So were you pitching, “Mom does unusual thing whilst nursing?” As in, was it a mom pitch or was it a writer pitch? Because obviously, I get a lot of writer pitches. And to me, that is not unusual at all. That is not an unusual way to write.
I'm wondering how you pitched that. Was it like the mom side? Or what angle? And to what kind of press, I guess?
Halima: Yeah, so there's different angles. And this is the thing that's really important —
Different press require different angles. So an example of that story was actually the Manchester Evening News, which is a big regional in where I live in Manchester. And that came about because I actually won an award, I won a Best Adult Fiction award for my book, which may seem arbitrary in the author space, but actually, the media loved it.
So when he was interviewing me and talking to me, I mentioned my unusual writing habit, and that was the most interesting thing for him. The headline was “Mom drafts book on iPhone notes and wins a national award.” If I went to the mom press, absolutely that would be the angle.
The Good Housekeeping angle was a bit of that. And again, it was an award-winning book. But if you went to, for example, and I would advise this to all authors, if for example, you started with your local media, they want to champion a local person done good. So they would be interested in the fact that you've written a story and you've published a story.
I think this is a really important point you mentioned, that it's not unusual to you what I mentioned about the writing habit.
Sometimes I think we can discount potentially interesting stories because it's usual for us. However, it might be interesting to a reader who knows nothing about the author world. So the fact that you say it's not unusual, but actually the interesting thing is to another person, they're like, “Wow, how did you manage? How did you do that while pushing a pram? How does that work?”
I think there's definitely a balance, and I talk a lot in my book about this, that there's a bit of a litmus test where you can ask yourself certain questions to see if it's a story. I think sometimes it's always worth bearing in mind that sometimes we can be our own worst cynic in a way, and we can be our own biggest barrier because we assume something's not interesting, but actually it's because it's so normal to us.
Another example might be, you know, you could have had a complete career change and gone into writing, and it could be the complete opposite of what you were doing. That's another interesting angle.
Another thing could be, for example, and like I say, I know they're arbitrary, but —
Book awards do generate media coverage, because again, the media loves an award stories. Local media, regional media, they love to champion someone that's done well.Another angle could be if you've got an unusual take on a story.
So for example, you've written a sort of Northern English take on Game of Thrones or something very against norm, something you wouldn't expect. And I know in sort of author world, we talk about tried and true tropes, but actually there is room if you did a twist on a traditional genre or traditional tale, that would be of interest.
So it's really kind of asking certain questions. The things to begin with, you know, before you even think about what media, I would say find the stories and go,
What is new? What is different? Are you bucking a trend? A really simple thing, and again, a lot of us will forget this day-to-day, business development, which might not necessarily make your books fly off the shelves, but it does add to your whole roster of media coverage.
So for example, if you're writing by yourself, and suddenly you've hired a PA, you're growing your business. That's development. And a lot of people would think, “So what? I would never think to pitch that.” But actually, you're growing your brand. You doubled your business growth in terms of personnel.
So it's really looking at—and I talk about this a lot more in detail in the book—looking at the different areas that might be of interest to a journalist. And then thinking about, okay, would it be of interest to my local press? Would it be of interest to my regional? If, for example, you have a niche topic, there are magazines out there.
So with my work, The Secret Diary of an Arranged Marriage, it was a lot of my readers, I've actually got a broad spread of readers, but there was within there a niche of British Asian people, British Asian women. So I went to the niche media. So I was on the BBC Asian network, I was on certain niche publications, and I went to a lot of the local press.
So there's lots of different things. There's lots of different angles.
It's really about starting from the beginning and asking yourself the questions and thinking, “Okay, what is different? What is new? What have I got to say about my books?” And then you can look at marrying that with what media would potentially be interested.
Joanna: That's fantastic. And again, your book is so full of tips. But that's the thing, you didn't pitch me about The Secret Diary of an Arranged Marriage, because, well, I just don't know if that would have stood out. What you pitched me was what will help my audience, which is this Priceless Publicity book. So that's a perfect example of tailoring it.
I did want to come back on a couple of things. So you mentioned niche publications there. But you also mentioned before that you got on a panel around the arranged marriage thing. Now, obviously, culturally, you can talk about those things. You mentioned the ‘brown Bridget Jones' earlier, which I thought was a great little tagline.
But this is something that I've worried about in the past, and something I'm also thinking about now, which is sometimes PR people want the personal story behind the story, and sometimes we don't necessarily want people to know more about that.
So for example, I've just written this memoir called Pilgrimage, and there are aspects in there about midlife and menopause and mental health.
On the one hand, I want people to hear about it, and on the other hand, I'm kind of terrified that I might end up on TV talking about something that's frankly terrifying, I guess.
How do we balance the desire to get the book out there but also protect our personal lives?I mean, it's a tough thing to balance, right? How have you dealt with that?
Halima: Absolutely. And it really is, as you say, a balancing act. So I think, for me, it was being very clear about boundaries of what I will talk about and what I won't, and really being clear in your mind.
So if you're pitching a personal story, which by the way, thank you for sharing, that sounds great. I had a little nosy. So it's what is within your comfort zone to talk about.
So with my book, it's not my memoir, but of course, like with all fiction, it's snippets of my life, others, etc. And a lot of people obviously will naturally say, so how much of it is your story? And I was very clear about how much I could mention that would still be interesting enough, and what things were off the table, which journalists are very receptive to.
To give you another example that helps around that is—and I know a lot of authors struggle with things like if you have a pen name, if you want to be quite anonymous. So certain things, if I'm honest, will be harder. So you're not going to be able to get the human interest angles if you don't want to be pictured or you don't want to talk about yourself.
It's not to say all media will be shut off to you because there are other opportunities, like I mentioned about the business development angles, the award angles. The example I have is aside from my books, I write a lifestyle blog. And it started off very frivolous, talking about lipsticks and things like that. And then as I had children, it pivoted slightly towards being a mom.
One of the things with my boundaries is I don't put pictures of my children publicly on social media.
That's just my thing. So certain journalists would say, “Oh, we would like to have a picture of your children, if possible.” But the workaround was, I'd explained, so for example, I was in Mother and Baby Magazine, and the angle was I gave birth in the midst of a pandemic. And then I got to also mention my book within the article.
So the story, you know, the photos we did required strategic work, where I kind of like was holding my son, but you couldn't see his face, and my daughter was holding a toy, and they were fine with that. Not to say everybody necessarily will, but I just wanted to stress that there are ways around it and certain publications will be very receptive.
The thing to bear in mind is, they will only know the information you give them, if that makes sense. So when you write a press release, when you have your pitch, when you have your points, if there's something you don't want to mention or you don't want to go there, you wouldn't include that in your pitch.
Perhaps the thing to be prepared about—and I appreciate the feeling of terror because I get it. I mean, I was talking about a subject that doesn't really get talked about, so I 100% understand.
Thinking of every eventuality and being prepared is a big help. So it's almost like, and I don't want to sound scary but I taught a lot of crisis communications, which is coming up with and having to think of all the questions. And I know you mentioned that people often criticize in the media on subjects around your books. So think about, well, what are the criticisms? What do they bring up? What do they sort of say? What does the media publish about them that's negative?
And then thinking, okay, how would I combat that? How would I account for that? What can I say about it? What's my narrative and my story?
So with my books, the back of my mind was, what if some journalists think, oh, you're trying to promote arranged marriages or some kind of archaic out-of-date tradition. So luckily, that didn't actually come up.
However, I was prepared for those questions that might come up and how I would answer it, and say, well, I'm not actually promoting it at all. It's a very nuanced view. It's not a negative view, but I'm showing the good, bad and the ugly. And ultimately, it's a story that all women can relate to, all people can relate to, that have that desire to settle down. And that was me being prepared.
So it's worth sitting down almost and thinking, okay, what could they ask that might be tricky? And how would I answer that? What can I say? What can I bring to the table?
Joanna: That's great. Okay, well, let's get into some more specifics about actually getting some attention. So I mean, one of the things many of us get as authors is as soon as you self-publish a book, you'll get emails from some spam companies who say, “Pay us $200, and we will send out a press release.” And they'll put it on that PR Newswire or whatever it is, and it will just spam go out to hundreds and hundreds of people.
What is the best way to do a press release?Halima: A much more tailored approach than that, I would say. So we talked about the key points you'd want, the key angles that might be of interest.
And then once you think of a few angles, or even one angle, think, “Okay, who would be interested?” And that goes back to looking at the media and sort of reading the magazines, newspapers, listening to podcasts, looking at online magazines and news sites, which is huge now, and thinking, “Okay, do I have a place within that? Can my book sit within that?”
And this is the thing, when I pitched to come on this podcast, it wasn't about, as you say, it wasn't about The Secret Diary of an Arranged Marriage, because to all intents and purposes, that's another fiction book. It was about, what can I do to help? So that's absolutely the right way to go into. Think, what can I do that would be of interest to this magazine, or newspaper or website?
So for example, if you're a nonfiction author, and you're writing about finances, and how to keep your finances in check as a family, are there any money websites? Are there any family websites that would be interested in the story?
If you're doing a fiction book, again, it’s the story based in another area? Would that area's local publication be interested? What about my local publication? Would they also be interested? You know, once you've got the angles.
If you want to go more national, it's looking at, do they have a section that I could actually see myself in? So for example, I got a national piece in Metro magazine. And again, it was talking about the misconceptions when I got married. And it was kind of people asking me certain questions about how I met my husband. And it's kind of like well-meaning welfare questions, but I remember the awkwardness around it. So that was a pitch because they have a section called first person. And that's a national mainstream magazine, so it's any kind of first person story they take.
It's looking at what you can bring to the table when you've got your angles, and just seeing how you marry your story with what they need. And that's almost the simplest way of looking at it. But actually, once you strip away all the, how to write a press release, how to do it, how to pitch, that is simply what we're doing. We're giving a story that promotes our work to a journalist in a way that they would want to write it or present it.
Joanna: Okay, so we've got our topic, we've got our publication that we want to pitch. So do we need to find a named journalist? Or do we email it? Do we put it in the post with a copy of our book?
What do we do to get this to the right person?Halima: So well, the way I would go about it is email, for sure. And I would find the journalist, and this is a little secret I'm going to share.
So obviously, swanky PR agencies, of which I was a part of a while ago, will subscribe to these super expensive databases which throws up hundreds of journalists names.
I would honestly say Google is your friend. If you go on to any, even the magazines and newspapers, they always have an online version. And there you'll see a list of the journalists. That might be a local area journalist, it might be a journalist on a topic, like a political journalist or a lifestyle editor.
Find the journalist that writes the kind of stories that you can see being featured with, and then just email them and get in touch.What I would suggest is, for authors that are first starting to do their own PR, a full press release is quite daunting and quite a big undertaking. I would actually start with a pitch, and it would be as simple as, “Hi, name of the journalist. I think this would be of interest to you because…” and literally a two or three sentence pitch, which is, what my story is—and when I say what my story is, I don't mean about the book necessarily, unless you're pitching your book to an editor who's doing the book curation, book features. I mean, the actual story.
So for example, with your story, you want to speak to lifestyle press. With your nonfiction book it would be, “This is my story. I'm writing this book on keeping fit and healthy through menopause and going on walking and pilgrimages. This is why it would be of interest to your readers.” Give them the why, and then you've offered them your story on a plate.
Then it's simply saying, “For more information or pictures, do let me know if you need anything else.” And that's always a lot better than sending a blanket email to all and sundry because they will know it's a blanket email to everybody.
Joanna: Yeah, it is very, very obvious. I mean, I get pitches that say, “Dear podcaster,” and then it's about a Visa card offer or like utterly ridiculous things that obviously are just spam pitches, but they still seem to get through and it's just very annoying. But, I really like your tips.
So let's take it a step further. Let's say someone's actually interested. Someone said, “Yes, I'd really like to talk to you.” So I mean, you mentioned first up really thinking about like we've got our points, and we've now thought about the negative things.
Anything else we need to do in terms of preparing for an interview?Whether that's on a radio station, or whether that's someone coming and taking photos of you, or an interview. What are some things, or lessons learned, or things to avoid, I guess?
Halima: So the first thing is, don't panic. I think it's really important to remember, it's a great thing.
And I've had clients when I've trained them up in the past, saying, “Oh, my gosh, this journalist has come back and said, ‘Can you write an 800 word article about it,' and I'm terrified.” And I say, that's an amazing thing because an 800 word article is huge, and that is a big space for you to talk about what you're trying to promote.
So there are different ways a journalist will get in touch. And the first thing is, and I joke and say, don't panic, but really don't, they're just like you and me. I always mentioned this, and I say in the book, they are overworked, underpaid, and that's why sometimes they might be a little bit to the point because your email will be among a sea of hundreds. And they're always on a deadline, so that's why they have to be quite picky and sometimes, like I say, get to the point of the story.
They will come back to you saying what they want. Often they're quite receptive. If they know you're not a PR person, they'll see if you've got any more information and you can put together a few bullet points, then you give them that.
If they want to interview over the phone, which I must say is a little less and less these days, more because journalists don't have the time that they used to. It's a different world for them now. They're often on a deadline, and they're often short staffed. And sadly, they might not be based in even the area that they cover.
So what they'll often say is, have you got a press release? If they call you for a phone interview, which I'm not saying they don't, I've been asked a few times, again, it's preparations. Maybe having the key questions to ask yourself, so it's kind of what they might ask you. Why is your reason for writing the story? What's different? What's unusual? The things that also you want to get across, it's really worth having written down just in front of you, so you're not nervous and tongue-tied.
I think if they ask for a photo —
It's always worth all authors having a photo ready. Whether that's a great shot of your book, but more often than not, if they want the story behind the story and the person, a photo of you. And I have to stress, this isn't the time for sending your grainy Facebook photo, they want a decent high res image of you.
I've got one of me casually leaning against a bookshelf, and it works really well. Very, very casual, head cocked to the side. And the thing you don't see in the photo is my two children are on the bed opposite playing with each other while my husband was taking the photo. But that's the story behind the story. Yeah, having a photo ready.
If they send around a photographer, they'll often be led by you. So with Good Housekeeping, they did send a photographer, and they asked me if I knew of a local cafe. And luckily I did, and it's a great, quite quirky independent cafe that had some nice artwork. They sent hair and makeup, which I have to stress doesn't happen often, before anyone gets excited. It's rare, it's rare. And it was a lovely treat as I had a baby at that time. So it was nice, it was like a spa day. So they're few and far between, more often than not, they'll ask you for a photo.
And that's really it.
It's thinking of the questions they might ask, and it's just being as helpful and as accommodating as you can. I think I must stress this, the easier you can make their life, the better it is and the more chance there is, that they'll cover your story and also be receptive to stories from you in the future.
And just to roll back actually, and I was talking about when emailing them the story, I wouldn't attach a photo. I wouldn't go and attach a one megabyte picture because often they have very limited email capacity, and they wouldn't want to open it just in case it spam. Just as you mentioned with your podcasts, they get any manner of random pitches that are irrelevant or not even aimed at them.
Joanna: Never attach anything to a first email is basically the thing.
Halima: Never attach anything to a first email. You can always mention in the email, “If you need pictures or more information,” that's always really helpful. Because sometimes they're so quick and they're on such a deadline, they might just print a paragraph of what you've got. And you're like, oh, I wish I had mentioned a photo. So offer that up in the body of the email, just say, “I've got pictures if you need. Do get in touch for more information.” And it's as simple as that, really.
Like I say, we can dress it up and overthink it, but it is simply giving them what they want. And it goes back to know the publication you're pitching. And by that, you might only need to read a couple of articles or listen to a few of their podcasts or read a couple of their stories online, but just get a feel because I think there's nothing worse than poorly pitching something inappropriately to the wrong person.
Joanna: Just on timeliness, because I mean, this book, Pilgrimage, as we speak, I did a Kickstarter, but it's coming out officially, it's on pre-order for the first of May. So I've still got a little bit of time.
We're recording this in mid-March, so this is about six weeks before the official launch of the book. Pilgrimage is a kind of timely thing, but that's when the book comes out. I could keep pitching it forever, really. I'm not intending to write another book on pilgrimage.
When we're doing this, can we pitch for older books? Or does this really need to be timely?Halima: Absolutely, you can. And the thing to bear in mind is, again, it depends on the angle.
If you're pitching it saying, “Hi, this is a new book and haven't I done great,” then yes, it has to be timely. But if it's a story around the book, so the fact that like I say, for example, you've won a new award, then that's the story is that you've won the award. But it's about a book, and that might be a book that you wrote last year, and it's just won an award.
Or if, for example, you're building your business, and you've recruited a couple of PAs, couple of members of staff, your books might be years old and you're continuing to write books, but the story is about the fact that you're growing.
So it depends on the angle. Like I say, if you're talking about a new book coming out, then that's slightly different. But most of the media I've had has been on different angles, like I say, the story behind the story.
So the Metro article that came out, I think it was middle of 2022, so we're going back to last year, but they pitched The Secret Diary of an Arranged Marriage and they mentioned it at the end with a link, and The Secret Diary of an Arranged Marriage came out in 2020. So often when it's sort of, and I don't want to overcomplicate, but sometimes you can call it a case study or something that's not time sensitive, that's when you don't have to worry so much about your books being older.
Other examples are, I get a lot of love from my London magazine because that's where I used to live. And the book is first based up north, but then it goes into London, and they get in touch with me or I get in touch with them, and we have a conversation when the new book has come out or is coming out. Yeah, so it depends on how you pitch it.
Joanna: That's really helpful. Because also, I mean, you mentioned at the beginning about the imposter syndrome. And I say it's funny, it's completely natural.
I've been doing this 15 years now, and I still have impostor syndrome — which is why I mostly avoid traditional media because I don't want to have to deal with the “Oh, you're just an indie author,” or whatever.
I do think things have changed now, and certainly with this book, Pilgrimage, I really want to push my comfort zone a bit.
Coming back to another reason I don't do it is, and this is where we need to say, is it worth the time and the energy, right?
Because back in 2008, I did all of this. I was in Australia. I did a press release. I got in the national press. I got on national TV.
I did all the things with traditional media and I got all the results, and I hardly sold any books. Because I guess the books weren't in the bookshops, but also traditional media is pretty much more scattergun. And like you're talking about, okay, a mom walking and dictating, does that translate into book sales?
It comes down to the question — is PR worth it? Because it might not lead to book sales.Like even if you get on national TV, you're not going to sell 200,000 copies of your book that day. So is it worth it?
Halima: You're absolutely right in asking that question. And what I would say, and any PR person worth their salt would say, PR alone isn't the answer to everything. It sits in alongside all of your marketing.
So the thing I say about a PR is, it would be false of me to say, “Oh, write this press release and go to this journalist, and they'll print it, and your sales will spike.” There are exceptions to rule which I'm going to go on to in a minute, but it doesn't necessarily work like that. What PR does is you're using it alongside all your branding.
So to give you an example, it has so many other areas to leverage. If you're featured in a magazine, or a newspaper, or you go on a podcast, you can then add that to your about information on your website. You can add it to your email signature, as featured in. You can add it to any ad copy for any Facebook ads or Amazon ads. You can share it with your newsletter. So you suddenly have another talking point —
It gives you gravitas that you don't get from other marketing. I should say I use Amazon ads, and I do use pay-per-click because I wouldn't just do PR. I think it needs to sit with other things, like your TikTok and your other areas.
It's a complement to everything you do. So another example is, when I get great media coverage, I always share on my social media, and people that are sort of thinking about buying my book go, “Oh, that's amazing. I've just ordered your book.”
It gives you more content. So with your podcast and your blog posts, you have more content to add, and write, “Oh, and I was featured here.” It gives you the gravitas that I would say money can't buy, and it is about leveling up.
You're absolutely right that a lot of certain international non-niche publications are scattergun. And you're right, because they are read far and wide, and not necessarily people looking for those books, but it's planting that seed. Within that I want to add, there are also niche publications which do really make a difference.
As a point, I actually was on the Self-publishing Show Podcast about Priceless Publicity, and that is PR because it was me pitching my story and speaking about it. I got a spike in sales because it was very niche to the audience of authors who are interested in doing their own PR.
In your answer, I would say, give it the time it deserves. So I wouldn't say pause the book you're writing and just spend two weeks learning about PR, or I wouldn't say hire an agency and spend four or five figures a month. There is a place for that, and the big corporates who don't have time to do their own PR do outsource and it makes sense for them because they need to be seen and they need to be making noises on a sort of peripheral level about their brand.
For an independent author, I would say do it in your own time around your business. And I use my own example, life is quite full, I have two small children, so I'm not hammering on the phone speaking to every national, every local. I simply don't have the time. So I am getting PR as and when I can around my business. It's bubbling along. And it's something you certainly can do in your own time, and give it the right amount of time to get yourself publicity.
It's very effective. And like I say, it gives you things that aren't so tangible and aren't so measurable. And it's the things that really helped build your brand over time and show that you're basically a serious contender as an author. That in turn, it does lead to sales. They might not be the obvious sales, they might not be the spike necessarily, but they will trickle through.
So I wouldn't say stop everything you're doing. I would say it's great to learn and do alongside your business because over time, it really does help. And quite simply, if I didn't believe in it, I wouldn't be doing my own.
Joanna: The book is excellent. I mean, you obviously sent me a review copy. I've also ordered it in paperback because it's one of those books I'm going to put on my desk and like look at and go, “Right, I could just do something. I could just do a little pitch.”
And you've definitely given me some ideas for my book, Pilgrimage. And I guess for people listening, it's got to be the right book, you know, it's got to be the one that you feel perhaps has the most stories. Like I've got 40 books, a lot of people listening have a lot of books. So it's almost like the book is definitely not the point anymore, but it is that story behind the story. So that's been super useful.
Where can people find you and your books, both fiction and nonfiction, online?Halima: They're available everywhere. I'm wide with my books. So the usual return is Amazon, Kobo, Google Play. And also, I'm a big fan of this, you can order it from your local library if you request the book. I'm quite passionate about that, and I think in this time, I think it's really great for people to be able to go and use their library. So you can get my books everywhere.
Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Halima. That was great.
Halima: Thank you for having me.
The post Book Marketing: How To Get Publicity For Your Book With Halima Khatun first appeared on The Creative Penn.
What are the most important aspects of becoming a successful publisher? Jon Barton talks about his lessons learned and how to avoid the pitfalls.
In the intro, Amazon AWS Bedrock for generative AI; Impromptu: Amplifying our Humanity Through AI by Reid Hoffman and co-written with GPT4; reflections on the fantastic 20BooksSpain Seville conference; Ideas and execution by Hugh Howey; The Creator Economy course; AI Cover Design for Authors;
Today's podcast sponsor is Findaway Voices, which gives you access to the world's largest network of audiobook sellers and everything you need to create and sell professional audiobooks.Take back your freedom. Choose your price, choose how you sell, choose how you distribute audio. Check it out atFindawayVoices.com.
Jon Barton is the founder and managing director of the award-winning independent publisher Vertebrate Publishing, as well as the author of several bestselling mountain biking guides.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- Challenges in publishing other people's works
- The ecosystem of Vertebrate Publishing
- Pivoting business models
- Sticking to a niche and why it works
- Tips for pitching to a publisher
- RRP royalty rate vs. net royalty rate
- Understanding contracts and seeking outside advice
You can find Jon and Vertebrate Publishing at AdventureBooks.com
Transcript of Interview with Jon BartonJoanna: Jon Barton is the founder and managing director of the award-winning independent publisher Vertebrate Publishing, as well as the author of several bestselling mountain biking guides. So welcome to the show, Jon.
Jon: Hi, Jo. How goes it?
Joanna: Good. I'm excited to talk to you today.
First up, tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing.Jon: Well, the one thing that's worth knowing about me is I've never had a CV and never been to a job interview, I'm older than I sound as well. I discovered rock climbing when I was probably 13 or 14, and that's pretty much all I did until I was about 30.
In fact, when I met my wife and I was about 31, 32, and she just presumed I'd been working for a decade and had savings and houses and all the rest of it, like normal people had. Then she discovered later on in life that a hadn't, I'd just been going around the world climbing.
So I was very much addicted to climbing. I was a professional climber, but that probably suggests I made money out of it, which I didn't. And then I used to do a few odd jobs, sort of construction type jobs, and we used to clean windows of skyscrapers and jobs like that before it became sort of more professional to earn money. And I used to find that fairly soul-destroying.
I think it was on some US trips, where people were very interested in the sort of cultural history of British climbing. And people were asking us about Lady Diana, and the Queen and all sorts of weird stuff in some of the climbing areas we were. But they were very interested in these sort of almost legendary stories of British climbers.
I sort of inadvertently became the British correspondent in some American climbing publications, and just sending over news items. I realized I quite liked writing, and I quite liked recording things and documenting things in a roundabout way.
Then the other thing that happened is —
I was doing a lot of mountain biking in the UK Peak District where I live, and the guidebooks that were available didn't reflect the kind of people you see out on the trails. So the guidebooks would be, you know, the traditional routes, it would be some pictures of men in out-of-date gear. And what I was seeing was young people, women out there cycling, latest gear, latest bikes, going into some fairly—I mean the Peak District is not remote—but some fairly challenging terrain and pushing themselves. So I decided to write a guidebook to what I saw, and it sold really well. And that's where the publishing business came from.
We have now 300-400 titles.
And ironically, our Peak District Mountain Biking Guide, which was published 18 years ago, is still one of our bestselling books. I don't know how much. So yeah, that's really it. So it came from my climbing roots.
The other thing I used to do when I sort of hit my 30s and realized I needed to make money, I worked in a graphic design business, which is what this business eventually became. We used to make all of our money out of selling more stuff to people. So we design them a logo, but then we'd sell them stationery, and we'd sell them branded T-shirts and plastic pens, endless plastic pens with logos on.
I was always a bit uncomfortable with this idea that I was just putting more stuff in the world. And the more stuff I can persuade somebody to have, the more money we would make. I didn't really like it, it didn't sit very comfortably.
When we published books, I felt I was adding something to the world that people were getting something from and would keep and treasure. Maybe not treasure all of our books, but I found it a much more wholesome thing. That's where it all started from.
Joanna: That's lovely. Obviously, book lovers are listening as well. So fascinating, you said at the beginning that you never had a job interview, and you're basically an independent-minded chap, and a lot of independent people listening as well. So I really love that you've come into it this way.
But it's a really big difference to go from writing and publishing your own book to publishing other people.
How did you transition into deciding to publish other people? What have been some of those challenges?Jon: Well, so we did—I did my first book. I always use the word “we” because I can't spell or I can't do layout or anything. So I've always been very good at working with people who are brighter and cleverer than me that can do stuff, which I think is one key thing.
So the success of the first Mountain Biking was great. And then I had somebody I knew who did a lot of mountain biking down south of England, so I said, “Well, this is the template, this is the format we've done. Can you do it for the south of England?” So they did do that.
We learned—this might sound daft—we learned that people in the north of England aren't interested in buying a guidebook to the south of England. Who knew?!
So all of a sudden we can had to get wise in how we were going to sell books that weren't on our backyard.
We had to learn marketing and distribution and sales.Then sort of going back to this idea, this American idea, that a lot of stories do get lost. Particularly niche sports, I'm from a rock climbing mountaineering background, and some of the stories to us seemed quite normal, you know, 10 people living in a room because we didn't earn any money and we just needed to climb, and living out of dumpsters when food gets thrown away at the end of the day in a supermarket, you can go and retrieve it.
I think on one trip to Australia, I lived for 800 pounds for six months. I've told my wife when we go away for the weekend, and we spend 800 pounds just on the hotel bills for the weekend, I remind her we could have gone to Australia for six months.
Joanna: You were in your 20s. It was a different time!
Jon: I was younger, and I could live on out-of-date pasta for days.
So we discovered that these stories, I mean, the one about the dumpsters is possibly not very interesting, but the stories would get lost. And so I tracked down the people that had made these stories, have lived these lives, and persuaded them to write books.
So we produced mountaineering books, climbing books, and running books, just by documenting these stories. And you then start attracting submissions, and one thing and another.
We made huge, huge numbers of mistakes because I found it very hard to say ‘no.' And some things I would find interesting, might not necessarily be interesting to the wider public.
Joanna: Well, let's get further into that then because obviously my listeners, we are mainly authors, but many of us are also publishers. So I publish my own books, obviously people listening might publish their own books.
Some people are starting micro publishers, almost like yourself. Maybe a decade or two ago, someone will say, oh, can I publish this book or somebody has died and left their copyright to someone. So what's emerging in the independent author community is a whole load of micro presses, like there were in the beginning. I guess that's how publishing was until all the big conglomerates.
So you mentioned there, mistakes. One of them you said was trying to sell stuff for the north of England to the south and vice versa. So geographically specific books, I guess.
What were some of the other mistakes or lessons learned?
Jon: I think the stepping out of our niche. Just because we can produce the best climbing book or the best cycling book that the world has ever seen, it really doesn't mean we can produce a good children's book or a good fiction book.
Whenever we stray out of our niche, we have a failure. And I think failure is the wrong word in publishing, I think in traditional publishing, a better way of saying it is you just printed too many. But certainly, when we step out of our niche, that can be a failure.
We will have a loyal readership and a loyal base, like many independent authors will have, and we put a lot of time and effort into managing that and growing that and looking after that.
But I think expecting them and wanting them to buy books that aren't the sort of thing we publish is not a good tactic. And the other thing we learned is that people like local guidebooks, they don't like national guidebooks. That's, again, the bigger publishers can be better at that. But the main thing was operating in our niche.
Joanna: I think that's a really good tip, and it's much easier to grow your brand when you're known for a certain thing.
You also said there, printing too many copies is a mistake. So I wondered, because again, most of us use print-on-demand, very few independent authors will be doing print runs. I mean, even for a Kickstarter, you print them after you've got the number of books you need to do. So how does your model work in terms of are you doing mainly that sort of print runs? Or do you also use print on demand?
How does your publishing ecosystem work?Jon: So we have a commissioning editor and the brightest people in the business, or the three people with the loudest voices, four people with the loudest voices, form a commissioning team, and we will review submissions and review this publishing strategy. So in theory, it starts with very robust commissioning.
And for a book to get through the commissioning process is quite a lot of work. Included in that is forecasting.
We use a lot of information to produce the forecast. A lot of historical data, we benchmark against other books, we look at the market, we look at the author profile, we look at their social media profile, we look at their track record.
So saying that they're willing to do lots of marketing is often very different to doing lots of marketing.
Then we will produce the book, and we will typically with our books, we will go to a good size print run on the first printing. It used to be 5000 copies, it was just always 5000 copies. We haven't had many books where we haven't either made a good dent into that or gone to a reprint, but now it's much less.
It's very rare for us to print 5000 upfront because we can be holding stocks for five or six years, in some instances, with that amount of print. Sometimes we'll print 3000 or 4000, and we've had occasions where they've sold out before publication date, which is good, but embarrassing. So it just tends to be that model.
Because we've always done that, and a lot of our books aren't suitable for print on demand because one thing we've been very bad at is format control. So at one point, every book coming out had a different format, and many of them just weren't suitable for print-on-demand.
We don't do a lot of mono books. So we don't do a lot of 200 page, black and white reading books, narratives.
Our books will be different sizes, highly illustrated, flaps on the cover, all those sort of things.
So we've just done some short run printing to fill a stock hole, and we're pretty much making ten pounds or losing ten pounds every time we sell a copy of the 200 we had to print quickly. Just because the economies don't work for us on short run and print on demand.
I think now the technology is really changing. The printing processes have really come on. We're having to look at our format so we can be much more—I won't say digitally led or digital first— but we need to be digitally available.
Joanna: It's interesting. So I did go on your website, and I noticed I could buy a paperback from your website, but I primarily read ebooks. I do buy some lovely hardbacks, and obviously you have beautiful print books as well.
What about digital? What about ebooks and audiobooks?Jon: Yes, so our bestselling books—so if we take something like Swimming Wild in the Lake District, or The Climbing Bible, which is a sort of a climbing training book, we won't sell very many digital copies. Certainly a book about wild swimming, it's a large format, it's got lots of big photos in, it doesn't sell at all well as a digital book.
And of course, the audio will just be somebody splashing around. (That's a joke in case everybody missed it!)
So they just don't lend themselves. So we will do an eBook version, and we'll do an audiobook version, if appropriate, but they just don't lend themselves to digital sales.
Some of the books with more global appeal, so the climbing training books we sell a lot globally. And because the only way we can ship them is from a US warehouse and a UK warehouse, we will sell a lot digitally globally of those books. So some of them work on Kindle, but mostly it's the physical books. Around about 10-15% of our revenue is digital.
Joanna: And when you say digital, you mean ebook or audiobook, rather than books bought online. Because this is the thing now, people say, “oh, digital,” but of course someone who buys a print book from you on your website, is that a digital sale or no?
Jon: No, that's a physical book. So when we talk about digital, we're literally talking about ebook or audiobook. And then I probably can't be clear on print on demand whether it is, and then print on demand then merges with sort of micro print runs. So it depends on the book, but probably 15% of our revenue is eBook and audio.
Joanna: It's interesting because I have for the first time just done a hardback with color photos for Pilgrimage. And I've used Bookvault.app here in the UK, and I've done that with Kickstarter.
So it was kind of a small print run, and then I sort of sent them all out. But it's the first time I have done this, and it makes me think that doing more of these beautiful books is a good thing in a world where, for example, there's a lot of digital creation where it's hard to stand out.
Do you think on balance that your business model will get better? Or are you thinking of changing what you do? For example, you could do some more narrative stories or narrative versions that are just plain text for digital sales in order to expand.
Are you thinking of pivoting your business model at all?Jon: Very much so. I think one of the problems we generated for ourselves is some of our narrative titles were very heavily illustrated. They had all the bells and whistles on the printing, and they were very labor intensive, lots of editing. Somebody had written a foreword, somebody wrote a postscript to the book, or even the preface, there would be photos everywhere. There'd be fancy endpapers and oil blotting on all the rest of it.
It was okay while we were fairly new and people were hoovering up our stuff. Once margins got a bit tighter, and once the printing really started going up, we were sort of stuck with that.
People expected 24, 36 pages of color plates in the book. It did make for some quite expensive books.
What we're looking at now, which is, when I when I listened to—I must make a criticism about your podcasts, they're not quite long enough, because I listen to them when I go running, and I tend to run for about an hour and a half. I literally had to stop—get this—I had to stop in the rain two nights ago to change podcasts.
Joanna: Oh, I apologize. But thanks for listening!
Jon: Yeah., but if you could just do a special long-distance runner podcast every now and again, just put that in. Or if I was a bit more tech-savvy, one could follow straight after the other.
Joanna: Or you could change it to the slower speed. You can speed podcasts up, you can also slow them down.
Jon: But then that would be the tempo for my running. I'd just get really unfit. I'd be waiting for the next word. We've almost forgotten the question, haven't we?
Joanna: We're talking about pivoting business models.
Jon: So what we do need to do is we need to get a workflow in place for narratives. We get a lot of submissions, a lot of good books, and we had sort of found ourselves in this situation where we're producing these very lavish books.
But in the autumn, when printing basically doubled in price, and we're all panicking about the cost of living crisis, we actually put a few books out with the minimum basic work. We found the sales weren't really affected.
People wanted a good story, they didn't particularly need 24 pages of the author showing them how great it looks. They can get that off their Instagram feed.So yeah, we are actively now looking to put a lot of our narratives out in B-format paperback, we can launch digitally. we can do things like instock protection with Amazon.
So while we'll have a print run, we'll also have a POD edition there available. And certainly with some of our American publishing, rather than shipping pallets of books to America, we're just setting them up as PODs.
Joanna: And printing them there just makes sense, doesn't it?
The other thing I was going to ask is about Kickstarter, because there's a small press I follow, Microcosm Press. I don't know if you know them.
Jon: Yeah.
Joanna: They do a fantastic job of Kickstarters for all their books. That's how they do every single book. It's what seems to be is they do a Kickstarter, and then you can buy it from their store. And I think you did it for Waymaking, that was one of yours.
Jon: We've done three or four Kickstarters over the years.
Waymaking was the Kickstarter that was most successful. I mean, the obvious downfalls for us with Kickstarter is it's a lot of intense marketing, because you've just got that opportunity, haven't you.
And that marketing doesn't go anywhere because you're putting all that into a Kickstarter campaign. Meanwhile, you have gotten the names and the addresses and one thing and another, and it just sort of sits on a Kickstarter platform.
So we've just done a caving book, it's very easy to find all the caver in the world. They all drink in the same bar. So Kickstarter, I think it's very good to sort of, I mean, I'm not a Kickstarter expert, but it's very good to reach new audiences and market and do new things.
But I think with us, strictly hill walking, we're mountain running, we're climbing, mountaineering, wild swimming, we can find those people quite effectively.
Joanna: Even, I guess, old school media, just that there are magazines and things that you can advertise in and Facebook groups and all that kind of thing.
Jon: Exactly. And there'll always be the world's best climber. And you can always—well, you can't always persuade them—but you can often persuade those sorts of people to promote your book.
I found Kickstarter for Waymaking was very good because we were, with the Waymaking book, we were publishing all these mountaineering narratives. And we have some Australian climbers and US climbers and European climbers and lots of British climbers, and we do a preorder offer that people come to the website and order the book. I started doing some analysis on the names that were ordering it.
Now at Christmas, there was a gender split fairly 50-50. Lots of women, lots of men. If it wasn't Christmas, it was all men. I think one preorder, 98% of the orders were male names. And I think we deduced that at Christmas, wives, girlfriends, mothers were buying books for their boyfriends, sons, husbands. And during the rest of the year, it was just men buying books for themselves. I think we came to the conclusion that the adventure narrative market was pretty much male dominated. And this was when we did Waymaking, which was probably six or seven years ago.
The mountaineering bestseller list on Amazon would usually be 98 out of 100 books would be written by men.
The two that weren't, one would be written by Bernadette McDonald, and that would be a biography of a man. And one would be Nan Shepherd's The Living Mountain, which is a great book, it always sits there.
So we did Waymaking because it was an anthology of new writing, poetry, and art by women about adventure. And really, the idea was to sort of bring some women to the fore, hopefully, I don't sound patronizing, and just give them the confidence—
Joanna: And the platform. Well, I bought it. I bought that book. I mean, I would comment, and I'm not saying this is about you, but the adventure niche in general, it's a lot of sort of blokes with beards on the front of books. In terms of branding, it's not so accessible.
It is interesting, now, to me, the travel niche is different to the adventure niche. So I think you're more broadly travel. Although it's funny, isn't it, because like mountain biking, you could say is kind of adventurous. Or is it hobbies? Does it go in hobbies?
Jon: I mean, in all honesty, while we have some books we would call travel, we are strictly adventure, sports, outdoor pursuits.
And the reason we went to Kickstarter with the Waymaking is because we had to go and find some women. Not in a creepy way.
Joanna: No, no, not at all — and the book is wonderful. So I'll have a link to it in the notes. I think it's interesting, like you said—
It comes back to niche, and you stepped out of your niche for that book.But it did really well. I think it got a lot of press as well, didn't it?
Jon: Yes. The aim of that book—and I know we're talking about Kickstarter—the aim of that book, and it would have failed had the women in it and other women, not started publishing in the adventure pursuits market, and they have. A couple of the women have actually started their own micro-publishing businesses up from their work on that book.
Either last year, well, certainly last year, I can't quite remember the year before, we published more books by women than we did by men. And in this year coming. We've got more books coming out by women than men. I think for us and the niche, I won't say it was all Waymaking that did it, but it definitely achieved what we wanted to achieve.
It goes back to what I was saying about my first book. When we were going out, when I was climbing when I was younger, you know, women were climbing, men were climbing, but women weren't writing the books. With mountain biking, there'd be plenty of women mountain biking, but you wouldn't see any guide books written by a woman.
One of the first rules we had in the publishing business is we wouldn't publish a book, a guidebook, without a photo of a woman in it because it just wouldn't represent what was happening out there. We've gone as far as saying now that we have to make sure we have diversity in our publishing with our authors.
Joanna: I think that's great. And again, it's about seeing somebody like you doing something out there. So I applaud your diversity push there.
Let's just come back to the idea of authors who might want to pitch publishers. So maybe there are some people listening and they're like, oh, I would really like to pitch you, or pitch another publisher or an agent. And you mentioned earlier, you said that you look at an author's profile and an author's marketing and their track record.
What are your tips for authors who want to pitch an idea, whether that's to you or someone else?Jon: So I think the crucial thing is you have to look at the output of that publisher you're pitching to. So really, I mean, we don't publish poetry, we don't publish narrative, we don't publish children's books anymore. So there's literally no point sending us crime fiction or really fiction at all.
We only publish in the sports that we publish in. So we're not interested in skateboarding or surfing or anything like that, or sailing books. So do your research. Don't just send stuff in.
I think I think getting to know the publisher is useful, if you've got the time. I mean, certainly following them on social media is just crucial, unless you don't use social media, which is fine. Going to some of their events, reading their best sellers is all good.
This might sound stupid, the phone will often go, people will start pitching the book down the phone, which is not ideal, but I understand it's fair enough. And I will often say, “Well, we like books like Waymaking, and this is what we did with Waymaking.”
And we will often get that book criticized. “Oh yeah, my books really good. I didn't like Waymaking because the stories were too short or I hadn't heard of the authors or it was all women.” Literally those sorts of things have been said to me. “But my book is better.”
That's just like, oh, well, thanks very much. “Stick a copy in the post, we don't return manuscripts,” is usually the answer that you get. So it's respecting what the publisher has published.
Realistically, we want an engaging story, we want a relatable story, we want something that's in our strategy. But it does often come down to the marketing plan.As self-published authors will know, there's nobody better to sell a book than the author. Even if you're working with Penguin Random House, you will always be able to sell more books, more of your own books, than any other process, realistically.
The author profile is key for us. We have to be commercial. So it's what the author brings to the table from a marketing point of view is crucial.
Joanna: So if someone wants to send a pitch email, it should be the first paragraph about the book and the second paragraph about the author, platform, and marketing ideas.
Jon: Well, we just have submission guidelines. So we need to know about them, we need to know what their competitive titles are, in their opinion, we need to know their marketing reach, some samples of the work, have they written before, all those sorts of things. So we have quite detailed submission guidelines.
Joanna: And a big tip is to follow those. I mean, it's so funny, I've obviously been to these events where they tell you stuff and everyone says, no, follow the guidelines. And I imagine a lot of people don't follow the guidelines.
Jon: Yeah, yeah. I mean, only about one in 10 of our submissions follow the guidelines.
The other thing to appreciate is, we're not a bad company, we've got quite a slick operation. In terms of new authors for Vertebrate, we're taking on very few a year. It's less than 10 brand new authors a year, probably less than five brand new authors.
Joanna: So as in you're commissioning books from people who've already written books, like on rock climbing or mountain biking?
Jon: Yeah, well, we have books we want, so we will often go out and find that author. In terms of interesting submissions that come into the in tray that we end up subsequently publishing, it is actually very few.
It's very difficult to get into, even us, and I'd say we're quite open and receptive. It's very difficult for us to publish something that's just landed in the submissions tray.
Equally, we will look at submissions, and we will feedback where we can. If it's something we're interested in, it might go right through to the commissioning meeting.
So we produce what we call a book investment proposal, and that can iron out a lot of stuff. And we will give feedback even if we refuse the book, I have seen quite a lot of books we have refused subsequently published, whether they've taken our advice or not, but they have actually gone on to get a publishing deal which is always great to see. Especially if they send me a copy, that's always nice if I had given them feedback.
Joanna: And I think one of the questions, I mean a lot of indie authors listening is, are publishers interested if an author who has published themselves and now are interested in a deal? Let's assume this is a new book. So if I came to you and said, “I've got this new book, and I've got 30-plus titles, and here's my sales history.”
Are you as a publisher interested in independent authors?Jon: Yes, very much. I mean, one of our bestselling books was actually published independently. He published two books independently. One's called Bothy Tales, one's called The Last Hill Walker. Really nice guy. And he'd got so far with what he could do, and he wanted time to write more books. We republished them under our imprint, and have subsequently done two new books with him.
So the book was established, so his royalty rate is actually 50%, so it's a stonking good royalty rate. So it works for everybody. And we've been able to take what he did, which was a lot of digital sales, and have the confidence and the cash flow to print good numbers and have them distributed globally as well.
So yeah, so we'll work on merit, and if an indie author is successful, then it makes forecasting so much easier because they're bringing real sales data to the commissioning meeting.
