The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

Joanna Penn

Writing Craft and Creative Business

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Oct 2, 2023 • 43min

Producing Visual, High Quality Books, Thinking Differently, and Kickstarter Lessons With Holger Nils Pohl

How might thinking differently help you create clarity in our noisy world? How can you produce a high-quality print book — and successfully fund it on Kickstarter? Holger Nils Pohl discusses these things and more. In the intro, Copyright in an age of AI [Self Publishing Advice, Monica Leonelle, Ars Technica, The Verge, The Atlantic; Insider; Kathryn Goldman; US Government Copyright Office AI Submission]; Writing the Shadow Kickstarter; Lesbians Who Write; Pretty Links; Today's show is sponsored by Ingram Spark, which I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 40,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries, and more. It's your content—do more with it through IngramSpark.com. Holger Nils Pohl is a visual strategist, professional speaker, trainer, and coach. He's also the author of multiple books, from business to children's books, as well as the co-creator of an award-winning business board game. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Breaking out of the traditional publishing mindset The creative process — distilling ideas into visual images versus words Neurodiversity as a creative Living authentically and breaking out of ‘masking' Challenges of creating a high-quality book Return on investment for nonfiction authors on Kickstarter Six tips for a successful Kickstarter How creatives can create clarity and choose the right direction You can find Holger at HolgerNilsPohl.com. You can also go to HolgerNilsPohl.com/penn, and you will find examples of the visuals we discussed, as well as the process of how you can find clarity to cut through the noise in the author world, as much as the rest of your life. Sign up for the Autism children's book here. Transcript of Interview with Holger Nils Pohl Joanna: Holger Nils Pohl is a visual strategist, professional speaker, trainer, and coach. He's also the author of multiple books, from business to children's books, as well as the co-creator of an award-winning business board game. So welcome to the show, Holger. Holger: Thank you for having me, Jo. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you. Before we get into it— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Holger: So while we're talking here in 2023, I'm 43 years old. I was a late reader of books, I would say. So until the age of 14, I'd only read comics and magazines, but nothing that was kind of like a book. I didn't like German or English in school, and I'm coming from Germany, by the way, you might already know from my accent. I found my passion for reading crime and science fiction, as well as fantasy, a bit later. At the age of 14/15, I started to read, and then I never stopped. I'm kind of a whale reader, I read very fast and very much. I always have trouble to find more new books that I can read because somehow I read faster than the market can provide me with books sometimes. I love the pen and pen roleplay and, as well, developed new worlds and systems with my friends to play that, but I never had the urge to write anything but always to create. I love to create. I got distracted from all of this by university because I had to find something that is worthwhile spending your working life. Everybody told me you need to be an engineer or do something proper, and not be just creative. By now we know that this was stupid advice, but back then I didn't know. I tried architecture, I broke up from university after one and a half years, I became a carpenter then, I did an apprenticeship as a carpenter, and afterwards became a designer. And luckily enough, that was a good fit for me. In 2009, I started my self-employment right after the university. I work with visuals. I teach, as well, people to draw. But at some point, people were begging me to write about my knowledge about business, as well as how we can communicate better with visual tools, and everything I have done in the past. People asked me for so long, basically for three or four years, that I started writing, and then I never get out of that again. I started writing, and I couldn't stop, and somehow the nonfiction opened up an avenue for my fiction writing. So I wanted to write fiction, and now I'm all over the place with writing, while still being a consultant and coach full time. Joanna: Well, can I also ask you about the self-publishing side? Because you and I have been connected now for many years, and I feel like, I don't even know, do you know how many years? Holger: I mean, I've been following you for, I guess, seven years now. So yeah, quite a while. Joanna: So seven years, so maybe 2016-ish. And it's interesting because, of course, Germany I feel is even more traditional around literature, and proper books, and proper publishing. How did you break out of that mindset that traditional publishing is the only valid path in Germany, in particular? Or is that just part of you being more of a designer? Because it's a strong feeling in Germany, I think, not to be self-published. Although I know some Germans listening will be like, “No, no, we're a very big indie community.” But it has been a slower trend, I think. Holger: Oh, yeah, definitely. And I would still say, it's predominantly traditional publishing here in Germany. I actually had my first book traditionally published, and it was a huge failure in terms of sales. I still get my check, which is basically 12 euros per year or something. So we sell like 10 to 20 books per year with our publisher. That was from year one, so it was not that we had a high peak or something. I was super disappointed with that first book, especially with the process with the traditional publisher, and that was basically the thing that pushed me into self-publishing, because I said, I can do that better. If I could decide the things myself that the publisher decided for me, in that case, this could have been a better book. That drove me to self-publishing and actually to your podcast in the first place. I think the first book I published in 2015, and I listened to you and thought I can do that myself. But saying that, it's still super difficult to do that in Germany, especially. It's way easier for me to publish in the US, the UK, everywhere around the world, not in the German-speaking countries. Joanna: Yes, and I've heard that from other German indie authors. These things emerge at different times in different countries. People listening, we've got listeners from over 220 countries, and I think it's probably still much easier in Germany than it is in a lot of countries in the world. We appreciate you listeners in other places! Let's get back to your books and what you do because you are, as you mentioned, you're a designer, you're a creator, and you use a lot of visual images. It's very hard because this is an audio medium, but tell us— How does your creative process work differently in terms of distilling ideas into visual images versus words? Because they're just so different. Holger: Yeah, that's true. Let me just back up for a second and give a short definition of what we say when we mean visuals. And again, that is difficult to explain with only audio, but I think we will manage. So I don't mean paintings or photographs or generated pictures when I say visuals. NOTE: Speedboat for character development shown below is by Holger Nils Pohl, used with permission. You can download this and other useful images at http://holgernilspohl.com/penn So when I say visuals, I mainly mean drawings that are quickly done, more like icons, I would say. If you imagine a picture in your head right now, it could be like a hand drawn icon, I would say, and perhaps emojis to express ideas and concepts. I think that's what I say when I say visuals, Joanna: On your style, I almost think of it as professional cartooning. Holger: Okay. If you see like that, we can say that too. Okay, I agree with that. Joanna: Is that okay? It's got more of that vibe, as you say, it's kind of hand drawn, but it looks more professional than I would hand draw something. Holger: Okay, I can agree on that. A lot of people when they see my work, they think that I think as well in visuals, and I distill ideas right into visuals. But the funny thing is that I always need the words first, before I can put them into visuals. Because still, my brain works based on words, and I think all the brains we have work based on words. Of course, we have visuals in our head, but most of the time we think in logical structures step by step in words, and I translate those words into visuals. So what I do is, first of all, and I think your question brought me two new insights, actually. I think the first most important thing is intention. So compared to other people — When I am in a creative process, I have the intention to make something visual, compared to just writing words down. So everything I listen to, I always translate them in parallel to: how could I express that in visuals? How would that look like in a structure? How would things be connected to each other? Would that be a Venn diagram? Would that be like a pie chart? Would there be a timeline? Which kind of visuals would I use? I'm always reflecting on when I hear something, like how would that look like? It makes it easier for me to see my ideas as well because if I only have words, sometimes it's difficult to read through them. It takes a long time. When I see a visual that I have drawn, everything becomes super clear very fast to me. Joanna: I'm just writing some notes down there because you said there that you have words first and you make them into images. I wasn't expecting that because for me, as a creative, I see images first, and then I have to put them into words. I mean, well, for my fiction anyway. For fiction, my latest, my novella Catacomb, I had such a clear idea. It was like a movie in my head. I can see the characters running down into the earth, into the catacomb, and I could see it all. Then I had to just get it into words. Like there's this tropical underground jungle and I had to describe that. I could see it, I just have to find the words. So that's so interesting. I just didn't expect you to say that. I thought that you had the little people doing the things in your mind and then you just drew them and then you wrote up the words later. Holger: No, I mean, you can't even go so far. If you would put me into a dark room, close the door, shut down the windows, it's pitch black in the room, I don't see anything. Joanna: I think there's a name for that. There's some kind of name for it. I've heard someone else talk about that too. [Note: I referred to Aphantasia, but that's not necessarily what Holger experiences.] Holger: Yeah, for me, it's words. Sometimes I might see kind of a movie scene or something, but basically, I think about a story first in words and those words would trigger a scene for me. Joanna: Wow. Do you hear it? Because some people I know they say they take dictation, almost as if they hear it. My mum, when she wrote books, she was like, I hear these things. I never hear anything. How do you experience those words? Holger: I don't hear them either. I would say it's like I would talk to myself in my head, let's say it like that. So you could say I hear them. Sometimes I have a scent, so that I smell something. Sometimes it's a color that I see. Sometimes it's a touch, like a feeling or so. But very seldomly there is a picture first, very seldomly. Joanna: I love that. It's so interesting. I mean, just sort of coming to—you talk openly about being autistic, and I don't think this is part of it. I think it's a completely different spectrum of how we create, but maybe talk a bit about that. I think this is so important. I mean, neurodiversity, even just talking to anyone and asking like this question, like how do you see visual images or words? I mean, we all think so differently, and yet, I think sometimes we assume that things are the same for other people. So tell us a bit more about your experience of being autistic? How does neurodiversity help you as a creative? Holger: So first of all, I think it's important that I didn't know I'm autistic for 40 years of my life. So I only know that for three years now, so I'm kind of a freshling, a newbie in that field of knowing myself as an autistic person. It came as a bit of a surprise because I can do masking very well. So masking is the activity of pretending that you are neurotypical, not neurodiverse, but you are as everybody else, while you're not as everybody else. So just pretending you're understanding a joke and laughing like everybody else, and nobody recognizes you didn't find the joke funny or even understood the joke. I masked so properly that I didn't even notice myself that I am different to other people. So I masked for myself too. For three years now, I know I'm autistic, and that helped a lot. I mean, that created a lot of challenges and problems to be very fair, but as well as opened up a whole new world for me understanding how I work, and how everything in my life functions, basically. So I had to understand, first of all, that I have a lot of strengths that are related to my autistic being. For example, seeing patterns everywhere due to the need of understanding everybody through my cognition. So as an autistic person, I don't feel what you feel, but I see what you feel. But I don't really feel your emotions because I don't feel my emotions very well, either. But I can understand by how you clenched your eyes and how you move your mouth, I can very precisely forecast what are your emotions right now, and therefore react accordingly. So I'm pretty good in finding patterns, which helps me with my nonfiction writing, because everybody asked me like, how can you know what we're talking about so fast? That's only because I listen very carefully and very intentionally for every single clue in a conversation, and then very quickly can forecast what will happen in the next 10-15 minutes. As well, I can see through the surface because I don't care for emotions too much. So if everybody is raging about whatever it is, let's take AI, and everybody is emotional about that topic, I don't care for that too much. I just want to know the facts and figures, how it works, why it works, what's the problem, what's not the problem, how can it help, and I don't get emotional about it. So that helps me my creative process because I can stay clear of all those emotions. Joanna: When you talked about masking, for myself, I don't think