The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

How can you shift your mindset in order to reach more readers with your books? How can you leverage the tools available for authors to sell more copies? Ricci Wolman from Written Word Media gives her tips. In the intro, The Hotsheet useful newsletter; Book publishing is broken; In the US, the Federal Trade Commission is about to launch the antitrust lawsuit against Amazon [Politico] and a thought experiment; The Authors Guild trains authors on AI tools, and so does the IPG, and so does Publishers Weekly. Google rolls AI writing into Docs and Gmail. JFPennBooks.com is live — use discount coupon LAUNCH for 15% off all books in all formats until the end of August 2023. Catacomb is available on my store and also everywhere else. Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, where you can get free ebook formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Get your free Author Marketing Guide at draft2digital.com/penn Ricci Wolman is the founder and CEO of Written Word Media, a marketing platform that empowers authors to market and sell their books. Ricci has been in the self-publishing space for nearly a decade. She holds an MBA from Harvard, and is passionate about using her marketing powers for good. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Creating a positive attitude towards marketing Separating ourselves from our art to become business-minded What Written Word Media offers authors and readers Ad stacking — what it is and why it's so successful Price differences when marketing different genres The many aspects that make up the marketing ecosystem The future of selling direct while utilizing promo services You can find Ricci at WrittenWordMedia.com and you can use my affiliate link here if you fancy checking out the Membership while supporting the show. Transcript of Interview with Ricci Wolman Joanna: Ricci Wolman is the founder and CEO of Written Word Media, a marketing platform that empowers authors to market and sell their books. Ricci has been in the self-publishing space for nearly a decade. She holds an MBA from Harvard, and is passionate about using her marketing powers for good. So welcome back to the show, Ricci. Ricci: Thanks, Joanna. So nice to be here. Joanna: Oh, yes. So I wanted to take you back a little bit. You started out in banking and then moved into corporate marketing. Tell us a bit more about why you wanted to start your own company, and why in the author space? Because frankly, there are more profitable businesses. Why do you care about books and marketing? Ricci: Yeah, absolutely. So I would say the entrepreneurial thing came first. I always knew I wanted to start and run my own company, it was just a matter of when and how. So that had always been in the back of my mind, even as I was going through my different corporate jobs. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to do that within the books and book marketing space, due to really just luck in a personal story, which is that my mom was self-publishing a book. This is all the way back in 2009/10 ish, when self-publishing was fairly new. And being the tech-savvy daughter in the family, I was helping her get her files uploaded and learn how the KDP platform worked.  My background was in marketing, as you alluded to, and so through the process of helping her publish her book, it became very clear to me that there was a lack of resources for authors when it came to marketing their books. That's how Freebooksy was born, which was our very first promo site. It really just started, honestly, as a Facebook group. And that has now grown to the Written Word Media platform. So it's been a wonderful journey. I myself am an avid reader. I'm a big believer in books. So it's a confluence of events and a lot of luck that brought me to an entrepreneurial trajectory within the books and self-publishing space. Joanna: And certainly, I jumped on board with Freebooksy really early on, and over the years, we've become friends. I was just listening to you there, and I've known you for so long that I'm used to your accent, but just— Tell people a bit about your background and what your accent is, in case they don't realize. Yes, absolutely. Well, right now, at this point in my life, it's very blended. But it started out as a full-blown native South African accent. That is where I was born and raised, from Johannesburg. I lived there all the way through my initial schooling. I came to the States when I was 17 for college, and this is home now. It's quite a crazy thing, and now I've spent more of my life and time in the States than I had in South Africa. Some of that time was in New York and Boston, now I actually live down south in North Carolina. So it's a blended South African/American with a little touch of southern in it, if people are trying to place it. Joanna: I love your accent! Let's take it up to the level of marketing in general, because many authors struggle. It probably is, apart from actually writing the book, which is one struggle, many writers also struggle with marketing. I feel like there still is this feeling of, “if my book is good enough, then readers will just find it, that somehow quality will out.” I feel like that's almost a defeatist attitude. How can authors reframe marketing to be more of a positive choice, something even creative and worth investing in? Ricci: Yeah, and I wish that were true, that a book that's fantastic and good enough would somehow rise to the top without any marketing. That is not true, and it's not true of really any product or service or idea, really, that's out there in the world. Even some of the most amazing ideas need some marketing behind them so that they can reach a critical mass of people to make an impact. Ricci: The first thing I would say is for authors to understand that this is true for everything across the board, to not take it personally. It's not necessarily just around books in the book industry, this is just the way that it is. It does take some effort to get a spotlight and put some attention on your work. The other thing I would say is that there's a mind shift that needs to happen. And as somebody who owns my own business, I've struggled with this as well. When I first started Freebooksy and Written Word Media, I felt a little cringy about marketing. I think that's part of it for authors as well. It's like, well, I'm not a salesperson, I'm a writer. And for me, it was like, I'm not a salesperson, I'm just trying to offer a service that helps authors. So how do you reframe that from being, hey, I'm pushing or trying to sell, to something that's more positive? And the truth is, is that — The book that you have written is going to bring a lot of joy to the readers who are the right fit for it, and I think that's where it would be helpful for authors to focus. Instead of thinking about marketing as, hey, I'm trying to sell more of my books, think about marketing as a way to reach more people and impact more lives, and that the people are out there waiting to read your book, but they don't know about it. You're actually doing a service to them by helping them discover the book that you have written. That's on the mind shift piece of it. The first element is you have to get comfortable psychologically with selling and marketing your book. Then the second piece is, okay, now that you're comfortable, what channels and tactics do you choose in order to get your message out there? Joanna: Yeah, we'll come back on that. It's interesting, you mentioned there that marketing has to be done, and it's true for any product, any service, any idea. I feel like this is something that authors struggle with, because on the one hand, we feel like we're artists and creatives, so we don't want to think that our book is the same as any other product. Like you said, it's a mind shift, which I completely get, but it's almost like— How do we separate ourselves from the art to become a business person? Ricci: Yeah, I understand that perspective, and it is challenging, but you can even look at some of the artists within other mediums. Painters have art shows, right. They get galleries to pick them up, and they have art shows, and people go to those art shows to see the work. So in every realm of creativity, there is an element of marketing. Otherwise, people would be creating wonderful works, whether that be art or fiction, and it would be sitting in a room at home or sitting in a drawer in your desk. So it does feel maybe not a natural place to go, but I think trying to zoom out and understand that it is part and parcel of being an artist is also showing your work might help authors feel differently about it. Joanna: Yes, I mean, for me, people often ask how I balance my time. What I tend to say is — In the mornings, I do creative work, and in the afternoons, I do marketing and business. I just call it business, which is everything to do with marketing, getting it out there, and accounting and all of these things, interviews like this, and other stuff like that. So I almost divide my time into two, and that helps me almost divide my head into two, around how I need to separate the artist and the business person. Ricci: Absolutely, and I think for each author, it's going to be different. It's a spectrum, right. You can spend 100% of your time writing, and if that's all you want to do, that's okay, but then you need to hire somebody to wear the business hat and do the marketing. Or you might be an author who, like yourself, Joanna, is fine with the 50/50. Or you might be somebody who the marketing comes very naturally to you, and you actually love it, and so you want someone to spend 75% of your time on the marketing, and only 25% of your time on the writing. So I do think it's a personal choice, and it's very specific to each author, and their personality, and what they feel called to. Joanna: So you talk there about hiring someone, and of course, that's one of the things we do with Freebooksy, Bargain Booksy, and what Written Word Media does is essentially we're paying for marketing services. You were last on the show in 2015, which is kind of crazy. I didn't realize it been so long. Ricci: Me neither. Joanna: I know, it's crazy. Time flies. Written Word Media has moved on a lot since you were last on the show in 2015. So if people only know Freebooksy and/or Bargain Booksy, why don't you tell us like— What is going on at Written Word Media? What can authors and readers find? Ricci: Yeah, so we have grown and evolved a lot since 2015. And what I'm going to share with you is the metaphor that we share internally about what our vision for the platform is and how we're building that out. So if you think about where we started and when we chatted in 2015, we had a few promo sites, Freebooksy, Bargain Booksy, and probably Red Feather Romance were the most known or the ones that were around at that time. The promo sites are just a super effective way to market your book in a time-efficient manner. So what we do is we go out there and we aggregate groups of readers, and then we put your book in front of readers that are most likely to purchase or download the book. So very similar to Book Bub, we just happen to have a family of brands that do that, we don't have one single brand like Book Bub.  The way to think about that is we had one really successful ride — promo sites — that work well for authors and authors really enjoyed riding. And over time authors have come to us and said, hey, I need help with other types of things. So what our vision is we want to build out this theme park for authors that has a lot of really fun marketing rides. The key point here is fun. I know marketing is stressful and daunting for so many authors, and so what we're trying to do is take that piece away and bring the joy back to it. So everything that we do, every product that we launch, has that in mind. How can we make this easy and fun for authors? So we have, if you think about a theme park, we have our promo sites as part of it, where we have Freebooksy, Bargain Booksy, Red Feather, we have Audio Thicket, we have NewInBooks, and we're actually starting to bring on partners. We now have Hello Books and Fussy Librarian. So we have this really robust corner of the park that's all around promo sites, and if you just want to run a promo in one of those newsletters, there it is, easy peasy. We've also built out a section of the park called Reader Reach. This is all around Facebook and Amazon ads. So if you want someone else to run your Facebook ads, your Amazon ads, you would come to Reader Reach side of the park. One of the things that we really love about that product is that we do everything for you. So the creative, the ad copy, the targeting, and we're able to leverage a lot of the audiences that we have and the data we have to actually be more effective at running some of those ads, then maybe an author could do on their own.  Over time, what we're hoping to do is to continue adding different rides, different areas of the park, that authors need and are going to find fun and exciting. So if you want to come into the park, you can walk right in and go to any section of the park, jump on the ride. We also do have the equivalent of a VIP pass, which is our membership program. So you can sign up to be a gold or platinum member. (affiliate link) With that program, that gives you preferential access to some of the rides, it gives you access to rides that we're testing, so any kind of beta products that we have, it gives you access to a bunch of discounts for other vendors in the space. So you can picture that as there's a Reedsy (affiliate link) kiosk, and if you want to use Reedsy, they're going to give you a coupon because you're using Reedsy because you came in through the park. Then you also get discounts on every ride that you ride, to the point that if you use your membership well, you actually make back a return on your investment. So if you buy gold membership for $125, and you ride enough rides, you actually get $250 back in value. So that's a way for us to say thank you to authors that really want to stay in the park and ride everything. It's also a way for authors to say, hey, I love what you're doing, I'm happy to pay an annual fee. Then we're taking that and reinvesting it in building a bunch of new rides for the future. So that's the vision, which is very different from when we chatted in 2015. So the last thing I'll say about the rides is that there's one experience that we have built very recently, and that's the promo stacking experience. I'd love to talk about promo stacking in more detail, but — One of the most effective marketing techniques is for authors to have a concerted marketing strategy around a price drop or a discount. So instead of just running Freebooksy, you run multiple promo sites. That tends to be quite time-consuming and arduous to organize, and so one of the experiences we've put together is promo stacking bundles. So you can walk right to that section of the park that's all around promos, and tell us, “Hey, I'm going to run a five day promo,” and we'll put all the elements together for you. So we're super excited about that experience. It's the first time we've done something like that. So far, the reception by authors has been very resoundingly positive. Joanna: Lots to unpack there. I love the theme park. I think it's hilarious, actually. I mean, I think it's great that you're so enthusiastic and your team is so enthusiastic about marketing that you've made it a theme park. I think for most authors, it's like marketing is not fun, but if you can make it more fun, then I think that's a great selling point.  