Wordslinger Podcast: Recent Episodes
Kevin Tumlinson
Kevin Tumlinson, Bestselling and Award-Winning Thriller Author, talks to authors and entrepreneurs to get their behind-the-scenes story. Each week, you can tune in to a full hour of wisdom and insight from some of the most intriguing people on the planet. It's all about the story here.
Steve Berry is the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of 13 Cotton Malone adventures and four stand-alone thrillers. His books have been translated into 40 languages with more than 22,000,000 copies in 51 countries. They consistently appear in the top echelon of The New York Times, USA Today, and indie bestseller lists.
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- Website:: www.steveberry.org
- Amazon Author page:: https://www.amazon.com/Malta-Exchange-Steve-Berry/dp/1250140269/
- Facebook:: https://www.facebook.com/SteveBerryWriter/
- YouTube Channel:: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi9nEHISaFpRqkEqTwPDvQ2-jrBrgM61R
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SPONSORS: INDIE AUTHOR BLUEPRINT: You are not alone! Find out where to start, and how to build and grow your indie author career. And we’ll be with you the whole way! http://indieauthorblueprint.com * DRAFT2DIGITAL: Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger * ACORNS: Start an Acorns account today and get FREE MONEY! kevintumlinson.com/acorns * AUDIBLE.COM:* Get a FREE 30-day trial of Audible and listen to any audiobook in their vast library, when you go to http://audibletrial.com/wordslinger
PETER D. JOHNSTON is a renowned negotiation expert and bestselling author of Negotiating with Giants, a nonfiction guide to the art and science of negotiation. His pioneering expertise in asymmetric negotiations is sought worldwide by companies and governments. A former journalist and banker, he is a graduate of the Harvard Business School and has been interviewed by CNN, ABC, Fox, The Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail and Oprah & Friends.
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Website:: https://weaponsofpeace-book.com/
Amazon Author page:: https://www.amazon.com/Peter-D-Johnston/e/B00MG4MKRO/
Twitter Handle:: @nailimited
Facebook:: https://www.facebook.com/nailimited/photos/a.262102297613286/262103677613148/?type=1&theater
YouTube Channel:: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdkmDk06hoE
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AuthorOnTheRoad.com
SPONSORS:
INDIE AUTHOR BLUEPRINT: You are not alone! Find out where to start, and how to build and grow your indie author career. And we’ll be with you the whole way! http://indieauthorblueprint.com
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Casey Barrett is a crime novelist, Canadian Olympian, and the co-founder and co-CEO of Imagine Swimming, New York City's largest learn-to-swim school. He is the author of the Shamus-nominated Duck Darley series, set in present-day Manhattan, with the third, THE TOWER OF SONGS, to be released on August 27th. Casey has won three Emmy awards and one Peabody award for his work on NBC's broadcasts of the Olympic Games. He was the author of the popular swimming blog, Cap & Goggles, and was a regular contributor to the Village Voice. His work has also appeared in GQ, Rolling Stone, and Swimming World magazine.
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Website:: www.caseybarrettbooks.com
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Twitter Handle:: @CapandGoggles
Facebook:: @CaseyBarrettBooks
How can listeners join your mailing list?: Best way is through my website - caseybarrettbooks.com
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AuthorOnTheRoad.com
SPONSORS:
INDIE AUTHOR BLUEPRINT: You are not alone! Find out where to start, and how to build and grow your indie author career. And we’ll be with you the whole way! http://indieauthorblueprint.com
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Kevin talks about his upcoming adventure, as he and Kara hit the road in a tiny camper, living the #camperlife! How will Kevin keep up with the writing, the livestreaming, the podcasting, the marketing & PR work for Draft2Digital and Author.Email and Indie Author Blueprint and… PHEW! You’ll just have to tune in and see!
SHOW LINKS:
Subscribe to my YouTube Channel: youtube.com/c/KevinTumlinson
Wordslinger Podcast on YouTube: youtube.com/c/wordslingerpodcast
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Indie Author Blueprint: indieauthorblueprint.com
AuthorOnTheRoad.com
SPONSORS:
INDIE AUTHOR BLUEPRINT: You are not alone! Find out where to start, and how to build and grow your indie author career. And we’ll be with you the whole way! http://indieauthorblueprint.com
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Kevin chats with author Mary Keliikoa about the debut of her new mystery novel, and how she’s building a platform before she even as a book released!
Evan Gow is the indie developer of StoryOrigin, a marketing tool and community of authors working together to build mailing lists, increase sales, and find reviewers.
TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLE
SHOW LINKS:
Subscribe to my YouTube Channel: youtube.com/c/KevinTumlinson
Wordslinger Podcast on YouTube: youtube.com/c/wordslingerpodcast
Author.Email: author.email
Indie Author Blueprint: indieauthorblueprint.com
GUEST LINKS:
Website:: https://storyoriginapp.com/
SPONSORS:
INDIE AUTHOR BLUEPRINT: You are not alone! Find out where to start, and how to build and grow your indie author career. And we’ll be with you the whole way! http://indieauthorblueprint.com
DRAFT2DIGITAL: Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
ACORNS: Start an Acorns account today and get FREE MONEY! kevintumlinson.com/acorns
AUDIBLE.COM: Get a FREE 30-day trial of Audible and listen to any audiobook in their vast library, when you go to http://audibletrial.com/wordslinger
TRANSCRIPT
Longtime podcaster, full-cast audio pioneer and independent filmmaker, and author of 30 books, J. Daniel Sawyer hosts the daily writers podcast The Every Day Novelist dedicated to creativity, process, writerly discipline, and cultivating a fertile mental life.
TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLE
SHOW LINKS:
Subscribe to my YouTube Channel: youtube.com/c/KevinTumlinson
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GUEST LINKS:
Website:: http://www.jdsawyer.net
Amazon Author Page:: https://www.amazon.com/J-Daniel-Sawyer/e/B003L9JM92
Twitter:: @dsawyer
Facebook:: https://www.facebook.com/jdaniel.sawyer
How can people join your mailing list?: http://jdsawyer.net/about/mailing-list-signup/
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AUDIBLE.COM: Get a FREE 30-day trial of Audible and listen to any audiobook in their vast library, when you go to http://audibletrial.com/wordslinger
TRANSCRIPT:
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
book, people, podcast, nanowrimo, pandemic, years, worldview, everyday, talking, novelist, life, interesting, grew, read, thought, recorded, held, listen, writing, questions
SPEAKERS
Kevin Tumlinson, J Daniel Sawyer
Kevin Tumlinson 00:01
Hey everybody, thank you for tuning in for sticking through the intro. I'm not even sure what I said in the intro, but I promise I will, I can guarantee at least I was interested in it. So thanks for tuning in and playing along. So today we're talking to Jay Daniel Sawyer. Now I'm going to read his bio here because it's it's got some great details for you but longtime podcaster full cast, audio pioneer, and independent filmmaker and author of 30 books. Jay saw your hosts the daily writers podcast, the everyday novelist, dedicated credit to creativity, process, and writerly discipline, and cultivating a fertile mental life. That's the part I wanted to get to in your bio. I like the idea of a fertile mental life. How's that? How's that shake out? And welcome to the show.
J Daniel Sawyer 00:52
Hi, Doug diggin Kevin. Yeah, you were on everyday novelist. What about it? But two years ago, I think
Kevin Tumlinson 00:58
Yeah, a little bit. Doesn't seem like that long.
J Daniel Sawyer 01:01
I guys been crazy packed two years and like, every sense. Yeah,
Kevin Tumlinson 01:06
yeah. I feel like I've done a billion podcasts and webinars and live stream since then. And that's just this week. Oh, no. Yes. And I, you know, and I told you this before we started and I'm, I'm going to apologize to the rest of the world. Because if I sounded all frazzled, or off my game, it's because we've had so there's that on top of a pandemic, and I don't know when you're listening to this, it's probably a little bit in the future for sure. Maybe things turned out all right. And if so, thank you world for playing along. But uh, you know, things have been a little crazy. In terms of stuff we're doing with DDD, we got these spotlights, we're doing like every day, and then my buddy here pops in and I for some reason, I thought it was one of my author consults. So So I'm off base. I'm off kilter man. We're gonna get back on track
J Daniel Sawyer 02:04
so I think we'll do fine.
Kevin Tumlinson 02:06
How is everything in the James J Daniel Sawyer world man Tell me a little bit about what you're doing right now.
J Daniel Sawyer 02:12
Oh well right now I'm stuck up in the backwoods I moved up to the backwoods of New England for a week in order to help my parents relocate a year ago It turned out that their their retirement house needed some renovations. So Oh, got stuck here. And just as we were getting ready to leave the quarantine comes down. So I might be stuck here another year. So there's a lot of interesting refactoring going on.
Kevin Tumlinson 02:36
But that seems to be the way that works out. I mean, we we were we moved out of our apartment and moved into our in laws place for a few days, quote, unquote, and then 14 hit and we're like, well, they're gonna hunker down anyway. Go ahead.
J Daniel Sawyer 02:54
Yeah. But yeah, it's it's good. It's, you know, we're on we've got 50 acres to play with. So there's a Lots of good time for outside notice and using the opportunity to resurrect my fiction podcast and get some work ahead done on the homestead we're building on the other side of the country. Right? So it's, it's gonna work out
Kevin Tumlinson 03:15
what kind of work ahead can you do if it's on the other side of the country?
J Daniel Sawyer 03:18
There's a lot of design stuff. Yeah design, designing and costing sourcing stuff for the first buildings figuring out order of operations for at what stage we do the well when we do the catchment, what's the priority of how much electrical build out because where we are, it's a quarter mile beyond the last electrical pole. So it's 20 odd thousand just to bring power in. It's actually a lot cheaper. Even though we're in an iffy climate zone. It's actually a lot cheaper to go solar. So, right. Yes, that's a whole new set of things I've been learning about and
Kevin Tumlinson 03:53
Oh, man. Yeah, you're talking to the right guy. Cool. This is I have to so you know, You know that we're getting into an RV full time again? Yeah. So the the two biggest problems, the three big problems. One, the two are bigger than the third. But internet is the biggest challenge. You know, power isn't such a big challenge unless it's going to be hot. And then we have Eric. Right. So, yeah, so solar power and generators and alternative energy are all in my mind. I'm thinking about installing something on the wheels of the camper that as we rolling in generates power.
J Daniel Sawyer 04:36
I've been studying doing that kind of stuff. It should be pretty, pretty simple.
Kevin Tumlinson 04:40
Yeah, man. Yeah. by simple, you know, that's a relative term.
J Daniel Sawyer 04:44
Well, it's a relative term. But the question is, would it be more efficient than just putting a bigger alternator in the truck? Yeah. And then, and then routing it to the chargeback.
Kevin Tumlinson 04:55
That's something else I I've considered. Well, yeah, whatever. This has been alternate energy talk everyone.
J Daniel Sawyer 05:03
So, well, you know, we were talking about a fertile mental life. Yeah, exactly. I mean, one of the one of the things about creativity is it's nonlinear, you can't reason your way into what you have to do is you have to create a broad, a broad base of knowledge and experience and interests to pull from. And so, you know, one of the ways that I keep myself Spry is by picking interesting stuff that's not related to anything else I'm doing and finding a way to get interested in it because I always get story ideas out of it.
Kevin Tumlinson 05:35
Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's interesting. And that and so that's what you mean by by fertile mental life?
J Daniel Sawyer 05:42
Well, partly, I've just finished a book called The autodidact Bible, which should be coming out. I think we've set the publication date for early July. Yeah. Which is a basically a comprehensive toolkit for teaching yourself how to self educate, eat, whether you're self educated. With philosophy or with carpentry, and everything in between,
Kevin Tumlinson 06:04
man, I gotta tell you, though, hmm, you should call it a fertile mental life. The other didactics Bible. Thank you.
J Daniel Sawyer 06:11
I've been looking for a good title for it because the working title is a bit wonky. Yeah, so I'll write that down.
Kevin Tumlinson 06:20
I think that's gonna work. I would buy that book. All right, I wouldn't buy the first one.
J Daniel Sawyer 06:25
right because it sounds really technical. It
Kevin Tumlinson 06:27
sounds like it's gonna Yeah, like, I'm gonna have to read this with like one of those clear rulers. Oh,
06:35
I lost I lost your lighting
Kevin Tumlinson 06:36
just went away. Yeah, well, good thing nobody everyone listening is doesn't know that.
J Daniel Sawyer 06:41
Yeah, speaking of off grid power,
Kevin Tumlinson 06:44
no joke. Now, I'm not really sure why that happened. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna let that charge up while I'm on with you. Okay,
J Daniel Sawyer 06:52
both backlit, so it's sort of fair. Exactly.
Kevin Tumlinson 06:57
Things things like this are always happening to me lately. I don't What's going on? Um, so yeah, we'll get off that see this one talking about some I get off track just
J Daniel Sawyer 07:09
because I'll just chase whatever and that's okay. you stumble onto
Kevin Tumlinson 07:12
you know, I studied improv and you know, you roll with whatever is gonna come at you. Yeah,
J Daniel Sawyer 07:17
yes, yeah, yes and or no but but never Yeah.
Kevin Tumlinson 07:20
So, uh, I, let's talk a little bit about your well wouldn't talk about your book. Do you want to talk a little about your book? I was gonna get off on your podcasts
J Daniel Sawyer 07:32
there. Let's get off on the podcast. They're related. They're
Kevin Tumlinson 07:35
related, okay, who partly out of the other. So tell me. How did the show get started? Like what made you decide to do it
J Daniel Sawyer 07:41
back in? I think it was 2006 Yeah, 2005 or 2006. I went to a write in for NaNoWriMo at Central Park in Berkeley. And Chris, whatever his name is the guy that started NaNoWriMo was there and so I got to talk to you too. Like, why'd you know why did he do this? I'd never done it before. It always seemed kind of silly to me. And he said, Well, I wanted to be a writer and I couldn't motivate myself. So I decided to pick the most difficult month in the year and intentionally write a book there to prove to myself I could do it. Yeah, I thought that was kind of a cool idea. So I wanted to trying to do NaNoWriMo that year and I completely failed. But the the lit the minor features of the conversation like going in the direction of greatest difficulty in order to build up your writing chops, really sunk in made a big difference to me as a writer to my productivity and to my general approach to all things writerly. So, I had in mind always want especially once I started podcasting, I always thought it would be fun to do sort of a walkthrough of NaNoWriMo for the newbie who'd never written a book before. Okay, and about 2016 I had the free time. So I sat and did it. And I got to the end of this 30 day walkthrough, which has since evolved into my book becoming an everyday novelist. And I started getting emails from people saying, Please don't end it here. We've become dependent on it. And so I, I went on pod and I read a couple of these. And I said, Okay, so look, here's the problem. It took me, God, you know, God knows how many untold hours to work out the program for this 30 day walkthrough to put things in the right place to write the copy that whole bit. So if you want me to keep this going, you've got to make it easy for me send me questions or something. Yeah. And I thought that was gonna be the end of it. But they sent questions. And they kept sending questions, and they kept sending questions, and it's now four plus years on and we're just creeping up on 1000 episodes now, and they're still sending questions. Occasionally, a question will spin off and I'll do a special series or or I'll have a guest on every once in a while. Then about about two and a half years ago, I wrote a I cracked the formula for hemlines juvenile books. And so I wrote a Heinlein juvenile and did a walkthrough of how to write a headline juvenile interesting and you know, some other stuff like that. But as the years have gone on, the questions have gotten more and more interesting. We get into history in psychology and philosophy in general auto didacticism and mental health management and physical health management. And the reading list that I refer people to keeps growing and growing and growing.
Kevin Tumlinson 10:41
Yeah, was what puts you though, on that specific course like you are? Well, I guess more the more important question is like how are you answering those questions like where are the answers come from?
J Daniel Sawyer 10:55
Well, I read the questions when they come in and then about one second Good enough to do a block I record 15 to 30 episodes in a day. Yeah. And do it all off the top of my head. Okay, I'm, I'm Constance I grew up in I literally grew up in academia, both grandfathers are cattle ranchers and then my father is a theology professor. So I grew up idolizing my blue collar grandparents and hanging out in the college where my father taught. So I was like, auditing classes when I was six, seven years old. Just Yeah, I thought it was cool. Not realizing I was picking up useful stuff. Right. And I've just always loved learning and hated school. So I've become the I quit. I dropped out of school at 15. I started working full time and going to college on the sly. And just read, read, read, experiment, learn, do a bunch of different stuff. I've, I've run a courier company. I've run a couple of publishing companies. I've been in the tech world. I've run a music company. or not, that was music services company like MC live sound mixing and doing videos, that sort of thing. And over the years, I've built up this toolkit for how to navigate any situation and come out of it. Come out of it, learning a lot about it. That's crazy and how to cross apply those things to other areas so that you can bootstrap on multiple fronts at once. Yeah. So when someone comes in and asks a question, and I'm really I'm always really careful to separate my opinion from the state of the art in a given field and what the state of my knowledge is, and then, if it's something that's, you know, socially controversial, or that's fraught in the field, I refer to sources that contra counterbalance each other and when it's when it's something more historical, I just didn't refer to a couple of good books that are they give more depth on this. subject that I'm able to give. We've done deep dives on the history and background of the writing of certain influential books, you know, that kind of stuff.
Kevin Tumlinson 13:09
Yeah. And you're cataloging all this somewhere so that people can can access Yeah,
J Daniel Sawyer 13:14
yeah, there's a there's a on the website at everyday novelist calm there's a reading list of basically every book we've ever recommended on the cast. Do you album,
Kevin Tumlinson 13:25
are you monetizing that somehow? Are you you know, people got paid?
J Daniel Sawyer 13:30
Yes. No, no, well, it's, it's free. Listen, I've got Patreon subscribe star and the gumroad subscription feed all currently doesn't bring in very much but yes, for me, it's kind of a pay it forward thing I need to figure out how to monetize it a little better, because that's taken ungodly amount of time.
Kevin Tumlinson 13:46
That's always a challenge too. Because, you know, you like me. I mean, I I've lost track of how much I've put out there. that's meant to help the community but you know, at some point you do have to make a living. Luckily, my books make money. Living. So that's great. But he put in all this time and energy, you feel like there should be some sort of monetary reward.
J Daniel Sawyer 14:09
Well, people who listen to this, if you come over and listen to the cast kick $1 in here and there or buy the books through the Yeah, the site that really helps out a lot. One of the lovely things and you'll know, that's one of the lovely things about being sort of off the beaten track, whether you're in an RV or going or we were in an RV for a couple years or going off to the middle of the woods, is you have the freedom to live on quite a lot less than everybody else does. Right? So it doesn't take a whole lot to meet your monthly bills. So you know, we don't make a lot it really does help with the budget, but genuinely, every dollar helps us both nice and a little bit of a downer.
Kevin Tumlinson 14:49
Yeah, well, but I guess if you really think about it, that's just gonna be true no matter what I mean, you. Yeah, I mean for most people, for like, we'll say 90% of people. That's probably going to be the truth.
J Daniel Sawyer 15:01
It's got interesting. Yeah, it's gonna be interesting watching what kind of long term effects this whole. This whole endemic pandemic adventure has on people's determination to work from home and other things over the long term that could seriously change the shape of the way things work.
Kevin Tumlinson 15:18
I predict that I honestly think we're, we've just we just witnessed, like a leap forward in the evolution of a civilization. As you know, everything we understood has come to an end. And we're now going to reinvent ourselves.
J Daniel Sawyer 15:35
That's a lot more true than you might realize. Because it's not just the social changes that this is forcing. But there is another set of social changes that was waiting in the wings for coming to three years from now when the boomers hit mass retirement that this has accelerated. Yeah. And that is that because of the global demography, the demand driven economic expansion that started With the Black Death just ended, right just ended. Right? That's 500 years of political, social, and economic and ethical systems all premised on the notion that things would continue to grow at a moderate rate forever. They don't work anymore. Right? I'm planning on editing an anthology later this year dealing with potential new ways to do things where growth is not an embedded obligation of the system. Figure science fiction needs to get back to hardcore speculation. So
Kevin Tumlinson 16:32
I think we also just witnessed the opening of a whole new door when it comes to intellectual property and the way culture reacts with it.
J Daniel Sawyer 16:42
Yeah. Very interesting.
Kevin Tumlinson 16:44
Yeah. I'm real curious to see what happens. Because you know, you think about everything we've seen of late like all the little sessions where people do like, you know, oh, sorry about that. No problem. You got to clean anything up. You Good.
J Daniel Sawyer 17:00
No, no, I just wasn't my reflector wasn't backed by a strong enough, strong enough Wait,
Kevin Tumlinson 17:05
all right. You know those all those videos and everything that have popped up like nurses and doctors singing or high school kids singing something and performing something, you know, all that stuff is out there, it's getting a lot of attention. And some of it is easily even sort of inadvertently monetized. And but nobody is having to secure the rights to that stuff right now. So
J Daniel Sawyer 17:30
I'm curious to see what happened has to be some there's gonna have to be a new new compulsory licensing scheme, like happened in the 20th is when radio came in?
Kevin Tumlinson 17:39
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, you know that there's a whole thing going on with this has been in discussion for years really, because this is why the Creative Commons first kind of came on the scene, but, you know, can you really truly own an idea and is it beneficial to society for you to own the idea Yeah, and we need to make a living as content creators. But do we, you know, how far does that extend in terms of ownership? So, you know, I'm, I kind of am on in that boat of, you know, ideas want to be free, like the guy who created Yep. Was it Oracle? No, it was a Linux, creator of Linux. Yes. But at the same time I make my living from my ideas. So.
J Daniel Sawyer 18:30
Oh, no, it was, it was it was it was a bill, what's his name from Sun Microsystems said that.
Kevin Tumlinson 18:34
Okay. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah. No, no, probably. Yeah. No, I
J Daniel Sawyer 18:39
yeah. No, I'm the same way. I've quite a lot of my stuff is creative commons license. And I you know, I've interviewed Cory Doctorow years ago and yeah, and, and the greatest The greatest enemy of any new artist is obscurity and not piracy, all that sort of stuff. Yep. totally on board with that. And on the other hand, the yeah The rationale for copyright law is that the for the civilization to benefit from the culture, people have to be incentivized to make it. And when everything was expensive to publish, that was very easy to that was a very easy line to draw, but it's not anymore and we've delayed rethinking that seriously. years and nobody has put Yeah, I think you're right, that dam just broke.
Kevin Tumlinson 19:27
Yeah, I absolutely think it has. And, you know, of course, one of the things that's that's been happening since since the pandemic started almost hesitate to talk about the pandemic at all honestly, because by the time this episode airs we should hopefully be out of
J Daniel Sawyer 19:45
don't bet on it. I'm expecting that I'm expecting that there'll be a sawtooth quarantine for
Kevin Tumlinson 19:50
we'll see we'll see if you're right if this good when this goes live, we'll see if that things change. I don't know what but whatever
J Daniel Sawyer 19:57
I'll on record. So if my prediction everyone laugh
Kevin Tumlinson 20:00
at me gonna be a transcript and everything, man. Absolutely. So I think, you know, right now I know from, from my experience with drafter digital and in my own personal experience that ebooks, ebook sales have been just going through the roof. You know? And I mean, we've we've seen, like a 45% increase across retailers, but like 175% increase with libraries. So people are out there. I
J Daniel Sawyer 20:27
got my book library sales have also gone way up. Yeah. Yeah. It's, so I seem to have the greatest penetration in libraries with my audiobooks. So
Kevin Tumlinson 20:37
that's interesting, though. That's interesting. Because most of the time when I think about audio books, I'm thinking like people are getting them to listen to while they drive into work or something. I would think so too, but
J Daniel Sawyer 20:49
that maybe, you know, while there would be out everybody taking walks or Yeah, or cleaning the house, and if you're living in the house, you have to clean a lot more often.
Kevin Tumlinson 20:59
So how are you Balancing the podcasting and everything else you're doing with the writing, like how you keep on track.
J Daniel Sawyer 21:08
I tend to batch a lot, current. So like right now, it is called the everyday novelist because I usually write everyday but the last few months, because things have been so weird, it's been a little bit different. So I've currently got four books that I'm redlining. And the podcast is actually as much time as it takes sexual easy because I can batch it. So I'll just say okay, at the end of the recorded buffer is coming up, like when we're recording this, I've got another recording session tonight, because my buffer just ran out. I say at the end of the recorded buffers coming up, take one night to record them all. Then take a day to edit them all and post them and then that's that and but I do a lot of stuff with batch work. So I let you know enough of a pile pile up that I can do it as a project because With the exception of getting in a groove and writing every day, almost everything else I either get bored of or get. It starts to grind on me if it's a chronic thing, but if I have projects I can get through, then that Jazz's me up. So
Kevin Tumlinson 22:16
yeah, so that's it, you know, are you how much production goes into each of your podcast episodes?