this is just an autistic thing. Holger: No, that's an introvert thing too, and a neurotypical thing, too. Joanna: Well, I mean, obviously, there's a spectrum of everything. But when you say that, I mean, I remember when I discovered Susan Cain's book, Quiet. It made a huge difference in my life and a lot of people's life because I feel like introverts, we have had to—I mean, I'm a bit older than you at 48—but I almost had to pretend to be an extrovert for 35 years because that's how we're expected to behave. I mean, you talk about humor there and laughing—oh, my goodness, I literally don't have a sense of humor. I feel like I'm always fake-laughing at things. I'm laughing now because I'm laughing at myself. It's so interesting, isn't it? So for people listening, masking for yourself is a really challenging statement, that wherever you are on neurodiverse scale, it's something that we should all be questioning. Where do we mask and why are we doing that? I mean, you're one of my patrons, you know about my upcoming book, Writing the Shadow. This is something I've been thinking about a lot, and it's very damaging to do that. So I mean— How did you break out of expectations in order to live more authentically, be more you, and get rid of some of that masking? Holger: Yeah, I think I'm still on the journey. I didn't really completely break out of that. So one thing is, I'm under chronic pain as well. I have headaches like basically every day since like 15 years or something. And this demands a change, right? So if you are under pressure, change is a bit easier. I started telling people about it, so it enables me to act more as myself without stepping on toes. Like, if somebody is questioning why I behave differently right now, at least they know and they can decide for themselves That helped me, instead of just behaving differently, and everybody's asking, like what's happening to Holger? The other thing is that I understood, for example, dealing with energy loss when I am with other people. I know you talked about that on events. For me, it's kind of the same on a very high scale, I would say. I'm losing a lot of energy, and I have a job, I am a coach and trainer and consultant. So basically what I do is stand in front of people, and helping them get through their complexity. I had to understand that I need to rest afterwards. I can't go for example, for a dinner with the clients because after a full day of workshop, I have to rest because otherwise I can't do the next day properly. So it's more small things often enough, or bigger things when I have more private contact, like with you or with family and friends. People who I know, I can be a bit more open and speak about it, and perhaps not smile all the time because I can just relax sometimes. Joanna: I love that. Really, it is hard. It's funny, because we're recording this in August, I am almost preparing now to go to 20Books Vegas in November. I've talked about backing out of it last year, I had a ticket and didn't go because I was so worried about the whole energy thing. I'm trying to incorporate all these practices, like you say, you just have to go and be somewhere else. I think that's how we have to manage it. It is interesting because, of course, and I used to have headaches every day when I was a consultant and worked in an office. I was popping pills every day, and I got very sick. So how do you manage that then as a consultant, doing the work you do? Because like you say, so much of your work is giving to other people. How do you manage that? Is part of your writing, and doing these books, and building your store and everything—Is that trying to offset that people-time? Holger: Yeah, pretty much. So definitely publishing is one way to reduce the onside time with people into products that I can sell without spending time. And there is another advantage of being autistic, which is hyperfocus. I can click on hyperfocus anytime. I can do that for eight hours straight, and I can do that for three days straight, basically. Nobody will ever get a slightest clue that it's hard for me because I can step into that hyperfocus and be the so-called showman, and help people with what they have to go through. Afterwards, I'm pretty destroyed, to be honest, but for a certain time I can do that. Changing my mindset, as well as the intention, and stepping on stage as a different person. Joanna: Yes, and I can do this too. I would say this is partly extroverting. I mean, I don't have that hyperfocus that you do. I think that is one of the—do we still call it Asperger's? Holger: I would say you can, some people say you don't. I don't care, like that's another thing where I don't care too much about the label. Joanna: But people who have been characterized with those words, are people who do have that hyperfocus, kind of high functioning, extreme high functioning. I certainly don't have that, but I do have that exhaustion afterwards. I feel like it's an extroversion. I think the other thing is how important it is. So we're not saying to people listening that we don't want to do this. We're saying that it's incredibly important to do this work for both of us, but it takes something out of us. I think many people listening probably feel the same, and yet it is so important, isn't it? You must love a part of it. Holger: Oh, yeah, definitely. That's the difficult thing to explain, right? I really enjoy being with people and talking about the things that I am interested in, or they are interested in, and I can help with that. I grow when I meet people, and I learn something new. I love being with people because it inspires me. So it gives me something and it gives me energy as well. But on another level, I lose a lot of energy as well. It's kind of this the same thing at the same time kind of thing. It's difficult, it's a catch 22, and we need to acknowledge that because that makes it more difficult. We want to meet people, and it's really enjoyable, but we need some rest afterwards or have to deal with that in another way. Joanna: Absolutely. I feel like it's even more important, becoming more important, to do this kind of thing in a world where a lot more is AI-generated. Of course, you know, I'm positive about AI, but I also want to connect with people. So I think that's important. Let's come back to your books because I want to talk about Creating Clarity. I have a copy here, it is incredibly high quality. It's a heavy book. It's got a lot of color. It's got, of course, the illustrations, your drawings. As well as, it's basically a business book. You published it through Kickstarter, you raised over 30,000 euros, which is fantastic. Now, you obviously sell it on your online store, you sell it in different ways. So first of all, tell us a bit about the book itself. Why did you want to do such a really sort of magnum opus book? It's a hell of a book. Why did you want to do this project in the first place? Holger: First of all, this is the book that everybody was begging me to write. So people were nudging me right, left and center to put what I know into a book. And I honestly didn't find a way to do two books out of this, even though I thought it could be two books, but I didn't find a proper way to do it. So I decided to make it one book. So that's why it's so big. It's 1.1 kilograms. So it's pretty heavy. Joanna: Yes, it's a ‘proper' book! Holger: And it's not even hardcover. It's paperback. Joanna: It's lovely quality. I think that's really important. I mean, partly, books are heavier when you use high-quality paper. So that's probably why it's so heavy. Holger: So what I found is, when I have books that are really important to me, like from other authors, I really enjoy if they have a version of the book that is higher quality than the trade paperback because I want to read it more often than one time. I want to put notes into it, I want to put posts into it, I want to have it on my desk for a time and put it back to the storage, and then get it back to the table again and work with it. So I enjoy high-quality books that I can work with. So that's why I wanted to create that. I knew, as per my topic, visual tools, I needed to have visuals in it because I can't write about leveraging that side of our brain, the visual part, without having a proper example in terms of a book. And the whole book should be an example of how to work with visuals and how to create clarity. That's a thing that's even more important because I promised that you can create clarity when you read that book, but then the book needs to be super clear, as well. That demanded of me a good design, working with a lot of whitespace, which costs, again, in terms of the page numbers, and a lot of visuals. So that's why I decided to make it the way you have it now in your hands. Joanna: Tell us, I mean, it's interesting, I think partly you doing this, and also when I look at the books I have. I wrote in my journal the other day, “I want to make beautiful books.” That's how I want my next 15 years to be. It's not just that I want to put my words into beautiful books, I want to create beautiful objects. And again, I feel like we're moving from a time where digital is going to be much easier to make. Well it is, one click. But to make a hard copy of a beautiful book, this is gonna be hard work. Tell us about the challenges of creating such a beautiful book. Holger: So the first challenge is that most of the advice that you get online is for textbooks. So if you're learning on your own, like I do most of the time, it's very hard to find good advice for these types of books because most people who are talking about book publishing, they're talking about textbooks. Even though you have some people talking about children's books, but then in terms of how to really do it, you don't get so much advice. I think I have an advantage because I am a trained designer, so I could do everything on my own. So I think that needs to be clear, it's an unfair advantage, I guess. I wrote the book, I created the sketches, and I laid out everything myself up until the physical print production. So I could do all of that on my own. I think that helps, but it costs me like hours and days and weeks of my time as well. The challenge, I think, with such a physical product is, as well, the timing because you need to order paper to see how the paper looks like, how the print on the paper would look like. You need to have a test book where the printer creates the whole book without the content, but just an empty book to see how would it feel like, how heavy is it, how big. You're doing all those test prints all the time. I just spoke today to my printer because I'm working on a children's book around the topic of autism. This should be a super nice book as well, and a very high quality book. So I'm talking to them, if they'll produce another test print, and if they'll produce another binding test, and all these kinds of things. That takes time, and as well, I have to pay for those. So it costs extra money too. Joanna: Yes, I mean, this is the thing, and of course, there are levels of printing. So I mean, you know about my Pilgrimage hardback, and I still think it's a beautiful book, it is still print-on-demand, the hardback is still print-on-demand. It's much higher quality than what we've been able to do before, but yes, your paper definitely feels different. This is interesting, then, because obviously, you had to do all of that work before the Kickstarter. So you raised over 30,000 EUR, but it was a very expensive process, and then also the shipping is on top of that, isn't it? So yeah, it's expensive to ship and all of that kind of thing. Talk about the return on investment for nonfiction authors like yourself. Because it wasn't just the Kickstarter, was it? This is the basis of your consulting as well. Holger: Yeah, true. So just in terms of the numbers, I mean, just the book itself, I ordered a print run, so meaning I paid for printed copies, not print-on-demand. I ordered 1500 books, and I still had to pay over eight euros per book. Joanna: Wow. Holger: Right. So it comes at a price. So I had to order a lot of books to have at least a somewhat feasible price for the book, and that is a challenge. So that's actually why I used Kickstarter because I said, I can't invest that much money into a book before I am sure that somebody will really buy it. It was a bit unclear if that would be really a success, I was happy that it was. So basically, at the end of the whole campaign, I get out of a profit of 4000 euros. That's my profit after raising 30,000 euros. So it's not a feasible business model. It's not a get-rich-quick scheme on Kickstarter with such an expensive book. But it created a lot of buzz. So as you know, it's kind of a high buzz project, these kind of Kickstarter campaigns. It's a good marketing tool. I got a lot of new followers online, I got a lot of new people on my newsletter due to the buzz that people created around my Kickstarter campaign. That in itself was worthwhile without me investing money because at least I got out with 5000 extra. So it didn't cost me in terms of the marketing. So that was one part, the marketing piece. As well a bit of money, the 5000. As well as having a few people very engaged, those Kickstarter people I could use as well and leverage when I republished it basically afterward on my own store. I'm a wide author, so I'm publishing on Amazon, and Apple, and Kobo and whatever in bookstores. So when I launched the book, officially to the market, all those Kickstarter backers helped me, or a few of them at least, helped me to spread the word and told their people, look, I got this book, now you can get it too. I got quite a few orders again when I published the book to the market. So that helped too. Of course, last but not least, it's basically a credibility product. So people know that I know what I talk about. I can give that to my clients. I do workshops around that. People pay me a lot of money to come to their events and talk about the topic of creating clarity and how they could use that for the business. So it's not the Kickstarter, the Kickstarter just helped me having that clearness that people want to have that book because the campaign is successful, as well having the money to print enough books that they can give away for free, basically, now. Joanna: Yes, I think it's so important. You've spent a lot of time and money to make the best product you could possibly make. It really is very high quality. So you have an asset that is now the basis of a business —which is about, as you say, the visuals. But also, you as a designer, I think from the beginning you talked about how that's part of your brand. If you didn't have