I mean, the ad stacking, in particular, I think is interesting, and I joined the membership just a few months ago. One of the things I like, and we'll come back on ad stacking, one of the things I like is almost the reminder to myself. You do get emails, so if you run a Freebooksy or a Bargain Booksy, or one of the rides, you'll get an email which says, “It's been 90 days since you last ran an ad. Do you want to do another one?” And I actually find that really simple thing very useful because time just flies, and I'm like, okay, it's time to reschedule, which I think is great. I was going to ask you, because I think other people might be thinking it— If you run something every 90 days, how do we guarantee that there are new readers? How are you refreshing your readers on that side of things? Ricci: Yeah, that's a great question. So for us, marketing is fun. I think you've hit the nail on the head there, in terms of, we think theme park, we think fun. This is what we do day in and day out, and everybody's really excited about marketing. What we do consistently, day in and day out, is continue to build our reader audience. So, much of the membership fees and what you're paying for promos gets reinvested into marketing to build up the lists. The reason that we recommend waiting 90 days, or at least 60, is we want to make sure that we have enough new readers on there so that you're going to see great performance every time you promote with us.  So I'm not going to share our secret sauce of how we get those readers, but what I can tell you is that we are adding tens of thousands of new readers every month. We literally track it on a weekly basis how many new readers are added to every single promo site, to make sure that we're hitting our targets. We have a slew of different marketing channels and a team that is focused on doing that every day. Joanna: And then I guess the other question, because this is a global show— Is this primarily US-focused? Or what can people expect around the international side? Yeah, so the homegrown Written Word Media sites are primarily US-focused, but we have been candidly lacking in terms of an international audience, and that's where this partnership with Hello Books comes in that we're super excited about. So about a month ago, we announced that we have the strategic partnership with Hello Books. Hello Books is now a ride inside of the Written Word Media park. We are actually managing all of the kind of back end, we're running the ride for Hello Books.  Ricci: Hello Books has a much more diverse audience. There are, of course, US readers, but there are a lot more readers from the UK, Canada, Australia. It has international reach. So the goal is to continue to grow that audience with a focus on the international readers so that we can provide full-service marketing for authors who want to reach all audiences, not just a US audience. Joanna: And then still drilling down into what's available, people write different genres, and each of these offerings is genre specific. What have you found are the best-performing genres? How are they broken down? Ricci: Yeah, so the way that we think about it is, we don't play favorites with genres, but there is a natural demand curve when it comes to genres. So romance, mystery, fantasy, sci-fi, those are all very popular genres. So the audiences that we are able to build there tend to be very large, and so when you go into buy a promo, you'll see that the pricing for a promo for those genres are going to be more expensive. They're only more expensive because you can get back that return because the audience is so large. Ricci: Then there are other genres which are just as valuable, but tend to maybe be less popular in terms of the general audience, like literary fiction, or children’s, or LGBTQ. So we also build out those audiences, but when you go into purchase a promo, those will be cheaper. So let's say you spend $30 on a promo for lit fic on Bargain Booksy, the expectation is you will make that back in sales. Because the audience is so much bigger on mystery, if you spend $80 on mystery, you'll make that back in sales. So we're actually able to configure our pricing to make sure that no matter what genre you're publishing in, you are going to get a return, but there is of course disparity in the number of readers who are interested in each particular genre. Joanna: What about non-fiction? Ricci: Yeah, non-fiction, I would say, is squarely in the middle. In terms of audience, non-fiction is trickier because there's so many sub genres within non-fiction. So calling non-fiction one genre is a little anathema because within that you might have biography and memoir, there's self-help and how-to, there's cookbooks, there's history. What we've done is try to break down non-fiction into the top three or four sub-genres of non-fiction, and then we go and build those reader lists on those specific interests and, as well, price it up accordingly. I will say, non-fiction, especially business, is probably the one genre where there is so much more author supply than demand. So there are a lot of books being written in that genre, but there's not as much demand from readers. Not because readers aren't interested, but just because there's so much to choose from. So if you're interested in reading business books, maybe you read one a month, but there are probably thousands out there that you could be reading. So we do find that to be kind of the most mismatched genre in terms of supply and demand. Joanna: That's interesting because as a non-fiction reader, I'm quite different to a fiction reader. And Written Word Media specializes in digital, but with non-fiction a lot of people read in print, or even hardback, and also, I think pay top price rather than necessarily looking at promo sites. So I think it's just a totally different market, although personally, I'd like to do more non-fiction promotions. I feel like the market is quite different to the voracious fiction eBook reading market. Ricci: That's correct, and what happens in non-fiction is you tend to get these breakout books, and then they stay on the charts for much, much longer. This is a trad book, but I think Atomic Habits has been on the top charts of non-fiction for years now. And it's like, there are lots of other really amazing books around habit building and productivity, yet, James has a kind of a lock on that market. So the non-fiction tends to have more of this momentum somehow, where it's really harder to knock some of the kings and queens off of their pedestals there. So it's more competitive somehow. Joanna: Yeah, just different. Let's come back to the ad stacking. Back in 2014, I can't believe it so long, I was part of the Deadly Dozen, twelve thriller writers organized by Diane Capri, a fantastic author, and we hit the New York Times list and the USA Today list. And we used essentially, the ad stacking design, which as you mentioned is sort of multiple promotions on different days during the week of measurement of the bestseller list.  It's so interesting because almost a decade later, ad stacking is still a good idea. So maybe you could explain a bit more about what it is. And I guess since this is about marketing in general— What are some of the other sites that authors might put together or some of the other things they might do if they wanted to make a run on a bestseller list? Now the USA Today is back, by the way. Ricci: Yes. I saw that. Yes. Thank goodness, we need as many bestseller lists as possible. So I was glad to see that. Yeah, your dirty dozen promotion. Joanna: Deadly Dozen. Ricci: Sorry, Deadly Dozen, of course. Your Deadly Dozen promotion was super successful because I think you all, I think it was 12 authors, did such a fantastic job of executing on promo stacking. Another kind of analogy that I try to use when educating authors about this is to think about the last time you were maybe sitting in a symphony hall or going to see a Broadway show, and you're sitting in the audience and the orchestra down front, they start tuning just before the show. So you might hear a cello or violin, and you hear it and you kind of look up for a minute, and then you go back to talking to the person next to you. Maybe a drumbeat goes, you look up for a minute, then you go back to the person sitting next to you. But then when the whole orchestra starts together, that first note, everybody looks up and a hush falls on the audience. And that, to me, is what promo stacking is. If you promote on just one site, you are going to have a small impact. You're going to get some people who look up and say, okay, there's that book, that's interesting. But if you have this concerted effort that all happens together, you get this burst of activity that grabs everyone's attention, so that the promotions themselves actually give you results that are greater than the sum of its parts. Having each one of the instruments and the orchestra playing together is so much more powerful.  So that's why, we're just the beginning stages of this, but we're really going to be trying to build out as many different promo stacking options as possible for authors that we have found to be successful. The promo stacking, generally, authors are choosing between three or five day runs. The reason that it's kind of maxed out at five is just because of the price drops through KDP. If you're actually using KDP Select and their price drops, five is the maximum that you can drop your price. So it's not necessarily that five days is optimal, but it's just kind of where the industry standard has come to.  What we found to be most effective is you want to email, email, email. So email your own list, use promo sites, as many as possible to get your book out via email to readers, doing any kind of email list swaps with other authors that you're friendly with. Then what we also like to do is put a baseline Facebook ads campaign, like a five day Facebook ads campaign that runs over the whole five days to give you some foundational sales which smooths out some of the highs and lows that can come from the different emails. So if you were to go to the site today, and you go to our promo stacking interface, what you'll see are some three and five day promo stacks. We've already put those elements together for you. The Facebook ads, plus say, a Bargain Booksy, and Hello Books, and an eReaderIQ. Or if you're doing a free book, it's Facebook ads, a Freebooksy promo, a Fussy Librarian promo, and maybe one other thing. So the goal is that we'll continue to expand the different elements that can be incorporated into those promo stacks, but we already have some really compelling ones out there. The last thing I'll say on that is the thing that I'm most excited about is, I have done promo stacking before, as I said, my mom has books. So I have gone to every different site and set these promo stacks up, and it takes hours. It takes hours of coordination, I have a spreadsheet, I'm figuring out my dates, I'm going to each site, I have to put my payment method in every time. Some of the sites don't confirm until a few days later, so you think you've got your stack set up, and then they write you back and say, sorry, that day is not available. Then you have to kind of reformulate everything. The reason that we've picked this as one of the first places to go for experiences is because it is so painful, and it is so time-consuming. And we've structured it to take all that pain out. So you come to us, we're booking on all the sites, the minute you book, it's guaranteed those dates are set, you check out once. Something that used to take maybe 8 to 10 hours, now can literally take five minutes. I'm a big productivity person, always looking for shortcuts, and so this promo stacking tool that we have is the ultimate shortcut for authors. Joanna: Yeah, it is fantastic. What I do want to say, though, it's obviously not free. It is a product that people are paying for, this service. So I think maybe we should talk about what it is good for. For example, a brand new author, their first book, no reviews, possibly not the way to make their money back, although of course, you do have NewInBooks as one of the sites. What would be your best recommendation for booking these types of spike marketing campaigns with the ad stacking? In order that people can see the sell-through and can at least hopefully make their money back? Ricci: Yeah, and our goal is always for authors to get that return back. So we're always monitoring results and setting our pricing accordingly. So your question is a really good one, and it depends is the answer. It depends on where you are in your author journey and what your goals are. So if we're starting with somebody who has a newly published titled, and you're trying to build reviews, and you're trying to sell some copies of the book, get some traction. The other element here is you do have to educate the algorithms, Amazon being the most important one, but slowly but surely Apple and Google, this is on eBooks specifically, are starting to take a little bit of share. For that type of title, I would recommend a free run.  