Joanna: It's good to hear because I mean, I remember coming to the FutureBook / The Booksellers Conference here in the UK back in 2012, and I was really treated like an outcast and indie authors were not welcome about a decade ago. It feels like things have changed. And with a business mindset—
Certainly, a lot of indie authors have a business mindset. That's what you have as a publisher, right?Jon: Yeah, I mean, one of my things, it's not massively commercial, but I tend to just want to work with people I like and like working with. What their track record is, and their material, I think indie authors are good because you know, straight away, you know what they're like to work with. If they've managed to get books out before, they are an achiever.
I mean, writing a book, as you know, is a lot of work and you're putting yourself out there. You're really putting your head above the parapet and asking people to like what you do. That can be quite a challenge.
And if you're working with a first time author, we've had some horrendous problems with getting them to let go of the manuscript. It might be because they are climbers and they don't like letting go. That's a rubbish joke, you should edit it out.
Joanna: No, that's a good joke. I like it!
I did want to come back, because we're almost out of time. I want to ask you, originally, you emailed me and said you wanted to address my ‘publisher bashing.'
I'd love to know what you particularly disagree with, or whether it's just the type of publisher? Because all publishers are not the same, right? Like all authors are not the same.
Are there any myths or issues you want to correct around publishers?Jon: I think this always comes back to haunt me. I was on Alastair Humphrey's podcast, and he dug out something I said about ‘pseudo-adventurers trying to write stories about something that anybody could have done.' So he also called me out.
I mean, we hear quite a lot. I mean, we're nice people, and we work hard, and we put our authors first, and all the rest of it. And you do hear that phrase, “Oh, I got ripped off by my publisher,” or, “My publisher didn't listen,” or my publisher this, my publisher that.
At the end of the day, they're just human beings. If you've got a deal with Penguin Random House, you're actually working, but you might be working with some really nice editors and marketing people and book designers.
And so I think when I hear that, that sort of, “the publisher did this,” I think it's not necessarily fair on the industry of publishing. We are commercial organizations, obviously. But the best favor a publisher can always do for its author is to be solvent, and that requires making money.
What a lot of authors don't do is scrutinize the contract and really understand what they're signing. Just knowing the difference between a net royalty rate and an RRP royalty rate is huge. I think authors have to just sit down with that contract and understand every line in it, as boring as that might sound, before they sign it.
And have some real-world examples, you know, what does 10% mean?
What does actually that mean? How much money will I get per book sold? How many books are you expecting to sell? How much marketing support will I get? Will I get paid expenses if I get asked to go to a festival?
I think all that should be asked. You didn't sign your house mortgage without understanding what your repayments were and how long those repayments had to be done? Well, maybe some people do, but I think that can often lead to conflict down the line when you realize that your royalty check is only 18 pounds.
Joanna: I'm so glad you said that because that is a lot of it. I mean, I talk a lot about this and try and educate people around contracts. I have absolutely no problem with people signing with traditional publishers, and have done myself for foreign rights and things like that. Exactly as you say, you have to understand what you're signing.
I guess one of my issues is often the clauses that are in the standard contracts. You know, and publishers, to be fair, they're going to offer the best deals for themselves and it's up to the author and/or the agent to negotiate it.
But it's the taking all rights for the life of copyright, all formats, that kind of thing. An author shouldn't sign that, and yet, it seems like some of the big companies, they want everything and otherwise there's no choice.
Just coming back on what you said—
What is net versus RRP royalty rate?Because I know people listening are like, what is that? What should I do? So can you just explain that just so people know.
Jon: So if the published price of the book is 20 pounds and you're being offered a 10% royalty, that's not two pounds, that will typically not be two pounds. So an RRP, so that's the recommended retail price in the UK or the sales price or whatever. So if you're being offered a royalty on the RRP then the percentage will be two pounds, if it's 10%.
Joanna: Well, that's never done.
Jon: Well, you say it's never done, but lots of authors think that is exactly what they're signing. So that must be clear. And certainly with agented books, we find that with agent books, they always try and get an RRP royalty, which is fine. We had a small children's imprint, and many of those books were RRP.
So then the net rate is, so if it's 10%, it's 10% of what we receive when we sell a copy. And that can be very, very murky.
So if we sell a book on Amazon, Amazon will give us 40% of the retail price. So if it's 10 pounds, we'll get four pounds, and we'll give the author whatever the rate is, 10% or 20% of that, depends on the book.
In John Burns’ case, with his The Last Hill Walker, it's 50% of that. So that's four pounds. But we don't get four pounds because for that Amazon sale, we have a distribution charge, which is another 10%. And we might have a repping charge, which might be another 5%. And we might have some delivery costs.
There can be all sorts of costs that you could potentially lump in, and you might end up receiving 50 pounds for the books, and then you might end up paying the author 10% on 50 pounds, which is not very much.
I don't think many publishers do that. We certainly wouldn't. But I think this is why some real world examples are required. And obviously the net rate is very good if you're selling direct.
So if you sell a book at full price, then the net rate is obviously higher. So also understanding what the split of sales is for a publisher. So 30% of our books are sold via Amazon, which is the highest discount we give. Obviously, we give Amazon the highest discount, why wouldn't we? So that's what the net rate means.
I've looked at plenty of contracts for people I know who've been offered contracts with big publishers and they've asked me to look at them. And the other one to look out for is special sales. So you can often have a lower net rate for special sales. I think it's very important to understand what the publisher means by special sales.
Joanna: Because it could mean anything.
Jon: Yeah, you know, so for special sales, you will get a net rate of 5%, and it's just buried there in the contract. And then all of a sudden, you might find that 90% of your books are special.
Joanna: And to me, this is interesting. And people listening, this is publishing, this really is. I mean, the writing for us, for you and me as well, I mean—
The writing of the book is completely separate, really, to the business side. And I'm an artist, and I'm a businesswoman. And those are two sides of the coin.
In the same way, you are still an author, but you're a businessman being separate to the, “oh, I love this book” type of thing. You can absolutely love a book. but the business is very specific. You have to be interested in both of these things, I think, to be successful. You can't just be interested in the art.
Jon: No, you can't. And I will often say to people at the start of their book project, just so I can manage their expectations and make sure they're happy at the end of it is, “What are you trying to achieve from the book?”
And invariably, the answer is something like, ‘I just want to get my story out, I want to inspire other people, I want to put something down on paper for my children or whatever.'
When the book is published, I'm sorry to say, you know what the phone calls are about.
Joanna: Yeah. Where's my million pounds?
Jon: Yeah, the phone calls are all about sales. Now fortunately, I understand that. So I think it's important at the very start to understand what that sales and renumeration is.
You know, a lot of our authors will only write one book. They've done something amazing, and they want to tell the story, and they have a day job. And if they make money out of the book, great. If they don't make money out of the book, it's not the end of the world. Understanding what that return is, is important.
We welcome, and I often advise, particularly if we get into a tricky situation on negotiation, I'll often advise the author to go and speak to—in the UK, it's a Society of Authors, and apologies, I don't know if they're global, but there will be representative bodies all around the world—go and speak to the Society of Authors.
We find they're very helpful, they will come down on us as a publisher very hard, but then they're actually very reasonable. And when you actually get to the point where you're signing, you very much get a better contract and a better understanding out of it. So seek advice.
If you've not signed a publishing contract, you shouldn't sign it blindly. You should get advice.Joanna: And if you're doing it through an agent, then you still need to understand all the clauses. I think the other thing people don't necessarily understand is that relationships change.
You might change agents, the publisher might change, publishing houses get bought, they get sold, things change. You know, you and I are not going to live forever. So there's lots of things to think about because of course, copyright goes on after your death.
Jon: Yeah, I mean, particularly in the genre I publish in, I'm sending lots of royalty checks to estates.
Joanna: Oh, God, climbing is a nightmare — [joking around] Oh, happy times, Jon!
Where can people find you and Vertebrate online?Jon: So our website is adventurebooks.com, all one word, and there's contact details on there. If anybody's got follow up questions, I'll happily try and answer them. And Vertebrate Publishing, we're all over social media Twitter, the Vertebrate Publishing Instagram, is a bit more professional.
Joanna: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Jon. That was great.
Jon: Yeah, thanks for that, Jo. I enjoyed it.
The post The Challenges Of Small Press Publishing With Jon Barton first appeared on The Creative Penn.
You cannot see many of the problems with your own writing, as you are so close to the manuscript. ProWritingAid can help you self-edit your work before you take it on to a human editor, so they can focus on the bigger issues.
In this episode, Chris Banks, the CEO of ProWritingAid talks about how developments in AI have added functionality to the software to help writers even more.
If you'd like to support the podcast, you can use my affiliate link, www.TheCreativePenn.com/prowritingaid and check out my tutorial here. Or you can just go to ProWritingAid.com.
Chris Banks is the CEO and founder of ProWritingAid, which has over 1.5 million users worldwide.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- The key benefits of ProWritingAid
- The evolution of grammar tools as technology accelerates
- Skepticism about using AI tools in your writing and how to overcome it
- AI tools as a creative companion
- Can using AI tools lead to plagiarism?
- Problems with tools that ‘detect' AI-generated writing
- Why this is such an exciting time for creatives
You can find Chris at ProWritingAid.com
Transcript of Interview with Chris BanksChris: Chris Banks is the CEO and founder of ProWritingAid, which has over 1.5 million users worldwide, including myself. So welcome back to the show, Chris.
Thanks, Joanna. It's a pleasure to be here.
Joanna: Oh, yes. We were talking before about how we're so excited right now about all the things going on. But before we look forward—
Let's just tell people a bit more about ProWritingAid.So if anyone doesn't know it, can you give us just a brief overview of some of the key benefits?
Chris: Yes. Well, the tool basically is designed to make writing fun and easy. We try and do all of the heavy lifting and take away the difficult bits of writing. So all of the kind of boring bits that you might struggle with, all of the things that take a lot of time and don't bring you any joy, ProWritingAid is designed to help you get rid of those and to make your life a lot easier and fun.
Joanna: And just some of the specifics. So I use it for editing, and it does things like pick up my terrible comma usage and some of my passive language, which I always use. Anything else that you think is commonly used by authors?
Chris: Yes, I think I designed the tool to help myself and to criticize myself, to find all of the mistakes that I was making when I was writing. I think when you're doing a first draft, I always think of the first draft as a quote by Shannon Hale, where “you're just piling up sand so that later you can build castles out of it.”
So in the first draft, you're just trying to get everything down, all of your thoughts, all of your stories. It's about flow. Then when you move into the editing phase afterwards, that's about constructing things and building these beautiful castles.
So what ProWritingAid does is it helps you with that construction process.
It goes through your first draft and shows you all of the areas that you need to focus on in order to take that first draft to a publishable manuscript. So that's things like, have you overused passive voice? Have you used too many cliches? Have you used repetitive sentence structures? Grammar mistakes, common mistakes, things along the lines of have you shown rather than told, in terms of like emotions or other areas.
The idea is to take all of the advice that you would read in books on writing, and actually apply that to your own writing and show you where you need to focus yourself to get the most out of your time.
Joanna: And actually, what you just said there is one of the criticisms that I have had, because obviously, I love ProWritingAid, I use it. I have a video tutorial, and someone posted a comment which basically said something along the lines of, “You're lazy. You should learn all these rules yourself.” I mean, what do you think about that? Should we be reading all those books and learning all the rules and applying them?
Are we losing something by using a tool to help us with writing?Chris: I think you probably have read all of those books, Joanna!
Joanna: I have. Yes!
Chris: I certainly read a lot of them, but I can't remember them. And I think what a lot of people struggle with is actually taking that advice that you get in books and actually applying it to your own writing. Because often it's quite abstract, we don't really see the connection. So that's what we're trying to do.
I always think, going back to that metaphor of building castles, right? When you're constructing something, you have a bunch of tools that help you construct it.
If you were going to build a house, you would have like a digger, and a crane, and a dumper truck that would make building your house an awful lot easier. Yes, you could do it without those things, but it will take you an awful lot longer, and it would be much less enjoyable. So ProWritingAid is a tool, like any of those things, that just makes the whole process a lot easier and a lot faster.
Joanna: And actually, I learn something every time I use it. Like as you say, you might know a rule in your head, like ‘oh yes, I should not use repetitive words' or something, but then you can't see it on the screen, and you can't see it on the page necessarily.
I find that I always learn something, and then of course, hopefully, the next time around, you will get a better score because ProWritingAid gives you a score for your chapters. My goal is to try and get it into the higher level score before I even use the tool. So you can challenge yourself to become a better writer. I definitely find it helps me with that.
Chris: Yes, I think that is one of the benefits of the tool as well, is that it gives you that objective eye. I think everybody needs an objective eye. If you think of like the best sports people in the world, they have a coach who watches them doing their sports and gives them advice on how to do it better. They can't do that themselves because they can't see themselves doing the sport.
So ProWritingAid is giving people that objective eye. Yes, it would be great if everybody could afford to have their own personal writing coach who reviewed everything that they ever wrote and gave them feedback, but that's beyond the means of most people.
So what we're trying to do is give that to everybody, so that you can get that first objective eye. Maybe then you use an editor to get another objective eye, but by using ProWritingAid first, you're getting a lot more value from your editor, and there'll be certainly doing the part of their job that they prefer doing.
Joanna: I imagine a lot of editors do use these tools. It's not like they print out manuscripts and hand-edit everything. And maybe some people still do that, but everyone uses tools as part of their job.
Chris: Exactly. And a lot of editors actually recommend ProWritingAid to their clients, that they use ProWritingAid before they send it to the editor, specifically because you'll get a lot more value out of your editor if they're not correcting simple grammar mistakes and showing you the simpler things.
But they're really helping you with things like your tone of voice, your plot holes, characterization, those kinds of things. You'll be a lot happier because you feel like you're getting more from your editor. Your editor will be happier because they're not correcting simple things. Everybody wins.
Joanna: Absolutely. It takes us further. It enhances us. We should be returning to that as a thought.
You were last on the show in April 2021, so almost—we're recording this in the middle of March—so April 2021, two years ago, when we first talked.
What has changed for ProWritingAid, in the software, but also with the company as well?Did the pandemic, which was still in sort of full flow then, change things? What have you noticed over the last few years?
Chris: Well, I think there's been a seismic shift in everything over the last few years. I mean, for ProWritingAid as a company, I think at the beginning of the pandemic, we saw a lot of people going online. So writing, in general, became a lot more important. A lot of communication became through the written word, through documents.
I think a lot of people realized actually how effective communicating through writing and putting your thoughts down on paper can be. Because I think writing is a really powerful tool for helping you crystallize your thoughts in a much better way than you can just in your head.
Obviously, I think for us as a company, a lot of people were stuck at home and started writing novels or memoirs or whatever they wanted to work on. So things got really busy.
And then more recently, obviously, I think the technology has advanced massively, even in the last six months. You've probably all heard of ChatGPT. The underlying technology of that is something called transformers, which is something that we used for several years in our grammar checking but has suddenly taken a huge leap forward. We are now using that, and we can do things now that six months ago would literally have been impossible. It's very, very exciting time from a technology perspective as well.
Joanna: Well, let's split that into two things. So first of all, you said that ProWritingAid has been using the transformer technology. And obviously we don't need to go into technical details, but I mean, so ProWritingAid, it's not new that you're using AI. So if we look sort of backward—
How have you been using AI in ProWritingAid? Chris: Yes. So I mean, pretty much from the start we've used AI. Language, on the surface, it seems quite simple. But underneath, it's incredibly complicated. If you think how long it took for people to have even reasonable grammar checkers. If you look back 10 years ago, grammar checkers were pretty terrible, and they're only getting to the stage now where they're actually a lot better.
All of that has come from AI and using effectively like the statistical models in AI. And then previously if we wanted to do very specific things, we would have to build very specific models, which would involve generating a training set or acquiring a training set from somewhere, creating a model, and then applying it so that we could deliver value to people.
The big change over the last six months is that these models have transformed into what are called now foundational models, which means that these models can actually just do a lot of things without actually any specific training.
So this means that you can take one model and use it for as many things as you can think of, rather than previously, everything that you wanted to do, you'd have to generate your own model. So it means that we can now do effectively 100 times or more things much more easily than we could previously.
Joanna: And also, you said that we can do things now that you couldn't do six months ago.
What have you added to ProWritingAid because of the acceleration of AI technology?Chris: So we're just getting started, obviously, because it's so new. But for me, this is solving the missing piece of ProWritingAid.
So the problem that we've always had with the product is that we could often show you where there was a problem, but in that case, we'd have to show you that there was a problem here, and then we'd say, right, now go away, read these articles, and you have to work out how to fix that problem.
So obviously, with basic spelling and grammar, we could suggest it, but with more complicated things, we would have to rely on you doing that. And obviously, for some people, that's quite a lot of work, and they just think, ugh, too much effort, I can't be bothered, I'll give up.
Whereas now, with these new models, we can for pretty much everything, show you several examples of it, on your own work, of how you should fix it. And then you can choose between those examples or you can combine them and come up with your own take on it.
So over the next three, four, five months, I hope that whereas we had lots of suggestions in ProWritingAid before where we couldn't give you examples of what good looked like, we should be able to give you examples that you can accept for pretty much everything in the product.
Joanna: That's fantastic. And I mean, I was on ChatGPT the morning it launched. I was so excited when it came out. And I was like, woo hoo, and it was super fun.
And one of the things that's interesting, because I'm a discovery writer, so I just sit down and I kind of make it up as I go along. Like I'm not a plotter or anything like that. But one of the interesting things is being able to paste in a chapter, and then ask it to summarize, to kind of do text in different ways. Is that something that you might consider? Because there are lots of reports, aren't there, in ProWritingAid?
Chris: Yes, there are lots of reports. They're all designed to work on different areas. And I think, again, a lot of them we didn't integrate into the real-time checking because they required a lot more work. Whereas now, with the things that we can do, we can actually bring that more into the real-time checking.
So a good example of something that, I mean, it literally blew my mind the first time I saw this. I think humans love to see lots of really kind of like detailed descriptions of scenes, of people. It really helps to engage people with your writing. And I think a lot of time people don't include enough like sensory detail about the smell, or the taste, or the touch of the things in their story.
Now we can identify where there's a lack of sensory detail, and then we can suggest a complete rewrite of a paragraph or a couple of paragraphs where we suggest sensory detail that you can add. So that might be like the sound of the clock or the sounds generated by like a car going down a path. It's just amazing when you see the transformations. It's incredible. And again, we don't necessarily get you to 100%, but we'll get you somewhere where you really understand what problem is, and then you can use your own take on it.
Joanna: I love this sensory detail stuff. I think it's fantastic. Again, we all have strengths and weaknesses, and I'm very good at visual stuff. So my visual descriptions are usually pretty good, but I always forget smell. And I often forget hearing because I'm an introvert, I don't really like noise.
So I find this sensory detail to be really useful because it suggests things that I haven't even thought of, based on a context. I think this is amazing. And yet, this is actually one of the criticisms that people have.
So again, it almost comes back to the, “well, you should read the grammar books, and you should know the rules.”
And so some writers who are slightly resistant, or even more than slightly resistant to AI, would say either, that's cheating, or it's replacing the author's creativity.They feel in some way that we're missing out because we're not just pulling it all from our brain.
Chris: Well, I think that's an interesting question. And you might say the same about, for instance, using a thesaurus. Is using a thesaurus cheating because you're not pulling those different words that you could be using out of your brain?
I would say no. And I would say that any tool that you use to find different ways of expressing yourself, for me, it's not cheating, it's just common sense.
So for example, to give a specific example, there's a resource called The Emotion Thesaurus, which I think a lot of writers use, the idea being that you should show the emotions of your characters rather than tell them. So you shouldn't say that somebody is angry, right, you should show their face getting red, and their knuckles going wide, and all of the physical characteristics of them being angry, rather than just saying he was really angry. So The Emotion Thesaurus is a really good resource, I highly recommend it to anybody who hasn't tried it out. It gives you all have these descriptions that you can use, if you have a character that is angry.
Now, one of the great things that we could do is actually also help with that process as well. Whereas before, I would just say, you know, “Here you said he's angry. Maybe you need to go and look at how you can show he's angry instead.”
Very soon we'll be adding functionality that will actually show you four different or five different suggestions of how you might write the sentence better to show the physical symptoms of him being angry, rather than just saying he's angry.
You could do that process by looking at The Emotion Thesaurus as well, it will take you longer. I would highly recommend also using The Emotion Thesaurus as well, because we are by no means exhaustive. Or you could just sit there thinking for an hour on your own of what physical description you have for somebody who's angry. It is the same process effectively, you're just being more efficient.
Joanna: Yes, and use the word efficient, which is partly true, but I have also found that it's made me more creative because it comes up with things that I might not have thought of, like we mentioned the sensory description. I often talk about this extended thesaurus idea, and it's just a sort of tool on steroids, really. I think that, as you said, what's coming in is this ability to enhance our creative thinking rather than replace it.
So I still have to, like within ProWritingAid, I still have to put in the raw material, and then have it suggest alternatives. So it's still from my mind, it's just enhancing what I want to create. And I've certainly found using some of these things that I come up with better ideas. And often there might be an idea that I think, no, that's not quite right, but it helps me think of something else.
Chris: I completely agree. I mean, I'm really interested in the area, it's called computational creativity, like how we can use computers to be more creative ourselves.
And I think as humans, we can really get stuck in like holes, and I think that's where writer's block comes from. Where you really struggle to get outside of this valley that your brain settled in, like this is the only thing I can think of. And there's a super interesting feature of all of these things like ChatGPT, is as a kind of creative companion.
You know, if I said to you, can you name like 10 adjectives, you'd probably come up with five really quickly, and then it just gets harder and harder to think of them as it goes onwards. Whereas if you put that into ChatGPT, it would just carry on listing them all day.
It's this kind of inexhaustible creative companion that can just give you ideas, and then you're effectively curating those ideas into your creative work. So yeah, for me, it's an amazing creative companion.
Joanna: I like that. The inexhaustible creative companion. That's exactly how I feel.
Just to address some of the other concerns that authors have about AI, and of course, ‘AI' is like ‘the internet.' It doesn't necessarily mean one thing, it's really big, but it's the term that people are still using.
So the training data, people are concerned that works in copyright have been used to train, you mentioned foundational models, and therefore the original creators of those works are not fairly compensated. And of course, there are legal cases. So this is literally not something that has been decided. What's your understanding of this issue?
Chris: I think it's really interesting.
I think with this kind of massive shift in technology, we will obviously need changes in the legal system as well. To use a kind of comparison, for me it's like cars being invented. Before there were cars, you didn't need to have road laws, necessarily. But we've invented this new thing that will be used in some good ways, and undoubtedly some bad ways. So we will need to generate new laws to govern that as well.
I think fundamentally, there's a lot of comparison, though, between AI and humans as well, right? The AI is based on human biology, the idea of neurons, and it learns in a similar way to humans by reading things.
So when you're writing something as a human, arguably, you've read books, you've read copyright things on the internet, and when you're writing, what you're producing is based on what you've read. So are you worried about copyright in that case? Probably not. I think there's always going to be a continuum, and different people will be on different places on the continuum.
For me, it's very interesting because I think one of the things people say is, “Oh, it's going to plagiarize things from the internet.” It's much less likely to plagiarize things from the internet than an actual human is, which is kind of ironic. Because it's read so many things, the paths it takes to predict what to say next are so many more, that it is much less likely to follow the same path of something it's read than a human is.
It's kind of difficult to explain, but if you imagine you're walking through a garden, if you've only seen like two pieces of text in your life, every like fork in the road, there's only two ways you can go, so you can go left or right.
So you can say there are like ten different forks, but the chances are, you're going to follow the same path as somebody else has in that garden. Whereas if every fork you get to there's actually like a thousand different ways you could go, and there's ten different partner forks, then you're much less likely to follow the same path as somebody. So a human is that one that's only got two paths in front of them because it's seen much less data than an AI.
So ironically, I would be much more worried about an individual person accidentally writing the same sentence as somebody else, or an editor changing the sentence to be the same as somebody else, than I would be about an AI producing the same sentence as it has seen somewhere in a copyrighted work.
Joanna: As you say, we can't go too deep into the technology, but I feel like people think it's almost a database where it kind of pulls out a line, like you ask it something or you have some text and it rewrites it, and it pulls out a line from an exact database.
But as you said, it's more a predictive model that has all these different paths that it could do.
Are you saying that if ProWritingAid offers us a suggestion of a rewritten sentence, we should not worry that that could be plagiarized?
Chris: Yeah, well, so when we rewrite things, obviously, it's based on what you've written. So fundamentally, it's the same process of you writing something, and then you sending it to your editor, and then they make some edits to that sentence.
Now, I don't think anybody has ever said, “I'm worried that by using a copy editor, they might rewrite my sentence and plagiarize something.” But I would say it's much more likely that your copy editor would put you in that situation than any AI tool would.
Joanna: Well, it's interesting, because I actually recommend to people, and I personally also use ProWritingAid's plagiarism checker. So I have used some generative text in a short story, and I used the plagiarism checker to run over it just in case. Again, I don't normally do that for my own books because I feel like I'm happy with my process. But when it includes some words that have been generated, I decided to do this.
ProWritingAid has a plagiarism checker. What do you think of that extra step?I mean, maybe it's just for my own happy feeling.
Chris: Well, I think it's completely natural that you feel that way. And like people worry about this, and it's a very new technology. So anything that's new, I think people have a healthy dose of skepticism about and worry.
For me, plagiarism is an interesting area, and I think there is definitely an ability for this tool to be used for bad, in terms of plagiarism. Just in the same way that you could use a car, you could drive it into the front of a shop and steal all of the things from a shop. Just because you can misuse something, doesn't mean that it's bad.
I think we'll have to really rethink actually what constitutes plagiarism. Because it can be used, for instance, to take an article and rephrase every sentence. And then that is clearly plagiarized from my perspective, you haven't done anything yourself. But no plagiarism checker that I'm aware of currently would ever find that. So I think plagiarism checking almost is less useful now. Undoubtedly, there'll be advances in that area, but it's definitely losing the battle currently.
Joanna: It's interesting, I mean, what about the AI writing checkers that are starting to spring up? Because as you say, I mean, and I've been using all these tools as creative companions. As you say, I have my own sense of what I want to create, so I don't need to just copy and paste whole things from an AI tool, but some people obviously are doing that. That is already happening.
Now there are these tools popping up that kind of try and find what is AI-generated writing. Now as someone who's been putting articles online for over a decade, I kind of feel like someone could create, and in fact, someone has sent me a thing where they use ChatGPT to pretend they were Joanna Penn and write an article in the style of Joanna Penn. And it could have been me, it really could have been me. And yet that is AI-generated.
So I have not used any of these tools because I almost feel like, well, it will be a false positive. It'll say my writing is AI writing, but maybe because there's so much on the internet and I followed rules around SEO and blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean?
What do you think about any tools that will pick up AI-generated writing?Chris: Yeah, I think as I alluded before, it's going to be an arms race. I think plagiarism-checking tools now are losing that by a long way.
There are a bunch of tools that have come out recently that purport to be checking tools. I think most of them have been proven to be fairly useless and give lots of false positives, which means that they're effectively not very useful for much.
For me, it's less about whether it's written with the help of AI, versus, like plagiarized. And I think plagiarism for me, anybody who writes a novel, if you write like 100,000 words, there will be a section of your text, like undoubtedly, where you've used five words, six words that somebody else has used in another novel. I mean, that's just a fact. But nobody would say using six words that are fairly generic is plagiarism. Whereas if you use like six very specific words from a famous quote, then people would say, well, that is plagiarism.
If I take an entire article and rewrite it, that's clearly plagiarism. If I write an article and reword it with an AI tool, that's clearly not plagiarism. So I think we're going to have a redrawing of the boundaries and the definitions of what is plagiarism.
Joanna: And what is copyright, I think as well. I think copyright is going to be interesting. I mean, it's emerging more in the visual arts space at the moment because it's kind of easier in visual art to see something, whereas in a book, it's a lot more to go through. I mean, copyright feels like it's changing.
Just to be clear, so if someone is working on their book in ProWritingAid, so as I do, I use Scrivener, I open ProWritingAid, I open my Scrivener document, and I work through it. Now, if I rephrase something and I take ProWritingAid's suggestion for that line, I can still copyright my whole book because that's my product.
Chris: Exactly.
Joanna: Just checking in case people were confused.
I also wanted to circle back to something you talked about earlier, and you mentioned the foundational models.
And one of the things that I find useful in ProWritingAid is a style guide. So for example, if I'm writing a fantasy novel, or I have certain words that I use, I can put them in. Now one of the thing that's interesting for me is this idea of fine tuning models. So having my voice.
When ProWritingAid, for example, suggests a rewrite, is there a potential in the future, because, again, like you said, we're at the beginning of all of these changes.
Is there a potential to fine tune so that it will suggest things that I actually would use as part of my normal writing?Chris: Yeah, there's definitely potential, and I think there's potential on various levels. So I think if we look at different companies, for instance, every company will have like their tone of voice, which is their attempt to homogenize the way that they talk across a large group of people. They might say, “We use lots of short sentences, it's really positive,” or, “We use like lots of long technical language because we're Ferrari and we want our customers to think they're getting more for their money.” Obviously, individuals, I think as well, will say, “Well, I like to talk, my voice is very dark, or airy, or very magical.”
So there's that kind of prescriptive way of just configuring like how I want my writing to sound, then the text that's generated will be guided by that. But then for people like yourself, who've got a large body of written work already, then there is a definite possibility of this fine-tuning, where you actually create a model that's specifically tuned to the way that you write.
So the results that are produced by the model will be a lot closer to your general style of writing. So I think there's a lot of potential in that area as well.
Joanna: I really like that idea, especially in the editing. Because it's funny, probably over a year ago now, I worked with a company to fine-tune a model that was more the generative stuff. So this was pre-ChatGPT days, which you know, things move on so fast now. And so I trained this model, and then I was like, oh, I'm so bored, because I didn't want to co-create with myself.
You mentioned the creative companion, I don't want a creative companion that is myself. That actually wasn't helping me. But in the editing phase, I do want myself because then it's a consistent voice.
Whereas in that early creative phase, I want someone whose “brain” is different to my own. So I ditched that fine-tuned model because I actually enjoyed the sense of creativity with bigger models, the bigger GPT models. So it's different stages of the process, isn't it?
And definitely within my editing stage, that is definitely when I would want my voice.
Chris: Yeah, I completely agree. I read a quote once, “A different perspective is worth 50 IQ points.” And I completely agree with that. You want a different person to be creative with, to throw ideas around, to suggest different ways of saying it.
As I eluded before, that beginning phase is all about just getting all of these ideas down. They don't have to be great ideas. They're just your ideas. Right?
There's another thing which says, all the first draft has to do is exist, that's his only job. Right? Once it exists, then you've got something that you can build on. But if you haven't got a first draft, then you haven't got anything. So yeah, the two processes, I think, are very different needs, as you say, different creative companions. One needs to be very like you and one needs to be like your opposite.
Joanna: Yes, it's so funny as we're both reaching for language here. We're like “creative companion” and use the word “brain.” And we've used the word “person” as well, which I think is interesting.
This is a struggle right now, it's actually quite hard to use language to talk about these tools. That's what is so strange.
Chris: Yeah, well, it's such a jump forward that people are having to rethink all kinds of different things, and obviously create their own new vocabulary to describe the way that these models work and how they're going to interact with them. I think the potential is just enormous.
Joanna: So anything else that you're excited about or that you can tease us for the future of ProWritingAid? Or just anything that you're just enthusiastic about right now for what's coming?
Chris:
Well, I am possibly the biggest advocate of AI in the entire world. I think it's got the potential to solve huge problems in the world. For me, it's a huge step forward, and there's so much potential. We're really just starting to touch the surface of what we can do.
And that is why, for me, and ProWritingAid, this is literally the most exciting time now since I started the company because the number of features that we've got planned to come out this year is just enormous. The amount of extra value that we can deliver to people, and how much easier we can make writers' lives I think is just phenomenal.
Joanna: I'm excited.
Where can people find ProWritingAid online and stay up to date with everything that's coming?Chris: Oh, ProWritingAid.com. But then we've also recently launched a community as well. Writing can be very lonely, I think, so it's nice to have a community to bounce ideas off when you didn't have ChatGPT. But to get critique and to discuss things and learn, Community.ProWritingAid.com is where you can go there as well.
There's a power user group in there as well, for any of our power users if they're listening. Or if you are a power user, and you're not in the group, then send me an email and we can add you. And then you can start to have a say in the future of ProWritingAid as well. Because fundamentally, we're here to make all of your lives easier, to make writing fun and easy. So the more feedback that we get from our users, the better we can make the tool, and the more we can make life fun.
Joanna: Indeed. Well, thanks so much for your time, Chris. That was great.
Chris: I really appreciate it.
The post How To Use ProWritingAid To Improve Your Writing With Chris Banks first appeared on The Creative Penn.
Why do you need an email list when you can just reach readers with social media? How can you use reader magnets to build your email list? Tammi Labrecque gives beginner and advanced tips for book marketing.
In the intro, The state of the Creator Economy report from ConvertKit; and I use and recommend ConvertKit for my email service provider. Also, check out my Instagram @jfpennauthor for Greece pics.
Today's podcast sponsor is Findaway Voices, which gives you access to the world's largest network of audiobook sellers and everything you need to create and sell professional audiobooks. Take back your freedom. Choose your price, choose how you sell, choose how you distribute audio. Check it out at FindawayVoices.com.
Tammi Labrecque writes urban fantasy, thrillers, and LitRPG under pen names. She's also the author of Newsletter Ninja: How to Become an Author Mailing List Expert, which we discussed a few years ago, back in episode 414. Her latest book is Newsletter Ninja 2: If You Give the Reader a Cookie: Supercharge Your Author Mailing List With the Perfect Reader Magnet, which we are talking about today.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- Why do authors need an email list?
- What is a reader magnet and why do authors need one?
- On what works well as a reader magnet for non-fiction and fiction
- Key elements for a ‘convertible cookie’
- Tips for building an email list and finding new readers
- Why finding readers in your specific niche or sub-niche matters
- Ideas for what to talk to your newsletter subscribers about
- Why it’s okay if people unsubscribe from your list
You can find Tammi Labrecque at NewsletterNinja.net and on Twitter @tammi_ninja
Transcript of Interview with Tammi Labrecque
Joanna: Tammi Labrecque writes urban fantasy, thrillers, and LitRPG under pen names. She's also the author of Newsletter Ninja: How to Become an Author Mailing List Expert, which we discussed a few years ago, back in episode 414. Her latest book is Newsletter Ninja 2: If You Give the Reader a Cookie: Supercharge Your Author Mailing List With the Perfect Reader Magnet, which we are talking about today. Welcome back to the show, Tammi.
Tammi: Hi, it's so good to be back again.
Joanna: I'm glad to talk about this new topic. But before we get into ‘Reader Magnet,' I just wanted to play devil's advocate and do some email basics because these days we have social media, we have TikTok, we have Amazon ads. We have loads of ways to reach readers.
Why bother with an email list in the first place? Can't we just use social media?
Tammi: Well, does every devil need an advocate, Joanna, really? Seriously, though, there's actually two ways to approach this. We repeat a lot of the same reasons over and over. Those of us in the community who like to talk about this stuff, which is a small, probably very boring segment of the author community, but we talk about the same reasons all the time. And they're usually because if you don't have an email list, this terrible thing might happen.
For example, we say, don't build your business on someone else's land, digital sharecropping, as I've heard it called, as I've called it myself. And that is true.
When you build on someone else's land, it can be taken away from you.
And whether that's something relatively minor like Facebook or Instagram being down for a day, which happened not too long ago, you'll recall, or something really major like Facebook taking away your ad account or your entire Facebook account. If your social media situation goes south, you don't have access to any of those friends or followers unless they're on your email list, and that's scary stuff.
And there are a few of us who talk about those tried and true reasons a lot. Everybody's heard this by now from me, from you, from David Gaughran, from Mark Dawson. But if we step back just a moment from that, I think a lot of those reasons, while I absolutely believe in them, I think that they come from a place of fear. Maybe it's not as effective to scare people into setting up their email list when there are actually really positive and optimistic reasons to do so.
If you'll forgive me using numbers at this hour of the morning, well, it's not morning in England, but I'll tell you what it is here. Rather than grudgingly start your email list in case Facebook bans you, what if I told you that
You should nurture your email list because 92% of online adults use email [OptInMonster Email Marketing Stats 2022]
And of that 92% of adults who use email, 99% of them check their email every day, Joanna. And that's not me just pulling five-year-old stats out of my butt. That's from a January 7th article from OptinMonster, January 7th of this year.
Joanna: Do you mean once a day or you mean once an hour?!
Tammi: They actually did have a statistic and it was nuts. It was like sometimes 60 times a day or whatever, and I was like, ‘Listen, even I don't do that.' But 99% of them check their email at least once a day, every single day. That's crazy.
A couple other quick stats just from that same article. I know we have a lot of stuff to talk about, but 58% of users check their email first in the day before they get to social media or news or whatever else they're going to do online, 69% of them check their email while they're watching TV, 57% of them check their email in bed, and probably most important for our purposes, 61% of consumers report that they'd rather hear from the brands they like via email, not SMS, not direct messaging, not the phone. I mean, gross, right, who wants to talk on the phone?
Joanna: Definitely not!
Tammi: No, do not call me. I don't use my phone for that. Now, we're not brands exactly. And I always tell my students and my clients that they should remember that we are very different from most internet marketers. There's a lot of info out there that just doesn't work for us.
I imagine we'll talk about a little bit of that later on. What does work for us usually has to be transmuted somehow to account for how different our customers and using air quotes here, ‘products, marketing.' That's all really different for us.
Those statistics are relevant to anyone with an email list, 92%, 99%, 61%. Those are big numbers of people who want to hear from you. So, yes, you need to have a mailing list, not just as like a fire stop against something terrible happening on Facebook or whatever, but because that's genuinely where people want to hear from you.
Joanna: Absolutely. And I'll add, on the positive side.
This is about a long-term relationship with people who opt into your list.
And it will be a tiny percentage of potentially your social media followers or people who come to your website, but they're actively choosing to be on your list.
We are indie authors. We are independent authors, which means we should try and keep at least some of our stuff in areas we can control. And, of course, I would also say back up your email list. I export people every month. Obviously, we have all the GDPR rules and everything, but these are, I guess, almost business assets or lists of business assets and we look after them and we care for them.
To me, it's also part of that long-term independence that I consider to be a critical part of my author business.
Tammi: I would agree with that 100%. No matter what happens to you, you can just pick up that spreadsheet and you can start from scratch, and that's amazing. What a relief that is. What's the word I'm looking for? Security. That's the word I'm looking for. That's security in your business because nobody can take that list of names away from you.
Joanna: I've had an email list since 2008 and I'm on my third service. I use ConvertKit. And so that's another thing. All of these things change. Everything changes.
All the different services change over time, but the people behind the email account, that's the person we are talking to.
So, okay. So, we agree we need a list. So, let's get into the new book. Why can't I just have a little box that says, ‘Sign Up for my Newsletter?'
What is a ‘Reader Magnet,' and why do I need one?
Tammi: You can have a little box that does that, and, in fact, you totally should. Everybody should have a just sign up box, like no magnet newsletter sign up, put a form on the front page of the website above the fold, please.
Maybe one of those thin little bars that goes across the top and just have the email field, the first name if you collect that.
Don't mention your magnet. You don't have to promise anything except be in the know or get my newsletter or whatever. See how that works out.
You'll definitely get some signups from that, and they're probably going to be some of your most engaged subscribers because they sought out a way to keep tabs on you and they didn't need to be bribed. We love those folks. I absolutely love those folks.
And, in fact, sometimes I go to a website and I do just want to sign up. I actually don't even care about getting a thing right now. ‘Can I just put my name and my email in somewhere?' And if you can't find that, it could be annoying, to be brutally honest. So, you should have that. Absolutely.
That is a really slow way to build your list, that organic process. It begins when someone reads your book and they like it and they happen to have finished it at a moment when they have the time and the ability to head over to the website and find your sign up, right? But if they finish the book like in bed and they've got an e-ink Kindle because those things cannot go on the internet, let me tell you. I actually think they might have, but they might not have browsers anymore, but my old one does but it doesn't work, so that's not relevant. You cannot go on the internet.
Maybe they're sleepy. Maybe their urge isn't strong enough to get up and go to the computer. Maybe by morning, they don't care about it anymore. But if the last thing they saw was your back of a book CTA that tells them about this absolutely irresistible reader magnet, that might just be the thing that makes them get up and go to the computer. Or that's asking a lot, maybe they leave their Kindle on the CTA page or they send themselves a quick text. That's the sort of thing I would do so they'll remember in the morning. Don't forget to get that sign-up thing, and they go to bed.
Joanna: Just confirm what a CTA is because you used that language.
Tammi: Call to action.
So, at the back of your book, you're going to have a call to action (CTA)
that says, ‘Do you want to find out this or do you want to read about that? Or do you want to hear more about this couple or spaceship?' Or whatever it is that you're writing about. That's the call to action.
Click here, sign up for my mailing list, and I'll send you whatever your reader magnet is.
And so then, of course, in addition, maybe it bribes somebody who's on the cusp there, there's also the opportunity then to do things like newsletter swaps and group promotions then giveaways that let authors signal boost each other and share subscribers, and that boosts your numbers even further.
It's a little bit harder to say to an author, ‘I have a new book out for sale. Can you share it with your list?' And they're like, ‘I don't want to ask them to open their wallets today,' or maybe they have a release in two weeks or whatever. They could have any number of reasons, but saying, ‘Why don't we just get together and you send my cookie to your subscribers and I'll send yours to mine?'
And then, of course, that whole situation is more formalized and more organized over at Book Funnel or Story Origin, where people are doing these big group promotion things.
And that boosts your numbers really fast because the reason that's important, of course, is that marketing is…and authors hate to be called marketers.
I apologize to every listener, but marketing is a numbers game, and it's just a fact that the more eyeballs you have on your marketing, whether that's your newsletter or your Facebook ads or whatever, the more people you'll convert to buyers because conversion rates don't tend to change.
If you have a 10% conversion rate on your list, you're probably going to have that no matter how big your list is. People might have higher or lower conversion rates. I'm just terrible at math, so I'm keeping it really simple.
If you send a new release to your email list and 10 people open that email and 1 person clicks through and buys, that's a 10% conversion rate. So, that means that 100 openers, if you had them, would mean 10 buyers, and 1,000 openers is 100 buyers, right? If you've got 30,000 people on your list and a 33% open rate, shaking it up now with the 3s, that's 10,000 opens and you're looking at 1,000 buyers. Like I said a minute ago, it's just a numbers game. So, you're just trying to increase that number as much as you can.
It's a numbers game but with the caveat that you're trying to make sure that the people that you're attracting are people who read in your genre, in your specific niche.
You don't want to cast so wide a net that you've got a bunch of people who wouldn't be interested in your books. That doesn't serve you at all.
But if you can find, and you can, and I assure you, however many tens of thousands of people who read in romance or science fiction or whatever, then you've got that big list and those conversion numbers. The raw numbers go up as the percentage stays the same. It's just math, which I hate, but here we are.
Joanna: I think it's important. You said it's a numbers game with a caveat, which it isn't just a numbers game. They do have to be quality. When I say quality, I mean people who are actually interested in buying stuff. And so that's important.
I've found some of these bigger co-promotions haven't worked so well for me because, for example, I really write cross-genre, and so the authors' promotions will have to be such a good fit in order for people to stick around and want my stuff for the long-term. So, I think that's really important.
Tammi: It is.
Joanna: I do love that you said just use the newsletter sign-up. I don't do that right now, but you've given me permission to do that because I've been feeling that for a while. I do just want some people to come and have my newsletter. So, that's super useful. I'm so glad you said that. Let's get back to what is a read of magnet?
Give us some examples of good reader magnets for fiction and nonfiction
Tammi: I'll do nonfiction first because the theory of that at least is easy. I don't know so much about the execution being easy, at least for me, but the best reader magnet for nonfiction is generally considered to be something that educates the people who download it or gives them a tool of some kind.
[Note from Joanna: I have my Author Blueprint.]
I personally prefer a tool over a lecture any day because I feel like we're all just regurgitating so much of the same information anyway. But, that said, if you have a niche-y market, like you and I are talking to indie authors and that is smaller than say most internet marketers audiences are, an informational lead magnet can actually do very well.
I love to download a spreadsheet that tells me it's going to help me calculate this or a workbook that tells me it's going to teach me how to do that or whatever. I love that stuff. But I'm currently finding the most success that I have, and that's very relative, it's just a cheat sheet of, well, it says 10 tips but it's actually 12 tips because I have problems, but it's just 10 tips for writing emails that people want to read.