such a high-quality book, it would affect your brand. Holger: Absolutely. Joanna: So it's evidence for what you're offering to bring to a business or a client, isn't it? Holger: Yeah, it is. It's my brand promise, basically. I will spend that eye for the detail, and for the best thing that we can create with my clients too, that I spent on the book. Joanna: I think this is something I want people to think about, and what I'm thinking about now, which is I want people to have a book on their shelf that represents my brand that stands out in a different way, you know, that is some incredible book. So you helped me with my first Kickstarter. I really appreciated your help with that. But just— What lessons have you learned about Kickstarter? Because you've done another campaign, haven't you? So yeah, give us some advice or lessons learned. Holger: Yeah, exactly. So I did actually three campaigns, and all were in that range of 30,000 to 50,000 euros. And yeah, I have put together six kind of learnings or insights. Let's go through them quickly. Let's see, I hope they help, and they're not too negative here. It's important that it's not a get-rich-quick scheme. I want to repeat that. There are some outliers out there that paint basically the wrong picture, I would say. Even though there are high numbers sometimes, the profit is not that high, and we need to be prepared for that. You can earn a living by doing a lot of Kickstarter campaigns, yes, but it is a lot of effort as well. It's not that you get the money for free. I think that's important. That will be my first one. Then the second very important one — Don't underestimate the time investment. And I mean, Jo, I told you how much time it will take and you didn't believe me. Joanna: I thought I had accounted for it, and then I realized I hadn't. Yeah, it definitely is a lot of work. Although, I feel like there are different ways to do Kickstarters, and possibly the people who do four or six a year are doing it differently to how you and I have done it. Holger: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, if you get into a routine, it might be easier. But if it's not your routine, it doesn't matter if you do a 12-day or 30-day campaign, you should plan like around two months that you spend and do nothing more than the Kickstarter, actually, from my experience, at least. Overcommunication is important. You should communicate more than you think you should. You have to keep talking about your Kickstarter, especially before the campaign, but then during the campaign, to your backers and to possible new backers. And as well, after the campaign, what is your process looking like. You have to communicate more often than you would normally do with a newsletter or when you launch a book or something because you need to create that trust to your people who were paying you on Kickstarter, basically, and like pre-trusting you with their money. I found it's very important that you answer fast and you update very often to keep everybody happy. I think that will be the third point. The fourth is — Make it about you. People trust you, they buy from you. You don't use marketing slang or like copy pasting something. You have to make it personal so people will then come and buy from you. I think that counts not only for Kickstarter, but for everything else we do nowadays. But especially on Kickstarter, I think it's less about the product that you sell, in terms of the book, because there are many books on Kickstarter too. It's about you, your story, why did you write the book, why do you want to sell it on Kickstarter. It's about you. I think that's important. Then yeah, the two others were — Start early. Don't plan your campaign and then not tell anybody. But perhaps two to three months early, you launch the preview website on Kickstarter, and then tell people about it a few months early so you can build the buzz. So do not think that you just start from nothing, you should communicate before. The last one is — Don't over-promise. I think you did that as well, in a good way, having the book finished when you do your Kickstarter campaign, not still writing the book. Joanna: Yeah, and I think that's a recommendation that I've heard from others like Monica Leonelle and Russell Nohelty and people like that — finish the book first because you just have a whole load of other stuff to do. There's enough to do with fulfilling a Kickstarter. It's so funny, so we're recording this in August, and when this goes out on the show, I should have my pre-launch page up for what is still “The Shadow Book,” but by the time this goes out, I will probably in my introduction have directed people there. So exactly what you say, having a pre-launch page up really as early as possible, right, because the campaign is much shorter. I feel like as independent authors, we've been so used to running longer marketing, you know, we're used to just ongoing marketing for years, whereas this really is sort of a couple of weeks. Holger: Yeah, true. It's very fast, very fast-paced. Joanna: It is. So just a couple more questions. First of all, I wanted to just ask you about creating clarity, as a topic, because it does feel like there is so much noise. For authors listening, there are so many things to know. And I mean, I'm just as responsible as anyone else for having another podcast that offers people more tips every week, or whatever. There's so much noise with publishing options, marketing options, we mentioned AI, I mean, there's a lot of noise. How can people create clarity for themselves around their creative choices and cut through the noise? Holger: Yeah, that's a very good question. I'll try to answer it like briefly and see how we can help here. The first thing, I think the most important thing is to do things with intention, not just doing things because somebody says something, or there is a new trend, or like this is the holy grail of publishing, but doing everything with intention. This means not doing anything right away when you see it, but just pause, take a deep breath, and think about, is that something for me? That will be the first step. If you get to that step, I would say, understanding that the only thing that you can really influence is yourself. Around us, everything else changes all the time. As you said, there is technology, there might be AI, then there is Scrivener, there's Word for you to write in, you could write in longhand. There is as well your business model. Do you go exclusive with some of the companies? Or do you choose subscription or Kickstarter or wide or direct? Then there are all the channels of like Instagram and TikTok and Facebook and email and whatnot. Everything around us is changing all the time, and we have close to no influence on it. I think that's important to notice because if you notice that, you could think of yourself and say, what are my goals and values and preferences to work? And sit down and write that. Perhaps you take a piece of paper and write that in the center of the paper. You ask yourself, what are your goals, your values and your preferences. Then when you have done that, you can write all the technologies and the business models and the channels down on that paper as well. You write, for example, technology on the right upper corner and say: there is AI, there's Scrivener, there's longhand, there's Vellum, there's whatever you use for writing, for example, or publishing. Then on the right bottom corner, you could use your business model, which could be exclusive or direct or wide or Kickstarter, whatever comes to your mind, subscription. And on the left, you could put all the channels: social media, and email, and what you have there, events, for example, fairs or something. If you look at all these things around you, you could do a quick emotional check. I learned that from my coach. I know you know him well, Mark McGuinness, he's like a long-term business coach. He taught me the emotional scale. [Note: Mark McGuinness has been on the podcast multiple times, including talking about How to Stay Creative in Difficult Times.] So everything that's coming up out there, and let's take, for example, the subscription model that a lot of people talk about nowadays, to not take AI here, so let's take subscription. If you take subscription, place yourself on a scale from 0-10. Zero would mean you would be really unhappy and feeling unwell doing subscription, and 10 means you would be super happy about it, and it will be easy for you. You do that scale for everything that comes up. And just to take you, Jo, as an example. We heard about TikTok and that you decided to not use it, I would say on the scale, you would be rather close to the zero somewhere. Joanna: I am a zero at TikTok! Holger: Which means you don't embrace that direction. It's not for you. If you do that exercise of knowing what your values and preferences are, and then checking just from your gut feeling—and saying that as an autistic individual, but we have gut feeling too. Is that creating resistance in myself or would that feel easy to embrace? And if so, then should I do it or not? And you just think about that. Just putting that on a piece of paper might create a lot more clarity than just getting all the insights all the time and only thinking about them, because that creates most often the fear of missing out and then not knowing what to do next. Joanna: I love that. I also think that as writers writing these things can help us because this is a way that we do work things out. I think also repeating that kind of exercise over time, so if you're someone listening who has gone certain routes, and then you do this exercise again on what you have already built, that might be when you decide to stop doing things. Holger: Yeah, yeah. You could use that as a dashboard kind of thing that you revisit every quarter, every year, whatever you want to. Or depending on your practice, so I write fiction, nonfiction, children's books, and all that kind of stuff. So for example, for my fiction and writing fantasy, I decided on longhand writing because that feels just better for fiction for me. Whereas I use artificial intelligence to co-write with Chat GPT about a very personal artistic topic because I need to talk to somebody who can't run away from me when I talk about it. So I choose AI for that topic. So it doesn't have to always be the same. Joanna: That's interesting, a lot of people using it as a kind of therapist or acting as a therapist. I mean, I've been talking a lot—we say talking, I mean typing or whatever—about different things that, yeah, you don't want to necessarily share with a human, which is quite interesting. But we're straying into AI. So let's come back, we're almost out of time. I did want to just come back on your children's book about autism or for children with autism. Can you talk a bit more about that because I feel like that we are in a point in history when this is far more acceptable to talk about. Like you said, this wasn't something we talked about when we were children. So we obviously need these kinds of resources. Tell us about your children's book around autism and when people might be able to get that. Holger: Yeah, so if you're English-speaking, it will be called The Wrong Planet. And in German, it will be called Falsche Planet. It's a children's book about an alien that is a shapeshifter and lands mistakenly on Earth, on this wrong planet. That's how a lot of autistic individuals feel here on earth, as being on the wrong planet. And its shapeshifting when it's meeting different kinds of animals, but never fits in completely. So it always stays kind of a strange thing. It's still green, it still has only one eye, but it looks like a duck, somehow. It tries to interact and never succeeds. Throughout the story, it meets like five different animals and learns that somehow it didn't manage to properly communicate with them until it meets another last animal, that's the platypus, which is a strange animal in itself. They become friends and talk about being just different, and that it's okay to be different. It's a highly professional illustrated book. I didn't illustrate that myself, but my illustrator did that in a very classical kid style. So it will be a very high-quality book again. And it has the first part of the story in rhymes, so completely rhymed. Then there's a second part that explains basically different situations that our main protagonist, the alien, experienced throughout the book. So if somebody is asking, how specifically is that about autism, they can look up at the end of the book and say, okay, this is about special interests, this is about masking, this is about loud noises, this is about understanding jokes and how it is difficult for autistic individuals. So my aim for that will be, and that came from knowing that two of my three children are autistic as well — My aim is that parents could read that with their kids, or teachers could read that with their classes to just speak about autism, and have people understand it. We explained to the class of our son how our son feels in the class, just with the draft of the book. So you can relate to that in a different way than just having another nonfiction book about autism, but having a story that guides you through a very emotional journey. So I had a lot of people cry when I read the draft to them. Joanna: I'm almost crying now! I feel like we all need this book. I think maybe it's a parable book, you know, like some kids books are also for adults. Is that kind of what it is? Holger: Yeah, it is. I will publish that in November in English and German. So I wrote the German myself, with a German editor of course, and I had somebody professionally edit and translate in English because translating rhymes from one language into the other is another art form. Joanna: It will be available November 2023— Tell people where they can find your books and everything else you do online. Holger: Yes, so best you go to my website, which is HolgerNilsPohl.com. There will be everything, my services as well as my books. And Joanna, we talked about visuals here, so I will prepare something for your listeners on my website. So you go to HolgerNilsPohl.com/penn, and you will find some examples of the visuals we talked about, as well as the process of how they could get clarity to cut through the noise that we spoke about here in our chat. Joanna: That would be fantastic. Well, thank you so much for your time, Holger. That was great. Holger: Thank you, Joanna, for having me. It was a blast.The post Producing Visual, High Quality Books, Thinking Differently, and Kickstarter Lessons With Holger Nils Pohl first appeared on The Creative Penn.