For a free run, you don't actually have to do it for that long. You could do a one-day or a three-day free run where you set your book to free. And what'll happen is you'll do a promo stack, you'll see a spike in downloads, and if you're in KU, which most of the time you will be if you're doing a free day, you actually get paid out on any reads that you get even when your book is free. I really love that element of it for authors who are exclusive, or at least exclusive when they first launch the book, and then maybe you pull the book out after. So free is good. It also generates a ton of reviews, and it teaches Amazon very quickly who the right readers are for you. When we talked about that symphony, you're trying to get the attention of readers, but you're also very much trying to get the attention of the retailer where your book is being sold, and that's one way to do it. Once you get the attention of the retailer, once the algorithm figures out, hey, this is a book that has traction, this is who the audience is, it will start doing some marketing on your behalf. It starts to show it in books you might like, it starts to send emails to readers, including that title. So you know, free for a newly published title tends to be very powerful. Free is also very powerful if you have a series. And if you put book one as free, it really helps your read-through. So you see a lift in sales of all the other titles in your series, so we love that. If you're looking for just a straight return, where you have a title that's kind of the baseline sales are a little lower than you'd like, that's when doing a 99 cent or $1.99 promo over a five day period would really help you to climb the charts again, spur some activity, get this halo effect going for increased visibility. Then after the promo, you should be at a higher baseline level of sales than you were before. Joanna: Yeah, I think the main point is you've got to know what you want to achieve, and then do your promotions around that. So we're certainly not saying just jump in and pick something, you really have to think about your marketing strategy. Then of course, it's a regular event. So I'm always building my own email list, but I also use various Written Word Media campaigns to do little spike campaigns through the year. So I guess that's the reality of the author life, is these things happen month in month out. Whether it's ongoing marketing, ads, spike marketing, content marketing, like we're doing here— There are just lots of things that make up that marketing ecosystem. Ricci: Absolutely, and I think sometimes, especially if you're getting started, or even if you've been doing this for a really long time, you can be a little unsure of what the best strategy is. We would be happy to help with that. We have a team of experts who are looking at this all the time for different authors. So if you were just to write into us, there's no charge for this, and you can say, “Hey, here's my book, these are my goals.” We do this all the time, so we would tell you, “Hey, here's some suggestions on some marketing tactics that might work.” So info@writtenwordmedia.com, you write in, or you're right on our Facebook page, we'll help with that. Joanna: That's great. I appreciate that. I hope some people take you up on that. That'd be great. I do want to ask you because, of course, I've been wide from the start. I mean, I've been doing this since before there was KU, like your mum. I mean, there was no KU back in 2009/2010 when your mum started, or 2008 when I started. So one of the trends that I'm part of, and many authors are doing now, is selling direct. It's become more and more of a thing over the last few years. I've got my Shopify stores, I've got two now. So I wondered how that might work in terms of Written Word Media in the future. Can we have our theme park marketing services with selling direct, as well as all the big retailers? Ricci: Yeah, absolutely. We're very excited about this trend for authors selling direct and taking ownership as much of the customer experience, you know, reader funnel as possible. I'll come back to direct links in a minute, but the first thing we tell every author is build your email list. Like having your own email list, it's the best asset that you can build, and the sooner you start building it, the more successful you're going to be because the quicker it's going to grow. Putting a link to sign up to your mailing list in the back matter of every single one of your titles, that's the first thing you should do. That's also where you get a ton of value from running promos because as people read that book, they then come on and they sign on to your list. Once you have a list, you can then direct people to your store. We tried this actually, we were very excited about allowing our readers to go directly to author stores. So we rolled this out earlier this year, and we had some authors try it out, and what we found is that the website experience does need to be robust for this to work. So I think, Joanna, I've seen your stores, like they're fantastic, right? There's a great reader experience, you go on, it's easy to navigate, you can check out easily. It's on Shopify, it's a tech site that makes all of this very easy. That's the dream. We're finally at a point where the technology is there, and the readers are actually willing to check out on a place other than Amazon or their top five websites because they already have an account with Shopify and they get that nifty little number to put in, or their credit card information is already stored in their browser. So we're at a point where those two things have actually finally come together, which they had not been that way in the past. The final piece of the puzzle, though, is that authors need to be thinking about the reader experience and making sure that it's seamless. I think a lot of authors think about their experience. They're like, I'm excited to sell my book, I can make more money, so I'm going to throw my book up on here. And they expect readers to convert the same way that they would on Apple or Amazon or Google. But the reason that all those sites take 30% is because they spend so much time on the user experience and increasing that conversion. So if you're going to be taking more of the profit, you do need to be spending some time on the experience. So what we ended up doing is we actually rolled this feature back because our readers were complaining that when they got to the author's website, it was too difficult to check out. They thought they bought a book, but then they're like, I don't know where my book is, I never received delivery of it. So this is something that's on our list to see how we can help authors get their websites to a point where we could then open it up again, where we could send the readers that we do have directly to their websites so that those purchases could happen there. Joanna: Yes, and I mean, obviously, you've been going now for a long time, and hopefully the business will carry on. I see this as really the beginning of perhaps the next 15 years of indie, where there will be a rise in all these stores. But I completely get the technical side of things, when you're building something as you are, it all has to work. So yes, interesting times, but good to hear that you're looking to do that in the future. Is there anything else that you see in terms of trends and things for authors on the horizon, or anything else you wanted to point us to? Ricci: Yeah, I mean, obviously, AI is the big thing. There's a lot of buzz around that and how that's going to impact publishing. We have an optimistic view of AI. We see it as a productivity tool that can help authors write more quickly, and that can potentially help authors save money by having some of the first pass edits have their titles complete. I do think it remains to be seen what the impact is going to be, and there is some concern around flooding of the marketplace with AI titles. So I think that's a trend, you know, I don't have any solutions or big insights around that, but that's definitely a trend and something we're monitoring really closely on our end.  Then yeah, just echoing what you said about authors really taking ownership of their businesses, the trend towards owning all aspects of your business and not being as reliant on the third party platforms. I do think they will always have a place, those third-party platforms. The way that we think about it is, as an author, just like any business, you need to have diversified sources of revenue. So the more you can have, the better off you're going to be. You just don't want to be dependent on one, but it's not like any of them are good or bad. You know, it's agnostic. You just want to have as many as possible to de-risk your business, because that's what authors are, they're businesses. Whether they be micro businesses or macro businesses, they are businesses at the end of the day. Joanna: Fantastic. Where can people find Written Word Media online? Ricci: Yeah, you can just come to WrittenWordMedia.com. That is the jumping off point for anything that you would need. We do have a really great blog. We have just a fantastic team of people here at Written Word Media who, as you can hear, are very passionate about authors and marketing and all things publishing, so you could check out that blog. That's also where you can learn more about our products and services and membership. And like I said, if you have questions or if you want help around marketing strategy, shoot us a line at info@writtenwordmedia.com, and we will be happy to chat with you. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Ricci. That was great. Ricci: Thanks, Jo. Wonderful to be here again.The post The Marketing Mind Shift And The Power Of Ad Stacking With Ricci Wolman first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you write fast but also make your creative process sustainable for the long term? How can you collaborate effectively with other authors in your genre? Dan Willcocks talks about his creative and business approach. In the intro, Draft2Digital acquires SelfPubBookCovers; Different types of creative energy [Self Publishing Advice]; Twitter becomes X [The Verge]; TikTok text posts [The Verge]; What AI can help you do in 30 mins [Ethan Mollick]; Discovery Writing with ChatGPT by J. Thorn; Claude 100K model on Poe.com; Facebook AI Writing for Authors. Please join my shadow survey for my next book: www.jfpenn.com/shadowsurvey. Plus Catacomb is available now! Walker Kane didn't believe in monsters … Until they came for his daughter. Buy now on my new store, www.JFPennBooks.com – use discount coupon LAUNCH for 15% off. Today's show is sponsored by Ingram Spark, which I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 40,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries, and more. It's your content—do more with it through IngramSpark.com. Daniel Willcocks is the international bestselling author of over 60 books, including horror, sci-fi, and nonfiction. He's also an award-winning podcaster, author coach and speaker, and runs the Activated Author community. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Tips for being a prolific writer Reasons why authors write darker books Scheduling separate times for writing different genres Creating a successful co-writing relationship What is a series of standalone? How to manage your time when you juggle multiple projects Optimizing your strengths to best run an author business Ambition and working to reach long-term goals You can find Dan at DanielWillcocks.com, join his author community at ActivatedAuthors.com, and listen to his horror podcast at TheOtherStories.net Transcript of Interview with Daniel Willcocks Joanna: Daniel Willcocks is the international bestselling author of over 60 books, including horror, sci-fi and nonfiction. He's also an award-winning podcaster, author coach and speaker, and runs the Activated Author community. So welcome to the show, Dan. Dan: Thank you so much for having me. I am incredibly excited to be here. Before we start, I will say that this is a big moment for me because I've been listening to you since I started my author journey in 2014. So I'm glad we finally got here. Joanna: Ah, 2014. It seems so long ago now. But fantastic, so you're almost a decade and you've done a lot. It's very exciting. But first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Dan: I've always been interested in reading. Writing was never something that I kind of foresaw as a career because I never thought it was achievable to become a writer. It just wasn't a thing that was on my radar, but I've always studied English, I did some writing and things throughout university. It wasn't until the Christmas of 2013/2014 that I was gifted from a Secret Santa, a book of Stephen King short stories. And I was reading through these, and at the time I was a nonfiction proofreader and copy editor, sorting out other people's work, and I was reading these stories just going like these are—like I didn't understand the medium of short stories very well, and obviously, if you're going to start anywhere, start with Stephen King. This collection, each story was so individual, and unique, and in depth for such a short amount of time. I kind of just started putting fingers to keyboard, and around early 2014, I then discovered KDP. I had an old stage play that I'd written for university that got nominated to go to the Edinburgh Fringe. I thought, oh, let's experiment and see if I can turn this into a book. I had no expectations of what that would look like. A couple of weeks later, I ended up with this book in my lap. Then I started thinking, well, if I can do this, well, maybe I can write a short story. And I ended up writing a novella called Sins of Smoke, that I ended up publishing in October of 2015. That went to number one in the horror charts. That whole experience of just putting stuff out there, I was like, this is fun. I just want a book that's on the shelf for me. It kind of ignited a bit of a flame, and it was very quickly after that that I started collaborating with people, founded Hawk & Cleaver. It just kind of accelerated from there. Joanna: Give us a little bit of an update in terms of where you are now because it's a long way to go from a stage play that turned into a novella, and 60 books across multiple sub genres. So tell us— How did you transition into writing so many books, and podcasting, and everything you do now? Because it doesn't just go from, oh, I wrote a novella and it hit number one in the charts, and now I'm full time and everything's all good. Dan: Yeah, well, everything that ends up big starts incrementally. So after that first book was launched, I ended up reaching out to another indie author who wrote a dark sci fi book. It turned out that he was joining forces with two other authors, Ben Arrington, Luke Kondor, and they’re very chatty with a guy called Matt Butcher. They were starting with Hawk & Cleaver. We jumped on a Zoom call during Christmas 2015, and we were like, you know what —  We love writing the same similar things. Maybe we can do this together, help promote each other, and do it all under this unified brand. I suggested that we create an e-magazine, we each write a 1000-word short story once a month, create an e-magazine, and we can publish on Kindle because I knew how to do that. Then that could be a way to build up a bit of an audience while we were all writing other things.  Luke Kondor had a bit of a background in podcasting and suggested we made it a podcast. So we started writing this podcast, we got narrators in, Luke did a lot of the original editing. And that podcast became The Other Stories, which launched in 2016, and now has hit 10 million plus downloads over the past sort of seven years.  