J Daniel Sawyer 22:25
For the everyday novelist it's about a it's about a two and a half to one timewise. As you can tell, as we're talking here, I have a bit of a scatter shot. I tend to circle a topic before before angling in on it and sometimes there's a lot of stumbling associated with that right right. I like what I'm doing the everyday novelist because it's all improv I like to to narrow the stumbling down as much as possible. So right, it takes about twice as long to cut every episode as the final Listening length winds up being. Okay. So overall, I met including the recording time at about two or three to one production ratio.
Kevin Tumlinson 23:10
Alright, well alright, that's that makes sense. That's about what it what it takes for me so that I feel a little more comfortable. I am actually because I've been doing some other stuff recently live I'm actually considering shifting the model of this show to being a live format, essentially producing it on the fly. Yeah, it can be fun. It's a little tougher to get certain guests on. But you get the benefit of you know, the production is is done that day.
J Daniel Sawyer 23:42
Yeah, absolutely dead set out. And I really, I dig doing interview shows that way. When I'm, when I'm doing monologues. I like to massage the timing a lot because that that really helps with the delivery. Yeah, when you've got a conversation going on. The timing emerges from the interaction so you can avoid the editing if you want to.
Kevin Tumlinson 24:03
Yeah, that's exactly yeah, I like that part where everything is done for me automatically.
J Daniel Sawyer 24:10
Oh yeah.
Kevin Tumlinson 24:12
I started my I started this thing called the Kevin show. I don't know if you've seen any of those and they're ridiculous I haven't seen that yet. They're not right.
J Daniel Sawyer 24:20
They were your YouTube channel. Yeah, yeah. So I started I've got a tab open, but I haven't watched any of them yet.
Kevin Tumlinson 24:26
Yeah, well, I'm just gonna warn you in advance don't go there hoping for writing wisdom.
J Daniel Sawyer 24:34
But I figured it's us so it's probably gonna be like RV weird DIY stuff. And strange. There's gonna be all kinds of stuff.
Kevin Tumlinson 24:41
Yeah. So it started literally that show. So yeah, okay, I'm gonna bring us back around to what we're discussing here. But that show started as me and Nick factor. I said to Nick, you know, when I was so stressed out from the moving from the pandemic from, you know, just being inundated with things So you know, what I would love to do is just do something stupid fun, no agenda, no plan and call it I could call it the Kevin show, because that's ridiculous. And just put it out there live and have fun for 30 minutes, distract people. And he, he said I'd go on that. And so within an hour, I had designed that entire show, from the graphics to music to a video intro to booking my first guest. And the next day it went live. And I've done one every week since so that's dad said, to bring it back to the important thing of this interview, which is you that shows I think that process of the fertile mind, you know, the the fertile mental life that you are, that you are focused on, or would you would you disagree with that? kind of put you on the spot?
J Daniel Sawyer 25:56
No, no, I think that's a great example to the brain. branching out. It's Oh, I'm trying to think of something pithy to come back to that. But yeah, I think you've got it exactly.
Kevin Tumlinson 26:07
That's something.
J Daniel Sawyer 26:09
Life is chaotic, interesting and complicated. And it doesn't easily fit into any of the categories that anybody likes to impose on it. Yeah. And I can't remember who I ran into from it might have been, it might have been something out of one of two labs books. But I came across this idea of it's better to have strong opinions loosely held. Yeah, then then weak, then weak opinions strongly held. Most people have weak opinions strongly held. They have ideas that they like, they can't really support them in in the face of a monumental challenge, but they'll hold on to them for dear life because they're identified with them.
Kevin Tumlinson 26:50
Exactly. Sort of. Yeah,
J Daniel Sawyer 26:52
I like that core way. I prefer to be able to articulate what I'm thinking in a very useful strong way, right and be comfortable enough with my own level of ignorance that I can change my opinion when something challenges it and it doesn't, in my opinion doesn't stand up in the teeth of whatever I'm engaging with. As a result of course, I've had multiple interesting worldview shifts over my life. I've been all over the political spectrum. I've had three different religions. And but, but it's but the reason is that, that I'm more interested in figuring out what's actually going on and engaging with life in a in a deep way. And if that's my priority, then what's expendable has to be my determination to cling on to the things that might otherwise make me feel secure.
Kevin Tumlinson 27:54
Yeah, okay. That is I Exactly. I love the way you have Put that if that is an actual quote, I need to go find it about strong or strong opinions. Loosely held. Yeah, yeah, that's I feel like that's me. And I think I think the danger is people hear strong opinions and then decide. That's where you stand. And so the idea that you might change your mind from a strong opinion, and pivot to a new worldview is is completely foreign to some folks. But I think that's that's the right way to be personally, I like that.
J Daniel Sawyer 28:30
Yeah. And I do and I mean, one of the things you're, you're like me, you're, you're a little bit north of 30, at least. And one of the things by the time you hit your mid 30s, you realize that whether you want it to or not your worldviews gonna change. Yeah. Because the cumulative experience you build up, gradually goes out of sync with your ideology, whatever ideology that is, because ideologies are models that we build to deal with the world. They're not the world itself and any model is going to have holes in it. Yeah, and the. So when you're in your 20s, it's really easy to righteously hold on to everything because you are fighting for the good. But the older you get, the more that instead of that makes you look, instead of making you impassioned, and a person of great conviction, makes you look kind of stupid. Yeah, because you're not you look vapid and hollow? Well, yeah, because what's happening is while your practical worldview is changing, and you can always tell by the evidence of someone's behavior, rather than what they say, what you believe is reflected in what you do not in what you say. And as you get older, if you're holding on to those, to those early convictions that tightly, the gap between your behavior and your speech will grow. And if you look in the mirror, and all of us eventually do or at least most of us eventually do. You notice that disconnect and that's when you have the existential crisis, who,
Kevin Tumlinson 30:02
yeah, if you've ever read Carol Dwight's book about my called mindset, it talks about exactly you should tell you, that will probably end up on your list of recommended books, because it talks about that very idea. And it's the closed mindset versus the open mindset, you know, and we tend to look for things that become part of our identity when, especially when we're young, especially when we're vulnerable. Like we're, you know, the bullied high school kid, you know, can say, Well, people pick on me, but at least I'm really good at math. And so if you identify with that, and then you fail a math test,
30:40
you're crushed, suddenly, yep.
Kevin Tumlinson 30:42
Your whole identity was just taken for you were murdered, you know, in your, in your own mind. And so you start to think if I don't have that, what am I? Who am I? So anyway, um, so, unfortunately, we are we're closing in on our time
J Daniel Sawyer 30:58
on the end,
Kevin Tumlinson 30:59
which was is really unfortunate man I always I dig talking to you we know when am I coming back on your show man? I know
J Daniel Sawyer 31:13
whenever it's good for you let me know I would love to have you back on especially now you're working with Jeff to digital. I'd like to Yeah,
Kevin Tumlinson 31:19
cuz i don't think i was last time was
J Daniel Sawyer 31:21
last time you were last time you were
Kevin Tumlinson 31:25
completely independent.
J Daniel Sawyer 31:26
You You were just leaving your first stint at draft to digital I think it was
Kevin Tumlinson 31:31
no it would have been because I was still Oh yeah, so I was working for DDD, but I
J Daniel Sawyer 31:36
stayed with a different position. Oh yeah, I was.
Kevin Tumlinson 31:39
I was getting on the road though. That's the only guy that would have been. So okay, yeah, so I still fresh it D to D Really? Because that happened like right after. Okay, there we go. That's the you have
J Daniel Sawyer 31:50
this. this. Yeah, the stuff you guys are doing over there, especially now that marks on the team and whatnot has gotten a lot more interesting. I keep signing up for the meetings and then not making them because Everything else in the world that's there recorded I really want.
Kevin Tumlinson 32:04
I'm gonna have to look back through from my recorded pop into your YouTube channel. Okay, which is officially youtube.com slash c slash draft to digital everyone. And while you're there, look for Kevin Tumlinson and you can tune into the Kevin show xo into plugs but tell everybody the more important URL is where can people find you online?
J Daniel Sawyer 32:30
You can find me at everyday novelist calm that's for the daily podcast. You can find a whole bunch of my other stuff audio books, full cast audio fiction podcasts, my rather scattered and sometimes very dark musings on the universe on my blog, and a complete list of the books that are available for purchase at the moment as well as my autodidacts reading list at WWW dot JDC. All your.net and I just want a very, very dark take on some of the stuff we were talking about earlier about the changeover and ages. Check out my blog post. The Abyss stares back.
Kevin Tumlinson 33:12
Yes. Excellent. All right. Well, you heard him everybody. Make sure you check that stuff out, buy his books, go see his stuff. Listen to his podcast. There's a lot you can do to keep him going throw a buck or two his way on Patreon. Let's let's make sure we're taking care of our own here, man. So Jay Daniel Sawyer, sir, thank you so much for being a part of the word slinger podcast.
J Daniel Sawyer 33:34
Thanks for having me on. It is a delight.
Kevin Tumlinson 33:37
Everybody else right now. Right now you're probably hearing the groovy bridge music. You may dance in place it will and if you stick around, I am sure to say something profound on the other side, and if I don't make fun of me, see you next time.
Carlyn Robertson is responsible for partner education on BookBub’s Partners Team. She’s an expert on BookBub’s promotional tools and ensures that authors, publishers, and book marketers know how to use those tools to accomplish their marketing goals.
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Joanna Penn is an award-nominated, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers under J.F.Penn and also writes non-fiction for authors. She’s also a podcaster and an award-winning creative entrepreneur. Her site, TheCreativePenn.com has been voted in the Top 100 sites for writers by Writer's Digest.
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Jonas Salzgeber is the author of The Little Book of Stoicism and writes for a small army of remarkable people at NJlifehacks.com. On his quest to be the best he can be he stumbled upon Stoicism – and got hooked. His practical writing style helps people with the most important step: to put the wisdom from book page to action.
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Jared Angaza is an Identity Architect, author, podcaster, and philanthropist. Over the past 20 years, he's leveraged the studies of behavioral science, consciousness, philanthropy, creativity, and culture to develop remarkable brands, events, and campaigns. Today, he guides seekers on their spiritual quest and continues to develop socially conscious brands, cultures of innovation, and experiences that bolster the vitality of humanity and our planet.
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Heath Armstrong is a creative writer and the co-founder of Rage Create. He is the creator of "The Sweet Ass Journal to Develop your Happiness Muscle in 100 Days," "Sweet-Ass Affirmations: The World's First R-Rated Motivational Card Deck," and the host of the "Never Stop Peaking" podcast.
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No such thing as talent? Kevin doesn’t think so! In this episode he talks about the idea of talent, aptitude, and inclination as it applies to what you can do and achieve in your life. Tune in to see if you agree. PLUS stick around to the end for a special holiday message from Kevin!
And otherwise, here’s to a merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a wonderful new year!
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Jennie Nash, CEO and founder of Author Accelerator, talks about her program for training book coaches to help writers write books worth reading. Kevin and Jennie discuss coaching, as well as Jennie’s new book, Read Books All Day and Get Paid For It: The Business of Book Coaching.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Jennie Nash - Wordslinger Podcast
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
book, people, author, helping, writers, coaches, money, offering, writing, pay, calls, accelerator, coaching, business, marketing, viable, expertise, service, ideal reader, agent
SPEAKERS
Jennie Nash, Kevin Tumlinson
Kevin Tumlinson 00:02
Hey, everybody, thanks for tuning in. Now I, here's what's interesting about what I do. I travel, I go to all kinds of conferences all over the world. And I meet some some pretty incredible people, and in particular, I meet a lot of folks who work in some aspect of this industry. And that is what happened with today's guest. I'm talking to Jenny Nash. There's a lot of ways that Jenny and I are connected. But one of the first ways we met was at San Francisco writers conference about two, three years ago. I think. I'm not even sure at this point.
Jennie Nash 00:37
Yeah, that's right.
Kevin Tumlinson 00:38
Now, okay, just the official stuff, Jenny, I'll throw it in there. Jenny Nash is the founder and CEO of author accelerator, a company on a mission to train book coaches to help writers write books worth reading. And we're going to be talking to her about that and about her new book, read books all day and get paid for it, the business of book coaching. I'm looking forward to Ironically, we discussed this just before the show, but I've got like back to back, our author consultations all day today. So this is an ironic topic for me to tell people how to make money doing it, that's where I need to start upping my game. like I always do a lot of these for free. So I need to start making some cash on this stuff.
Jennie Nash 01:21
Oh, let's talk about that. Should we jump right into it?
Kevin Tumlinson 01:23
Let's jump right in. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for being a part of the word slinger podcast. So yes, let's jump right in. And how does somebody make money reading books all day?
Jennie Nash 01:32
So I want to talk about the money because I've been a book coach now for about 10 years. And I make multiple six figures as a book coach, and we at author accelerator. We recently did a poll of about 180 people who do this type of work, and I turned out to be one of the top paid people and that's great for me, but what was horrifying was The number of people who are not making very much money at it and the more that you dug into it, the number of people who give their work away for free and here I am talking to such a person.
Kevin Tumlinson 02:11
I don't give it all away for free, let's just make that clear. But I am obsessed with helping authors succeed and so that sometimes Trumps me charging them for it. I think so.
Jennie Nash 02:22
Okay, so here's the thing. I'm obsessed with that too. And, and it is such a noble and good thing to be obsessed with because, as you well know, the publishing industry is super fast changing all the time things it's pretty chaotic things come, you know, companies come they go trends come and go. There's, you know, self publishing wasn't even a thing. Basically, when I when I started coaching like it, it everything changes so fast. And that combined with this pervasive myth that writers don't make money writers don't have money to spend to help them. or invest in their careers, this whole starving artist thing this whole, you know, oh, we all just do this for love thing. And it makes me crazy because so many of the myths that I just spun off are not true writers, a lot of writers do make money a lot of publishers and publishing companies and people that are helping writers do make money. It's a big industry of infinite and people were making money it would not, it would not be so right. So I am, I am kind of on a mission to to change this and to help people who help authors with their writing to help coaches, raise the bar, be more professional, ask for what you're worth realize the value of what you're giving. So I want to talk about this all day long.
Kevin Tumlinson 03:49
Well, you're in luck. We can talk about it for at least 30 minutes. Yeah, no, I, I understand I you know, that's the thing and then the sector of authors I tend to deal with Our incoming. So how do you build a profile? I don't want you to give away the story here. But, you know, how would someone like me who deals with a lot of incoming authors who don't typically have any money? They're not making any money from the books yet. They may have a book yet, right? I'm like where's the starting point of that my my trouble with so I did author coaching for quite a while and charge people money for but I never really managed to make it a viable business because I maybe I was overcharging maybe I was under serving I don't know. So I never, it never took off as a business for me. Now I do it as part of kind of other things.
Jennie Nash 04:41
Right. Right. So I mean, the way that I like to think about it is is this, the, there's this idea with writers that this sort of lottery idea, like I'm gonna roll the dice, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna get picked and I'm going to get picked either by a publisher, an agent and a publisher, I'm going to get picked by readership out in the universe. And the thing behind that is, is that and then I'll leave my day job, right? And then all I'll get a movie deal with Reese Witherspoon and and then you know, like whatever the thing is that that the get picked mentality. And that mentality is so pervasive that writers think that that, you know, I'm just rolling the dice and and it's like they're holding their breath. They're not thinking of their own book and their own career as a viable business. And part of what I do is to help people change that mindset, like what other industry and what other industry which you bring a product into the world and that product could be anything. It could be a podcast, it could be a service industry, it could be, you know, you're growing firms to sell to people for their Fern gardens. I don't know where that came from, but you No, like whatever business nobody starts a business, thinking, I'm just going to get picked and, and like look out of the despair of my day to day job by by selling this thing to people people don't think like that. But with books, they think like that. So part of the mindset is shift is helping them think, okay, like the one of the first questions that I asked him out there is what is your goal with this book? And if their goal with this book is I want to write something to leave a legacy for my kids. And, you know, I don't care if it sells, I don't care if it gets read beyond that. That person's not going to probably make any money off of their work. Right. But if they most people are not going to say that, by the way, if they say, Well, my goal is, you know, if you really can have an honest conversation with them, they're going to state a goal that has something to do with selling books. And so what I talked to them about is then what do you need to invest in? In order to make that come true in order to have a viable business model? What skills do you need? What support do you need? You know, the business that you're in? One of the businesses you're in isn't helping people actually produce their book, you can actually produce a book and not invest money in that in that production. production costs. So the same should be true with writing the book, how are you going to learn how to write a book? How are you going to get the support, you need to do it? How are you going to decide which publishing path to go on? All of those things are investments in that outcome that they're trying to see? Right? And get people to start thinking about their outcome, then you can start talking about the value that you might add to their process. And then that means you have to be really clear about what value you're adding and what you're actually doing for them. Yeah,
Kevin Tumlinson 07:56
yeah, yeah. I agree. I agree. One of the one of the things that always nails me is I have all my little excuses lined up and then somebody comes along and pulls that peg and I can't use any of them.
Jennie Nash 08:15
That's me.
Kevin Tumlinson 08:16
That's exactly what that's supposed to be right. So what is that what author accelerator is about? Like, tell me about author accelerator?
Jennie Nash 08:26
Yes. So I have been training book coaches, I've trained more than 50 book coaches. certifying them and part of that process is teaching them how to manage a Writers Project with a project being the book, how to help that writer, raise the bar of that writer, raise their their own writing standards and skills, make a good publishing choice. The author accelerator is all about the development process. So once you get to the point where you're going to produce the book, you Have to go to somebody like draft to digital or some other person that's going to or entity that's going to help you produce the book. We don't do that. But we help people all the way up to that moment. And so I'm training book coaches, to guide writers and to help writers think about how they're going to make money from their book, if they're going to make money for their book, you know, a huge part of what we do is burst people's bubbles. That if how hard it is to make money at a book, you've got to know that in advance and why you're doing it again, back to the goal of that writer and the goal of that book and, and really making a plan for it. And so I'm helping the coaches help the writers think through that process and think through what they're doing. And we're we do that work in the context of helping them with the writing of the book. I I am Market focus by market focus, it's like, okay, who else is writing a book like you for a book, and it's going to be a book of essays. And it's going to be a book of essays about all the bad boyfriends I've ever had. And there have been 23 of them. So there's gonna be 23 chapters about all the bad boyfriends I've ever had. And I'm going to write these essays about that. The first thing I'm going to say is, are you aware that for an unpublished writer with with no platform to bring out a book of essays is The hardest possible thing in the world to sell. That's the first thing that I would say, right? And they would then then they always come back to me and say something like, but Tina Fey did it, or David Sedaris did it. And it's like, well, Yes, that's correct. But let's look at the hurdles that you might have getting to the marketplace with this book. I'm not trying to get them to write something different. I'm not trying to shoot down their dream, I'm trying to be realistic about it. And, and if they say to me, okay, what how can I ship this so that it might be viable for the marketplace, then we might talk about their structure, we might go look at audiences who are buying books like that we might try to find a way to bring that content to life in such a way that it is viable. So that's what I mean by being market focused. And if I'm going to do that, I I've been in the publishing industry for more than 30 years, I've helped a lot of people come to market. I've seen a lot of books, I'm going to charge for my expertise and my time, I'm not going to help that person out of the goodness of my heart, which sounds super cold and calculating now that I'm going to help that person if they're serious about reaching the marketplace, they're going to have to pay me to get my expertise.
Kevin Tumlinson 12:21
Yeah. And I and again, to draw on your earlier examples. I mean, this is not an unreasonable ask, when it comes to any other business is just for some reason, when it comes to businesses tied to people's dreams. Then all of a sudden, we are cold, heartless, capitalists.
Jennie Nash 12:42
Right. And that's the thing that makes me crazy. And I mean, the other thing it makes me crazy is there are a lot of people out there who are preying on authors, dreams and desires. It's easy to do because you tell an author, I can I can help you publish this book. I am We could do it in 90 days, you could be a best seller on Amazon. And they are all like, here's my money. Right? Well, you know, guess what, I just published a book, my own self. And I put it on Amazon and I literally did nothing, literally nothing other than hit the button. And it came up as the number one new release best seller in whatever category literally not one book sale. And I am I got that little Amazon bestseller flag and the people who are are selling that, like, we have a strategy for your book becoming a best seller on release day and we'll help you with this strategy. And we'll put you through these paces and people pay money for that because they don't know any better. And that makes me crazy, too. So Yeah, same here. There's people that prey on authors desires and dreams and, and I don't think it's right and fair. And so a lot of what I'm trying to do is tell them the truth. This is going to be long. It's going to be hard. And guess what? You're going to have to pay money. Let's talk about what you're going to have to pay to bring this book into the world. And do you want to do that? Right? Yeah.
Kevin Tumlinson 14:11
It's interesting, because I talked to people about this, this concept all the time in these coaching sessions, by the way, the very same ideas, because there is a hesitation among authors to do things like market themselves. Right? And, you know, it's the exact same idea. You know, I've, I wish I could remember the exact quote, I had a guest on the show, several years, a few years ago now, who said that if you are building something that can help people, then it is your responsibility to to market it and in this case, to charge for the service? Like that's part of the responsibility because that's how you continue to keep being able to offer that. Right.
Jennie Nash 14:57
Exactly. And, you know, you mentioned other things Jeez, like if I I mean, here's a perfect example. I'm in my car brand new, by the way, three days old. My car was hit the other day somebody backed into the rumor. I was at a standstill back to the road sucks. So hard. So what do I do? I call my insurance. I get a tow truck. The tow truck guy drives into place. Do I have to pay the tow truck guy? Yes. Because he's, he's saving my bacon from it was raining the cars in the middle of the intersection. So of course, I'm going to pay the tow truck guy. And you know, then we take it to the body shop. You know, it's going to be $4,000 to fix the thing. Like all of those. Those things are things that I need. They're solving a pain point of mine and you don't question for three seconds that you're going to pay that fee because it's you have this point of pain. I can't drive my car. My car's been So we pay when we have points of pain and writers have points of pain, they don't know things, you know things you've been in this you're inside this industry, you know exactly how it works, you hone your skills and your expertise, they come to you the reason you're having these calls is because they need your expertise and they have a pain they want to solve. And so that's how I start trying to talk to my coaches is what particular pain Are you trying to help this writer solve? Is it is it deciding on a publishing path? Is it making decisions about your investment towards that is it that the writing is not strong enough and needs to get better? Is it that you're getting rejected all the time out in the marketplace? And you don't know why is it that your covers bad, you know, there's a lot of pain points along the path and if somebody is helping a writer solve those, the that Pain. They're adding value and should be paid for it just like the total.
Kevin Tumlinson 17:04
No, no, you're you're right, I think is a kind of a supply and demand kind of thing. You know, you can, it's easier to charge someone when they're kind of over a barrel on that tow truck driver, you need this vehicle towed. Now we both know you're going to pay me a little different
Jennie Nash 17:22
thing. That's what's interesting is one of the things that I guide people to do is to choose what pain point they're going to specialize in as a coach, where are they going to help people and, and how are they going to frame that help? Because the writers are going to actually feel the same way as I did with my broken car. You know, if the writers got a book that they're dying to get into the world, they're going to feel that same pain and, you know, we talked at the beginning about how confusing this industry is, if you're outside of it, you know, how do you know what to do? How do you how do you know what to pay? How You know, there's a lot of confusion. So you didn't ask, but if you were to ask me how to convert these calls into paying into paying customers, I would think of these consultation calls as, okay, you're helping them for 30 minutes or an hour or whatever you're offering them and help them with some of their questions. I would think of them as consultation calls to a service. So it's like, this is the way that I could help you. This is how the decision that is in front of you, I'm seeing that you have these choices, and I can help you walk you through those choices and make a good choice. And then I can help you, whatever the next step of the process is. And if you're interested in that, I have a service that we could talk about, you're signing up for. It would be you can still help people out of the goodness of your heart. I do that all day long as well. But, you know, like, the other day, I was talking to a woman Who writes a column for Forbes? magazine, and she wants to write a book. It's her second book. And she she was trying to make a decision about agent or not agent on this on the second book and, and I got on the phone with her and, and had an hour long conversation, I was sending her links I was sending her, you know, information, I was talking about money, I was talking about what it takes to find an agent, how much it would cost her to work on a nonfiction book proposal with somebody like me how much time it would take, I was feeding her information, I was helping her. And it was all in insert in it that my intention was well, this is probably going to shock you but the the service that I would have worked with her on is a $24,000 service. And that would be for a serious professional to get a nonfiction proposal that hopefully will get them a book deal. Yeah. She turned out she she did not take it, she did not go for it. She decided that she didn't want to go for the agent route she that was not for her. She was horrified at the pros and cons when I laid them out of agent versus not agent. she opted out of the service that I was offering. So I spent it an hour using my best brain work to help her to help her decide not to use me. In my mind, that was a good use of time. I helped somebody I helped her come to a good decision. I did good in the world. You know, I did not get the $24,000 client. But guess what next time I might or next time I might and so you know, I think you can combine the helpfulness with the money part.