[You can find Tammi's cheatsheet here: https://newsletterninja.net/newsletter/]
That's been far more successful in terms of actual conversion to subscribers than previously I had a subscriber avatar worksheet thing that just seemed to confuse people more than help them. So, I do struggle with it.
I haven't felt that my reader magnet situation has been entirely effective. I'm actually about to roll out something new. I'm very excited, but it's really complicated. So, I hope it'll be a big hit. I'll let you know how it goes.
For fiction, though, I feel like deciding the best reader magnet, I'm going to slip, though. I'm going to call this a cookie sometimes because it's a habit at this point. But just there's a negative chance that I would ever talk about website cookies, like the little tracking cookies. So, if you hear me say cookie, I mean a reader magnet.
Figuring out the best reader magnet really starts first with figuring out who the target audience is.
The best reader magnet for someone who just finished a specific book of yours isn't necessarily the best reader magnet for someone who's just finished a different book in that series or a book in a different series entirely or, in your case, a different genre entirely.
And probably none of those is the best reader magnet for someone who hasn't yet heard of you and you're going into a blind promotion like a book funnel group promo or a story origin swap or whatever. You can write reader magnets for all of those people, but they might not be the same magnet.
So, let me just break it down this way. For someone who has just finished a book of yours, the best reader magnet is one which answers a question or closes a loop from that specific book and/or tells them more about the characters or the world of that book because that's the thing they're immersed in, and so that's the thing that when you get to the end and say, ‘Do you want to hear more about this?' They say, ‘Oh, absolutely. Of course, I do.'
But if you don't want to write a reader magnet for every single book in your catalog, though, I will tell you I have plenty of romance writer clients who are doing exactly that. Romance writers are amazing. Maybe you have a reader magnet that would work for that book and it would work for the other two or three or seven books in that series.
So, a side character's story, someone that appears in several of the books but doesn't have their own book that they're the protagonist of or a prequel or a folk tale. I like to use that as an example if you write some speculative fiction, fantasy, that thing. There may be stories that are told in your world and you can actually write that story.
Or somebody's origin story. People love a villain origin story. They love it. Just something like that, something over the world or the characters touch on every book in the series and vice versa so it will appeal to anyone who's reading the series.
But you can go broader than that and try to cover a lot of books with a single magnet. Maybe you've got three trilogies set in the same urban fantasy world or military sci-fi or small-town romance or whatever. And you can write one reader magnet that's relevant to anyone who's read any of the three books in the three trilogies.
Now, I'm talking about one magnet, nine books, and that maybe sounds crazy, but think of the ‘Star Wars' universe. Rogue One would be a fantastic reader magnet. It's an in-world story that really appeals to people who've seen any of the nine movies in the three main ‘Star Wars' trilogies.
Solo, the movie about Han Solo's origin story. That would be great. That'd be a great reader magnet. And what appeals to me about those specific stories is that they also work for people who have not seen any ‘Star Wars' movies. So, now we're moving out of how do you appeal to your exactly specific readers, and into how do you appeal to these people that maybe some friend of yours is just putting your story in front of their audience?
Their audience is not going to pick up an epilogue from one of your books because who wants an epilogue for a book they haven't read? So, if you can write something that appeals to your readers but it will also appeal to people who haven't yet heard of you, that's what I call in the book a convertible cookie.
I actually said in the book that I couldn't remember where I stole that from, but I have since remembered, so I just want to say it. It was an author named Vered Ehsani, I think is how you say her last name. She's an urban fantasy writer I met at a convention. So, a convertible cookie is, to me, one that appeals to readers who know you and readers who don't.
Now, this is a very simple sentence but it's not actually as simple to pull off as it may sound.
The key to that is to write a standalone story that does not require knowledge of any of your published books but it does contain fan-favorite characters or elements from your published books.
So, it doesn't require that people have read them, but if people have read them, they will recognize these fan favorites.
What happens there is that people who have read your book or books, they want the cookie because they want to know more about the character or the world that you've created, but people whose first exposure to you is the cookie we hope will then want to go on and read more about the characters and elements that you introduced in the cookie.
It's a little bit lopsided because then that, we'll call it a need, that need to move from the published book to the cookie is going to be greater than the need to move from the cookie to the published book.
The people who've read your books are more invested in getting that reader magnet than the reader magnet people will be in moving over. But the thing is if you're putting those fan favorites, the side character that they've been clamoring to hear about, the origin story that they keep asking about, the tale that you've told a little bit of, but everyone's always like, ‘Oh, that sounds funny.'
If you're putting those things into the reader magnet, it's pretty safe to say that they will pique interest and spur the people who read the magnet into reading the published books because they have probably become fan favorites for a reason.
If you're creating your cookies based on what your readers want more of, you are very naturally and organically creating magnets that contain some of your most compelling stuff.
I hope that makes sense. You're just automatically making these stories be about people and events and places that turned out to be really, really exciting to your existing readers so they're probably pretty good.
Joanna: Right. So, you've given us loads there, but
Let's take it back to basics because I'm sure some people are like, ‘Wow, I thought I was just writing one novel. Now I have to write all these different reader cookies for different occasions?'
I want to point out to people, it has to be based on where you are. You mentioned the romance readers being amazing, the romance writers and readers, and you are right. The romance writers are amazing and they mostly have a lot of books as well, the successful ones.
I would just say to people you can start out with just ‘sign up for my newsletter'. And then I went from there, for my fiction, I went to here's a free novella, ‘Day of the Vikings,' which does have characters from two of my series, but it's also available for sale. So, that breaks some rules as well.
[You can get a free thriller at www.JFPenn.com/free ]
But essentially, that has been my cookie, my reader magnet for eight years. And to be honest, I could grow my list faster, but that's the one I've been using and because it has a basic email autoresponder series behind it and I haven't changed it. I know I should, but it carries on and I get signups every day.
Just one thing. And that is a good start. It's better than nothing, right?
So, if people really just want to start with the basics, is that enough?
Tammi: Yes. That actually is 100% my position. I always want to give people permission to do the easiest thing or the least thing that will get the job done. Because if you tell somebody, ‘Got to have a cookie for every series, sorry, I don't make the rules.' That's too hard, especially if they're coming to it late.
When I have people come to me for advice before they've really started and they're very close to the beginning of their journey, it's not as hard for them, I say bake it in because that's hilarious to me because I'm a child, but just bake the cookie part in.
If you're writing a trilogy, think as you're writing, okay, what's the cookie for this trilogy going to be? And then just whip it off. It's only going to be 10,000 words. Get it done. And then just if you're building them as you go, it's really easy.
But if you're looking back at, you know, ‘I've written 12 series at this point,' or for you, in particular, ‘Not only have I written 12 series, but they're not in the same world. They're not even in the same genre,' at that point, it's important to give people permission to do the imperfect thing rather than do nothing at all.
I think if you write in multiple genres or fiction and non-fiction, eventually, you're going to have to write at least one cookie for those broadest divisions across which you don't see a lot of reader transference. But if you have to do that, you also don't have to do them all today.
You can look at what's coming up next on your release schedule and go, ‘Okay, I'm going to do a cookie for that.' And then maybe next you say, ‘Oh, I'm going to go backwards and I'm going to write a cookie for my series that is the best-selling one. That's the one that gets into the most people's hands, so if I've got a really good cookie in that CTA, it's going to get me the most sign-ups.' There you go.
Or you can write one for the series that sells the worst and hope you give it a boost. You do you.
But the important thing to remember is that just like with your published books, these are assets you'll have forever.
If you only write one or two cookies a year, eventually, you will either catch up with everything you've written or you'll at least have covered the most important parts of your catalog. If you only have one, you only have one. Hey, it's better than zero, and you should leverage it as best you can.
If it doesn't quite fit with one of the things that isn't quite in the genre, you just explain to people how they'll like it anyway. ‘Oh, you read this stuff, and here's this one that I wrote in this slightly different genre, but it's got X, Y, and Z that you've come to expect from Joanna'. Give them a reason to make the switch.
Honestly, the victory condition is to be Nora Roberts, and it doesn't matter what genre you write in because readers will just follow you anywhere, so go for it, I say.
Joanna: I don't know if Nora has a cookie. I follow her blog.
Tammi: Oh, goodness, no. Nora is beyond cookies. She is so far beyond even the thought of a cookie. No.
Joanna: People say that, don't they?
They say things like, ‘Nora Roberts doesn't have an email sign-up. Why should I have one?'
Tammi: You're not Nora Roberts, honey.
One of the things I hear a lot when I was doing editing, which I, unfortunately, don't do anymore only because it's so time-consuming, it takes up so much time, but I used to do a lot of copy editing and content editing for other indie authors. And sometimes I'd correct somebody's head-hopping.
This happens with romance, in particular, and they'd say, ‘Well, Nora Roberts does it all the time,' and I'd be like, ‘Oh, honey, you are not Nora Roberts. You cannot do this. I'm sorry. I don't know what to tell you.'
Joanna: That's so funny to say that. Because I do remember reading in Nora Roberts, I think it was ‘Year Zero.' I really liked that series. And I was like, ‘Oh, my goodness. She is head-hopping within a scene and this is not allowed,' and then I was like, ‘Yeah, it doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. She's just so great in so many ways.' But anyway, this is not the Nora Roberts fan club podcast. So, just coming back.
Tammi: Absolutely.
Joanna: Maybe we should just get back to the subtitle of the book. So, we've talked a bit about reader magnets, which we're calling cookies as well, but the first part is supercharge your author emailing list.
So, we've got the super gift, let's call it a gift as well that we're giving the reader in exchange for an email sign-up. How do we supercharge that list? You mentioned a few earlier about newsletter swaps.
What are the most effective ways for people to supercharge their email list and get people to that landing page?
Tammi: So, there's two basic methods, obviously. There's asking your readers, which you do in your books, on your website, on social media. Those are going to be limited by your natural reach as an author. So, if you're just starting out, you're not going to get a lot.
If you launch to number one in the Amazon store every time you release a book, awesome, good for you. And you probably get tons of sign-ups because that's just how it works. Again, a numbers game.
So, that's the first method, just ask your readers. Put it in the back of your book.
It should be your first CTA if it's the first thing you want people to do.
Let me just talk real quickly about CTAs, calls to action. You can put as many calls to action on a sales page or in the back of a book or wherever that you want, but, of course, the conventional wisdom is people are mostly just going to do the first one, so make sure you know what you really want.
There's definitely a school of thought, and I think I probably subscribe to it, that your first call to action if there's a next book in the series, is probably get the next book in the series. We're not running a charity here. Go ahead and sell a book.
Joanna: Me too.
Tammi: So, do it. But when you run out of series, you're either waiting for the next one to come out or it's the end of the series, that first call to action should obviously be join my newsletter on your website. It needs to be above the fold. People need to see it right away as soon as they land.
Don't make them look for it. Don't make them hunt for it. Put it on your social media. Pin it to the top of whatever it is that you're doing for social media. If you've got a whole bio situation, make sure that one of the places that that takes you is to a place where they can sign up, all of that.
The other method, of course, is seeking out new readers, which is a thing we can do if we have the reader magnet that stands on its own, a standalone novel, a standalone story, a novella or whatever. And we can take that and you can reach out directly to authors that you know or that are in your network and just do a one-on-one newsletter swap, ‘Hey, I've got this free thing. Do you want to send it to your people? I can certainly send your thing to my people.'
You can do that over at BookFunnel. They specifically have a setup where you can do one-on-one newsletter swaps or you can do group promotions.
You can do what are called BookFunnel bundles, which are a little bit different from the group promotions because those are open to the public and you just go and apply. But you can do like a private Book Funnel bundle where you just reach out to your own network and make a little promotion, which is generally what I prefer.
If you're right at the beginning, probably just do one of the public ones. My goodness, beggars can't be choosers.
But once you've got any audience to actually work with, it's awesome to reach out and actually network with the people that are at your level.
These are the people who are in your also-boughts, the people that you can see are selling at about the same level you are.
If you're a romance writer and you launch to whatever, 12,000 in the store, probably you're not going to reach out to Lucy Score today. And that's okay. You look for the people who are in your range. But I also think that doing the bigger swaps or bundles can work really well for people provided, as we were saying earlier, that you don't go too far afield of what it is that you write.
The more you can niche down and make sure that the people that you're swapping with are very close to your own books, the better off you'll be with subscribers.
Let me just give an example. If you write romance, romance is a very big category, do you write contemporary romance or historical romance? That's a big divide. Do you write paranormal romance or nonparanormal romance? I guess that's contemporary romance. If it's paranormal, is it shifters or is it vampires? You can niche down quite a bit.
The closer the other people in the promo are to being in your exact same sort of book, the more vetted those people are as they come onto your newsletter list because you know that they like cowboy small-town romance, not just romance, but small-town cowboys, which is what you write.
I'd rather do a swap with four small-town cowboy people than three small-town cowboys and a billionaire. You're going to get a bunch of people that aren't going to be quite right for you. So, you're laughing at the billionaire, aren't you?
Joanna: I'm laughing at the book. Three Small-Town Cowboys and a Billionaire. That is a book title.
Tammi: Okay. The first person to write that I want to know about it.
Joanna: That is a real cross-genre romance.
Tammi: I love it. Yes. Okay. But I would rather just keep really tight in my niche.
Sometimes if you're a little too niche-y, you might have niche, niche, niche. You might have to reach up a little bit, maybe your specific brand of whatever. You have to just go up a level to find enough people, but you don't want to just throw in with anybody who's even remotely like you.
That's my main advice about that is if you're going to go out there in the wide world and just start trying to farm out promos, find the ones that are closest to you. If you write cozies, make sure you're in with the pet cozy people instead of the witch cozy people. Those are different enough that I would try to keep them separate, that sort of thing.
But here's the thing. I'm saying that that's what I'm seeing people have a ton of success with right now. I actually have a client right now who came to me before they had published any of their cozy mysteries. They had two of them written. They said, ‘I don't have any idea what to do for a magnet.' We brainstormed something and found a prequel story for them to do.
They signed up for BookFunnel. They joined two paranormal cozies. It's a ghost cozy, not a witch cozy, but they joined two promotions with ghosts, with paranormal cozies. And before publishing book one, they had a mailing list of about 600 people. Now, I would rather launch to 600 people than crickets any day. Their books are obviously not taking Amazon by storm, but they didn't sell four books and drop into the phone numbers either.
It's just steadily trickling along doing okay, more people are coming in all the time. And that person actually just signed up for a one-on-one promo with another author that seems to perform a little bit better and has a bigger mailing list. But they were fine with it because they could see that that person had subscribers and was managing them well and their books were doing well.
So, you can really have some success over there doing that. But it's important to remember that while I'm seeing that right now, we certainly weren't doing BookFunnel bundles in 2014, were we?
Tammi: It all changes so fast. Three years ago, that's not what we were doing, and three years from now, who knows what we'll be doing?
But there's a whole chapter in the new book about strategies versus tactics, which I frankly almost deleted because there's a lot of talk of traffic lights and honestly, Joanna, it was a really hard time for me, but strategies versus tactics is really important.
So, whether we're going to use this software or deliver our reader magnets in this specific way or blah, blah, blah, those parts might change but we will offer you a little bit extra story in exchange for the ability to reach out and let you know when we have new books for you. That's not going to change ever.
Joanna: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That's long-term. Now we're almost out of time, but a really important question that people have is all right so I've built this mailing list with my amazing magnet, but what do I email people because I don't know what to say when I send the emails? So, give us some examples. You've mentioned a lot of genres with authors who are releasing regularly.
What do we write to people on our email list, especially if we don't release a book very often?
Tammi: This is such a pain point for people. I wish it wasn't because if you have enough imagination to write a novel, you can write a newsletter.
If you were to go out there into the wide world of internet marketing, which I actually do not recommend, they are just constantly banging on about story, story, story. You have to sell to your subscribers with a story. Wow.
The good news is we are already way ahead of the game on that one. If there's one thing that your listeners know how to do it's tell a story. So, I mentioned earlier that a lot of internet marketing techniques have to be transmuted to work for newsletters, right? This is a really good example.
This is what I've been talking about lately with people who come to me and say, ‘I don't know what to write about,' is this. One of the things that's really big out there in the internet marketing land is what they call content buckets or what they call them other things too, but I've heard them called content buckets.
You have these different types of content or themes that you rotate through as you're sending your newsletters or posting on social media or whatever.
So, on Monday, you send a newsletter that shows your authority. Authority is a big thing for marketers. Someplace you've been published or maybe given a talk or something.
And then on Tuesday, you post something educational, and then on Wednesday, you post a case study, and so on and so forth. You just rotate through. Oh, it's Friday, it's time for whatever.
For us, a lot of the themes that your average internet marketer would have for a content bucket, those are not going to work for us. We're not establishing authority or educating our readers on the industry or whatever. But there's a nugget in there that if you take that concept and you twist it a little, well, you can have content buckets or themes or whatever you want to call them.
So, say you send an email every week. And half of your audience just drop dead where they're standing.
You don't have to send an email every week. It's okay. But, let's just say you do. If you don't, then awesome because this will last. You can stretch this over a longer period of time if you're only sending every couple of weeks or every month.
Let's say you send an email every week. The first week of the month, that's when I do work-in-progress updates. So, a funny bit of dialogue or a little scene I wrote today, or if I were writing romance, I would maybe do some banter between the hero and the heroine that maybe ends with like a moment, a gaze, something like that. That makes people want to keep reading.
This is where you would do your cover reveals if you're in a genre that likes cover reveals. I don't think anybody is doing cover reveals in thrillers or whatever, but they're big in romance. They can be big in urban fantasy. It can even just be I'm halfway through, ‘Hey, I got to this word count and I expect the book will be out on time.' Just a little update.
Week two could be the week that you talk about yourself and what you're up to, as personal or not personal as you like. ‘I went kayaking,' or, ‘It's almost spring and the dogs are happy to be getting more walks,' or, ‘I took the kids to the museum.' Or if you don't talk about your kids, some people draw that line there, just, ‘I went to the museum. Here's a picture of a stegosaurus, whatever.'
Week three could be you talk about other books and media in your genre. So, what romance or sci-fi or urban fantasy are you reading or binging on Netflix right now? I'm out of ideas for week four because I'm a little tired, but there are probably more than three things in your life. So, just take another one and make it week four.
And then when you sit down to write your newsletter, you already have a loose idea of what you're going to write about. Oh, it's week four and I write about such and such. Oh, it's week two. What am I watching? That internet marketing idea, the content buckets, and you pick it apart and figure out how it would work for you when you're not selling widgets or courses.
Honestly, that's how I think about the entirety of what I'm doing at Newsletter Ninja, whether it's books or courses or the client work I do. I'm just trying to translate all of that stuff that's out there into ideas that work for us in the indie author market.
Joanna: Another tip, of course, is to sign up for the mailing list of other authors in your niche, and not just in your niche, other authors who seem to be doing well with newsletters. For example, those romance authors, although they have a different voice.
Obviously, the voice is really important of your newsletter, but you can certainly get content ideas, as you say, for your different buckets from signing up for people. And look, most of us don't mind if you sign up for the list, have a look at it, and then unsubscribe.
Also, people will unsubscribe all the time, right? We don't need to be scared of that.
Never be scared of unsubscribes.
Tammi: One hundred percent. Particularly if you're out there doing any aggressive list building, so you go out and you join a BookFunnel promo of some kind and you bring in 1,200 new subscribers in 2 weeks, expect to lose 1/3 of them at least when they come through.
And, in fact, I always tell people the first thing that like a stranger subscriber, somebody that has not read any of your books that you've bribed with this wonderful reader magnet, the first thing they should see when they sign up for your books is probably a giant button that says unsubscribe.
Hey, if you just signed up for the free book, I get it. No harm, no foul. I love free books. You can click here and you won't hear from me again, and a bunch of them will click it and that's totally okay.
Joanna: I did one of these recently and the first email that I got really just did say, ‘Here's the unsubscribe link. You can unsubscribe.' And then there was another one at the bottom going, ‘PS, you're welcome to unsubscribe' because the reality is the more people we have on our list, these are premium, you have to pay for them. So, they have to pay their way, basically.
We have to pay the email services. I always encourage unsubscribes, but anyway, we could talk about this forever.
Your books have amazing information in and I've signed up for your list. I've got your various spreadsheets and all of that thing. So, people can go do that.
Tell us where can people find you and your books and everything online.
Tammi: Everything for me starts at newsletterninja.net. So, that's easy to remember. It's the .net, not the .com which somebody is squatting on. There are links there to all the courses. That's all waitlists as we're recording, but I'll probably run the ‘Advanced Automations' course sometime in the summer maybe.
And there's links to the books, to the Facebook group, to the social media, and, of course, to my own newsletter.
Joanna: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Tammi. That was great.
Tammi: Thanks, Joanna. It was wonderful to talk to you.
The post Build Your Email List With Reader Magnets With Tammi Labrecque first appeared on The Creative Penn.
How do we decide on the hero for our story? How can we write distinctive — but still believable — characters? Matt Bird talks about aspects of writing character.
In the intro, a guide to UBLs, Universal Book Links [Draft2Digital]; Your author brand [Ask ALLi with me and Orna Ross]; The Creator Economy in Bath.
Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing, and integration with Scrivener, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 25% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna
Matt Bird is an author, screenwriter, podcaster, and blogger. His latest book is The Secrets of Character: Writing a Hero Anyone Will Love.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- Matt's journey from indie filmmaking and screenwriting to non-fiction, blogging, and podcasting
- How do we decide on the hero of the story — and how readers sometimes choose someone else anyway
- Deep point of view (POV)
- Writing distinctive — but still believable — characters
- Mining real life for character details
- Does a character have to be likable?
You can find Matt Bird at TheSecretsofStory.com.
Transcript of Interview with Matt Bird
Joanna: Matt Bird is an author, screenwriter, podcaster, and blogger. His latest book is The Secrets of Character: Writing a Hero Anyone Will Love. Welcome, Matt.
Matt: Thanks so much for having me on.
Joanna: I'm so excited to talk to you.
Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing.
Matt: Oh, I wrote a lot. I was an English major. I always liked writing. I always liked creative writing. I decided to become a filmmaker. I wrote and directed many, I would call them indie films, but what is below indie film, DIY, no money changing hands in any way, shape, or form movies.
Then I decided to go ahead and go to film school. I went to Columbia Film School in New York and decided to focus. Very quickly, I realized that I was more of a screenwriter than a director. I focused on screenwriting, got frustrated with the program in various ways.
I talk about in my first book, how it was basically a fantasy camp, and you weren't allowed to criticize anybody for anything they had done, well, not even criticize people that sounds bad, but, if were to ever go, you may have to reconceive this then they were like, nobody should ever reconceive anything, you should achieve your vision.
Joanna: Very artiste.
Matt: I spent a fortune at Columbia, and then it looked like I was going to make a big. When I got out, I got a big-time manager and got a lot of Hollywood meetings, and sold some screenplays, which they never paid me for. I was very frustrated with Hollywood.
Then I got cancer and lost a year of my life to that. And then, when I found that all of my career heat was totally gone by the time I came back from chemo, I was frustrated, and I started to blog.
At first, it was an underrated movies blog where I watched a movie every day, this was in the heat of blogging back in 2010, I guess. And I watched a movie every day and wrote about it. And then eventually that just became exhausting. I'm like, ‘I gotta come up with another way to blog every day.' And I'm like, ‘I can start doing writing advice to make it easier on myself.'
So I started giving writing advice, and that took off. And people really liked my writing advice, and so they said, ‘You should collect this in a book.' I wrote a book called Secrets of Story: Innovative Tools for Perfecting Your Fiction and Captivating Readers. I did not come up with the very wordy subtitle of that book, ‘Writer's Digest' did.
That book has been very successful, and I've been very gratified by that success. And then ‘Writer's Digest' was owned up by Penguin Random House, and Penguin Random House asked me to do a new one. So, I've written a brand new book, The Secrets of Character: Writing a Hero Anyone Will Love.
Meanwhile, I have a new big writing gig that I can't really talk about very much. But it involves a lot of the things that Joanna talks about on this show. It involves AI. I also have a podcast called ‘The Secret of Story Podcast' with James Kennedy.
And I've got a second podcast, which is just for fun, which is called ‘Marvel Reread Club' with my brother, Steve. And that's me. That's what I'm doing.
Joanna: Wow. That is great. And, of course, you've gone through all the ups and downs there. Talk about a hero's journey, which I'm sure we'll come back to.
You've had the excitement, the highs, potentially, of Hollywood, the downs of, obviously, the difficulties and cancer; that's a big one. So interesting to hear where you are now, which is obviously, blending, writing, technology, podcasting, blogging.
I love all that. And I think that's actually important as we come into the topic of the book, which is character. So, let's get into the book. First of all, I want to address the hero.
How do we know who should be the hero of the story?
Matt: First of all, I should say that hero is gender-neutral and morally neutral, obviously, a hero can be a man or woman. I'm using that term genderless. And it can be totally evil or totally good. I'm not using that term to imply a hero should be a good person, obviously, there are anti-heroes and all sorts of other heroes.
In terms of having a hero, so you had asked me in sort of your pre-questions, well, what if your book has lots of heroes? What if your book is a multi-cast novel? And the bad news is that it's up to your reader to determine who your hero is.
Your reader will usually pick one character to be their favorite, and sometimes it won't be the main character.
And sometimes your audience will be like, ‘Well, you're telling me who the hero is, but I prefer this character. I prefer Han Solo to Luke Skywalker, Luke Skywalker is whiny.” And so, you have to be prepared for that.
You have to be prepared for the audience picking a hero. I talked about “Traffic,” where there was Michael Douglas as this struggling DEA secretary, who has a daughter who's doing drugs. And people just saw that movie, and they were like, ‘We do not care about this guy, boo-hoo.'
Benicio del Toro played a Mexican cop, and everyone was like, ‘We like that guy. That guy gets the Oscar, Michael Douglas gets no Oscar.' And it's up to the audience to determine who the hero is.
Now, in turn, if you have a book that has truly a ton of heroes. So let's look at a book like War and Peace, which has many, many, many heroes. One thing that Tolstoy does in that book is before every scene, one hero gets a prep scene. One person in that scene gets a little prep scene where they establish what their expectations for that scene is, and they become the hero of that scene.
So, you've got a huge sprawling novel, it's got maybe, 6 main characters and 10 more fairly major characters. But every scene is one person scene and has its own POV, and that is established beforehand.
Even if you've got a ton of heroes, you're generally going to be writing about one POV at a time. You're going to be writing about one hero at a time. You're going to be making people care about and privilege one hero at a time.
Joanna: We should say POV is point of view and if people are new writers, that can be complicated. I like the example of George RR Martin with the ‘Game of Thrones' book, because a lot of people might have also seen the TV series as well, because that, to me, is a classic multicast with a lot of different heroes.
In terms of the point of view, having read the book as well, he changes the deep point of view for a number of different characters.
So, in terms of a technical writing thing, can you explain how we use that deep point of view and, almost, I guess, manipulate the reader into understanding who the hero of the story is? Even number of pages about that character from that character's point of view?
Can you explain how we use that deep point of view and, almost, manipulate the reader into understanding who the hero of the story is?
Matt: I've talked about how in ‘Game of Thrones,' that you have to skim ahead in ‘Game of Thrones' and see like, okay, the first chapter is from Brans' point of view. So is he actually the hero of the book? Is this a book about a seven-year-old boy? Because Bran is only seven in the books.
Then you flip ahead, and you're like, well, every chapter, hopefully in that book, has the name of the POV character at the beginning of the chapter. I think there are seven POV characters, and there's 22 chapters. And you flip ahead, and you're like, ‘Okay, is Bran going to be the main character?' You're like, ‘No.' He only gets like three of the 22 chapters.
Eddard is clearly the main character. He gets most of the 22 chapters. And you have to go, ‘Okay, maybe, I'm not supposed to totally bond with Bran right away.' And indeed, Bran is this POV character through whom you're looking at his eyes, and you're more interested in the world around him than you are interested in him.
This is what is sometimes called a POV character, a character who we are meeting the world through his eyes, but he is not the main character. And we meet all his brothers through his eyes in the first chapter. We can tell that we're choosing between them.
It's easy to see that Theon is not going to be the hero because he can't take anything seriously, and he laughs and kicks the severed head around, and we don't like him. But we have a hard time deciding in that chapter. We sort of like Jon and I can't remember his name, the eldest son, and we're like, ‘Oh, they seem like two variations on manhood. They seem like two different versions of appealing manhood.'
We can't quite decide, and indeed the books can't quite decide until they abruptly decide at the end of the third book, and or in the middle of the third book. And it's like, oh, okay, I guess the book has finally chosen its own hero. The book series has finally chosen its own hero when one of those two sons abruptly dies. Sorry, spoilers, I try to avoid spoilers. That's a really interesting book.
It's very important to Martin that every chapter only have one point of view. Martin eventually wrote some episodes of the TV show. And then he did commentaries on the DVDs on those episodes TV show. And there was one scene with, again, I don't remember his name, the character who became the bodyguard to Tyrion later on.
They're preparing for the big siege of Kings landing, and there's a scene between two minor characters. George RR Martin says in the commentary for that episode that he wrote the screenplay of that, ‘Oh, it's so much fun to get to write the scene because I wasn't allowed to write it in the books because neither of these characters were POV characters.'
Even though he had so many POV characters, he just knew he couldn't have that many. He couldn't have 20 POV characters. And so, he was not allowed to write that scene because none of his POV characters was in it. And then on TV, it's less strict. POV is less strict on TV. And you can write a scene with two minor characters in it, with none of your major POV characters in it.
Joanna: Yes, because we're not inside their heads with TV and film, whereas in the book, we're inside their heads. And this, I guess, we can also use the ‘Game of Thrones' book as a cautionary tale because as we record this, the book's still aren't finished.
If you add more characters that you want to write the point of view from, the books become more and more sprawling, right?
So, I would say a tip if you are starting out is maybe pick one hero, one point of view.
I think a really good example of this is The Hunger Games. I always use that example. If you just write Katniss Everdeen's story, it can become a lot simpler if you just like, ‘Here's the hero and here's the arc,' and there you go, there are other characters. But if you have one, it becomes much easier. Is that a way to simplify a story?
Matt: Oh, yeah. That would've been a completely different novel if we'd had just a Haymitch, Peeta scene without Katniss there, or if we had, you know, broken POV with her at all, it's such a strong voice in that novel.
Voice is, of course, one of the most important elements of writing, especially of novel writing. And to have her strong voice in every paragraph, in every line of dialogue, well, not every line of dialogue, not when she's talking to somebody else, but to have her strong voice in every line in that book is what makes that book work. That book is so much driven by voice. And even though the book is in third person, I believe, right?
Joanna: I think so.
Matt: But even books in third person, if they have limited POV, and that book has limited POV, we are only seeing things described in third person that… But is it in third person? I don't know.
Joanne: This is interesting because we can't remember off the top of our heads, but we both feel that we know that character, and we know that character's voice in such a way that it, I guess it doesn't matter, so much like a deep third person, a close third person, whatever they call it, point of view, brings that character to life so much more than a much wider point of view, I guess.
Matt: Yes. It is first person. I just looked it up. My book begins with The Hunger Games as the main example. I'm quoting from the book so it wasn't hard for me to look up here and see examples of whether or not it's in first person or third person.
I think that The Hunger Games is not the greatest novel, it's not an all-time classic of literature, but it is such a good example of how to become a successful novelist.
It is such a successful book. It is such a good book to study in terms of how to write, how to learn to be a writer. Because it is so simple. Because it is so powerful.
In some ways, cynical, you know, this was a writer who was writing a lot of books about cockroaches talking to each other under the streets of New York. And then she said, ‘I'm tired to write about cockroaches. I want to write a more successful book.' I think she made certain, somewhat cynical decisions when she wrote that book, and they were brilliant decisions. And, in terms of craft, it is unbeatable.
Joanna: Absolutely. Right. So getting back to characters, how can we make readers believe in the reality of our characters, make them three-dimensional? Obviously, we can't do that for every single character, it's just not necessary in a book.
In terms of our main characters, how do we make them believable, but obviously, still special enough for a story?
Matt: In my book, I talk about how you have to do three things right away. You might have the reader believe in the reality of your character. You have to make the reader care about the circumstances of your character. And you have to make your reader invest in…make the reader invest their hopes in this character to solve this problem.
Most stories are about the solving of a large problem and we need to invest our hopes in that character to solve that problem. So, I begin the book by talking about The Hunger Games because it does all three right away brilliantly.
One of the first ways, as I've said, to get us to believe in a character's voice. If a character has a believable voice, then we love him right away. One of the main ways to determine your voice is how many periods versus how many commas you use. There's a lot of periods in The Hunger Games.
Let's just look at the third paragraph of The Hunger Games. I think it's a great example of ‘Believe, Care and Invest,' but it's also a good example of how my advice is sort of the opposite of Save the Cat. Because she almost kills the cat in the first paragraph, and then she does kill a cat two pages later.
In the second paragraph, it says, ‘Sitting at Prim's knee guarding her is the world's ugliest cat, mashed-in nose, half of one ear missing, eyes the color of a rotting squash. Prim named him Buttercup, insisting that his muddy yellow coat matched the bright flower. He hates me. Or at least distrusts me.' And then she talks about how she tried to drown him.
Right away, she's got very believable voice. She's got very unique circumstances in her world. We care for her right away because she couldn't afford to have a cat. She felt like she had to kill a cat in order to protect their meager way of life. And boy, oh boy, do we invest in Katniss right away, because she is out there bow hunting.
What could be more badass than bow hunting? And she does kill a lynx, that another cat, a big cat that has been following her around and she has decided to kill it because it is chasing off game. Then she sells its pelt.
Obviously, killing animals is very tricky in books. A lot of people are very upset by it. But in this case, I don't think many people are very upset by it. I don't think many people are like, “Oh, that poor lynx.' I think people think it's pretty awesome when they read that in The Hunger Games. But so there you go. You've gotta ‘Believe, Care, and Invest' right away on the first page.
Joanna: It's interesting because, of course, we say about the reality of the character, is it a believable character? But we're writing fiction, does it have to be a believable character or just someone, as you say, that we care and invest in?
I've not been in a situation like that where I've been starving so much that I have to go hunting with a bow and arrow, most of us haven't, thankfully, but we still believe it, even though that's not our situation, right? Is it that it has to be believable or just careful in some way?
Matt: I get that believability has nothing to do with, oh, this is Superman, he's flying. Heroes can fly, therefore, this isn't a believable character. Believable is more about Superman can fly, but also Superman has to have a job. And he's someone who has friends in the comics. He has friends in the movies.
In ‘Man of Steel,' he does not have friends, he has a love interest. But Jimmy Olsen did appear in one of the Snyder Superman movies just to get killed in two seconds after he appeared. He's not Superman's pal, Jimmy Olsen.
You need to give your hero a fully flesh-out world. You need to have sensory information.
There's plenty of sensory information in The Hunger Games.
Sensory information makes the world come to life. Anthropomorphizing nature makes the world come to life. They eat a ton in The Hunger Games. Descriptions of food, audiences love descriptions of food. They have their own unique jargon. They've got just a bizarrely complicated setup.
I think a lot of times people are told, ‘Don't have a complicated setup in your book.' But the whole math of the lottery in The Hunger Games is very complex.
I think that makes worlds more believable when there's a lot of rules that have to be explained, even though we're told often don't do that. I think that there's all sorts of ways in which The Hunger Games is believable, even though we may think that America will never fall and no one will ever start running a hunger games. That has nothing to do with it.
One thing is, I just re-watched this weekend the movie ‘Captain Marvel.' And at one point, Captain Marvel is talking to Nick Fury, and she's like, ‘Prove to me you're not a squirrel.' And so, this is exactly what writers do. We have to have our characters prove to readers that they're not squirrels.
Nick Fury is like, ‘Well, let me tell you about my history. Let me tell you about my mom. Let me tell you some interesting biographical details that make me a unique, interesting person.' And then she says, ‘Name one more thing you couldn't possibly have made up about yourself.'
That's so much about believability is including details that make the reader go, ‘The writer couldn't possibly have made that up. That's too real.‘ Then Nick Fury says to her, ‘If toast is cut diagonally, I can't eat it.' Then he then realizes that she didn't actually need him say that, that she was already convinced, but she is at this point sort of cracking up because she got him to admit that.
But, in fact, she did need him to say it because that is the ultimate way to prove that you're not a squirrel, to prove that your characters are not squirrel, are not imitations of life, imitations of reality. To prove that they're real characters is a detail. Like, “if toast is cut diagonally, I can't eat,” is gold for a writer.
That's the sort of thing where you can pull it from your own life and gift it to your characters, and then they come to life. But the audience can tell, oh, that's not made up, that must be from somebody's real life. That must be from the author's real-life, or the author's mother's real-life, or something.
Think about it in ‘The Sopranos,' where Tony Soprano's mom won't answer the phone after dark. And you're like, ‘Oh, that has to be real.' And indeed, that was true. In the DVD commentary, David Chase talks about how his own mother would not answer the phone after dark. And he is like, she's like, ‘Somebody called me after dark.' And he is like, ‘Well, who was it?' And she's like, ‘I don't know, I didn't answer the phone, it was after dark.' And he's like, ‘Mom, that doesn't make any sense.' But, of course, these days nobody answers their phone.
Joanna: I never answer my phone. Yes, okay. So you've talked there about interesting details, which I totally agree, really important about people's lives about backstories.
One of the things that can be overdone are what are called character tags, which might be a scar, or a limp, or something like that distinguishes them physically. But how do we write these sort of character descriptions?
How do we distinguish our characters with tags without making them gimmicky or cliche?
Matt: I'm rewatching the Marvel movies right now, and you can tell that we're on movie number 20, we just did ‘Captain Marvel.' So many characters have eye patches in this movie. Nick Fury has an eyepatch, Odin has an eyepatch, Thor eventually has an eye patch. Eye patches are done, you cannot do eye patches anymore.
Obviously, Harry Potter made it work because they gave him a lightning shape scar, which lots of characters have scars. James Bond has a scar in the books, but not in the movies. But, oh, okay, lightning shape scar makes come to life again.
Or characters may have tattoos, but the tattoos in ‘Avatar: The Last Air Bender' are so distinctive and cool. They are really great. Jack Sparrow in ‘Pirates of Caribbean' has a P branded on his arm by the East India Company.
Scars and tattoos and disabilities, they do make characters come to life. You're actually marking your character. You're actually giving your character a physical distinction instead of just character distinctions, instead of just more ephemeral distinctions.
But, you're right, they can totally be overdone. It's a risk. And, certainly, a character cannot have them and still be a fully fleshed-out believable character. Katniss Everdeen does not have a scar, a tattoo, or a limp.
Joanne: I think probably her tag is the bow and arrow because that is both the thing that provides food, it becomes her weapon. Yes, in my mind, that's what springs to mind, of course, in the end, is that the bird and that, I guess some of the actions.
There are things when you think of a character, I guess you could say there are associations with that character, that become part of who that character is. I think when you are a new writer, scars are almost the one that happens. Everyone has some kind of scar.
The scar also implies backstory, which can also help with character and plot, and certainly, that's what it does in ‘Harry Potter'.
You've said mine your own life, but I'm on novel number 18 or something. I definitely find original character tags to be difficult to find. But as you say, maybe Marvel was using them. I haven't used an eye patch.
Any tips for coming up with some of these details?
Matt: There you go. Keep a journal is the number one thing to do. Every day when you get home, before you go to bed at night, write down…
Joanna: What do mean when you get home? We're all at home!
Matt: We're all at home all day long. It's true. I work from home. But if you have any way to get out in the world and any way to see or hear anything, or just with your own family at home, then write down interesting things that people did or said.
Write down stuff where it's like, you just have to be constantly in the lookout for details like if bread is cut diagonally, I can't eat it. And you may be on your 18th book, but I'll bet you there's more than 18 things in your own life, like, if bread is cut diagonally, I can't eat it, and you just need one per book. You just have to keep mining your life and coming up with more things like that.
I give examples in the end of my book about examples from my own life of ‘Believe, Care, and Invest.' In order to come up with those examples, I just check my own sheet where I keep track of details from my life. The believed detail was actually my daughter singing a song from the latest rap musical she had written.
My daughter loves Hamilton and writes rap musicals. I just quote the absolutely buck nuts, insane lyrics from her rap musical songs that this 10-year-old girl was writing. And I'm like, ‘That can't be made it up.' It's also something that's very real.
We have not really seen this Hamilton generation yet, this generation of 10-year-old girls who have memorized Hamilton on-screen yet or in, I don't know if it's showing up in novels yet. But it's the sort of thing where anyone who knows 10-year-old girls, knows this is true. And this hasn't been done to death yet. And I'm like, ‘That's a perfect believable detail.'
Joanna: Interesting. This is something that people struggle with a lot, particularly at this point in history when there's a lot of focus, rightly so on diverse voices. Very important that we have diverse voices writing books.
As writers, we also want to write diverse characters. I don't want to just write middle-aged, married white British characters. And in fact, I don't. I rarely write them at all.
How can we write effective characters from other cultures, other races, other experiences in a way that is still respectful?
Matt: It is one of the hardest things. It is definitely one of the hardest parts of writing. A lot of it is just research. Watch documentaries, transcribe voices of interesting characters, and try to really get these voices down.
Obviously, the best thing to do is just get to know a wide variety of people, and write in the voices of people you know, or have gotten to know through transcribing their dialogue from other places, from reality shows, from documentaries, from anything you can. But it's one of the hardest things to do.
Joanna: I think research is the key. I write multinational novels with people from all different cultures. And what I do is as you say, I research.
For example, I wrote a scene set in an Appalachian snake-handling church in the USA. I am never going to go to one of those churches, although it'd be really cool, where they have serpents and that's part of their worship of God. I found this hour and a half documentary on YouTube, and as you say, I literally transcribed it because the way they spoke during their service was just something I could never make up.
By transcribing it and then mentioning that documentary in my author's note, I hoped that I was able to respectfully talk about that culture in the process of writing my fiction, plus also set up my character within that church that explained their later behavior. So that's the sort of cultural and religious difference.
I did the same with Destroyer of Worlds, which is almost entirely set in India. So, I think research is a great way. And as you say, it's often documentaries, or memoirs, or books, you know, written by particular people. I don't think we should be afraid of it. I think it's too important to be afraid of. You have to embrace it.
Matt: If you look at one of the most beloved TV shows of all time, ‘The Wire,' has a lot of diverse characters in it, and it was written mostly by white people. The creator of that show, David Simon, was a white person, and yet he actually never got in trouble for that show. People absolutely loved these characters. Idris Elba became a star, Michael Jordan became a star.
I went ahead and I looked at that show. Like you said, it's dangerous to look at other fiction examples because you're getting a second-generation voice. But when I went ahead and transcribed some dialogue from that show, I realized that, yeah, I talk in both my books about metaphor families, and I realize that everybody on that show has a different metaphor family.
They have different well of language that they go to. And I'd remember just everybody cursing up a storm on that show, but Omar never once utters a curse word in any way, shape, or form on that show. His metaphor family was pirate, which is not a metaphor family you would instantly associate with because metaphor family sometimes times comes from a character's background, but sometimes comes from their aspirations.
So, he was talking about, we've got a parlay and these words that you sort of associate with ‘Pirates of the Caribbean.' I talk about in my first book, how in the UK version of ‘The Office,' how Gareth's metaphor family was military, even though he works in a paper company. And he, like Omar, had wanted to be something other than what he was. He saw himself in a tradition of people that did not match his immediate surroundings.
That's such a great way to get a character to come alive.
Such a great way to get a character be believable is have them have one source of language that they are drawing from that might be atypical.
If you look at ‘Star Wars,' Obi-Wan's metaphor family is military as well. He is this spiritual hermit, but he uses all of this language out of the military when he talks. And it really gives the character a strong, ironic counterpoint, and baked into his character, and really makes him come to life.
Joanna: We're almost out of time, but I want to talk about the subtitle, which is Writing a Hero Anyone Will Love. I've been watching a couple of things recently. So, ‘WeCrashed,' on ‘Apple TV,' which is just brilliant, and you just hate the characters, but they're so compelling to watch.
And then also ‘Succession,' about the billionaire media mogul and the family. There are literally no likable characters in both of these TV series, and yet I cannot look away.
Do we always need to love characters or do they just have to be compelling in some way?