Along the way, I was working a full-time job until 2019. I developed a practice of writing every morning, of putting out content, of just making it a priority for me to do alongside the rest of my life. So every morning, I would get up and I'd write those words. And, as I said, incrementally over time, I ended up publishing one book that turned into two, I then collaborated with Michael Anderle in his Kurtherian Gambit universe and wrote five book series in that universe. I then went on to do three years of ghostwriting. In 2020, I wrote 26 books in a single year. So like, it all comes back to those humble beginnings. In the beginning, I was writing 200 words a day, ish, like every other day. Then I just got so absorbed in it and really kind of did a lot of self-development, a lot of mindset work, which came on to form the foundation of the Activated Author community that I run. Yeah, there is a lot to look back on and go, I have done a fair bit now. I podcasted for several years as well, and done well over 250 episodes across different podcasts. If you just chip away a little bit each day, in the end, it all adds up. Joanna: Yes, well, I'm very impressed. People say I do a lot, but you do even more. You also have your family, so you're a busy guy. Let's get into that word count because you said you were at 200 words a day or every couple of days. Now, I realize that some people don't write every day. I don't write every day, I tend to binge-write. So when I'm working on a project, I'll binge write. Other people obviously have family issues, health issues, mental health issues. So we're not saying you have to write every day, that's definitely not what we're saying. But, in terms of you have a book for authors coming out later this year— Dan: Yes. Joanna: Which is 50,000 Words in 30 Days. Give us some more tips for being prolific. Dan: Well, as you mentioned, it's about finding the pace of what works for you. I think there is some really good advice in your community, and there is some more toxic advice. I do think that the whole write everyday ethos, like you say, can work for some people, but I think sometimes it puts people off and makes them think they're not going to be a writer because they can't keep that pace. So a lot of what I do when I'm coaching and working with authors is really trying to — Figure out how your life looks, how you're set-up, because people have jobs with different schedules and routines — as you say, you've got family, or you might have financial limitations, health problems, like not everyone can hit that pace every day. So to be prolific for you, which is the key thing because you should never compare yourself to other people, is to understand who you are, what you do, and to find out the word counts that will fit you. So if that's 100 words a day, awesome. If that's 2000 words a day, great. If that's 5000 words on a weekend, then that sort of works for you. I think you need to be confident, own it, and be comfortable in those word counts. As I say, there is a lot of advice out there that is somewhat toxic. Like I do know authors that write 13,000 words a day. I, personally, cannot hit that consistently. I've had big word days, but every time I have a big word day, it burns me out, and then I do nothing next day. It's really connecting with who you are, giving yourself that grace to be a bit slower if that is your pace. There are people in my Activated Authors community who write 1000 words a week, and that's fine. That works for them, they publish books. Myself, I've kind of gone from being a regular writer to being, as you say, a bit more of a binge writer with projects. So if I'm in a project, I can definitely hit some bigger word counts, but then I'm sort of done for a few weeks. Getting to know yourself is certainly a big tip. Another really good tip is —  Prioritize your writing. Make an appointment with yourself. Make a date with yourself to say, at this time,  at this date, in this place, I'm going to write. That was something I had to do when I was first starting out because I had a full time job, and the only time that I could fit in writing was half past six in the morning, and then at seven, I'd have to get up and get the little boy ready and get ready for work. So that was something that I committed to myself. I said to myself, this is happening, I want to publish books, and this is what it's going to take for me.  Then I think the biggest piece of advice I give, and it's normally the starting point of anytime I'm in a consultation or coaching someone, is— You need to ask yourself why you're doing it. Because if you are writing just because you think it's a quick way to make money, you're going to burn out quickly and the work probably isn't going to be worth the reward.  If you're like me, and you love telling stories, I love the idea of leaving a legacy, I love reaching out to readers, it becomes a compulsion that I now can't stop, then you're creating a sustainable way to keep on going. Then on those days when it's really, really, really hard, and you're waking up bleary eyed and your alarm is going off, and you just can't be bothered today, like you kind just go, well, why am I doing it? And you might see that book a few months down the line, you might see yourself looking back on yourself when you're 80 and thinking, you know, I made the most of this day. But having a really good reason as to why you're doing it is ultimately the fundamental component of how you create a sustainable career. Joanna: I laughed there when you said those people who think it's a quick way to make money. You and I know that this is not a quick way to make money! Dan: No, no. Nine years in and I'm still trying to make money. Joanna: That's the thing. I feel like, well, people listening to this show understand, if you want to write you'll write. If you want to do it full-time, that's a different thing. Obviously, both you and I do a lot of different things other than just write. But I did want to ask you, because you write dark stories as do I, but also like me on your nonfiction stuff, you're a happy, upbeat person. If people meet you at a convention or something, you're always smiling, and that's you and me as well, but we have this other side. Tell us more about why you write darker books and how you tap into that. Dan: I love this question because it's definitely something I've been trying to verbalize and pin down and work on myself. In the beginning, I didn't really know. I just wanted to tell darker stories, I didn't know where it came from. Over time, what I've come to learn is that horror writers tend to be some of the loveliest people you'll meet. We were just speaking beforehand that I've just been to StokerCon, which is a convention purely made of horror writers, and it was one of the best times I've had at a conference. Everyone was lovely. I think there's a few reasons why it's so cathartic to write horror. One of them being that there aren't really any limits to what you can write, and as someone who kind of likes to go through life sampling from every table, and just experimenting, and seeing all the different colors on the spectrum, having not to worry about what you're writing is quite a nice experience. It's freeing. So when you're writing your prose not worried about swear words, you're not worried about sort of graphic material, it's just a place to play.  The other really thing good thing that I love about it as well, is it is a place to exorcise your demons. I think a lot of the reason that horror writers are really nice people is because they put all of their demons onto the page. One thing I certainly do is anything that's worrying me, any sort of tough times I've had, any sort of trauma I've been through, I then use that to fuel the stories. In a way, it's kind of its own therapy, which is, as I say, just a really nice way to work through that in your mind and to put things down. So, I mean, there are a number of reasons. Like, who doesn't like playing with monsters and ghosts? Who doesn't like just going to the darkest edges of what's going on? But yeah, there's definitely a personal element of just therapy as well for me. Joanna: I agree with you, I think just put putting the demons on the page. You're exactly right, like lovely, lovely people, horror writers. Dan: Yeah. Ironically. Joanna: It is kind of ironic, but it makes sense when you think about it. Do you write under different names? Do you find that you separate your time differently with fiction and nonfiction? Dan: So I haven't, purely because I didn't want to over stretch what I was doing with different pen names. I don't know if maybe I should have for certain projects. but where I am at the minute, it's all under one name. I am looking at a different style of horror, which I'm contemplating a pen name for, but I haven't yet made that decision. That's mostly for sort of marketing purposes, in the sense of like it's a middle grade horror, a lot less dark, a bit more pacey, whereas like some of the stuff I like to write is a lot more wayfaring and rich prose and very, very dark. So I'm potentially contemplating those two different audiences, just to make it a bit easier to sell those books.  As I said, I've not really made a decision on that yet because part of the reason that I choose to write is because I want to share the stuff that I do. So putting myself behind a pen name, because this would be a totally different name, putting myself behind the pen name, I kind of feel like I'm hiding, and I don't necessarily want to do that. Then I understand the marketing value as well. So once I figured that one out, I'll let you know. Joanna: It is tough. I mean, I published the first two or three novels under Joanna Penn and then realized that I needed to, for my audience, but also for myself. Like I do kind of schedule different time slots, you talked about that, making an appointment with yourself. I make Joanna Penn appointments, and J.F. Penn appointments. Like I've got my Catacomb monster book here on my desk, and that I have scheduled time for J.F. Penn editing. I wouldn't be able to do this interview with you after doing that kind of session. So I really have to split my time. But I did want to ask you, because you've mentioned collaboration, and Hawk & Cleaver, and you mentioned Michael Anderle and the collaborations. Now, I have co-written a few novels and other books, and I do find it really hard. Give us some tips around collaborating and co-writing and how you do that. Dan: Yeah, I think it all starts with, again, that question of: why you're doing it? What is it you're hoping to achieve from the collaboration? And sort of the second biggest thing to go into a collaboration with is understanding that it's not going to be your book. I think a lot of people go into collaborations, and they're like, I'm going to be able to write my story faster because I'm working with someone else. What ends up happening is this beautiful magic in which you create an amalgam of both styles of writer, the story kind of takes its own phrase, and you really have to put your ego aside and say, look, this project isn't going to be typically how I process things because there's two people involved.  So as I said, there's the question of why. There are also many, many different ways to collaborate. So I've done collaborations with Luke Kondor, incredible writer, check him out Lukekondor.com. But I've done collaborations with him in which it was 50/50, in the sense of we worked on two novels at once, I wrote the first draft of one, he wrote the first draft the other, and we kind of switched back and forth between drafts. So the story was very much both of our hands very much in that story. The collaboration with Michael that you mentioned, he'd already built a world, he knew what that timeline was, there was a bunch of rules that you had to stick to so that the rest of the books made sense. Then I was allowed to create my own little sandbox in that world and play with it myself, and then there was just that approval at the end to make sure that it fitted where it needs to go. Then I've done a collaboration with J. Thorn and his American Demon Hunter series. [Me too! American Demon Hunters: Sacrifice, written on the train from Chicago to New Orleans] That was taking his characters, and his location, and writing their story for him with my ideas. There are all these different ways to collaborate, and it doesn't even have to stay within the writing zone. It could be one person writes, the other person edits. It could be one person does all the writing, the other person does all the marketing. I think the key to collaborating really is being open and honest with each other and being transparent with what you want because the minute someone lies or someone misleads the other person, that is where it all starts falling flat. So if you can't meet the deadline, but you say you're going to, that's an issue. If the project isn't entirely in line with the things you want to create, and you feel like a collaboration will just make it happen quicker, that's a bad idea. I have seen some collaborations go south very quickly, and that has mostly just been because the expectations of each author are different and they haven't had that initial conversation. I wrote a book, back in 2020 I published it, Collaboration for Authors, and within that I had all these different sections for the different stages of collaborating with another author. What very quickly happened was all of the pages about the setup, before you've signed anything or agreed anything, ended up being half of the book. The most important thing you can do is figure everything out upfront, like go into detail on finance, marketing, writing timelines, any problems you might foresee, because if you can do that before you've fully agreed and committed, then half of the problems are gone. Joanna: That's interesting. Of course, I've also co-written with J Thorn in that same universe. Dan: Who hasn't?! Joanna: We wrote Risen Gods together, and also Co-writing a Book together. It's interesting, I've written some nonfiction co-written, and on the one hand, I like it, and on the other hand, I find it really hard because, as you say, we're control freaks. We like our own stories.  Here's another point is that, yes, I agree, you have to get your contract sorted upfront, but then the money is split between two of you, or however many you do. So I basically have found that those books don't make me as much money, so therefore, I don't promote them as much. How do you deal with the business side of co-writing? Are you just so prolific it doesn't matter because you have so many books? Dan: Yeah. I mean, the collaborations aren't the ones that made me the most money. I mean, obviously, the books I did with Michael have been very, very helpful because he's a giant in the space that he's currently working in. There is definitely something about having two names on the cover that can put people off. I'm not sure about the psychology behind that or what that is. I have seen quite a few authors who, if they are collaborating, will generally create a pseudonym or a pen name for themselves, so it looks like one author, but it's actually two or sometimes three. So yeah, I mean, I will say that they're probably not the most lucrative in terms of making money and earning that back. I've been publishing books pretty much solid since 2014, so having that regular rhythm, that regular schedule definitely helps. I ‘m doing a lot of work at the minute with creating a series of standalones within horror that will keep the read-through going between different books, to hopefully also help increase somebody's income.  