Kevin Tumlinson 20:50
I think in scenarios like that, you could take that conversation, boil it down to the points that were made. And then you can Create something that could simultaneously educate incoming authors who might have the same question and help you nurture mailing list for example so hundred percent right you could totally turn that into a top of funnel offer
Jennie Nash 21:15
100% and and I have so much free content I have so much amazing resources on on my website people are welcome to come you probably do too. You know, it's it's that push and pull between offering something but not offering everything. Yeah. And I think you're right we we tend in these realms that are about creative pursuits, we tend to diminish the, the value of the expertise and I want to change that.
Kevin Tumlinson 21:47
Yeah, same here. Actually, personally.
Jennie Nash 21:53
Here's what I do with those calls. Just flip your mindset. Just think this is a consultation call personally. That I could offer. I'm going to help them on this call. I'm going to I'm going to be generous and helpful. And I'm going to, instead of giving all the answers away, think more in terms of framing the questions they have to ask. There's questions that you need to answer. Here's the decisions you have to make. Here's a way that I could help you if you wanted to sign up for that service.
Kevin Tumlinson 22:24
Yeah. So does does your program I mean, speaking of markets, does your program kind of arm authors that are the coaches rather with how they would market the service how they reach these authors and you?
Jennie Nash 22:39
Yes, yes, I do. And I studied on my own personally, a lot of marketing people and and tried to adapt the the best practices for book coaching in in my new book, which is called read books all day and get paid for it. Go way into the marketing. And I've had a couple of other top coaches reviewing the book. That's all happening right now because because it's just come out and I had somebody say to me, Jenny's advice on marketing was so spot on. And it made me laugh out loud. So I'm not going to tell you what that is, you'll have to read the book to
Kevin Tumlinson 23:21
see how this works.
Jennie Nash 23:24
I totally help people do it. And here's, here's the key thing. It's not what you probably think it is. It's not take out an ad on this website or go to this conference and print out a bunch of swag or, you know, it's not that really what it amounts to is knowing what you're offering and who you're offering it for. Right. I'm going to totally botch how he says it but Seth Godin and his new book, this is marketing says something along the lines of marketing is about doing something That matters for people who care. That's, that's what I help people do is what are you doing that matters? And who's going to care about that. So if you're somebody who's helping people, at the very beginning of their book idea, going from idea to getting it on the page and helping them frame that the structure of their book, you could specialize in that point in the process and do really well because you'd become known for that part of the process. You could become someone who specializes. I have a coach who wants to specialize in helping lawyers who want to write fiction. There's a lot of lawyers who want to write fiction. Yes, yes. What a cool nice, right. Yeah. To be able to speak to a lawyer to be able to help them translate the way lawyers think and speak and write which is a very particular way to to fiction writing. I have somebody else who wants to help women in speculative fiction, because it's mostly a male dominated genre. So they want to focus on helping women get into speculative fiction. So if you focus on who you're helping, so doing Oh, I think we might have froze. Yeah,
Kevin Tumlinson 25:33
we froze. But we're gonna, can you hear me now? Yes. Okay, we're gonna we're gonna muddle through.
Jennie Nash 25:40
So they say that again.
Kevin Tumlinson 25:42
Yeah, you were to you're just introducing us to the idea of the woman who was helping other women who are speculative fiction, and go, Okay,
Jennie Nash 25:51
okay. I have another coach who's specializing in helping women break into this big speculative fiction genre because it's very male dominated, and her expertise is going to be that. So if she becomes known for that, everybody's going to send those writers to her because that's her. She's helping those people with that particular pain point. So that's what marketing in terms of book coaching is all about is becoming known for doing something really well, that helps people at a place where they really need help.
Kevin Tumlinson 26:24
I think you just hit on something that has always nagged at me, by the way, because there is whenever I have offered author coaching, now, right now, I'm doing it through DVD, you know, we do our consultations, little free consultations, and it's, it's meant to help the people who showed up at our webinars and stuff, so I can't charge folks for that. And I'm not trying to, but when I've tried to add this in the past, there is always that problem of, you know, focus, right. And there's that aphorism that if everyone's your customer, no one's your customer. Yeah, I think what you're saying here is that there's an opportunity if you are willing to focus on a specific aspect of this. So for me, I might I might coach, people in writing thrillers, because that's what I write, or I might coach them in, right in using, you know, I might pick something out there, right? Yeah, just the process of writing. I could do all that. But it's too broad too general. And that's probably one of the reasons why it never quite worked. I wasn't advertising or I wasn't marketing, specifically enough.
Jennie Nash 27:30
Right. So you, you can't make a business on even what you just said. I'm going to help people writing thrillers. Well, what people what kind of thrillers At what point in the process? Have they written a book before? Are they writing their second book? Are they writing a series or do they have a plan to write a book a year like you've got to really narrow down on what writer where they are in the process what they need? Are you helping somebody right faster? Are you helping them right? Like plot out faster. Are you helping them plot better? Are you helping them raise up their writing skills? Are you helping them? Like what exactly are you doing? So there's so many layers to figure out and, and just helping. So if you're on a consulting call with someone, and I'm sure you've been on a million of these calls, people are asking questions about all over the map, right? marketing, about social media about my website about my book cover about the production about the time about the cost about the writing itself about this and that, like that's just scattershot. Yeah, advice, but if you're honing down to really say, I can have your thriller writer, writing your first book, you've never done it before, and you need to make X, Y and Z choices. I can help you do that efficiently, effectively. And, you know, to help you toward your goal. Now I thought a viable business. Yeah, well,
Kevin Tumlinson 28:56
that that is the ideal reader. concept. That's the ideal reader ideal customer concept. And I'm shocked that I never put it together.
Jennie Nash 29:10
One thing because it's what book coaches help writers do, like if I'm working with somebody right now who's writing middle grade fiction, and she's actually a very successful nonfiction writer. And one of the things that I've become known for is helping successful nonfiction writers who want to switch over to not true. I helped her write the book that got the six figure deal for her first novel, excellent. And so I kind of have a specialty in that regard, and I'm helping a woman writing a middle grade story and she She had her story was a hot mess. Okay, so she came to me with a manuscript that just was all over the place. And it had all these characters and all these ideas and all these themes and all this stuff. And you know, it's not going to work. And so part of what I did with her was exactly what we're talking about. Who do you want to reach? Who's your ideal reader? Can't it's not enough to say an 11 year old girl, it's like, an 11 year old girl who reads what and who does what and who's thinking about what and who cares about what and we've really got to hone down on who that 11 year old reader is and what she cares about and what she needs in that book. Otherwise, that book is not going to work. So I, I do this with the writer, and we need to do this with the people helping the writers to is, you know, what are what is your gig? What are you doing to help people? Yeah.
Kevin Tumlinson 30:53
And as That's it, what's funny is here's what you always come back to their sort of universal pieces of advice. that fit no matter what industry you're in. If you're an author, it's no matter what genre you're in. That's this seems to be one of those pieces is to identify the specific reader slash customer you're trying to reach. We are we're at time. So which is unfortunate, because I'm enjoying this quite a bit. And I'm getting a lot out of it personally. Those are always the toughest interviews to end. But I appreciate why don't you back on Now, before I before we drop out of here, I did want to say you have coming up January 20 2020. You have a summit coming up. You want to talk about that for just a second.
Jennie Nash 31:43
I would love to I'm doing a free week of programming about becoming a book coach and I've got 15 killer experts who we have conversations and take you through everything from how to market how to make money, what book coaching really is how it works. And that you can find all the information at author accelerator.com slash summit. So that's author accelerator, comm slash summit. And it's free. It's a week, it's January 20 2020. And I would love to have people come. And if you can't make it, we'll be sending out those recordings so you can grab them after the fact. Very good.
Kevin Tumlinson 32:25
Very cool. All right. I am I think I've signed I think I managed to sign up. So I'm going to check that out and everyone listening to the sound of my voice, you should also check that out. Thank you so much, Jay, for being on. I really appreciate all the wisdom you've dropped on us.
Jennie Nash 32:44
Thanks for having me. All right, everybody. Right now.
Kevin Tumlinson 32:47
You are probably hearing the groovy bridge music and you may dance and place it will and stick around for whatever I'm going to say whatever pithy fun thing I'm sure I came up with Right after this interview and I'll see you all on the other side
It’s a Wordslinger three-peat with author, speaker, and podcast host, Bryan Cohen! Kevin and Bryan chat about Amazon ads and more in this don’t-miss episode!
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Kevin shares some tips and advice for not only winning NaNoWriMo but carrying that success forward into a winning writing career!
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Kevin chats with Mal Cooper, author of Help! My Facebook Ads Suck.
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Kevin chats with Herb Freed—author, director, producer—about his life and career, as well as his new book, Love, Faith and a Pair of Pants.
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Six years of Wordslinger Podcast! Kevin reflects on the things that he’s learned from more than half a decade of doing the show, and shares the perspective and inspiration he’s taken from interviews and audience interactions.
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THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
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Can changing your routines improve your writing? In this episode, Kevin dives into this idea, and shares his personal experience with how his career and his life have improved over the years as he’s embraced new workflows, new processes, and new resources.
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THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
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Thriller writer Jack Carr drops back in to update Kevin on how his career is going and what he’s learned about treating his writing career as a business. This episode is filled with useful insights into the traditional world of publishing, with tips that can help any other—traditional or indie—with building a career aimed at success.
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THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
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FIO—Figure It Out. That’s one of Kevin’s core principles in both life and career, and it guides everything he does, from packing for a trip to marketing his books. In this episode Kevin talks about how he puts FIO to work, and how you can too. Learn how to use this simple (but oddly challenging) principle to work in your own life and career.
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THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
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Surely you can’t just ask for what you want? Kevin begs to differ. If you’ve been struggling to find a way to market your books on a shoestring or no-string budget, you’ll want to tune in to this episode for some first-step author marketing advice.
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Introducing Scribd Snapshots: A New Way to Discover The Best Nonfiction Books — Scribd Blog - https://blog.scribd.com/home/introducing-scribd-snapshots-a-new-way-to-discover-the-best-nonfiction-books
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THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
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TRANSCRIPT
WANT TO HELP IMPROVE THESE TRANSCRIPTS? REACH OUT
Kevin Tumlinson: 00:00 Hey slingers, this is another week of the Wordslinger Podcast. And one you're not gonna want to miss. Stick around and find I, you can get what you want just by asking for it. Hey, you looking for a jump on your own India author career. Yeah.
Kevin Tumlinson: 00:14 Kind of confused about where to start. I got the place for you. Check out draft two digital. That's where you're going to be able to convert your manuscript, distributed worldwide, online, and get help. The hallway from the best author support there is. Trust me on this one. So go check out drafted digital@drafteddigital.com slash word slinger.
Announcer: 00:37 It's the Wordslinger Podcast where story matters. Build your brand, write your book, redefine who you are. It's all about the story here. What's yours? Now here's the guy who invented pants, optional Kevin Tumlinson, the Wordslinger.
Kevin Tumlinson: 01:02 Well, I am Kevin Tumlinson, the Wordsligner. Uh, you
Kevin Tumlinson: 01:05 are whoever you are the person listening to this broadcast. Uh, so I'm, uh, I'm in the middle, so you may have noticed I didn't, uh, do an episode last week. Um, and I gotta tell Ya, it's, it's probably going to be tough to get episodes out over the next couple of months. I got, I got conferences coming up August. I, I, I literally have a conference every week of August. Um, and, uh, lots, a lot of travel. It's a lot of trying to work everything out. I'm gonna do my best. I'm gonna do my absolute best to, uh, to get you at least one episode a week in there. It might just be a bunch of Solo slinger episodes. Um, and I'm sorry to the folks who I have interviewed that I'm trying to, I'm trying to get through that bad catalog as fast as possible, and I got more interviews coming up.
Kevin Tumlinson: 01:57 So, uh, but you know, this is crunch time, uh, for me in this, in this business with, um, basically it's conference season. So, um, I'm gonna do my best though, and I'm looking out for you. Uh, and speaking of that, uh, you know, we've done a couple of webinars now or while we've done one webinar so far for a draft to digital, the d to do d to d a You a as we call it, ask us anything. Uh, the first one went really well and we set up a bunch of, uh, author consultations. Now, unfortunately, I didn't check a box, uh, that needed to be checked in order to evenly distribute the consultations. So for two weeks, two, three weeks now I have, um, I've basically had back to back consultations with authors with no gap between, uh, and no lunch breaks and none of that.
Kevin Tumlinson: 02:49 So it's been a very rough couple of weeks. Uh, plus we've had some other, I've had some other things going on here, like a whole family thing happened. Um, so it's been challenging to get everything done and that includes getting the Wordslinger Podcast recorded. Um, but I'm here, I'm back at least today. Um, but one of the things that's come up in the author consultations that I thought would make a great topic, uh, it's a very basic marketing technique or marketing, um, strategy that I think gets overlooked all the time. Now, everyone I talked to, uh, asks marketing questions, they're always very focused on, you know, Facebook ads, uh, Amazon Ams ads, that sort of thing. You know, how do I handle I up my game and get people to buy my book wide or, you know, uh, just discover me and get on my mailing list. And the one thing that I've discovered that, that hardly anyone does is just ask for what they want.
Kevin Tumlinson: 03:53 So if you have a mailing list, now, a lot of the VA, a lot of the authors I've talked to at all, you know, they only have like maybe a hundred people, some only have like 20 people on their list. Uh, some have 1500. It is, it's, it doesn't really matter what the size of the list is. But one of the things you should be doing regularly is engaging that readership with personable emails, which we've talked about in the past. When you want to become a human being to these people, you don't have to share personal, private details of your life, but you want to, uh, frame yourself as someone that they can, that they might enjoy knowing. You know, as someone you're having a conversation with. Um, and in these emails you should periodically ask them to share the, the links to get your free book or short story or whatever you're using to get people on your mailing list.
Kevin Tumlinson: 04:47 Um, if you're not offering something, some top of funnel offer or incentive for authors to get on your mailing list, you need to come up with something. Um, I just talked to an author just now. I won't, I won't reveal who she was. I, she's, she's a little shy, but uh, she has a free novella. I have no a prequel. It wasn't an Avella cause it was like 75,000 words. So it was a full on book. She'll give that book away for free. She sells it, but she also gives it away for free. If you get on her mailing list a, but she created this a bonus content that was a, uh, sort of a like almost like, uh, an espionage case study kind of thing. Um, and uh, she offered that as a sort of, I'm sorry to her list for not having emailed him for a bit.
Kevin Tumlinson: 05:35 And I, I told her to, to package that and offer that as an incentive for people to just get on the list in the first place. That's a great resource. So if you, if you could pull together a little things like that, just content people can't get anywhere else. Exclusive content for being on your mailing list that is attractive to a lot of readers. And, uh, it's also going to pull in the kind of readers that you want, the readers who are interested in this, this topic that you cover. You know, whatever your genre happens to be, um, who are willing to take an action, uh, which makes them much more likely to take the action of buying a book when you have one to promote to them. Now, um, email your list regularly, once a month at least. Um, and tell them it's perfectly okay with you if they share the links to get the free downloads.
Kevin Tumlinson: 06:33 Say, ah, look, I am trying to reach as many readers as possible. You know, this is my dream. You can help me achieve my dream. If you share this link with everyone you know, everyone you think would be interested in reading, um, my kind of books and uh, and just do that every now and then. This is a, this should become a, a regular part of your author diet. Uh, you are going to go out and ask your readership and your platform to share, um, ways to get on your mailing list. The mailing list is where the money's at. It always will be. I'm convinced of this. It always has been for sure. So you want to nurture the mailing list before you try anything else. If you're, if you want to advertise and you're not making a lot of sales, I would advise you to advertise Facebook ads or otherwise.
Kevin Tumlinson: 07:30 Um, well the focus on growing your mailing list rather than focusing on sales. Now Amazon's a little different. Uh, ams, the, you know, it's all internal. Um, I have my own opinions about Amazon ads, um, and uh, sort of the toll to play an idea. But um, you can do the same thing on Amazon ads. You can have a book that is, uh, geared towards, you know, for example, this author is pretty cool. This book is actually geared towards enticing people to get interested in the rest of her series. Um, I would heavily laden that with, um, you know, calls to action to get on her mailing list. Definitely a CTA to read through in the next book in the series. Definitely want that. But I would make sure that the call to action to get on the mailing list is front and center and then the Freebie that they get at that point should be like that bonus material or something that they can't get anywhere else.
Kevin Tumlinson: 08:30 Cause what you don't want is for the author or for the readers to feel cheated to find out that they could have gotten this book. They just spent, you know, a couple of bucks on for free if they had gotten on your mailing list. So instead you're advertising this prequel or the first book in your series or whatever. Uh, definitely trying to promote, read through, but also trying, pushing, uh, to get people on your mailing list. Once they're on your mailing list, you get a whole lot of other options. Uh, you nurture that list in, you'll go far. So, um, so that is part of this ask. Um, you should also ask, asking is always this to me, it's a magical tool. Ask your readers how things are going, how are the, how, how are you liking the books? Take that feedback and learn from it.
Kevin Tumlinson: 09:28 So if someone says to you, you know, I like the books, but there's a lot of typos. All right, well there's an area to focus on. You got to get better at editing. I like your books with the covers stink or I like your books. I really love the covers. You might get some positive feedback out of this, which is always good and always motivational. Um, and then, uh, ask you can ask them what you know for ideas. You can say, I'm trying to get more people to uh, to check out my books at the library. Right? Does anyone know any librarians I can talk to? Does anyone know any programs I can be involved in? Um, and you may be able to find this stuff with a Google search, but if you find this stuff through the people you're engaging with it, there's a bond that happens.
Kevin Tumlinson: 10:17 So don't be afraid to ask your platform, um, to help you out and frame it that way. You can say, now you're, you should always focus on trying to give more than you get when it comes to your platform. And I'm using platform to encompass emails, social media conferences, you attend, whatever. But uh, you want to try to give more than you receive, right? So give out some free bonus stuff. Give out, you know, make sure you are engaging your, your email list with, uh, tales from wherever. If you're not personally comfortable sharing personal information, then share things about what you're reading, share trips that you're taking chair or not. You don't have to give people insight information about you're going to be out of town during such and such date. But you can come back and share photos, share history that you've learned. If you're a romance writer, share a, you know, funny romantic comedies that you've watched.
Kevin Tumlinson: 11:17 Um, you want to share, share, share. You want to get these people to start thinking of you as a friend that they are willing to help. And then you periodically a, asked them to share with as many people as they can. Your link to get a download or whatever. Or, um, you're linked to by a renew, a preorder or buy a new release or something along those lines. And, and be, um, you asked them to buy this, softens that ask, ah, it's not a hard sell if you spent three months prepping to make it right or to even ask for it. Um, so there's an underlying philosophy here. It's something that it's part of, it's one of my sort of principles, right? That, um, you never get anything you'd [inaudible] you're going to, everything you get you have to ask for in one way or another, right?
Kevin Tumlinson: 12:16 Even if you didn't intend to ask for it. So the phrase my grandfather used to use is, I never got to think, I didn't ask for, even if it was a punch in the mouth, which I always took to mean, you know, you, you get, you ask for everything you get out of life in one way or another, your reap what you sell, right? If you got punched in the mouth, you probably set that up somehow, even if you didn't sing or do anything to deserve it. You put yourself in these scenario somehow. Right? Um, and maybe that's not true. Maybe someone just randomly ran up and clocked you in the jaw. It, it's been known to happen. Uh, this is not victim blaming. This is personal responsibility, right? This is you deciding you're empowered rather than deciding everything has to happen to you. You, you are deciding, I am make things happen. When you think like that and you're willing to ask for what you want, you increase the odds of getting it.
Speaker 4: 13:15 Yeah.
Kevin Tumlinson: 13:15 So you may not get it every time, right? You may not actually get what you asked for. You may ask for something and you don't get exactly what you asked for. Uh, but maybe it comes close or maybe it goes off in a different direction and you decide you didn't want that anyway. You know, maybe you could change your mind, but getting used to and getting comfortable with asking, uh, will carry you much further. This is part of a whole bootstrapping idea by the way, that you can use this to promote yourself without having spend money. So that right there should make your ears perk up. So, uh,
Speaker 4: 13:56 okay.
Kevin Tumlinson: 13:56 There's a couple of concepts at play here and we talk about this often, but your first priority should be to build up your platform as much as possible. Your platform can be defined as, as your reach to a willing audience that that has a higher, that has higher odds of actually going out and purchasing your books. That's going to be your platform. Your mailing list is the biggest component of that platform. The more people you can get on your mailing list, who are sympathetic to you, who are vetted, uh, the better. So your goal there is you want to build a mailing list of people who, uh, who like the type of thing you write and are willing to part with money for it.
Speaker 4: 14:38 Yeah.
Kevin Tumlinson: 14:38 Which, you know, seems pretty basic and no brainer. And yet nobody, nobody, I'm not going to say that. A lot of authors don't think about it and they don't do what it takes to make happen. Um, so this is all kind of a mindset thing. I'll be honest, it's, it's all, it's all kind of go out and own your author career, right. Be empowered and empowered. People ask for what they want. The idea is to ask, ask, ask and play the numbers game increase your odds every time you ask your odds go up. Right? So that's what marketing is. Marketing is all about increasing the odds that the right person will find your book at the right time and make a purchase. That's what marketing is. Some people spend money to increase those odds. Some people don't. Some people do a mix of both. Um, I do a mix of both.
Kevin Tumlinson: 15:37 Uh, but for the largest portion of my career I had, I only did free promotion stuff cause I only had $0 million to spin. So it's not impossible to market your work without money. It's not impossible at all. You, you don't need a budget to market. Uh, but money is uh, in a nice, interesting little reciprocal relationship with time. You are either going to spend time or you are going to spend money. Money is a shortcut. Money means you don't have to spend as much time and you can actually amplify your time with money. But that doesn't make it the end all be all of my marketing resources. That would be, um, your creativity. You know, because even if you have a budget, let's say that you've got $1,000 extra a month, you know, you sell cans or you or blood or, or you have a book income of thousand dollars or you, um, mow lawns on top of your regular job or something, right?
Kevin Tumlinson: 16:40 You've just, somehow each month you've cobbled together an extra thousand a month that you can throw into an advertising or rather a PR I, um, marketing budget, I don't want to call it an advertising budget, cause advertising isn't always the right answer. Advertising can be the right answer, but it comes down to how are you going to spend that thousand dollars? What, how do you, how can you most efficiently spend that thousand dollars? And let's just say it's not $1,000. So let's say the best you're able to do each month is an extra hundred dollars. How do you spend it? Well, you know, you can't go do, um, in an elaborate Facebook ad campaign for 100 bucks a month. You can run Facebook ads for 100 bucks a month and you might even see some traction, but it, it, you need to assess, um, how best to apply those funds. If Facebook advertising is going to be the way to go, chances are you're going to need to figure out, um, the best way to funnel traffic from those ads into something that you can use.
Kevin Tumlinson: 17:44 I would argue that at that point, the lower your budget, uh, the important it is to focus entirely on your mailing list. And I think that's just, that's just marketing life right there. In fact, with us, we, let's just engrave that in stone. The lower your budget, the more important it is to focus entirely on growing your mailing list rather than on direct sales. Because you can sell to that list over time. Once you have those people captured, you don't have to spend any more money to, to engage with them necessarily. I mean there are, there is some overhead in, you know, the email management systems, lots of tools out there to explore, to help keep the cost down. But in general, if you have a mailing list, you're not going to spend a ton of money, uh, to be able to remain in contact with them.