4 snips

Aug 28, 2023 • 1h 2min

Writing Poetry In The Dark With Stephanie Wytovich

Stephanie Wytovich, an expert in writing poetry and breaking free of constraints in poetry, talks about how to stop self-censoring your writing and share the deepest aspects of yourself with your readers. She also discusses the importance of allowing poetry to break out from fitting in a box, the process of putting together a poetry collection, and balancing writing for therapy and writing for the readers. Wytovich emphasizes the need for self-advocacy in the writing industry and encourages writers to prioritize their passion for writing over winning awards.

17 snips

Aug 21, 2023 • 1h 29min

Build A Successful Author Business For The Long Term With Joe Solari

Guest Joe Solari, an expert on building a long-term author business, discusses key aspects of an author business, including the changing landscape of book sales, the importance of building a direct relationship with your audience, and shifting business focus to direct sales and audio.

4 snips

Aug 14, 2023 • 1h 12min

Publishing Books For Children And Profitable School Visits With Tonya Ellis

How can you create a book series that children love — and that you can expand into multiple streams of income? How can you offer a fantastic experience to schools — and get paid well for your time? Tonya Duncan Ellis gives her tips. In the intro, investment firm KKR will buy Simon & Schuster [Publishing Perspectives]; Subscriber Surge Giveaways [Written Word Media]; Key Book Publishing Paths [Jane Friedman]. Plus, lots happening with Amazon. I would rather see my books get pirated than this (Or why Goodreads and Amazon are becoming dumpster fires) by Jane Friedman; Blockchain for provenance and copyright with Roanie Levy; “Every single one” of Amazon’s businesses has “multiple generative AI initiatives going right now.” [The Verge]; Amazon AI tool coming for writing product descriptions [The Information]; FTC antitrust lawsuit [Politico]; Amazon is “eliminating dozens of its private label brands” which may help “placate antitrust regulators” [Wall St Journal]; “Amazon will be disrupted,” says Jeff Bezos (in 2013) [Insider]. This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors. Tonya Duncan Ellis is the award-winning author of the Sophie Washington chapter book series and activity books, as well as a professional speaker. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Beginning your career as a self-published author Tips for working with an illustrator Deciding what to write about throughout a chapter book series Creating additional products from your intellectual property Earning an income from professional school visits How to market and prepare for school visits Networking and co-promoting with other authors You can find Tonya at TonyaDuncanEllis.com, on Instagram @TonyaEllisBooks, and on Twitter @TonyaDEllis Transcript of Interview with Tonya Duncan Ellis Joanna: Tonya Duncan Ellis is the award-winning author of the Sophie Washington chapter book series and activity books, as well as a professional speaker. So welcome, Tonya. Tonya: Thank you, Joanna, for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Joanna: We're talking about books for children, which is a really popular topic. But first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Tonya: Well, I'm a Houston Texas-based children's author. I started writing from a very young age. When I was 10 years old, I won a writing competition at my school, and my teachers encouraged me to continue with writing. Back then I had never met an author or thought that that was within the realm of possibility for me to become an actual author. I did pursue journalism. I learned about writing for newspapers because I thought that would be a great way to make an income and get a job in writing. So after college, I worked as a journalist for a while. Then I worked in corporate America in business for a while in marketing departments. When I got married, I had three children and I was home with them, but I was able to do freelance writing for some magazines in my community, which I did for about 10 years. During that time, I would read a lot with my children, and I had always wanted to write a book. It was kind of like a bucket list item I wanted to do. And I said, you know, I could write a children's book that might be interesting for my kids because living here in Houston, we have alligators in our neighborhood, you'll see wild boar running around, there's all kinds of interesting things going on. I said that this would be a fun story that I could write just for my children, kind of a fun thing to do. So I wrote the first book in my series, Sophie Washington: Queen of the Bee, and I shared it with the librarian at my children's school. And she told me, you know, you really have something here because it has an African American family going through just normal life experiences, not traumatic experiences, which are things you typically see when you have an African American protagonist in a lot of the children's books that are out. So she said, this kind of fills a niche. She supported me and promoted me with having my first school visit. Then I started doing some community events with the book, and writing other books, and they've just grown. Now I have 13 books in the series, and I've sold over 150,000 books. Joanna: That is amazing. We're going to come back on a lot of those different things. But I want to ask, first of all, about the series because you said you wrote the first book, and the librarian was encouraging, and now you've got 13. I feel like this is something that is important for success, is that one book is just not enough. But when you wrote that first book, did you decide you wanted to write a series? Or— How did you decide to go into this whole series idea? Tonya: I did conceive of it as a series because my children loved reading chapter book series. And so when I came up with the idea for the first book, I said, I'll have a little girl from Houston. Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States and very diverse, so I wanted to show the diversity in the series. So I came up with an idea of having a series, and my idea was maybe to have five to ten books, and it just kept growing. So I did think about it as a series when I was conceiving the first book. Joanna: And did you ever think about pitching traditional publishing with those books? Or— Did you always want to self-publish? Tonya: At the beginning, I just thought about self-publishing. I didn't know much about the process of pitching to traditional publishing companies, and I really didn't even imagine it growing as much as it did. It was kind of like a fun thing I wanted to do for myself. I'd always just wanted to write a book. So I didn't even think about approaching traditional publishers with these books initially. Now, one of my books, book eight in the series, Sophie Washington: Code One, is about the children in a computer coding competition, and Scholastic actually bought rights to that book for a STEM program in 2021. So they did approach me with that. When I started, I was thinking of myself as an indie author. And really, I started out with a hybrid company, and I see now they were on ALLi's watchdog list as a company to watch out for, but I didn't know that at the beginning. I didn't know anything about ALLi or anything. And so when I started with them, as I started growing, I realized I need to learn all the elements of being an indie author of my own. That's kind of how I found information from you, Joanna Penn, all of your educational materials on self-publishing. I ran across those, and I read all your books, looked at your marketing materials, and learned so much that helped me grow my series. Joanna: Oh, well, I'm so glad to help. And just so people know, you mentioned ALLi, that's the Alliance of Independent Authors. They have a watchdog list, which has companies to watch out for, so I'll link to that in the show notes. It's interesting because so many people start with those type of companies because I guess you're on Google, and they're the ones who are advertising usually. So I feel that's how people get there. We're not going to mention any names, but— How did you go from working with one of those author services companies to deciding to do it yourself? Was it the money, or was it that you just got a feeling that you wanted to do it yourself? Tonya: It was the money. As my series started taking off, they weren't paying me all my royalty checks. I was getting frustrated. And also, when I started learning things from your materials, I wanted to do more with my own marketing on Amazon and doing different things. I wanted to make my first book perma-free. I couldn't do those because they were listed as the publisher, and then I'd have to pay them every time I wanted to do anything. So I realized I wanted my series to grow, and I couldn't continue with that. Then they started keeping some of my royalties. I said, no, we've got to put a stop to this. So that's when I took over the reins and learned how to do everything myself. Joanna: So how did you resolve that situation? Because again, people email me all the time and say, I did this thing with this company, and now I don't know what to do about it. How did you get those books out of that situation? Tonya: I had to have them write a letter. I just requested that they write a letter turning the rights back over. In my initial contract, it stated that they didn't have the rights to my intellectual property. So they wrote the letter, and then I took over from there. Joanna: Oh, that's quite good then. So that's good that you checked that original contract and made sure everything was good. So you get all those back and control everything. Just going back to when you're creating these books in the first place, one of the hard things about books for children is illustration, and you've got lovely illustrations. So how did you find that process? How did you find your illustrator? And what are your tips? Tonya: So for me, my books are paperback illustrated chapter books with black and white illustrations, about 20 inside each book, and then they have the color cover. Initially, I had a local artist in my area cover the first book, and she had never illustrated a children's book. The book cover was nice, but it wasn't exactly what I wanted. Then for the second book, I used another illustrator who was an art teacher at my children's school, and I ran into the same issue because she had not illustrated a book that had been published. So when it came time for the third book, when I was finishing it up I did go back to her, and she was busy with some other projects. So some friends of mine had a comic book series, and they had used my current illustrator for that, and I loved the images. He actually lives in India, so I said, well, let me see what he does with a third book, and I loved it. So I had him re-cover my two first two books in this series, and I've worked with him ever since. I don't think that my relationship with him is typical from what I've heard from other authors. But what I do, is it's kind of like a pay-for-hire situation, so I have the rights to all the images. With each book, I will send him a detailed list of what I want, how I want them to look, and I'll send them clip art as well. It's been a great relationship. His company was called Massive Brain, and I feel like he can read my mind or something because everything that I want, he pretty much produces very quickly. The only problems, because he's in India, I had a wild boar in one of my books, and he put pigs. Like he might send back something with like foreign pigs, which look different, but then I'll send him the images. So that's how we've worked together through the years, and it's been a great relationship. Joanna: That is good. So you're very clear on what you want, whereas I feel like some illustrators, it's more of a collaboration where the author might not be so clear. It sounds like you've communicated very clearly what you wanted. Tonya: Right. Sometimes, like, for example, with the most recent book in my series, it's called Treasure Beach, I had given him parameters for the cover, but one of the other images he made looked so good, I said, let's make that the cover. I do tell him exactly what I want. I tell him that they're in the classroom, they're in a private school, so they wear a uniform. So I tell him specifically what I want on most of the images. Joanna: And then the stories themselves, how do you decide on the topics? So you've mentioned, I think, the spelling bee and the computer coding and the treasure hunt, I guess that you did there. How do you decide what stories you want each book to be? Tonya: Well, they are about an 11-year-old girl from Houston and her diverse group of friends. So they're in upper elementary school, they're tween. They deal with tween issues, like standing up to bullies, being true to themselves, making friends, playing with video games. So when I conceived the series, I came up with a list of ideas of topics that I wanted the character to do. In one, she plays tennis. So I kind of had a list of five or six ideas that I wanted to cover. Each book teaches a lesson for the children. They're fun stories. She has a problem in each one, and then she solves them by the end. So I just kind of had a list when I started the series of five or six topics I wanted to cover. Also, I'm a mom of three, and some of them are inspired by things that my kids do. For example, The Snitch is the second book and they're encountering a bully. And my daughter had experienced being bullied at school, she and her friends, and they were afraid of being called a snitch more so than reporting this person that was bullying them. So I said that would be interesting. Some of it is inspired from my kids, and I have been around children a lot as a mother, so I see a lot of different things that they're doing. That's inspired a lot of the topics in my books. Joanna: That's interesting. Then coming on to the production process— How are you actually producing the print books? Tonya: So I publish them print-on-demand through Amazon and Ingram Spark. With Ingram, I'm able to get them in bookstores and order copies for school visits or different events. Most of my sales come through print, whereas I know that many indie authors get more sales with eBooks. I do have my books in eBook format, and three of my books are in audiobook format as well, the first three of the series. Joanna: That's great. And I think, obviously, I've had other children's authors on, and there's a big difference between what you're doing, which is the black and white chapter books that are easier to do with print-on-demand, and the sort of full-color books that are aimed at the slightly younger kids. I think what you're doing is the easier option in terms of printing. Because you do school visits, right? And then you can just order boxes from Ingram to take to schools. Tonya: Exactly. Yes, that's what I do. Joanna: You also have a lot of extras on your website. Your website is very professional. I absolutely urge people to go and have a look. It's fantastic. You've got these coloring pages, worksheets, you've got these activity books. Why did you create all of these things, and any tips on those? Tonya: Well, that idea came from you, again. Joanna: Oh, yay! Tonya: Being a great publisher and utilizing all your resources. So after I had invested in my illustrations, since they're black and white, I said I could use these for coloring pages. So I produced the coloring books myself on Microsoft Word. I just took all the images I had and made coloring pages, and I had my illustrator make a cover for that. Then even with the activity book, online there's different websites where you can make seek-and-finds and crossword puzzles and things like that. So I have those, and writing prompts and different activities that I created for the kids, just to add many add-ons and make it fun and immersive for the readers. I wanted to just do as much as I could to utilize the things that I have. I also have animated book trailers on my website for all of the books, and book discussion questions, so they can talk about the books. Joanna: Let's come back to these trailers. But just staying on the product, so in terms of your sales because the activity books are paid products, and then the coloring pages and the worksheets are kind of free downloads. Do the activity books actually make money? Are they a percentage of your sales now? Tonya: They're not a huge percentage, and I don't market those as heavily as I have the books. But in particular, I came out with the activity book at the beginning of the pandemic and it was a way to keep the fans engaged, especially with kids at home. I saw more of an uptick of sales on those at that time. They're not a huge percentage, I'd say they're like a 1%, if that, of the total sales. I haven't done as much marketing with those. Also, at one point, I even had Sophie Washington birthday, napkins and plates, because a couple of the fans had some parties. So I produced those as well. Joanna: It's difficult, isn't it, because you feel like well, some of these things are worth doing and some of them are worth trying, and then others don't work. Have you taken the activity books into schools, as well? Or do you just take the main books? Tonya: I take the main books. Now, I was doing a lot of live events, and even like farmers markets and different things like that, and I did sell a lot of the activity books, in particular. I do have coloring books that are 100 pages of coloring sheets, even though I offer one or two free on my website. So those could be sold to younger siblings who weren't able to read the chapter books. So when I bring those to live events, I do find them selling, and because I produce those completely myself, I didn't pay much for the cover, you know, the outlay to produce those was very minimal. So I do make a pretty good profit on them when I sell those. And talking to you, maybe I do need to promote those more because they're cheaper to produce. Joanna: Than the books. Yes, cheaper to produce, but you can actually price them sometimes higher. Tonya: Right. Right, exactly. So now talking to you, I may need to start pushing those more. Joanna: This is what we have to think is how could—I mean, because I do work books, obviously for my nonfiction books—and again, they don't have as much content in them. They have no content, they have lines in and questions, but people pay for those because they want to do things themselves. So it's kind of a different product. I feel like we forget these, and I love it that you're doing it with fiction. I mean, you know, your stories are fiction. Let's come back on the school visits. So on your website, you have, again, a really professional school visit page with professional speaking rates and a brochure, which is fantastic. I've spoken to a lot of children's authors, and they are pretty reticent to charge money, or they feel, I don't know, they feel funny about it. How did you go about school visits in such a professional way? Did you always do it like that? Or have you kind of started charging over time? Tonya: Well, when I first started out, I did free visits. And this is maybe in 2018, I did do some free visits in some schools in my area. But I have a very professional presentation where I talk about my author journey, I teach children about writing, and even I have my presentations geared to helping them meet standards for certain tests that they have to take here in the US. I'm teaching them different things, and I even do writing workshops. I feel like this is a needed service for the children. I need to be paid for what I'm doing. So I started charging maybe after doing four or five visits. I'm also a member of a Facebook group called Create Engaging School Visits. So it's a forum where authors talk about how we need to value ourselves as creatives in our work, and not to sell ourselves short out here. I don't feel funny about it