I mean, collaborations are there a lot of fun, but yeah, each one is absolutely different. Some can be more of a struggle than others. And also, yeah, I will say as a warning to anyone, the admin side of it is a bit of a headache. Joanna: Yeah, although thanks to Draft2Digital who now have payment splitting. I did that with Mark Leslie Lefebvre for The Relaxed Author. You mentioned there a series of standalone in horror, which everyone's like, what? What is the series of standalone? Explain that because, of course, in horror, a lot of books are standalone because like a lot of people die, there's no one left. What is a series of ‘standalone' books? Dan: Well, so I've been trying to get my head around this for the last sort of two, three years. I wrote a serialized novel in 2020 that turned out it was six novellas that I released one a month and started building a bit of an audience. Then like you say, at the end, everyone dies. So where do you go from there? I've kind of just been doing a lot of looking into how people sustain horror series because there are examples out there of people who have kept series going. So you can look at The Shining and then Doctor Sleep as kind of a sequel, very, very short series. You can look at things like R.L. Stine's Goosebumps, which are obviously aimed at much, much younger readers.  There are a lot of examples of authors out there that are creating standalones, but within either a brand or a universe. So there's Jeremy Bates. Joanna: Oh, yes. Dan: Yeah, I think it's like the World's Scariest Places or something. He's got a bunch of books in that series, and even though they're all standalone, the branding tells the reader they're written by the same author, they're in the same sort of tone, they have a uniformity on the stories without each story being connected, which I think is a really, really smart way to do that. So that's something that I'm creating and playing with at the minute. I'll say this, because I've already seen a few other people doing this, I thought it had a really unique idea, but every idea is unique when you do it yourself. But I mentioned, obviously Goosebumps is a series of standalone, and so one of the things I'm working on at the minute is a Goosebumps-inspired series for adults. So for the much more sort of older horror reader, a series of interconnected shorter novellas—I say interconnected, not story wise—but branded together so that they're written in a very particular style, readers know what they're going to get, they're a much faster pace reads. As I say, when it comes to these, it's definitely the branding that's going to be the most important thing to sell that to people. So you know that if you pick up book one, you could pick up book eight, and you'll still have the same experience, but an entirely different story. Joanna: Yeah, it is tough. I was actually looking at Jeremy Bates's books because my book is called Catacomb, and whenever you have a one-word title, you're going to overlap with someone else's one-word title. He has one of his World's Scariest Places, or whatever it is, is Catacomb. Yeah, I've read a few of his books, and they're fantastic. So I do think we can all look at series options, so I like that.  We mentioned at the beginning that you do a lot, and you do. So I wondered, how do you manage your time? Because I know it can be hard to juggle so much, and I would say as someone who is a few years ahead of you, that one of the things that has happened to me is I have had to drop things over time because I realized I haven't got time for everything or I need to spend time on the things that are really the main thing that I need to do. How do you juggle everything? How do you manage your time? Dan: So it's very fortuitous timing that you ask this question. But I'll say before I kind of dive into the reality of the situation, so I've kind of got two thoughts on this that have changed over the last couple of years. The first one is, productivity comes in seasons. So what I have found is that there are certain points in which I am incredibly productive, and 2020 was definitely one of them, and I can't think why that might be. So that was very productive.  Then I also see my own productiveness as a bit of an accordion. So what I mean by that is that I will generally slim loads of stuff down until I feel that I have capacity. Then over time, I'll gently take more and more and more on until I'm sort of right stretched out, can't take any more, and then I squeeze it all back in and try to slim it out so I can focus again. So I do do a lot, and one of the things I'm definitely trying to do is slim down on that. I know that you've been a big proponent of books that sort of encourage ‘no' and slimming back, and I've read a few of those. A perfect example of why that's important is that I actually ended up in hospital in March of this year, having a stress/anxiety attack, which I thought was a heart attack. That was a combination of work, that was a combination of personal life circumstances because there's a lot going on in the personal life as well. This kind of comes back to what we're saying about your life and your way, because — Everyone has their own capacity depending on what it is they're doing, and I pushed mine a bit too far. So there are lessons learned, and I think one of the things that I teach a lot is the idea of going narrow and deep on a subject, rather than wide and shallow on about 10 different ones. My problem is I'm just an incredibly ambitious individual. So I will get very excited about an idea, and I will just run with it. I know that you're a proponent these days of the Clifton Strengths model, and two of mine are Activator and Ideation. So I will come up with an idea for something and I will want to execute it straightaway. I will get incredibly excited about that idea, and I will just go for it. What I'm learning is that I need to slow that down and really kind of put some brakes on myself, contemplate what it is that I'm doing, and whether or not that serves a bigger goal.  Even over the past few months since the incident at the hospital, I've incredibly narrowed down what my big goals are because I've realized that I can't do it all. And more importantly, I shouldn't do it all, especially if I want to make this a sustainable career and not end up back in hospital again. So creating very, very stringent, like one big goal, two big goals, at most three big goals, and then creating small pathways to get to those without getting too distracted, which is, again, for people like me, incredibly hard.  This is also one of the reasons that I created the Author Activation Matrix, which is a free resource people can download it on the activatedauthors.com website. It's because I was giving a lot of thought into what the different areas of life as an author are, so not just about the writing, but about the health, the social life, all the different components of what makes you you, so that you can try and put those in balance and try and keep pushing forward without hurting yourself. And again, speaking as someone that has been there, I find it incredibly useful. Joanna: Yes, and thank you for talking about that. I think it's important for us all to talk about that. I mean there aren't many authors who are professionals who haven't had some kind of these incidents. I mean, for me, it was more that I ended up with a really bad shoulder injury from the posture that we sit in, the kind of hunched posture, not just from writing, but from 20 years in IT as well. So like this morning, I was working out with my personal trainer, I do weights twice a week, I do walking and things. You include health on one of the aspects of your activation matrix, so that's one of the things. What are some of the other things that you think are important for authors to consider? Dan: Well, so the five categories I've got down here are: general, health, social, authorship, and outlook. So general is kind of encompassing just feelings, and how you are on a day to day. So there's things like mood in there. There is gratitude. How grateful are you for the things that you currently have? Are you taking time to be appreciative of what you do have rather than what you don't? Things like joy are in there. I've even put finances in there because finances, as you no doubt know, massively affects that underlying level of tension and anxiety you might feel on a daily basis. Under health there's things like hydration, nutrition, exercise, sleep, even just going outside and getting some sunshine. Then there's the social element that's got like how are your relationships with your family, with your friends, or with any partnerships that can be romantic, or important work partnerships. There's a section for authorship, which is how creative do you feel? Are you doing stuff for self-development? How's your publishing? How's your marketing? That's a bit more sort of boiling down into the operational logistics of running your author business.  Then outlook is just as simple as how are you currently feeling now and how optimistic or pessimistic are you for the future that you've got coming up? So it's quite holistic, but what I do is I've got each category labeled 1 to 10. Then as you go through, you circle what number you're on, where you feel you are in these particular areas, and then at the end, you get given a score. The idea isn't to win or lose the score, it's literally just to give you a baseline of where you're at so that you can look back in a week or two weeks’ time and say, okay, I've taken action on this one, my number is improving, that means I'm paying attention to the areas that I'm letting drop. Joanna: It's interesting. I like the Clifton Strengths because the focus is more leaning into our strengths. The matrix you talk about, obviously, there'll be some numbers we're weak on. We cannot be strong on everything. What kind of person are you? Are you an optimize your strengths or fix your weaknesses person? Because we can't do everything. Dan: No, I think I am definitely optimize my strengths is where I've kind of gotten to. I mean, I got this principle from Gary Vaynerchuk and some of the stuff that he said all over his Instagram all the time with his incredibly thick accent. But yeah, I like the idea of leaning into the things that you do well in.  Sometimes that's difficult, especially if you're running a solo author business. Obviously, you've got to be able to cover a lot of different areas, and some that you might not be as good in. But if you can afford it, if you can get the help, or even if you've got sort of volunteer partners or collaborators that can help you balance out what those weaknesses are, then that will help you create a more sort of rounded experience. I mean, something that I found incredibly useful,  and this is going a bit more back to the day job, is a model that I came across called the T-shaped marketing model. The idea was that you create, similarly to the activity in the author matrix, you create a baseline of all the different categories that are critical to your business. So it could be finance, it could be marketing, it could be writing, and then you give yourself kind of a score in terms of like along the line. It's hard to do by my audio only, but people, check out the T-shaped marketing model.  It highlights what you're strong in, and anything that you're weak in you can then look for other people to bring in to inflate those to bring those up so that you've got a bit more of a rounded business that you can then run. So yeah, I tend to lean into my strengths a lot more, but when I can, I do try and educate myself on the things that I might be a bit weaker in. Joanna: Well, you do have marketing under authorship. I feel like this is a non-negotiable weakness that authors have to sort out you. You actually can't leave that. Sorry, everyone. I mean, you can hire people, but you can only really do that at a point in your career where you can afford it. As an author of fiction and nonfiction books, give us some of your tips for marketing both of those. And how are they different? Dan: I mean, there are some similarities, and there's definitely like a lot of differences. My fiction tends to center around, like one of the big things is my reader magnets. I've got a number of those for different series, different books that I've put out. I do a lot of newsletter swaps. I'm very, very prolific on Story Origin as a resource, which I highly recommend to anyone looking to try and build up their mailing lists and just get readers into their funnel. I do a lot of swaps just to stay connected with other authors and to reach new readers. A lot of the fiction stuff, it has to be regular, you have to be putting out newsletters somewhat regularly. Again, whatever that looks like for you. So it could be monthly, weekly, bi monthly. So all these different strategies and rhythms and times to create the fiction promotion.  