Kevin Tumlinson: 18:38 Um, but you control that list, you control that group. I mean, if it came down to it, I don't advise this, but you could export that list and import it into a special Gmail account and email those people on blind. See, you know, blind copy, right? There's always going to be a way, I'm not always an advisable way, but at least there is a way, right? So, um, that's the, that's our new one of our new commandments. Well, maybe one day, I should write all these down actually, but that's one of our new commandments. This is lower your budget. The more your focus should be on building your mailing list, uh, and asking that list to help promote you to others is how you grow that list beyond having you spend money, right? So if you can only spend 100 bucks a month and you're focusing all, all of it on getting a couple of people on your mailing list here and there, then I'm asking them to go off and be advocates on your behalf.
Kevin Tumlinson: 19:39 It's, that's the fastest way to grow without a bunch of overhead. It's a little bit like network marketing that I don't know if anybody in the audience has ever had this experience. I got approached by tons of people who did network marketing, Amway and things like that. I'm not saying I'm not going to pass any judgments on this. Uh, this practice. There are a lot of millionaires out there who built their millions through network marketing. So Kudos to you. Um, it was never quite my bag. However, the principle of it is pretty sound from a marketing perspective. Uh, I just think we take a different, more heartfelt approach than going out and blind recruiting, you know, hundreds of people to do our bidding and be in our, our downline or whatever they call it. Um, and here's how that would work. So you get, you get your readers to download your Freebie, you get on your mailing list and, and maybe they've even gone off and bought a book or two from you.
Kevin Tumlinson: 20:43 And if you only have one book, you know, maybe they've bought your book, now you've, uh, you've enticed them to get on your mailing list, you've somewhat vetted them. And if you asked them to go off and share with just, you know, could you just go share with, say, I would always say everyone, you know, but even if it's just two people, if you could just get two people to sign up and get this Freebie, think of two people you like who might like it and enjoy this book or this bonus content or this short story and tell them, give them this link. You can share this email with them. And that's really when you want your emails to be on point, by the way. You want your emails to be, um, focused on, uh, being personable, engaging, asking questions, open loops. We call it, you want people to respond, right?
Kevin Tumlinson: 21:36 Uh, but if you, I'm telling you, as you get people on your mailing list, people are, are really kind of wonderful if you ask for help and you frame it that way. Hey, I need your help. Okay, I need a favor. If that favor doesn't cost them any money, then there's a bigger chance that they're going to go ahead and do it. Uh, there's a book and I'm gonna pop over into a web browser real quick and try to remember what the, I know that the title is influence. Um, but I can't remember the author's name right now, so let me look that up. But you want to, you want to get your hands on this book, uh, influence science and practice. Is that it? No, the psychology of persuasion influence the psychology of persuasion. Uh, this is a written by Robert B and I think it's chill, chill, chill.
Kevin Tumlinson: 22:31 Deany CIA, l. D. I. N I, um, pick up this book. Read this book, get it on any book. Get it on audible. Uh, wherever you like to, uh, consume your books. Uh, this is a, this is a good one. This is this, there are a lot of ideas in here that are very applicable to authors. One of the ideas was, um, people respond to and ask if you give them a reason, if you say, because, right? So, uh, I think, and I'm, I'm, I may butcher this, this example. So if you read the book and I'm completely off base, forgive me, it's been a bit, um, but they did a test with, um, people in line to use a copier and someone comes along and says, do you mind? Could I get, could I cut in front of you and use the, the copier because I have 10,000 copies to make or I have 10 copies to make.
Kevin Tumlinson: 23:30 That's probably closer to what they actually said. Um, so what they found was when people did this and they gave a reason, no matter what that reason was, it, it increased the odds that the person would let them cut. So when you say to someone, um, would you mind sharing this email with everyone? You know, because I'm trying to build up my readership and it would really help me out. Okay. So now they get to be a hero. You're asking them to help you fulfill your dreams. I would even frame it that way if you wanted. I have a dream of being an author. This is the only thing I really want to do with my life. I love writing. I love, I'm so happy that you enjoy my books. Would you help me find new readers by sharing this with as many people as you can think of?
Kevin Tumlinson: 24:24 Thank you so much. I'm so very grateful. And so now you're, you're coming to them hat in hand asking them to help you. You've got to get past the ego. But on this, by the way, don't think of this as begging or, or, or anything like that. Asking for charity. Uh, these people agreed to get on your mailing list because they were interested in what you had to say. They're interested in your book. They were interested in your Freebie. They voluntarily got on this list. You asking them to help grow. That list is not charity. It's just to, you know, two people interacting. We do this. The social contract allows us to do this all the time in our personal relationships. Stop thinking of your list as being a bunch of customers and start thinking of them as a bunch of friends of yours and your life is going to change for the better. I promise you start treating everybody on that list like, like you are so thrilled that they're there because you should be everyone on that list. They're more than just numbers. They're more than just the dollars. They represent their living, breathing human beings who care about you and showed it by getting on your list. Nelson, are there deadbeats on lists? Yes. Are there people who aren't going to respond positively no matter what you say or do? Yes. They're not your audience.
Kevin Tumlinson: 25:49 They're welcome to leave that list. You have a special club that, uh, that this group belongs to and you want to treat them like that and remind them of it all the time. You are a, you are in and the exclusive, a company of, of wonderful human beings. And, uh, I am so happy you're here. I am your guide in this, in this, uh, community. Uh, but I, you know, I am a also a servant and if you could help me by spreading this around, you would make my dreams come true. People will respond very positively. Um, and the same thing can happen outside of your mailing list. It can happen on your social media, social media circles. But an interesting thing happens on social media. Uh, there's a kind of, uh, it's a little bit like high school. Like if you to say to your friends in high school, I could really use help in math.
Kevin Tumlinson: 26:48 Uh, if you went to your friends individually and said that they, they would help you. But if you said that to your group of friends who are all equally trying to impress each other and build their own audiences and, or cliques, uh, you know, and promote themselves at the same time, chances are instead of being helpful and kind, they're going to be cruel and, and hurtful. They're going to make jokes, they're going to make light of it. Or even if they don't go to that extreme [inaudible] sorry about that. Hold on and to clear my throat. Um, even if they don't go to that extreme, they may just rib you and make fun of you a little out of kindness, you know, out of love, quote unquote. Um, just because a, they don't want to openly commit to anything cause they may get approached by others to do it or whatever. So it's the fact that they can be seen when you ask them. I think so you want to ask them more privately in, in an email newsletter is private. It feels like they're getting an email directly from you. So, uh, you can still ask for this stuff with social media and you'll oftentimes you will, you will get some help. But in my experience, it's much better to, uh, to approach your list. One second.
Kevin Tumlinson: 28:11 I absolutely hate putting little gaps in there, but when my throat dries out and what can I do, I could edit, not going to do it. Um, anyway, we're coming up on time. Uh, just a couple minutes left. I, uh, I hope that this has been useful to you. Um, this is how I approach everything. And honestly, it's, it's worked so well for me. I, I don't spend much in advertising. Now. I have some promotions coming up that I do. I have spent money on. I have a $2,500 promotion coming up. Um, you know, August. Uh, I spend money on ads, you know, from time to time, not, not a lot, but then, you know, I spend money on BookBub's and I spend money on, uh, the various different, uh, uh, promotion tools. Um, and I, but I do it sort of sparingly and I do it experimentally.
Kevin Tumlinson: 29:09 And, uh, I think I can say without a doubt that I get more traction out of, uh, out of this, this type of thing out of asking the more organic way of doing this. And it's more stable. It grows better over time. It does take more time. So don't, don't think this is an overnight kind of thing. Uh, but you can spend tons of money on ads and never see the needle move for sales. I would spend that money. I'd focus. If I were you and I did this, I would focus entirely on a, I'd focus a hundred percent of my efforts on building my list up and then only promoting to my list. Cause if you can get 50,000 people on your list, you know, and they all buy a book, that's great.
Kevin Tumlinson: 30:00 So anyway, uh, that's going to do it for this week. I hope you got something out of it. I hope I'm able to give you an episode Friday, but just in case I'm not a, just be aware I'm doing conference stuff. So, uh, reach out if you want to. God bless and I'll see you next time. Hey, how are you doing on money? I know it's a touchy subject, but, uh, I got some that may help you out. See, I'm using an app called acorns and it helps me manage some investing. Uh, put some money back, get a little interest. It's Kinda nice to watch my money grow. So I want to share that with you. Go to kevintumlinson.com/acorns and you'll get some free money. See you there.
Kevin talks about his “iterative publishing” approach and how to leverage it to produce more books, faster, and make them as close to perfect as they can be, over time.
TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLE BELOW
THIS WEEK'S NEWS:
Introducing Scribd Snapshots: A New Way to Discover The Best Nonfiction Books — Scribd Blog - https://blog.scribd.com/home/introducing-scribd-snapshots-a-new-way-to-discover-the-best-nonfiction-books
AAP calls for closer regulation of Amazon and Google - https://www.thebookseller.com/news/aap-calls-closer-regulation-amazon-and-google-1027576
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VISIT KEVINTUMLINSON.COM/ACORNS
DID I MENTION?
Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
Joe Konrath writes novels in the thriller, mystery, and horror genres. He’s written under the name J.A. Konrath and Jack Kilborn.
READ THE TRANSCRIPT BELOW!
THIS WEEK'S NEWS:
Introducing Scribd Snapshots: A New Way to Discover The Best Nonfiction Books — Scribd Blog - https://blog.scribd.com/home/introducing-scribd-snapshots-a-new-way-to-discover-the-best-nonfiction-books
AAP calls for closer regulation of Amazon and Google - https://www.thebookseller.com/news/aap-calls-closer-regulation-amazon-and-google-1027576
START AN ACORNS ACCOUNT AND GET FREE MONEY!
VISIT KEVINTUMLINSON.COM/ACORNS
DID I MENTION?
Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website:: www.jakonrath.com
Amazon Author page:: https://www.amazon.com/J.A.-Konrath/e/B000BCH4EM
Twitter Handle:: @JAKonrath
Facebook:: https://www.facebook.com/JAKonrath/
How can listeners join your mailing list?: http://www.jakonrath.com/contact-news.php
--
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
Can content marketing help authors with discoverability? Yes. Yes it can. That’s what Kevin believes, at least, and in this Solo Slinger episode he talks about some of the ways an author can leverage content beyond their books to bring more readers to their books.
READ THE TRANSCRIPT BELOW
THIS WEEK'S NEWS:
Written World Podcast launch - https://writtenworld.us
B&N Posts a Profit in Fiscal 2019 Despite Sales Decline - https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/financial-reporting/article/80499-b-n-posts-a-profit-in-fiscal-2019-despite-sales-decline.html
START AN ACORNS ACCOUNT
AND GET FREE MONEY!
VISIT https://www.acorns.com/invite/HRHTYF
DID I MENTION?
Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
—
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
Jodé is the author of the best-selling SEATS: NEW YORK Theatre guidebooks, and her debut thriller novel, “The Midnight Call,” will released by Immortal Works Publishing on June 18, 2019. The unpublished manuscript of “The Midnight Call” was short-listed for the 2014 Clue Award and received the First Place Blue Ribbon as “Best Police Procedural” by Chantireviews.com.
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THIS WEEK'S NEWS:
Written World Podcast launch - https://writtenworld.us
B&N Posts a Profit in Fiscal 2019 Despite Sales Decline - https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/financial-reporting/article/80499-b-n-posts-a-profit-in-fiscal-2019-despite-sales-decline.html
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THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
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Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
Kevin talks about building your platform with a focus on your mailing list, and creating super fans by being personable and engaging with your readers.
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THIS WEEK'S NEWS:
Readerlink is Working on Higher Bid For B&N | The Digital Reader
https://the-digital-reader.com/2019/06/10/readerlink-is-working-on-higher-bid-for-bn/
How The Paper Shortage Has Affected Book Publishing | Forbes
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelkramerbussel/2019/06/10/how-the-paper-shortage-has-affected-book-publishing/#80c60f11b26e
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THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
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Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
Patrick O'Donnell is a self-published author and full-time police sergeant in one of the largest police departments in the United States. He has over 24 years of experience and has worked a variety of assignments ranging from undercover work, robbery details, vice squads, violent crime task forces, and served as the incident commander for multiple officer-involved shooting investigations. He currently works as a consultant to authors and screenwriters on police procedure.
THIS WEEK'S NEWS:
Readerlink is Working on Higher Bid For B&N | The Digital Reader
https://the-digital-reader.com/2019/06/10/readerlink-is-working-on-higher-bid-for-bn/
How The Paper Shortage Has Affected Book Publishing | Forbes
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelkramerbussel/2019/06/10/how-the-paper-shortage-has-affected-book-publishing/#80c60f11b26e
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THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
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Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
Kevin talks about how to get started in an author career when you have no money and very few resources. Learn how to get the basics—cover, ebook layout, print layout, and distribution—for free. And learn how to tackle some of the business aspects, such as tracking sales and royalties, building a website, and marketing your books, plus investing back into your business and your future.
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TRANSCRIPT BELOW!
DID I MENTION?
Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
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THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
GP James is a writer and music creator living in Los Angeles. He has written four screenplays, two novels, and several volumes of poetry. His novels have been edited by Richard Marek, publisher and editor of Silence of the Lambs, The Bourne Identity, and countless other bestsellers. James has also worked as a music producer, sound mixer, and recording engineer for Snoop Dogg, Amy Winehouse, Patti LaBelle, and many other award-winning artists, television shows and feature films.
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Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees
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Website(s): https://www.gpjames.com/
Twitter handle(s): @_gp_james
Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/GP-James/e/B07BCK9937
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THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
What does it take to write a book? The bare minimum comes down to "the tool that lets you write." In this episode, Kevin talks about some of his experiences with writing using only the resources he had on hand, including a few found items.
NEW! Read the full transcript below!
DID I MENTION?
Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
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THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
TRANSCRIPT
Kevin Tumlinson: 00:00 Hey slingers, welcome back to another Wordslinger Wednesday. Uh, we're gonna jump right into a whole bunch of ideas that I've been kicking around about the basics of what you need to get started in this business. So stick around. We'll talk about that next.
Announcer: 00:19 It's the word slinger podcast. Where's story matters? Build your brand, right, your book. Redefine who you are. It's all about this story here. What's yours? Now here's the guy who invented pants, optional. Kevin Tumlinson, The Wordslinger.
Singer: 00:41 Wordslinger!
Kevin Tumlinson: 00:44 Well, I am Kevin Tumlinson, the Wordslinger. Thank you for tuning into another Wordslinger Wednesday. Uh, I guess that's what we're going to call this. It's the, it's a Wednesday episode of the Wordslinger podcast. And if you are tuning in and expecting to hear a guest interview, uh, I am very sorry, but, uh, that's not what we do here. At least not on Wednesdays, not on this particular style of episode. If you've been tuning in for the past couple of weeks, you've, you've probably discovered that I am a, I've been splitting up the episodes between interviews and a, this little word, uh, afterword word, wisdom, whatever you want to call it. Uh, so I've kind of been experimenting with the format a little is what we're, what we're saying here. So right now, um, I'm experimenting even further. Actually I'm a tinkering with a, this is, this is going to be an audio only podcast today.
Kevin Tumlinson: 01:42 So if you have become accustomed to being able to find this on Youtube, actually you're probably not listening at all right now because I'm not gonna, I'm not going to do a video. And there's a couple of reasons for that. One. Um, I got incredibly frustrated today as I recorded this episode once already and then everything fell apart and I was unable to a series of, uh, freakish instances. How are you Siri? That's hilarious. Uh, a series of really things like that just happened, technical glitches, goofy things that happened, uh, caused it to not just not work. And there just comes a point where I start to question what the value, I'm not seeing a lot of subscriptions on Youtube. It's just not for this, this format doesn't work on Youtube is what I've determined or maybe it does and I'm not doing it right.
Kevin Tumlinson: 02:44 Yeah, there could be all kinds of things, but I am, I've decided to sort of fall back on my strength. I'm may very well not do any video episodes. Um, going forward. The frank truth is I was just recording myself doing this show this way. Anyway, so there you have it. Um, so that, but that is not what today's Wordslinger Wednesday or Wednesday word is about taking what vote. Hey, tell me what you think I should call this. Um, this, this part, this type of episode I'm leaning towards, I'm leaning towards a couple of things, but I'd love to hear what you have to say. Pop on over towards, on your podcast.com hit the contact button or leave this in the show notes of this episode. [inaudible] and just tell me what you think. Um, I should call the shelf at a couple people chime in. Um, and, uh, Eh, yeah, I think, I think I got a general direction. So anyway, so this, this week, this Wednesday I wanted to talk to you about something that's, that's Kinda been, it's come up a couple times. I had a whole conversation with Roland in Zelle a few days ago, uh, that, that was sort of on it kind of went to this place. Um, but the, uh, and I'm sorry, I keep clearing my throat and ear. I'll try to hit the mute button like this.
Kevin Tumlinson: 04:07 That way you don't hear me cough in your ear. Um, anyway, I had this conversation and it's something I've been thinking about for awhile. I've been trying to kind of pull together a blog post on this topic. It's actually a little tougher than you might think to, uh, discuss this topic because I don't want to oversimplify it and I don't want to overcomplicate it. So I'm trying to find the medium, middle ground here, but the idea is what are, what is the absolute minimum you need to, uh, to have a author career? Um, now what I've decided for this episode at least is to focus just on the writing portion of this. So the minimum you would need to actually write and publish your book. Um, so none, there's none. There is no component for marketing in this. There's no advice on, um, you know, uh, anything other than anything beyond sort of the mechanics of actually writing.
Kevin Tumlinson: 05:05 And so, uh, that's going to simplify this just a little and then a, in a future episode, if you are particularly if you're interested in this, um, I'll expand on this topic, but so to tell you, uh, to kind of get you into the right head space here, uh, the conversation I had with, uh, Roland involved, um, this idea of authors sort of constantly being on the lookout for a, a, an all in one solution for everything that they need. So they want something that, that helps them, uh, you know, map out the book, plot the book, uh, build the characters, build the settings, uh, you know, write the scenes, tag the scenes, uh, organize everything into chapters. Uh, do all the editing, fine, all the grammar. And the other issues as, yeah. And then, you know, reorganize the book, spin it out as a, um, uh, well an ebook in whatever format they want, uh, and or published that Ebook to all the various storefronts.
Kevin Tumlinson: 06:09 And you know, the reality is that that's becoming much closer to a reality. It's becoming more real a that something like that could exist. Uh, specifically we were talking about an APP that is making the rounds, but uh, this, all of that stuff could apply to scrivener, which is my writing tool of choice. But what, what kind of came out of this was some, some thinking about, you know, isn't necessarily the best plan in the world to have an all in one tool. I mean, it can be, it depends on the tool. Um, but let's just talk about Scrivener for a second. I love Scrivener and Scrivener was the, the sort of break-over tool for me because for one, I'd spent most of my career writing a copy for clients and an employee in employers and for myself, uh, in Microsoft word. So the word is the, it's the tool of choice for no matter what industry you're in, if you're going to create written words on a page, Microsoft word is going to come into play at some point in that process.
Kevin Tumlinson: 07:20 Uh, you can't work in any professional industry in this, on this planet without word, uh, factoring in somewhere. So word was, uh, my first choice when it came to, you know, writing my books. Now I had written books and I had written other than lots of things in a tools outside of Word, uh, especially in the years before Word existed. And yeah, that I am that old. Um, but eh, you know, word became the tool of choice. And so I, you know, that's what I fell back on. So for me, um, Scrivener represented a way to write in a new fun environment if you'll permit that. Um, that wasn't word. So what was happening for me was I was spending, you know, eight, 10, 12 hours a day writing copy in Microsoft word and then a stop and buy a coffee shop on my way home from an office or something.
Kevin Tumlinson: 08:18 And putting another couple of hours in, in Microsoft Word, and it just felt like more work. It took the soul out of me. Uh, I didn't feel creative anymore. I felt, you know, drained of energy. I felt like here I am slugging away one, you know, two more hours out of my day, four more hours out of my day spent in this wretched software. You know, and I actually like word quite a bit. It's the most powerful writing software to my knowledge. I mean, I, I've used practically everything and this is the word is really robust, uh, sometimes too much. So, um, but Scrivener represented to a whole new way of thinking about my writing. It was nonlinear. It allowed me to, uh, uh, write in scenes and within chapters, just like files within a folder, reorganize all that stuff. Funny to this scene would be work better in chapter three than it does in chapter 10.
Kevin Tumlinson: 09:10 Uh, this chapter would make a better chapter seven, then chapter three, a. So I'm able to reorganize on the fly if I want or, uh, after the book is done, I can retool it and restructure it and uh, that's great. I also liked the cork board. That was probably the first thing that attracted me to Scrivener was the stupid cork board, which I don't even use now. But I had a, I had come in after an era of, uh, doing a whole lot of, uh, screenwriting for documentary mostly and uh, to keep all the stuff organized. I used an actual cork board with, um, through three by five note cards. So being able to do that virtually was comfortable. So that was one of the first things that attracted me to scrivener. Uh, also it has a story and that it was created by an author.
Kevin Tumlinson: 10:09 That's always a hook for me. I'm going to get into that in a future episode. But, um, anyway, so Scrivener was a tool that, that was comfortable and fun for you use. Now here's the deal. Scrivener for the longest time, uh, was only available, I believe it was only available on a Mac. And so, but then it became available on PC, uh, but it wasn't as good for a long time. I think now they've solved a lot of these problems and then eventually it wasn't available on Ios where I really wanted it. So there were times where even Scrivener was kind of frustrating to me and I branched out and tried other things, tried Ulysses, which I really did like. Uh, and then they went to a paid model and I didn't like that. Uh, among other things, there was also a couple of other factors in me switching away from Ulysses.
Kevin Tumlinson: 10:56 Um, but there's, you know, there's been a lot of those little apps, so I've been thinking about this for awhile now. What is the, um, ultimately, you know, what does it come down to when you are, uh, when you're looking at the, uh, what it takes to do this work? Does it take a scrivener? Does it take a Microsoft word? You know, these are, these are software platforms that are actually quite expensive. Um, so you don't necessarily want to drop a bunch of cash to get into this when you don't know if you're going to succeed. Um, and you know, granted, most people can afford some something, you know, they can't afford one of these apps. Scrivener's like 40 bucks. So, um, I say that so cavalier, but not everybody has 40 bucks through it. Something like this. So bare minimum though, let's just face facts.
Kevin Tumlinson: 11:52 There is that old method of sitting down with a pad and Pencil and scribbling out your book in Longhand. I still know authors who do this, you know, I know plenty of authors who do it. Uh, it's sort of almost shocking to me that there are that many people who write their books long hand and my hand cramps up just thinking about it, but there, but there is some appeal in that for me. I've written longhand short stories, articles, all kinds of things. I carry around a mole skin notebook pretty frequently. I've got lots and lots of journals all around me. Uh, so there's been plenty of writing that way in my life. Um, and that is one way to go. And in fact I have a story. So, um, a couple of years ago I was just sort of thinking, pondering the nature of being a writer and the accessibility of it.
Kevin Tumlinson: 12:46 Um, and I decided I would, I would do a little experiment. I like to keep my eyes open. I like to keep my eyes open for resources. I'm, I'm a very resource oriented guy. Okay. So I thought, well I'm a resource wearing a guy. I'm always looking for like where was the last time I saw a coat hanger or a screwdriver or something in case I've locked myself out of a car or you know, I need to fix something or whatever. And I keep that stuff in my head, a sort of a little, a buffer of that stuff. So I thought, well, I'm going to start looking for the materials. I would need to have a writing career. Just, just, I just spent like a couple of days doing this. Like I'm just going wherever I go, I'm to look around and say, okay, I could use that. I could use that.
Kevin Tumlinson: 13:30 I do this as a matter of course anyway. Um, I'm always kind of keeping my eyes open in case there's a, you know, in case I need a, that, that rock or that brick or that, uh, you know, uh, whatever. And this is how I find a lot of money by the way. So keeping my eyes open for things that would help me. Right. I took one of my regular morning walks, I'm going, I'm heading for I a doughnut shop actually, where I tend to sit and do a little bit of reading and writing. Uh, not anymore. I don't live anywhere near this place. Um, and oddly enough, I don't think I ever bought a donut from this place, but while walking through another parking lot to get there, I spotted someone had dropped a ballpoint pen like that, the writing and implement, I will pick that up.