Matt: In preparation for this podcast, because you had said you wanted to talk about ‘WeCrashed,' I went ahead and watched the first three episodes of ‘WeCrashed.' And then I re-watched the first 10 minutes because that's what I'm talking about in my book, is the first 10 pages of a book or the first 10 minutes of a movie or TV show.
Almost always, they got us to believe, care, and invest in the first 10 minutes before there's any plot. WeWork is not founded in the first 10 minutes of ‘WeCrashed,' but we totally believe, care, and invest in the first 10 pages, and has nothing to do with being a ‘lovable character' or a likable character.
They're not lovable, they're not likable. I'd say that they are lovable. They're not likable, but they are lovable, but they're lovable in a very certain way.
So, let's talk about how we believe in the first 10 minutes of ‘WeCrashed.' One of the things that really makes a character believable, it's when they have mottos. And you find this, especially on TV. TV characters have a lot of mottos. I go through my book like the three different mottos that House has, and his pilot in the three different mottos that Grissom has in CSI.
Adam in ‘WeCrashed' gets a lot of mottos right away. “Fear is a choice.” “You're a supernova.” These are mottos. I talk about how he's got very distinctive tastes. Everybody loves songs. They love characters who love songs. And he loves the song so much, he makes his assistant desperately run out ahead of him and pump the song into the WeWork speakers before he enters the office. He has distinctive tactics and this is something that makes us believe and invest.
The way he steals his neighbor's Chinese food in the first 10 minutes is so distinctive, it so makes his character come to life for us, and so makes us invest in his character. We are investing in him to solve the problem of his life.
This a problem in his life is that he's poor, he's not rich, and we need to invest in him to solve that problem. Even if we don't really want him to be rich, even if we don't want there to be more billionaires in the world. Then we see that that is his problem in this show and we want him to solve this problem.
In fiction, if we see someone is trying to tackle a big problem, we're going to root for them to solve that problem.
And the tradecraft involved, I used the term from spy movies, in how he offers his neighbor a beer, which doesn't exist, and really just as part of this clever plan to steal his neighbor's Chinese food, is so wonderful and so makes it come to life.
In terms of caring, they do a very classic trick in WeWork, they jump ahead to the worst thing that happens to him. And they have a flash-forward, and then they jump back to the past. Often the flash-forward is the hero getting a humiliation that is deserved and is outsized.
We can tell in the flash-forward, he gets fired from his company. We're not sure that's what's happening, but we're pretty sure. And we can see he deserves it because we see him wake up halfway through the day, and have a servant rush in with a bong for him to smoke before he actually gets out of bed, before his feet touch the floor. So obviously, that's a bad CEO. He should be fired.
Another big reason to believe is his distinctive wardrobe. We see him come to work with no shoes. We see him walking the streets of New York and coming into his office with no shoes on. It's like, okay, that's something where you see that's like, that has to be from real life. And indeed it is from real life.
That's another reason for him to be fired. But we also find out that he has borrowed $380 million against the shares of the IPO they're about to do that is now going to be canceled. We understand that someone should get fired for smoking from a bong during the day or wearing no shoes to work.
But, having to have cost them $380 million, that seems like an outsized humiliation. That seems like a massive humiliation for toking up when they're supposed to be at work, which is something that a lot of people haven't done and haven't been punished to that degree.
Joanna: The book is well structured in terms of tips. I appreciate the way you've written in the book, which is basically a succession of tips and examples for each. So, I definitely recommend the book, The Secrets of Character.
Tell people where they can find you and your books, and your podcast online.
Matt: As of today, you can go to Amazon or your favorite independent book stories website, or even your favorite independent bookstore in person, and buy a copy of The Secrets of Character: Writing a Hero Anyone Will Love.
You can also get my previous book, The Secrets of Story, at any of your favorite bookstores. You can find my podcasts on ‘Apple Podcasts,' ‘The Secrets of Story Podcasts,' or ‘Marvel Reread Club.'
You and go to my blog, thesecretsofstory.com, or just secretsofstory.com. I've been blogging since January 1st, 2010, and I have a massive amount of content that you can enjoy.
I'm redesigning the blog, it'll relaunch soon, redesigned. But the original blogger version is still going strong. And you can also see about 150…I've moved to the top of the sidebar, 150 examples of novels, TV, memoirs, and movies, where I break down ‘Believe, Care, and Invest.'
Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Matt. That was great.
Matt: That was great. Thank you so much for having me on.
The post Writing Characters With Matt Bird first appeared on The Creative Penn.
I've been talking about AI narration for several years now, but it's just starting to go mainstream and I've been getting emails every day recently asking the same questions, so this is a round-up article with the most important information.
For context, I am an audiobook narrator. I narrate my own non-fiction and short stories. I absolutely value human narrators, and I have spent tens of thousands of dollars hiring professional narrators for my novels and non-fiction over the last decade. I am also a futurist and I embrace AI tools as part of my creative and business practice.
This episode covers:
- Why are AI-narrated audiobooks an important development?
- “AI voices are robotic and don't have the right intonation. No one wants to listen to that.”
- Will AI-narrated audiobooks put real human narrators out of a job?
- What services can you use to create AI-narrated audiobooks? How much does it cost?
- Can anyone create an AI-narrated audiobook? What intellectual property rights do you need to hold?
- Where can you sell AI-narrated audiobooks? Can you just upload them everywhere?
- What price should an AI narrated audiobook be?
- How can you make sure that listeners know this is AI-narrated? Why is labeling important?
- How do you market AI-narrated audiobooks?
- Where is AI narration heading in the next few years?
This episode is sponsored by my patrons at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn. Thank you for enabling me to continue exploring the future of creativity and the author business model.
You can find out lots more on how AI can help you create and earn more in my course on The AI-Assisted Author. You can find all my courses here on Teachable.
I'd love to know what you think. Please leave a comment here or tweet me @thecreativepenn or email me if it's more personal.
Why are AI-narrated audiobooks an important development?
Most content in written words is not available in audio format, primarily because it is expensive to produce, and many countries and languages don't have an established audiobook production ecosystem.
It's important to have written word content in audio for accessibility reasons, but also because many people choose to consume in audio. It's easier to listen than read with your eyes because you can do other things at the same time, driving, exercising, chores, etc.
There is room for all formats and our job is to make sure our books are available in whatever format the customer chooses. Personally, I listen to a lot of non-fiction audiobooks while exercising, cooking, cleaning, and doing chores, as well as when traveling to rest my eyes. My husband listens to epic fantasy audiobooks every evening for relaxation.
Audio content also needs to be more diverse. Why do I always have to listen to business books read by a US male voice? Why can't I choose the voice of the narrator?
People identify with people who speak like them. Why can't someone choose the accent they prefer as well as the language and gender in the same way we choose the voice of our Google Assistant, Siri, or Alexa?
It would be prohibitively expensive to create multiple versions of audiobooks with different voices, but it could be achieved with AI narration.
You can listen to Your Author Business Plan narrated by me (British English female).
You can also listen to the same audiobook read by Mia from Google Play, an American female voice.
“AI voices are robotic and don't have the right intonation or emotion. No one wants to listen to that.”
AI narration will never supplant high-quality audiobooks performed by actors and voice artists at the pinnacle of their craft.
They will never replace the ‘art' end of the audiobook market.
They are not intended to.
In fact, the rise of AI narration might even push human narration into even more beautiful forms of audio art, because the ‘mass market content' side can be produced with AI, and narrators can focus on the books they care about.
Remember, you are not your audience, and you don't speak for the entire world of potential listeners. Even if you never want to listen to an AI-narrated book, why stop others from listening? Many people would rather have the content in audio in any voice than not at all, especially if their language is under-served in terms of audiobooks.
AI voices are also improving all the time. I've included samples here so you can listen to some of mine.
I have two versions of A Thousand Fiendish Angels, a short story trilogy. Here's me reading as a British English female with an accent from the South West of England.
The following version is digitally narrated with the voice of William Birch, a British male also with a southern English accent, produced by DeepZen Limited. I like the narration, and it's more interesting because it's a male voice. Two of the three stories have male protagonists and I love how different the stories sound from mine.
You can buy A Thousand Fiendish Angels here direct from me and listen on the Bookfunnel app. It will also be available on multiple retailers in coming months as it's distributed through DeepZen.
Human narration is also variable, as is listener preference.
I'm also an audio consumer. I listen to a LOT of audiobooks, almost all non-fiction, and I often wonder if I am listening to an AI, anyway. There are plenty of human narrators who sound expressionless, especially for the more technical or business books I listen to. Plus, I listen at 1.5x speed anyway, so it often doesn't even matter.
There are also an increasing number of tools for other voice-first needs, of which audiobooks are perhaps the smallest use case. Gaming has embraced AI tools for years, including AI for voice.
Podcasters have been using AI tools for several years now. I created a Voice Double using OverDub through Descript.com, which can be used in the podcast editing process. Mark Leslie Lefebvre and I even had a conversation between our Voice Doubles here. We need to redo it as the technology has moved on in the last 2 years and the voice doubles are so much better now.
Will AI-narrated audiobooks put real human narrators out of a job?
AI narration will never replace high-quality human performance, or the nuances of an actor's ability to communicate meaning, or narration by the human author.
But the time is right for a stratification of audio rights into several streams — the full cast multi-voice audio production, the human single or multi-voice read, and the AI narrated version, of which there might be several versions.
In this way, each audiobook is no longer one product, but many, in the same way that we have multiple versions for ebook, paperback, hardback, large print, and other formats.
It may change the job for some narrators, but in the same way that the job has changed for many translators with the advent of AI tools like Deepl.
Many translators have more work now, as there are more books being translated because of AI. The bulk of the work is done by the AI engine and then the translator brings the art and skill of finessing the translation into a finished product.
As voice licensing becomes more common, narrators will license their voices [as Samuel L Jackson did for Alexa), attracting other revenue streams without the workload of narration.
They might use this technology to create the ‘first draft' of an audiobook and then finesse the finished audiobook in the same way that AI-augmented translators do. Or authors and creators will be able to license their voices for creating audiobooks themselves.
Narrators, check your contracts. Who owns your master recordings and what can they do with them? Could whoever hired you create an AI voice from the recordings and license that?
Estate management will also expand to include voice licensing for talent after death.
But what do narrators think?
You can listen to narrators and voice artists discuss AI narration on the VOBoss Podcast. They have lots of different episodes on the topic, and there are a variety of views from ‘it should not be allowed,' to ‘it all sounds terrible and AI can never communicate like a human,' to ‘we should embrace AI and license our voices and use the tools to spread our personal brand and make more money.' As ever, there are always varied opinions on new tools and technologies.
Also, check out VoiceBot.ai which also has a podcast discussing these issues in depth.
Publishers Weekly (4 Feb 2022) rounds up a variety of responses to AI narration, with concluding comments as follows.
Hillary Huber is a member of the SAG-AFTRA [Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists] Audiobook Steering Committee, and a board member of the Professional Audiobook Narrators Association (PANA.) She says, “AI is coming. We can’t stop it, but hopefully we can be proactive by creating protections and, more importantly, by raising awareness in general so that listeners and authors can make informed choices.”
Anthony Goff (previously senior V-P and publisher of Hachette Audio said, “The technology is good and getting better but can never fully replace the art of audiobook creation… With the amazing growth of audio over the past few years, it’s clear that consumers love narration by professionals, and we do not see AI replacing that—rather, we see it supplementing it.”
Absolutely. I agree with both of these comments. AI supplements the existing audio market, and education is needed for consumers so they know what they are getting, and for narrators so they can use the technology to expand their creative and business potential, while still retaining the high-end human production values we love so much.
There is room for all, especially if we start stratifying audio rights in contracts, and educating listeners about their different options and the impact of each choice.
What services can you use to create AI-narrated audiobooks?
There are different services with different levels of help and distribution options.
Google Play Books is free (as of May 2022). They have an easy-to-use dashboard where you claim your ebook published on their platform, choose the voice, and then review the audio. It generates in a few hours and you can download the files and sell them elsewhere if you like.
This is the Dashboard now, so you can see how easy it is to use. Even if you use a different service e.g. PublishDrive to distribute to Google, you can log into the dashboard and claim your books for AI audio.
As an independent author, your ebooks have to be wide to access the platform.
[You can listen to my discussion with Ryan Dingler from Google Play here, where we discuss AI for audio toward the end. I will have another interview with Google Play Books in the next few months for an update.]
DeepZen is a premium service with ethical standards where they pay narrators for voice licensing. They also have distribution to most audiobook services because their quality is so high (excluding Audible). I've produced two audiobooks through DeepZen, which are in their distribution queue at the moment.
You can listen to my discussion with Taylan Kamis from DeepZen here, or read the transcript.]
There are lots of other AI narration and production services. Check out AI comes to audiobooks, Publishers Weekly, by Thad McIlroy for a list and opinions on AI voice in the traditional publishing industry.
PLEASE make sure you read the terms of service before you use any platform. Download a version and keep it as evidence of what you signed at the time, as terms will inevitably change.
Can anyone create an AI-narrated audiobook?
If you own and control the audiobook rights for specific intellectual property assets (i.e. books or short stories), then you can use AI narration.
Some of the services are not available to all countries, but they will likely expand over time. Most are starting with English and some of the most common languages, and again, will hopefully expand this.
If you have already licensed your audio rights, you cannot create an AI-narrated version.
Have you signed a contract with a publisher or an audio production company? It's likely you have licensed audiobook rights in their entirety, but check your contract to be sure.
You can't create an AI version if you have signed an exclusive license with ACX or another service. That exclusive license also covers all audiobook rights.
I think we need to start negotiating for the stratification of audio rights in contracts, so consider negotiating specific audio rights, e.g. specify a human narrator, or AI production, depending on the situation.
Where can you sell AI-narrated audiobooks? Can you just upload them everywhere?
If you create your audiobook with Google Play, you can sell it on Google Play immediately.
You can also download it and sell it direct. I currently use Payhip with Bookfunnel integration, but many authors use Shopify, Gumroad, and other services. Audiobook listeners can listen on the Bookfunnel app, which is really easy and Bookfunnel provide customer service for anyone who has issues.
Here's my tutorial on using Payhip with Bookfunnel which you can use to deliver audiobooks on their app.
DeepZen have distribution to most audiobook services as their quality is so high, but you have to produce and distribute through them to access this, and it is a premium service.
You cannot publish AI-narrated audiobooks on ACX or FindawayVoices as of mid-May 2022. This may change in the future, but for now, it's human narration only.
What price should an AI narrated audiobook be?
It's up to you.
However, it is still the same content, which is valuable, so don't make it free, unless it is a promotional price or a first in series.
I think it should be cheaper than the human narration, but not free.
Is anyone buying the AI-narrated audiobooks?
It's early days, and most authors are just trying things out so far. I've sold a few but I tend to push my human narrated audiobooks more heavily, especially as I am the narrator of many of them!
Some authors are embracing this technology wholeheartedly. Here's a comment from my YouTube channel from romance author, Alex Anders.
“This month I converted 65 of my fiction stories to AI created audiobooks on Google Play. They have outsold my ebooks in territories they are available. It blew my mind when I realized what was happening.”
In a subsequent comment, Alex said, “I sold 6 sexy romance AI generated audiobooks yesterday and the only market it is available on is the US Google Play store. I sold 0 ebooks in the same territory. I think we are on the verge of a serious revolution and it blows me away.”
Clearly, sales will increase if there is more AI narrated content available, available in more markets, in more languages, and if listeners are educated about their choices.
How can you make sure that listeners know this is AI-narrated? Why is labeling important?
I think AI-produced audiobooks should be labeled. This is part of the ethical use of AI tools. There's no need to hide the fact an audiobook is AI-narrated, so why not make it obvious?
We don't want to mislead customers, and in fact, we want to educate them about their choice. Do you want this audiobook narrated by a human? Or do you want this narrated by an AI voice? There is room for both in the market.
I'm using a ‘sticker' on my audiobook covers with Digitally Narrated on them. I hope something like this becomes the industry standard. We can also use something like it to emphasize human narration and make that part of the packaging as well. I'm using a banner for “Narrated by the author” to differentiate the product.
How do you market AI-narrated audiobooks?
In the same way as you market any other audio or ebook that you sell direct. I have a section on my Payhip store for digitally-narrated audio.
Make sure you link to it on your author website, and in email and social media. Tell your readers about it and educate them on why you're using AI for voice.
Click here for 16 more ways to market your audiobook.
Where is AI narration heading in the next few years?
AI narration will become an increasingly accepted part of the audio ecosystem, and services that don't accept AI narrated books now will likely do so in the next few years — unless their point of difference is specifically artistic, human narration.
I think Audible will allow AI narrated content at some point. Given they are owned by Amazon which already has AI for voice with Alexa and Polly, they will likely produce their own software-as-a-service in the same way that Google Play has.
Spotify bought Findaway in November 2021 and Spotify allows AI-voices for music, and AI-collaborative musicians, so why not allow AI-narrated audiobooks?
In the same way that consumers expect an ebook version of every print book, they will also expect an audiobook version of every ebook and written word resource, in every language, and perhaps in varying accents within that language.
We can only achieve this with AI narration because there are not enough humans to narrate in every language and every accent.
There are already apps that read written content aloud in various voices, and these might acquire licenses to read audiobooks as well as other content.
Many countries do not have a developed audiobook production ecosystem, so AI narration will help them produce massive amounts of content in audio. Because of this need and the resistance to AI audio in English, the growth of AI narration will primarily be for markets other than English over the next few years.
This will be fantastic for audio-first consumers as all content will be available in audio and in languages they prefer.
For creators, rights-holders, and narrators, AI-narrated audio will drive down costs — but it will also drive down revenue.
Ubiquitous audio and the rise of subscription models will continue to erode income from audiobooks, some of which may be made up in increased volume, but not all.
This digital abundance only increases the importance of personal branding and developing a relationship with readers and listeners, as well as expanding streams of income.
This is the heart of the emerging Creator Economy.
Don't rely on streaming and subscription services for your audio revenue, in the same way as many of us no longer rely on the big services for the rest of our author income. Sell direct and use your intellectual property assets to create new products and new revenue streams.
Readers and listeners love their favorite narrators and authors, and will continue to buy from them, so emphasize high-quality human narration options as well as AI audio. Charge premium prices for the human version in the same way we charge more for a limited edition hardback compared to an ebook borrow on a subscription service. Audiobooks shouldn't be just one product.
Create multiple streams of income with your audio by selling on different platforms, not just on the subscription and streaming services. Emerging blockchain and NFT opportunities will enable limited edition collectible digital audio for super-fans, and you can use patron models, crowdfunding, and other revenue streams.
Those who embrace AI narration for audio — as well as high-quality human narration — will reach more listeners and expand their market.
As Kevin Kelly says inThe Inevitable, “This is not a race against the machines. If we race against them, we lose. This is a racewiththe machines. You’ll be paid in the future based on how well you work with robots … It is inevitable.”
Let's figure out how we can work with the robots (AI) in order to create more, serve more customers, and increase the value of our creative businesses as authors, narrators, and rights-holders.
Personally, I will continue to narrate my own non-fiction and short stories, and I intend to license my voice when that becomes a possibility. I'll also continue to hire professional human narrators through Findaway Voices, and I will also produce multiple forms of AI-narrated audiobooks. I'm more excited than ever about AI tools for authors, narrators and rights-holders!
I'd love to know what you think. Please leave a comment here or tweet me @thecreativepenn or email me if it's more personal.
If you found this useful, please consider supporting the show atPatreon.com/thecreativepenn, or you can buy me a coffee (or two) at BuyMeACoffee.com/thecreativepenn
You can find out lots more on how AI can help you create and earn more in my course onThe AI-Assisted Author. You can find allmy courses here on Teachable.
The post An Update On AI-Narrated Audiobooks [May 2022] first appeared on The Creative Penn.
Why is writing so important? How can we pursue true independence as authors? How can we stay open to technological change while still focusing on the fundamentals of craft? Derek Sivers talks about these things and more.
In the intro, How to know if you are putting too much pressure on yourself [Holly Worton]; Breaking down language barriers with augmented reality [Google].
This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.
Derek Sivers is the author of four non-fiction books, as well as a musician, entrepreneur, and book publisher. His latest book is How to Live: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- Why focus on writing?
- Decentralization and why selling direct is so important for authors who value independence
- Tips for selling direct — for digital and print
- Taking the long-term view
- Thoughts of blockchain, GPT-3, and AI translation
- Giving everything to one book — and starting again for the next one
You can find Derek Sivers at sive.rs and on Twitter @sivers
Transcript of Interview with Derek Sivers
[Note: Derek provided his notes which have been added to the transcript, so we hope you find them useful!]
Joanna: Derek Sivers is the author of four non-fiction books, as well as a musician, entrepreneur, and book publisher. His latest book is How to Live: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion. Welcome to the show, Derek.
Derek: Thanks, Joanna.
Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you today. So, my first question is, you are a multi-passionate creator and your bio says, ‘I'm ambitiously focused on creating.'
What part does writing play in your creative life and your business these days?
Derek: First, listeners should know I'm not doing any of this for the money. My cost of living is paid for by past investments, and I give all my profits to charity.So filter my answers accordingly.
If you're listening to this wondering how to get rich or something, I will not be giving a formula for how to get rich because I'm doing this for other reasons. So, what part does it play in my life?
I'm trying to better understand the world. I want to figure out life. I want to be smarter. I want to learn. I want insights into life. How to work and live more effectively.
When I learn or invent an insight that feels USEFUL TO OTHERS, not just me, I feel I SHOULD SHARE IT with the world.
It's GENEROSITY. It would be easier to write it in my journal and keep it to myself. But making it public can help other people. So it's for the greater good.
It helps RETENTION. Writing and editing for public consumption makes you hone and clarify every idea. Whatever makes an idea easy to spread, also makes it easier to remember. The easier it is to remember, the more likely you are to internalize it, and let it guide your daily actions out in the world.
So, I write for my own retention. And I post things publicly because I find that people's feedback can improve my thinking. Like, when I post an idea…and I say idea because I actually…I try to post things in little itty-bitty bite sizes so that we can shine a spotlight on each idea. I'd be happy to talk more about that later, but that's a tangent.
Their FEEDBACK can IMPROVE my thinking. When I post an idea, people often reply with improvements. They disagree, and show me where I'm wrong. They point out an angle I hadn't considered.
It's an EGO BOOST. We say ego boost like it's a bad thing, but it's fuel! That motivation helps push you through the harder times. You write better if you think many people are going to read it seriously.
We say ego boost like it's a bad thing. But guess what? It's fuel. That motivation, helps push you through the harder times. I don't mean hard times, like, laying in a gutter drunk. I just mean harder times, just struggling to squeeze out an idea that's half-formed. It takes work.
But the ego boost of doing it, when it's done people going, ‘Oh, my god. You're amazing.'
You write better if you think that many people are going to read this.
So, posting publicly helps you push through some of the harder aspects of thinking things through, whether that's creatively or even diligent thinking through a life situation.
For all of these reasons, I decided to take writing more seriously. Which really means I decided to give it more time. I put aside a few hours each day for nothing but writing for the public.
I try to post one idea at a time. When I post an idea, people often reply with improvements. They sometimes will disagree and show me where I'm wrong, or they agree but point out an angle that I hadn't considered. So that improves my own thinking of my own idea.
Sometimes I feel like an idea is finished, and I post it to the world and people go, ‘Uh. Uh. Uh.' And I realize it's not finished. So, I also write publicly as an ego boost.
It's NETWORKING FOR INTROVERTS. Publishing your ideas instead of keeping them to yourself can help you meet other smart thoughtful people — people interested in the same things you are. Ideally you earn respect from people you respect. I'd rather earn the respect of ten people I admire, than a million people I don't.
It's a worthy drive, a worthy goal. So, for all of these reasons, I've just pretty recently decided to take my writing more seriously. You and I met in Oxford two years ago, was it?
Joanna: Well, it must have been in 2019, pre-pandemic.
Derek: Right. Okay. So, let's say, two-and-a-half years ago, you and I met in Oxford. And I think even at that time, I wasn't too sure. It was kind of one foot in one foot out. I was kind of calling myself an entrepreneur, a programmer.
Sometimes I would write and share my thoughts. But I was considering my writing to be on the side. It was on the periphery of what I was really doing. But since then, I've just given it more thought. And for the reasons I just said, I've realized that it's the most worthy pursuit for me.
I've decided to take it more seriously, which really just means giving it more time.
Turning off other things, and just doing this for a few hours each day.
Joanna: I love that. And it's so funny because, of course, you had these previous careers, which I will have talked about before the introduction. But I came to you through your writing, through Seth Godin, through Anything You Want, I think was that book. And so that's how I came to you.
As you said, connecting with introverts, I connected with your mind through your writing, and a lot of people, too. And that's almost how I think about it. It's almost telepathy, it's like, this is my thought. And it connects with you through time, through space.
We're never going to talk about all the things that we write about, but it's magic. I love that you mentioned ego, too, because I feel this is the difference. Because writing in your journal is one thing, but we publish because we want other people to read our work.
Publishing is a fascinating thing. And you've got a really interesting publishing history because you've worked with publishing companies. And then you got the rights back for Anything You Want, I think. And you are doing some really interesting stuff.
I think you're pretty much unemployable by anyone else, which probably shapes your decisions.
What are your thoughts on publishing these days, having tried different methods?
Derek: First, I often think in terms of what's best for the world, for the greater good.
De-centralization is good.Amazon should not be the only bookstore.
De-centralization will always be an uphill battle, but it's one worth fighting.
For some people, they don't feel it's worth fighting. For me, I'm willing to fight the decentralization battle. So, if you're an author that has fans, you should send your fans anywhere but Amazon.
Whether that's a small, independent bookshop or selling directly, you can help be the change to help show people that there are other ways to buy books besides Amazon and Audible.
In the late 90s there was this revolution in the music business when musicians were enabled to sell and communicate directly with fans.
They had been so screwed-over by the music industry for decades, so it was so empowering and liberating to bypass the entire industry.
But here we are 25 years later, and the independent spirit seems to be gone, especially in the book world.
Any talk of how to be an independent author seems to focus mostly on how to kiss Amazon's ass.
It's a smarter long-term strategy to deal directly with your thousand true fans, instead of blindly selling more units through some platform that captures most of the profits, and doesn't let you communicate with your customers.
When I used to run CD Baby, I had some clients that were formerly rock stars. They told me that it meant more to them emotionally to sell a thousand CDs sold through me and get at the direct contact information for their fans, because that's how my old company, CD Baby, used to work.
Every time you would sell something through CD Baby, I'd say, ‘Hey, here's who bought your CD today? Here's Joanna Penn in Bath, and here's her email address.' And for each person, I'd say, ‘Here's their name and email address.' And the fans knew this too. They knew that when you bought through CD Baby, that I'm going to ship you the CDs or give you the MP3s, but I'm going to put you directly in contact with the musician.
And the musicians would have the direct contact information for all these fans. And these former rock stars would tell me that it was emotionally more rewarding to be in touch with 1,000 people than it was to get some kind of sales report saying that they had sold a million copies.
So, I really took that to heart. And I really will just do everything to have direct contact with my fans, or readers, or whatever you want to call them.
All that being said….
My first book was written as a favor to Seth Godin. I had never intended to write a book, but Seth asked me to be the first author on his new publishing company, so I said OK, and wrote him a book in 10 days.He published it a week later.Five years later, he sold his publishing company to Penguin.So that's why my first book is on Penguin.
My main contact at Penguin is really sweet.We went out to dinner once.She's wonderful.I like all the people I've encountered there.They paid me fairly, and all was well.They were happy with the sales of my first book, and said they'd be happy to publish any of my future books.
But I wanted to sell directly to my fans, and it felt weird that I wasn't allowed to do that.I didn't like not owning the publishing rights to my own words.So I decided I would self-publish all future books.
I contacted Penguin and bought back the rights, or I'm just in the process right now. They say it's going to be done in 10 days, buying back the rights to my first book so that I will have the right to sell absolutely all of my books directly. I think that answers it.
I want to do some fun things that regular sellers can't do.
Personalize ebooks and audiobooks. Sell at a weird price: $19 for the first one, $4 for each after. Sell $15 for digital access forever, all future formats. Sell autographed books. Say yes to translations. Own the translations.
But mostly the decision comes from thinking very long-term. I want the rights to adapt my past books to new technologies.To do whatever I want with them for all future time.
Joanna: Like a loyalty thing.
Derek: Yeah. And I like that, encourages people to buy 10, or 20, or 30 copies or… Well, anyway, I like selling my digital files for a flat $15, to say, okay, for 15 bucks, you get access to all digital formats for all future time. Even formats that haven't been invented yet, you got them. You pay me 15 bucks now, all digital files are yours forever.
I like to sell autographed books, which is an idea I got from you. I had never considered that. But sitting at a table on a sidewalk in Oxford, you said I should autograph them. And I think I sneered, I thought that sounded horrible. But then I thought about it and thought, ‘Okay, Jo is right. I should do that.'
And then I like to say yes to translations. I like to own the translations. But mostly…sorry, I'm giving you very long answers to your questions.
Joanna: No, no, it's great.
Derek: But mostly the decision comes from thinking very long-term. I want the rights to adapt my past books to new technologies, to do whatever I want with them for all future time. And that to me, at its core, was why self-publishing was just mandatory.
Joanna: I think we both prefer the term independent publishing because, again, you said before, maybe the independent spirit is dying a bit. I don't think it is. This show is definitely focused on long-term thinking. It is wide and all of those things.
I feel like those of us who really care about what independence actually means, what you're talking about is so true.
What I would say, though, is that you are a programmer, and obviously, I bought your books, and I like how I can log on to your website, and there are all the books I've bought. And you've basically hand-coded this whole thing.
Most authors are not like you. We're not programmers. So, there are tools that are emerging for this.
Any tips for selling direct, if people are not programmers, for people who might want to spin into this as well as selling on the other stores.
Derek: First, let's do the one more reason why I think it's so important to try to capture every penny you can, from the sale of your book.
I'm not a very money-focused person. I'm not saying this as in any kind of greedy way. But If you're in direct contact with a fan, who already wants to buy your book, then it seems fundamentally wrong to give Amazon a big cut of that sale.
I price my digital books at $15.I've made over a half-million dollars selling them directly to fans on my site.If I would have sold those same books through Amazon it would have been about $100,000.So $500,000 versus $100,000
It costs about $2000 to save a life.Charities like the Against Malaria Foundation will save about one life for every $2000 donated.I donate all of my profits, so that means 200 people will live instead of die because I sold my books directly instead of through Amazon.
Joanna: That's a good reason.
Derek: Yeah. Whenever I would consider like, ‘It'd be so much easier to just do KDP and be done with it.' And I think, ‘Come on. Even if I'm giving it all away, this is like $2,000 is a life that's somebody who dies if you don't donate $2,000.'
That in itself is a reason to ask all your fans to buy directly instead on Amazon. More profits which you can then donate to save people's lives.
That said, I will list them on Amazon very soon, but I won't send my fans there. If Amazon wants to generate new fans for my book, that's fine.
As for tips on selling directly….
You tried to scare me away from this because of customer support! But I‘ve found that less than 1% of buyers said they had a problem getting their digital files to work on their device.
I wrote a form letter telling people how to get a mobi file on to their Kindle. I wrote a form letter telling people how to open an m4b audiobook file on their phone.
Didn't need to be a programmer. Just walk through it once successfully, and note every step, and write it down.
Use Gumroad. Use PayPal. Use whatever. I built my own store but I'm a nerd like that. For most people just use whatever existing tools out there seem easy and appealing to you.
Joanna: Or just to say, and I think that's amazing. But for most of us, that $2,000 might pay the mortgage or our kids' school or whatever. So, what we're saying is making the money yourself is completely valid. However you choose to spend that money, and you've chosen that direction, which is amazing. We're not saying that you have to donate your royalties.
Derek: Right. I was just giving all this, I think, maybe I'm being a little extra defensive because I've heard people just sound really greedy when they're, ‘Why should I share?'
It's kind of almost like those people that don't want to pay any taxes. It's like, ‘Urgh, come on. Have you not thought this through in the bigger picture. There's reasons to pay taxes.' So, I don't mean to sound like nobody can take any piece of my transaction.
I just think for all these reasons I've said, decentralization and all that, I just think it's morally the right thing to do to try to keep as much of the profits from the sale of your sales directly to your fans as possible.
Okay. So, that, I just had to get that off my back or whatever you call it, but…
Okay. So, tips on selling directly. That's funny. When you and I talked at Oxford, you I want to say tried to scare me away, but you kind of tried to scare me away from selling directly because of the customer support, the tech support. You're like, ‘Derek, Derek, you don't want to be answering tech support from people that don't know how to get a file onto their phone, or don't know how to put a thing onto their Kindle. You don't want to deal with this. You don't want to spend your life with it.'
I want you to know how seriously I took your warning. I thought about that for months, and really considered that, and really let it shape some of my decisions because, I look up to you a lot. And you've been there, done that way more than I have. You're way more experienced in this field. So, I really was kind of deferring to your judgment.
But I just, I decided for me it was worth the uphill battle again. So, I ended up writing a form letter telling people directly, how to get a Mobi file onto their Kindle.
Like, here's the three ways to do it. I took an hour. And I wrote that form letter once so that anytime somebody says, ‘Hey, just bought your book, but how do I read it on my Kindle?' I just hit cut, paste, and here is the well-written form letter telling them exactly how to do it. Same thing with people who buy my audiobook in the M4B audio format, and they don't know how to get it to play in their phone, or their tablet, or their computer. I have a form letter for that, that I took an hour to write.
I have this feeling that every time I'm sending somebody that form letter, I'm actually doing a little bit of greater good for the world because now this is a person that hopefully knows how to do this for future use.
And one of your other listeners one day will benefit from this as that same person now feels a little bit more comfortable buying something directly from an author using PayPal, or Gumroad, or whatever it may be. So, to me, that was worth the uphill battle. I've been saying that phrase way too many times today.
Joanna: You are right because selling direct is an uphill battle. It is easier to just go on KU, whatever. I would say that I'm sure I must have mentioned BookFunnel.com, which does that. But you prefer to control all of your technology, don't you? You actually prefer kind of coding it that way than using a third-party service.
Derek: Yeah. It's kind of my favorite hobby. I really enjoy programming. Also, I've already got a really big infrastructure. Basically, I wrote all of the software that built and ran CD Baby. When I sold the company, I got to keep the backend software for my own use because I had written it myself. Like you said, I wrote every line by hand.
So, I've got this amazing backend infrastructure that already has the full contact information for a quarter-million people that I've emailed over the past 25 years.
Everybody that's ever left a comment on my site, or emailed me, or signed up for one of my things online, it all ties back into this one central database.
It just made sense for me to also tie in a bookstore into that same database so that I could say like, ‘Hi, Tracy. I've noticed you've bought my first two books, but not my newest two books.' I know who's bought what, and it helps me talk to people to say like, ‘ You, in the past, said that you really liked this post of mine, and that post of mine turned into this book. And I noticed you haven't bought the book based on this post that you said you liked.'
I'm able to communicate with people in a very personal way like that because I've kept everything in one central place. So, to me, it was worth doing that.
Joanna: I think the lesson there for everyone is, not that you need to hand-code everything but that long-term view, what you did with all of that is think about future. You designed a system that could be used for the long-term because you were thinking like that.
That's kind of your programmer's brain, I think, broke it down that way, which my husband's a programmer. I get that mindset of structuring things so you can do things in different ways.
I did want to ask, though, because I feel like in a way the eBook problem, it was easier than the print problem. Because you're also doing special hardbacks and all kinds of things.
What about selling the print books direct?
Derek: Luckily, one of my best friends is a paper book nerd. Her name is Saeah Lee Wood, and she is brilliant. In fact, you know what? I'm going to straight up give a plug. She is really an independent book producer now. Her first name is Korean. So, it's spelled strangely, it's S-A-E-A-H.
If you go to saeah.com, is Saeah's website. And she took care of everything of producing my paper book. She nerds out on binding, on edge pages, about the fabric on the hardcovers, about the spine. All of that stuff fascinates her.
She spent so many hours or so many months actually talking to so many different book printers, getting samples, printing samples with them, sending it back saying, ‘Not good enough yet.' After months and months and months of back and forth, she produced the beautiful hardcovers that you can get through me.
She has her own warehouse in North Carolina, USA, where she ships all of the books from. She has all of my books in a big barn on the east coast of the U.S. And anybody who orders a paper book through me, it gets a little message sent to Saeah to send them to where. That was worth the effort to me because I really wanted beautiful linen hardcover books.
Joanna: They're fantastic. And again, I think it's about systems, but also people. So, you've found the right person to work with.
Derek: Yes.
Joanna: I'm kind of going this way now. And also there is a dropshipping. You can now sell direct, but then drop shipping a print-on-demand book, which is really emerging now. So you can still sell direct, but you don't have to have a warehouse full.
And, of course, the upfront printing cost is often a problem. So, this is what I'm looking at now is, okay, I can sell direct print and dropship at the same time, which is just fantastic. Time moves on and these problems, companies emerge and people emerge to solve these problems, don't they? Because people want to do this.
When people want to do something, the answer emerges somehow.
Derek: I agree. And sometimes it's worth doing a step backward. I ended up just doing a good old-fashioned, upfront printing 20,000 copies of my hardcover book because I estimated that's how much I think I'll sell.
I had to just kind of guess, which I know the more efficient thing would've been to just do them all print-on-demand. But I just found that I could get higher quality by doing this certain kind of, I forget what it's called, it's like not digital printing, but…
Joanna: Offset printing?
Derek: Offset. Thank you. That's the word. So, they're offset instead of computer printed, or instead of digital. And it was a slightly higher quality. And to me, that was just worth the upfront investment.
I had taken a gamble and pay them whatever that was, a few dollars per book for 20,000 copies upfront and warehouse them and all that stuff. A lot of people might not want to do that or might not care so much about the nerding out on the paper quality and font quality and things like that.
Joanna: I love that. I love that you've done that because, again, I guess you're known as the sort of digital guy, but you also now have these wonderful print books that your company's done.
I want to come back to, you mentioned earlier, decentralization is good. And looking at what the music industry or what's happening in the music industry now, we've got interesting decentralized, if one could call them that, options with blockchain and NFTs to split royalties. And then we've got changes like Spotify getting into Audiobooks.
There's a lot happening right now, I think, in music and audio space that we're starting to see emerge for authors. The royalty fractionalization thing is very, very interesting to me and many authors about, wow, this is kind of potentially the future of crowdfunding. There's lots of options.
What do you think about some of these emerging opportunities and challenges?
I can't emphasize this enough:Nobody knows the future, so focus on what doesn't change.
I've been in the music business since 1987. I've seen a ton of change. What I've seen in music is this:
People always love a memorable melody. You can’t know what instrumentation or production style will be in fashion. So it's best to focus on the craft of making great melodies.
People always want an emotional connection. You can’t know what technology will carry that communication. So it's best to focus on the essence of how to connect with an audience.
Writing lots of songs increases your chances of writing a hit. You can’t know which song will be a hit. So it's best to write as many songs as you can.
Instead of predicting the future, focus your time and energy on the fundamentals. The unpredictable changes around them are just the details.
The best investment of your time is on the timeless aspects of your craft.
This also drives a majority of the sales. Yes there's some activity in on the ever-trendy fringe of things, and it might be worth a bit of your effort, but appropriately small.
I think that even though it's newsworthy to talk about NFT stuff, and blockchain, and whatever's going on right now, it's interesting to the media because it's new. I think that it's actually driving a minority of the sales.
I think the majority of the sales you're ever going to get will come from the fundamental aspects of what you're doing. How great is your story? How memorable are your characters? How insightful is your writing? And yes, there's activity on the ever-trendy fringe of things. And it might be worth it a bit of your effort, but I'd say to proportion it, appropriately small.
But all of that being said, I think, whatever fascinates you, you should go do it. And if it doesn't fascinate you, that's kind of what I'm speaking to. If somebody's listening to this feeling like, ‘Blockchain, NFTs. Urgh. It's just, I guess I should be doing this, but I don't want to.' No.
Then I guess that's who I'm speaking to. If this doesn't fascinate you, then you could just skip it. It doesn't matter that much. It's the edge of things. And some people are fascinated by it. If you're fascinated with it, then go for it. But I really think that the most strategic use of your time is to focus on the fundamentals that don't change.
Joanna: I totally agree with you. And also, most people listening will be rolling their eyes at me asking that question because I am fascinated with it. But I guess I'm thinking about business models of writing.
Fifteen years now, I've been in publishing, not as long as you've been in music, but writing and publishing for 15 years. And again, how the business model has changed in 15 years is kind of crazy. I'm looking at another 15 years ahead and thinking, what is my business model going to look like in the next 15 years, into my 60s'? How can I position myself so that I'm ready?
I'm often early in adopting new ways of publishing. I think the smart contracts that are emerging with NFTs are really, really interesting for the future of intellectual property. [More on the future of creativity here.]
Coming back to what you said earlier, which is when you sell direct you're going to make sure you include the formats of the future. But the problem at the moment is that authors are signing contracts that have a clause in that say something like, ‘All format existing now, and to be created for the life of copyright.' Authors are signing that.
It means they can't take advantage of a new opportunity. I'm completely with you, right now is not the time to do NFT books as we record this in April, 2022, but maybe by 2025, if it's now the new thing, the thing that we are doing, if you've signed a contract, that means you can't do it, then you're going to be screwed.
That's what I'm thinking of is, yes, it's edge-case now, but what if?
Derek: Yeah. And that's a great argument to keep your own rights now, even if it means that you are giving up some sales.
By the way, I do just feel that I should give some kind of caveat that everything I'm saying, I realize is just one point of view, and I could argue against it.
Joanna: No, that's an interview, Derek. We know that!
Derek: Right. And what I'm saying is three of my friends, Tim Ferriss, Mark Manson, and James Clear, a few of my good friends have gone against everything I've said here and done astonishingly well, selling bajillions of books.
Joanna: Mark Manson just did the NFT drop as well. Didn't he?
Derek: Yeah. Everything I'm describing is just like, this is, you're asking me to talk about the way that I've personally chosen to do it. But I know that it's not the way for everybody. I'm not prescribing it to everybody, but for my temperament, my situation in life, even the very first thing that I started out saying, I'm not doing any of this for the money.
If I was to say, what's the best way to make a ton of money selling books, well, then I wouldn't say you should be hand-coding your own website and all that.
I do think that trying as much as possible to hold onto your own rights, even if it means losing some sales in the present is a smarter long-term strategy for the future of whatever is happening next.
Joanna: Absolutely. So, just staying on the technology side of things, I think we talked about AI translation when we talked in Oxford. I'm really fascinated with GPT-3, and GPT-4 is due out this year, and the kind of tools that we can potentially use as writers with AI.
What are your thoughts on how creatives can work with AI rather than fight against it and as a tool, rather than ‘it will write a book for me' type of thing.
Derek: I got to know GPT-3 quite well. I have an account with OpenAI, the company behind GPT-3. I wrote some programs to use their API. I worked with a hardcore expert of it for two weeks and he showed me how to do even more with it.
But GPT-3, I also really nerded on, I contacted the company that makes it, OpenAI.
Joanna: OpenAI. Yeah.
Derek: And yet after all that, I don't think it's a threat, and don't find it that interesting.
GPT-3 can complete a sentence for you. It can complete a paragraph for you.
But more words was never the point. To be a great writer, we need more insights, more emotional connection, more wow. Not more words.
You can use GPT-3 to finish sentences when you don't know how to finish it. You can do it multiple times and it will finish it in multiple different ways. So it's like asking strangers on the street. “How would you finish this thought?” The answers are usually worthless but occasionally might spark an idea.
Ideas can come from anywhere. A song, an advertisement on a bus, an overheard snippet of conversation. So you can get ideas from GPT-3's auto-generated stuff.
Anyone listening to your show has nothing to fear.
GPT-3 can replace people churning out crap fodder just to fill search engine results.
But those people don't listen to your show.
And yet after all that, I don't think it's a threat, and don't find it that interesting.
I would plug it into GPT-3, and I'd say, ‘Give me 20 different endings to this sentence or this paragraph.' And I'd say ‘Go.' And it would return 20 different replies.
I would read through them for inspiration. Most of them were worthless. But occasionally, I would get an idea from GPT-3's strange completion of my sentence. But it's not that different from asking strangers on the street. How would you finish this thought? Because ideas can come from anywhere.
You can get an idea from a song, or an advertisement on a bus, or an overheard snippet of conversation. You can get great ideas from GPT-3's auto-generated stuff. I would highly recommend it for that.