One of the big things is just keep writing good books because if someone enjoys the reader experience, then hell yeah, they're going to buy another book from you. If they reach out to you, absolutely write something back — Because nothing pleases a reader more than actually hearing back from the people that they enjoy reading from. Then nonfiction, it's somewhat similar, although I tend to do a lot of things like this, you know, podcasts, hop on different interviews, network and speak to different people. If I'm at events, I'll speak to different people and try and see what they've got going on and see if there's any sort of cross-promotional opportunities. I have the Activated Authors Podcast, which I run with Samantha Frost. We're on a little bit of a hiatus at the minute, but we run that pretty much every week, discussing all the different areas of author life. We sometimes have interviews. I do think podcasting is a very, very good vehicle to bring people into a nonfiction environment. That's one of the reasons I created Activated Authors was because, well, I say I created it, but the community basically begged me to make it happen. But you know, running something like a podcast or doing small events or challenges and things, it gives people a chance to get to know you, to hear your voice, to get familiar with you. I'm sure that you're more than familiar with this, the amount of time someone will come up to you and they'll know who you are, so they talk to you like an old friend, and you've never seen that person before in your life. Any opportunity to connect with people, to reach out, to just get a bit of exposure and share who you really are, it's fantastic for nonfiction. What I kind of say with my brand in nonfiction is I prioritize authenticity, honesty, and just the reality behind the author journey. So Activated Authors is all about supporting authors, no sort of screens, no smoke screens about what it is to be an author. We're very honest, we all support each other, and it's kind of a wonderful environment to be in. So the thing that I find in marketing is there are very, very general principles which everyone knows. It's just everyone's very reluctant to put the work in to make it happen. Because obviously we want to be writers ,and that's kind of why people get into the writing business in the first place. Joanna: You're right. I mean, at the end of the day — The email list still rules. Dan: It reigns supreme. Joanna: Yes, exactly. I did want to come back on something you said earlier. You talked about being ambitious, and you've obviously been doing this now almost a decade. Tell us a bit more about ambition because I feel like a lot of us have ambition, and we might be just slightly ashamed of it, especially being British, it's just not done to talk that way. Americans are fine, but we struggle. Talk about ambition and how you're weaving these longer-term ambitions into the short-term need to make money. Dan: Yeah, I mean, that's a big question. I ended up doing a lot of sort of self-development work around what would have been 2013 through 2017. That was a mix of reading a bunch of nonfiction books, people like Gary Vaynerchuk were very inspirational for that. Brene Brown, Glennon Doyle, Elizabeth Gilbert, like all those books are like fantastic for helping you, I guess, come to terms with your own ambition and the fact that this is your life to lead. I think, without going on a whole sort of soapbox, one of the big disadvantages of especially being British, is the school system is bred to teach you to comply and that anything outside of the norm is unwanted, unacceptable, and kind of something to be ashamed about. I kind of came around to it, probably in my late teens, maybe just a little after, but the idea that I'm only going to be here once, I'm only going to live on this planet once, if what I believe to be true is true. I try not to hold back from anything that I want to do. Part of that is, well, there's many kinds of components that, but one of them is accepting that you're probably going to fail to begin with, or that things are going to be hard when you first learn them. Over the years I've taught myself guitar, piano, juggling. I'm learning coding for video games and things at the minute. I taught myself how to write novels and scripts and short stories, tried painting, tried drawing. Like I've tried a lot of different things, even if I've sucked at it, just to give it a go and to understand. I mean, I've literally bought a little crochet kit at the minute so I can try and make my kid a crochet Buzz Lightyear because I want to see if I can do that skill.  It's accepting that you're not going to be good to begin with, and it's got to take work, and that's just part of the process. And because I'm very much gotten to the point that I, you know, we all fall prey to it sometimes, but for the most part, I don't compare myself to other people. I'm hyper aware that my journey is different to anyone else's. Number one, Individualization, back to the Clifton Strengths. I'm so aware that my journey is different that it really doesn't bother me what other people think of me.  I've gotten to a point now where I can experiment and write a stupid story and put that out there. A couple of times, I've done some live writing in which I've written the first draft of a story just in front of people and let them see that. I shared my first ever first draft of my first ever novel with people inside Activated Authors because that was done from 2014. That's nothing to do with me now, like I've put in the work. So ambition comes from, I guess, a desire to live a life well lived. Also, in order to do that, you have to just be very, very aware that like no one can tell you no, only you can tell you no. You know, in a way without getting arrested. But you're the only one that can really stop yourself from doing things. So again, like I've kind of taught myself small bits of languages, and I want to learn more of that, I played lots of different sports, but it's an ever-evolving journey. I just want to have fun, and I want to see what I can do in the time I have. Joanna: But— Do you have any specific author-related ambitions? Dan: Yeah, I mean, I want to win a Bram Stoker. That would be awesome. Which is a weird one because I'm not fueled by approval, but I think I need a goal in that regard. Kind of go on that journey, as I say, I've recently just come back from StokerCon, I sat in the Bram Stoker Awards this year, met a lot of nominated authors, spoke to a few award-winning authors. I'm putting in the work to find out how that happens, and to see what that looks like, and anything that I can do to make it. No matter what you want to do, there is somewhat a path to there. I mean, you'll struggle if you're—not to say that this hasn't happened—but you'll struggle if you're four-foot and you're trying to dunk in the NBA. So there are certain limits to ambitions, but for the most part, there's a path to try and get to where you want to go. The hard part is figuring what that path is and allowing yourself to stumble along the way. Joanna: Absolutely. Dan: So yeah, I definitely want the award. I've got a few ambitions to speak in bigger venues and bigger arenas and just to try and spread the message of a lot of the stuff that we had spoken about because I think it's hyper-important. And honestly, a lot of people don't talk about the tougher times and the realities of being an author. I kind of hear too many interviews where people are like, “Oh, yeah, my first book went amazing. Now I'm writing every day, and it's wonderful.” Because I'm like, you're lying. There's something that you're holding back that for some reason you're scared to share. Joanna: I mean, a lot of that is the historical way. I mean, I think on this show, we keep it real! Dan: A hundred percent. And that's why I've listened to you for nine years. Joanna: I think people come back because of the difficult times as well. They're going to get different things here. Thank you for sharing. So where can people find you, and your books, and your podcasts, and everything you do online? Dan: So there's three main places for me. There's DanielWillcocks.com. There's ActivatedAuthors.com for anyone who wants to come over and see the author community, which I have recently made free. So if any wants to jump over into that, that's at that website. Then for some nice horror every Monday into your podcast feed, that's at TheOtherStories.net. Joanna: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Dan. That was great. Dan: Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity to come on.The post Writing Fast, Collaboration, And Author Mindset With Daniel Willcocks first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you use what you're scared of to write better stories that resonate with readers? How can you acknowledge your shadow side and bring aspects of it into the light in a healthy way that serves you and your customers? Michaelbrent Collings talks about his experiences — and you can do my Shadow Survey here (before 31 Aug 2023). In the intro, The Inner Work of Age by Connie Zweig; different kinds of direct sales [Wish I'd Known Then]; QuitCast on productivity and burnout with Becca Syme; 7 success factors for neurodivergent and cognitively impaired self-published authors [Self-Publishing Advice]; Outcomes of an AI Future [Moonshots and Mindsets] This podcast is sponsored 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.  Michaelbrent Collings is the multi-award-nominated internationally bestselling author of over 50 books across horror, thriller, fantasy, sci-fi and more, as well as a produced screenwriter and speaker. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Writing from the shadow side of the self Bringing your fears and guilts into your writing How to bring your shadows to the surface in a helpful way Differences in what we find appropriate based on culture and upbringing The underlying hope when reading and writing horror Hiding our shame in our shadows Tips for overcoming self-censorship You can find Michaelbrent at WrittenInsomnia.com and his Bestseller Life course at BestsellerLife.com Transcript of Interview with Michaelbrent Collings Joanna: Michaelbrent Collings is the multi-award-nominated internationally bestselling author of over 50 books across horror, thriller, fantasy, sci fi and more, as well as a produced screenwriter and speaker. So welcome back to the show, Michaelbrent. Michaelbrent: Hello, Joanna. It's always so fun to hang out with you. Joanna: It is. Sixth time on the show, it is a record! Michaelbrent: I'm looking forward to a coat, a Letterman's jacket of some kind. Just something, you know, with my name on it and The Creative Penn across the back, so I feel like a legit rockstar. Joanna: You really are. And over the years, we've talked about writing hooks, and book descriptions, how to reboot a flagging author career. We've also talked about writing with depression, which is a very popular episode. Also, how to write fast and how to write horror. So we've covered a lot, and today's discussion kind of covers elements of some of these things. We're just going to jump straight in because at the moment, I'm working on this book about writing from the shadow side of the self, and you came to top of mind for someone who does this. Michaelbrent: Because I'm best viewed in the shadows, so that's my life. Joanna: Not at all, but you've been so open about some of this darker stuff. So I wanted to start with— What do you think is part of the shadow side for you? Michaelbrent: Well, for me, there's a lot of stuff. And I tell people that they look at me, and every time I'm on a show—not with you, but with other people that I don't know—and I get through and they're like, “Oh, you were so nice.” Like they were expecting me to be doing voodoo during the show, or chanting in the background, or like I was going to reach through their screen and make a wallet out of their face skin or something horrific.  So much of it is just upbringing. Like my dad was an expert on Stephen King, he was literally the world expert on Stephen King for 20 years. So I tell people I grew up with screaming and typing in the next room. That's what I went to bed with, and that changes a person, you know. So part of its that, and part of it was I just had a tough time of it when I was young. Some of that was self-inflicted, I was kind of a snotty kid. I'm this little, tiny kid, and I'm a genius. Literally, my mom was taking me to college in sixth grade so I could have math class there. And I let people know it. So I'm sitting there as like the worst kind of nerd that you've ever experienced, and people reacted to that. So because of that, I didn't have a lot of friends, and it took a long time to figure out how to kind of overcome that part of myself that was so low self-esteem that I needed to tell everyone how great I was. But really, it was a function in self-inflicted wounds that caused me to kind of cave in.  We also had mental health problems in my family that made things difficult. There was a lot of stress in the air. Despite there being a lot of love, there was also a lot of challenges. So being kind of small, feeling helpless, despite the fact that I was pretty smart, and it just compressed into this one little package that was like, I'm going to write some stuff to make me feel better. And my first story, I can remember, was about killing my brother. So obviously there was some dark crap in there. Joanna: It's interesting having siblings. I'm the eldest of five siblings, and I have one brother who's quite close to me in age. I do remember almost trying to kill him many times. I would kind of flip him upside down when he was smaller than me. I don't know what it is about siblings. I mean, have you watched Succession? Michaelbrent: No, I haven't. That's on my to do list because I've heard so many good things about it, and it's got such good people in it. Joanna: It's possibly the most violent show on TV without physical violence, as in between siblings it is incredibly verbally violent. So it's interesting. I guess family is one of those things in our shadow, like the things that come up around family and, I guess, guilt around feeling that way. Do you think guilt around family sits in the shadow? Michaelbrent: I think so, for sure. I mean, again, like even in my description, I was like, “and it was self-inflicted,” because you look back on your life, and so much of life is built around regret. You know, I don't want to become my parents, and so I'm going to do everything I can to avoid that. And despite all that, I turned into my father anyways, and I feel bad about that. Or I feel good about it, and it's great because it turns out that he was wonderful. You know, as you age, your perspective changes, and then it switches immediately to like, oh, I must have been really crappy to my dad, and I want to avoid these mistakes I made with my children. So I'm going to push them a certain direction that's less about their life lived than the life I regret living. You know, we focus our regret into our family lines because they're generational hope for the future. You know, it's like I want to leave something wonderful behind, so I'm going to make sure my kids don't suck as much as I did. Of course that ends up twisting them up terribly. Joanna: You mentioned your kids, obviously, you talked about your dad and your brother. Fear of losing family is one of my tropes that comes up in my writing. It's often about sisters. I have two sisters, and doing things for family who are in jeopardy. So I mean, you have kids, and some of them I think are quite young, but yet you do have children in jeopardy in your books. So how do you bring those fears into your writing? Michaelbrent: I think the one thing that you have to be careful with, before we say anything else, is — You don't want to turn your books into therapy. The one thing that every therapist has in common in the whole world is they require payment. So if I'm going to therapy, I pay my therapist, and that's fine. But if I write a book, and I use that for therapy, and then I turn around to the therapist and say, “That'll be $4.99 or $9.99,” or whatever the price of the book is, they're going to be like, no, no, that's not how it works. I think taking the core of the things that worry you and the things that terrify you, and turning that into the basis of a book is a tremendously good idea because we tend to be worried about kind of universal things when you drill down. The danger comes when you're just using it exclusively as a self-improvement vehicle. In that case, you're going to be really self-indulgent, and long winded, and people aren't going to care. So when you get down to it, yeah, families are incredibly important because every single person has one. I mean, they either have an actual one that they live with currently that they love/hate, because there's always that stuff bound up no matter how good the family, or they have the family they wish they had. You know, the people that are orphaned or abandoned or what have you, they can't help but look around at the kind of nuclear examples around them and say, “What if I had had that? Why didn't I have that?” There's so many questions that are fundamentally human nature that are really rooted in where did I come from and where am I going. And that's, by definition, kind of a familial question. So those things matter tremendously.  