at all because I've actually seen children inspired to write. One young girl who I met during a school visit, she wanted to write and her mother reached out to me, and I got her connected with a writing competition. She won $400, and now she's out going to different events, promoting her book, and doing different things. These author visits can play a huge role in encouraging literacy with the children and inspiring them. Joanna: Yeah, I'm totally with you. I mean, obviously, you prepare. Like you said, you have a professional presentation. And again, even just the look of your website, I think can make people feel it has that value. I'm not saying that people who do things for free aren't offering something of value, it's just that we're creatives, as you say, and we need to value our own time and getting paid for these things. You're actually doing a lesson, and your books might not get bought by the school, so getting paid for the visit is important. You've got this brochure, so— How do you market to schools? Tonya: I send the brochures out to schools. I email them and send the brochure out. Prior to the pandemic, I was doing almost weekly events, and I was meeting lots of school teachers and librarians, and talking to them about the series. So that was a great way for me to connect with them and book school visits. But recently, I've started with those brochures and sending out emails directly to the librarians. Joanna: Are you still just focusing on Houston, or are you doing online stuff elsewhere? Tonya: I've done virtual school visits. Houston is such a large community that I can stay pretty busy in my own area. I also got a booking agent who's in Austin, Texas, to try to get booked in some other areas outside my city, you know. So I tried to do that as well. And I'm virtual, so I am open. I can do virtual school visits anywhere. Joanna: Yes. Well, that's what I thought, and also internationally. You know, I was talking to someone the other day, and I was like, have you thought about doing things to the UK? Because it's so funny, a lot of Americans say to me, ‘oh, I love your accent.' And I'm like, yeah, because it's different to your accent. I hear your accent, and I think well, people will love your accent too. And when you speak to a different country, it's almost like you're almost naturally more interesting. Tonya: Right. Exactly. That is true. It just seems more highbrow when I hear that English accent. Joanna: I think that's quite funny. Okay, so just coming back to the schools. So you charge for the visit, which is fantastic, but— How do you incorporate book sales into school visits? Tonya: I simply hand an order form to the librarian. So once we discussed booking me to come in, I send ahead the order form, so if the children want their book autographed beforehand, I can have some of those ready. I bring extra as well, because inevitably, teachers and some of the other staff may want to purchase books as well. I ask them also for the group sizes. We talk about this space I'll be in, sometimes I might need a microphone. I always ask for help from an audio-visual tech person because, inevitably, there's going to be some kind of little snafu, and I'm not the best at setting up all the tech. I make sure to get there at least a half an hour early to get everything set up properly. Joanna: I mean, I do professional speaking, and all of that is exactly the same. I mean, it's a professional speaking event. Any awful mistakes, or lessons learned, or things that you would like to tell to people who want to do this type of thing? Tonya: Things have gone pretty well for me most of the time. I would say be prepared with your presentation. I remember one virtual presentation I had, for some reason, I could not see the slides I had. Fortunately, I had printed them out, and this was virtual during the pandemic—no, I hadn't printed them out, but I knew my presentation well enough that I could just talk through and handle everything. I try to be prepared in case something goes wrong with your PowerPoint, or whatever, to make it engaging, especially with the children. So if something goes wrong, and you can't use slides, if that was what you had intended, you have something to engage the kids in some kind of activity for them. Joanna: Yeah, I mean, that is a difficult audience. I haven't done things for kids, and I don't have kids, so that would actually terrify me. Tonya: It's funny because for me, I'm more comfortable talking with children than with adults. I did a talk for The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators in New York earlier this year, and it went great, but I had way more anxiety with that than I have when I'm preparing to speak with the children. Joanna: Maybe it's a different fear when it's with peers or people who were in the publishing industry. It's a very different form of judgment than kids who might judge you by just thinking you're boring, or I don't know what else kids think. Tonya: Exactly. And I did want to state again, when you talked about some authors may feel bad about charging, in the beginning, I started to feel resentment after a few times doing it free when someone asked me to do something free. I said, you know, my work is valuable. I encourage all authors, if you've prepared and you're confident in your presentation, you've got valuable information to share. You're providing a service, so you shouldn't sell yourself short. Joanna: Yeah, I think that resentment is a very good indicator. I remember when I started out self-publishing and talking about things back in almost like 2008/2009, and I did a bit of consulting back then, and I started really low, like 99 US dollars for an hour. I remember feeling quite quickly, I'm being too cheap, I'm too cheap, I'm getting too many bookings, and I'm resenting the time. So I put it up until I felt more comfortable, and then I just stopped doing it all together. Did you ratchet up your fees over time until you felt like it was about what you were happy with? Tonya: Well, after I joined that Create Engaging School Visits website, some of the other authors shared what they charge, so that gave me a feel. There's also an author named Kim Norman, who has a book about school visits that's a great resource. Her name is Kim Norman, she has a book about doing school visits, and she makes over like six figures year doing school visits. So she gives all kinds of great information in that book. So that was helpful to me. Joanna: Right, so that book is called Sell Books and get PAID doing Author School Visits, which is a fantastic book title, by Kim Norman. So that's great. I do think that's important because it's all about multiple streams of income, and that's what you're doing. You've got the books, but you've also got the school visits. Let's come back to marketing because many authors—children's authors, well, everyone—struggles with marketing. But you were in corporate marketing, you mentioned earlier— What have been the most effective forms of marketing for your books? Tonya: I feel like the best thing for me was starting out locally. And because I'm in a large market here in Houston, I did a lot of events and got a groundswell of support from librarians and teachers in my community. Then they started sharing my work on Twitter and Instagram, so anytime I would do events, I would take pictures of the children with my book and get permission from their parents. I was posting those on social media, and that helped get the word out about my book all around the world. That was a big thing that helped me in the beginning. Another thing was getting lots of reviews, positive reviews for my books. I made the first in the series perma-free and got a lot of bookings, and with it being free, I think a lot of teachers started reading it. That made them give my series to chance as an indie series, I think that got it some exposure. So those are things, and I now also I have an email list. So I've been working on being consistent with that, and I think that helps, especially with school visits because people are seeing what I'm doing and I'm continuing to connect with them. I'll even put things about school visits I've done, and I've seen then I get some other bookings when I'm showing those in my email. Joanna: Well, the email list is interesting because, of course, your email list is not full of 11 year old children. Who are the people on your email list? Tonya: Most of them are educators and parents or grandparents that are on my list. Another thing, I had something called My Sophie's Club Ambassadors. So I invited them to be ambassadors for my brand and gave them Sophie Washington t-shirts and other little swag and perks. They had to, as a condition of being an ambassador, post a photo of them with their favorite book and shirt, which helped market my books. Then the parents like seeing their children encouraged to read and seeing them promoted, because I do a lot to highlight children who are doing well and encouraging them with reading and literacy. So the parents like that as well. Joanna: That's fantastic. So you mentioned before the animated book trailers, and I did have a look at one of them on your site. They look great, but I have done book trailers myself, and I have found them to be expensive and not very useful. How useful have you found your book trailers? Tonya: They haven't done that much. My illustrator isn't too expensive. So that was something that enabled me to continue with them. So they don't bring that much money, or there's no way for me to even really measure that. With the launches, I would have the trailer, so I just continued with it because it wasn't that costly. My illustrator took some of the images we already had, and kind of incorporated them. I write the scripts and give him the music to use. So it wasn't that costly for me. If it had been, I wouldn't have made them. Joanna: I think that's a really important point for people, is some of these things that are more expensive aren't worth doing. Whereas the things that were kind of free financially, like you said about local marketing, although they take time, they can actually be more effective. So what about things like advertising? Are you doing any paid advertising on Amazon or anything? Tonya: I do Amazon ads. I just went wide with my books about four months ago because I had a company looking at buying my series, and I needed to get them wide. I had been on Kindle Unlimited, and I do Amazon ads. Those help with sales. I've also done ads through BookBub. I've had BookBub Feature Deals, which has been helpful. Occasionally, I'll do Fussy Librarian or Bargain Booksy and different things like that, ads for my eBooks. Joanna: What about networking and co-promoting with other children's authors? Tonya: That's been fantastic for me because I'm very active on Instagram. And during the pandemic, I was part of a community called Own Voices Book Challenge, and it was a group of other children's authors. So we started building community, networking, promoting each other's books. I also have on Instagram, an Instagram Live show called ‘Write This' where I interview different authors in the industry. I started it when I was selected to be in a group sponsored by the Highlights Foundation, because it was through Zoom, it was a group of other authors, and I wanted to get to know them, and it was difficult on Zoom. I said, well, I could do an interview, then I can start talking to people and getting to know them. That's been a fabulous way of me building connections in my industry with other authors who promote me, I promote them, they may tell me about different opportunities. So networking has really played a huge role in my growth as well. Joanna: I'm interested in the technical side. Obviously, we're doing this on Zoom. I've never done an interview on Instagram. What do you use to do an interview on Instagram? Tonya: It's really simple. You just go live on Instagram. So on your page, there's a button to push live. Joanna: Just on your phone? Tonya: Yeah, on your phone. It's through the phone, not your computer. Then they join me. People do have anxiety when I've asked them to interview if they've never done it, but it's very simple. So I just click a button and it sends them an invitation, they click it, and they're on the screen with me, and then I interviewed them for maybe half an hour. Then I also upload the interviews onto my YouTube channel. Joanna: Ah, okay, that's interesting. So you actually invite someone. You go live on Instagram, and then you can invite someone into the show, basically. Tonya: Exactly. Then we're live on the interview, and then afterwards, I can save that interview. Joanna: There we go. I haven't done one on Instagram. To be fair, like I record all of these and we're not live so I can edit it, and I feel a lot more comfortable. There's no problem about any of that. I'm just not very confident with live video, so it's interesting that you're really comfortable with it. Were you always comfortable [with live video] or is that something you've learned? Tonya: I've learned because I was nervous. I remember when I would first go live, I would get everything perfect and do all this. I remember, actually my daughter who's a young adult, when I did my first live I did all this and then it didn't save. And my daughter was like, all you do is push a button. You know, I'm like, I'm so stressed, and it didn't even save. I've gotten more comfortable. I've done maybe 30 interviews on there, and I've interviewed some top people in the children's book world. So I'm very happy with the interviews. On one interview, one of my friends had a nosebleed while we were talking during the interview. So we were like, “ah!” but she covered it, and we just kept going. So different things do happen when you're live. Joanna: Probably people love that. They're like, oh, that's just totally normal, right? Tonya: Yeah. So it's been fun. I've enjoyed it because it's enabled me, and I'm sure you see this too, just to meet so many different people in the industry. So it's been a lot of fun, and I learn a lot from what they're doing. Joanna: Absolutely. This podcast has brought me a lot of friends and contacts over the years. So yes, I think networking with other authors is so important. There's so many things I want to ask you, actually, but let's get to the business side. I feel like children's books have to have more investment because of the illustration usually, and because the number of books sold is usually smaller. Although, you've sold 150,000 books, so you're doing super well. When did this become a proper business for you? When were you like, okay, this can be a good business as opposed to just a hobby? Tonya: I think after I had my fifth book, and it started selling. I had one child send me a picture of her dressed as the character, and I'm like, wow, this is part of these children's childhood. They love this. I got really excited and I felt just encouraged to push on. And in one day, I sold 1000 books. I guess a school or something had bought a thousand of one book. So those type things have encouraged me that this is something that people want. Still, the margin per book is not huge, and I have to continue with the school visits. Then, I've been embraced by the industry. I'm a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. So they asked me to speak at their national conference with Jane Friedman on marketing for children's authors. So those types of things encourage me and make me feel like this is my career, and I'm able to continue with this. Joanna: You recently announced a traditional book deal as well. Tell us about that and how that happened. Tonya: Right. So I have a book coming out in 2024, spring of 2024, a picture book called They Built Me For Freedom. It's about Emancipation Park, where the first Juneteenth Celebration was held. It's here in Houston, Texas, where I live, the park. What happened is that I was participating in a virtual SCBWI conference with a manuscript I had. I submitted it for a critique, and unbeknownst to me, it was put in for a competition. I just put it in just to get a critique from an agent just to see what they thought of it. She met with me and said told me she had recommended it to win for a prize. I was like, what is that? She suggested I write picture books, and she also told me that I should get an agent. She wasn't taking new clients at the time, but she encouraged me to try to get an agent with that manuscript. It did win in the competition, and so I just queried agents and ended up getting an agent within a couple of months with that manuscript. In the meantime, I was intrigued when she talks about me writing picture books because I was saying, well, what? I really hadn't thought about it. At that conference, another author who I admire read her picture book, and all of us were crying on the Zoom. And I was saying, wow, I want to write something like this. This is so beautiful and impactful. This is the kind of thing I want to write. So I started learning all I could about picture books. I also read that book, The Artist's Way, which tells you to take artists field trips. Joanna: The artist's date. Tonya: Yeah, take the artist's date. So I would try to go to different places, and I happened to go to that park, and that's when lines from the book that I wrote came to me. I wrote the picture book, and this is before Juneteenth was a holiday, and I told my agent, this book, Juneteenth, is going to be a holiday. Somehow just from what I was hearing, I'm like, this is something people need to know about. So she'd sent it out on submission, which is where you're sending it out for publishing companies to consider it, and it ended up selling. So that's how I got the deal. The other book never made it. My initial manuscript that I landed my agent with was rejected over 20 times, and we just kind of shelved that one. But the picture book did sell. Joanna: Well, just for people who are not in the USA— What is Juneteenth? Tonya: So Juneteenth is the time when enslaved people in Texas learned they were free. It happened two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. So people in Texas didn't hear that they were free until two years later, when General Gordon Granger came to Galveston, Texas and announced that they were free. So that was the time when all African Americans, enslaved people, were all freed. The part that I'm writing about is where they held celebrations to celebrate. The park has had 150 year anniversary a year or so ago, and it's a beautiful space here in Houston. Actually, the architect who did work on the African American Museum in Washington DC, he did work on some of the buildings here in Houston and the Emancipation Park. It has beautiful sculptures and artwork in the park. It's a gorgeous park. Joanna: Why is it Juneteenth? I mean, it's in June, right? Is it like June the 10th? Or what's the teenth? Tonya: So the teenth is the day. It's June 19th. That's why it's called Juneteenth. Joanna: There we go. A lot of the listeners are not in the USA, so it's good to clear that up. So many interesting things you've got going on. Even if your traditional books take off, will you still carry on with Sophie Washington? Tonya: Well, I have it set in my contract that I can continue with Sophie Washington, but I do have 13 books in the series, so I am pursuing some other traditional projects. I actually sold another book after I sold the Juneteenth book, but it hasn't been formally announced, but to that same publisher. HarperCollins. Joanna: Fantastic. Where can people find you and your books online? Tonya: They can find me on Instagram and Facebook at Tonya Ellis Books, and on Twitter @TonyaDEllis, and also on the new Threads @TonyaEllisBooks. My website is TonyaDuncanEllis.com. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Tonya. That was great. Tonya: Thank you so much for having me, Joanna. I'm honored to be here and thrilled to speak with you.The post Publishing Books For Children And Profitable School Visits With Tonya Ellis first appeared on The Creative Penn.