Kevin Tumlinson: 14:22 And uh, I went ahead and pick that up and then I get to the, uh, the donut shop in order my coffee and they'd give me a receipt. And they, for some reason they gave me this super long receipt, not a lot on it. And it was, uh, the backside of it was entirely blank. So, uh, I'm thought, well, there are some paper, I have a pin, I'm going to write something. So I, I spent a few minutes writing out, uh, basically something that became the front end of a blog post. Um, and uh, you know, I handled, I had a good time with this. I mean, I, this is a kind of fun exercise, right? Yeah. I thought, well, okay, so that's handwritten. Now how would I get that to a digital world now I had my phone with me, so of course I could sit there and type it in, you know, bit by bit on my phone.
Kevin Tumlinson: 15:10 I thought, you know, that's kind of cheating. I brought that with me. Uh, if I didn't have that with me, how would I do this? Now that the answer there is, it wasn't an immediate thing with my phone. I could immediately publish. I can instantly publish. I got another story about that coming up. But without the phone. I had to think of some other way, you know, if I were, if I were just completely broke and they only means I had was this, you know, this pan I found on the ground and any scrap of paper I could pick up, how would I go about turning that into a writing business? Um, and the answer for me, uh, on this particular trip was, um, once the sun was up, once the world was active and moving, I, uh, walked to a local library was very close to where I was once I was in the library.
Kevin Tumlinson: 16:05 Uh, they had several computers that I could sit at for free. And, uh, once you're sitting in a computer to get all kinds of options, now I wanted to publish this, right? So I, I used, um, uh, Google docs, you know, which is a free office, Microsoft office level tool. And I typed up what I'd written in and I kind of finished it and you know, and then I did the copy and paste and I could have easily done used anything else. I was, since I was blogging this, I could've just written in the blog platform, there are a million free blog platforms. Um, so that may not, like I went from finding a penalty ground and using a receipt to sitting down in front of your computer and publishing what I'd written and it didn't cost me anything more than the cup of coffee I'd paid for.
Kevin Tumlinson: 16:55 And I could easily have skipped that and just written this on, uh, any scrap of paper and I didn't even need the pen or the paper really could have just gotten to the library and sat down and started writing. So, um, now that's a blog post, but the same thing applies. Google docs, for example, will let you spit out that, uh, your work as a word document or an RTF file. Guess who uses that? You can actually upload that to, um, draft to digital, convert your manuscript that you've created into a, in a pub and a Mobi file, a distributed worldwide right from there. Um, and, uh, start making some money on this thing that you, you know, wrote wall front of abusing opinion out in the parking lot, or skip the pen and then just go straight in and write your, uh, your and Google docs.
Kevin Tumlinson: 17:50 Um, uh, fast forward now. I went to a conference in Orlando. You've heard this story before if you've listened to the show for awhile, but I was in a conference in Orlando and had some time between conferences. I had multiple conferences going on and a couple of days and decided I would go do Disney world. Actually, I basically had one day, like one day and decided I'm going to go to Disney world today. So I went to Disney world, had a great time, didn't want to take care of a bunch of crap with me. So I had my phone and that was it. Um, so I am, uh, standing in line for the flight of passage ride, which is the, if you go to animal kingdom, they have a whole avatar world. For some reason Disney owns avatar. Now for some reason, despite this movie being, you know, forever old and only one movie and wasn't even all that great, they have an entire section of a park in Disney world dedicated to it.
Kevin Tumlinson: 18:53 And I have to admit the park itself is much cooler than the movie. Um, so I'm waiting for this ride. It's a three hour wait. So I took my phone out and I had recently had a conversation with Michael LaRonn. Now you can benefit from that conversation cause uh, I did an interview with him on this topic later. Um, and he told me, and you could find that go towards in your podcast at comp type Michael LaRonn, L. A. R. O. N. N. Um, he told me that he'd started writing all of his books using his iPhone and typing using his thumbs on the screen. And that blew my freaking mind. So I wanted to play with this. So I started doing a lot of stuff on my phone. I started writing blog posts, I started writing copy, um, marketing copy for draft to digital. And I decided, well, what if I applied this to fiction?
Kevin Tumlinson: 19:50 So I started while whiteness line, I wrote a little short story using nothing but the iPhone and my thumbs right went much faster than than you would think. It actually went very well. Um, but from that phone I was able to, uh, you know, I wrote it in Scrivener, I was able to output that as a word document, uh, to a Dropbox. I was able to upload that word document too. Um, drafted digital and from draft to digital I could convert it to all the a ebook formats and a I went on a Canva and use their little free ebook cover thing and made a cover for it, uh, complete with an original image and everything. And then I wrote the description and I wrote all the metadata stuff and uh, you know, chose the title and ha got it all pulled together and I got all the way to the point where I could've pushed publish and stop there because I wanted to go back and edit, maybe expand, do some other things with this story.
Kevin Tumlinson: 20:49 So the point there was in that three hours, three hour window of standing in line, because I was by myself, I didn't have anybody to talk to. Everybody had their loved ones and family with them. Everybody's laughing and having a good time and I'm feeling a little lonely. So I write a short story and made me feel much better. And uh, and by the time it was all done, I could have pressed, pressed publish on that and put it out into the world where it could have started making me some money. And so I would have turned that, that waiting time into writing time, uh, all that took was a smart phone. So I love that idea because years ago I used to write using a palm pilot and if you don't, if you're not old enough to remember these, the personal digital assistants, PDAs, they were the precursor of the iPhone.
Kevin Tumlinson: 21:43 Most of you, I think it probably lived through that era. But, uh, I had a palm five, which was a fairly fancy palm pilot and I had a little keyboard for it. I even at one point had a little digital, a laser generated keyboard, laser projected keyboard. It would project the keys onto a table top surface and I could type that way. Uh, that didn't work, all that great. So I didn't use it much, but I did have a little, a little thing that the, that the PDA snapped into the palm pilot snapped into then how to keyboard. It was a great keyboard. I really wished I could get one like it for my iPhone. Um, cause it all folded up is perfect. But man, I, I mean I love the idea of a folding keyboard. I've got like a dozen of them and I still can't find one.
Kevin Tumlinson: 22:32 That's that I really love. Uh, but I was able to, uh, you know, wherever I was, I, this was, I had laptops but they weren't very battery efficient. Uh, and, and this was small and portable and I carried it in my pocket. So wherever I was, I could stop and do some, some writing. And I wrote lots of articles, blog and I, this was pre blog. No one knew what a blog was, but I was, I was basically, you know, writing a blog, um, uh, sort of web journal and, um, you know, I did a lot of short stories, things like that. And it was all mobile. Well that, that thing is just like there's a little monochromatic screen and doesn't even have Internet access. It's just, it was just an organizer basically. But it gave me this tool and that shaped a lot of how I do my work now.
Kevin Tumlinson: 23:21 Um, but the idea is to look around, uh, the, the bare minimum that you need for this as a, as a pad and pencil. You need to be able to get this stuff online these days. Uh, but even that is kind of, you know, it's kind of Iffy, like you don't necessarily have to publish online. Um, there are ways to go about this where you never touched the internet at all, but I, uh, I don't know why are you the efficiency of that? But the real point here is you can create a career from almost literally nothing. It just takes, you know, looking around and figuring out how do I get my words on the page. Um, now we've talked about writing, Eh, uh, as in sitting down with a pad and pencil or sitting down with the keyboard. Um, but it's equally as effective to go ahead and just dictate what your writing.
Kevin Tumlinson: 24:21 Um, I read Kevin j Anderson's book, I think it was like the millionaire writer or something. Hold on just a second. I'm to take a little sip of water. Hold on. Mm hmm. That is lubricating. Um, he wrote a Kevin J. Anderson, he was talking about one of his favorite things to do, which is to, um, to go hiking on the trails near his home in Colorado. And while he's doing that, he carries a little voice recorder with him. He dictates his books as he goes. Now. That's fantastic. I've never really gotten into that, but I could see how it would work. And I was talking to actually Roland Denzel about that very idea. He likes to use dragon. Um, and he has a PC and a, you know, I never got into the whole dragon thing. Uh, you know, I kind of played with it when they first introduced it years ago and I played with, I played with a few times since.
Kevin Tumlinson: 25:20 Uh, I just don't feel all that comfortable, especially sitting in front of my computer. I'm dictating. It just doesn't work as well for me. It's not the same vibe from me. However, I could see how I'm doing it on the go, walking and talking. Uh, I think that might work well for me now to do that. You could use a voice recorder or you could use your mobile phone. Um, now if you're using a text to our speech to text software, things can get a little tricky. Um, but uh, but there are ways to make that work. Uh, but you know, I, I like, um, I don't use this yet for narrating a book, but I've used a service called Timmy, which is spelled t e m i.com. It is a service that will, it uses the same sort of software basically that will translate your, your words into text automatically and a cost you about six, $6 an hour, about 10 cents a minute actually.
Kevin Tumlinson: 26:23 So, um, I've played around with it a little. I was going to use it for our transcriptions for the show. Uh, it's not perfect, especially when you've got more than one voice recorded, so you have to, you will have to do some editing. But, uh, if you don't, if you have a Mac and therefore can't get the dragon software, uh, or if you don't like, you know, dealing with that, that sort of thing, uh, this is another option so you can, so you don't even have to be able to type or write, you know, physically right to write a book. You can just narrate it. Now, one of the advantages then is if you do it right, um, you could even have your audio book, uh, sort of prerecorded. I don't see how you could do that really, uh, fresh without editing, but, uh, you know, stranger things have happened.
Kevin Tumlinson: 27:13 Um, but it does give you kind of used to the idea of reading your work out loud and if you're going to do that, you, you very well could record your own audio books. You could get really good at this stuff. So the point there is a, there are no real limitations here. Um, and if there are limitations, you know, they're usually extenuating circumstances and you can, you, you can find a way to work around those. Uh, what it takes is looking around seeing what resources you have and putting those resources to work. I've had people tell me I could never ride on my cell phone, even with a keyboard. Know I love my Bluetooth keyboard with my phone. I love to write that way. Um, cause it's hyper portable, you know, I mean I can be anywhere. Um, but I've had people tell me I could never ride on the phone and the screen's too small.
Kevin Tumlinson: 28:04 I'm blown away by that very statement. Given that I used to have a word processor that a little strip of monochromatic LCD screen and that I basically could see about half a sentence at a time. And I wrote entire books on that word processor. So to tell me that they phoned screen is too small. Um, you know, I think it's just a matter of adjusting, Eh, the point is there is a way, and you might have to compromise a little on what you think it means to be a writer, but you can get this done. So the bare minimum, the bare minimum to right is a, to find a tool that works for you in that means it works for you, physically, works for you in terms of your budget works for you in terms of productivity. Uh, but it's out there. You do not have to spend a lot of money on software of any kind apps of any kind equipment of any kind.
Kevin Tumlinson: 29:03 You know, there are some people who buy a Mac so that they can use scrivener and vellum, you know, um, Scrivener's available in pcs, like I said, but you know, vellum isn't, um, you know, you the, I applaud you, um, if you've got the budget to do that, do it. I do. So I do. Um, but maybe you don't, uh, I went to the flea market this past weekend and I saw hundreds of small laptops and the, and large laptops that people were selling for like less than 25 bucks. Some were selling for more. Uh, but a lot of, a lot of these were working laptops that people were, sounded like $25, not the latest and greatest. Of course you might have to reformat them. You know, I, there will be some blemishes on them, you know, uh, it, so you can, you can do this. I mean, am I first laptop came from the flea market.
Kevin Tumlinson: 29:58 I paid $20 for it. It was a monochromatic green screen, Tandy laptop, clamshell laptop. This is the first laptop I owned, you know, so, um, the point there is there are more resources out there and then you're probably aware of or that you're thinking about. And it doesn't take that much to actually do this. So, uh, and I ran you through a whole process of getting that, you know, book onto, um, you know, into distribution using drafted digital. I'm biased towards draft to digital, but, uh, you know, there are a lot of other ways to do this too. So that's it. That's the basics. That's all it takes. And I know you can do it. Uh, cause I've seen, you know, a few thousand of you do it. You're not, if you are still struggling to write your first book, um, then you know, I just want you to know there are no real barriers and if you are already writing, um, and you're thinking about, you know, you maybe you feel a little inadequate.
Kevin Tumlinson: 30:57 I don't have a Mac. Maybe they should do virtual Mac pay, pay a monthly fee so I can use vellum. Uh, you know, maybe I should, uh, save up and buy a new Mac book pro or whatever. Um, it's fine if you do that, but it's not necessary. And that's the point I'm trying to make. So, uh, I'm at time, a little over an hour, so I'm going to go ahead and wrap this up. Uh, if you have questions about this or anything else, please hop on over to words on your podcast.com. Let me know what you're thinking. Ah, let me know you think of this and this format and everything else that's going on. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Itunes, stitcher, Google, play. Uh, Spotify. I'm everywhere now. Um, even on youtube though. Heck man, I may not, I may not do the show this way on youtube anymore. Let me know what you think about that too. So
Kevin Tumlinson: 31:52 anyway, I am happy we had this time chat. God bless each and every one of you. Make sure you subscribe and I'll see you all though. This Friday. See you Friday with a whole new episodes talking to GP James. You're not going to want to miss that. So I'll see you then.
Singer: 32:12 Wordslinger!
Michael Bunker is a USA Today bestselling author of fiction and non-fiction books. He was born in Lubbock, Texas and his family moved around a bit until finally returning to live in his beloved Texas when he was 14 where he went to high school in Odessa and then college at Texas Tech University. After marrying his wife Danielle and entering the business world, they left it all in 1998 to start a small sustenance farm in West Texas so Michael could write. In 2005 the family (now of 6!) moved to Central Texas and started a completely off-grid farm. Michael writes from a small office on his farm that is powered by solar power and occasionally a generator. His breakthrough bestselling novel was The Pennsylvania Omnibus, for which he sold his first film option, followed by the bestselling Amish Scifi thriller Brother, Frank.
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How can you get more out of your content? Kevin walks you through one of his processes in today's Wordslinger words of wisdom.
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Michael Evans is the author of the Control Freakz series, a Young Adult Post-Apocalyptic Thriller series set in a near-future United States. He is currently attending high school in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, but he is originally from Long Island, New York. Some of his hobbies include hiking, running, camping, going to the beach, watching and taking artsy pictures of sunsets (it’s honestly a very enlightening activity to partake in), and walking his ginormous, fluffy golden doodle underneath the stars. He is also fascinated with the environment and neuroscience, and his true passion is learning about how the wonders of the human mind and the environment we live in will change with time. The future, specifically his goal of helping to impact the future of humanity positively is what drives him to tell stories. Writing is something that is instinctive to him, and he seeks to express his thoughts on his own life and the world to inspire others to use the power in the voice they have to advocate for positive changes in their own lives and the world we all live in.
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This week we pull a 180 as Kevin Tumlinson switches up the format a little. No guest, not interview, just pure Wordslinger Wisdom as Kevin splits the typical episode into two parts—Interview and Wordslinger Afterword.
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A book-lover turned entrepreneur, Ryan Zee in 2016 created BookSweeps.com, which is now one of the largest book giveaway & lead generation sites for fiction authors, with an email list of nearly 100,000 readers. Over 3,500 authors have used BookSweeps' promotional services, including some of the top-selling names in romance, mysteries & thrillers, sci-fi & fantasy, Christian fiction, and YA
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James Rollins is the author of the bestselling Sigma Force series Sandstorm, Map of Bones, Black Order, The Judas Strain, The Last Oracle, The Doomsday Key, The Devil Colony, Bloodline, The Eye of God, The 6th Extinction, The Seventh Plague, and The Demon Crown; six individual adventure thrillers; the blockbuster movie novelization, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; the Tucker Wayne Series; the Order of the Sanguines Series; and the Jake Ransom middle grade series. The fourteenth Sigma Force Adventure, Crucible, debuts January 8th, 2019.
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B.J. Mendelson is a world-renowned speaker and author of the cult-classic, "Social Media Is Bullshit" from St. Martin's Press. He is also a comic book writer and author of the new book, "Privacy: And How We Get It Back" from Curious Reads.
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KRIS FRIESWICK is a journalist, editor, humorist, teacher and author whose work has appeared in national magazines, newspapers and books for more than 20 years. She is an avid cyclist, cook and traveler who divides her time between Cape Cod, Massachusetts and St. Croix, USVI.
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Geoff Symon is a 20-year Federal Forensic Investigator. His participation in high-profile cases includes the attacks on September 11, 2001, the War in Iraq, the Space Shuttle Columbia explosion, among countless other cases. He has direct, first-hand experience investigating cases including murder, suicide, arson, kidnapping, bombings, sexual assault, child exploitation, theft and financial crimes. He has specified and certified training in the collection and preservation of evidence, blood spatter analysis, autopsies and laboratory techniques. For the past several years, he has shared his expertise by teaching authors about real-life forensics through lectures, online courses, and consultations. His Forensics for Fiction series has become the go-to resource for genre authors.
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Ricardo Fayet is one of the founders of Reedsy, an online marketplace connecting authors with the world's very best publishing talent (think editors, cover designers, book marketers, etc.). A digital marketing enthusiast, he also helps authors find their audience and is now busy growing Reedsy Discovery. https://reedsy.com/discovery
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Twitter Handle:: RicardoFayet
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THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
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JACK J. HERSCH is an expert in the field of troubled and distressed companies. He is a strategic advisor to corporate management and investment institutions, has served as a corporate board member, and has guest lectured at the business schools of M.I.T., U.S.C., and U.C. Berkeley, among others. DEATH MARCH ESCAPE is his first work of non-fiction.
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Website:: deathmarchescape.com and davidhersch.com
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THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
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Nick Thacker is the author of best-selling action-adventure thrillers, including the Harvey Bennett Thrillers series.
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sonataandscribe.com
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THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
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Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
William Dylan Powell is an award-winning author who writes crime stories, mystery fiction and books about Texas. He lives in Houston. Powell's work has been featured in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, the Best American Mysteries 2018 and a host of fine truck stop bathroom walls across the Texas badlands.
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Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
Bestselling author of the critically acclaimed Feast of Fates, Christian A. Brown received a Kirkus star in 2014 for the first novel in his genre-changing Four Feasts Till Darkness series. He has appeared on Newstalk 1010, AM640, Daytime Rogers, and Get Bold Today with LeGrande Green. He actively writes a blog about his mother’s journey with cancer and on gender issues in the media.
DID I MENTION?
Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller The Stepping Maze - https://books2read.com/stepping-maze
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website(s): www.christianadrianbrown.com
Twitter handle(s): @AuthorChrisAB
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChristianAdrianBrown/
Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00M7V9YLG
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THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
Joe Start writes goofy non-fiction. His first-person experiences as an American abroad, cultural observations and fun facts will have you laughing and learning.
DID I MENTION?
Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller The Girl in the Mayan Tomb - https://books2read.com/mayan-tomb
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website(s): www.startgoingplaces.com
http://voicemap.me/authors/joe-start
Twitter handle(s):
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JoeStartAuthor
Amazon Author page: http://amazon.com/author/joestart
--
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
For more than three decades George Mercer worked as a national park warden in Canada, including both east and west coasts, the North and the Rocky Mountains. For eight of those years, George worked as a Park Warden and Monitoring Ecologist in Gulf Islands National Park Reserve, British Columbia. George continues to be passionate about parks and protected areas, weaving elements of mystery and suspense into Dyed In The Green, the first fiction series about Canada’s iconic national parks.
DID I MENTION?
Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller The Girl in the Mayan Tomb - https://books2read.com/mayan-tomb
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website:: www.georgemercer.com
Amazon Author page:: https://www.amazon.com/George-Mercer/e/B01M5L55F3
Twitter Handle:: @egeorgemercer
Facebook:: https://www.facebook.com/george.mercer.12
--
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
Jack Carr, a former Navy SEAL, led a special operations teams on four continents as a Team Leader, Platoon Commander, Troop Commander and Task Unit Commander. So when he delivered a thriller about a fictional former SEAL, famed editor Emily Bestler had to sit up and take notice.
DID I MENTION?
Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller The Girl in the Mayan Tomb - https://books2read.com/mayan-tomb
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website(s): https://officialjackcarr.comTwitter handle(s): @JackCarrUSAFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/jackcarrusa/AmazonAuthor page: https://www.amazon.com/Jack-Carr/e/B0773Y8L7L/
--
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
M.G. Herron is the author of The Translocator Trilogy and other action-packed science fiction novels. When he’s not inventing new worlds or exploring the great outdoors, Matt works as a marketing strategist and freelance copywriter in Austin, TX.
DID I MENTION?
Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller The Girl in the Mayan Tomb - https://books2read.com/mayan-tomb
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website:: https://mgherron.com
Amazon Author page:: https://www.amazon.com/M.-G.-Herron/e/B00OEKX55E/
Books2Read Author Page:: https://books2read.com/ap/8PZaOR/MG-Herron
Twitter Handle:: @mgherron
Facebook:: facebook.com/mgherronauthor
--
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
Jennifer Miller is a journalist and the author of three books. Her debut novel, The Year of the Gadfly (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), was called “a dark comic romp” by the Washington Post and “entirely addictive” by Glamour. Jason is editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur magazine, host of the podcasts Pessimists Archive and Problem Solvers, and has been an editor at Men’s Health, Maxim, Fast Company, and Boston magazine. They live in Brooklyn with their 3-year- old, who they hope will never read this book.
DID I MENTION?
Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller The Girl in the Mayan Tomb - https://books2read.com/mayan-tomb
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website:: www.MrNiceGuyNovel.com
Amazon Author page:: https://www.amazon.com/Mr-Nice-Guy-Jennifer-Miller/dp/1250189888
Twitter Handle:: @mrniceguy
--
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
Eric C. Anderson is a retired member of the U.S. intelligence community who served tours of duty in Hawaii, Iraq, Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia and Washington, D.C. A former academic, he taught at the University of Missouri, University of Maryland, Air Force Academy and National Intelligence University. During his career, he produced more than 600 articles for the President’s Daily Brief, National Intelligence Council, International Security Advisory Board and the Department of Defense. In addition, he is the author of Take the Money and Run: Sovereign Wealth Funds and the Demise of American Prosperity, China Restores: The Middle Kingdom Looks Forward to 2020, Adopting Ainsley: There’s No Place for a Car Seat on a Motorcycle and Sinophobia: The Huawei Story. A life-long sailor and biker, he claims to have spent endless hours on boats and put over 300,000 miles on a variety of Harley-Davidsons.
DID I MENTION?
Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller The Girl in the Mayan Tomb - https://books2read.com/mayan-tomb
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website:: http://dunnbooks.com/eric-c-anderson/
Amazon Author page:: https://www.amazon.com/Eric-C.-Anderson/e/B001QV2DX4/
--
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
Brandon Barr is a USA Today Bestselling Author who hails from Southern California. He writes in the genres of science fiction and fantasy and often combines the two, preferring stories where the science is soft, the fantastic is vivid, and the flesh and soul characters are front and center.
DID I MENTION?
Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller The Girl in the Mayan Tomb - https://books2read.com/mayan-tomb
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website:: www.brandonbarr.com
Amazon Author page:: https://www.amazon.com/Brandon-Barr/e/B002DMIYTW
Facebook:: https://www.facebook.com/BrandonJBarr/
How can listeners join your mailing list?: www.brandonbarr.com
--
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
Toronto-born writer, researcher and artist Marina L. Reed has been penning stories since she was a small child, growing up in rural Ontario. Reed has worked as a researcher and writer for CBC Television, as a mentor for struggling families, has written for journals and online education programs, and has taught the arts to people aged 4-18 in schools across Ontario, Europe, and the West Indies. Reed holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Windsor (where she won the Board of Governor’s Medal). She also holds a Master of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Western Ontario and a Bachelor Degree of Education from the University of Toronto. She is an avid lover of nature and the magic that surrounds us. She currently lives outside Toronto where she creates her art. Reed’s debut novel, Primrose Street, is forthcoming from Blue Moon Publishers in 2018.
DID I MENTION?
Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller The Girl in the Mayan Tomb - https://books2read.com/mayan-tomb
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website:: https://marinalreed.com
Twitter Handle:: @marinalreed
--
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
Matthew Thrush is the cofounder of Six-Figure Ghostwriter and #1 best-selling author of over 50 books. He's a top-ranked ghostwriter and writing coach, who specializes in mentoring aspiring writers to scale to six-figures with ghostwriting. He's been an expert or guest speaker for Make Money While You Sleep, YourFirst10kReaders, Author Platform Rocket, Kindlepreneur, Wordslinger, and Draft2Digital. His mission is fuel people with an abundance mindset so they can manifest their dreams.
DID I MENTION?
Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller The Girl in the Mayan Tomb - https://books2read.com/mayan-tomb
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website:: www.sixfigureghostwriter.com
Amazon Author page:: https://www.amazon.com/default/e/B00J8VFJK8/
Twitter Handle:: @Genk01Thrush
Facebook:: https://www.facebook.com/groups/313369749194477/about/
How can listeners join your mailing list?: https://www.facebook.com/groups/313369749194477/about/
--
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
Grant Faulkner is the Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month and the co-founder of 100 Word Story. He recently published a book of essays on creativity, Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo. His stories have appeared in dozens of literary magazines, including Tin House, The Southwest Review, and The Gettysburg Review, and have been widely anthologized. His essays on creativity have been published in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Writer’s Digest, and The Writer. He's also published a collection of 100-word stories, Fissures, and served as co-editor of Nothing Short of 100: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story.
DID I MENTION?
Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller The Girl in the Mayan Tomb - https://books2read.com/mayan-tomb
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website:: http://grantfaulkner.com/
Amazon Author page:: https://www.amazon.com/Grant-Faulkner/e/B00J1YQZVE
Books2Read Author Page::
Twitter Handle:: @grantfaulkner
Facebook:: https://www.facebook.com/grantfaulkner
--
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
Megan Haskell is the author of the Amazon bestselling dark fantasy adventure series, The Sanyare Chronicles, The first book in the series, Sanyare: The Last Descendant, was honored with a B.R.A.G. Medallion for quality in independent literature. She lives in Orange County, California with her husband, two young daughters, and one ridiculously energetic dog. You can find her on her website at www.MeganHaskell.com.
Greta Boris is the author of the 2017 releases, A Margin of Lust and The Scent of Wrath, the first two books in her 7 Deadly Sins domestic suspense series. She’s published articles on culture, health, and entertainment for a variety of national magazines including Victorian Homes, Zombies, 50 Scariest Movies, Exodus, and Women of the Bible. Her first book, The Wine and Chocolate Workout – Sip, Savor, and Strengthen for a Healthier Life, is an Amazon Kindle Bestseller. To find out what she's up to and to receive a free story, June Gloom - A Deadly Short, visit her at http://gretaboris.com.
DID I MENTION?
Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller The Girl in the Mayan Tomb - https://books2read.com/mayan-tomb
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website(s):
www.aspiringtoauthor.com
www.meganhaskell.com
www.gretaboris.com
Twitter handle(s):
@meganphaskell
@gretaboris
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/meganhaskellauthor
www.facebook.com/gretaboris
Amazon Author page:
https://www.amazon.com/Megan-Haskell/e/B00RSHJ306/
https://www.amazon.com/Greta-Boris/e/B00ADUFSD6/
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THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
Christine Munroe is the Director of Kobo Writing Life, Kobo's free self-publishing platform that helps authors reach millions of Kobo readers around the world. Before joining Kobo, she worked in NYC as a literary agent and international book scout. In her free time she wrangles two small kids and two small dogs, but always finds time to read every day.
LISTEN: Kevin’s interview on Kobo Writing Life
DID I MENTION?
Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller The Girl in the Mayan Tomb - https://books2read.com/mayan-tomb
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website:: kobo.com/writinglife
Twitter Handle:: @kobowritinglife
Facebook:: https://www.facebook.com/KoboWritingLife/
--
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
Colin Gardiner is a former economics/statistical researcher and the current Chief Product Officer of Outdoorsy, the largest and safest community-driven RV marketplace for renting RVs directly from local RV owners.
DID I MENTION?
Check out my interview on the Roadtreking Podcast: http://bit.ly/154-roadtrek
Rent a writer's retreat that can take you places! Check out my RV, now for rent via Outdoorsy, at bit.ly/rvwriter!
Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller The Girl in the Mayan Tomb - https://books2read.com/mayan-tomb
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website(s): https://www.outdoorsy.com
Twitter handle(s): @colingardiner
THIS WEEK’S INDIE PUBLISHING NEWS
Brought to you byDraft2Digital
- AAP Estimates US Book Publishing Industry Generated $26 Billion in Revenue Last Year — http://bit.ly/157-billions
- Tor Books is Now Windowing Library eBooks — http://bit.ly/157-tor
- Amazon Updates KDP Rules to Discourage Book-Stuffing — http://bit.ly/157-amazon
--
LOOKING FOR SOME COOL T-SHIRTS WITH WHICH TO HIDE YOUR NAKED SHAME? Now you can get T-shirts with stuff I wrote on ‘em. Just hit http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees to browse and buy!
--
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Written World Writer’s Retreat - Rent a writer’s retreat that goes wherever you want to go. Check out my listing on Outdoorsy for the perfect writer’s retreat—my 38’ luxury motor coach! Go to http://bit.ly/rvwriter for details.
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
GOT A QUESTION FOR KEVIN AND HIS GUESTS?
CALL 281-809-WORD (9673)
Mark is a Scotsman now living in Würzburg, Germany. He is a former technology journalist, with past experience working for newspapers, magazines, and websites. In a previous life, he was a Jack-of-all-trades, including being a government civil servant, working in hotels, travelling around Europe and working as a civilian employee on a US Army base here in Würzburg.
DID I MENTION?
- Check out my interview on the Roadtreking Podcast: http://bit.ly/154-roadtrek
Rent a writer's retreat that can take you places! Check out my RV, now for rent via Outdoorsy, at bit.ly/rvwriter!
Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller The Girl in the Mayan Tomb - https://books2read.com/mayan-tomb
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website(s): markoneill.org
Twitter handle(s): @markoneill
Facebook: facebook.com/markoneillonline
Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Mark-ONeill/e/B074LCQN1D
THIS WEEK’S INDIE PUBLISHING NEWS
Brought to you by Draft2Digital
-
Walmart and Microsoft team up to fight Amazon - http://bit.ly/156-walmart
-
Bad Romance - http://bit.ly/156-badromance
-
Trademark on Cover Design - http://bit.ly/156-trademark
--
LOOKING FOR SOME COOL T-SHIRTS WITH WHICH TO HIDE YOUR NAKED SHAME? Now you can get T-shirts with stuff I wrote on ‘em. Just hit http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees to browse and buy!
--
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Written World Writer’s Retreat - Rent a writer’s retreat that goes wherever you want to go. Check out my listing on Outdoorsy for the perfect writer’s retreat—my 38’ luxury motor coach! Go to http://bit.ly/rvwriter for details.
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
___
GOT A QUESTION FOR KEVIN AND HIS GUESTS?
CALL 281-809-WORD (9673)
Author Justin Sloan wrote video games before becoming a full-time author, with credits on such games as Game of Thrones, Tales from the Borderlands, Walking Dead, and Marvel and mobile games. He taught Muay Thai kickboxing and Marine Corps Martial Arts, and can play three songs on the bagpipes. Justin holds advanced degrees in international relations/economics and creative writing. Oh, and he acted in movies for a bit - all small roles though.
DID I MENTION?
- Check out my interview on the Roadtreking Podcast: http://bit.ly/154-roadtrek
Rent a writer's retreat that can take you places! Check out my RV, now for rent via Outdoorsy, at bit.ly/rvwriter!
Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller The Girl in the Mayan Tomb - https://books2read.com/mayan-tomb
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website(s): www.JustinSloanAuthor.com
Twitter handle(s): @justinmsloan
Facebook: www.facebook.com/JustinSloanAuthor/
Amazon Author page: www.amazon.com/Justin-Sloan
THIS WEEK’S INDIE PUBLISHING NEWS
Brought to you byDraft2Digital
- Bookfunnel announces Print Codes - http://bit.ly/155-bookfunnel
- Kobo limits book descriptions to 4,000 characters for Walmart - http://bit.ly/155-kobo
- Authors can lease a virtual Mac - http://bit.ly/155-mac
--
LOOKING FOR SOME COOL T-SHIRTS WITH WHICH TO HIDE YOUR NAKED SHAME? Now you can get T-shirts with stuff I wrote on ‘em. Just hit http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees to browse and buy!
--
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Written World Writer’s Retreat - Rent a writer’s retreat that goes wherever you want to go. Check out my listing on Outdoorsy for the perfect writer’s retreat—my 38’ luxury motor coach! Go to http://bit.ly/rvwriter for details.
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
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GOT A QUESTION FOR KEVIN AND HIS GUESTS?
CALL 281-809-WORD (9673)
Scott is a turtle amongst ninjas. At an early age he potty trained himself and has been ahead of the curve ever since. A one time college professor, Scott now makes his living as an indy author and board game photographer.
MENTIONS:
- Check out my interview on the Roadtreking Podcast: http://bit.ly/154-roadtrek
Rent a writer's retreat that can take you places! Check out my RV, now for rent via Outdoorsy, at bit.ly/rvwriter!
Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller The Girl in the Mayan Tomb - https://books2read.com/mayan-tomb
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website(s): www.scottking.info
Twitter handle(s): @scottking
Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Scott-King/e/B002BMAE9C/
THIS WEEK’S INDIE PUBLISHING NEWS
Brought to you byDraft2Digital
Barnes & Noble fires its newest CEO with no severance pay - http://bit.ly/154-bn
English rapper Stormzy launches book publishing imprint, announces book - http://bit.ly/154-stormzy
Cockygate is over! - http://bit.ly/154-cocky
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LOOKING FOR SOME COOL T-SHIRTS WITH WHICH TO HIDE YOUR NAKED SHAME? Now you can get T-shirts with stuff I wrote on ‘em. Just hit http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees to browse and buy!
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THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Written World Writer’s Retreat - Rent a writer’s retreat that goes wherever you want to go. Check out my listing on Outdoorsy for the perfect writer’s retreat—my 38’ luxury motor coach! Go to http://bit.ly/rvwriter for details.
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
___
GOT A QUESTION FOR KEVIN AND HIS GUESTS?
CALL 281-809-WORD (9673)
Mike is a veteran journalist who, with his wife, Jennifer, travels North America in a Type B motorhome, blogging about the people, places, joys and adventure of RV life on the road. He enjoys camping (obviously), hiking, biking, fitness, photography, kayaking, video editing and all things dealing with technology. See and subscribe to his RV Lifestyle Channel on YouTube, where he has hundreds of RV and travel related videos. His PC Mike TV reports, on personal technology are distributed weekly to all 215 NBC-TV stations.
MENTIONS:
Rent a writer's retreat that can take you places! Check out my RV, now for rent via Outdoorsy, at bit.ly/rvwriter!
Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller The Girl in the Mayan Tomb - https://books2read.com/mayan-tomb
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website(s): roadtreking.com
YouTube: rvlifestylechannel.com
Twitter handle(s): @roadtreking
Facebook: facebook.com/roadtreking
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/default/e/B001KIDWWY
THIS WEEK’S INDIE PUBLISHING NEWS
Brought to you byDraft2Digital
US Supreme Court Tax Ruling Means Authors Have to Collect Sales Tax on Direct Sales - http://bit.ly/153-taxes
iBooks gets a redesign and new Apple Books branding in iOS 12 - http://bit.ly/153-apple
Harlan Ellison, one of science fiction’s most controversial authors, has died - http://bit.ly/153-harlan
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LOOKING FOR SOME COOL T-SHIRTS WITH WHICH TO HIDE YOUR NAKED SHAME? Now you can get T-shirts with stuff I wrote on ‘em. Just hit http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees to browse and buy!
--
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Written World Writer’s Retreat - Rent a writer’s retreat that goes wherever you want to go. Check out my listing on Outdoorsy for the perfect writer’s retreat—my 38’ luxury motor coach! Go to http://bit.ly/rvwriter for details.
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
___
GOT A QUESTION FOR KEVIN AND HIS GUESTS?
CALL 281-809-WORD (9673)
As an avid snowboarder from Utah, Ben grew up with a passion for learning. This thirst for knowledge led him to sports, music, and academic endeavours. He has done volunteer work in Brazil and speaks three languages. With a bachelors from the University of Central Florida, he started publishing in 2012 and has since sold over 200,000 copies. Each of his books have been inspired by his wife and six beautiful children. He currently resides in Missouri while completing his Master's in professional writing.
MENTIONS:
Rent a writer's retreat that can take you places! Check out my RV, now for rent via Outdoorsy, at bit.ly/rvwriter!
Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller The Girl in the Mayan Tomb - https://books2read.com/mayan-tomb
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website(s):
www.Lumineia.com
www.27dates.com
Twitter handle(s):
@27dates
@benhale8
Facebook: Facebook.com/Elseerian, Facebook.com/27dates
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/default/e/B008L4V466
THIS WEEK’S INDIE PUBLISHING NEWS
Brought to you byDraft2Digital
VELLUM ADDS EASIER IMPORT FROM SCRIVENER
http://bit.ly/152-vellum
THE AUTHOR'S GUILD IS TAKING IT'S ANNUAL AUTHOR INCOME SURVEY
http://bit.ly/152-income
AMAZON NOW LETS AUTHORS PURCHASE MULTIPLE COPIES OF KINDLE EBOOKS
http://bit.ly/152-amazon
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LOOKING FOR SOME COOL T-SHIRTS WITH WHICH TO HIDE YOUR NAKED SHAME? Now you can get T-shirts with stuff I wrote on ‘em. Just hit http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees to browse and buy!
--
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Written World Writer’s Retreat - Rent a writer’s retreat that goes wherever you want to go. Check out my listing on Outdoorsy for the perfect writer’s retreat—my 38’ luxury motor coach! Go to http://bit.ly/rvwriter for details.
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
___
GOT A QUESTION FOR KEVIN AND HIS GUESTS?
CALL 281-809-WORD (9673)
David Gaughran is an Irish writer, living in Prague, who spends most of his time travelling the world, collecting stories. He runs the publishing blog Let's Get Digital and the South American history site South Americana, and his work has been featured in the Huffington Post, The Sunday Times and the Irish Times.
MENTIONS:
Rent a writer's retreat that can take you places! Check out my RV, now for rent via Outdoorsy, at bit.ly/rvwriter!
Cover your nakedness and your shame with a Written World Tee, now with 100% more Kevin words! http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller The Girl in the Mayan Tomb - https://books2read.com/mayan-tomb
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website(s):
Blog: https://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/
Site: http://davidgaughran.com/
Twitter handle(s): @DavidGaughran
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DavidGaughranWriter/
Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/David-Gaughran/e/B004YWUS6Q
THIS WEEK’S INDIE PUBLISHING NEWS
Brought to you by Draft2Digital
Traditional ebooks are down, Indies are up — That’s according to a story in GeekWire, which presents the oddly confusing yet comforting statement “Ebook sales are dying. Ebooks are insanely popular.” The story cites PubTrack Digital’s research results, showing a 10 percent decline in ebook sales from 2017 over 2016. The 450 publishers included in the study saw ebook sales from from 170 million units to 162 million in that one-year span. A second study released by the American Association of Publishers seems to jive with those results, showing a 4.7 percent drop in ebook sales in 2017, from more than 1,200 publishers. But all is not lost—because the article points out that those studies are both focused entirely on traditional book publishing. Factor in indie publishing, and you get a revolution of ebook sales. Big numbers are hitting the board, including one from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos: “Over a thousand independent authors surpassed $100,000 in royalties in 2017, through Kindle Direct Publishing.” — http://bit.ly/151-ebooks
Should we judge a work by its author? — In the wake of allegations of sexist misconduct, some are asking if we should ignore and invalidate work written by authors such as Junto Díaz, a Pulitzer Prize winner who was accused of forcibly kissing a woman years earlier. A recent editorial in the National Review argues that we shouldn’t dismiss a writer’s (or actor’s or comedian’s or artist’s) work because of that writer’s actions. I agree. Despite allegations, enough readers have resonated with Díaz’s work that it would be horribly dismissive to ban or boycott it. Instead, maybe we should consider that first all humans are capable of producing good work regardless of their past offenses, and second that we humans are not defined by the mistakes of our past. If we’re to grow and evolve, we have to accept that people can change. What do you think? — http://bit.ly/151-badwriter
What Can Algorithms Tell You About Your Writing? — In a recent Wall Street Journal post, machine learning has come into the spotlight as potentially “your next editor.” Computer algorithms can now be used to determine everything from reading level to mood to the complexity of your ideas. Could this lead to a revolution in automated editing? Maybe. Though the technology gives some pretty handy insights into improving a writing sample, it doesn’t necessarily account for when a writer deliberately wants to break the rules. Imagine Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer run through this thing and you’ll get the idea. On the other hand, for writers who may be just learning to hone their craft, this could be a life (and budget) saver. Check out the story and even test some of your own writing. — http://bit.ly/151-algorithm
LOOKING FOR SOME COOL T-SHIRTS WITH WHICH TO HIDE YOUR NAKED SHAME? Now you can get T-shirts with stuff I wrote on ‘em. Just hit http://bit.ly/writtenworld-tees to browse and buy!
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Written World Writer’s Retreat - Rent a writer’s retreat that goes wherever you want to go. Check out my listing on Outdoorsy for the perfect writer’s retreat—my 38’ luxury motor coach! Go to http://bit.ly/rvwriter for details.
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
___
GOT A QUESTION FOR KEVIN AND HIS GUESTS?
CALL 281-809-WORD (9673)
Rick Pullen is a novelist, award-winning investigative reporter and magazine editor. His 2016 thriller, Naked Ambition, about a reporter investigating a corrupt presidential candidate, became a bestseller. The Apprentice is his latest release. In 2018, newspaper reporter Beck Rikki returns as she sets out to discover the Naked Truth, the sequel to Naked Ambition. Pullen is a member of the Folio 100—the 100 most influential people in magazine publishing—and was a finalist for Editor of the Year.
MENTIONS:
Rent a writer's retreat that can take you places! Check out my RV, now for rent via Outdoorsy, at bit.ly/rvwriter!
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller The Girl in the Mayan Tomb - https://books2read.com/mayan-tomb
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website(s): http://rickpullen.com/
Twitter handle(s): @RickPullen
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rickpullenwriter/
Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Apprentice-Rick-Pullen-ebook/dp/B075787Y89
THIS WEEK’S INDIE PUBLISHING NEWS
Brought to you by Draft2Digital
The Worlds Are Ending! — Amazon has announced that it will be closing its popular Kindle Worlds service in July. KW launched in May 2013 as a way for intellectual property owners to open their worlds for other writers, with both the copyright holder and the contributor splitting royalties from sales. It was a popular option for authors looking to break into writing fiction, with the power of a known brand behind them. There’s been no official word as to what happens next, and that’s proving problematic for contributing authors. Under the Kindle Worlds License Agreement, the contributing authors granted rights to their stories to the property holders. Effectively, then, it’s up to those property holders to make any deals to republish or redistribute that work. As there are few viable options for royalty splitting in the marketplace, the likelihood is that these titles will never be republished. — http://bit.ly/150-worlds
Romantic Times Calling it Quits — Romantic Times Magazine, and its associated annual convention, will be shutting down, according to a May 16 announcement. The Romantic Times convention is currently running, but magazine owner Kathryn Falk announced to attendees that this would be the last year. Most attendees were very surprised, and were concerned that the closure would impact readers. Thanks to JoCarol Jones, however, there’s still some spark for readers and convention goers. Jones accounted that she will be creating and running The Booklovers Convention, which will take up the cause. — http://bit.ly/150-romantic
More Cocky — The story behind #cockygate just keeps evolving, now with a feature article in Vox detailing some of the finer points of the IP battle. For those not in the know, author Faleena Hopkins started an avalanche of news and ill feelings when she trademarked the word “cocky” as it applies to ebooks, books, and audiobooks in the romance genre. She started a ruckus when she sent cease and desist letters to a number of romance authors using the word in the titles of their books, following up by issuing takedown notices with Amazon for alleged trademark violation. The story continues to take on mass as authors take issue, file petitions to have the trademark revoked, and even turn to trade organizations like RWA to bring legal muscle to the game. The implications of this story keep unfolding. — http://bit.ly/150-cocky
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Written World Writer’s Retreat - Rent a writer’s retreat that goes wherever you want to go. Check out my listing on Outdoorsy for the perfect writer’s retreat—my 38’ luxury motor coach! Go to http://bit.ly/rvwriter for details.
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
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CALL 281-809-WORD (9673)
Michelle Madow is a USA Today bestselling author of fast paced fantasy novels that will leave you turning the pages wanting more! She grew up in Maryland and now lives in Florida. Some of her favorite things are: reading, traveling, pizza, time travel, Broadway musicals, and spending time with friends and family. Someday, she hopes to travel the world for a year on a cruise ship.
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website(s): www.michellemadow.com
Twitter handle(s): @MichelleMadow
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michellemadow/
Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Michelle-Madow/e/B005GA8KA6/
THIS WEEK’S INDIE PUBLISHING NEWS:
Don’t Get Cocky — Romance author Faleena Hopkins has been the talk of the indie publishing industry of late, thanks to her decision to trademark the word “cocky” as it applies to romance-genre ebooks, books, audiobooks, and allegedly even metadata for all of the above. Hopkins began sending cease and desist notifications to authors using the word in their romance titles, threatening legal action if authors didn’t comply and make a change. Hopkins has trademarked not only the word “cocky,” but a stylized font treatment of the word using a font that is, apparently, not legally allowed for use in a trademark or copyright. The community is up-at-arms over the move, and it has sparked a very heated discussion regarding intellectual property laws as they apply to indie authors. My take: This is an abuse of IP law, and it should never have passed review. Someone in the US Patent and Trademark Office has fallen down on the job, or has been banned for access to a common English language dictionary. This is a story to watch for all its implications to the industry, for sure. — http://bit.ly/149-cocky
Books by women authors are cheaper than books by men? — That, according to CBS Money Watch, reporting on research that books written by women are priced 45 percent lower than books written by men. Researchers analyzed more than 2 million books published between 2002 and 2012 and determined the 45 percent number to apply to both traditional and indie-published books. That number shrinks to just 9 recent once genre and other mitigating factors are included. And the number specific to self-published titles is smaller still: “Self-published titles by women are priced at 4 percent less than for men, the researchers found,” as stated by the CBS article. So what’s driving that price differential? I argue that it’s genre: Women tend to write in genres where various factors have driven the price point lower. Whereas men tend to write in genres where a higher price point is acceptable. The way to look at this and verify it would be to break this down and study price points and ranges within specific genres, to see if the disparity holds up. — http://bit.ly/149-gender
Author takes on US Education — Ted Dintersmith, author of “What School Could Be,” appeared on CNBC to discuss his book and his take on how the education system in the United States is not only letting students down, but is actually making it more difficult for them to be competitive in the workplace. Dintermsith states that he believes college “definitely is not for everyone,” and points out that only one in five students leave college with a background and resources that can equip them for a successful career. I have to say, I agree 100%. As controversial as this statement may be, I believe college is a worthless endeavor for the majority of our population, and that most people if not all people would benefit far more by investing all of that time, money, and energy into starting a small business—even if that business utterly fails. What do you think? Check out the interview and leave me a comment. — bit.ly/149-school
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Written World Writer’s Retreat - Rent a writer’s retreat that goes wherever you want to go. Check out my listing on Outdoorsy for the perfect writer’s retreat—my 38’ luxury motor coach! Go to http://bit.ly/rvwriter for details.
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
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Heather Hildenbrand was born and raised in a small town in northern Virginia where she was homeschooled through high school. (She's only slightly socially awkward as a result.) She writes paranormal and contemporary romance with plenty of abs and angst. Her most frequent hobbies are riding motorcycles and avoiding killer slugs.