My wife and I lost a child years back, and that became the root of one of my most terrifying books, which is called Apparition. And it's not terrifying because it's the greatest book of all time, but just the concept is that there's this thing out there that makes parents kill their children. It's like a demon, and it consumes the blood and the fear of the children, and then it withdraws and consumes the madness of these parents that realize what they've done. I wrote that in large measure as a way of kind of working through what I was experiencing, having just lost my own child. Joanna: Which is an awful experience, but just on the writing side there, you said, don't write for therapy, and yet you wrote this book as part of dealing with that. So where's that line? How do you know? Or— Is it Write in grief, Edit outside of it? I don't know. Michaelbrent: Yes. Yeah, I think that's really part of it. So much of what we write has got to be for ourself, it has to be fulfilling and enjoyable. I've written just for the money, and I can do it, but it's really 10 times harder. I wake up late in the morning, I don't want to get started, because it's just a job. It's just digging a ditch, you know, and I'm using my mental processes instead of my physical ones. At its heart, if you want a long-term career, if you want to have a career that you enjoy day to day, you have to enjoy the process. Part of what we write has to, on its surface level, be about the writer. it has to be something that I find fulfilling or interesting.  In the editing process—and there's two editing processes—there's one that the end where you put all the bells and whistles on and you make it beautiful. But there also has to be one at the beginning, which is, here's an idea—this is my personal opinion—but there should be an editing process at the beginning, which is, this is something I'm interested in, is this universal? Is this something that will speak to other people, or is it just about me? If it's just about me, I'll write it and then put it in a drawer because that is therapy, it's something I'm working through. If it starts out universal, or if I can figure out a way to broaden it somehow or to narrow it and make it more applicable to others, then that's where kind of the preliminary magic comes in. So with this book Apparition, if it had just been a dad kind of thinking like, “I'm going to write my journal about what it feels like to lose a kid and how hard that is. There's a lot of sadness, and at the end I realize I'm not quite so sad anymore.” You know, that would not be a book that maybe grabbed people. I had to say, well, how can I kind of discuss what I want to talk about, which is this horrific event, in a way that's going to be useful and helpful for me, but also make it enjoyable or useful or helpful to others as well. So before I even started writing that, there was definitely an end in mind, which is this is going out into the world and it can't just be, Michaelbrent stars in a Michaelbrent book about Michaelbrent saying woe is me, Michaelbrent. It just wouldn't work very well. Joanna: I mean, there are other things, you mentioned mental health, and obviously we've done a show on depression. I wrote a bit about suicidal thoughts in my book Delirium and also in Pilgrimage, a recent memoir. I feel like mental health issues are also something that you tackle in your life, but also in your writing. So how does that side come into your writing? Michaelbrent: It's like any other part of you. So for those who haven't heard the other shows, I have major mental health problems, I have major depressive disorder, suicidal tendencies and psychotic breaks. And that's just, it's me, it's my reality. So, you know, if I lose an arm in an accident, I'm going to type differently from then forward, and it's just necessity based.  This isn't losing an arm, but it does lock up certain parts of my brain, and it unlocks other ones, which is nice. You know, I do a lot more of my own editing than most people do successfully, simply because people are like, how do you do that, and I go, well, you have to start out with a deep disdain for yourself. I'm not in love with my work because it came from me, and at my heart, there's this broken thing that's like, oh, everything you do sucks. And that's a really good place to come from for a self-editing path, or working with an editor. I just sold a pitch a while back for a series to a national publisher, and every time they came back with a note, I could tell they were worried I was going to fly off the handle. And instead, I was like, my problem is I didn't think of that. My only issue with your suggestion is it's so good, I'm worried you're going to tell people you came up with it. So long story short is — You find a way to live with who you are. That's a really important thing to do as an author because what we're doing is creating these communities. We're telling stories that bind people together. I would hope that if we're choosing that as a livelihood and as a vocation, that we're binding people together with good ties. We're saying, here's the reality, some of us are broken, but here's the other reality, we find ways to go on. So, of course, as someone who deals with mental health problems day to day, I'm going to include those in my stories as much as a way of saying, hey, they're survivable, as anything else. Joanna: As you're talking there, I don't think your mental health problems are in your shadow because you absolutely acknowledge them. They're part of your life. Like you said, it's just who you are. Perhaps that isn't part of your shadow. Perhaps that used to be part of mine, as in I didn't used to talk about having thoughts like that, about, say, suicidal tendencies, or whatever. I didn't think that was acceptable. so I didn't talk about it. If we deny a part of ourselves, that's what goes into the shadow. So this is an interesting question then. Are there things, I guess, that are in your shadow or that you've brought out from your shadow? Perhaps we can't even acknowledge these things if they're deeply buried. But are there things perhaps you've dug out over time? Michaelbrent: Oh, sure. And I love the shadow analogy because, you know, what a shadow is, it's just an unexamined outline. I mean, if you look at what a shadow really is, it's a place where your outline has gotten in the path of something and made it a little darker. You've had this interesting interaction between illumination and whatever is standing behind you. That is very much like so many of our problems, they're self-inflicted, in that, instead of dealing with them, we avoid them. Dealing with them doesn't mean they go away or they become less powerful. Like I said, and like you said, I deal with my mental health stuff. It's not like I woke up one morning and was like, oh, my gosh, I'm depressed, and now I feel better. I was like, oh, my gosh, I'm depressed, and now at least when I feel like opening a vein, I can be like, hold on a little bit, this will go away, hold on a little bit, this will go away.  It still affects every part of my life, but I think the danger is denying the reality of those things. The danger is looking at a shadow and saying, “Oh, that's not me. Oh, that couldn't be me. Oh, look how warped that shadow is. That's definitely not mine.” We've all walked down the street at sunset and seen our shadow stretch eighty-two feet ahead of us. And we look at that and go there's no way that giant tall guy is me or that weirdly chubby guy is me at noon, or whatever. And they're all us, they're all aspects of us that depend on the direction we're facing and what part of life we're examining. If we're looking towards the light, there's less shadow. If we're looking away from it, which is the job of a horror writer, in some respects, is to look at evil and discern it and describe it, then there's going to be a lot more shadow apparent in our field of view. It really isn't about whether the shadow exists or not, or whether it's us or not. Yes, it exists. Yes, it's us. It's kind of the direction we're pointing, and if we can clarify the line between where shadow ends and the rest of kind of reality begins. Joanna: You totally avoided the question! Michaelbrent: I did, because, well, because I think the question was: is there anything that we bring out of that shadow and make into ourselves or is there things that we can't bring out? And I don't think there are things that we can't bring out. I think there is a question of— If I bring this out and then spread it around, is that going to be helpful or harmful? I feel like there are creators out there, be they artists, authors, whatever, whose whole thing is like, well, this is my muse, and even though it's destructive and hurts people, I'm going to cast it around because I feel like doing it. And I find that to be, in any other business, that's a sociopath and we avoid that person. And in our business, it's like, oh, they're following their muse, how wonderful. I think we can talk about anything, but I think it behooves us to care for its effect on those we speak to. You and I were talking earlier about, I just sold this series idea, and it's a middle grade series. It's actually quite dark, it's got a lot of horror to it, and I'm continually talking to the editors going, I think we can talk about anything to kids. Children survived the Holocaust, we can discuss anything with kids — but the way we discuss it matters. So when my two year old comes up and says, how are babies made? You know, we've all heard that, “When a mommy and daddy love each other very much, they stay together, and magic.” It's like just very kind of vague. And it ends with, “And come back in 10 years.” Then we tell them more as time goes on. It's never a lie, but we tell them the story in a way that they'll understand and be uplifted and benefited by. I remember my parents telling me about sex, and I just had bad dreams that night because the whole process sounded horrific. So I needed to know about it, but it's just a question of how and the moment we choose to tell people. So yeah, I think there's no such thing as something so dark that we can't talk about it. I definitely think that there's darkness that we have to be careful with. Joanna: Yeah, and I think some of the things that go into the shadow are the things that we are told are not appropriate. I remember being at school, I think I was around 11 years old, and I wrote an essay, and it's funny you talked about murdering your brother, because I had to choose between my dad and my sister being beheaded. I still remember it. It's in my mind, I can picture it. Michaelbrent: Joanna Penn, people. Legit darkness! Joanna: Well, it was this awful choice. So my dad and sister on one side, and my mom and my brother on the other side, like being boiled alive in one of those cauldrons. And my parents divorced, and it was all about choosing between family, which is a terrible choice, a sort of Sophie's Choice idea. I wrote this essay, and my teacher—these days, they just report you to the school counselor or whatever, but back then this was the 80s, you know— My teacher said that was entirely inappropriate to write a story like that, and I should be writing something like Black Beauty. And so I really feel like from that young age, I was essentially told that it was unacceptable to think these darker thoughts and that I could only write in this sort of happy, happy way.  I think I had probably 25 years of pushing inappropriate, darker writing into my shadow before it came back out again. So did you have that, “this is inappropriate Michaelbrent,” or have you had to deal with that? Or— Has it always been fine for you to write about these [darker] things? Michaelbrent: I was very lucky, in that I had parents who not just encouraged me and supported me, but gave me what I think is a really healthy outlook on appropriateness and inappropriateness. We were watching the John Carpenter movie, The Thing, and we're watching it oddly enough in my church, and because I'm a church-going person, we have this thing called family home evening. So on Monday nights, the families were supposed to get together and have a little church, like a scripture or something, and then you have an activity and a refreshment, some kind of brownies or whatever. So we're doing that, and we had our scripture, and then dad's like, and now we're going to watch Aliens and The Fly. So like our family home evening devolved into this, you know, we're going to watch scary movies. And for one of the scary movie, it was The Thing, and I don't want to do a spoiler alert, but the movie is like 45 years old. The alien, that's the bad guy, that's the antagonist, can assume any shape and its individual parts are self-sufficient. So they're burning this person who they've determined is one of the alien mimics, and as they're burning it alive, its head pulls away from its body, sprouts legs and scuttles off. That's happening on the VCR. I'm like nine years old. My mom pauses it and stands there and goes, “You're about to hear a word. I want you to pay attention to the word,” and then she unpauses it and one of the guys goes, “You've got to be effing kidding me.” And she pauses it again and says, “That is the only circumstance under which I want to hear that word come out of your mouth. If a guy's head has just pulled off and sprouted legs and locked away, you are allowed to use that word.” It was funny because she was making a point about not saying certain things, but the lesson we all got that was a much better lesson, I think, which is that there's no such thing as a bad word or a bad thing to say. Nobody's ever said a word to another person and had blood erupt from their ears because that word is an inherently harmful bunch of sound, you know, that hits us and causes an explosion in our brains. You know, it's not a scanner's kind of a situation. What we do have are words that we use inappropriately, or that say bad things about us or about our beliefs, or are harmful to other people.  