If you can get an account with GPT-3 or find some way to use their API to let it complete your sentences or paragraphs that you are stuck on, it's wonderful. But I think anyone listening to your show has nothing to fear from it. It could replace people that were churning out…or it already has replaced people that were churning out crap fodder to fill search engine results. But those people do not listen to this show.
Joanna: Hopefully. And also marketing copy. Jasper, I think, is now using that to put out marketing and add text and things like that, which is an interesting use case.
Just before we talk about the translation on GTP-3, people listening, I've had Amit from Sudowrite. Sudowrite is a front-end on GPT-3. So, again, to use the API, you have to be quite technical. But Sudowrite is like a front-end.
I feel when you said strange, I was like, that's exactly right. I feel that my Sudowrite is like a strange co-pilot that comes up with things actually make me laugh. Sometimes I'm like, ‘That is just ridiculous.' But I don't laugh when I'm…well, sometimes I do sitting on my own writing. But maybe it's like, wow, it just comes up with stuff that makes me think in a different way.
I know it's not a mind, but it comes up with things that are different than what I would've come up with. And that's why I like to use it too. But I completely agree with you.
It's a massively powerful tool, but you have to drive it. You have to prompt it.
That's the key, right? It doesn't just do it on its own.
Derek: Yes. I think when I first heard of it, I was more excited for its potential. And then as I actually used it, I thought, ‘Oh, okay, this isn't as interesting as I thought.' Sorry, we didn't even talk about translation at all.
I think for translation, it's amazing. And I think that's a perfect use because that is something where there can be something close to a right answer. What was the Picasso quote? ‘Computers are boring, they can only give you answers.'
I like that a lot. So, I think translation is a wonderful use of it, at least for the first draft. What I've done for a lot of my books is I have this new service I created, or once again, me making my own tools. I created something called inchword.com that I've been using. It's basically just my tools I've been using to translate my books.
I break down all of my books into per sentence. So, every single sentence has its own entry in the database. And then they get merged together into the template to make the layout of the article or the book. I used a service called deepl.com to translate each one of those sentences at a time and return to me the translated sentence. And then I would store the translated sentence in the database.
But then I would always hire a human translator to use that as their starting point and improve it from there. They found that it saved them some time that, say, a quarter of the time, deepl.com returned a translated sentence that they felt was good enough as is, like, ‘okay, that's fine as is. So, I could just leave that one.' And then they can focus on tweaking the ones that could be better. I love that use of AI.
[Note from Joanna: Here's how I used Deepl for my books in German.]
Joanna: Absolutely. And again, tools that we can use to achieve our creative goal. That's, I think, what it comes down to.
On your now page, I want to look forward. Now, you say that How to Live is your best book ever. I love that. I love that you're so proud of it. And you were writing it when we spoke in Oxford. I remember then you were like, ‘This is the challenge.' But your face would sort of light up when you talked about it.
You say after four years that it's done. And it's clearly been special and challenging. But I know that you don't necessarily sit around going, ‘Hey, look at my amazing book. And I'm done, I'm finished now. That's perfect.' So, what are you doing next?
What are you excited about creating next? Or are you just going to rest on your laurels for a while?
Derek: Sorry, listeners, I'm not trying to sell you my book. But just saying that How to Live is my book that I think a lot of new parents I've heard have this feeling. When they have a kid, they think, ‘I really want to put everything I've ever learned into a book for my kid so if I die before my kid is old enough, somebody can just give him this book and I can say, ‘This is everything I ever would've told you.”
I gave How to Live everything. All of my thoughts. Everything I know. Each insight reduced to a single sentence. So I'm feeling like I've said it all.
It's time for me to generate new thoughts. Lateral thinking. Discovery. Learn more. Share more.
My book called How to Live is kind of like that. I compressed everything I've ever learned into one book.
The first draft of it was like 1,300 pages. And then my challenge is, I spent the next two years editing it down to only 114 pages. I did that by reducing almost everything down to a single sentence. Each idea was reduced to its essence in a single sentence.
Then the problem is I wrote this 114-page book that feels like I've now said everything I have to say on Earth. So, even though I haven't, because most of my ideas are just represented with this single sentence. It's put me into a weird position where everything I think of saying now it feels like, ‘Oh, but I already talked about that in How to Live. But I did it in only a sentence, but I already did it.'
Here's what I'm thinking. Stand-up comedians usually reuse their old material and slowly introduce some new material, but they keep the old laughs as they keep touring. If you go see them over the years, you'll hear them tell a lot of the same jokes, but some new ones.
Just a few of the most brilliant standup comedians challenge themselves to come up with all new material every year. It's a massive challenge, and only a few have ever done it. I want to challenge myself now to say, ‘Okay. Well, I just put everything I know into How to Live so I'm starting from scratch now.‘
It's time for me to generate new thoughts, lateral thinking, discovery, learning more, sharing more, not to just new material for books. The book is not the point, it's really more about new insights into life to say, ‘Okay. Well, everything I've learned before, How to Live, got put into my book called How to Live. And now everything I do next will only be the stuff that I learn after that.'
It's really about challenging myself to learn more.
Joanna: Didn't you just say that you're now in a hardcore reading phase. Is that on your blog?
Derek: I wouldn't say hardcore as much as I stopped reading for a few years of How to Live because of the nature of that book, where I was putting everything I learned into one book. So, it's like, ‘I don't want to learn something new right now. Otherwise, I'm going to have to add it to the book, the book's already long enough.' So, I had kind of stopped reading for a few years.
Now I'm reading this backlog. I've got like 120 books queued up on my Kindle, books that I bought from the last few years, but hadn't read yet. I'm reading them all now. I'm putting aside a few hours a day just to reading.
Joanna: That to me is the way to get excited about the next thing. I've been listening to, and we've talked about it on the show, it's a book called The Genesis Machine by Amy Webb. I know you don't want book recommendations, but it's about synthetic biology.
Now, I have no background in biology, and this book it's a non-fiction book, but it's like science fiction because it's a topic I know nothing about. I'm listening to it going, ‘Oh, my goodness. I didn't know. I didn't know that. That's amazing.'
Derek: I love that.
Joanna: And it's so funny, and it's just like, ‘Wow,' That just sets off all these fireworks. That's how I feel when I'm excited about a topic is like fireworks in my brain. And then you never know how it's going to pop up again, right?
I imagine that's kind of where you are going is, where do the fireworks come up next for me?
Derek: Yes. I actually just last night started reading the Essays and Aphorisms of Arnold Schopenhauer, this German philosopher that I've heard of for years. I've never read his stuff. I'm only like 10 pages in, and I'm like, ‘Ooh, this is good.' Today I'm still thinking about the 10 pages I read last night.
As for what's next to me, yeah, my challenge is to learn a lot more so I will have more insights into life and maybe have something new to share with the world.
Joanna: Brilliant.
Where can people find you, and your books, and your blog, and everything you do online?
Derek: Oh, just go to Amazon! Sorry. No, my website is sive.rs. It's my last name, but with a dot in it. So, yeah, sive.rs is my website, and everything's there.
And really, honestly, part of the reason that I do interviews like this, instead of you and I just talking at a cafe, is I really like the kind of people that listen to your show. So, if you're somebody that listened all the way to the end of this interview, my email address is in a big font on my website. Just send me an email and say hello and introduce yourself.
I actually really, really, really love meeting other writers, especially from around the world. There's a reason you're doing this podcast too. It's like meeting other writers. You have so much in common. It's such a great kindred feeling to talk about writing with people.
Joanna: Oh, indeed.
Derek: Any other writers, please send me an email. Say, hello. Let's connect.
Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Derek. That was great.
Derek: Thanks, Joanna.
The post Writing, Independence, And Selling Books Direct With Derek Sivers first appeared on The Creative Penn.
If you want to create, sell, buy, or trade NFTs, you need to understand the financial and tax implications. In this interview, Joe David explains the important aspects of blockchain assets and cryptocurrency.
[Disclaimer: This is not financial or legal advice. This is just a conversation based on our interest and experience. Please consult a professional about your situation.]
In the intro, I mention the bear market and recommend Unshakeable. Your Financial Freedom Playbook. Creating Peace of Mind in a World of Volatility by Tony Robbins, as well as my list of other money books, plus my NFTs on OpenSea; Future Freedom community; and podcasts I listen to at the moment: Crypto Business; Azeem Azar's Exponential View; Exponential Wisdom.
If you're just getting started, listen or read episode 610 on NFTs for Authors, which covers the basics and different types of NFTs. You can also watch the presentation as a video here.
This podcast is sponsored by Written Word Media, which makes book marketing a breeze by offering quick, easy and effective ways for authors to promote their books. You can also subscribe to the Written Word Media email newsletter for book marketing tips.
Joe David is the founder and managing director of UK-based Nephos Group, which helps businesses with tax, technology, and business planning. Nephos includes Myna Accountants, which is the UK's leading dedicated cryptocurrency accountancy.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- What is an accountant interested in crypto?
- Is cryptocurrency ‘real' money?
- Why blockchain transactions are transparent and trackable and how exchanges require KYC (know your customer) setup
- Global vs local rules for cryptocurrency
- Are NFT books assets or products and how do we account for them?
- The types of tax you need to think about: income tax, and capital gains (and loss)
- Taxable events include ‘disposal' of assets, which can be transferring one currency into another (e.g. ETH to BTC) or from crypto to fiat (e.g. ETH to USD)
- Where are we in the crypto adoption cycle?
- What is the future of NFTs?
You can find Joe David at MynaAccountants.coand on Twitter @crypjo091
Transcript of Interview with The Crypto Accountant
Joanna: Joe David is the founder and managing director of UK-based Nephos Group, which helps businesses with tax, technology, and business planning. Nephos includes Myna Accountants, which is the UK's leading dedicated cryptocurrency accountancy. Welcome to the show, Joe.
Joe: Hey, Jo. Thanks for having me.
Joanna: I'm really excited to talk to you about this topic.
Before we get started, I guess you'd better give a bit of a disclaimer.
Joe: Indeed. Basically, everything we discuss in this podcast will be based on either factual information that's been provided to me via the resources available, or my opinion on certain things.
None of it is financial advice. None of it is tax advice.
If you do want specific tax advice, then please contact me separately. But this is a generic overview for your education only.
Joanna: Yes. Brilliant. Absolutely. So, let's get into it.
I want to start with a more personal question, because you're an accountant, and yet you are super interested in cryptocurrency.
Why are you so interested, especially when the media, and probably a lot of accountants, can be super negative about crypto?
Joe: It is a good place to start, because I do get asked that question quite a lot. I think, for me, it comes down to two things.
First of all, looking into cryptocurrency over the years, working in the area with a few clients here and there, I just really liked the concept. As soon as I started reading more about it and watching more videos about it, and really understanding the underlying fundamental principles of crypto and blockchain, it really resonates with me how we can have a financial system that isn't reliant on any one person or any third party.
There's no single source of failure. You control your own money. All of those bits and pieces fit really nicely, I think, with where we should go with the digital technology we've got these days.
The other point is, and it kind of touches on your point of where the media say certain things and other accountants might say certain things is, I've always been very opinionated and very…I call it anti-establishment, but that doesn't mean I hate everything that is said. It means that I like to do things differently, and I like to mix things up, and I like to change things for the better.
I think that crypto will create a better financial system for our future generations, and therefore that's my opinion, and that's why I'm so passionate about it.
Joanna: I do want to circle back. You said you liked the concept, so you started reading more until you could understand the fundamentals. This is what I feel right now. I feel like I have now spent maybe 60 to 80 hours on reading about cryptocurrencies and blockchain. And that's just sort of the real deep stuff.
It's been a year or so for me of learning in discussions like this. But I do feel like there is quite a knowledge gap between people who have opinions on this stuff and people who've actually spent time learning about it.
Is it that you have to spend 40 hours on this stuff before you get it? Is that where we are?
Joe: I think it depends on what you class as ‘getting it'. You can get a fundamental, basic understanding of it through watching a few videos, reading a book or two here and there.
You'll be able to get a basic understanding of some of the common principles within blockchain technology and the cryptocurrencies that are laid on top of that. So, I totally think you can get an understanding fairly quickly.
The reason I said it takes ages and what, loads of videos, to read loads of articles and books and things like that is, for me, I wanted to go really deep, and I'm still going deeply. There's still much more that I keep finding.
I'm on a group, and just this morning, someone said, ‘It's amazing how you learn something every day in crypto.‘ And it is definitely that feeling of every day, you learn something new or you see something different, so I think it depends on the level that you want to go to.
And because I wanted to go so deep and really specialize in it, for me, I spent hours and hours and hours and days and weeks, and months and whatnot researching it.
Joanna: I've definitely caught the bug as such, and I'm going down these rabbit holes too. And again, it's following your curiosity and figuring stuff out, and I'm still learning a lot as well, so I'm really glad to talk to you about this.
Let's tackle a common misconception, which is that cryptocurrencies are not real money, so we don't have to account for them, we don't have to pay tax on them, and equally, it must be anonymous.
Tell us why that's wrong and how we should think of it.
Joe: If we start on the first point around it, whether it's kind of, in inverted commas, ‘real money' or not, obviously, the definition, I guess, of money is an exchange of value.
I give you money for something and you give me something back in return. So, if somebody is willing to give you a cryptocurrency and you're willing to give them something back in return for that cryptocurrency, then ultimately, you've got a transaction there that you could class as money.
I was reading once that there's some island somewhere out in Australasia, or something like that, they trade rocks or something because that's the only kind of commodity they've got there that. So that's not real money. But it is able to trade value between themselves and between other people. So that is, I guess, the concept of whether it is or isn't real money, but it's money if it's perceived to be exchangeable for value.
Obviously, at the moment, there are limited ways of spending cryptocurrency in the world, but what I would say is that's only going to get bigger and stronger. I wouldn't say it's not real money, but at the same time, I wouldn't say that it is a currency and therefore should be treated as so, if that makes sense. That's the first part I would say about whether it is or isn't real money.
The second point, then, is, if it's not real, or you can't physically see it or hold it, I can understand people then saying, ‘Well, why do I need to tell anybody about it? I'm just going online and effectively I'm gambling with buying some Bitcoin and hoping it goes up, therefore, I shouldn't pay tax on it.'
But actually, that couldn't be further from the truth. The tax rules are very complicated, and have a lot of potential issues for some people if not done properly. It is definitely something that you need to be aware of. It's not as simple as just saying, ‘It's not real money, therefore I don't have to report it.'
Joanna: And what about the anonymity side of it?
Joe: So, it's one of those situations. It's totally anonymous in a sense of, it's done all via a wallet address, not by name or anything like that. But at the same time, it's the most open system that anyone can possibly see ever. That might sound a bit strange, but the reason I say that is for two reasons.
Like I say, it's anonymous in the sense of you've got a wallet address, and that wallet address is the identifier to who you are, but, in a lot of circumstances, you don't need to run any kind of KYC [Konw Your Customer] checks on that wallet. And therefore, there is no clear distinction between whose wallet is whose.
The other argument to that is, but actually, some exchanges, so, Binance, Coinbase, places like that, they will expect you to KYC. So that the moment that you trade with one of those, you've already linked that to your name.
I can understand why people consider it to be anonymous, but actually, 9 times out of 10, it probably isn't. The reason then that I say it's the most open system ever is that, even if you could argue that it's anonymous, let's just say, actually, you can follow the flow of every single transaction.
Every single movement of crypto across a blockchain can be tracked and viewed on what's called block explorers on the internet.
So, if I knew your wallet address, I could look at your wallet, I could see your transactions, I could see what you were doing, which also actually makes it much easier for us than you might think to do the tax side of it.
Joanna: In fact, I've read that people are more worried about transparency than anonymity, and that for very high net worth individuals everything can be seen, and then the tax authorities can see everything. Plus, I've heard of AI-related tools that can essentially track you through other forms of online behavior to your wallet address.
I guess why I wanted to start with that is, I still hear comments that relate to what perhaps Bitcoin was back a decade ago, and things have changed a lot. And so, importantly, we are saying that we're going to account for this as we do, let's say I go to a fair and I transact in cash, I will account for that with my accountant in the same way that I will also account for my cryptocurrency.
So, you could ‘somehow try and avoid accounting for it', but we're business people, we want to do the right thing. That's essentially what it comes down to.
Joe: Totally. And look, I speak to people who have this dilemma ‘all the time', their dilemma of whether they should declare it or not. And my point is always, this is an open system, that anybody can look at, at any point, whenever they want.
HMRC (UK tax authority) may not have the capability at the moment in order to be able to find this information, but this is going to stay on the blockchain forever.
It's not going to be taken away and no longer viewable or anything like that. So, even if it takes a couple of years for HMRC to be able to get the ability to be able to do it, they are going to have the ability. So, why would you risk, if you like, that, when you know full well that they're going to be able to access publicly available information?
And actually, you talk about cash, and actually, it's an interesting point because people suggest that cryptos are used for a lot of illicit activities and things like that. But actually, all of that, in principle, can be tracked, whereas cash can't be tracked.
If I drive to where you are now and I hand you a bag of cash, and then I drive away again, who's to ever say what happened to that? And if you then go and use that for illicit activities, for example, even if I didn't, there's no way of tracking that.
Whereas with crypto, if I send you crypto, and then you send that to an illicit activity, I can find that out. So, actually, when people talk about that, you've got to think about actually, well, how much illicit activity is used in the current financial system that can't be followed or tracked?
Joanna: Absolutely. So, just a couple of acronyms there, KYC, which is Know Your Customer, for people listening.
Joe: Know Your Customer.
Joanna: That's when you upload your driver's license and your name and address and what country you're in. And then also, you mentioned HMRC, which is the tax authority here in the UK.
When you're talking about things, is this UK-specific or, given that this is all kind of global, how is it global and how is it not?
Joe: It's a really interesting point, again, because we do now get a lot of inquiries internationally, and we do work internationally, more so on the business side of things than the personal tax side of things. But we do work internationally on personal tax as well, because there are accountants around the world that don't know how to deal with crypto.
We're talking to a guy in the U.S. at the moment where we're going to reconcile all his crypto stuff, and then send that over to his U.S. accountant, who will file it.
Ultimately, the rules are different, in a sense, in every country. There are more tax-friendly jurisdictions for crypto, and there are less friendly jurisdictions for crypto. The rules are different in each country, but a lot of the principles are very similar.
[From Joanna: For country-specific accounting and tax info, check out Koinly tax guides per country]
Joanna: Absolutely. Right, let's get into some specifics.
The listeners are authors, and we sell books, mainly, and there are companies emerging that will help us sell eBooks as NFTs.
So, let's call them NFT books, which are essentially an EPUB file on a specific blockchain, with a smart contract attached in some way, and a buyer can read, collect, and/or sell those NFT books.
Is an NFT book a product? Is it an asset? Is it a collectible? Because I believe these are treated differently for tax purposes.
Joe: I should say this, we're going kinda specific, but also, I just want to reiterate the point around, whilst this is a specific subject, we're not actually talking about specific scenarios, so please do get in touch if this relates to you.
Ultimately an NFT can be multiple different things these days, and people look at NFTs and say, ‘Oh, it's just digital art or what have you.' But actually, the use cases for NFTs are going to be mind-blowing, I think, in the future.
For the first thing to establish is what NFT you are actually creating, or using, or selling, or buying, or what have you. Ultimately, what I do is to try and tie it back to what the kind of traditional underlying asset might be, and what the intention is of what you're doing.
If, for example, you're a creator, so you're a book author, and you create your book as an NFT and you sell that, then, to be honest, you're likely to be taxed under the same kind of rules, if you like, as if your book was another copy. So, if you sell that book for 0.1 Ethereum or whatever it might be, then you will be taxed on the value of that at the point of sale. That's the first, fairly kind of, again, broad brush, but fairly simple approach.
If you're a buyer, obviously you're not going to pay tax on purchasing, but if you then resell that, then there is a tax on reselling of that NFT. So, where that might be different is if you were buying a book, you're in the kind of normal kind of world, you went to a book store, you bought the book, and then you saw your friend the next day, because you read it really quickly, and you said, ‘Here you go. Here's this book. Gimme a pound back for it,' and they gave you a pound, that probably wouldn't ever be declared.
Whereas, with the blockchain, NFTs, at the moment, are not split between a book, a piece of art, a ticket. They're all put under one banner, if you like, as NFTs. So, I think at the moment, there'll be a real challenge between saying that NFT purchase and sale shouldn't be taxed, because ultimately, HMRC would say an NFT's an NFT, therefore there should be tax on that.
The last example is, you will have collectors. So, you will have people who purchase NFTs, or traditional books, to collect. Now, obviously there's a slightly different regime for that under the current tax guidance as well.
Unfortunately, we're in a position where we've got a whole new world, which is opening up to a kind of really large audience, which is fantastic. But unfortunately, the guidance doesn't necessarily follow every single kind of avenue that's been opened. So, in this case, with books and publishers and authors, there is no specific guidance.
That is definitely something that needs to be considered when you're doing this, and to get specific advice on the exact scenario. Like I say, intention's really important, why you're doing it? What would be the implications if you were doing it in the traditional way, and kind of taking it from there. But like I say, it does need to be specific to your scenario.
Joanna: Absolutely. And as you say, intention, and also best endeavors, like, I really tried, and I came to you with these questions, because I want to do the right thing, and I'm going to make decisions about my business based on trying to abide by what the rules are. Maybe I'll write a company minute about what I'm doing, and I will just really, really try hard to do this the right way.
But, as you say, there are no rules yet, so we have to just make it up as we go along, but in the best way, the most appropriate way, that will enable us to run a business, but also, will stay within what the tax authorities want.
Joe: Absolutely. And like I say, that's the trickiest part now, is the fact that there is no specific guidance, and you've got to guess in some sense as what the tax authorities may or may not want you to do.
As we discussed, when we've spoken, it's all around intention. It's all around the kind of backing paperwork that you've got covering your back. If you've made a decision, why have you made it? And here's the reasoning why I did it.
Because if they do change the rules in the future, at least you can say, ‘Look, at the time, these were the rules that were in place, and this is why I made that decision.' You're much more likely to be looked upon positively than if you just said, ‘Oh, I didn't know, so I didn't do anything.' They do say that naivety is not the answer, if that makes sense.
Joanna: Ignorance doesn't count.
Joe: Exactly.
Joanna: You have to try. You have to at least try and find out these things.
Let's go back to, I'm a creator and I sell my book for the 0.1 ETH, as we discussed. And obviously, I'm going to pay income tax on that, completely fine, but also what happens when I sell an eBook right now is, depending on where the customer is, so, some EU countries, for example, Australia, Japan, have a digital sales tax, or a digital VAT, which, at the moment, is covered by the services like Amazon and Apple and Kobo, and they pay those taxes, and then I just get the profit afterwards, which I would pay income tax on.
If we're looking at selling NFT books, and again, we don't know the answer, but what we might think will happen:
Do we have to do this kind of digital VAT, or digital sales tax, on NFT books?
Joe: This is a really hot topic at the moment, not just for VAT on cryptocurrency and NFTs, because it's a similar sort of situation with digital art and tickets, and many kinds of NFTs is, where is your customer? And especially in crypto world, a lot of people like to try and stay as anonymous as they can.
You very rarely get someone tell you their first name straightaway, because it's a space where people are very cautious about their details, security, and things like that. So, you'll quite often find that people aren't being honest, and people will also use VPNs, which, again, earlier I said, acronyms that didn't necessarily mean anything.
A VPN effectively changes the location of your computer. So, if your computer is based in the UK, you can get a VPN which you can route to, I don't know, France. And then, as far as the computer is concerned, you're in France.
People like Netflix and people like that will block, for example, if you've got a subscription in the UK, you can't use it if you're on a computer outside of the UK. So a lot of people will use VPNs to trick the computer to think that it's in the UK, so they can use Netflix and things like that.
Same concept here in crypto, where people will quite often say, ‘I might be sat in the UK, but actually, I want this security and this anonymity etc., so therefore, I'm going to put my IP address to be somewhere else.'
So, it's a really difficult question, because ultimately, who's responsible for that, and HMRC would say you as the seller, you're responsible for finding out where your customer is. But practically, and in reality, that's significantly harder than it might seem.
Ultimately, like I said, the rules at the moment are very, very, very general. And it's the same as the VAT as it is for income tax and capitals gain tax around NFT. So, there is no specific answer to say, ‘If you're an author, and you sell books to the EU, and that country has a digital sales tax, and therefore you'd have to pay that tax.'
The answer at the moment is, again, going back to that point I made earlier, you've got to relate it back to the real-world asset, if you were to sell that. So, at the moment, what we're advising clients is, if you are selling into a country, and you would normally have reported that sales tax under the VAT MOSS regime, then you should continue to do that.
Again, best endeavors with your NFTs. HMRC have said to us that you should track an IP address, the IP address being the computer's location. As I just said, that can be different, but if you've tracked it, and you've got an idea of where people are, whether that's right or not is not your fault, you're not expected to then investigate whether someone's IP address is in the right place.
So, there are certain things you can do. You and I spoke about, could you take an assumption? Let's say currently you sell 50% of your books in the UK and 50% in the U.S. Again, reasonably say, ‘Look, I took a reasonable assumption that 50% of my books were in the UK, therefore 50% of them I charge VAT on, and, or pay VAT on, and 50% I don't.'
There are a lot of assumptions, as you've probably gathered, but what I'm trying to get at is as long as you've got reasoning and justifiable basis for what you're doing, you can't be penalized for doing your best with what's in front of you, is what I'm trying to say.
It is a bit of a game, and you've got to try and work out the best way to play it. But that's what people like me are here for, to talk through your specific scenario, and really give you a bit more comfort on it.
Joanna: I have been trying to encourage the NFT book platforms, which are just emerging, to give us some kind of report on their best endeavors on which countries people are buying from.
So, to put the onus on them, to give us a report that says, ‘Here's your country breakdown as best as we can do it.'
If they at least provide that, then at least that gives me something to go on. So, they're definitely listening, but as you say, this is still all emerging, so it's actually quite, I want to say fun. This is fun for us. We love all this stuff.
Joe: If you're sad like me, then it's fun, but…
Joanna: Oh, no, it's sad like me too. If anyone's still listening, it's fun for them as well!
Joe: Yeah. True.
Joanna: You mentioned capital gains tax, and I feel like capital gains is something that, as authors, we really have not had to think about before. It literally, it has not come up any time in my business of over a decade as an author, is capital gains tax, as it relates to books specifically.
Explain why we need to think about capital gains as authors selling NFTs.
Joe: Really good point. And again, sometimes I forget that actually, you're right, this would probably never really come up in your business or whatnot before.
Quickly on what capital gains tax is. Capital gains tax is a tax on any capital gains. So, the simplistic way to explain it is, if you buy a property, which is an investment property, and you buy it for £100,000, and then two years later you sell it for £200,000, you would pay capital gains tax on the increase in value of that property. In that example, there'd be capital gains tax on the £100,000.
I'm not going to go into the rates, because it depends and all those sorts of things. So, the second concept here, so, let's just say you accept, and I'm going to call it 1 ETH, it would be great to sell a book for an ETH, I'm sure, which is about $3500 at the moment, but, or $3000 maybe, but, depending when this goes out.
But yeah, so, let's just say it's for 1 ETH, and let's just say that when you receive that 1 ETH, you keep that in Ethereum, you don't sell it, and therefore, you're holding that Ethereum.
If, in a week's time, again, what a scenario this would be, that 1 ETH was worth double, so now it's worth, well, let's just call it it's $3000 for one, it's now $6,000 for one, you've now made a $3,000 gain, of which you will pay capital gains tax on.
When I talk about capital gains tax, I'm talking about the increase in the value of an asset that you're holding, that you then subsequently sell.
So, like I said, Ethereum is received at a value. If that goes up when you sell it, and you sell it for a higher value, you will pay tax on the difference between what you sold it for and what you paid for it when you received it. Hopefully that explains it in a fairly non-complex way.
Joanna: Yes. And I think, again, people might have to think about this again and again, or listen several times. I had to think about this quite a lot, and I made a mistake. When we call things taxable events, that's the time at which things become taxable. So, like you said, if someone bought my book, and let's say it's a first edition, why wouldn't it be 1 ETH?
Joe: There you go. Yeah.
Joanna: Sort of, like, the first edition, Charles Dicken's first edition print book is way more than that. The 1 ETH I got when they bought the book, and so that is income taxable, because that was a purchase that they bought, and I received that at that point, so that's a taxable event. But then, as you said, if I wait a week and then I turn that ETH into pounds or dollars, that makes it a taxable event.
If I keep it in ETH, then it just stays there. I don't have to turn it into fiat currency, or pounds, or dollars, or currency in my bank account. I can just leave it there in ETH, and then I don't pay capital gains or loss, because, let's remember, there can be loss as well. I don't have to think about that unless I do something, like I turn that into money in my bank account, or, if I exchange that ETH for, let's say, Bitcoin, if I exchange it, that's a taxable event, or if I download the money, essentially, that's also a taxable event.
Joe: Correct. You've hit the nail on the head there, so maybe you want a job?!
It's a case of a disposal. A taxable event is a disposal of some kind.
Now, in some circumstances, a disposal, like you say, is selling of the asset. It might also be using that to purchase something. For example, you might receive an ETH for your NFT book, and you might use that 1 ETH to then buy an NFT piece of art, or an NFT ticket, or something like that. Any kind of disposal, if you like, of any kind.
You're right to point out, because some people do sometimes get a bit concerned and anxious about this. ETH was to increase tenfold overnight, you would only pay tax if you sold it or disposed of it, and realized that gain. If you don't realize it by disposing it, then there is no tax to pay.
Joanna: I think that's really important. And so, what I did was, I was like, ‘Oh, well. I'll turn this into something else.' I didn't realize that that would trigger a capital gains event in that case. If I had known that, I would've maybe done it at a different point, or just held it there, instead of going, ‘Oh, I should put that in my GBP bank account, because that's a good idea.'
I think it just gives us more to consider. This is a big mindset shift, and so I hope people listening are still with us.
When we do an NFT book, there are different blockchains that we could transact on — and we have to choose carefully.
So, you've mentioned Ethereum, which has the currency ETH, and that is, at the moment, it's expensive to mint. But equally, it's quite stable as a coin.
By holding ETH, I think, probably it'll go up and down, but it will be quite stable.
But there are other services being built on blockchains that are newer, that might have a coin that few have heard of before. I guess what I'm saying is, what do you think about how we can assess risk in terms of which blockchains and which services to use when we're thinking about a longer-term thing?
You said earlier that you think it's mind-blowing as to what the future might hold for NFTs, but many of these blockchains and coins are going to disappear.
They're going to go to zero, in the same way that many of the .com boom companies disappeared. So, what do you think about that? I know it's totally your opinion, by the way.
What do you think about how we can assess risk in terms of which blockchains and which services to use when we're thinking about the long-term?
Joe: You're right. And it's so hard, because you read the white paper which is the pitch deck, if you like, the reason why their product is better than everybody else's, why you should buy it, and whatnot. And it's very easy to get sold on them and think this is the next big thing.
But actually, like you say, a lot of these will very quickly go to zero, and it's really hard to know which ones will and which ones won't, and in fact, probably nigh impossible.
So, what we've got to do is look at blockchain and look at cryptocurrency for what the underlying principles and technologies are that we're looking at, and the blockchains that you're building on, and how many other projects are on there, how much money is on that.
You can look at what's called a ‘total value locked,' which is basically the money that's locked on the platform in one way, shape, or form, which shows you the use. You can also look at the volume that's gone through, the trade volume that's gone through the platform, to see how high or maybe low that is.
There is research that you can do, and it's impossible for me to say which ones are going to be good and which ones are going to be bad. But naturally, if something like Bitcoin and Ethereum has been able, Bitcoin more so, but has been able to be around for as long as it has, and yes, the value's gone up, and yes, the value's gone down, but actually now, there's a fairly good range, say, for Bitcoin to 35K to 45K dollars is pretty much the range, I think, for now.
Ethereum's pretty much $2,700, $2,800 to, like, $3,500, something like that. So, there is that range now, and if you look today, the market's down today, Ethereum's down a couple of percent, different lower-cap coins are down 9%, 10%, 15%, 20%. So, it shows in that, that you can see which ones are the more secure.
You've got to do research, and as we said at the start this is not financial advice and all that sort of stuff.
You've got to do your own research and you've got to look into each project, and really just not be sold on what it says on the tin, and really look at the underlying assets.
Because the biggest thing in crypto is effective because it's peer-to-peer, effectively. I sell my crypto, you will have to buy my crypto. Do you know what I mean?
It's not like a bookie, where you say, ‘Look, I'm going to put a bet on,' and the bookie backs that bet. This is a situation where I've got to want to sell and you've got to want to buy, effectively. So, what that means is there isn't a lot of liquidity, so if it's a small-cap token, where there's not a lot of liquidity, you might actually find that if you receive money in that, you can't actually sell it.
And not because it's a scam, but because there just isn't enough liquidity to sell that at that moment. You've just got to be conscious and careful around what you're receiving, why you're receiving it, and really do some research before you accept anything that is outside of the kind of top two.
Joanna: Absolutely. And right at the beginning, you said this is a financial system. And that's, I think, the big difference between the whole Web 2.0, we were still using normal ‘money.' We didn't have to think about a financial system, really, on the internet, and I feel like this is another step, that I didn't actually realize until I minted my first NFT. And then I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, I've just earned this thing, some ETH. What does that mean?‘
When I started questioning, ‘What does it mean? What does it mean?' that's how I ended up thinking about this.
But, to come to the risk again, how early do you think we are? Obviously Bitcoin's been around what is, 14 years or something? Could crypto fail completely? Is the NFT bubble bursting? Or are we looking at, we're just moving into a new phase, where we're going to have the regulators coming in, we're going to have the central banks coming in, and things are changing?
Where do you think we are in the blockchain and cryptocurrency adoption cycle?
Joe: I still think we're very early. If you look at, and I haven't got the numbers to hand, but if you look at the amount of people adopting cryptocurrency today compared to the amount of people there are in the world, that gives you a slight indication as to where it could go.
There's also a chart out there, it actually shows the adoption curve of the internet, and then the adoption curve of crypto, and crypto is actually ahead of that adoption curve at the same period of time as the internet was.
So, it doesn't mean that it will be in the future, but I think it is more accessible to more people, because you can deal with crypto on a mobile phone, you don't need a hard-wired internet connection, you can access crypto on your phone.
This chart is awesome!!!
Acording to Coinbase, #crypto to hit 1 billion users within 5 years from a current 200 million! pic.twitter.com/4aYXOlIikV
— Lark Davis (@TheCryptoLark) December 17, 2021 Lots of people don't have bank accounts in third world countries and things like that. They don't actually need a bank account for crypto. They can hold it in their own wallet.
So, personally, I think it is still very early, and I think there's still a huge increase in what crypto will do, and what blockchain will do. The same, in a sense, for NFTs.
Personally, I think we're past the phase of spending millions of dollars on one-time images. I think that boom has probably gone out. And I'm not saying we never will see that again, but I think that clearly is a boom-and-bust type scenario. You don't spend, every week, you don't spend millions on on digital art. It's just not sustainable.
I do think that NFTs are here forever, and that's because I think that the utility that an NFT can provide is more important than the image that's portrayed on it, if that makes sense. So, books being an example, but also, we're looking at launching an NFT for artwork, so we are going to launch an NFT. We're just finalizing the details.
We'll hopefully be able to announce it in the next couple of weeks, where we're going to be able to do some quite interesting things with our business, and a lot of that will be locked, if you like, behind an NFT.
So, if you own one of our NFTs, you'll get access to certain things, and if you don't own an NFT, you wouldn't get access to it, for example. I think what NFTs have is a huge future, being able to trade products and services between people, legitimately.
Ticketing is a perfect example. If you go to a sports game, a football game, or the races, or something like that, you're going to speak to someone, no doubt, who says, ‘Do you want to buy a ticket, please?' Or, ‘Do you want to sell a ticket?' The ticket house, because there's a huge black market for selling, you know, tickets. And some of those are legit, some of them won't be.
[From Joanna: You can watch or listen to my presentation on NFTs for Authors here.]
Whereas with NFTs, you've got that whole market on a secure, legitimate blockchain. So, if I want to sell my ticket to you, I can sell it and you know it's legit. You don't need to know who I am. I know people that have got season tickets to football clubs, and they've got a little card. If they were to sell it to someone randomly, they'd have to give them that card and trust that they'd get it back.
With the blockchain, you don't need to do that. You just transfer the right to that game to that person. They go. The ability to do things like that, I think, is phenomenal, but I don't think that there will be a huge market for million-dollar pictures of apes.
Joanna: It's changing. That's what we're saying, it's changing. And again, the media likes all the hypey-hypey stories, but behind the hype are your business, my business. We're looking at what we're going to do for the next couple of decades in terms of really interesting business models.
I'm excited to see what you're going to do. Now, many people listening will be like, ‘Oh my goodness, I just don't know where to start.'
Tell us about you and your team, and everything you do online.
Joe: Our focus is, as you said in the intro, one of our brands is solely focused on crypto. And that isn't just the kind of accounting and taxation side. It is an educational side as well, and I talked briefly a second ago about an NFT that we're considering. I don't know how we're going to launch it.
We do want to build in some educational content around that as well, because we are really passionate about crypto and the future of it. So, definitely do kind of follow us and check us out, because especially with my kind of social media and things like that, I am trying to be educational, as well as tax-related things and stuff like that. So, do check us out. We want to be able to bring mainstream adoption to crypto in the professional services area.
We want to be a leader in professional services and how you deal with crypto and blockchain technology within your business or your personal life. So, that's our focus and our goal, and we're doing well so far, but there's a long way to go.
Reach out to us, and we're more than happy to help. So, our website is mynaaccountants.co, and my Twitter is @crypjo091. I'm fairly active every day. And @mynaaccountants is our business Twitter as well.
Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Joe. That was great.
Joe: No worries. Thanks for having me.
The post Financial And Tax Implications Of NFTs With Joe David, Crypto Accountant first appeared on The Creative Penn.
In this inspirational interview, crime writer Angela Marsons talks about how she overcame years of rejection and broke out of societal expectations to reach writing and publishing success. She also talks about tips for writing a long-running crime series, and how she weaves her home of the Black Country into her stories.
In the intro, pics from Arizona, Dear Writer, Are You Intuitive? by Becca Syme and Susan Bischoff and 5 Key Tips for Profitable Book Marketing webinar, 18 May, 2022.
Today's show is sponsored by IngramSpark, who I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 39,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries and more. It's your content – do more with it through IngramSpark.com.
Angela Marsons is the Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of crime thrillers with over 5 million books sold and translations into 29 different languages.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- The long journey to publication — with plenty of rejection and difficulties along the way
- Overcoming the mindset of ‘writing isn't for people like me'
- Tips on writing a long-running book series with characters that readers want to return to
- Discovery writing by following your curiosity
- Writing darker themes
- Working with a digital-first publisher
You can find Angela Marsons at AngelaMarsons-books.comand on Twitter @WriteAngie
Transcript of Interview with Angela Marsons
Joanna: Angela Marsons is the ‘Wall Street Journal' and ‘USA Today' bestselling author of crime thrillers with over 5 million books sold and translations into 29 different languages. Welcome to the show, Angela.
Angela: Thank you very much. I'm so pleased to be here. I've listened to the podcast many times, it's fabulous. So, I'm absolutely thrilled to get the chance to have a chat.
Joanna: Oh, brilliant.
First up, tell us a bit about you and how you got into writing.
Angela: I always loved writing at school. I used to love the feel of a pencil on paper and just getting the ideas down, and exploring my feelings, and that kind of thing. I wasn't really good a lot at school.
Then my English teacher, and when I was about 12, 13, asked if she could bring in a couple of books that were above my reading age, and they were Andrea Newman books. I read them and they got me totally hooked on exploring emotions, and frailties, and just people, in general.
That was when I realized that, as well as loving reading, I wanted to be the person telling some stories as well. I wanted to be writing these things. And from that point on, and I just used to write down everything.
I used to explore different situations. I would pretend that my dad had left us, and then I would explore how I felt about it. I'd write all these feelings down, and I'd been in absolute bits by the end of it. And he'd only gone to the pub. But at the time, I made it feel real so I could explore how I felt about it.
Then I started writing short stories, and I would submit them to magazines. Never actually got one accepted, but then I moved on to novels and started submitting those as well. And that was a very, very long process until Bookouture gave ‘Silent Scream' a chance in 2014, I think it was that they signed me. So, it was a long journey, but I wouldn't change anything about it.
Joanna: What else did you do for your day jobs along the way? Have day jobs featured in your books in any way?
Angela: Oh, they certainly have. I started out in admin because when I was at school, the best thing you could do was learn to type because it was assumed that you would be in an office job when you left school.
You weren't really taught to aspire to anything like writing. That was not for people like me.
And so I did all the things I was supposed to do, the typing, the office practice. I spent quite a few years, just generally going from office job to office job. And then I somehow ended up in security and security management.
I spent 19 years at a shopping center managing a team of 72, which has given me a great deal of fodder for the books. Shopping centers are featured, security officers are featured.
I like to think that everything is ammunition, it's all inspiration for people and situations. So, it was mainly security management that I spent my working life doing.
Joanna: You said that “writing books was not for people like you,” maybe explain what you mean by that because, obviously, we've got listeners from all over the place, but I feel like we do have quite a class system in the UK.
Why did you feel like writing wasn't for ‘people like you'? And how did you change that to be something else?
Angela: I think it was just our environment, very working class. And it was considered that you'd done well, if you did manage to end up in an office, it was just the way it was.
I don't think there's anybody to blame, but teachers kind of, like, that was your target, that was to work in an office and get a nice, solid stable job. The really intelligent people were encouraged to go into banking, and that kind of thing.
Our options of subjects that we could take, there was never anything in creative writing. I took, obviously, English literature and English language, but there was nothing else that you could take or do to head you in that direction. It was all office-based.
Although, I am glad to learn to type now. Typing is coming very, very useful for this second draft and the third draft.
So, you were guided in that direction, you were guided towards office work. And the boys were guided towards woodwork and metal work. There weren't many opportunities around that.
Joanna: Because some people, I think, feel hemmed in by societal attitudes to what they should do, but obviously, you have broken out of that.
How did you break out of that attitude?
Angela: I think it was just because I loved writing so much, I did it in my spare time. I didn't go to college. I didn't have any formal training. I just read books, looked for inspiration, read how-to books.
There weren't podcasts around, then it was literally just getting books from the bookshop. Even Amazon, wasn't a thing then, oh, dear me. I'm showing my age now. So, it was a case of buying books, and reading them, and gaining inspiration, and then sitting down and just writing.
I think the best way of learning the craft is to just keep doing it, just keep writing.
I do firmly believe that nothing is wasted, everything that we write. Even if we then look at it and think, ‘Oh my goodness, that's rubbish. I'm never going to let anybody see that.'
I still believe that we learned something through everything that we write. So I just kept doing the in and around day jobs to get up early and write, and then stay up late and do some more writing and started to submit. I started to submit short stories, first of all, to ‘Writing Magazine' and ‘Writers' News.'
The first time I actually got shortlisted was the very first validation I ever had that actually, I've got something. I don't know what it is, but I've been shortlisted for a competition. And that must have kept me going for about 10 years because that's the worst thing is, certainly, when you've not really had any education, you think, ‘I'm just chasing a dream.'
While chasing the dream, you're doing something that you love and that you really enjoy, and that you would be doing anyway.
If the passion is there, the passion is there, you're going to write, whether you're getting published or not, because you just can't help yourself.
You see a pencil, you see a notepad, and that's it. You put those together, and you're going to start writing something. So I think it was just a case of keep trying and keep trying.
But my partner, Julie, we've been together 35 years. She's been on this journey every step of the way. And she would just constantly encourage me. Sometimes I'd have five, six, seven rejections come back in one day. I felt sorry for the postman because he was logging these three chapters and synopsis about, and then bringing them back to me.
Julie would always say, ‘It's their loss, it will happen. It's their loss, it will happen.' And she kept the faith far more than I did, but I never stopped writing. Sometimes I would stop submitting for a few months and just concentrate on the writing. And it eventually did happen. She was right. But it took a while. It took a while.
Joanna: I love that you've had such a supportive partner, and I know that's hard for some people who don't have that. And I love that you got there eventually.
I wanted to also bring up something else. So, listeners, again, we have listeners from over 200 countries in the world. And you have quite a particular accent, which I think we should talk about because your books are also set in a particular area.
Tell us a bit about the Black Country, and what's so special about your area?