MENTIONS:
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller The Girl in the Mayan Tomb - https://books2read.com/mayan-tomb
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website(s): www.heatherhildenbrand.com
Twitter handle(s): @HeatherHildenbr
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HeatherHildenbrandAuthor/
Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Heather-Hildenbrand/e/B004VH51XE/
THIS WEEK’S INDIE PUBLISHING NEWS:
Amazon launches Prime Book Box — Coming up later in 2018, Amazon will launch Prime Book Box, a monthly subscription-based service aimed at kids. The subscription will run just under $23 per month, and spending on the age of the child they’ll get either four board books (think Little Golden Books) or two hardcover picture books or novels. The board books go to kids who are two years old or younger, and the picture books and novels go to ages three to 12. This is significant because it’s the first time Amazon has offered a subscription service for physical books. And because you’ll ask, the books are selected by Amazon Books editors, who pick based on the appropriateness for the age ranges, and they’ll avoid duplicates by using the customer’s purchase history. — http://bit.ly/148-amazon
The launch of Publishing Technology Partners — For those looking to launch and build a business in the publishing space, Publishing Technology Partners is a consulting partnership that brings a lot of industry expertise to the table. The five founding partners have an impressive array of combined publishing and technology know-how, and are making it available to startups and businesses in need of development, marketing, strategy and more. It’s an interesting emerging business in large part because it signifies just how legit “new publishing” has become. If you happen to be developing in this space, it’s worth checking these guys out. — http://bit.ly/148-partners
Findaway Voices introduces promotional pricing — Audiobook distribution platform Findaway Voices has announced that they now support promotional retail pricing. Authors distributing through the service can now set up promotional pricing through Google Play, NOOK Audiobooks, eStories, LibroFM, and Instread. Findaway lists some perks to accompany this new resource, and by far my favorite has been “Vendors will typically give titles on promotion more favorable coverage and merchandising support.” If you’d like to save on the $49 admin fee, by the way, you can sign up for Findaway Voices via Draft2Digital. — http://bit.ly/148-findaway
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
___
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Adam Leeb is the Cofounder of Astrohaus, the makers of the Freewrite Distraction-Free writing tool. He is a product designer and mechanical engineer (MIT graduate)
MENTIONS:
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller The Girl in the Mayan Tomb - https://books2read.com/mayan-tomb
CONNECT ONLINE:Website(s):
https://getfreewrite.com
wtf.getfreewrite.com
https://astrohaus.com
https://adamleeb.com
Twitter handle(s): @iamadamleeb
THIS WEEK’S INDIE PUBLISHING NEWS:Bezos Reveals Amazon Prime has 100M Members — In Amazon’s annual shareholder letter, CEO Jeff Bezos gave the typical call for the company to live up to “ever-rising customer expectations,” and touting Amazon’s high standards at every level. The letter also contained some interesting news in the form of information that all the world has wondered about: Just how many subscribers does Amazon Prime have? The number, as it turns out, is 100 million. Meaning Amazon not only makes around $9.9-billion per year on the service, it also has the eyes of a hundred million vetted customers, willing to spend even more money with the retail giant. I’m not sure what to do with this knowledge, now that I have it. But I’m impressed, Jeff. slow clap — http://bit.ly/147-Bezos
ALLi is Betting on Blockchain — If you’ve followed news about Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency, then you may have some vague knowledge of what “bitcoin” and “cryptocurrency” mean. And you might also have heard of Blockchain. The idea, in the simplest terms, is that blockchain is a sort of digital ledger for transactions made with cryptocurrencies, like bitcoin. If that didn’t clear anything up, think of it as a more or less foolproof way to do a digital transaction, much more in line with the way you’d do a physical transaction. In other words, if I pay for your physical book, you get your money and I get the book. I can’t then replicate the book with a few mouse clicks and resell it, keeping the original and maybe repeating the process. Blockchain would effectively prevent anyone from being able to sell a digital version of your book, without at least giving up their digital version. It’s a way to make digital products more like their physical counterparts. And the Alliance of Independent Authors sees this as a great way to give authors a more complete ownership of their intellectual property, allowing authors to have more control, and be less dependent on giants such as Amazon KDP. They’re calling it Self Publishing 3.0, and they’ve released a white paper that gives the full details. — http://bit.ly/147-blockchain
Amazon Wins First Arbitration — In September 2017 Amazon filed for arbitration against at least five authors and businesses accused of violating Amazon’s terms of service, essentially scamming the system to make quite a bit of money. Amazon has won the first of these arbitrations, against a British business owner. Amazon has asked the court to enter judgement in line with the January award issued by American Arbitration Association. Jake Drya, the UK business owner, is ordered to pay damages after arbitration determined he knowingly manipulated KDP, violating their TOS. Dryan’s business was doing crazy stuff, including publishing duplicates of books that were already available, using bots to increase page views. All of which violates Amazon’s TOS.— http://bit.ly/147-Amazon
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wordslingerpodcast
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
___
GOT A QUESTION FOR KEVIN AND HIS GUESTS?CALL 281-809-WORD (9673)
Beau L'Amour was born in Los Angeles, California. His father was Louis L'Amour, a well known author of magazine and paperback fiction. His mother was Katherine Adams, the daughter of a silent movie actress and a southern California real estate developer. Throughout a good deal of his youth Beau lived in West Hollywood, an unincorporated section of Los Angeles county, known as a center of counter-culture and beatnik life. He grew up surrounded by his parents eclectic and eccentric group of friends; Austrian philosophers, American Indians, FBI agents, members of the Hollywood Ten, Eastern European refugees, Thai aristocracy, mysteriously talented dealers in primitive art and a wide array of writers, from Ray Bradbury to Jim Thompson.
MENTIONS:
New to Wordslinger Press, pick up Writing a Better Book Description
Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller The Girl in the Mayan Tomb - https://books2read.com/mayan-tomb
CONNECT ONLINE:Website(s): http://beaulamour.com/index.html http://www.louislamourslosttreasures.com http://louislamour.com/aboutlouis/biography.htm
http://www.thediamondofjeruaudio.com
Twitter handle(s):
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BeauDLAmour
Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Beau-LAmour/e/B00FVVNKGE/
THIS WEEK’S INDIE PUBLISHING NEWS:Amazon targets Kindle Publishing Scams — Finally. I mean, seriously, this story should have been a headline years ago. But finally Amazon is taking steps to cut down on scams and abuse from unscrupulous authors using their Kindle Direct Publishing service. Amazon has filed five complaints against authors who are violating the terms of service, with everything from trafficking in fake reviews to “link abuse,” where an author puts a link in the front of the book that sends readers to the back of the book, in an effort to capitalize on Amazon’s page reads policy. Amazon is seeking more than half a million dollars in damages from five authors. It remains to be seen whether these actions will curtail some of KDP’s woes, but a start is a start. — http://bit.ly/WPC146-Amazon-Lawsuit
Microsoft quietly rolls out E-Bookstore — Authors looking to reach a very specific and narrow group of readers can rejoice … Microsoft has finally rolled out its eBook store, which is available exclusively to users of the Windows 10 operating system. Ebooks can be purchased via the Microsoft Store app, or on Microsoft’s website. When asked if Microsoft will eventually support devices beyond Windows 10, such as the prolific and near universal Apple iPhone or the stunningly popular Google Android platform, Microsoft replied in the vaguest terms possible. Which means “no, but maybe.Someday. If we get around to it.” — http://bit.ly/WPC146-Microsoft
Smashwords Founder Mark Coker thinks Indies are losing their independence — Citing an ever-increasing dependence on KDP Select, Mark Coker wrote in the Huffington post that “Authors who now derive 100% of their sales from Amazon are no longer indie authors. They’re dependent authors. I suppose we have indie authors and de-authors now.” A bit cynical, but does he have a point? Personally, I believe the “independent” in “independent authors” is more about owning your career and being in control of your decisions, but Coker’s point is that dependence on one sales channel will lead to losing options. Whether this is the future of Indies, we really can’t say. Definitely food for thought, though.— http://bit.ly/WPC146-Coker
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
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Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
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Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
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With over 15 years in online marketing experience Jonny Andrews has been in digital publishing before Amazon released the Kindle.
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Jonny last appeared on the Wordslinger Podcast in Episode 75
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Website: authorplatformrocket.com
Twitter: @Jonny_Andrews
THIS WEEK’S INDIE PUBLISHING NEWS:
Draft2Digital Announces Author Pages and Book Tabs — D2D started 2018 by announcing we were going to focus on beefing up our offering at Books2Read.com, and by paying particular attention to tools that will help with author discoverability. To that end, we just announced our new discoverability tools: D2D Author Pages and D2D Book Tabs. These two new resources will showcase both the author and the author’s work (books that is) to new and existing readers. Think of Author Pages as either your author-themed web presence, if you don’t have an author website, or as your book store for your existing site. Book Tabs are product pages that give readers everything they need to make their book buying decision, including a link that sends them to everywhere your book is sold online. These tools are incredible, and you can learn more about them on the official blog post, now with more video walk-thrus! — http://bit.ly/WPC145-D2DAuthorPages
Digital Manga Overtakes Print — Manga, which no one ever seems to be able to pronounce correctly, is hugely popular worldwide, but particularly in Japan. And for the first time, digital sales of manga have outpaced print sales. Digital sales were up 17.2% from the previous year, versus print sales falling 14.4% over last year’s numbers. What makes this interesting is that manga is currently underserved in digital markets. As the rise in popularity starts to indicate a shift in interest from consumers, this could lead to opportunities for some willing and able digital publishers out there. Notably, Amazon’s Comixology acquisition could lead to its dominance in yet another digital publishing field. — http://bit.ly/WPC145-Digital-Manga
No room for pirates in Switzerland — When you think of Switzerland, you think of pirates. No? You probably should, because internet piracy is huge in Switzerland, and impacts a lot of authors. The Swiss Federal Supreme Court is considering dialing back on its previous 2010 decision, which barred anti-piracy agencies from having access to the IP addresses of file servers used by internet pirates. The original ruling made Switzerland something of a safe harbor for pirates, but it also landed Switzerland on the US government’s watchlist, which is sometimes used to limit commerce with Swiss businesses online. Changes to the Swiss policy, which I’ll admit has some holes (heh), could help crack down on one of the biggest thorns in the sides of authors. — http://bit.ly/WPC145-Switzerland-Piracy
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
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Bryan Cohen is a two-time USA Today bestselling author with over 40 books and 100,000 copies sold. He's also the head copywriter at Best Page Forward, a book description service, and he's the co-host of The Sell More Books Show, a weekly publishing industry news show.
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Bryan last appeared on the Wordslinger Podcast in WPC-055 - Ninja Book Descriptions with Bryan Cohen
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CONNECT ONLINE:Website(s):
http://www.sellmorebooksshow.com
http://www.bestpageforward.net/blurbs
Twitter handle(s): @bryancohenbooks
Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Bryan-Cohen/e/B004I9WJTY/
THIS WEEK’S INDIE PUBLISHING NEWS:No Love Between Audible and Romance Authors — Is Audible ripping off romance authors? Yes. But that’s my opinion. It is, of course, based on the latest information coming to us about Audible’s new subscription package for romance titles. It was hailed as being similar to Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program, which pays authors for pages read. But where KU pays authors something comparable to the royalty they would have gotten for a sale, Audible’s program is paying only pennies per listen. Compounding that is the fact that the program only pays the author once they’ve reached a $50 threshold, so for many authors it could be YEARS before they see a very meager return on thousands and thousands of listeners downloading their books. So I’m standing firm on this one—Audible is ripping off romance authors. You may feel free to disagree in comments. It’s a free country. Especially if you’re listening to someone’s romance book. https://goodereader.com/blog/indie-author-news/is-audible-romance-ripping-off-authors
Uppity author thinks authors should be paid for their work — According to author Philip Pullman, there’s something a bit unbalanced about the fact that profits and margins are increasing in the publishing industry while the share given to the author is diminishing. In a quote from The Guardian, Pullman said, “To allow corporate profits to be so high at a time when author earnings are markedly falling is, apart from anything else, shockingly bad husbandry. It’s perfectly possible to make a good profit and pay a fair return to all of those on whose work, after all, everything else depends. But that’s not happening at the moment.” This would seem a good time to point out that indie authors keep a much bigger share of their royalties. True, they work for it, in terms of marketing and platform building. The disparity between what authors make versus what shareholders and stakeholders make is astounding: About three times what the authors makes for his or her work. My take: The industry has to make a profit, and that’s why this disparity exists. The solution, then, is to excise your career from the meat grinder of traditional publishing as much as you possibly can. If the trad industry can embrace a hybrid model, where the idea is to assist the author in increasing their reach and growing their platform, everyone can win. Agree? Disagree? Answer in the comments. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/mar/05/philip-pullman-calls-for-authors-to-get-fairer-share-of-publisher-profits
Barnes & Noble’s comeback will be a slow burn — BN hasn’t been feeling so well, and the road to recovery is going to be long. Following a lackluster holiday season and a series of unexpected layoffs in February, Barnes & Noble has released details of its “long-term strategic plan.” The idea is to improve customer satisfaction and profitability by going back to book sales as the focus. It looks like they’re finally waking up to the fact that no one buys music or DVDs from Barnes & Noble (or anywhere, really), so those will likely fall out of the offering. They’re putting their money on gifts and stationary. Because that’ll work. This feels an awful lot like “same thing, new name” to me, but I’m hopeful that BN will see the kind of growth it needs. If they do, in fact, start focusing on the customer more and on defunct product offerings less, it could … well, do nothing, honestly. Truthfully, I don’t see any way that will help. But the new prototype stores, which have been rumored to have offerings such as wine bars and restaurants … ok, no, I just don’t see that working either. Maybe it’s time for Barnes & Noble to sell out to Amazon and get it over with. Comment with your take. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/76213-no-quick-fix-for-b-n.html
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
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Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
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Alisse Lee Goldenberg is an award winning author of Horror, Young Adult Paranormal Romance, and Young Adult Fantasy fiction. She is currently working on three series: The Sitnalta Series, The Dybbuk Scrolls, and The Bath Salts Journals (co-authored with An Tran). She has her Bachelors of Education and a Fine Arts degree, and has studied fantasy and folk lore since she was a child. Alisse is also a screenwriter and playwright living in Toronto with her husband Brian, and their triplets Joseph, Phillip, and Hailey.
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Website(s): www.alisseleegoldenberg.com
Twitter handle(s): @AliLGoldenberg
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AlisseLeeGoldenbergAuthor/
Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Alisse-Lee-Goldenberg/e/B006LNKMNA
THIS WEEK’S INDIE PUBLISHING NEWS:
Wordslinger Press Officially Launches — As self-serving as this may be, it’s my show. So nyah-nyah. But as of this week, I’ve launched Wordslinger Press. This will be the non-fiction arm of my publishing business, focusing primarily on creating content oriented toward the indie publishing community. You may already be aware of one of my other non-fiction books, 30-Day Author. This week I released a second Wordslinger book titled Writing A Better Book Description. This is a short, quick read—around 40 pages for $1.99, and available as an ebook everywhere you can think to buy one. This is the first in a series of quick guides meant to give authors and publishers a place to start when trying to figure out the mechanics of this business. Look for more of these in the near future. Pick up Writing A Better Book Description at https://books2read.com/betterbookdescriptions
Is Amazon being used for money laundering? — It’s that time of year, when authors are getting their 1099s just in time to pay Uncle Sam for the privilege of being able to work for a living. Some authors are getting a little extra surprise with with their tax forms, though. Patrick Reames got a 1099 indicating that he’d made nearly $24,000 from book sales on CreateSpace.This seemed unlikely, as Reames did not have any books published through Amazon’s POD service. Upon checking into it, he discovered that someone had used his identity to create an account and sell a book titled “Lower Days Ahead” for $555 per copy. Reames and others aren’t entirely sure what’s up, but one theory is that someone is using CreateSpace to launder pilfered credit cards, buying copies of the paperback and having Amazon deposit 60% of the sale into a bank account. If true, this represents a huge and scary problem for both Amazon and indie authors. But it’s the kind of cool plot twist one might turn into a thriller novel. I call dibs. https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/02/money-laundering-via-author-impersonation-on-amazon/
Hachette CEO says eBooks are a stupid product — Hachette is back in the news for comments from CEO Armaud Nourry. While in India, Nourry was interviewed by Scroll.in, and was pretty open about his disdain of the entire eBook market. “The ebook is a stupid product. It is exactly the same as print, except it’s electronic,” Nourry said. “There is no creativity, no enhancement, no real digital experience.” Nourry did admit that it was the entire industry that had not done a good job with eBooks … big of him. Frankly, the CEO’s comments highlight the fact that he and the rest of the traditional publishing industry seem to be utterly clueless about the impact of ebooks. That’s my opinion of course. As a seller of ebooks that are not priced higher than paperback books. http://www.thepassivevoice.com/2018/02/the-ebook-is-a-stupid-product-no-creativity-no-enhancement-says-the-hachette-group-ceo/
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
Wordslinger Press—This is your chance to start your indie author career right. Pick up books and other products to help you build and grow a successful writing career. Start growing at http://wordslingerpodcast.com
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
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Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
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Michael La Ronn is the author of over 30 science fiction & fantasy books including the Android X series, Modern Necromancy series, and the Galaxy Mavericks series. He writes from the great plains of Iowa and has perfected the art of balancing writing with a full-time job and family, writing 5-7 books per year.
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Pick up a copy of Kevin Tumlinson's newest Dan Kotler archaeological thriller The Girl in the Mayan Tomb - https://books2read.com/mayan-tomb
CONNECT ONLINE:Website(s): www.michaellaronn.com
Twitter handle(s): @michaellaronn
Facebook: www.facebook.com/michael.laronn
Amazon Author page: amazon.com/author/michaellaronn
THIS WEEK’S INDIE PUBLISHING NEWS:Offset printing for indie authors? — Indies have risen to success thanks to a handful of technologies that make their work more accessible to readers, from ebooks to publishing on demand. Now, writer Joel Friedlander thinks that the future for Indies will include access to a technology that has traditionally been more … well … traditional. Is offset printing the future of indie authors? Friedlander thinks so. The tech is becoming increasingly available and accessible, which means some adventurous indie publishers are reaching out to use it, more and more. Of course, 99% of people, to completely make up a number, can’t tell the difference between offset and laser printing without studying both very closely, side by side. So is it worth the extra cost? Or will the cost come down to something affordable for everyone? https://www.thebookdesigner.com/2018/02/offset-printing-future-indie-authors/
Washington Post is Evolving the Bestseller List — It’s been a complaint for Indies since day one: Bestseller lists often refuse to include sales results from sources such as Amazon.com, where ebook sales could skyrocket some lesser known and unknown authors well past traditionally published giants. The Washington Post is the first to recognize this for the error that it is. They’re revamping their bestseller list to include data not just from Bookscan, but from Amazon as well. What will this mean for indie authors? Are lists still relevant? https://lunch.publishersmarketplace.com/2018/02/washington-post-revamps-bestsellers-becomes-amazoned/
Book Marks could be the Rotten Tomatoes for literature — Literary Hub is launching a new section for their site, called Book Marks, that is aimed at helping readers “find books they will love by giving them access to the critical discourse that is an essential part of our ecosystem.” That from John Freeman, LitHub’s executive editor. In other words, Book Marks will aggregate reviews from all over the web, and crowdsource readers to improve on recommendations. Will this help new and unknown authors reach a new audience? Or will it just end in tears and gnashing of teeth for everyone? http://www.independentpublisher.com/article.php?page=2075&urltitle=Literary%20Hub%20Launches%20a%20New%20Book%20Review%20Aggregator%20Site%20BOOK%20MARKS
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
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Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
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Steve Berry is the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of 13 Cotton Malone adventures and 4 stand-alone thrillers. His books have been translated into 40 languages with over 22,000,000 copies in 51 countries. They consistently appear in the top echelon of The New York Times, USA Today, and Indie bestseller lists.
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History Matters - http://history-matters.org
1001 Dark Nights - http://www.1001darknights.com
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Website(s): http://steveberry.org
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqbOLerUd6JxYu9QPs6NY7g
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SteveBerryWriter/
Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Steve-Berry/e/B001H6W6DU/
THIS WEEK’S INDIE PUBLISHING NEWS:
Scribd reintroduces Unlimited — Scribd announced this week that it’s bringing back its unlimited plan for audiobooks and eBooks, causing some buzz among authors and readers alike. This is a reboot of their previous attempt, and it looks like the service is learning from its mistakes. The reboot will allow Scribd subscribers to have access to an unlimited catalog of ebooks, audiobooks, magazines and newspapers, and sheet music, for some reason. However, “unlimited” may be a little misleading. After users have pored through a certain, unspecified number of books, they’ll essentially be throttled, and limited to books “unlimited’ reading from a list of pre-determined books. These will include new releases and frontlist books—the sort that people actually want to read on demand, in other words. This is a bit like Netflix deciding to limit viewers to only a backlist of videos, and charging them extra to watch new releases. My opinion, at least. What’s yours? https://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-news/scribd-reintroduces-unlimited-audiobooks-and-ebooks
Apple fires shots across Amazon’s eBook bow — I’ve talked about this a bit in the past, but Apple and Amazon will likely be mentioned in a lot of indie publishing news over the next year, as Apple starts eyeing Amazon’s big, steaming hunk of the eBook market. Not only is Apple retooling its book business, with a redesigned app and a less ‘i-everyting’ name, they’ve also hired former executives from both Amazon and Barnes & Noble. What’s the game plan? World domination, obviously. And I, for one, welcome our technological overlords. Where do you think Apple will take the business, with these aggressive moves? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-25/apple-is-said-to-ready-revamped-e-books-push-against-amazon
Audiobook sales are on the rise — In a turn that is going to be good news for authors already invested in audiobooks as a sales channel, sales showed an upward trend in 2017. In the first three quarters, audiobooks sales rose 26.2%. As retailers such as Google Play and others start putting more focus on audiobooks, it’s likely we’re just at the beginning of an upward swoop. And as there are nowhere near the titles available in audio as there are in ebook formats, this represents an opportunity for early adopters to carve a piece of the pie for themselves. How are audiobooks fitting your publishing strategy? https://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-news/audiobook-sales-increased-26-2-first-three-quarters-of-2017
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
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USA Today Bestselling action/adventure author Ernest Dempsey writes page-turning archaeological thrillers. Ernest currently splits time in his hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee and Atlanta, Georgia. Despite having degrees in Psychology and Counseling, Ernest always enjoyed creating stories, has perpetually been fascinated by the ancient world, and can often be found reading books and watching television shows related to history.
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Atlas Obscura - https://www.atlasobscura.com
Hybrid Author Podcast - http://hybridauthorpodcast.com/episode-17-the-future-of-hybrid-publishing-with-kevin-tumlinson/
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Website(s): Ernestdempsey.net
Twitter handle(s): @erndempsey
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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/edempsey3
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THIS WEEK’S INDIE PUBLISHING NEWS:
Barnes & Noble relaunches NOOK Press — BN thinks the third time’s the charm, as they once again rebrand and relaunch their self-publishing platform. Barnes & Noble: Nook Press has relaunched as a much easier mouthful, Barnes & Noble Press—a publishing device that will include both ebook and print-on-demand. The move surprised practically everyone, as most had written off Barnes & Noble after rumors and announcements over it’s NOOK platform began to sound like a death knell. But hopes and speculation are both on the rise after BN’s press release, stating that, among other things, they’ll be offering an increased royalty rate of 65% for ebooks priced at $10 or above, and the ability to set pre-orders up to 12 months in advance. Does this change BN’s future as an eBook distributor? Comment below to sound off. https://goodereader.com/blog/digital-publishing/bn-rebrands-its-selfpub-platform
Findaway Voices becomes a gateway to Google Play — Audiobook distributor Findaway has announced that their platform, Findaway Voices, will be distributing audiobooks to Google Play’s new audiobook catalog. Voices, a program that Draft2Digital helped to launch in 2017, allows independent authors and publishers to produce and distribute their audiobooks to a global marketplace, without the exclusivity requirements pushed by services such as Amazon’s ACX program. Adding Google Play distribution means that indies now have one of the most coveted retailers in their belts. Could this lead to a greater indie presence on Google Play? https://medium.com/findaway-voices/distribution-update-google-play-launches-audiobooks-620ac0d479ef
Walmart and Rakuten partnership means Kobo ebooks and audiobook distribution — Rakuten, the Japanese company that owns Canadian ebook distributor Kobo, has partnered with retail giant Walmart to deliver groceries in Japan. But the bigger news for indie authors is that Kobo’s catalog of ebooks and audiobooks will now be distributed globally via Walmart.com. Walmart has long courted the ebook industry, with several toe-dips into those waters, but with the muscle of Rakuten behind the deal, this could place Walmart in a position to topple Amazon’s dominance of the marketplace. Do you agree? https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/25/walmart-and-rakuten-partner-on-grocery-delivery-in-japan-kobo-e-books-and-audiobooks-in-u-s/
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
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Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
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Boyhood interests in trains and electronics fostered Mark's career as an electrical engineer, designing and commissioning signal and communications systems for railroads and rail transit agencies across the United States. Along the way Mark indulged his writing desire by authoring articles for rail and transit industry trade magazines. Coupled with Mark's long-time membership in anime, manga and anthropomorphic fandoms, he took up writing genre fiction. Growing up in Michigan, never far from his beloved Great Lakes, Mark and his wife today make their home in Wisconsin with their son and a dog who naps beside him as he writes. He is a member of Allied Authors of Wisconsin and the Furry Writers' Guild.