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Aug 10, 2023 • 49min

How AI Tools Are Useful For Writers With Disabilities And Health Issues With S.J. Pajonas

How can AI tools help authors who struggle with energy and time because of disability, chronic pain, health conditions, post-viral fatigue, or other unavoidable life issues? Steph Pajonas explains why AI is important for accessibility and more. Today's show is sponsored by my wonderful patrons who fund my brain so I have time to think about and discuss these futurist topics impacting authors. If you support the show, you also get the extra monthly patron-only Q&A audio. You can support the show at www.patreon.com/thecreativepenn S.J. Pajonas is the USA Today Best Selling author of science fiction, romance and cozy mystery, with over 30 books under two pen names. She also started the Facebook group AI Writing for Authors, and is one of the founders of the Future Fiction Academy, teaching authors how to harness the power of AI to revolutionize the world of fiction writing. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Using AI tools to overcome brain fog and help brainstorm AI tools to help writers with disabilities How to stand out in a saturated market Generative search for creating a more nuanced search Using AI as a co-writer and having fun What is the Future Fiction Academy and how does it help others? You can find Steph at SPajonas.com, FutureFictionAcademy.com, or at the AI Writing for Authors Facebook Group. Transcript of Interview with Steph Pajonas Joanna: S.J. Pajonas is the USA Today Best Selling author of science fiction, romance and cozy mystery, with over 30 books under two pen names. She also started the Facebook group AI Writing for Authors, and is one of the founders of the Future Fiction Academy, teaching authors how to harness the power of AI to revolutionize the world of fiction writing. So welcome, Steph. Steph: Thank you so much for having me, Joanna. I'm so excited to be here. You have no idea. Joanna: Well, it's funny because you and I have been connected for probably a decade. We've been on social media and like comments and all of this, but this is the first time you're on the show. So first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Steph: I think that my story about writing is pretty similar to most people. I started writing at a young age. I really enjoyed writing fanfiction and screenplays when I was in high school. I did some co-writing with a friend of mine, and we really enjoyed coming up and using other people's worlds to tell stories. So that was a lot of fun for me. Then when I went to university, I went to Michigan State University, I studied a field that is not really in use anymore, telecommunications. It's been usurped by the internet and everything like that. So I studied telecommunications with a minor in film. And when I was doing film studies, I did a lot of screenplays. I really wanted to be a screenwriter. I really wanted to write screenplays. When I got to my final year of college, and I looked at how much money I owed for my student loans, I thought, oh, no, I really probably should get a job to pay all of these loans off. Then it was my senior year, I decided to take a basic HTML coding class. Back then it was like 1996/1997, and so I was doing basic HTML in Netscape, I think it was Netscape 2.0, and building websites in class, and I thought it was pretty fun. I was like, this is fun, this could be the future. I kept thinking that the internet was going to really boom. I had been part of the generation that had AOL, you know, and I was in chat rooms when I was younger. So I decided, right then and there, that I would learn how to make websites as a career and do that in order to pay off my bills. So I graduated from college in 1998. I went to work in a small internet design firm in Detroit, or just north of Detroit at that point. Then they got bought by a bigger New York company. So I thought, hey, you know, I just broke up with a boyfriend, I could really expand my horizons by moving to New York. I have family in the New York, New Jersey area, so I would be close to family, so let's move to New York. So I transferred to New York, and then that company did well for a while. Then it was the dot-com boom, and then it was the dot-com bust. I got laid off, and I went to work at HBO at that point. So I started working for HBO on hbo.com, and it was the heyday of HBO. It was The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, all the great shows back then. I was working with the team that helped build all of those websites. So I was back in the entertainment business. I was like, oh, this is great, I love working for entertainment companies. I was having so much fun, and I did that until 2007 when I had my first child. So when I had my first baby, we were living in Brooklyn, and everything was super expensive, couldn't really afford daycare, so my husband said, well, maybe you could stay home with her and our future second child, and then when they go to school, you can go back to work. And I thought, yeah, I could probably do that. It wasn't much longer after they were born that I was realizing that the internet was just taking off, like all of my skills were becoming irrelevant fairly quickly. I could have kept up with them, but I was still thinking that my career might be somewhere in entertainment, somewhere around there. Then I saw KDP, I saw that people were self-publishing, and I thought, well, I've always wanted to write a book. I've always wanted to turn my screenplays or my ideas into books, so I'll try that. So I wrote my first book, it took me like two years. You know, I think I went through like 12 revisions of that book, then I published in 2003. I'm actually coming up on 10 years published now. So I took the long road, through the internet and through entertainment companies, to come back to writing. I'm really happy to be here, and I've since published about 30 books between my science fiction, romances and the cozy mysteries that I published. Joanna: You said 2003 there. I think you meant 2013. Steph: 2013. Yes, you're right. Sorry. Joanna: Time flies. Steph: I'm thinking way back to my time of building internet websites! Joanna: Yeah, I know. It's crazy, isn't it, I mean, how time shifts. It's actually really interesting to hear more about your background in internet and entertainment, and we'll circle back to that in a minute. I did want to ask about how many of your books are centered around Japan. I wondered if you talk about that because you're obviously an American. And yet, if people go and have a look at some of your series, they are very Japanese. How do your travels come out in your writing? Why Japan? Steph: Yeah, so when I was late in college, I became interested in Japan. It was the time when Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke came out, I think it was right around that time that it was in the theaters. I was just amazed. I was like, this is such great storytelling, this is such beautiful anime, I really love this. So I started looking into Japan and beginning to understand a little bit more about the culture and the country. Then when I went to my first job, to the internet company just north of Detroit, I met a friend Jennifer, who had actually spent several years in Japan. She lived in Hiroshima, and she was working there a lot. So we sat down, and we just started talking a lot. She was missing Japan, so she was telling me lots of stories of her time there. And I was thinking, yeah, this is a really cool place. I'm really interested in this culture and in this country. So when I moved to New York, I thought, well, maybe I'll learn Japanese. That would be fun for me. I'll learn another language, and I will figure out if my love of this country will expand to something other than just pop culture. So I started taking Japanese language courses at the Japan Society. It's in New York City, it's on the east side over by the UN. It's a beautiful building, and they have a language program there. I started going to classes and I really just, I loved learning another language. It was so much fun. Learning another language taught me more about the English language, too. So I was able to really expand how I was learning about language and understanding language at that point. Then my love of the country grew from there. I started studying all types of parts of the culture, the history, I was watching movies, TV shows, like anything that I could get my hands on. Then we started traveling to the country as well. So I'm a longtime Japanophile. I feel like I started falling in love with it in like 1998. I've been studying the language for a long time, I am not fluent, not even close, but it is fun, and I seem to have a pretty big vocabulary. When I listened to the shows, I recognize a lot of the language and the words. So I really love it. There came a point in my life where I felt kind of removed from it. After I had my first child, I couldn't really go to the language classes anymore. I was sort of house bound with her, doing all the mom stuff. So when I decided to pick up writing, I thought, hey, if I use my knowledge of Japan in my works, it will sort of bring me back to it. It'll make me feel closer to the country. It'll make me feel closer to the culture and the language again. It just helped me fall right back in love with it once more. So spending the time, doing the research and looking at the history, I've learned so much just writing the books because I made parallels between my books and some ancient Japanese history. It just made everything come to life for me. I really just so enjoyed it, and I still do it now. So it's been 10 years of writing, and I still include a lot of Japan in my books. Joanna: I love that. And same as you, I use a lot of my actual travels, and my imaginary travels, and transporting somebody to another place as part of the book. It's that kind of escape. You were writing to help yourself escape, but we also write to help other people escape. I really love that, and people should definitely have a look at your books there. So let's get into the AI stuff. And again, like I said, it's really interesting that you've come out of this background of technical stuff plus entertainment. Tell me— Why and when did you become interested in the writing area with AI? And how has that developed? And I guess how do you use the tools now? Steph: Well, you definitely have something to do with that! Joanna: Yay! Steph: Last year, April of last year, so that was 2022, I'm trying to get my years straight, everything is flying by. April 2022, I got COVID. Now, at that time, COVID was here in the United States, and it was a little bit like more than a cold but less than flu. You know, it wasn't too bad, especially for people who had been immunized, like myself. I got COVID, it felt like a bad cold, and then I thought everything would be fine and I would just go right back to work afterward. Instead, I had about six to eight months of pretty terrible brain fog afterward. I just couldn't think. I would sit down to write, and I would look at my document, and I would try to remember what I had written and what I wanted to write next, and I just couldn't. I couldn't hold all of that information in my head. It was incredibly depressing and demoralizing to think I had written like 30 books, and now all of a sudden, I couldn't write anymore because of this brain fog. At that point, I had already had a Sudowrite subscription for about a year because I think you had had Amit on your show the first time a year previously. So I had gotten a Sudowrite subscription the very first time when he was on your show. I was like, this is great, this sounds like a really cool tool, I would love to use this and figure it out. I got the subscription, and I remember typing into it and trying to use the tools and not really understanding how they worked. So I let my subscription lapse, I put it on pause. Then when I had the brain fog in the next year, I decided, well, maybe this AI tool that I subscribed to a year ago will help me with what I'm writing. And at this point, it was late summer last year, and I had finally gotten to a point in the book that I had been writing where I'd gotten to like the 80% mark. It had taken six months to get to that 80% mark, when it should have only taken about two. I sat down and I thought, well, I'll use these tools and see if I can get myself over the finish line and then go back and fix all the stuff that I tried to write during my brain fog time that just didn't come out right, it felt very flat and uninspired. So when I started copying and pasting my work into Sudowrite, I suddenly realized how it all worked. Like I had a scene in a marketplace on this planet that it was mostly Japanese, right? So I had the scene in the marketplace and I wanted some more description, so I highlighted the parts of the scene that I wanted more description for and I clicked the describe button. And oh my gosh, it understood context. I was like, this is amazing. It knows my world because the context of the words around what I had highlighted included Japanese elements, it gave me Japanese elements to in the describe function. I was blown away by that. I was like, oh, I finally get it. The light bulb went off, and I was like this thing understands context. It understands the words around what I'm trying to use. Then suddenly, I was off to the races because now that I understood how the actual tool worked, I was like, I can actually use this for a little bit