Angela: Well, the thing is I spent many years writing books that I thought that publishers would like using characters that, again, I thought that they would like. I avoided my local area, the Black Country thinking, ‘Well, that's not sexy, that's not appealing. Good books are always set in London, or Liverpool, or Manchester, big city where you can really explore the culture and the diversity.'
I thought, ‘Well, nobody's going to want to read about the Black Country.' And then, of course, year-on-year rejection on rejection. ‘Silent Scream,' the first book in the ‘Kim Stone' series was a bit of a rebellion, and it was a case of, ‘Okay. I'm going to write about the character that's been in my head for a very long time. And I'm going to set it in an area that I know. Yes, it's dark. Yes, it's industrial, but so is my main character. She's quite dark.' And so, actually, they could work quite well together.
‘Silent Scream' was kind of my rebellion book. And it was my first crack at a crime book. I fully expected to get to 40,000 words and hit a wall. And I think, ‘Oh, well, at least okay crime a try.'
But it just kept coming. It's almost like the character took control of the pencil. And I started having to rewrite ideas because, I thought, ‘No, she wouldn't do that.' And I just explored the area and thought, ‘Now, this works, this character in my local area that I know and understand works well.' And that was it.
Then, it was like, ‘Okay. She's always going to be in the Black Country because that's what works.' So, I think that even if people don't know the Black Country, they can identify with an area that's rich in industry, or was in years gone by in coal, in steel. And I think they can identify with that kind of area and that kind of community.
Joanna: And, of course, for you, it's authenticity in voice as well, isn't it? Because that is your area and your characters there.
How much of you is in your character, Kim Stone?
Angela: I often say to people, and I get lots of people who say, ‘What would Kim do?' She's probably a good representation of what I'd like to be, but with better social skills, because she's very determined, and she's very focused, and diligent, and tenacious.
I'd love like some more of those qualities, but I think there's not too much of me. I think there's a lot of qualities that I wish I had more of. But note, the voice had just been in my head for a long time and I never actually let it out because I didn't like it myself. I didn't like the sound of her. So, it was, if I don't like her because the readers aren't going to like her very much, so let's just keep her in there.
Joanna: Oh, well, no, I love it. Now, just coming back to the sense of place. So, the Black Country is basically the West Midlands of the UK, people can have a look on a map. But it's not actually a massive area. It's not like a whole country, it's an area in the country. You've got 16 books in this series.
How do you plot and plan these books while still keeping them in the same area? Do you use the same places over and over again, for example?
Angela: Sometimes. Sometimes I use areas that are very familiar to people and then do sometimes make some areas or some locations, or if I can't think of somewhere that fits exactly what I want, but I'll model it on something similar in the area, and just give it different name. But now there's this sort of like plenty of small areas of the Black Country to explore.
And because the West Midlands police forces, I think, it's the second-largest in the country. Second to the Met, it does cover quite a vast area. And although in the books, Kim covers Halesowen, under the Dudley and Halesowen policing unit.
We can have a bit of license and send her elsewhere around the border because she's a bit nosy and she would get involved in areas that don't really concern. So, we do have the scope to use the entire West Midlands really.
Joanna: That's brilliant. Now, as I mentioned, though, there are 16 books in the series so far, and many listeners want to write a long-running series. But it can be difficult writing.
What are your tips for writing a long-running episodic series?
Angela: I think, definitely, start off with characters that you yourself feel strongly about and that you want to explore. I deliberately made Kim in a work relationship with a happily married man, because I didn't want the reader to constantly be thinking, ‘Well, they won't. It's a very clear, no, they won't.'
That gives me the opportunity to introduce quite a bit of banter between, because Kim hasn't really got any friends except for Brian, her work partner. And so we have quite a lot of banter there. So, although there's no romance between Kim and other characters, I soften the darkness with the humor rather than the romance, because that's not how I want to write the character.
There's plenty of opportunities for humor. All of the characters that are in the core team, there's lots that I want to explore about their characters, but also I bring in different characters on a consultancy basis to just mix it up a little bit, give another dynamic.
Also it's important to know when a character has served their time. I did do something in Book 8, which has caused a lot of bloggers and reviewers to say that they'll never ever forgive me. I won't say what it is, but it is important to know if there's nothing more about a character that you've got to say that will interest the reader. And it's a tough decision.
I cried writing certain scenes. But to try and keep it fresh, you have to let certain ones go. But also I think it's creating characters that readers can identify with.
And that's one of the things that always comes up in reviews about the books. The books are often referred to as a pair of old slippers, which I take is a huge compliment because people will say they open the book and joining the characters, again, is like putting on a pair of old slippers.
There's that comfort in knowing the characters and content in that space, they know how the characters are going to act, how they're going to respond in certain situations. And so I think they don't always have to be completely likable. Kim isn't completely likable, but she does have redeeming features.
She's quite rude, but she's passionate. So, always give the reader a reason to like the character, if you want them to like them, to hate them if you don't, and give a good cross-section of personalities.
Joanna: Did you set out to plan a long-running series? Because 16 books, I mean, did you think that far ahead?
How did you do the plotting and the planning right at the beginning?
Angela: No, I had no idea. By the time Bookouture signed me, three books were already written because I had been with a London Agent for two years, which ended really rather badly. And that was the worst time of, certainly, mine and Julie's time because I'd given not work to try and give the writing thing a go.
I'd taken voluntary redundancy after 19 years. And suddenly, we were selling our possessions to pay the mortgage, and that went on for a few months. I finally got a job of working night shifts, 12-hour night shifts. And then the reader that I'd worked with at the agency, she'd sent the ‘Silent Scream' to Bookouture without me really knowing.
She let me know, and I was like, ‘Oh, that's nice.' I couldn't really get excited about it because I absolutely knew that the response was going to be, ‘We like it. We just don't love it.' Which is the response I'd had for over 20 years.
But then when they did respond, which was a few days later, there was no book. And it was, like, ‘What other books have you written? What other ideas have you got?'
So I've got three books written, and they wanted to sign me initially for four. I didn't really have a plan beyond those four because I just thought, ‘Well, you know, it'd be nice if 500 people read ‘Silent Scream', see what happens. I didn't have any expectations.
There wasn't really a long-term plan at all. I always knew that there would be a lot of stories that I could explore with Kim.
I don't plan. I'm a complete pantser. I tend to write the books around a subject that interests me or intrigues me. And then I build a plot outwards from that subject. And that's how I plot.
I tend to know how I'm going to start, how I'm going to finish. And the in-between is a complete and utter blur. I allow it to happen organically.
Once I start writing, that's when I get ideas for other characters and other storylines I'll be writing. And then I'll be making notes on another piece of paper saying, ‘Oh, and when she goes here, she'll meet this person. And then this person's going to have this story.'
I do find that my best ideas come once I'm actually writing the book. As long as I know the first two or three chapters, I can then get on a roll, and then the bite comes. I always call it the bite. I don't want to put the pencil down, I want to be in my room every minute of the day, just getting this story down on paper.
Joanna: That's so lovely to hear about that. And coming back on, because I'm similar to you, I'm like, ‘Oh, this subject really intrigues me.'
The history of anatomy, my book Desecration. I went to an Anatomy Museum in London and I'm like, ‘Whoa, body parts in jars. That's interesting. Who are these people? And how did they get there? And what if there's a murder in the Anatomy Museum?' Then I looked at that.
Tell us about some of the subjects that have intrigued you that have spun off into stories?
Angela: In ‘Lost Girls,' that was Book 3, it remains my favorite. I wanted to explore the dynamics of a friendship when both children were kidnapped. I just wanted to explore what that would do to a friendship, what that would do to the parents.
It was such a horrific situation to be in, how do you try and save the life of your own child while knowingly sacrificing another child that you know almost as well as your own? That was just an idea that built-in. And that remains my favorite book.
Book 4, ‘Play Dead.' I wanted to explore very similar to what you were just saying, a body farm. I wanted to explore what kind of experiments that they do on a body farm.
I did have many, many emails after ‘Play Dead' saying, ‘Does this facility actually exist in the West Midlands?' I was like, ‘No, it's completely fictional. We don't have a body farm.' But the research that goes into looking into these things is I love it because then I'm learning. I love to learn about new subjects.
I wanted to write about hate crimes, which I did in Book 6. I wanted to write about cults and the methods that they use for pulling you, in which I did in, I think it was Book 12.
Most of the books, or all of the books, come from either subject that interests me, or an idea that I just want to explore and then build a crime story out from that. So, I suppose the crime story comes second to the interest in the subject.
Joanna: Yes, totally. The same for me. I really love that you say that because that's how I start. I feel like everybody starts in different places in terms of how the idea starts.
And then we all end up in the same place, which is, we all have a finished book with the same types of things in character, and plot, and theme, and all of that. But we can all come from it from different angles, right?
It doesn't matter where you start, as long as you finish with a book.
Angela: Definitely. I think you can get caught up in what is the right and wrong way to do it because once I was lucky enough to do this for a living. I started to think, ‘I'm doing it all wrong. Now, I'm not planning. I'm not plotting. I'm not doing chapter outlines. I'm not writing out character profiles.'
You can get caught in thinking the one-size-fits-all, and that everybody must do it a certain way.' I did try that with a book. I got to about chapter 7 and I was bored because there was no so surprise in it for me, I knew exactly what was going to happen from start to finish. And so there wasn't that organic surprise of, ‘Oh, here's a new idea. I know what I can do with that character.'
It went in the bin. I learned from that, I thought, ‘It may not be everybody's way of doing it, but it's my way of doing it.' And I'll keep doing it until it doesn't work anymore. Luckily, it continues to work. I always breathe a sigh of relief when I get to the end of the first draft of a new book. And it's like, ‘Oh, I got there.' It's never a given. But I do think that we can become embroiled in what is the right and wrong way to do something. What's right is what works for you.
Joanna: Totally agree. And it's interesting, you mentioned the body farm there. I get fascinated with these things, too. Do you think there's something in the darker crime writes?
We don't know each other. We've never met before. And you come across as a very happy bubbly person and people say the same about me, and yet, we write these darker books.
What role does writing darker things play in our lives? And how do you deal with some of what I'm sure people say about you in the same way they say about me?
Angel: They do. I do have messages in the nicest possible way saying, ‘How do you sleep at night?' But I don't have any trouble sleeping at all, to be honest, because I think, all I write about is probably what I'd like to read about. And if I don't find it interesting, I don't think anybody else will find it interesting.
So, I think a lot of the things is you can explore, and I've always said there's not any subject that I wouldn't explore, however horrific, as long as it's handled sensitively. I think that's where you have to be careful is how much detail you include because we don't want to be sensationalist about any subject.
I don't want any headline-grabbing lines that cause people to feel revolted or real negative emotion because, at the end of the day, we're entertaining. So, for example, when I read a lot about body farms and researched it. There was an awful lot left out because it wasn't necessary for the story.
I probably take it on what I want to read, the level of detail that I'd like to read. And in the case, in the books over the time, I've explored child abuse and child cruelty, but I've tried to do it sensitively so that people get a picture of what I'm writing. But I don't need to spell it out.
I don't need to put people in that kind of position of feeling uncomfortable or don't want to trigger anybody. So, I think you can write about subjects, but you just have to try and do it sensitively.
Joanna: Yes. And I think if people are reading crime thrillers, they know what they're going to get. Don't they? That it's part of the genre.
Angela: It is. But surprisingly, the amount of emails I get with saying, ‘I didn't realize that this was involved.' I've looked back and I thought, ‘But it was on the blurb.' And you respond as politely as you can because you don't want anybody to be upset after reading any of the books or any portion of the books.
Unfortunately, you can't list everything that everybody might be offended by because we're all offended by different things.
I personally can't read anything to do with animal cruelty. I can have serial killers murdering as many people as you like, but I can't read anything about animal cruelty because it stays with me, and the pictures I can't get out of my head afterwards. So, it affects me quite negatively.
It's a fine line of trying to do the story in your head justice but trying not to offend anybody.
I'll get emails saying about the use of language, which I do. I do try and keep bad language to a minimum, but then I get messages saying, ‘Taking the Lord's name in vain.' And it's like, these are police officers. They have to show their frustration, and horror, and disgust somehow. And ‘Oh my golly, gosh,' isn't going to cut for it time every. Sometimes we need something a little bit stronger.
Joanna: Yes. And these are all decisions we have to make as authors. It's funny on the swearing because the very first couple of novels I wrote had some swear words in that Americans consider swear words, and some British people don't consider swear words.
In the end, I just took them all out. I was like, ‘You know, you're fine with the murder and the explosions and all of that, but not the swear words.' So, as you said, we are entertainers.
We write the books we want to read, but also there are some lines that we do have to set up for our own writing.
And then, look, if people don't want to read your books, they're not going to read your books, right? They make their own choice.
Angela: That's the way you have to look at it in the end. When you've made a mistake, and I made a mistake in a recent book, and it was my own fault. I had a lady contact me to say that she was most upset by my use of the term ‘committed suicide' and not realizing what I'd done.
Obviously, I went and had a look, and I sent back a totally apologetic email explaining that was my fault, my ignorance, I should have known better about the term being now offensive. And it's not a mistake I will ever make again.
Readers letting you know how they felt about something actually can be quite a good thing.
And I think when you've made a mistake, you just take it on the chin, and you admit it, and you apologize, and you just don't do it again.
Joanna: Yes. And we should just say the term ‘died by suicide,' I believe is the correct term.
Angela: Exactly.
Joanna: Yes. And that's just partly to do with our age as well, I think, it's that we are brought up with a certain term.
Angela: It is. I never thought of the word ‘committed' as being in relation to a crime. So, it was a complete and utter revelation to me because it was just a term that I'd grown up with. And being told it was an outdated term, it was an education for me.
But I was thankful to be suitably advised, if you know what I mean, because I learned from it. And I won't do it again because I would hate to cause any offense to a family that's been through such a tragedy by me just not knowing the correct phraseology.
We do make mistakes, and we just have to hold our hands up. I did on this occasion just said, ‘I am so sorry. And it will not happen again.'
Joanna: And as you mentioned toward the beginning, a lot of this is about learning. And we put our learning in things and then we change them later if necessary. And that's life. You can't be right all the time on every single thing.
Angela: Absolutely right.
Joanna: I do want to just ask you about publishing, because you mentioned earlier that you had a bad experience with an agent that you'd got to a point where you were selling your possessions because you'd been laid off and you were doing these night shifts. And it sounds an absolute nightmare.
Tell us about because Bookouture. Some people might know, some people don't, but it's a digital-first imprint.
What is the difference between digital-first publishers and other types of publishers?
Angela: I think one of the main differences, and certainly, for me, works is the schedule. I write two books a year, and everything in digital publishing is so immediate, there'll be a cover reveal. And then a little bit later, the book will go on NetGalley and then you'll have a publication day. And then before you know it, you've got a cover reveal for the next one and NetGalley.
Lots of things happen throughout the year, which, obviously, with traditional publishing, it's a lot slower and longer process than that. So, I absolutely love the pace of the digital marketing.
The books have been on shelves in the supermarket. And obviously, when I was writing all those years, the dream was absolutely to see the books on shelves in supermarkets and bookshops. And I have to say, it was lovely. But as I say to people, the books in the bookshops might pay for the electric, but the eBooks pay the mortgage.
For me, being with a digital-first publisher works perfectly. I wouldn't want to be with anybody else. I continue to sign more deals with Bookouture. And I have told them, they'll have to get security to throw me out when they eventually don't want to publish the books anymore. They're happy with that. I'm happy with that, but there is nothing that any other publisher could give me that Bookouture don't.
I don't have an agent. Everything is transparent with me, and my editor, and the marketing team. Because when I joined Bookouture, it was four people, which was Oliver who founded it. There was Kim, the publicity manager. There was Claire, the publishing director. And then Keshini, who had brought me on board. She then joined the team as my editor.
She was my editor for the first eight books. So, it was a very small team. And it's a much bigger team now, but it's still is transparent. I can send anybody an email or have a chat with anybody on the phone any time at all. Everyone is accessible.
There's no cause at all for me to want to be published by anybody else. And ultimately, I'm a hugely loyal person.
And after all those years and a very bad experience, Bookouture gave the books a try. They gave me and Kim Stone a chance.
That will never, ever be forgotten because if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now. I do still pinch myself every day that I am lucky enough to call something that I love doing, a job, and that never gets old. Every single day, I realize how lucky I am. And so there is nothing any other publisher could do for me that Bookouture don't. So, now I'm not moving. They're stuck with me.
Joanna: I love that you are so positive and grateful about your publisher because many authors, obviously, have disappointing experiences, but it sounds like you had all your disappointment before you got your publisher and now you are happy.
We should point out that you joined in 2014, as you mentioned, it was very early. And I think, I'm just checking 2017, Bookouture was bought by Hachette. And so is no longer the, I know you said it still has the same feeling for you, but it is quite different now.
I don't want to give the impression to people listening that it's the same, it's not even the same company anymore, basically, it has changed. But obviously, your experience is amazing. So, those relationships have obviously kept you going through the whole time.
In turn, let's just talk about marketing for a minute, because you mentioned marketing there. And many people joining a publisher think that they never have to do marketing again because the publisher does that.
What kind of marketing things do you have to do? And what does Bookouture do?
Angela: I'm really not very good at it. But what I try and do is the publisher marketing team, they are fabulous and they know what I'm comfortable with because I'm a huge social anxiety sufferer. So, in-person things is not something I'm very good at doing.
I think COVID got me able to do podcasts and Facebook Lives and interviews. I'm a huge anxiety sufferer. So, these bigger things tend to paralyze me. Listeners with anxiety will completely get what I'm talking about.
What I try and do is stay accessible. Kim, Noelle, Ellen, Sarah, and the rest of the team, they are looking for opportunities where we can advertise the books, or just get some coverage, or run publication days and that kind of thing.
And what I try and do is to interact as much as I possibly can on social media, on Twitter, on Facebook. I've got to be honest, I can't get my head around Instagram. I've tried. TikTok is a complete unknown quantity to me.
I've got my also page on Facebook and the website. And I just try and interact in the book groups, the book clubs online and that kind thing, and respond to all the messages. When there's a new book out, that takes over the day job because it's suddenly, it's like this woosh of attention, which is fabulous.
I am allowed to spend publication day completely on social media and do nothing else. So, that's what I try and do. And then whatever it is that Kim, Sarah, and Noelle told me to do.
Joanna: That's great. I think, as you say, you are open to their suggestions, but then you are participating in a very positive way, like being on this show. Your publicist did approach me, but your participation is wholehearted.
You mentioned anxiety, I also have the same thing, maybe not as bad. But going to London Book Fair last week, it was an absolute nightmare. I was so scared. And I sometimes get on the phone like this and my heart is pounding. And so that doesn't necessarily go away. But as you say, you kind of just have to go, ‘Well, this is my dream job, and I have to do this.' Right?
You have to talk yourself into it.
Angela: Well, now doing things like this, now I just see them as having a chat. And Julie put that in my head. She was like, ‘Look, you're in your own home, you're in your own environment where you feel comfortable. You're just going to chat with people.'
A couple of years ago, it wouldn't have been as easy as it is now because doing this, I would be conscious of my accent and I would be trying to cover it. And I would think that I'm just going to say the wrong thing. And all these things are going on in your head while you're trying to talk.
Julie would just keep saying to me, ‘Just be yourself, speak like yourself. People know you come from the Black Country. It doesn't matter how you try to hide it, it's going to come through, and just be yourself.' So, now, it's just, I'm going online to have a chat, and that's it.
It's far more enjoyable than it used to be when I think, ‘Oh god, I'm going to say these wrong. I'm this wrong. I'm going to mess this up. I'm not going to say this.' And now I just don't think about it. I just roll with it now, which is a lot less stressful.
Joanna: Indeed, and you are a fantastic interviewee by the way. I love your accent. And I think people listening will love your accent.
We judge ourselves by standards that other people might not judge us by.
Angela: It's true. It's true because I had this delivery guy the other day anyway because we just got out of the Black Country, Worcestershire. And he delivered some soil, and he went, ‘Oh, that's a Brummy accent.' I went, ‘No, it isn't, it's Black Country. And you could get killed for saying things like that.'
That's the thing. It's always an association with a Brummy accent, which I think is viewed quite negatively. Brummy and Black Country, we like to keep the difference.
Joanna: I think it's brilliant.
Tell people where they can find you and your books online.
Angela: Definitely on Amazon, on iBooks, on Kobo. So, they're all out there. The paperbacks are available. The audio is available. So, yet, I think they're pretty much spread across all of the online mediums.
Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Angela. That was great.
Angela: No, it's been brilliant. It's been lovely to have a chat. It's flown by.
The post Writing A Successful Crime Thriller Series With Angela Marsons first appeared on The Creative Penn.
How can you make more money without growing the size of your business? What systems and mindset do you need to focus on in order to leverage your limited time? Elaine Pofeldt talks about Tiny Business, Big Money in this interview.
In the intro, Google Play Books opens up their AI narration for audiobooks; thoughts on Twitter and Elon Musk [PR Newswire], and Imaginable: How to see the future coming and be ready for anything, by Jane McGonigal.
Plus, limited time: Writing Craft and Business ebook and course bundle [Storybundle.com/writing]; and Self Publishing 101 by Mark Dawson course (affiliate link).
Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, where you can get free ebook formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Get your free Author Marketing Guide at www.draft2digital.com/penn
Elaine Pofeldt is an independent journalist specializing in small business and entrepreneurship, as well as an author, editor, and ghostwriter. Elaine was previously on the show in 2020 talking about her previous book The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business. Today we're talking about her latest book Tiny Business, Big Money, Strategies for Creating a High-Revenue Microbusiness.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- The definition of a microbusiness, and how that applies to solopreneurs
- How successful microbusinesses survived the pandemic by diversifying
- Why we need to separate the ‘writer' from the ‘business owner' and work out what's really important
- Tools and strategies of successful microbusinesses
- The importance of long-term thinking and building relationships
- Breaking through the ‘low price' barrier to sell higher value products
- What works for marketing non-fiction books?
You can find Elaine Pofeldt at TinyBusinessBigMoney.comand on Twitter @ElainePofeldt
Transcript of Interview with Elaine Pofeldt
Jo: Elaine Pofeldt is an independent journalist specializing in small business and entrepreneurship, as well as an author, editor, and ghostwriter. Elaine was previously on the show in 2020 talking about her previous book The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business. Today we're talking about her latest book Tiny Business, Big Money, Strategies for Creating a High-Revenue Microbusiness. Welcome back to the show, Elaine.
Elaine: Thank you so much, Joanna, it's great to be here.
Jo: I'm excited to talk about this. So, let's start with your definition.
What is your definition of a tiny business or a micro business?
Elaine: For the purposes of this book, I looked at businesses that were 20 employees or less, but, generally speaking, they were 5 employees or less. And some of them didn't have employees, they just had a recurring team of contractors.
What was different from the first book is that, if they did use contractors, it wasn't the random contractor here and there, this was a team. And the owner of the business had to act as a leader of a team, which is a big transition for a lot of solopreneurs.
Jo: I think this is why I wanted to talk to you because this is exactly what most authors listening have. My business is a tiny business, I'm the only employee, but I have a team of freelancers and I manage it all.
What was it that made you want to write this book after the last one?
What is it about micro businesses that made you go, ‘Yes, I need to write another book on this'?
Elaine: What got me interested in micro businesses was, as a business journalist, I noticed that almost all of the coverage on small businesses was about startups that were hoping to scale into the next unicorn. There was very little about the type of business that most people actually aspire to run, which is the solo business.
A lot of people are looking for a lifestyle business that allows them to replace their income from a corporate job but not have the stress. They don't necessarily want to scale, they like to keep their business small.
What I found was, after I did the first business, a number of the businesses said, ‘Elaine, we're really sorry but we hired someone,' and I would say, ‘that's awesome. You don't have to apologize to me for hiring somebody. I'm not against growing a business.'
What I think the challenge was for a lot of them was the leadership part of it. When you start transitioning from being a writer to being a writer with a team, you need to communicate more. And even though communication may be your forte, it's a different type of communication as to what is expected of people on the team, when are the deliverables due, what does good look like, and that sort of thing.
You can lose the little bit of freedom if you don't get it right because you're then always having to put out fires. So, I thought, ‘What can I find out from entrepreneurs who are a step or two ahead of these entrepreneurs in terms of growing their business past the one-person stage that will help them to avoid those pitfalls and keep their great lifestyle?' And that is what this new book is about.
Jo: So much to unpack there, but I do want to just come back to you, the timeline of this. Because 2020, when we talked last time, to now, which is we're recording this in April, 2022, well, of course we've had 2 years of a global pandemic, which is still going on in a lot of places.
How has the pandemic impacted tiny businesses?
Elaine: It's had a huge effect. A lot of them closed, here in the U.S., and I'm sure that's true around the world. What I found in keeping up with the entrepreneurs in the first book and in learning the stories of the entrepreneurs in the second book was the ones that survived were very diversified.
They didn't have just one sales channel. For instance, if they were a brick-and-mortar business that did service, maybe they also had a product.
I think writers did pretty well overall because we do digital work, to some extent, our whole careers are online. But even so there was some disruption for people in terms of their client base.
Maybe some of their clients weren't digitally-based and took a hit and, therefore, didn't need the services that they once did, or couldn't afford it.
It behooved everybody, I think, to diversify, find new customer pools, and really make sure they were optimizing their business so that there was not a lot of waste in it. And that's what the key to survival was, I think, for many of them.
Jo: You mentioned lifestyle and a lifestyle business, which is what I have. I'm one of those people also, I don't want to scale in terms of the number of employees. I do want to scale in terms of money, which is why I like, that you say, a high-revenue micro business.
But in terms of the lifestyle, we've also heard a lot about the issues with working from home and, obviously, people have had childcare. Is lifestyle business, or freedom you also mentioned, is that actually false?
Does running your own micro business really give you these things or do you actually end up just working all the time?
Elaine: A lot depends on the systems that you put in place. A lifestyle business can take over your life and be your lifestyle if you're not careful. But that's where being very conscious is important.
Sometimes I know I've made the mistake of taking on clients who take far too much time, they're not a good fit for the business. And that can cut into your time with your children or your pets or your hobbies or the other things that matter to you.
You have to be very mindful, I think, in terms of which clients are the right ones for you, which types of products are the most efficient for you, and also setting limits as to when you work and where you work.
You can literally work all the time, if you're a writer, but that doesn't mean you should.
And part of this goes into planning, just looking at your schedule every week and saying, ‘What time will I block out that is only for fun or only for my family or only for the other things in life?' and that forces you to be disciplined and contain the work into other time slots so that it doesn't take over.
Jo: That is something that I find very hard, and I think a lot of people listening probably find hard too. Because everything in life for a writer becomes fodder for the next book, right? If you're writing fiction, it's like, ‘Oh, look, there's an interesting character,' or, ‘that setting might go well in my book.' And it's really hard to ever turn the brain off.
What are your tips for writers in particular in terms of the separation between practitioner and business owner?
Elaine: Oh, you're so right about that occupational hazard, Joanna. I remember, as a teenager, my English teacher sent me to a writing conference. I wish I knew who said this, it was one of the speakers, she said, ‘When you're a writer, nothing is ever wasted.'
I think we go into life thinking everything will make a good story and things can take up a lot of our time that maybe we shouldn't be spending it on if we want to also have a business. So, I think part of it is really having a purpose in your business.
I know I work with a business coach, his name is Doug Wick, and he's been a great coach for me, he works with middle-market companies. And the reason I worked with him even though my business is much smaller than a middle-market company was he had survived a cancer diagnosis where he had a 2%, less than a 2% chance to live.
He's very focused on what's important. And I thought, ‘My life is totally different from his. I'm a mother with four children, now that my oldest are teenagers, and for me that's a priority. So, saying yes to them means saying no to other things.'
No one understands that better than someone who has been basically told their life is over. Luckily, he had a stem-cell transplant, he survived and now, more than 10 years later, he's fine. I think keeping that in mind.
None of us has unlimited time and we really have to make decisions. If we say yes to one thing, that means we're saying no to doing other things in that time.
I find that's a kind of simple tool to use every time you say yes to things. Sometimes they're worthy, it might be volunteering to do something, but is that a cause that really matters to you or are you saying no to a cause that does because you're just randomly doing this thing because it sounds nice to do? That's the kind of thinking you need, I think, to have a balanced life and not let everything take over.
Jo: I find this is part of the problem though is that a lot of people coming into, say, ‘the author life,' they think that their job is writing full time. And those of us who are full-time writers, will hear things like, ‘Well, you're not a real full-time writer because you don't write all the time.'
I feel like it's almost a misnomer to say that one is a full-time anything. You have a lot of different titles as well but we all have to do different things when we're running a business that is different to the work of the products that go into the business, I suppose. It is important, it does have a priority, right?
How can we reframe the ‘work' of the business?
Elaine: You need some time to write but I think getting caught up in what other people think about you, as a writer, is a trap. The proof is in the output really. So, if something took you 80 hours to write or took you 1 hour, it doesn't really matter.
Reminding yourself of that is important because there are so many tools to be more efficient that, maybe if your work is taking an inordinate amount of time, that's just because you're not using the best tools.
For instance, transcriptions, there are all kinds of tools out there that you can use for transcriptions. Or you can transcribe yourself, that will add hours to your business and make it full time. But should you be doing that? Or would you be better served by going on a walk in the woods and just letting your mind wander and letting your creativity flow?
I think it's almost an industrial-era perspective where you were punching a clock and, if you didn't work 37.5 hours a week, you weren't really working. But I think we all need to work on throwing that out the window because we're in the digital age where a lot of things can be done quickly.
That said, it is important to have a regular writing practice or you won't get the results. I'm a really big believer that practices like martial arts and yoga, two things that I actually really enjoy, are a good model for a writing practice.
Interestingly, in the book Tiny Business, Big Money, I did a survey of the seven-figure entrepreneurs. I think it was 88% exercise and the top exercise was yoga. I think what these practices teach you is the value of showing up.
You could sit down and write something day after day and nothing good will happen, you just throw it out, delete the file, and etc. Then, one day, somehow, as a result of all that work, the magic happens and it all comes together and you solve the writing problem.
If you didn't keep showing up and just showed up on that day, I don't think it would've happened. This is just my belief. Because this is what I see with yoga. I have some moves I've been working on for years, and then there's one called ‘the crow' where you're…
Jo: Oh yeah, I know that one.
Elaine: The crow, right, you're perched on your hands and then you put your knees on your elbows. I used to face plant for two years, I couldn't do it. Then, one day, suddenly, I came and I could do it. Now I can do it going into a headstand, going back into it, shooting my feet out, doing all these crazy yoga tricks.
I never would've believed that I could do it, and I think the reason I can do it is during the pandemic it was really the only form of exercise with a group that was available to me, living in the New York area, my school met outside. So, I just went to it more than I usually did. And that was when I really got the results.
I think the same is true with writing. The more you do it over and over again, the more proficient you get. But I don't think it matters exactly how many hours, it's more that, even if you have just one hour a day, that you're really present and you really put your best effort forward. That I think is what really helps.
Jo: I love that, I think that's so important too, having a practice. I love that you also mentioned the industrial-era perspective.
I still struggle with this, or I guess we can also call it the Protestant work ethic. The fact that, if you are not putting in 10 hours a day or 12 hours a day, then, clearly, you're not working hard enough. I definitely struggle with this. My husband is very good at changing processes so things are more efficient, which is what you mentioned.
You do have tools and things in the book, and you mentioned transcription.
What are some of the other tools that you found that people are using in these tiny businesses?
Elaine: One thing that might be helpful to your listeners would be an exercise that I actually did with my coach, which was to take an Excel spreadsheet or a Google sheet and put in all the hours of the day and actually map out what you're doing. Because that will help you to identify time that might be wasted or better spent on something else in the business.
I found that tremendously helpful. Even if it's not business-related, for instance, if you feel like seeing friends would actually make you happier and, therefore, you'd bring your best self, for lack of a better phrase, to your business, and you seem to have no time for friends, you might identify that you're spending a certain amount of time at the laundromat, or something like that, and you should send your laundry out and, therefore, you would have time for friends.
It helps you identify things like that that you're probably not aware of just because you get into habits and routines. Or you can spot things that you're doing out of obligation that maybe no longer serve you and that you could drop and free time for other things.
When my children were younger, sometimes it's hard to run a business when you have small children, you might find that, by not doing one other thing, you'll have the time to spend in your business and make more money.
The other thing I would recommend is setting income goals because that can free you from some of the constraints of that industrial-era thinking.
If you say, ‘I need to make $2,000 a week,' I'm just throwing that number out there hypothetically, and you've hit the $2,000, then you'll feel less pressure to log the hours because you've already achieved the income goal. So, shifting your goals to a monetary goal.
Or it could be an aspirational goal like getting into a certain publication. If I write an article for the economist, I pitch it successfully and get it published this month, that will be one of my goals.
If you set goals like that that really matter to you, you'll have the sense of progress you need in the business, assuming you're also bringing in income from other things and meeting your income goals, that can free you also from that.
It's really an employee mindset. That's one of the things I talked about in one of the earlier chapters of the book was the mindset to be an entrepreneur. A lot of us have been trained to be employees, pretty much most of us, by our schools, by our parents, by every influence that has surrounded us until we entered the work world.
So, it's no wonder we think that way, and I don't think anyone should beat themselves up for thinking that way. But you almost have to unlearn it and really think about just results. What are the results? And if I can get them quickly, why do I have to follow the rules of doing things that I learned in a corporate job? Because I'm not in one anymore.
I'll give you an example. I do a lot of different projects for different clients. When I do a project for a corporate client, just to pitch a blog, I would have to create a PowerPoint maybe involving the art department, to pitch it to the client. It could take 9 months for the blog to get published, 19 people could weigh in on it.
It will take that much effort because it might be for a big organization where those people all are stakeholders. But you don't have to do all those things, there's no point in doing a PowerPoint about a blog if you're doing it one-on-one for a client.
So, if you think about the processes that you follow, they might be suited for a different business environment than you're now working in, as a freelancer. And the more you can weed those out and just focus directly on the work, the better off you'll be.
That is part of mindset, it's letting go of this feeling, like, ‘I have to be the perfect employee,' and just saying, ‘I have to be the perfect entrepreneur for me and do things my own way.'
There's a writer in the book, Brian Dean, who founded Backlinko, and I actually just reconnected with him. He sold the business to SEMrush and he had created a course, it came out of an article he wrote about search-engine optimization.
He's an introvert, he does not like meetings, and he managed the whole business on Notion. And he was able to sell business to a publicly traded company. So, if he can do that, then why do we have to follow all the rules, right?
Jo: It's interesting. Many of my audience are independent authors. And people often say, ‘Oh, well, in traditional publishing, there are these types of rules.' And then what's happened in the 15 years that I've been in independent publishing is we've ended up making our own rules for a so-called independent movement, which now has these rules, in inverted commas, like you must put the book on Amazon and do this on launch week and blah-blah-blah.
And, of course, there are best practices, but how can we use best practices but, at the same time, not be an employee in that way and just, like, ‘Well, that's the rule, so, we have to follow it.'?
There's this tension between best practices and rules. Do we need to break out of that?
Elaine: I think we do. One way to do it is to reverse engineer your own successes. If you look back at your own greatest hits, say, you got an article in a prestigious publication or you sold a book to a publisher or your self-published book was a big hit, if you think about the things that led up to that, you'll start to identify your own best practices, and they may be very different from what you did in corporate.
One example might be pitching a project. Somebody who has never pitched a project in an industry will get a book on pitches or find an article on pitches and try to mirror other people's successful pitches and try to use the same subject lines that they use and all that other stuff.
But if you've started to build relationships in the industry, maybe the best way to pitch a project is you go out with one of your friends from the industry for a drink and you start talking about work, or whatever, and then it just flows naturally into the conversation that you've been wanting to do this article.
Then your friend's like, ‘Oh, we need an article on that,' and they hire you. That's not a formal pitch but it might've been very effective for you. And what was really effective was that you've taken the time to build relationships in your industry to the point you're really friendly with your clients and you're both helping each other.
So, if that really is what has worked for you, then doing those other types of pitches is probably a waste of time and you really need to be doubling down your efforts going to industry events or making time for coffee with your friends or phone catch-ups. Whatever is feasible, whatever state of the pandemic we're in.
It's that type of thing that will be a reality check for you to say, ‘Hey, wait a minute, I didn't do any of those things that I was told I was supposed to do, and yet, this was my biggest placement ever. So, I'm going to stick with what actually worked for me.'
I think that's kind of what Brian Dean did was he found that using Notion, a tech platform, worked really well for him with project management and scaling his business.
There was no need to go on a Zoom meeting or other things that he “should” be doing. That didn't work for him. He didn't want to do it, he dreaded it, and he was just going to throw it out the window, and he found a new way to do it.
Jo: And like you said, he's an introvert. I know a lot of people listening are introverts. I'm an introvert and I just was thinking about relationships there.
You and I, this is the second time we've talked on the phone, and I think I actually think I pitched you for the first time because I saw your book come out and I was like, ‘this looks really amazing,' or, I heard you on another show.
And then this time you reached out to me because we got on last time. Right? So, you could say we have an acquaintance-style relationship. But just from one conversation and a friendly email we have developed what is happily a nice conversation and also content marketing for us and, hopefully, useful for the listeners.
I feel like long-term relationships are really important.
And also this kind of connection, rather than a relationship, can also be really good. Right?
Elaine: Oh, absolutely. I think it's really important, whether you're an introvert or an extrovert, to find ways to get to know the people that you work with beyond just the transaction.
I think some of us have been taught to focus on every hour that we work to make sure we're getting the most out of each hour in terms of productivity, but I have found, I love talking with people, I don't know if I'm an introvert or an extrovert, I can't really tell, but I enjoy chatting.
I really enjoyed our conversation. I remembered it and I thought of you immediately when I had a new book because I just felt like we enjoyed talking about the last one. But I think we ran over too because we had a lot to talk about, giving yourself that extra little window to chat with someone and get to know them, and maybe I hear about something that might be useful to you six months from now or make an introduction or whatever, doing those things you really don't know where they're going to lead.
But if you're in an industry where you enjoy the people, it makes it a lot easier. So, it might be, as a writer, if you find a niche where that's happening for you more, where you just find yourself running over, talking to the people or chatting back and forth, if you prefer text messaging or other types of chatting over talking, that will help you grow your business.
It's not necessarily for that reason. I've made a lot of great friends through my work that I'm friends with outside of anything to do with freelance writing, now we do all kinds of things, I just like them as people, but part of it is placing yourself in a niche within your industry where that will happen, that makes it easier.
But then giving yourself that little breathing room to really get to know real human beings and develop more of a, whatever you want to call it, relationship or whatever it is, just two human beings connecting around a shared passion, there's a lot of power and energy in that.
Jo: I agree. You talk quite a lot about mindset, and I think another thing is this long-term thinking, and relationships would also come under that. As you say, you might meet someone at a conference and then, two years later, something might come up and you can reconnect again.
I feel also that with growing a small business in every aspect, your craft, relationships, the clients, all of this takes time.
When you were looking at the common mindset issues, how was long-term thinking part of that? And also, if people struggle with that, what are your tips for developing that long-term thinking?
Elaine: One thing that allows you to do the long-term thinking is putting the right financial foundation in place for your business. I know that seems removed, but what I've seen time and time again with any type of small business, it could be a writing practice or something else, is, if people run out of money, they can't think long term, they can't think about the big picture projects they'd like to do.
You do books, books are a long-term project. You can't possibly do a book on a book advance or if you're self-publishing. Unless you get a really, really big advance, you need some other form of income.
So, maybe you have a day job, maybe you're doing bread-and-butter editing or something like that to fund the other stuff, maybe you live in a really small apartment, so, you have the freedom to write, but if you don't have those pieces in place, you just will never have the luxury of getting out of scarcity mode, emergency mode, crisis mode.
You'll never have the mental space to be a big-picture thinker. So, I think that's really important.
It's also very important to have a peer group to support you.
It's very easy to feel alienated if you're only surrounded by people who have traditional jobs because they're following a different life path and maybe they're planning to retire with a pension or they've had a big 401k or things that are harder for writers to have.
If you surround yourself with successful writers who are navigating those issues too, you'll have other people who are on this journey with you, so, you don't abandon the long-term thinking, they find ways.
A friend of mine is finding a way to take the summer off to work on a novel, and she's been wanting to do this for a really long time, but, finally, she got all the financial pieces lined up. And that's really inspiring to me to think, ‘Well, wow, we've been doing the same type of work all these years.'
She's taking the summer off, something that I have not been able to do with four kids, two of whom are heading to college this year, but it inspired me. I think that's important too is if you can find, even if it's just one friend who's doing the same type of career as you are, it really adds a lot.
Jo: I totally agree with you. I've blogged every year since I've gone full time, which is coming up for 12 years now, I've blogged my lessons learned from that year. And my lessons learned from year one were exactly that, which was, ‘I need some structure,' ‘I need a community,' ‘I don't know anyone,' ‘this is really hard,' ‘I want to run back to the day job.'
It was meeting other people who were independent authors and who I could talk to, just have a coffee with, and go, ‘This is really hard, why is it so hard?' That really helped me in that first couple of years. And that's what I almost say to people now, ‘That first six months is a bit kind of white knuckle in that you don't know what you're doing, you're just trying to figure it out.'
As you say, having other forms of income is really important. I feel like we undervalue that community.
You almost just have to reach out in some way, don't you, to find those people?
Elaine: You definitely do, and you have to make yourself a little bit vulnerable. But the way I look at it is, if somebody doesn't take you up on going out for coffee or a phone call, you have no idea why that is. It could be that they have a personal issue going on, it could be that they're ill. Who knows what their situation is? You can't take it personally.
Although maybe it is kind of a personal overture, reaching out in friendship.
And the more you reach out, the more comfortable you'll get with it and the more great relationships you'll have.
Making time every week to do that, it might just be reaching out to help people.
If you see someone put something on LinkedIn and they need a connection for an article that they're writing, that can be the start of something more to find that community of other people like you.
I think it's really important to have people in your network of all ages too. I think one thing is we tend to self-select our own demographic in terms of networking. But as a writer, one thing that I think is important is to see the new ways things are being done.
Having younger friends who grew up with different technologies is really a great asset. I literally just, a few minutes ago, learned about a few different technologies from a friend of mine who's really tech-savvy. I'm going to add that I have to test them out and add them to my repertoire.
Same thing with older friends because they may have deep industry knowledge that you don't have about something or a different network than you have or just a different perspective. I think that's an important thing for any writer also. Any entrepreneur really for that matter.
Jo: Let's talk a bit more about money because I wanted to share a quote from the book.
The difference between a tiny business that makes big money and one that makes average money is often in finding a way to charge premium prices by delivering unusual value.
This is a fantastic quote, but the problem with most authors listening, and you as well, you write a book and there is a very clear price range for a book, for example.
Any tips on turning things into big money for authors and writers?
Elaine: A [non-fiction] book is often a calling card but it may not be the way that you make the six-figure or seven-figure income. For most people it won't be because, I think, we both know a lot of writers, how many really do just from the book alone?
If you really strike it hot and get lucky or if you have a number of books and you're starting to get royalties every year, you have self-published books, and, as a group, they start bringing in that kind of revenue, that's more achievable.
One area to look at is other ancillary products. For instance, you could do a course. One of the writers in the book, her name is Laura Belgray, you may know her, she's a copywriter, she's very funny, and she was actually making $1,450 per hour for her services. Which is probably 10 times what most people would make.
And she found it to be a lot of pressure because, when people are paying you that kind of money, you really have to perform in that hour. So, she decided to create…well, she had some two PDF courses about copywriting, one of them was about how to create your About Us page. And she wasn't really marketing them very heavily.
So, she worked with a business coach and he said, ‘What if you sent out your email newsletter three times a week and promoted these more?' And she already had created them, she hired a designer to make them look nice but they were very low-tech. Then she also started a mastermind about copywriting and she made it a point to include people from different industries.
So, there was really interesting chemistry in this mastermind and it was a combination of everything that brought her to seven figures. And then she wound up very rarely doing the hourly work anymore, even though it paid well, it was just too stressful. And that's where she is now.
Actually, the last time I spoke with her, she was working on a book which sounded really funny. I think she's got a really good model.
Another entrepreneur in the book, he's also a copywriter, Dana Derricks. He lives on a goat farm, it seems like it's more of a hobby-type farm in Wisconsin, and children visit it and that sort of thing, but he has this copywriting business and he actually scaled it to the point where he had employees.
He didn't like having employees because of all the compliance and then he went back to more of a freelance team. But what he does is high ticket books where he sells books to his clients related to copywriting but he prices them based on the value of the information.