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Website(s): https://www.mark-engels.com/
Twitter handle(s): @mj_engels
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mark.engels.39
Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Mark-J.-Engels/e/B074Q51T9R/
THIS WEEK’S INDIE PUBLISHING NEWS:
Author Earnings Report is out - Data Guy is back after a year-long hiatus, and he does not disappoint. The latest Author Earnings Report gives us some incredible insights into the industry, including a final confirmation that ebooks are, in fact, not going away. According to the report, 55% of online book purchase in 2017 were ebooks, and there’s every indication that climb will continue. The report has generated a bit of controversy, however, as it had initially named certain authors and publishers, giving their sales ranking and other information. Some authors complained this was a breech of privacy. What do you think? Does it impact privacy to aggregate and report publicly available data? http://authorearnings.com/report/january-2018-report-us-online-book-sales-q2-q4-2017/
Google Play now offers audiobooks. — Google Play has had a turbulent time trying to enter and keep a foothold in the content marketplace, with it’s Google Play Store being difficult to navigate and, largely, devoid of content beyond what you could find at an airport bookstore. As they continue to work on those challenges, it looks like they’re making a bid to go toe to toe with Audible and iTunes for the audiobook market. This week, Google announced it will start carrying audiobooks in the Google Play Store, specifying that there is no subscription, and that many popular books will be sold at a discount. Could this be a true contender for knocking Audible off of the hill, giving both consumers and authors a better shot? I’d love to hear what you think, in the comments. https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/23/16921176/audiobooks-google-play-android-ios-home-speakers
Apple takes another swing at Amazon over ebooks. — After a slap-down from the U.S. Department of Justice, back in 2012, Apple was forced to back off of some of its more aggressive plans for the ebook business. Now, they’re up for another run, with a revamped ebook store and mobile app, and a new name—switching from the familiar iBooks to simply “Books,” in a move that mirrors similar name changes across their product line. It’s good to see someone rise to take a swing at Amazon, who has dominated ebooks for years now, but it remains to be seen whether we’re all in better hands within Apple’s walled garden. How do you see this battle of the book giants turning out? Is it a turning point for the industry, or just more of the same? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-25/apple-is-said-to-ready-revamped-e-books-push-against-amazon
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
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Jesper Schmidt is a fantasy author, living in Denmark, but has a Finnish sauna to thank for getting into writing.
CONNECT ONLINE:Website(s): www.jesperschmidt.com
Twitter handle(s): @schmidtjesper
Facebook: http://bit.ly/28NJQXO
Amazon Author page: http://amzn.to/28VRmvr
THIS WEEK’S INDIE PUBLISHING NEWS:Will Amazon offer 50% royalty? — If you’ve published using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing service, you’re probably aware that Amazon offers two royalty options: 35% if your ebook is under $2.99, and 70% if it’s priced $2.99 to $9.99. But this past week, Amazon snuck in a surprise 50% option. It wasn’t clickable, and it disappeared as suddenly as it appeared. And as yet, no one knows what it might mean for sure. But the rumor mill has it now, and speculation is running wild. The most common hope/rumor: Amazon may start offering 50% royalty for non-exclusive books, and allowing authors to utilize services currently reserved for exclusive works. What do you think? Is a non-exclusive KDP in our future? And what would that mean for indie authors? https://goodereader.com/blog/digital-publishing/amazon-accidentally-drops-a-50-royalty-bombshell
Wattpad gets $51M —Toronto-based Wattpad is a storytelling app that allows users to write and publish shorts stories, articles, and even books, a chapter at a time, for readers to enjoy, comment on, and upvote. The company has just gotten a pretty significant financial boost from investors and venture capitalists, to the tune of $51million, bringing Wattpad’s total funding to $117.8 million, US so far. The company will fold this cash infusion into improving its tech platform, in an effort to “empower diverse storytellers all over rate world, helping them build a community of passionate readers,” according to CEO Allen Lau. Lau also said that an objective of the company is to connect Hollywood with stories that could have a bigger audience appeal. What could this mean for indie authors? Is this an opportunity to grab at a movie deal, or will Wattpad be just another slush pile for studios to pick through? http://deadline.com/2018/01/wattpad-gets-51m-injection-from-investor-group-will-expand-its-tech-1202248461/
Could Amazon Same-Day Delivery Disrupt Book Printing? — John Conley, CEO of Borderland Advisors, has 42 years in the business, and he believes Amazon has a shot at redefining book printing as an industry, stating that Amazon’s same-day delivery requirements will force a necessary change to the business. Offset printing isn’t going anywhere, Conley insists, but digital and on-demand are causing a building tsunami that will alter the DNA of the industry. Could this give indie publishers a strategic advantage? With authors regularly writing and publishing at an astoundingly rapid rate, will same-day delivery be the tool that tips the balance of power in publishing? Let me know in the comments. http://www.piworld.com/xchange/business-management/john-conley/
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
KDP Rocket—Take control, get more readers, increase your Kindle rankings. https://bit.ly/kdpslinger
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Joe & Kait Russo are full-time travelers, living in a travel van with their husky, Leo, as they travel the country to see what adventures they can find. Their popular YouTube channel, We're the Russos, informs thousands of would-be travelers about the ins, outs, and in-betweens of life on the road.
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Website(s):
https://weretherussos.com/ youtube.com/weretherussos
Twitter handle(s): @weretherussos
Facebook: facebook.com/weretherussos
Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Joe-Russo/e/B0756TCVKC
THIS WEEK’S INDIE PUBLISHING NEWS:
Smashwords hasn’t been hacked, but you might be — Smashwords, aka the “other” eBook aggregator service, sent an announcement to users stating that they’ve noted attempts to hack the service. In an email to users, Smashwords stated, “The security team here at Smashwords has detected multiple attempts by cybercriminals attempting to log in to Smashwords author accounts using stolen email/password combinations…To date, we’re aware of two authors who were victimized. Working with our payments partner PayPal we managed to recover the funds for one author earlier today and will continue pressing them to do the same for the other.” The service assured users that they had not been hacked but they encourage Smashwords users to change their passwords to something secure and strong, right away. So how about you? Does this vulnerability impact you at all? https://goodereader.com/blog/indie-author-news/smashwords-was-not-hacked-but-change-your-password
SFWA joins Author’s Guild and others to speak out about Open Library. The Internet Archive is back in the news again, as author groups speak out about alleged copyright infringement, thanks in large part to its Open Library initiative. The service was intended to be a sort of virtual library, where readers could check out works by various authors, and check them back in without retaining copies for themselves. Internet Archive holds to a somewhat sketchy position that if one has purchased the rights to a copy of the book, one is legally allowed to lend that book to others. What makes this tricky is, they’re right. Sort of. But the legality surrounding electronically transmitted copyrighted properties is still in a primordial ooze, with a lot of questions still to be answered. Many author groups, including SFWA and the Author’s Guild, see this as infringement, while some see it as functionally no different than services such as OverDrive, which allows libraries to purchase a license to distribute a book, and to distribute it in essentially the exact way Open Library is doing it. The key difference—Open Library is scanning legally purchased print books, as well as purchasing ebooks, to create its offering. So is this infringement? Is it violating copyright? Tell me in the comments. http://www.sfwa.org/2018/01/infringement-alert/
Could Mickey Mouse become public domain? Probably not, but Steamboat Willie, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, is set to enter the public domain in 2024. This comes two decades after Disney and other entertainment industry giants successfully lobbied to have copyright extended by 20 years, even for work that had already been created. This was a blow to intellectual property law, which is essentially meant to encourage new and original works. Oddly, at the moment no one is pushing any legislation to extended these rights further, meaning properties created in 1923 and beyond will start entering public domain soon. And here, a happy time can be had by all, as artists, writers, filmmakers, and other creatives gain access to a wealth of old content they can bend, fold, mutilate, and remix into new content. Does this breathe life into past work, or perpetuate the entertainment industry’s habit of falling back to cultivated ground, rather than pushing ahead into new frontiers? You tell me, in the comments. https://boingboing.net/2018/01/08/sonny-bono-is-dead.html
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
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J. Thorn is a Top 100 Most Popular Author in Horror, Science Fiction, Action & Adventure and Fantasy (Amazon Author Rank). He has published over one million words and has sold more than 170,000 books worldwide. In March of 2014 Thorn held the #5 position in Horror alongside his childhood idols Dean Koontz and Stephen King (at #4 and #2 respectively). He is an official, active member of the Horror Writers Association and a member of the Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers.
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website(s):
http://jthorn.net
http://theauthorcopilot.com/retreat
authorsonatrain.com
Twitter handle(s):
@JThorn_
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JThornwriter/
Amazon Author page: http://www.amazon.com/J.-Thorn/e/B004ZVF3MK/
THIS WEEK’S INDIE PUBLISHING NEWS:
Goodreads will now charge for its giveaways program, making it harder for readers to discover indie books - the Amazon-owned service announced that it will begin charging authors and publishers for what was once a free service, the ability to create and manage contests to give away free books to readers. Authors can now expect to pay between $119 and $599 for the service. It remains to be seen whether authors will actually use it, or will instead go and use BookFunnel.com to do it better anyway. https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/29/16714972/goodreads-giveaways-program-changing-standard-premium-tiers-authors
Amazon is launching yet another new imprint, this time focused on the Kindle Singles store. Amazon Original Stories will release short fiction and nonfiction works that can be read in a single sitting. These will be free to Prime and KU subscribers, and otherwise cost $1.99 per download. I personally love this idea, particularly for essay writing. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content-and-e-books/article/75489-amazon-publishing-launches-new-imprint.html
Nick Thacker is making soundtracks for authors. His new service, Sonata and Scribe, aims to provide original, orchestrated musical soundtracks for indie authors to use as part of their marketing and promotion, or even as an additional revenue stream. He’s making a few tracks for me right now, and they sound amazing.Check out SontaAndScribe.com http://sonataandscribe.com
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
KDP Rocket—Take control, get more readers, increase your Kindle rankings. https://bit.ly/kdpslinger
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/kevintumlinson
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
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Tim Knox is a bestselling author of over a dozen books in the fiction and nonfiction genres, the ghostwriter of over 100 books, editor, author coach, and digital publishing expert.
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Website(s):
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http://findabookeditor.com
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http://timknox.com
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http://timknoxbooks.com
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http://entrepreneur-code.com
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http://interviewingauthors.com
Twitter handle(s): @timknox
Facebook: timknoxbooks
MENTIONS:
Wordslinger Podcast on YouTube: http://bit.ly/WordslingerPodcast
THIS WEEK’S INDIE PUBLISHING NEWS:
Draft2Digital announced that it now distributes to Amazon
Pronoun accounted that it’s closing its doors in January 2018
Brian Meeks is now offering a full-on Amazon Ads for Authors course https://meeks-master-classes.teachable.com/
THIS EPISODE OF THE WORDSLINGER PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY:
Draft2Digital—Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslinger
KDP Rocket—Take control, get more readers, increase your Kindle rankings. https://bit.ly/kdpslinger
Support this show: Subscribe and share!
Support us on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/kevintumlinson
Pick something up to read that will be tough to put down—Archeological Thrillers, Science Fiction, YA Fantasy and more, at https://kevintumlinson.com/books
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Dale L. Roberts is an accomplished self-published author, former personal trainer and YouTube content creator. While he loves to read and write, Dale’s greatest passions include spending time with his wife and cat, watching wrestling and making funny videos CONNECT ONLINE:
Website(s): http://dalelroberts.com http://SelfPublishingWithDale.com
Twitter handle(s): @selfpubwithdale
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/selfpublishingwithdalelroberts/
Amazon Author page (if applicable): https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00KUAL3NS
MENTIONS:
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C.Steven Manley has been and done quite a few things in his life. Now, he writes books and tries in vain to keep up with his children. CONNECT ONLINE:
Website: www.cstevenmanley.net Twitter handle: @cstevenmanley Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1597432760477256 Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00U6722LC
MENTIONS:
Wordslinger Podcast on YouTube: http://bit.ly/WordslingerPodcast We're The Russos: https://weretherussos.com/ "Take Risks" by Joe Russo: http://amzn.to/2yNjfpk ___
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NICK THACKER AUTHOR OF MARK FOR BLOOD
Nick is an action-adventure thriller novelist, who writes the types of books he likes to read. That means you won’t find anything boring, slow, or sappy in his stories. People have described his work as “airplane books." Nick was born in Connecticut, grew up in Texas, and lives in Colorado with his wife, two children, three dogs, and a tortoise. He loves snow, drinking whiskey by the fireplace while it’s snowing, and writing books by candlelight while a thick layer of snow piles up outside.
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website: nickthacker.com Twitter handle: @NickThacker Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorNickThacker/ Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Nick-Thacker/e/B008A2W6XE
MENTIONS:
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Andrew Watts graduated from the US Naval Academy in 2003 and served as a naval officer and helicopter pilot until 2013. During that time, he flew counter-narcotic missions in the Eastern Pacific and counter-piracy missions off the Horn of Africa. He was a flight instructor in Pensacola, FL, and helped to run ship and flight operations while embarked on a nuclear aircraft carrier deployed in the Middle East. Today, he lives with his family in Ohio.
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website(s): andrewwattsauthor.com
Twitter handle(s): @wattsandrew
Facebook: www.facebook.com/AndrewWattsAuthor
Amazon Author page (if applicable): https://www.amazon.com/Andrew-Watts/e/B00RD3E4JA
MENTIONS:
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Kevin Tumlinson is a bestselling and award-winning thriller author, Host of the Wordslinger Podcast, and Director of Marketing for Draft2Digital. He is known as "the Voice of Indie Publishing," appearing on hundreds of podcasts and YouTube channels, and at conferences worldwide, speaking about independent self publishing as a career and a community.
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website(s): https://kevintumlinson.com
Facebook: kevin.tumlinson
Twitter: @kevintumlinson
Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Kevin-Tumlinson/e/B007POXGEG/
MENTIONS:
Indie Bookfest: http://indiebookconvention.com/ NINC: https://ninc.com/conferences/ninc-conference-2017/ Indie Palooza: http://www.houstonwritersguild.org/indiepalooza_2017/ ___
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Russell Blake is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author with more than 50 action/adventure and thriller novels, including two co-authored works with the legendary Clive Cussler.
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Website(s): russellblake.com
Facebook: Russell.Blake.Books
Amazon Author page (if applicable): https://www.amazon.com/Russell-Blake/e/B005OKCOLE
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Salt Lake City Comic Con: http://saltlakecomiccon.com/ Where There's Smoke Podcast: http://www.wheretheressmoke.co/ ___
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Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of historical fantasy novels: Ghost Talkers, and The Glamourist Histories series. She is also a three time Hugo Award winner. Her short fiction appears in Uncanny, Tor.com, and Asimov’s. Mary, a professional puppeteer, lives in Chicago.
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Website(s): http://maryrobinettekowal.com/
Twitter handle(s): @MaryRobinette
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maryrobinettekowal/
Amazon Author page (if applicable): https://www.amazon.com/Mary-Robinette-Kowal/e/B0033T90TC/
MENTIONS:
Salt Lake City Comic Con: http://saltlakecomiccon.com/ ___
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George S. Mahaffey Jr. is a lawyer, screenwriter, and author. His script Heatseekers was bought by Paramount Pictures with Michael Bay producing and Timur Bekmambetov attached to direct. In addition, he's sold or written scripts for Arnold Kopelson, Blumhouse, Benderspink, director Louis Leterrier and Paul McGuigan, and is the creator of In The Dust, an action-horror graphic novel in the vein of 30 Days of Night to be published by Top Cow with art by Christian Duce. He has also written the following books: Amityville: Origins, Amityville: Revenants, Razorbacks I, Razorbacks II, Razorbacks III, The Pact, The Devil's Ark, Familiars, and the Vertical City zombie series (Books 1-4). In addition, he is the co-creator of the upcoming sci-fi books Syndicate Wars (Book 1, Syndicate Wars: First Strike is out), and the upcoming post-apocalyptic thrillers Blood Runners (Books 1-3), and Broken Road (Books 1-2), all with co-creator Justin Sloan. He lives in the Washington D.C. area with his wife and young son.
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website(s): www.georgemahaffey.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Syndicate-Wars-1943370879233430/
Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/George-S.-Mahaffey-Jr./e/B00IWIJBP2
MENTIONS:
Houston Food Bank - Hurricane Harvey relief: http://bit.ly/HoustonBeatsHarvey Atlantis Riddle: http://amzn.to/2eqxV2G ___
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Josh Haynam is the co-founder of Interact Quiz Builder, a tool used by more than 30,000 businesses including The American Red Cross, Tony Robbins, and Forbes. He's probably seen more quizzes than any other human on earth right now.
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website(s): https://www.tryinteract.com
Twitter handle(s): @tryinteract
Armand Rosamilia is a full-time Horror and crime thriller author, podcaster, podcast network owner, and M&M lover. He's offering free hugs (virtual ... he doesn't like being touched).
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website(s): http://armandrosamilia.com http://projectentertainmentnetwork.com
Twitter handle(s): @ArmandAuthor
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorArmandRosamilia/
Amazon Author page (if applicable): https://www.amazon.com/Armand-Rosamilia/e/B004S48J6G/
MENTIONS:
Get HUNDREDS of free thriller ebooks now through 8/26/17! http://philwbooks.com/five-star-thrillers/ ___
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PHIL WILLIAMS AUTHOR OF NO CONSCIENCE
Phil M. Williams is the author of five novels, two nonfiction books, and one children's picture book. His books span many genres, but there are consistent themes such as universal morality, nature, and voluntarism. He currently lives in Central Pennsylvania with his wife on a permaculture homestead.
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Website(s): http://philwbooks.com/five-star-thrillers/
philwbooks.com foodproduction101.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/philwbooks/
Amazon Author page (if applicable): https://www.amazon.com/Phil-M.-Williams/e/B013IP5US0/
MENTIONS:
Get HUNDREDS of free thriller ebooks now through 8/26/17! http://philwbooks.com/five-star-thrillers/ Instafreebie - Build your mailing list with a free giveaway
Joe Williams is passionate about helping executives, coaches, and entrepreneurs become world-class communicators! He is the Founder of the Creative Performance Group, where he helps people get their message out to the world in the most powerful way possible. He created The Speakers Bootcamp, an intensive training that has created hundreds of other successful speakers, coaches, consultants and authors. Joe is a passionate student and trainer of personal and professional development techniques - he has worked with and spoken for peak performance coach Anthony Robbins for over 20 years. Joe’s work has led him to consult with companies in a diverse number of fields such as financial services, aerospace, retail business, internet and software, direct sales, publishing, entertainment and the federal government. He has trained over 300,000 people and is responsible for helping his clients create over $50 Billion in new business!
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website(s): http://joewilliamsonline.com creativeperformancegroup.com
Twitter handle(s): @joebwilliams
Facebook: facebook.com/Joewilliamsspeaking
MENTIONS:
Pick up Kevin's latest thriller, The Devil's Interval, today!
Jim Heskett was born in the wilds of Oklahoma, raised by a pack of wolves with a station wagon and a membership card to the local public swimming pool. Just like the man in the John Denver song, he moved to Colorado in the summer of his 27th year, and never looked back. Aside from an extended break travelling the world, he hasn't let the Flatirons mountains out of his sight.
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Website(s): www.jimheskett.com www.thejugglingauthor.com
Twitter handle(s): @jimheskett @jugglingauthor
Facebook: facebook.com/jugglingauthor
Amazon Author page (if applicable): https://www.amazon.com/Jim-Heskett/e/B009W1AOUY
MENTIONS:
Pick up Kevin's latest thriller, The Devil's Interval, today!
Brian D. Meeks is a full-time author who resides in Iowa when he’s not traveling. He writes across mystery, thriller, YA, science fiction, and humor/satire fiction genres. He has a degree in Economics from Iowa State University only because they didn’t offer Snarkology, his preferred major. Seven years as a data analyst in the auto insurance industry gave him the skills that have been key to his success in marketing his books and finding an audience. He really likes it when people send him pictures of their cats or guinea pigs.
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website(s): extremelyaverage.com
Twitter handle(s): @extremelyavg
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/407283052948198/
Amazon Author page (if applicable): https://www.amazon.com/Brian-D.-Meeks/e/B0073XZH78
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New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today Bestselling writer, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, blogs on the publishing industry every Thursday at her website kriswrites.com. She writes science fiction, mystery, fantasy, mystery, and romance as Rusch, noir mystery as Kris Nelscott, and fractured fairy tale romances as Kristine Grayson. Her novel, A Dangerous Road written as Kris Nelscott, is in development as a feature film. She also runs several companies, including a publishing company. She works and occasionally sleeps, surrounded by the obligatory writer's cats, in Oregon.
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website(s): kriswrites.com
Twitter handle(s): @kristinerusch
Facebook: kristinekathrynruschwriter
Amazon Author page (if applicable): https://www.amazon.com/Kristine-Kathryn-Rusch/e/B000AP60YK/
Kelly heads Findaway Voices, a new audiobook creation and distribution service from Findaway. Kelly’s team works closely with independent authors and small to mid-sized publishers to connect them with a community of world-class narrators, create audiobooks, and market and sell those audiobooks everywhere in the world. At Findaway, Kelly also played a key role in launching the Navy eReader Device (or NeRD), and growing AudioEngine into the world’s largest business-to-business audiobook platform. Kelly published and narrated his memoir, To Dad, From Kelly, about his relationship with his late father, college football Hall of Fame running back Rob Lytle, in 2014. Kelly speaks often on the concussion crisis in professional sports and has been featured in Sports Illustrated, The Denver Post, and The Detroit Free Press.
CONNECT ONLINE:
Website(s): https://findawayvoices.com/
Twitter handle(s): @findawayvoices @kelly_lytle
Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Kelly-Lytle/e/B00OK8YQAS/3
MENTIONS:
Email Kelly Lytle at klytle@findaway.com
D2D blog post on the Findaway partnership: bit.ly/FindawayD2D
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Carla King is the creator of the Self-Publishing Boot Camp educational series of books and workshops and a publishing coach with Author Friendly. A tech writer turned adventure traveler turned self-publishing expert, she published her first book in 1995 and, by popular demand, created a business teaching others how to self-publish, too. She splits her time between San Diego and Baja, California.
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Website(s):
authorfriendly.com
carlaking.com
Twitter handle(s): @carlaking
@selfpubbootcamp
@missadventuring
Facebook: facebook.com/missadventuring
Amazon Author page: amazon.com/author/carlaking
MENTIONS:
https://leanpub.com/
travelerstales.com
https://kobowritinglife.com/tag/carla-king/
The Paradise Pact
Zero to Travel Podcast
Speaking at Overland Expo - May 12 (Flagstaff) https://www.overlandexpo.com/
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Frances Caballo is an author and social media strategist and manager for writers. She’s a contributing writer at TheBookDesigner.com, and blogger and Social Media Expert for BookWorks. She’s written several social media books including Social Media Just for Writers. Her focus is on helping authors surmount the barriers that keep them from flourishing online, building their platform, finding new readers, and selling more books.
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Website(s): http://www.SocialMediaJustforWriters.com
Twitter handle(s): @CaballoFrances
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/FrancesCaballoAuthor
Amazon Author page (if applicable): https://www.amazon.com/Frances-Caballo/e/B009R5XZU6/
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Dean Wesley Smith is a bestselling author with over 21 million books in print. He is considered one of the most prolific writers working in modern fiction and has written just about everything. Seriously.
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Website(s): www.deanwesleysmith.com
Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Dean-Wesley-Smith/e/B000APCDJ6/
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