more than describing things. Like it is great at describing things using all the five senses and whatnot, but then when I reached my 80% mark where I had stopped, I thought, okay, we'll use the tools now to see if it can help me write and get me over the finish line so that I can edit and finally release this book. So it was one of those things where I had a need for it. So I had the brain fog, I had the subscription already, due to you, you talking to Amit. So I thought why not use these tools because I have a need for them. But it was like so revolutionary to see them actually work, and see how they worked, that from there, I was hooked. I was so hooked. I was like I'm going to buy a year subscription of this, and I'm going to use it, and we're going to I'm going to tell everybody about it. It was interesting that when I finally started telling people about it, I was so excited about the tools and how cool they were, the amount of negative pushback that I got from that. A lot of people were just like, “Oh, this is plagiarism. This is stealing from creatives,” etc, etc. So I thought, well, you know, I don't see it that way. Now that I looked at the white papers as to how it all worked, understood how GPT-3 works, because open AI was much more open about their training dataset for GPT-3. I went and looked at the white papers and I understand how it all worked, especially because I have this computer background. So I was able to put that knowledge to use to understand these tools. I decided, well, I know that the tide is probably against me, but I'm going to go anyway. Joanna is doing this, a lot of other people are doing this, I'm sure that I can make some headway. So I decided that I would be more open about it and start using the tools as they came along. And of course, as you know, like ChatGPT came along, I started using that. I use Anthropic and Claude. The tools have just blossomed since then. So I'm using all of these things, and now I'm doing it with a larger peer group as well. Joanna: It's great that you had that light bulb moment. And again, I appreciate your technical background. I have a bit of a technical background too. I feel like if, as you have done and I have done, actually look at how the technical stuff works, then many of these arguments we know are wrong, but this is an emotional topic. So I was really, really pleased because, of course, I've been talking about this since 2016, and so I was super thrilled. I've had a lot of negativity, obviously, for years. When you started the AI Writing for Authors Facebook group, I was so happy because I have felt very alone for years. I mean, people were telling me I was mad for quite a long time. I know I'm always early, and this has obviously grown a lot faster than I expected. But yeah, so you started the AI Writing for Authors Facebook group, which now has over three and a half thousand members, which I think in itself is amazing. You also have really clear guidelines. It's an AI-positive group, people can have questions, which a lot of people do, and everyone shares their knowledge, but it is AI positive, and obviously people have to apply. So I'll put the links in the show notes. What I wanted to ask you was, coming back on your COVID experience, I also had about six months of difficulty after COVID. What are some of the other health things, disability, and accessibility, that AI tools can help with? Because I feel like there are a lot of authors out there who are struggling, who could really use some help. Steph: Yes, yes, and I have learned more about this as I've been running the Facebook group. So the Facebook group started, and it was literally like me and three other people. It was like that for like a whole month pretty much. I never thought that anybody else would come in. And suddenly we started getting a trickle of people coming in. You know, like, a few here and then five there, and then suddenly it was like 10, and then suddenly I was waking up and there were 20 people every morning that I had to like let into the group. So the group started growing and people started sharing their experiences using AI. Without naming any names or anything, they shared with me that there were a few people who had — brain fog from chemotherapy, from fighting cancer, or brain injuries to from traffic accidents. There have been people who have low energy due to autoimmune disorders, that could be anything from like fibromyalgia or anything else in the autoimmune category. I've seen people who have come in who find that the AI tools help them with their ADHD brain. There's of a lot of ways that the AI tools help these people. Either it helps them to keep them on track, You know, you may be having a chat with ChatGPT about your world building or your characters, and you're really into it because it can go back and forth. You can bounce ideas off of it. It can ask you questions, you can ask it questions, so it can sort of keep you on track. It is great if your brain is kind of scattered and you find that you might be better off to be focused on something. There are people who are using the tools to help them flush out first drafts because sitting at the computer is taxing on their body. They may have spine impactions, shoulder issues, any one of these other like physical problems with actually sitting at a computer for long stretches of time when you would be typing. They can instead move a lot of that time to sitting or lying in bed and using the tools on their phone, or having the time sitting at the computer, instead of being like five hours, it's one hour, and they use the tools to help them quickly write a draft that they can then go and come back to and edit more into their style and into their voice. But it gets out of the way like five hours of sitting at the computer and drills it down to maybe one. So there's a lot of different ways that the tools are helping people with disabilities. It's really, really inspiring to see people who come into the group who have said that they've struggled for years with trying to write their book because they can't sit at the computer, or they only have like 30 minutes a day when they don't have brain fog or they're not extremely tired. Now finally, that time is productive because they're using the AI tool to help them get the words down. It's like made my heart just so full and like bursting watching these people tell us about the stuff that they're getting done. It's incredibly, incredibly inspiring. It's one of these moments where I have no words. Joanna: Yeah, and I am really with you on that. I think this really humanizes it too, and it's an angle we wanted to talk about because it's not really being talked about enough. It's like everyone's talking in the negative way about, oh, well, scammers will do this, and people who want to plagiarize famous authors will do this. And it's like, I'm sorry, that's really not the vast majority of people, let alone authors, and the real authors who want to create the project on their mind in their heart. They're the ones who are struggling. A lot of authors struggle with health issues, whether that's mental health, physical health. And I totally agree with you, I remember seeing one lady in there with sort of, I only have that one hour a day. And of course, it's not just the writing. It's like the other stuff we do, like writing emails. It can help you write emails, it can write your Facebook ads, it can do this other stuff. When I was reading that, I was like, oh, my goodness, that is so right. I had the same after COVID, I could do about one hour a day. It gave me a lot more compassion for people who have chronic fatigue and who have all these problems. Now, I'm fine now, but it gave me an insight into what can happen, and can happen to any of us at any time. I mean, you broke your leg a while back or something. Steph: Yeah. So I broke my leg in 2019 rather badly. I broke like both bones and needed five hours of surgery, and I still have a lot of metal in my leg. I still have chronic pain from that. I feel the time that I had COVID actually destroyed part of my short-term memory. I can't remember things from like one moment to the next, and I'm sure that's only going to get worse. Joanna: I think that might be age! Steph: It definitely got worse after COVID, so I'm gonna play a little bit of it on COVID. But yeah, sometimes you just need some help, and I don't see why you can't use these tools to get you a little further along on your path. Joanna: Exactly. And they are tools. I mean, I've been using the Claude 100K model through poe.com, P-O-E.com for people listening, to really analyze my work, to figure out my tropes, and to write better ads, and to write questions. I mean, it's just amazing what we can do. So let's take it from that other angle, because for me, the biggest use case—I mean, I hate the phrase use case, but it's very tech world, isn't it—but for me, it's almost like the joy of writing and the fun. I don't know if I ever really had fun writing before AI. I now just have so much fun. I'm literally sitting here giggling away. I felt jealous when I hear people who co-write with other humans, and they say, oh, we have so much fun. And I'm like, yeah, I haven't had that before, even though I have co-written and I love my co-writers, but you know, it just wasn't a fun giggly process. Now I literally am giggling away with Claude a lot, and it is fun. So I wanted to point that out to people listening, the positive ways to use this. So what can you say on that [positive] side, as well? Steph: Oh, yeah, I'm having so much fun with these tools as well. There have been times when, you know, it'll come up with a twist I hadn't thought of. It will surprise me with some little bit of dialogue that's really, really funny. You know, like, sometimes Claude could be really funny, and it's great to watch it come up with some things. I hear a lot of criticism of the AI tools that they're built on lots of human language, and human experience, and so it's only ever going to be as creative as humans. Well, I mean, I'm a person, I'm 47 years old, I've had a fairly good life experience so far. I've been to a lot of places, I have a college degree and whatnot. Yet still, I've sat down to brainstorm with ChatGPT once and we were talking about Arthurian legend. So I was talking, I was chatting with ChatGPT about the Arthurian legend, and at one point, I just said, “Well, what are some other long lived legends from other cultures that I could draw on for the story?” And it gave me this epic poem, Orlando Furioso. I had never heard of it before. I was like, what is this? This seems really interesting, and it was really a cool story. So I was like, “Tell me more about this poem. I had never heard of it before.” And ChatGPT told me all about it. Then I went off and I did my own research about the poem because I was looking at it and I thought this would be a really cool backdrop for a story. And so like, I didn't know anything about Orlando Furioso, and all of a sudden, ChatGPT gave me ideas I hadn't thought of before. It really, really, really sent me in an inspired tack, you know, something different to look at. Those kinds of moments happen all the time, right? Those kinds of moments, they can happen with the AI tools, they can happen if you're on Wikipedia and you're clicking on links. I can't tell you how many rabbit holes I've gone down on Wikipedia, just clicking on links and learning about stuff. It's just another way of approaching information, approaching data in a way that is fun and inspiring. I definitely love working with them. It's just so much fun. Every single day, I'm having fun working with these tools. Joanna: Yeah, me too. And in fact, it's almost like I can't wait to get back to it. Which again, I've not really had before. Writing is hard, you know, writing a book is hard, and it's very worthwhile. So yeah, I'm really loving it. What's funny, of course, is people say, oh, but it lies. And we're like, yeah, these hallucinations are actually creativity. Steph: They're great for fiction writers. Joanna: They are really good. Yes, so as you say it's using lots of going backwards and forwards. I think the very nature of the chat interface also changes things because, as you say, it sparks an idea, so you might ask another question. Then what it will come up with will spark something else, and then you'll go off and have a look, and you might come back later. So it's almost like the creative process can go a lot faster, in the same way that it would be with a collaborator. That's kind of how it feels. I mean, obviously, copyright, legal issues, all of these things are concerns, but I have done lots of shows on that already. So we're just gonna skip that because we believe the same thing, and I've covered it before. So people can go back and look at those. One of the other main concerns that we hear is that — Authors are worried that the proliferation of AI tools will mean a bigger flood of books and that discoverability and book marketing is going to become even harder in an already saturated marketplace. How are you feeling about this? And what are your thoughts on this? Steph: Okay, well, I have a few thoughts on this. I definitely think that the market is going to take care of a lot of the books that are coming into Amazon, to any one of the other stores, the market usually takes care of that. So readers find the stuff that they like, they keep buying from those authors, and then those books rise in the ranks and they do really well. Then the stuff that is not so great falls down