He started with a $400 book and he sold over a 1,000 copies of that, and then he kept upping the ante a little bit. And it seemed that he maybe topped out at $1,500 per book. And then there was a point of diminishing returns.
I thought that was an interesting mindset to think about, ‘Well, wow, if they applied all the information in this book, it would be worth at least $400.' And he had takers.
So, that might be something else to think about is there a convention in your industry that makes no sense to you about how things are priced. There is the reality of what the market will bear.
If you're doing copy editing, I don't think you can charge $2,000 an hour for that but maybe you could do a copy-editing course or, how to become a copywriter in a weekend retreat at your nice apartment somewhere.
There are a lot of examples of this in the book of people taking their knowledge and turning it into a product. It's not an overnight thing, all of these things require product development, but when you had mentioned about long-term thinking, Joanna, it's so important.
That will allow you to say, ‘Okay, I want to introduce my PDF course on whatever this year, so, I need to have every Friday off to work on it. Therefore, I'm going to take on this really high-paying bread-and-butter work to finance that, even though I'm not going to be taking in any money from it the first year.'
Doing it one step at a time instead of trying to do nine things at once seems to be the way that a lot of these folks work, by the way.
Because otherwise you spread yourself too thin and then nothing gets done. And there's sort of a negative energy I think that comes from having unfinished products, projects, and this gives you those wins so that you feel there is momentum.
And you also learn. If you release a product or mastermind and nobody signs up, maybe your pricing is wrong or you've named it the wrong thing or you released it the wrong time of year. You have an opportunity to learn from the first one and then use that to make the next one better.
Jo: I think so much there it's learning about yourself, it's learning about the product. And then, of course, your life changes.
I've been doing this for 15 years, and my business model has changed multiple times because things change.
You decide to pivot into a new way and you try something else. I think that's probably another long-term thing is to have a business for the long term.
It doesn't mean you set up a business and it just stays like that until you die. Things change, right?
Elaine: Yes, the whole market might change, the demand for certain things.
In my business, I started out just doing freelance journalism, and then there was a demand for content writing that started taking off, and I added that on. And then, in the great recession, some of the journalism dried up and I got more heavily into copywriting and marketing.
Then when things came back, then I was really busy but I realized it made sense to switch to adding some retainer clients to have more of a steady income instead of project by project. So, then I emphasized those clients, some of whom became book clients. We would do the content and then that kind of morphed into books.
Now probably the majority of my income comes from ghostwriting books. And interestingly, it's not intentional but the fact that I write books attracts the right type of clients to me because they like my writing style in my own books and they can very easily see if we have a similar mindset or not just by reading the books. That's been kind of an interesting thing that's happened that I didn't expect. I don't know, you may have found that too for you.
Jo: I don't do any ghostwriting but it is interesting how we pivot over time. We're almost out of time ourselves, and I did want to ask you because you do have two non-fiction books under your own name. And in terms of book marketing, because people are always interested, like, ‘How do you market a book?'
What have you found works best for marketing your non-fiction books?
Elaine: For me personally, I have found podcasting to be a really great engine for meeting people that are genuinely interested in the types of things that I write about. Because podcasts are so niche that people won't listen to a podcast if they're really not interested in the topic.
They also have to self-select the topic. If they see ‘Tiny Business, Big Money' and they have no interest in running a business, they won't even listen to it. So, it brings to me a lot of the types of people that will enjoy my books, and a lot of them become friends.
Also, live events have been really helpful for me. With my first book, I did a lot of live events where I would do panel discussions with the entrepreneurs that I profiled in the book. I found that was so powerful, I couldn't believe how powerful it was sometimes.
I would do events at the New York Public Library and there would be people out the door, like over 200 people, coming to these free events on a Thursday night to talk to the actual entrepreneurs. I think it's because they're regular people, just like anyone else, and yet they've achieved these great results.
People actually want to see them and talk to them and hear from them. And they can say it better than I ever can because they're talking about their own lives.
So, that was very effective, and I think I will be resuming that again now that the weather is a little warmer and we can do meetings safely. I've been holding off a little bit with the pandemic, I'm in the New York area, but I think the timing is right to get people back together.
For folks that are in a part of the world where that's feasible right now, that might be another option. Zoom events and things like that can also be helpful in terms of reaching a more global audience, and I do do a lot of Zoom events but I feel like, at this point in the pandemic, a lot of people are screened out. They don't want to look at another Zoom call. So, I do it sparingly, only if I feel like the event will really reach people that are genuinely interested in what I write about.
Jo: Brilliant.
Where can people find you and your books online?
Elaine: They can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook under my full name Elaine Pofeldt. And that's in the show notes, the spelling. Or on Instagram @milliondollaronepersonbusiness.
I do write back, it makes me a better journalist to know what you're curious about or to know your story. Sometimes I end up covering people that I hear from in that way.
The book is available on major bookstores Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all the other major bookstores. I have a website tinybusinessbigmoney.com that has links to the bookstores that carry it. So, do reach out, I hope to hear from you. And I really appreciate that the listeners have tuned in.
Jo: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Elaine, that was great.
Elaine: Thank you so much, I really appreciate the show. You do so much for the writing community, so, thank you.
The post Tiny Business, Big Money With Elaine Pofeldt first appeared on The Creative Penn.
How can you hook readers into your story by using universal human desires and motivations? How can you write what you love, run your author business your way, and still maintain the ambition for a 7-figure author business? Theodora Taylor gives her thoughts in this interview.
In the intro, self-publishing predictions for the 2020s [ALLi]; The Unexpected Road to an Unconventional Life [Books and Travel]; Craft and business of writing limited-time bundle available now! [Storybundle.com/writing]
Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with Scrivener, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 25% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna
Theodora Taylor is the best-selling author of over 50 books across contemporary, sci-fi, shifter, and interracial romance. She's also the author of 7 Figure Fiction: How to Use Universal Fantasy to Sell Your Books to Anyone, under T. Taylor.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- From traditional publishing to indie — and discovering the joy of being a one-person independent business as an author
- Why romance authors are always ahead of the curve
- What are universal fantasies and how are they different from tropes?
- Your market may be bigger than you think
- Consistency and time as the pillars of a successful author career
- Embracing our author ambition
- Creating assets that bring in multiple streams of income for the long term
You can find Theodora Taylor at 7FigureFiction.com and on Twitter @Theodorawrites
Transcript of Interview with Theodora Taylor
Joanna: Theodora Taylor is the best-selling author of over 50 books across contemporary, sci-fi, shifter, and interracial romance. She's also the author of 7 Figure Fiction: How to Use Universal Fantasy to Sell Your Books to Anyone, under T. Taylor. Welcome Theodora.
Theodora: Thank you for having me, Joanna.
Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you about this. I bought the book, I think it was last year. And I was like, ‘This is amazing. I want everyone to read this.'
Tell us a bit more about you and your writing journey, and also how you transitioned from traditional to indie publishing.
Theodora: The short version is that I was a writer. I spent two years pouring my heart and soul into a book, a women's fiction novel. And it sold in a somewhat splashy deal to a traditional publisher. And the movie rights sold before it was published, and it was really kind of set up to do great things, and then it just flopped.
The movie deal went away. Everything went away. I had a contract to write a second book. I spent another two years writing that, and promoting the first book, doing things like signings and readings, and all that kind of stuff they used to have before indie really kind of changed what releasing a book was.
I wrote a second book. I sent it to my editor. She sent me back this scathing letter, with all the things that were wrong with the book. It was really crushing. I called my best friend, and I said, ‘Oh, she hated everything except for the sex scenes. I might as well become a romance writer.'
But then that became, ‘Wait a minute. Maybe I should become a romance writer.' So I did my first of what I could now consider many, many experiments throughout my writing career.
My agent said, ‘Okay, we're going to send this around to other publishers.' I did have a contract for a non-fiction book at that point, but it wasn't due till February, so of course, you can't start it ahead of time. You got to push that to the last minute.
I decided that I'd write a book, a romance novel, while she was shopping the novel, the second book, under my real name.
And by the time she sold it and I got paid from the publisher who had picked up the second book, I had written four indie books, and paid way more money than the advance that I was getting.
It was, oh, this is where I belong. It was really one of those wonderful things, because, at that point in my writing career, I thought I had hit rock bottom, that I was a complete failure, that basically, my career was over. Theodora Taylor kind of introduced me to this new side of writing.
I liked being Theodora Taylor, one-person business, way more than I liked working with a traditional publisher.
So I went with Theodora Taylor. I did do two books for Harlequin, but that taught me that I really prefer to be a indie publisher.
Joanna: It's so great to hear that you enjoy being a one-person business. And we're going to come back to that.
You said, ‘I might as well be a romance writer,' which is just one of those comments that people say when they don't understand what the romance genre is like, and how incredible the business people are in the romance genre.
How can we change this stigma of romance, and make people understand how important the genre is?
Theodora: I wish you could see me right now, because I nodded along with every thing you said. I absolutely did view it in a dismissive way. I think that's because I did not understand how much work this is, and how important it is, what an important role we serve in the reading community.
It's one of those difficult things, because we know that we provide escape, we provide a way for people to explore some of their fantasies that they might not want to explore in real life. We provide all of these things to our readers, and our readers really, really love us for it.
But the perception of romance by people who aren't, unfortunately, in the romance community can be dismissive, in some cases, insulting. I wish that more people were into romance, because it teaches you important lessons about loving and being loved.
I could go on about this forever, but I'm a rambler, so I'll stop myself right there. I'll just say I wish that more people did understand romance and what it really brings to the table, as far as the reading experience goes.
Joanna: I also think, in terms of the indie community, the romance writers, and of course, the erotica writers, have been well ahead of most of the rest of the genres.
Theodora: Yes. We're early adopters, not that it matters, but we make so much money. It's one of these things that, too, so easily that some people so easily dismiss us. It's infuriating. Just infuriating.
Joanna: Totally. And look, to be fair, I remember back in 2010-ish, I also was quite dismissive of romance writers. Then I met some, and I realized that they were the smartest business people around, and it completely changed my perception. I do think that is changing over time.
Obviously, you're one of those very smart business people. Let's get into the book, 7 Figure Fiction. You talk about universal fantasy, which I think needs explaining because some people might think that's kind of elves and things.
What do you mean by ‘universal fantasy?'
Theodora: Thank you for giving me that opportunity. Because one of the biggest misconceptions are people saying, ‘Oh, can people who don't write fantasy…' I really did not understand about the fantasy genre before I wrote this book, or I might have called it something else.
Universal fantasy is basically those fantasies that we have, I would call it universally. But it doesn't have to be completely universal. It just has to be a fantasy that a lot of other people share.
There's some, like, big, big, big fantasies that everybody from a 3-year-old to a 70-year-old, or an older adult share. Those are fantasies like people appreciating you, being seen, getting attention. Those are kind of universal fantasies. Having somebody who's really worthy fall in love with you, things like that. Those are universal fantasies.
Joanna: How is that different to tropes? We talk about tropes a lot more in the fiction space.
Give us some examples of a trope compared to a universal fantasy.
Theodora: The difference between tropes and universal fantasies is that trope is the umbrella, and universal fantasy is what makes that trope so, so, so delicious. A great example that I just watched with my own kids is ‘Turning Red.' I don't know if you've seen that movie, or if it's released in the UK.
Joanna: No, I haven't seen it yet.
Theodora: It's the latest Disney cartoon. And it's this great mother-daughter film. When we say, ‘Oh, hey, it's a mother-daughter film,' what do we mean by that? It could be anything. That's a huge trope, mother-daughter stuff.
We could all name a mother-daughter film, a mother-daughter book, a mother-daughter television show. So, what do we mean with ‘Turning Red?' What did ‘Turning Red' do for the mother-daughter trope that…what universal fantasies made this mother-daughter film really land with audiences?
We have universal fantasies within ‘Turning Red,' like learning your parents' secret, helping your mother in some way, proving yourself as an adult, which, my middle schooler, my middle school person in my house is always trying to get us to give her more responsibility, to treat her like a fellow adult, even though she's 12.
So, that kind of idea that you get to make your own choices, that you do have what it takes to make your own decisions. That's a universal fantasy for a lot of us.
Another one that I really loved from that film was making your mother see you as an adult, getting to decide for yourself, and freedom from your mother.
What that film is ultimately about is someone getting the freedom to live life on her terms.
There are a lot of mother-daughter films that have these universal fantasies, but this is what made ‘Turning Red,' these particular fantasies, were what made ‘Turning Red' a particularly great mother-daughter film.
Joanna: Let's unpack that more, because I think, and I wish you'd used another word as well, because, again, fantasy in the romance genre can mean kind of sexual fantasy. And that's not what you're talking about at all.
To me, it's almost like a psychological, emotional aspect of story that make each of us go, ‘Yes, I feel something about that.' Some of those things, you were saying, obviously, I have a mother, it's Mother's Day here in the UK yesterday. And there are the good mother-daughter things and the difficult mother-daughter things that are kind of inevitable.
But just to pick, let's pick another genre, to help people. I write action-adventure thrillers, and I watch a lot of those types of movies as well, a sort of Lara Croft thing.
So, an example of a trope might be finding an ancient relic in a tomb, right? That makes all the action-adventure people go, ‘Yay, let's find a relic in a tomb.'
But the emotional side of it might be good overcoming evil, like Indiana Jones beating the Nazis to the Ark of the Covenant. Is that another example, or have I got that wrong?
Theodora: I think action-adventure is so interesting, because a lot of action-adventures, like you say, is about finding the thing that will solve everything, right. And really, the fantasy there is you are the one who solves everything by finding the thing.
I talk a lot about characters being avatars for the reader, but that your avatar finds this thing, and solves some problem. Some big problem.
Joanna: I like the characters are avatars for the reader. And of course, I write my character, Morgan Sierra, as my alter ego.
What we're saying is that I want to save the world, and thus I write a character who saves the world.
Theodora: Who can save the world. Yes. But I guess with further breakdowns it's always great to go over real examples, because what will saving the world do for you? What will it do for your character? What fantasy will it complete, if you will?
So if you save the world and that means that your father is proud of you, finally…
Joanna: Oh, no. I'm going to cry!
Theodora: Right. That's a fantasy that saving the world realizes. Saving the world, it's a trope. But within that saving the world trope, you can put in a lot of universal fantasies that will make that trope way better.
I think we've all watched action-adventure films where it's like, ‘Oh, we must get the thing. Car chase, car chase, car chase. There is an obstacle to getting the thing. Car chase, car chase, car chase.' And we found the thing, and the credits are rolling, and we feel nothing.
Whereas an action film where some big evil is overcome, like seeing Nazis melt, their face melt, that's very satisfying for a lot of people, right? And so, it's just kind of like, I didn't just vanquish an enemy. I vanquished the Nazis, in this kind of roundabout way.
Vanquishing a huge enemy, that's a huge universal butter to do it that well, where it's just like, oh, I melted their faces. We all remember how these particular Nazis died. And what's interesting is, throughout our movie history, lots and lots of Nazis have been killed, but we all remember how those particular Nazis died.
So I think they did a really good job of not only tapping in to that universal fantasy of really vanquishing a big enemy, but having them die horribly.
Joanna: What I love about your book, because there's a lot of writing books, but I do feel like you have tapped into this emotional side of things that I definitely struggle with, as in I'm much happier writing plot and theme and setting.
Theodora: Same.
Joanna: Okay, well, that's interesting. Because I kind of thought, well, maybe you're just naturally empathetic. How did you learn to see these universal fantasies behind the tropes?
Is there something you did, or have you just literally gone deeper and deeper for years?
Theodora: One of the most wonderful fan notes that I get from authors is, this is all stuff I'd knew. It feels like you broke something, that you turned on a light in a room I didn't know I had. I knew this. I just didn't know I'd know this.
It's making writing easier, because I think in the back of our minds, a lot of us are just kind of like, ‘Okay, I'm writing a good plot. I'm writing a good trope, all the elements are there. But there's something missing.
There's a disconnect with audience, or I don't know that an audience is going to like this.' So, in the book, I explain what happened. I paid for a really expensive…not really expensive. It's worth every penny. But, for me, at the time, where I was as an author, I paid for what I felt was an expensive class. And I realized that I would have to advertise this to an audience beyond my original target audience.
I write interracial romance, so my target audience is a pretty easy audience to pick out. It's Black women who are either in interracial relationships or want to read interracial romance.
But in this case, I went through the Facebook settings. And this, it was really bad. They don't even have an author in my genre that I could target.
They only had these huge, mostly traditional authors that you could target. And so, we're getting all this advice for this class. And I just realized that, oh, I had to figure out why people like the book.
I was trying to advertise on a universal level. As opposed to, hey, target audience, this is a book you like, interracial romance. This is an interracial romance book. You will probably like this book.
Once I realized, oh, there are universal fantasy elements to every novel, or every piece of entertainment that works, or has a lot of love, that appeals to audience.
When I figured that out, it was easier to write books, it was easier to market my books. And it was easier to connect with an audience when I thought about it in terms of, oh, you're telling a story around a fire.
What will keep that audience engaged? What will make that audience come to the fire when you say, ‘Hey, I've got a story about so and so?' Because there's a difference between calling an audience to the fire with ‘Oh, hey, I've got…' if we're, like, say we're cavemen, ‘Oh, hey, I've got a story about today's hunt.'
Versus saying to the audience, ‘I've got a story about today's hunt, in which our greatest warrior would have died if not for the efforts of our weakest warrior.'
Then all the people are coming to the fire to hear this story, because you've just given them some universal fantasy. It's like, ‘Wait, the strongest warrior almost died, and he would have died if not for the weakest warrior intervening, and I'm weak in some way.' The weak person turns out to be the hero.
This has just tapped into a universal fantasy. Yes, I will come listen to your story around the fire.' So, that's what universal fantasy is.
Joanna: I read the book on Kindle, and I've bought a hard copy. People listening, if you feel this way, I feel like I need to read it over and over again. Because I totally get what you're saying, and yet I cannot figure out, in my own books, what they are and what I need.
And, because we write the books we need and we watch the things that satisfy us in some way. So, I think it's almost like know yourself, but also know your reader. And
I want to come back on the interracial romance thing, because I love that you basically discovered that your audience is not just people in mixed-race marriages or whatever. It's also just people who like stories. ‘Bridgerton' is a great example. Have you seen the latest series of ‘Bridgerton?'
Theodora: I'm watching it right now. I'm on episode four.
Joanna: It's so good.
Theodora: I'm very upset right now. I think I'm meant to be, but I'm going to keep on going, even though I'm upset at things that have happened in episode four. That's all.
Joanna: What's so funny is my husband's far more romantic than I am. But we ended up yesterday, we binge-watched five hours because we couldn't stop watching, because we were like, ‘No, stop doing that. No, stop doing that.'
Just incredible storytelling, but of course, ‘Bridgerton,' if people don't know, people listening, it is an entirely multiracial cast. It's really quite super diverse. We're there for the story, not the differences between people.
And of course, that is important as well. But I love that you went, you know what? It's not just about this thing. It could be much, much bigger.
So often, we get trapped in demographics. ‘Women between 45 and 65 like this type of book.' And it's not true, right? Readers cross much more diversity.
Theodora: I always say both are true. Women between 40 and 55 really like your book about witches, middle-aged witches. They just love it, right? But at the same time, maybe women who are younger than that will love your book about middle-aged witches because A, it's about women overcoming something society have put up on them.
Or maybe they'll be interested because something happens on a universal level that speaks to a fantasy within themselves and the like.
Really, what this book is saying is that your audience is much bigger than you think it is.
I think one of the things people do is they'll say something like, ‘I write romance, so men won't be interested in it. This person won't be interested in it, this person won't be interested in it.'
In actuality, if you say, ‘I write about werewolves. And these big things are happening in their village, within their path. And there's intrigue, and there's this, this and this universal fantasy, then a lot of different…' It opens up your audience, and it says to your audience, ‘Yes, this is for me.'
But at the same time, one of the things that ‘Bridgerton' does so well is they're saying, ‘If you've ever wanted to take part in a regency romance, all of you are represented in this regency romance,' which is something I had not seen before.
They obviously understand that representation does matter. But they also know that everyone will watch, because we're all in it for this fantastic story that kind of appeals to us on a universal level.
Joanna: Yes. I actually think ‘Bridgerton' is hugely important. And in fact, talking of books and acceptance, I live in Bath, in the southwest of England, where ‘Bridgerton' is filmed. A lot of it is filmed here.
Theodora: Oh, wow.
Joanna: Because we have all the Georgian architecture. But what's so funny, it's a very literary town, and they're quite snobby, really, about books. But the local bookstore, the window is full of Julia Quinn's ‘Bridgerton' books.
Theodora: Of course. And it's so interesting with that kind of stuff, because the show's kind of like, ‘Oh, towns like to be represented. They're probably very proud that it's their town in this movie.' A lot more people will pick that up, because it's that.
Joanna: Exactly. It's really funny.
I want to change tack a little bit, because I wanted to come back on the business side. You mentioned in the beginning that you enjoy being a one-person business. What I love is that the book is called ‘7 Figure Fiction.' And your confidence just jumps off the page. I love it.
I love reading confidence around business as well as writing. You said at the beginning that you had failure at the beginning.
How do authors get to this level of confidence that they can make a business work? How have you grown into that attitude, or did you always have that attitude?
Theodora: With authors, one of the main things they don't give themselves is time. One of the things I really loved about your book is that you broke down how you entered the business, how you studied the business. Your book on non-fiction. And it was in how you transitioned into the business.
It wasn't like, ‘I decided to become a writer. And then the next day, I just knew everything there was to become a writer.'
They're often called ‘Baby Authors.' They'll ask me for advice that I feel is a matter of time. ‘How do you get all these people to read your book?' and a lot of that is just learning to consistently turn out books, to develop the audience.
It's kind of boring, because my best business advice is to do the business, and to learn, and to fail, and to just keep on going no matter what. Just keep going.
I don't think that I'm particularly confident. I have learned what I've learned. And I just keep on going. That's the main thing that I know, just statistically, if I keep on going, and I stay consistent, and by consistent, I mean, just put out.
Because I'm not that consistent of a writer, but I do try to put out a series every year, and things like that. So, if I keep on doing that, I will eventually reach my goal. I might do it sooner than projected. But eventually I will, if I just keep on going.
It's interesting with the keep on going thing or the keep on swimming, means, because really, that's the hardest part. I don't know if you've ever been discouraged within your writing career. But the keep on going piece, it's three words, but it's the hardest part of this business.
I think every writer has woken up, and they're supposed to write this book, and they suddenly suspect that they've forgotten how to write. Even though they've written 10 or 20 books, they're just suspicious that they're not a good writer, that this has somehow all been a fluke, and things like that.
And that's hard with that, when you're dealing with something like that, to keep on writing, and to put out books anyway, even if you're not confident. So, again, I fall into another ramble, but that's my point, keep on going.
Joanna: I love that. And I agree with you. Someone said to me the other day, ‘Well, you know a lot more than you realize that you know,' because the longer you're in this game.
We read so many books, we listen to people, and sometimes we don't realize we know what we know, and we just take it for granted what we're doing after so many years.
People look at us and say, ‘How do you do that?' And it's like, ‘Well, I just learned, like you will learn.'
Theodora: Right. I think the big thing is not valuing what we know. So, one of the things was on universal fantasy.
It was this kind of funny situation, because I had this group, back when I lived in California, a group of my fellow California writers, and I would meet in November or December, right before the big holiday break. And we would basically spend four days in a beach house, and we would say, ‘Okay, everybody has to teach something. They have to teach something that they know.'
This first year, I did one little class. And the second year, I was just like I don't really have much that I know. And there were some big hitters coming to the conference, because we always invited people outside of our group to come, just teach us for an hour, one thing you know. Do one workshop. And I was like, ‘I do know how to sell books to people outside of my audience.'
And so, I presented it, and it was this kind of crazy thing, where it juggernauted in the RWA chapter which was just kind of like, ‘Could you come present that to us?' And so I did. And then people kept on hearing it.
It's this thing that I know, but I wouldn't have necessarily put value on it until I started teaching other people this thing that I know. I think a lot of women in general do that. You're good at business, but they don't necessarily give themselves the credit.
Joanna: Absolutely. Really looking at what we know, and making sure we're using that.
I also wanted to ask, back to the 7 Figure Fiction and you do say in the beginning of the book, ‘I'm not a seven figure author.' But you're a multi-six-figure author, as am I.
You clearly have this aspiration for seven figures, which I also do, and I love talking about ambition because people often shy away from it.
They won't admit to it. But I actually think most authors have some kind of ambition.
Theodora: That's the best thing about being an indie romance writer. It's interesting, because I have a lot of friends who are outside this business, and so many of them are not okay with ambition.
If you're ambitious, and you want to find another group of women who are also ambitious, it's romance writers. It's amazing.
Joanna: That's really encouraging. I'm one of those women, but I don't write romance. I think, in the thriller niches, a lot more traditionally-published authors, so it's a bit different.
I did want to ask you, because I feel like your business, like my businesses, is a mature business, let's say. We've been around a while. And I feel like there's a step up between a multi-six-figure business and a seven-figure business.
Are you doing something different or planning to do something different, or is it, as you said earlier, is it just keep on keeping on?
What are you doing to take your author business to the next level?
Theodora: Okay, so this should come with a caveat. This is what I'm doing. This is not a suggestion for what other people should do.
I was very, very privileged last year to come to a precipice of the limits of what I could do with what I had, if you will. I made it to number 10 in the Amazon store, with a KU book. And so, I said to myself, ‘Okay, I'm looking at all the other people who are around me right now, and they are spending serious, serious bank on ads.'
But here's the other thing. I have two other books due in this series, and I really immediately need to be writing. And also, I am just more of a writer than I am an ad person, or something like that.
So I was just kind of like, you could do a huge spend on ads, and you could really level yourself up, because that's literally the difference. Once you start getting into the really low numbers, there's just a ton of action going on.
Or, you can really, really, really, really think about the organic ways that other non-KU authors reached that seven-figure platform, that might be more in line with how you do business.
The way I do business is that I write a book, I market a book for maybe a few days, and then I'm back to writing a book.
And almost nobody who's really great at marketing would suggest that you do business that way, but that's where I'm at.
I decided that I would need to, in order to hit my goals, is to go wide, first of all. Just be in more places, do more long-term investment, things like audiobooks, German, and basically have a lot of different income streams going.
And that's been really interesting, because it's the money I would have invested in ads, say, are now going into just making sure that I have money coming in from all these different places.
It really adds up. I'm really liking it. I'm not at my goal yet, but I'm doing pretty well so far this year. I think I'll hit this goal, this seven-figure goal in one year.
To be clear, I have made seven figures over the course of my author career, but I think I'll hit a seven-figure year in the next year or two, by making sure that my audiobook program is great, my German program is great, that I'm translating, that I'm doing all of these things to establish my author career, establish myself in other places.
I'm reading this book by my really good friend, Maggie Marr. It's called Books to Film, and it's a great guide that I'm excited to blurb, about how authors can get their books to film. And her main thing, like, the first thing she says is, ‘There is no one way to get your book to film.' And then she proceeds to show you all the different ways that authors have gotten their books to film.
That's how I feel about the whole seven-figure goal. There are authors who really just kill it on ads, and have hit seven-figures. And what's interesting to me is some authors are just like, ‘Oh, man, I learned Facebook ads, and I became a seven-figure author.' Some authors are like, ‘Oh, man, I just kill it on Amazon ads, and I became a seven-figure author.'
And then, I took this one author's class, where she was just kind of like, ‘Well, I just figured the more income streams I have, the better. So I just really invested in self.' I was like, ‘I think that's the path I want to take.' It's whatever resonates with you.
Saying, ‘Oh, hey, I'm mostly a writer. I would rather be writing most of the time. That's where I feel most comfortable.' For me, having my writing in more places is going to work for me. But there are other authors who are just great at ads, have the attention span for ads, and stuff like that. And that's where they should be.
So that's why this is what I decided to do, versus who knows what whoever is listening to this should do. But really, think about it for yourself, and have a goal and have a plan. So, whatever plan you come up with is better than no plan, or just being like, ‘I hope one day.'
Joanna: I get that. That is brilliant. I'm actually thrilled you said that, because I talk about multiple streams of income, and basically, what you're doing is creating assets that bring you money for the long term, rather than spending that money on ads.
So, assets, not ads is what you do, but you're right. It's up to the individual. So, as ever, this is just a discussion, rather than direct advice.
Theodora: Please don't say Theodora and Joanna told you to do this.
Joanna: Exactly. This has been brilliant.
Where can people find you and your books, and everything you do online?
Theodora: theodorataylor.com for my fiction stuff, and 7figurefiction.com for everything ‘7 Figure Fiction' in this book.
You can also find me on Facebook, or on Instagram, and TikTok. DM me if you have any questions. I'm always glad to hear from people. Thank you ahead of time if you get in contact.
Joanna: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Theodora. That was great.
Theodora: Oh, thank you, Joanna. You do so much for the community, so I cannot express to you what an honor it was to be on the show. Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me.
The post 7 Figure Fiction With Theodora Taylor first appeared on The Creative Penn.
Why are digital scarcity and ownership so important to the business model of creators in web 3? How can an author use a wider fictional world for creative and business goals? Rae and Stephen talk about why creators need web 3 and their fantasy universe, SitkaWorld.
In the intro, I mention the Creatokia podcast with Elf from the Forgotten Runes Wizard’s Cult, a world of story, built upon characters licensed through NFTs. I'm also creating 1 of 1 generative art NFTs from my fiction words on Opensea.io/jfpenn.
Rae Wojcik is a speculative fiction author, freelance editor and journalist. Stephen Poynter is an online entrepreneur, film professional and NFT enthusiast.
Rae and Steven are the creators of Sitka World, a community-driven, community rewarded literature movement based around a fantasy world.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- The importance of community ownership
- The difference between web 2 and web 3 tools — and attitudes
- Why digital scarcity and the ownership and resale of assets could transform the business model for creators who value their intellectual property over the long term. Rae also has a great article on Why content creators need Web3
- Different types of NFTs for different levels
- How the NFT model benefits readers
- Using existing digital publishing options alongside blockchain and web 3 options
- How long will adoption take?
You can find Sitka World at SitkaWorld.com and on Twitter @SitkaWorldNFT
Transcript of Interview with Rae Wojnic and Stephen Poynter
Joanna: Rae Wojcik is a speculative fiction author, freelance editor and journalist. And Stephen Poynter is an online entrepreneur, film professional and NFT enthusiast. Rae and Steven are the creators of Sitka World, a community-driven, community rewarded literature movement based around a fantasy world. Welcome to the show, Rae and Stephen.
Rae: Thank you.
Stephen: Thank you. Glad to be here.
Joanna: I'm very excited to talk to you about this. So let's start with, we've established that you're authors, creators.
Why are you so interested in Web3? And what does Web3 even mean to you?
Rae: I've been writing for most of my life, actually. And for so long, I was attracted to the idea of traditional publishing, as many of us are when we get started in this space.
But over the last few years, I feel like I've gone on a different journey of thinking of what are some different ways that I can really make writing work. I was attracted more to this idea of being a creative entrepreneur, and loved reading your book, How to Make a Living with Your Writing, and starting to think of that more creatively.
More recently, I've become attracted to this idea of community-driven publishing. And what I mean by that is almost taking this idea of the thousand true fans idea and thinking, how can I, instead of just sending a book out into the world to be read by people that I might never meet, trying to get it into as many hands as possible?
How can I really start to build a community and a community of those people who really care about writing, care about fantasy worlds and care about my book?
That's what drove me to the idea of Web3.
Stephen: I think that as far as why Web3 in the first place, why would we even go that route in terms of publishing, and then sometimes it's easy for people to be in the mindset of, well, if it works already, why change it? If we can get a book on Amazon Kindle, then isn't that good enough?
Beyond the community is the fundamental idea of ownership in Web3. I think that a lot of people don't really grasp all the ramifications that come with that. Because, with Web2, you never really own anything, you're just renting or licensing the right to be able to view content within a certain big tech platform.
And those platforms pretty much have all of the control over the distribution, over what's on their platform, over how the finances work for that. And they end up often taking a large percentage of those finances, and you're just at the mercy of whatever distribution platform is the main one for your genre normally.
With Web3, it gives more creative ownership and control for the artists, in this case, Rae, the author to be able to have more control over what she writes and how she connects with her audience, and how she sells to them and all that.
Joanna: Fantastic. Let's get more specific around ‘Sitka World.'
Tell us about SitkaWorld and what it is and what you hope to create around it.
Rae: With ‘Sitka World,' our mission is really to bring the magic of storytelling to Web3. It started out just as a way to publish my upcoming book series, actually, which is called ‘The Sitka Saga,' which is how ‘Sitka World' got its name.
But then I was thinking of it more and more. And I was realizing this doesn't have to just be a book, which is part of what the beauty of Web3 is, Web3 is so much more collaborative in many ways than many creative publishing platforms we've seen.
So I started to think of how can I make this more than being just about my specific fiction work. I work as a freelance journalist, I do some author coaching. The wheels started to turn a little bit and I started to think, ‘How can I make this really a community that's not just about my work, but can be about other people's work as well.'
With ‘Sitka World,' essentially, what it comes down to is it's going to be a whole community of writers helping everybody learn more about the Web3 space and being able to build a successful writing career in the Web3 space.
Stephen: And to expand on that idea of bringing the magic of storytelling to Web3, that's how we best came up with a way of describing and encapsulating what our vision is because it's partly like bringing the magic of the fantasy world, which is like this is a series that Rae has been writing for over a decade, has pretty much been her go-to passion creative outlet for since she was in high school.
We want to bring the messages and magic of that to Web3 in more interactive and immersive ways that are possible normally. That's one of the beauties of NFTs that maybe we can get into more later about how you can have this digital proof of ownership and you can get access to more than just a book. And you can continue to build on that, you can add more and more.
When you want to be doing audiobooks and looking at graphic novels and games and metaverse stuff and artificial intelligence and the community aspects and stuff where we can really allow readers to have a more immersive journey in this fantasy world where the book is really just the starting point, and just the base layer sort of introduction to that. So that's kind of one part.
The other part that Rae was saying is we really are developing this idea of what we're calling our Writers Guild, and having an inner group of writers within our community that we can help them find work like having a job gig portal, as well as different services like coaching and publishing services and helping them with networking and getting them connected in the world of Web3.
They can actually either bring their own works to life, if they're publishing their own works and want to maybe launch NFTs, or build a community or brand around that, or helping connect them with other established brands that are lacking in the storytelling.
A lot of brands, I think, especially in Web3, as they mature, will start to realize more the value of the intellectual property, of having a strong story and strong characters that their community will relate to, because that'll help keep their community engaged for the longer term.
We want to be able to present ourselves to other brands saying, “Hey, we have this group of writers. We could help you get connected with someone that could build out stories for you,” whether that's lore stuff, or websites, books, graphic novels, comics, game narrative, all that stuff, and to really then help bring that magic and power of storytelling to the broader world of Web3.
Joanna: Let's get a bit more specific, because I feel like the discussion of Web2 and Web3 can sometimes be confusing. And of course, you've mentioned things there like books and audiobooks, we have those right now, those exist right now.
I presume at some point, Rae, you're going to put these out in print, which, of course, is, we could say, not web at all. They're very old technology.
You've also mentioned almost being almost an education platform or something, your Writers Guild might have services, might have a job board, which could be done just with a website.
I'm really into this, but I feel like people get very confused technically. It's like, ‘Why don't I just have a website, and why don't I just publish a Kindle book?' So can you try and be a bit more specific, obviously, without getting too technical.
How is Web 3 different to what you can do with just Web2 tools?
Rae: Absolutely. Definitely, to start out, do we want to say, Web3 is not exclusive. So if you do love publishing ebooks, if you love publishing print books, you don't have to stop doing any of that with Web3.
One of the things that I like about it, and what helped me conceptualize, because I was new to all of this too, and didn't totally understand at first, but NFTs are really proof of ownership.
I think what's made a lot of headlines as they've started to come out is people hear about them, and they hear, ‘Oh, NFTs, those are just really expensive JPEG images.' But that's really just what it is on a surface level.
On a deeper level, an NFT can be a proof of ownership for anything, you could set it up as a proof of ownership to get into your community, if somebody owns your NFT, that's like their ticket in. You could have it where if somebody buys your NFT, if you're an author launching your book, that will give the holder royalties for your future earnings, it could give them access to really anything else in the world.
That's the crazy thing about this new technology is NFTs can really be your ticket to anything.
It's up to the creator just to use their imagination and think of what that anything can be.
Stephen: I think that the fundamental idea going back to the idea of ownership. In Web2, I think the two main distinctions, if I were to distill it to its essence, Web2 is about platform, the platform comes first. Everything has to be created for that platform. And the platform ultimately has the control over it.
Web3 is about community ownership, everyone that owns that NFT actually owns part of the network and the platform and brand. You don't have to surrender your intellectual property rights. Some do.
There are some sets where if you want to go that route, as a creator, you can actually allow your holders to use the characters or whatever their NFT represents and make their own works with it and own the rights but that's not how we're doing it. And it's certainly not how you have to but they own in the actual success of the project.
The biggest ramification of that is that your users actually feel more engaged. Think of it as a difference between some subscription, if it's some sort of club where you have to be paying, say, $100 a month to be part of some I don't know, golf club or something. Well, that's a subscription and it's a financial drain on you. Every month you have to keep on paying to be part of it. As soon as you leave, then you actually start saving money because now you're no longer having to pay for it. That's kind of what we've become used to with Web2.
But with Web3, it's more like you pay once upfront to actually take an ownership in, say, this golf club, I'm into golfing. But there's probably some golfers out there. And now there's only say a thousand owners. If that golf club does well, and if you help it do well over time, your stake and value in that ends up actually growing, and you could resell that membership to someone else and end up actually not being any of the worse out for it financially, because you're actually now like an equity owner in that golf club instead of just a paying subscriber.
Ownership changes the nature of the community.
You see a lot of very engaged NFT communities for that reason, because people actually feel like they want to be part of this in the long-term, they want to help it grow it because they just feel more tied to it, rather than just being like, ‘Hey, you're my fans, so I want to make money off of you. So just pay me money each month,' which can end up being a little more of a transactional, one-sided, maybe sort of relationship.
Joanna: I do think it's such a different mindset. That's why I keep asking these questions, because let's just say Amazon, as you mentioned, sort of platform-centered approach, which is we drive readers to Amazon, or Amazon has its own readership.
Then the author is just one of many, many millions of authors. But the benefits of that kind of centralization are that one big company is helping build a brand. And what you were talking about there is like community ownership.
So let's say ‘Sitka World' is not Amazon, obviously right now. Who knows what it could be in the future. The onus is on the community and the creators to drive readership into this world.
How do you see that happening? Because I feel like I'm almost frustrated right now. Because I feel like there's not enough of a community for this stuff to take off. And you mentioned there that engaged communities might take off, like you mentioned, the golf club might take off. But there are lots of these NFT collaborative projects that don't take off.
How can we bring people into this? And how are you thinking about building a world that will be successful? Because it's like starting from scratch again, basically, when many people are worried about that.
How are you thinking about finding readers, finding people who want to engage in Web 3?
Rae: I think that is a pretty big challenge. And I'm sure that 5, 10 years from now, there'll be plenty of people launching books on Web3, and it won't be as new as it seems.
To start out with, being user-friendly is incredibly important. One of the ways we're planning to launch the book to start is with using a platform called Readl. They're an NFT book platform that allows readers to make a purchase with a credit card. So they have an online reader and with the credit card option it's going to be super accessible to people who aren't used to the space.
You don't have to start to talk to people about here's how you create a crypto wallet, here's how you buy cryptocurrency, because that is so new to so many people, and can be a huge challenge. So I think having a platform that's user-friendly, and really utility focused is going to be a way to get some of those people to slowly start coming over who aren't used to the space.
Stephen: And along with that, the reading experience is, of course, important. At the end of the day, we can add a lot of other things on to the book. And we're doing that with all the different, say, services or perks and collaboration. But you have to have a good book, and you have to have the reader actually want to read the book.
There's been some Web3 attempts at launching books that were more just like a PDF sort of style. And a PDF isn't a good reading experience for anyone that's tried to read anything longer than a few pages on a PDF, it's not the same as a true Kindle reading app, say. But Readl is working on building out a real reading app that would compete with Amazon Kindle app reading experience.
I think that's important. Some of that is just the maturation of the industry. NFTs as we know them only really came onto the scene about a year ago. And it's crazy what's happened in 12 months.
Imagine where we'll be another 12 months from now, it will be certainly continue to just get better.
I think that the other thing in terms of getting readers on or why would people be interested is really making sure that you're really clear with what you're providing. I see some NFTs, and this is true for any brand, but you can't just launch and be like, ‘Well, we're just going to try to have a good book and a new experience.'
You have to give them a real reason to want to be part of the community.
There's also a lot of NFTs brands that are just kind of like ‘Well, we'll just have you know, I don't know metaverse, and fun and money or just join our community,' and it's like, ‘But why, what sets it apart? What's your mission? Who are you serving, and what are you helping them with?‘ So I think just having a real clear mission and audience of course is key like with any business.
And then growing that community and having it strongly incentivized for them to let it grow. That's where with us too, not only do you have, if you're a community holder, not only do you have the natural sort of incentive, like we discussed to want the project to do well because of an ownership stake, but we're having the royalty sharing built in where a future launches, 50% of all royalties will be given back to owner.
That way, we're publishing it serially, three acts for each book, and at least three books. So it'll be over the course of the years that we're really building out this whole series. That should encourage word of mouth, as long as the books are good, and people like it, then that you basically have an army of fans that are able to help spread the word of the books to their other fantasy communities and whatnot.
Joanna: Okay, loads to unpack there, which was really good. I appreciate everything you said.
First of all, Readl, I also love Readl, as we're recording this in April 2022, they're still not quite ready. But I totally agree with you. It's early days, and there are different companies. And hopefully, I think it will emerge in the same way as the kind of Web2 companies, we go wide with all these different things, and I think it will be the same. So I just wanted to give another thumbs up for Readl at the moment.
I wanted to ask about your business model, then you just mentioned 50%, royalty fractionalization, which if people don't understand that, it means say you sell, let's say you sell it for let's just say $10, five of those dollars after the fees, and there are always fees, five of those dollars will go to holders of that NFT smart contract for that book. Right? That is a very large royalty percentage.
I'm very interested, what do you see the business model being with this? Is it just for one book, how are you thinking about the future business model? Because obviously right now, that's not your full-time income. This is a future business model.
What do you see the business model being with web 3?
Stephen: I think a few things to clarify with that. The 50% wouldn't be tied to an individual, but would be spread among all individuals. And actually, Readl has ways that they're building out to do this. So think of it as more like a royalty sharing pool.
Joanna: Oh, no, I get that. You guys only get 50%. From the author perspective, 50% is a lot to give away. It's like a traditional publishing contract.
Stephen: That's really because we see it as a community movement and kind of like a Kickstarter idea. So if the project does well, we recognize that would be because of our early supporters and the people that join in and buy into that first launch and help it do well. We can't do it without the community.
And I think that the potential, even if it's 50% cut on our end, so to speak, the potential for real community movement, much outweighs the cost of that royalty share.
That's part of what I love about Web3 is cutting out the middleman by taking away the power from the platform, like we're talking about Readl.
They aren't a platform in the sense that Amazon is. You can't go exclusive with them, they don't get exclusive rights to your distribution or anything. They're just a tool and the actual NFT that you own is still decentralized in your wallet.
So say that we ended up not liking Readl and going with someone else later down the road, that's fine. There'll be competing apps that can also view the same NFTs. It's platform agnostic because you actually own that book in a way that is not possible in Web2.
[Note from Joanna: At the moment, in April 2022, you can view other NFTs on the same blockchain, but the cross-chain applications are still being worked on.]
Readl doesn't own it. And they can't stop you from going to a competing platform and using it, if they have a different reading app, not Readl, but a different app. And they say, ‘Hey, you have this NFT,' maybe you minted it, or bought it through the Readl site, but if the information is still there, you can still port it out to other platforms. Readl only need to have a 2% fee, like 2% is astronomically lower than 65% for Amazon.
By cutting out that power of the middleman we have a direct relationship with our readers.
And then between us and the readers, we get to accrue that value of the IP, you could say, so the value of that book, instead of the majority of going to a centralized platform, it all gets to go to the author and the readers.
In that sense, it's like, we're happy to share that value with our community and still be doing approximately as well as if we're going with Amazon or other platforms like that.