and it doesn't get discovered. If you want your books to be discovered, I figured there are a couple of different ways you can use AI tools in this regard. You can use them for helping you with social media, you can definitely use them to help you write Facebook posts, if you're still on Twitter, you can still have them help you write some tweets, like series of tweets about your book, or the themes within your book, the characters in your book. You can use the tools for ads, like coming up with ad copy for Facebook or Amazon ads. They can help you really turn out like a lot of ideas very quickly. So it lets you get in there and start testing those ideas quicker than possibly other people who are agonizing over those like 30 words you put in an Amazon ad. So it gives you a chance to like really pump out like a lot of ideas really quickly and then hash through them and get your idea out to market as quickly as possible. Plus, if you are a person who really loves content marketing, like I know you do, Jo, I also have been a blogger since like 2003. So that is definitely since 2003, that's been like 20 years that I've been blogging. I blogged first as a knitter, I had a knitting blog for many, many years. I shut that down at some point, and then when I became an author, I decided to have another blog that I would use also for marketing myself. If you want to write for your blog, or maybe Medium, or you want to do a Substack, any one of these things, you can use AI tools to help you come up with ideas to write about. You can tell it your genre, like let's say you're a cozy mystery author, you could go in and say, “Give me some ideas. I want to write about cozy mysteries. Give me themes within cozy mysteries that people might find appealing, Give me some ideas to write about.” It can help you come up with ideas and help you come up with SEO-optimized posts for your blog, for wherever you want to write. I just feel that being visible to our audience, being out there, being ourselves. You can be human and use AI at the same time. So it can help give you ideas, and then you can put your spin on it as a human to write about those things and get people to come to you. So I find that as long as you're out there, and you're creating content that is applicable to your genre or your brand, that people are going to find you. They're going to enjoy what you're talking about, they're going to enjoy the kinds of things that you write about, and then therefore, you're gonna be in their minds when they go to buy. So I just feel like you can use the AI tools in order to help you come up with these ideas so that you can be more visible to your audience. Joanna: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I'm finding with the Claude 100K (through www.poe.com) I'm kind of analyzing my books, and it's really helping me understand my tropes. For example, I have always said I don't write romance, and what I have found is that most of my books include second-chance romance as part of the subplots. I'm like, this is crazy, because I'm married for the second time, and my second time romance. So like, in my ARKANE thriller series, Morgan Sierra and Jake Timber, the agents, there's this sort of tension where they never get together. Then it's the same in Desecration, and I didn't even know. It was the AI that kind of told me, yeah, these are the tropes in your book. And I was like, oh, my goodness, how did I not even know that? That's hilarious. I'm learning a lot about my own work. I think generative search is going to change things and make search more nuanced. So I have almost given up on any other form of book discovery. So now, say, I'll be in Claude, and I'll be like, “I'm looking for books that are action-adventure thriller with religious elements,” like mine, obviously, “and I want a female protagonist and written by a female author and set in Rome,” and maybe, I don't know, a historical mystery. I'll give it such a long list, and then it will give me some options. Then I will go and I'll say, “Okay, I like this, but I'd like a subplot with this kind of thing.” So I'm actually having a chat to find books. This is not possible at the moment. We're so hamstrung by sort of keywords and categories, and I feel that generative search will mean much more nuanced search in the future. We're not there yet, but I think we're getting there. Steph: I feel like we're so close to just uploading our books to one of the stores and having it take a look at what we've written and then have it do all of its metadata on its own. Wouldn't that be amazing? Joanna: It should have been that. Why can't it not be that? It already has our books. We do upload our books! Steph: Like why can't it just look at it and say, “Oh, I see second-chance romances and religious themes,” and then just optimize your book for the search. I don't understand why that can't happen right now without us having to go in and choose keywords. Joanna: Yes. So I would just encourage people that I really think — Within the next six to twelve months, we're going to see a real change in search, where it's going to become so much more nuanced and granular. All of those of us who have been writing cross-genre books for forever will suddenly find more readers because people want these things, but they can't even search for them right now. So I'm actually very encouraged about discoverability. I'm really hoping that this solves the problems. Steph: You and me both. Joanna: Yeah, exactly. Okay, so just to come back to the other things you're doing. You and some other AI-positive authors have started the Future Fiction Academy, which is fantastic. I mean, even today I sent someone in your direction because they email me and say, “Oh, I really would like some help with how to use these tools.” What is the Future Fiction Academy and how are you helping authors over there? Steph: Okay, so Future Fiction Academy, I started it with a few other people. Our leader is Elizabeth Ann West, and we have a few other people on our team, Christine, and Karen and Leland. Basically, we're all AI positive people. I think that Elizabeth has probably been using them the longest out of all of us, with Christine probably. And we've been using the tools as part of our workflow for a while, and we decided that we wanted to be able to teach other authors to use these tools, but they need to be able to use them now, the way that they are now. So when we started the Future Fiction Academy, we sat down and we thought, how are we going to teach authors how to do this? Because if you try to create like an evergreen course, it's just not going to work. The things we're doing today weren't possible two weeks ago. There were things that we did two to three weeks ago that are completely obsolete now. So if you try to do a course, even like a six-week course, I was thinking even six weeks, like you could get three weeks into the course and something major could happen, and all of a sudden you're scrambling. So we decided, instead, to do lab hours with our students. So our model is built around the fact that we have eight live lab hours in one week. We sit down with our students on Zoom, and we go over the latest tools, we go over how to use those tools to write, we go over how to use those tools to brainstorm and world build and build characters. Then we'll sometimes even just look at something brand new that has come out like that day, and we'll sit down with the students and we'll play with it. We'll figure out the ways that it works. Maybe we see how it breaks, and so we try something different. It is a very sort of like off-the-cuff what we're doing with students. Then we archive all of our labs, and we have them all in Teachable. So if you can't make any of the labs, you can go and watch something from the week, and you can learn something new. So we decided to try this different platform for teaching because we need to be on the cutting edge all the time. We can't miss something. So we have about 100 students now, which is really great. They're coming to labs, we're all learning together, we have a Discord server where we talk a lot about like what we're working on, what we've come across, new tools we've seen. It's very cutting-edge, we're on the cusp of everything that's happening. It's been so much fun. It's kind of exhausting sometimes too. We'll get to the end of the week sometimes, and we'll meet just the five of us, the founders, and we'll look at each other and we're like, oh my god, I'm exhausted. It was such a week in AI. Like some new thing will come out. When Claude 2.0 came out, we were exhausted by the end of that week because we were teaching classes, and we were talking to people about it, and we were doing interviews, and all of a sudden the week was over, and I was like in bed, just horizontal, I couldn't do it anymore. So the Future Fiction Academy, we're just trying to make sure that we're staying ahead of the technology. We're teaching authors the ways to use AI tools in ethical ways. We're making sure that people are using the tools in an ethical fashion so that they feel that they are doing things the right way. It's been so much fun. I'm hoping that we will just keep going, and going, and going, and learning these new tools. I can't wait. Joanna: Yeah, and again, this is exactly the right thing. I mean, I have an AI course that went with my book from 2020 about this, and that was really more principles of how a lot of these things work and thinking about bias and thinking about ethics and all of that kind of thing. But what you're doing is the actual showing people the nuts and bolts, and you're exactly right, that you have to do kinda these live labs. Also you mentioned play, the word play. This is the word that I think is so important. I feel like authors—like, okay, let's say uploading a book to Amazon KDP, there is a way to do it, and it's exactly the same, and let's face it, it's been the same for pretty long time. So you can do a video on how to do that, and it will sit there. But exactly as you say, I mean, you log on to something and it has just changed. Like when I logged on to Poe, it's got the new Llama model, it's got some of the other models—I was like, oh, I wonder whether I should try this—and the 100K model just popped in and all this stuff. I think this is the attitude, it has to be playing with it. But of course, a lot of people aren't confident enough. So I really appreciate what you're doing. So yeah, I'm very much sending people to you at Future Fiction Academy. So tell us— Where can people find you, Steph, and also any other AI resources, the Facebook group and that kind of thing? Steph: Okay, great. So I'm Stephanie Pajonas. I write as SJ Pajonas, and I'm online at SPajonas.com. And then Future Fiction Academy is also online, you can find our website, which I also built, I love building websites still to this day, so that's at FutureFictionAcademy.com. We have information there about our labs, any upcoming stuff, any upcoming events we'll be doing, including we have a new free course, actually, on generative AI. It's all about the basics of generative AI and how it works, where all the information comes from. So it just gives people the basics. I feel like the basics are pretty easy and evergreen at this point, so we decided to have a free course on that to help people understand all of that. Then the Facebook group is AI Writing for Authors, and if you put that into Facebook, you should find it. Right now, I'm making sure that everybody who comes into the group is a writer. So if you apply to the group, and there was absolutely nothing on your profile that tells me that you're a writer, please just message me and let me know, please, because I definitely deny a lot of people who either don't answer the questions, or don't agree to the rules before they come in. But if they're not an author, then I kind of wonder what they're doing there. But they could have a pen name, or they don't do anything on their main profile, and that's totally fine. You just need to message me and let me know. There are plenty of people I also denied. I try to keep those people at bay so that they're not just coming in and spamming and selling stuff to our group because, I mean, our group on Facebook is very AI-positive. I try to keep the atmosphere in the group fairly positive and welcoming. This way people can come and they can feel secure there. So definitely come check us out. Let me know if there's nothing on your profile that tells me that you're a writer of some kind, you don't even need to be published, it's fine. I just want to make sure that you're a writer, so you're coming in and wanting to learn the tools. So those are the major places you can find me. Joanna: That's fantastic. I check Facebook far more often because I learn from people in the AI Writing for Authors group, and I know some people who have actually come back to Facebook in order to be part of it. I mean, they left and then they're like, oh, no, this is too good to miss. So yeah, you've done a fantastic job, and you, and Elizabeth, and the team there. I think we're only just beginning on this interesting journey. So thanks for all you do, Steph. I really appreciated your time. Steph: Thank you for having me, Joanna. This has been great.The post How AI Tools Are Useful For Writers With Disabilities And Health Issues With S.J. Pajonas first appeared on The Creative Penn.

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The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

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