Rae: What really drew me going back to this idea of community-driven publishing is this idea that your community with NFTs really becomes on your side. So there's so many ways that that could work. Part of that is we can collaborate with other authors.
For example, you can do a launch where you collaborate with somebody else, say, you reach out to that author's community and say, ‘Okay, everybody who owns let's say you as an example, say everybody who owns like Joanna Penn's NFT, like, we'll take 100 people who own hers, and they can join our community.' So it's a great way to start to make those collaborations as well.
Another thing that we didn't talk about either was the idea of secondary royalties.
With NFTs, authors can actually structure it where you get secondary royalties, meaning somebody who initially bought your NFT, can go sell it to somebody else later down the road, and you'll get some of that back, which is really, really huge.
Because as we know, in the traditional publishing world, you only get those initial purchases. If somebody is done with your book, they go sell it at a used bookstore, you don't see any of that money.
So it's actually a really interesting way, because this is kind of the first time that we're going to start to see if the value of your intellectual property increases, the original creator can start to get in on some of that, which I find really, really intriguing.
Stephen: Kind of like the example of an artist, say that if Picasso can go ahead, like sold a painting when they were young, and before they've been famous, that painting might have only sold for a few dollars. And then later on in their career now that painting's worth millions, well, do they benefit from that at all?
They created that brand, and the value and their fame, and everything is something that they created, but they no longer have any ownership stake. And the person that bought it from them benefits from it, which is fine, of course, the person that bought should benefit. But it also seems like shouldn't the original artist get some benefit from that because they are the ones that grew their brand and the value of their name.
I think this will be really interesting because it introduces that concept to all forms of art, not just paintings or books. It's after you release something, you as an artist, it's the norm to have the secondary royalties normally somewhere around 5% to 8% or 10%, on resales, and that can be baked into the contract so it's enforced by the blockchain forever indefinitely.
When you release something out there to the world, you aren't just incentivized to keep on pumping out more and more new stuff, if you're only making money on the initial selling of it.
You're incentivized to keep on growing the value of what you already put out there because you'll always have an ownership stake in it and always be benefiting from it growing in an intellectual like branding.
Then it becomes the way to monetize yourself as a content creator is anything under the sun that increases the value of your brand.
So anything that you're doing to increase the value of your brand, and really the sky's the limit, it doesn't have to have a direct monetization, whether you're getting on billboards, or having collaborations with other well-known projects, or getting into other forms of media, making movies or whatever it can be anything you want, that increases the value of your brand, because that'll always come back to you in the form of secondary royalties.
If the original content that you created is increasing your value, then the percentage that you're getting is increasing in value. And there are NFT brands that are making thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars a day just in those secondary royalties.
Rae: Which is really, really great for me, because I'm admittedly a very slow writer. As Stephen mentioned, I've been working on this series for 10 years now. So the idea of this high volume publishing, where you're putting out a new novel every single year is probably never going to work for me just because of how slow I am. So the idea of secondary royalties, I think, would be a lot better fit so that I don't feel that pressure to try to write that way.
Joanna: And just to add to that, so I want people listening, if you still haven't got this yet, this ownership as a reader means that, and this is for digital books, we're talking about digital versions.
If you own the copy of the book, as an NFT ebook, for example, you can then sell it to someone else. And let's say 5% goes back to the original creator.
I've also seen there are these lending things coming out now with NFT. So you could potentially be lending out your special NFT books to other readers. I think that's an interesting secondary market too.
I was thinking about this as a reader because of course, we have to remember the readers are the ones who are going to be hopefully buying our books, but I've been on Amazon, I got an Amazon Kindle as soon as it arrived. I was living in Australia at the time, but I have ‘bought' or licensed, nearly 3000 Kindle books, and that's not including things borrowed.
So basically, for over a decade I have been buying, I buy books every day. I'm looking at that going, okay, I knew I was locked in to the platform, but I really locked into the platform because if I decide I don't want to read on Kindle anymore, I lose all those books, because they are not mine.
What we're seeing with NFTs is if I buy your book, Rae, number one ‘Sitka World,' then I own that, and I can in a decade's time, as you say, I can look on whatever blockchain and find that again, I can sell it. I actually own that.
And as you say the NFT shows that I do and that's in the smart contract.
This really is an incredibly different way of thinking about digital.
I feel like people haven't necessarily understood that from the hardcore reader perspective even, it is a very good business model, right?
Rae: Absolutely. And that goes back to what you said earlier, too, about how it's so early now. We don't know which reading apps in Web3 are going to take off.
So like you said, if you purchase an NFT book, that is 100%, yours, so even if 10 years from now, let's say you start reading on Readl, but 10 years from now, they're not around and you want to read on something else, because that book is 100% yours, you can port it over to whatever reading app you're using at the time.
Joanna: I think that's really important. The other thing, talking there, I wanted to ask you both about what you think about NFT books.
I have a thing about digital scarcity. I don't want to publish 1 of 50,000. I want to publish one of ones, but also maybe one of hundreds. For people listening, we're just limiting the number of this edition of book. By limiting the number, we're making it more valuable.
[Note from Joanna: I create 1 of 1 generative art NFTs which I sell here on OpenSea.]
Some of my 1 of 1 NFTs, generative art made from words from my fiction as j.f. penn
I see some platforms going down the route of making them unlimited and putting very low prices on things, which I just go back and forwards. I'm not really sure. So what do you think? Maybe we just do all of these different things.
What are you going to do with your books?
Stephen: I think that's very much a balance that we've been considering. Because on one level as for building a brand and following and, from our standpoint, getting the message of our books out there, because the books have a lot of important messages that we want the world to read. So you want widespread distribution on that side.
But at the same time, in terms of having a real tight community and creating that value, you need to have some form of scarcity, which is something that Web3 has introduced that Web2 never really had.
In Web 2, for any sort of content, it's very hard to have scarcity, because you can just copy and paste things and things do go viral. And then it's like, as soon as something gets leaked, it's out there, whereas Web3, you can't have a real sense of there are only so many owners in this. And that's the limit.
What we're doing is a dual approach where there will be a core set of NFT holders that will give them more access to the online community or services that we're wanting to provide, the royalty sharing, all that will be for what we're referring to as author class NFTs, more built for the author community.
And then there will be the reader class NFTs where it's just a manuscript. And for those ones in Readl, we don't know exactly how many will have it, we might be able to have it be unlimited in Readl. But those will be more like traditionally priced, might be $15 for your copy of your book. And it doesn't come with royalty sharing or with any of the other benefits. It's just the manuscript just like you would on Kindle, and so that we'd want to get out to as many people as possible while still having the scarcity for the people that are really in the community.
Joanna: I really think this is important. For people listening, if you're thinking about doing an NFT book, please don't price it at what you would have priced the Kindle or the Kobo or the Apple copy, because again, readers don't own those copies.
I think it's so important that we set a floor price for even, I don't even know how you can have an unlimited NFT book, I feel like there has to be some number. It's so new, we don't even know this, right? We don't even know whether you can set a limit.
The smart contract to me has to have terms on it in terms of how many there are, how long the smart contract will last, and all of these things.
But what I don't want to see is this race to the bottom that we've had with the digital abundance model, which is essentially an unlimited, the subscription model for digital which we don't want that. We want it to be these are digitally scarce assets.
And I guess that's the other thing. These are assets, right? NFTs, certainly, I think in the U.S. and here in the UK, are classed as assets. So they are different to what we think of as products.
What are your thoughts around that?
Rae: I think this is going back to where that idea of value comes in. Authors will have to start having this mindset shift that when you're publishing in the Web3 world, you're not just giving people a manuscript, you're giving them access to a community, something that can be resold, you're giving them opportunities for fan fiction, however you want to structure it, it is something that brings more value to your reader than just reading a manuscript.
That's where we were talking about too, that has the potential for your intellectual property for your NFTs to grow in value over time. And as they do grow in value, that becomes an asset to your readers and if they want to resell it later then perhaps the price has gone up.
It has to be starting this fundamental mindset shift there that we're not just putting out unlimited work for everybody to read. This really is something that has the potential to benefit our readers.
Stephen: I think as both an opportunity and a responsibility. Because if you're a creator and putting out these assets, you can't think of it as just a product where I just sell it and forget about it. And that's where we see a lot of NFTs that haven't done well is because that's what creators did.
They thought, ‘I'm just going to put it out there and just hope it sells and goes up in value.' And it's like, no, it's not going to just magically go up in value, if you aren't putting in the work. It is a full-time job, essentially, to manage a brand of any form, including NFTs.
If you're creating this new class of assets, so to speak, for your community, then you're essentially signing up for the long-term responsibility of increasing that. It may not be for everyone, if you just want to sell something and forget about it, then maybe more traditional launches are appropriate, or you just then sell it and price it more as a traditional mass market paperback book just on the blockchain and you aren't promising any other benefits or expectation of it doing well, long-term. You're just like, this is just another way of buying it on the blockchain.
I think that's definitely something to consider in terms of figuring out what's really your goals and structure long-term for why you're launching a brand.
Joanna: I actually disagree with you, though, on this, I think the community NFT is completely different to the asset NFT. I think that just an NFT book, which I will have as scarce, will be something that the reader can, as I've said, the reader will buy, they will be able to read it and they will be able to resell it.
And also they'll be able to let's just say ‘flex' in the metaverse, put on their bookshelf and the background when they do whatever the metaverse Zoom equivalent is going to be, that kind of thing. I think that as a reader, that's what I want.
I have to be honest, I'm not really a community-type person.
I just want to create my stuff, and I will do limited edition scarce digital editions. And they will be what they are. They don't have to have a community token.
What you guys are doing is actually a different model, which is a community movement, community site. And so you're incorporating different types of NFTs. But I think that's really important. Because for some people listening, there'll be more like me, which is well, I don't want to do all of that kind of thing.
I can just do just these limited editions, scarce resellable NFT books, right?
Stephen: Absolutely. I think that's a really good clarification.
Joanna: I also did want to ask, you've mentioned longevity, I think not just for the community angle, it is also for our intellectual property value, as you mentioned, and that this is not just a ‘fly by night get rich quick scheme,' which I think is one of the issues around the news articles on NFTs is like, it's a get rich quick scheme. It's a scam. It's all of this kind of thing.
There's a lot of fear of, ‘Oh, I'm just going to get scammed with this stuff.'
How are you communicating long-term value, and how are you trying to reach out to people who might be interested and also helping with people's fear?
Rae: That's what we've seen with the initial just super excitement about the NFT movement. And it has been a huge bubble, as we all know.
Personally, I am all for that bubble bursting, because I think when any new technology comes along, people get super excited about it, and start to speculate about it before the real utility comes out.
But it's really once that initial kind of frenzy of investing starts to burst that you see, ‘Hey, actually, there is some real value and some real utility behind this technology,' which is what we're going to be communicating to our community, especially in our sense too and for ‘Sitka World,' this is going to be a series that we're planning to launch out over months over the course of years.
We're being very upfront with people saying, this is a long-haul project. This isn't just like a, you invest in this and hope to flip it tomorrow. This is we're in here for the long haul to build that kind of community.
Joanna: Are you going to publish these books in the old-fashioned way, and have them on Amazon and all of the other sites as well?
Rae: Yes, but after we've published to the community first. We're going to do Web3 first, and then also do Web2 and have all of those options out there.
Joanna: That's fantastic. I do want to come back on what you said about the bubble bursting; I agree with you. I was working back in 2000 in the dot com, boom. And I remember when loads of my friends went to work for various dot com companies, and then 2000, 2001. And then the whole thing came crumbling down. And everyone was like, ‘Well, that was a mistake.'
But now of course, we're 20 years later, which is kind of hard to believe. And we're all making a living on using the internet and it's become core. So I guess that would be my final question because we're almost out of time, which is, how long do you think this is going to take because of course we don't want it to be 2001? We'd rather it was a bit later than that in terms of, we don't want to wait 20 years for this to become a mature situation.
What do you think in terms of the timeline of adoption for web 3?
Stephen: That's anyone's guess, of course, we don't have any magic special foreknowledge there. I do think that what we see is that the rate of technological change keeps on appreciating.
I was reading an article about that recently about just how not only does technology keep on increasing, but the rate of change of that increase keeps on increasing. The amount of change that we've seen in the last five years is much more drastic than the amount of change, say, between 1900 and 1905.
Even now, just with the power of computing too, all the and artificial intelligence and all that, we're seeing massive growth in the way that Web3 is already being used. Like I said, like NFT is pretty much I mean, the crypto punks, whatever, they were kind of like an experiment a few years ago, but really NFTs started gaining any sort of real attention about the start of last year.
A lot of stuff behind the scenes that, I'm in on calls and messaging with a lot of different project devs every day, there's so many really cool stuff being built behind the scenes, but it's just not in the public yet.
Because it takes still many months, years to develop good projects. A lot of the quality projects are still in development. Even then, once they're released, it takes a while for it to gain user adoption and awareness.
I would say from what I'm seeing, we're probably talking within the next year, I think we'll start to really see some more mass adoption. And certainly within a few years, a lot of those tools and all the different areas of the web that really help people with Web3 will be functioning and be out there. I don't think it's going to be decades this time is what I would say.
Joanna: Rae, of course, you've been writing these books for you said a decade, you must be just desperate to get them out into the world and all of this. What do you think in terms of the adoption?
Rae: I've been attracted more to the idea of serial publishing. We're going to start out by publishing just Act I of my book following the three-act story structure. So that will be coming out. But then the whole process of getting all of these out will likely take several years, which I'm prepared for on the one hand, like you said, 10 years is a long time to be writing a series.
On the other hand, I'm also a very slow writer. So it gives me like a lot of time to be able to really hash out the stories to be what I want it to be, because as I've been working on it for 10 years, I also want it to be the best it can be. So not having that pressure to be constantly putting out work after work right away is actually really great for me.
Joanna: That has been such an interesting chat. I really appreciate everything you're doing to also educate the community. And maybe we'll have you back again in another year. We can see how much further you are.
For now, tell people where they can find you and everything you do online.
Rae: Our project has a website called sitkaworld.com. I also have my own website with my writings called northernwords.blog. And I actually recently published an article called Why Content Creators Need Web3, which goes into a lot more of these ideas a lot more thoroughly that we've talked about as far as the utility for Web3.
We also have a Twitter for ‘Sitka World' which is SitkaWorldNFT. We do have a private Discord. Like I mentioned, the community aspect, that's not going to be open all the time, it will be invite only, but whenever this podcast is up, we will share it on our Twitter and we can share a link so if there's anybody listening who wants to join, they can join that way.
Joanna: Thanks so much for your time. It's been great to talk to you.
Stephen: Absolutely. Thank you, Joanna.
Rae: Thank you, Joanna.
The post Creating A Fictional World In Web 3 With Rae Wojnic and Stephen Poynter first appeared on The Creative Penn.
How can you turn one idea into a short story or expand it into a novel? How can you find a writing process that brings you joy for the long term? Jessie Kwak talks about writing craft tips in this interview.
In the intro, I comment on Andy Jassy's letter to shareholders and the importance of long-term thinking.
This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.
Jessie Kwak is the author of gangster sci-fi supernatural thrillers and nonfiction for creatives. She's also a ghostwriter and freelance marketing copywriter. Her latest book is From Big Idea to Book: Create a Writing Practice That Brings You Joy.
You can listen above or onyour favorite podcast appor read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.
Show Notes
- Planning, plotting, and discovery writing
- Finding ideas, and turning them into short stories, or expanding them into novels
- Tips for dealing with critical voice
- Developing theme
- The pros and cons of working with small press
- Using Kickstarter as a pre-order
- How to put the joy back into writing
- Jessie was also on the show previously, talking about From Chaos to Creativity: Productivity for Writers.
You can find Jessie Kwak at JessieKwak.com and on Twitter @jkwak
Transcript of Interview with Jessie Kwak
Joanna: Jessie Kwak is the author of gangster sci-fi supernatural thrillers and nonfiction for creatives. She's also a ghostwriter and freelance marketing copywriter. Her latest book is From Big Idea to Book: Create a Writing Practice That Brings You Joy. Welcome back to the show, Jessie.
Jessie: Thank you for having me. This is super fun.
Joanna: Always good to talk to you. You've been on the show before. We talked a bit about your journey and how you manage everything. So we're just going to get straight into the topic today.
Now, I should say upfront, this is a really great book, there's so much in it and I found it very hard to choose the questions.
I want to start with the plotting versus discovery writing because there's this tension for both fiction and nonfiction. You say in the book that “every author plans, but the extent to which they plan differs.”
Talk about planning, and how we can find the best way for our writing style.
Jessie: I think there tends to be a lot of emphasis on what's the right way to write, should I outline, am I supposed to be doing this or that or the other thing. My very first piece of advice, as we get into talking about writing advice, is, don't really worry about what's right.
Start with what your strengths are. Start with what you enjoy about the process, and start experimenting from there. Definitely don't throw out the things that you enjoy just because you're like, ‘Oh, I read in a book that I'm supposed to do it a different way.'
When I talk about planning, I really came to writing as a pantser. And I didn't do a lot of outlining. I would try it and then I would just immediately go in a weird direction as soon as I started writing. I'm very much a discovery writer.
Unless I am literally typing or putting pencil to paper and writing out a scene, I don't know what is going to come out of that scene. Doesn't matter how much I outline. But I have tried to incorporate a lot more planning into my discovery process.
For example, you don't have to plot out the whole book, but maybe you could plot out this act that you're working on, or the first half of a book. My mind was blown at a conference a few years back when another author was like, ‘I only ever plot out the first half of any book, because my outline always goes off the rails.' It's like, ‘Oh, you can do that?'
Or you can try planning at the scene level. That's something that I find really helps me. Taking five minutes to jot out, this is what I want to do with the scene, some sensory details, basic scene blocking of who goes where and does what.
If you are a heavy planner, maybe experiment with giving yourself a little bit more flexibility. Experiment with how you are coming up with that outline. Are you going into a spreadsheet and plotting out every detail?
Or try being maybe a little bit more freeform and see if that helps at all. And if it doesn't, that's fine, you don't have to, you can be the spreadsheet outline, or you can be the complete pantser. But playing with what other people do, I think can really help.
Joanna: And it's interesting because you've been on the show talking about productivity, and I know how much work you get done. Knowing that you're incredibly organized in your nonfiction side. I feel like we've got a lot in common in our nonfiction.
But I feel like, with my fiction, I am a discovery writer, but I am so different with my fiction than I am with my nonfiction. So I wondered if that's the same with you?
Are you a completely different Jessie when you write fiction to nonfiction?
Jessie: Yes, I am. I definitely am more relaxed and letting the words flow and not being so detailed in the very first draft when I'm writing fiction.
Whereas with nonfiction, it tends to be a lot more outline-y. I write a lot of blog posts and articles. And so in that case, we do really want to say, ‘Okay, here's the three points I'm going to make. And then I'm going to flesh out each section.' But with fiction, I will let myself wander a lot more.
Joanna: I feel like the word plan can be a difficult word. I certainly find it difficult with fiction, because I feel like my muse wants to do what it does. But equally, it's funny you mentioned that person who plots the first half of the book.
I plan I guess in my head, I know the opening scene, which is always something… I like a prologue in action-adventure thriller. I like a prologue where something bad happens and then, Chapter 1, we see the protagonist. So I always have that prologue, that set-piece in some awesome location.
And then I often will have or pretty much always have my climax, which is another set-piece and another awesome location. And then the middle bit, it's everything in between just kind of wanders around.
So even the whole idea of planning, it doesn't matter, does it? It's whatever works for us.
Jessie: Yeah, and for me, I'm using a five-act structure for my books, the series that I'm working on right now. So I have the thing that happens at the end of each act for all five acts like where are we going to commercial break here? I kind of what's happening there.
Beyond that, I do plot out an act level and I say, ‘Okay, in this act, we're going to do this.' I know some things that are happening ahead of here. But the thing that I find is I can't keep going, unless I have a good strong foundation of what I've written before.
I tend to cycle through a book like, I will write Act I, I give to my husband, he reads it, he gives me some feedback, I rewrite it, then I write Act II and do the same thing.
I was at a writing retreat this weekend and there was a word count competition among everybody. And so I had to write Acts IV and V and I was like, ‘You know what, I'm at the end of the book, I know what's going to happen, I will just write as fast as I can, and I'm going to win this competition.'
But I got to the end of Act IV, and I got stuck and I couldn't write anymore in Act V. And I was like, ‘Oh, you just have to do your process, Jessie. You can't force it.' That's an example of experimentation. Start with your strengths and don't throw your strength out, which for me, is this cyclic process.
Joanna: That is a really good point. I would hate that word count contest. I always feel that's what happens in NaNoWriMo, as well; there's some people who always do like 50,000 words in one day or something.
Jessie: Oh, my, gosh.
Joanna: I've only done NaNoWriMo once back in originally, when I started Stone of Fire. I only ‘wrote' 20,000 words in a month and only about 5,000 words of those ended up in the book. My strength is not hardcore words done.
It's interesting you were on a writer's retreat, and they were presumably assuming that you could just write a lot of words.
Isn't this one of the issues in the writing community? We compete on things that aren't necessarily our strengths?
Jessie: Yes, absolutely. There was the word count board that was going up every day. One woman wrote 40,000 words in the four days that we were there, and I was just like, well, as soon as I saw her numbers going up I was like, ‘Well, there's no competition here.'
Joanna: I'm just going to give up now. I guess word count might kind of come into my next question. You have a great section on ideas. I know some people struggle with ideas.
Let's assume people have lots of ideas. How can we flesh an idea into a story? And also, how do we know what that story is? Is it a short story? Or is it a series or standalone? We've got an idea.
Did you see the wreck of a Shackleton's ship just got discovered? [BBC]
Jessie: Oh, yeah.
Joanna: Obviously, I'm like, ‘Wow, that's cool. What kind of story could that be?'
How do we take a seed of an idea and flesh that out?
Jessie: One thing that works really well, for me is freewriting about it or journaling on it. Just getting away from the computer and playing with the idea on paper, until it starts expanding and unfolding.
Another thing that I've been experimenting with lately is using tarot cards. That was partly inspired by your podcast with Caroline Donahue on tarot, I think it was from a few years back. It gives you the sort of interesting imagery that will combine with maybe the idea you had, and spark or your brain going in a bunch of different directions. So those are two tools that I tend to use when it comes to fleshing out an idea.
Another really good thing to try is keeping a collection file, whether that's on your computer, or whether that's articles you might physically cut out of a newspaper. Or images you might print out, and collecting all this imagery and words and ideas in one place and watching that accrete and grow over time.
That can be a really interesting way of building on a single story idea that you might have and being inspired by the world around you.
Joanna: I use the Things app and I'm always, always finding stuff. It might be links to an article or it might be a quote or it might be just what about this or. So I keep lots and lots of notes and that's just on my phone.
I have journals and things but they're almost fragments, aren't they? Snippets that you find in the world.
Jessie: Yes. I think it's really fun to see how those start to combine and grow with each other. It's almost like throwing a bunch of seeds in a garden and then seeing what starts to pop up. Except that with writing, the seeds will join with each other and come up with a weird hybrid.
Joanna: Yes, and that's what originality really is, isn't it? Because, of course, it's not original, like romance. Somebody meets somebody or more than one somebody and there's trouble and then they all get together or whatever. That's not original.
What's original is all the little things we add to make it our work.
Jessie: Absolutely.
Joanna: Let's just come back to the Shackleton idea, because I want us to try and give an example. I'll put a link in the show notes. But essentially, Shackleton's lost ship was found last week in the Antarctic, and this is an undiscovered shipwreck 107 years after it disappeared. This is very cool, right?
So this is I'm sure it's an idea for lots of people that's why I'm going to put it out there. If we had that seed of an idea, so underwater wreck rediscovered, how would we know? Or how would we turn that into, let's say, a short story?
Or how would we turn that idea into something much bigger?
Jessie: One of the skills that you start to acquire as an author is knowing how much story can fit in a container. And this is something that I had to learn and it took me forever to figure out.
I tried to write a short story and I would try to include, okay, here's this big geopolitical event, and then here's this international scandal. And then here's this person also has a conflict with like their father, and then their boyfriend's breaking up with them or whatever.
I'm trying to write a 2,000-word short story with all of that, that's not going to work.
If you were going to take the Shackleton's ship idea, and asking yourself if you wanted to write a short story, what is one of the smallest problems that could come that my protagonist could have about this?
If you were writing a scientist who's discovering it, you could write a novel about the office politics and the international concern over who found the ship and who should own the ship. This huge history and you could have this backstory of involving flashbacks to Shackleton's journey and things like that.
Or you could say, ‘Okay, my protagonist, this is their very first expedition, and they really need to prove themselves because of X, Y, or Z. And how does this event help them either accomplish that goal or change their goal into something else?'
Narrowing your focus into that, the biggest problem you're trying to solve in a single-story, I think can really help scale your idea up or down.
Joanna: And also the number of characters that you have.
Jessie: Absolutely.
Joanna: Yes, so like you said, let's take a deep-sea scuba diver, or some submariner. I'm not quite sure how deep it is. But let's say a submariner and they're piloting the ship and it's going to go down.
The short story is potentially there was an emergency and they have to overcome their fear or something like that. I like quest action-adventure thrillers, so in my head, the longer novel idea is the submariner goes down, and they find a box in the wreck. And they get the box back up, and they open the box, and they find a map. And thus begins an adventure through Antarctica.
But then there's more people, there's more plot points, and immediately, you get something much bigger than 2,000 words. So as you say, what's the smallest story unit that you can make with this idea?
I personally think the Shackleton thing is probably going to be novel size. What do you reckon?
Jessie: Probably. Especially if we were working on this book together, I would say the map is actually leading to some sort of alien artifact and I'm going to throw the sci-fi element in there. And now we're going to have this like a big intergalactic thing that happens, so definitely a novel.
Joanna: Okay, that's good. Obviously, coming back to your book, it is From Big Idea to Book. I do think that we've come up with what is possibly a big idea. Anyone listening, you're welcome to turn it into a book.
I think this is another thing, isn't it, about attitude? You and I've been doing this long enough. We met years ago now in Oregon, and I feel like when you've been doing this long enough, you don't mind. Or are you happy to throw out ideas? Because even if you and I both wrote those books that we just talked about, they'd be completely different.
Ideas are abundant.
Jessie: I really think so. There are definitely ideas that I have stolen from other people or borrowed or whatever the polite artistic term would be. I don't have time to write everything that I might possibly have an idea for. So if I read a book where somebody found this alien artifact in the Shackleton ship and ran with it. And they were like, ‘Oh, I listened to your podcast,' I'd be like, ‘Awesome, because I wanted to read that story, but I don't have time to write it.'
Joanna: Exactly. Although, even if six thriller writers took it and had the box and opened the box, I bet we'd all put different things in the box. It's actually a good writing prompt for everyone listening, what is in the box?
Jessie: Yeah. That can be a fun anthology.
Joanna: Actually that's a good point. When you do a Shackleton anthology, but this is what's so fun about story ideas. And this is what I think I want people to consider, anything you look at could turn into a story, and you get to decide the angle, right?
You picked an alien. And I'm never going to write about aliens. I say never but who knows, but I'm not into sci-fi. But you went that way, I went to the thriller side. That's the personal choice of ideas, too, isn't it?
Jessie: Right, it's the interest that you bring to it. But then it's also your past experience, and the things that you see in the world are going to be different than the things that I see in the world.
The details that you're going to notice, the emotional response you're going to bring to it.
That's what I think is so fascinating about writing. There's everyone's retelling fairytale stories. There's so many fairytale retellings, and all of them are so different.
Joanna: That's a really good point. I don't read those, to be honest. But I know what you mean. Even take something that's at the cinema right now, ‘The Batman.' Seriously, how come they are just rebooting this again?
You could say it's a nightmare, they're still doing the same idea over and over again. But on the other hand, they are all different, they are different characters, they are different sort of themes and all of that.
So yes, we can take these ideas and do different things. But you also have a great section on mindset. We've touched on mindset. But let's say we've got this brilliant Shackleton story, and we write it down. And inevitably, our words just don't come out the way we want, especially on the first pass, they're like, ‘Oh, this is terrible.
How can we deal with that critical voice that says, ‘Everything you do is terrible,' at the same time is also balancing that with improving our craft?
Jessie: On occasion, throw out questions to other writers as I was working on this book. This was one that I threw out on Twitter and said, ‘How does everyone deal with critical voice?'
I got the most responses to this question because it's something everyone deals with. One of my favorite things people would do was just put a sticky note on their laptop that said, ‘This is a discovery draft,' or, ‘This is my bad writing.' So you see it and you're like, ‘Okay, right, this doesn't have to be good.'
Or practicing bad writing was another thing that I kept hearing from people; the idea of doing morning pages. Letting yourself write badly, and doing it in a cheap journal or something where it's not your beautiful leather-bound journal where all the words have to be preserved for posterity. Giving yourself that mental cue that, it's okay to write badly here.
One thing that I like is using a different tool like, I mentioned, the cheap notebook. If you give me a beautiful notebook, I am just instant writer's block, but give me a little spiral-bound notebook and I can write forever.
Or the AlphaSmart Neo, one of those little word processors that they used to use in school that doesn't have a screen and it just has a few lines of text. Gets you away from where you write your finished product. And puts you in a space where you are just going to the word mines and pulling out the words that you can use to build the finished product later.
That's how I like to look at it. I'm putting sand in the sandbox, and then I will build a sandcastle, but you can't build the sandcastle without the sand first.
Joanna: I use Scrivener to write and I feel like it's about trust in the process.
Once you've been through this creative cycle enough times, you know that critical voice is just part of the process.
It's almost like you have to learn to write alongside it as opposed to try and banish it. So we don't say go away forever. We say, ‘Okay, trust the process.' And critical voice comes in when we edit. So that's fine.
Also, I personally, I don't use beta readers. I use professional editors. So I feel like as part of my process, I will always have someone who will stop it being terrible, you know what I mean?
Jessie: I agree with that.
Joanna: It's finding a process that saves you from thinking that that awfulness will go out in the world.
Jessie: I find myself very often when I'm at a place where I'm like, ‘Oh, this doesn't feel like it's sparkly and amazing prose.' And I'm like, ‘You know what, this is still going to my editor. Kiera's going to look at it, she's going to fix things. And then I will have one more chance to do a pass and make it like, beautiful and gleaming.' And I'm just like, ‘Okay, this is where I stop and send it off.'
Having a professional editor who you trust is amazing.
Joanna: I totally agree. Let's stick with editing because you talk about rediscovering and developing the core idea in your draft during this editing and revision. I find this interesting, because, in fact, I think Stephen King talks about this in On Writing, the book everyone needs to read, which is that theme that emerges later.
Some authors obviously decide on a theme and then write something to a theme. But I'm definitely one of those who's like, I don't even know what's happening until later as a discovery writer.
What do you mean by rediscovering and developing the core idea?
Jessie: I definitely agree with Stephen King about the theme emerging later as you're either in the revision process or maybe near the end of the book. That's often where I'm like, ‘Well, I've used this getting swept away by the sea metaphor, a lot of times, maybe my theme is about your life destabilizing, and how do you fix that? Interesting.'
One thing I find helps is getting some distance from the book, and from the actual words that are on the page and start thinking about the story more as a whole. One way you can do that is printing out your first draft and then reading through it with a cup of tea and a journal.
Not a red pen, you're not editing, you're just you're writing down what you're noticing, as you're reading through. Or telling a story to a friend can be another really helpful way to do that.
One thing that I really love is writing your back cover copy, and just saying, ‘This is what the story is about.' It also helps you focus in on what readers you're going after, as well.
Again, at this writing retreat I was at this weekend, one woman said that she always writes a review of her book, just like a professional reviewer would. And she used to work as a professional reviewer. So that's kind of her method anyways.
She writes about, here's the strengths of the book, here's why you're going to love it. It was a little lackluster over here. But this author is really more drawn to these sorts of things.
I love that because she includes those highlights, and the like, ‘Eh, this is maybe where the book fell down a little bit.' Because you can't do everything perfectly all the time and you're not trying to write for everyone.
To be able to say, ‘This book isn't necessarily for readers of Iain Banks who want these big weird sci-fi ideas. But if you love like great characters, and fast-paced, twisty plots, you're really going to love these books.'
It helps me at least, because speaking specifically with my books. ‘I don't have to be Iain Banks. My reviewers love my characters. They don't care about did I invent this crazy new alien species?'
Joanna: That's really important is focusing in and again, like we said,
It's about your curiosity, and what you enjoy as a reader, and the experience you like to deliver in your books.
I picked Shackleton there because I just read an undersea thriller, I love undersea thrillers. And I'm like, ‘Yeah, I've got an idea for an under…' I've written a number of short stories underwater, and it's like, ‘Okay, that's really cool.' We have to keep tapping into that, what we love.
I like that you say develop the core idea because it's in that editing process that you can go and layer in some more symbols, or some more backstory. Or foreshadowing anything that helps layer on that core idea, not so it's really obvious and on the nose. But it just is adding things in to make it richer and deepen it.
Jessie: Yes, you're just adding in more little layers of notes and color, and things that just create richer, deeper experiences people are reading through.
Joanna: Have you seen ‘The Crown' on Netflix?
Jessie: No, I haven't.
Joanna: Oh, okay. It was a big series on Netflix, but we just watched their fourth series right now, I've watched it for the second time. What we noticed on the second way through is how much metaphor they layer in the background of the scenes.
I'm learning a lot about storytelling from it, because of the way they're using visuals in the background. They might have a discussion about Princess Diana while someone is slaughtering a beast. And you're like, ‘Okay, I can see the metaphor.'
When you can see it, it feels heavy, but we didn't see it the first time around. I feel like in our books it's good to layer in things that perhaps people don't notice as they read through. But it comes through in the visual effects we're using and the dialogue we're using.
We're talking about real craft here, I know.
That's the kind of thing I'm thinking about now trying to deepen my books in that way.
Jessie: I interviewed Rachael Herron for this book. I talked specifically about editing with her because she's so good at it, and has spoken quite a bit about it.
One of the things that she said was if she is writing a book where the theme is, say, mother-daughter relationships and she has a scene where the characters are walking through a mall, and talking about something, she might have in the original draft written a couple teenagers goofing off in the background.
Instead, why not have it be a mom with a little girl toddler who's pulling away from her hand and racing away while the mom's calling after her? That's the thematic element that she's trying to get at. So even this little scene in the background, ‘Oh, wait, here's the place where I can layer that in a little bit better.'
Joanna: That is exactly right. And Rachael is a genius.
Jessie: She is.
Joanna: Everyone should go listen to her podcast.
Your book is fantastic. I also wanted to talk about how you published it, because you're a hybrid author with indie and traditionally published books. This book is out with Microcosm Publishing.
I noticed because, of course, I have a copy. And I was like, ‘Wow, this is really nice art in here from this publishing house, which I've not seen before.' It's out of Portland in Oregon. So presumably, it's quite funky.
You did a Kickstarter for it, which we're going to talk about.
Tell us about the pros and cons of working with a small press and why you decided to go that way.
Jessie: I have nothing but amazing things to say about Microcosm Publishing, they are like you said, they're very funky. They have this DIY punk aesthetic.
They originally started, I think, almost about 30 years ago. The founder, Joe Biel, he would create scenes and then bike with them on the back of his bike to a punk bar, and then sell them off the counter of the punk bar.
From there, he built this incredible, tiny little publishing empire. And he and his partner, Elly Blue, they're both incredibly business-savvy people.
They obviously, as you mentioned, do fantastic design work, really cool little artwork inside all the books. They run their own distribution. They've got a dedicated sales team that's working to get books into obviously bookstores, but also unique places like gift shops, because they have a lot of books that would be a good gift sort of thing. A store that might sell plants, they also will have Microcosm's books on how to garden, things like that.
One of the reasons that I started working with them, A, I was friends with Elly. And so when I brought up the idea for this book, I'd been thinking about self-publishing it, and she was like, ‘That sounds like something that would be perfect for Microcosm. We'd love to take this book if you want to publish it.' Or as…sorry, actually speaking of From Chaos to Creativity, which was the first book, I published with them.
I immediately said, ‘Yes,' because I am a freelancer, as my half-day job, and a fiction writer is my other half-day job. I'm already split between these two worlds, and I'm spending all this time trying to build up my fiction audience.
I knew realistically, I don't have time to try to build a nonfiction audience as well in this creative productivity space. And I certainly don't have time to try to get call bookshops, and gift shops all around the world and try to get my books in there. So I just knew, working with Microcosm, they were going to be able to promote this book way better than I ever could. So it was kind of a no-brainer, in that case with them.
Joanna: That's so interesting, because basically, what you've said is, I've got these two brands, your freelance brand, and your fiction brand, and you just could not do another brand, essentially.
Jessie: Right.
Joanna: A lot of people do ask me about how many pen names should you have? I often say I struggle enough with two with J.F. Penn for my fiction and Joanna Penn for my nonfiction.
It sounds like a similar issue, in a sense, and you're kind of thinking, ‘Well, I just can't do more under almost another brand, even if it's the same name.' But I think that's so fascinating because that's not a reason I've heard although, I guess you could say it's, I don't want to do the marketing.
Does that mean they're doing all the marketing? Obviously you're doing this interview. Are you doing other marketing for them?
Jessie: Essentially, all the marketing that I'm doing is this kind of publicity stuff. Podcasts or writing articles for different places. I still do a really small amount of content marketing to build this creative productivity brand.
But they're doing any sort of advertising; they've got a big newsletter there at events, pushing my books in person. They're doing all the marketing in that aspect.
Joanna: Would you ever consider a small press or a big publisher for your fiction?
Jessie: I think for my fiction, at this point, I would consider a big publisher. I think a small press, I don't know that they could do it better than what I'm doing for myself, because I am doing that for myself.
Whereas I feel like I could do a decent job with the content marketing and stuff for the nonfiction if I was really focused on it. But again, with the distribution Microcosm, just they have me beat completely, there's no way that I could get that level of distribution for at least for physical books.
For fiction, I think the place that I would look for a hybrid publishing opportunity in fiction would be a larger publisher who would have a bigger audience and be able to promote my books in ways that I can't get to at this point. But I think a small press with fiction, I don't know if that would be the right fit.
Joanna: That idea of fit is really interesting because essentially, you've assessed what you can do and what your strengths are. And then you've looked for a partner who can do things that you can't.
I really feel this is what we need to be doing as indies now, I've come to this realization, I keep coming to it, but we cannot do everything ourselves. We want to be independent, but that doesn't mean working alone. Does it?
We work with other people to achieve our goals.
Jessie: Absolutely. Working with somebody who was on the same page as you, I think is really important. That I feel very aligned from a philosophical standpoint, and from an indie writer sort of standpoint with the team at Microcosm.
Joanna: Yeah, they do look, as I said, super funky.
Jessie: They're fantastic. They have so many fun books. They're doing a bunch of queer werewolf erotica right now. It's awesome. Everything they do is so fun.
Joanna: That is, and also the Kickstarter. So you did or they did a Kickstarter, and you did a little video for it. What's so funny is we talk right now, Brandon Sanderson's epic, Kickstarter is still running and it's like over 25 million or something.
[Sanderson's 2022 Kickstarter closed at US$41 million!]
I feel like a lot of authors now want to do Kickstarter. But also I feel it might be easier with nonfiction to get some traction because it's kind of obvious what you're going to get. Whereas fiction, you really need to be a fan.
I've got a book right here that I supported on Kickstarter that I don't know the author at all, have no connection with the author, it's just I like the title. And it's a nonfiction business book. So I was like, ‘Yeah, I'm going to try that.'
Tell us about the Kickstarter and any tips for that.
Jessie: As you mentioned, it was really Microcosm that did the Kickstarter. So I don't want my first tip to be, have somebody who can do it for you.
Joanna: That's a good tip though.
Jessie: They do. They kickstart all of their new books and it's their way of getting pre-orders out for the books, and building their audience. So they've been doing this forever.
Essentially, all I needed to do, I went down to their office and recorded a little video and they were like, ‘Why don't you just like go dance and twirl in among the books.' I'm like, ‘Sweet, let's do it.' So it was a really, really fun silly video. And then I was also promoting it to my own audience. So that's kind of the aspect that I did.
One of the things with Kickstarter, because we did this for both From Big Idea to Book and then From Chaos to Creativity, having the stretch goals that can get people excited.
For example, with From Chaos to Creativity we added on a workbook halfway through because we were brainstorming ideas for a stretch goal. And that workbook I think was super, super popular. We didn't end up doing that with From Big Idea to Book. I don't know if it would have worked out in the same way.
The stretch goal that we did for that one was, I think it was like if we got to 300 backers, then people could be eligible to have a Zoom call with me and I do a little presentation. We didn't quite make it there. I think it just wasn't as exciting to people. We're all on Zoom all day long. So maybe that was part of it. Everyone's like, ‘Oh, Zoom.'
But coming up with something that adds more value in maybe a more tangible way than say the hangout obviously wasn't as valuable. That's one tip.
Joanna: I've just looked it up on Kickstarter. There were 281 backers pledging over 9,000 US dollars to bring that to life. I think that's brilliant because we hear the Brandon Sanderson 25 million or whatever and we think that's what you have to do.
But what this is essentially, as you said, these are pre-orders on a nonfiction book. And okay, so it exceeded the goal of 7,000. Do you know how they put those numbers on it? Do they normally do that kind of $7,000?
Or is the idea to set it low enough that it will fund regardless?
Jessie: I think the idea is to set it low enough that funds regardless, because as we said there, it's more of a preorder. And the book's coming out, it's not we won't but they also tried to make it a little bit of a challenge.
I'm not sure exactly what goes into how they set the numbers. But we did with From Chaos to Creativity, I believe the original number was 4,000 and we more than doubled that. So I think they were like, ‘Well, if we more than doubled it, let's almost more than double the next book, because she's already got an audience, there's already a little bit of buzz around it.'
They make sure that they're covering their production costs and all of that sort of thing. But they are trying to make it a bit of a challenge and not just, ‘Oh, it's $400. Let's see if we can fund that.'
Joanna: Exactly. And in just looking at it, what's interesting is they've used the page for your book to also include links to loads of other books that they've got on different things.
That's how I feel about Kickstarter. It's almost like this ecosystem, that if you start building an audience there, and then you put out multiple projects, then it does compound over time.
You've got the benefit with this latest one, you've got the benefit of all the ones that have come before in terms of picking up people every time. I always think that when we think about Kickstarter, which I am, that it can't just be a one-off, that you almost have to have a plan to do others in the future.
Jessie: Yes, and the idea of working with other people on this, whether that's getting people to donate maybe an eBook that you can use as part of the Kickstarter reward.
Or in one case, a friend of mine did a Kickstarter recently, where each week, he had a different subscriber bonus. If you signed up in the first week, then you got all four of these extra eBooks that friends of his had donated. And if you signed up in week two, you got the three of them and so one of them went away every week. So it increased this, like, ‘Oh, I got to get in early. So I can get all of these little rewards.'
Joanna: That is a good tip. We're almost out of time.
I want to come back to the book because the subtitle is ‘Create a Writing Practice That Brings You Joy.' I feel like the word joy can be difficult for some people to associate with writing because it can feel like it's difficult, or it's a struggle, or it has to be really important. So having joy might be difficult.
What are your final tips around finding joy in writing?
Jessie: I think it goes back to letting go of what you think you should be doing, how you think you should be writing, and what the outcome of your writing is going to be.
I think most of us got into writing because we liked telling stories, or we wrote stories as kids. I certainly did when I was a kid and I was writing stories. It wasn't so I could make a bestseller list or pay my mortgage.
I find the times when I'm so frustrated with writing are when I'm looking at a book and being like, ‘Okay, is this going to sell? Is this going to pay the mortgage?'
If you can let that outcome go and just focus on, ‘What do we love about this? Oh, I love dialogue. I love when the characters come alive and that sparkles, how can I get more of that?'
In the end, you can't control outcomes, you can certainly do your best to market your book and sell your book. But the only thing you can control is your daily process and that's where you're going to be spending your most time.
I really, really encourage you to think, how are you spending your days writing? Do you want to still be that happy or that miserable five years from now as you're still working on your writing career because it takes a while?
Joanna: It absolutely does. Brilliant.
Where can people find you and your books and everything you do online?
Jessie: You can find everything at jessiekwak.com. So everything's there. I'm on Instagram and Twitter. And basically, if you Google me I'm the only Jessie Kwak you'll find in like 10 pages of Google results. So I'm easily findable.
Joanna: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Jessie. That was great.
Jessie: Awesome. Thank you so much, Joanna.
The post From Big Idea To Book With Jessie Kwak first appeared on The Creative Penn.