So, again, with the shadow moments, my parents were saying that it matters how you tell the stories. It matters what you're trying to accomplish. Are you trying to spread your pain to others? Well, that's not a good thing. Let's not do that. Are you trying to deal with your pain? That's a fine thing. Are you trying to deal with your pain in a way that's more universal and can maybe help other people? That's an excellent thing.  So I actually received very little pushback. My dad, because he's this Stephen King expert, he's got tens of thousands of books in his home office, and he arranged them by appropriateness for my age. And he walked me in and he said, “If you can reach a book, you can read a book.” He had put the, you know, the naughtier, scary ones on the top shelf. So I pull out a stepladder, and I'm reading, you know, It, at age 10 or whatever. Joanna: Great book! Michaelbrent: It's just a fantastic book, but it wasn't exactly what he envisioned. But he walks in, and he catches me do it, and he's like, well, okay, so the alternative now is we're going to talk about these books. I think that was so much more helpful sitting down and going, “What did you pull out? Why did you think it was good or bad that they did this? And how is that going to change your life?” I think that was a much more healthy approach.  So if we bump into somebody and they tell us something dark and deep, and we react with horror or with disgust, that is not only harmful, that borders on the criminal. You know, there's this huge debate over whether we should have more gun control, and I'm not getting into that here, but I am saying, I don't think we're going to stop seeing mass casualty events until we have a little bit more of a forgiving attitude when people choose to share. You know, if somebody says, “I'm a neo-Nazi,” and my first response is, “Get away from me, you scum!” Well, I've just excised from that person's life any chance of improvement. What I should be saying is like, okay, let's sit down and talk about this, and let me see if I can help you. I'm not saying that we should forgive forever and allow people to run rampant, but I do think there's this really kind of harsh attitude that's become prevalent, where you better have been born with the proper attitudes and ideas and had them since day one. And if not, you're a bad person.  For me, I'm like, I want to look at 20 years ago, see all the stupid things you said, and all the dumb things you did, and then meet you now and say, wow, you've become incredible. I think that only comes when we allow people to make those mistakes and allow people to engage with that shadow part, to say, hey, I have this darkness I don't understand, how can I deal with it? Maybe not fix it, because some of them aren't fixable, but how can I deal with it? How can I turn it from a weakness into a great strength? Joanna: It's so interesting that you mentioned swearing, because I hadn't even put that on my list of what might even be in someone's shadow side. But it's so funny because—and it's American, sorry, the British people just don't care about this stuff. But I mean, my original books, when I started writing fiction, I had some swear words in because I swear, and most people I know swear as part of life. So that was kind of a character thing. Then I got these reviews from Americans who were like, you know, they don't mind you killing people in terrible ways, but a swear word is very, very bad. It's so interesting. It's like you say, we're not going to talk about politics, but there are obviously some very big things that people agree with or disagree with which people react against. I wonder if is it just culture and upbringing, if the things that we think are wrong are because of how we've been brought up. Because clearly, there are many Christians, for example, in the USA, who believe completely opposite things based on the same book. Michaelbrent: Oh, yeah, for sure. Joanna: Then the things that a religion, or a family, or a culture says is wrong, if we think that that gets pushed into the shadow because it's not acceptable. For me, swearing was fine, but talking about death was bad. Whereas for you, talking about death was fine, but swearing was bad. I mean, that's kind of crazy. Michaelbrent: Right? It's well, and again, it was like my parents, I will admit, I have said an F word or two in my life. And my dad actually wrote an entire article on the F word, it was great, about why we say it and why it's so powerful and stuff like that. It's fantastic. It's such a good article because he's an English professor, so he wasn't just sitting there musing in his basement, it was part of his job. What you say brings such an important point to light, which is the things that bother me are nothing to other people and vice versa. That's why I think it is so important that we have, first of all, a cautious outpouring of our shadow, that is trying to be aware if it's going to be harmful to somebody. Be it through cursing, or be it through sex, or whatever, you know, there's people out there. I'm not saying give everyone exactly what they want and pander and stuff because sometimes the best thing we can do is push people a little bit. But just that base awareness that we're part of the human race, and really, I do believe the biggest job of any artist is to create community. That's what we do with our stories, is we build groups. A lot of it does have to do with upbringing, a lot of it does have to do with culture and environment, but if I go into it at least with the attitude of like, oh, Joanna had a part in her book about—and I say this, because like, I know you and you wouldn't do this—but she was just ripping on the belief system that I have and saying it's stupid and dumb and everybody who's in it is an idiot. Well, I've tried to teach my kids that when you run across somebody like that, who has that base disagreement, they probably don't really think that about you, they think that about whatever they've heard about something, and that's very different. That's like judging the entire horror genre by a specific horror movie poster. The movie posters tend to be pretty grim and dark and scary, and just with despair and terror as their only feature. That's a very one-dimensional view of horror. Horror has this whole broad spectrum of cool stuff to it.  So whenever we run into something that we don't understand or that we deeply disagree with, rather than saying, “Oh, well, that's crazy,” which is an easy label to apply, which means I no longer have to engage with you because you make no rational sense. Most people make a lot of rational sense, it's just based on a series of events in their life that are so radically different from ours that we have no framework for understanding them. The job of good humans is to get together and build new frameworks together, you know, hopefully, when we're doing what we should be. So again, it all comes down to that we're never going to be able to pull out all the evil in our souls, in our base biology, and just be like, all that's left is just Kumbaya and love. That's not how nature functions, at least as we have it, absent some pretty big changes. What we do have is an ability to empathize. We have the capacity to sympathize. We have the basic concept of communication. That's something that's wonderful.  That's what we do as writers that are looking at darkness, is we go, hey, when you're talking about darkness, you're not just talking about events in a vacuum, you are talking about shadow. That means there's a real person casting it, there's a real person who, first of all, might be blocking some light off, but also that means they're standing in the light somehow. You know, nobody is 100% evil. So let's find that shadow, let's dig it out, let's bring it into light and make it an acceptable part of them by teaching them how to deal with it or how to function with it. That's one of the best things horror does at its most basic level. You know, I have so many people who write me talking about how horror is so hopeful for them. I had this one email years back, this lady said, “I'm going to the hospital. You don't have to respond. I'm dying. It's my final visit to the hospital, and I will die there, and I'm taking your scariest books because they give me hope.  So much of horror is that even if everybody dies in the end of the book, you close the book at the end and the reader lives on. The reader has become this survivor by proxy. I think we need more stories that teach people that. Not that you're debased and awful for liking this, but you, unlike the people in the book, made it through and came out different and hopefully better. Joanna: Yes, I find that your books—I haven't read all your books, you have a lot of books! — but I've read a lot of your books—and there's hope, and it's the human versus the monster, external monster or internal monster. Usually there's a bit of good that wins in the end, or the light in the darkness or something. That's what I like about the horror genre.  I think what's interesting, as well, is that — What's in the shadow doesn't have to be evil, or horror, or any of that. What's so interesting, for example, about romance and erotica, but even just romance, is that people will potentially hide that they read stuff like that. I remember meeting some indie romance authors, you know, 10-15 years ago now, and being just amazingly surprised because having been to a sort of literary course at university, and my mum was an English teacher, being told there are certain books that have value and others that don't. Michaelbrent: Oh, right. Joanna: You know what I mean? So I think what's in our shadow are the things that we might be ashamed of, or feel guilty, or hide, or that type of thing. I feel both you and I are completely open about the things we're talking about. It does occur to me that it's very hard to do an interview on the shadow because it is the things we hide. Michaelbrent: Yeah. Oh, for sure. Joanna: But it's definitely not just horror, is it? Because I mean— Some people will hide their interest in other things. Michaelbrent: Yeah, and I think that's one of the wonderful strengths of horror is it shows like, hey, it's reality. You know, you can't have the sun shining without some shadow in places. Wouldn't it be a funny life, if every place that there was a shadow we ran away screaming? We'd all be screaming all the time because we live in a world that's not just constant brightness, it's shadow. That would be a ludicrous way to live, but that's kind of how sometimes, again, we insist others act. It's like, you better not have made a bad joke on Twitter 25 years ago, or you and I can no longer be friends. And I'm like, that seems like running from shadows. That seems like a ludicrous way to survive, rather than look at the person who's casting the shadow and go, “Oh, that shadow is really funky and weird looking, but it turns out this is a beautiful person.” My wife is the most gorgeous person I've ever met, inside and out. I will admit, the first time I saw her that my very first thought wasn't like, I want to get to know her, it was that is the prettiest girl I've ever seen. And she casts just as weird a shadow as me, as a frumpy, balding guy does. We all have these problems. We all have these issues. I think most of them stem from places that can be turned to, or already are, quite good. Joanna: Let's try and give some practical tips then because I really feel I turned a corner maybe seven, eight years ago when I wrote my book Desecration … it's almost 10 years ago now. And it's kind of like, I stopped self-censoring. Well, I didn't stop, but I started down the road of talking about the fact that I like graveyards, for example, or I like corpse art and all of that kind of thing. So I was able to start talking about it as I started to write about it.  What tips can you give authors to get over self-censorship and tap into that shadow side? Michaelbrent: I think one of the biggest ones is, first of all, find the right audience. You know, if you are talking to someone who is visibly uncomfortable about your subject matter, you don't have to convert them to the gospel of horror. Like, I don't like erotica. I never going to like erotica. That doesn't mean I think all erotica writers are evil people or I can't speak to them or anything like that, but it doesn't mean if someone's pitching me an erotica book, I'm not going to be interested. If all that person wants me for is pitching their erotica book, that's going to become a tiresome relationship very quickly. So if you have a friend and you're like, “Oh, I'm writing this book, and it does feature graveyards and corpse art,” and they start wiggling around visibly uncomfortable, you can ask them, if you're close, be like, “Am I making you uncomfortable, and why?” And maybe that's a great growth moment for both of you to discover more about each other. If this is like somebody you met yesterday, and you're never going to see them again, maybe that's not the right person to sit down and be like, “Let me tell you why you're wrong to be uncomfortable about this, and why it's awesome.” I feel like so many of the mistakes that we make involve inflicting our point of view on people who are neither prepared nor interested, and might be at a different time. You know, so many people have come around to horror because they went to a panel that I was on, and they were like, this guy's funny and so I’ll read one of his books. And then, oh, it's scary, I didn't realize it'd be scary because he makes a lot of jokes, but okay, I'll keep with it. And now they're a horror lover, you know. It's approaching people at the right time. If you don't want to be ashamed, don't talk to somebody you know is going to shame you. I'm talking about if you love something innocuous that's harmless. I love romance, so don't talk to the big burly marine who has already stated bluntly that romance is for wimps and idiots. Maybe go find a community that supports it first. Then you can become friends with that burly marine, and as you become friends hope he comes to respect you. And while you're out shooting together, because you do that, you're like, “Yeah, this is just like a scene in my favorite romance book.” And he's like, “What?!” Joanna: I was going to say that they all love romance. Michaelbrent: Yeah, and that's me bluntly stereotyping as someone with a huge number of friends who are Army and Marine and stuff. But I'm making a silly analogy that we're all humans. The problem is usually it's less about subject matter than it is about timing. So if you want to break out of that and not feel ashamed, well, first of all, recognize it's part of you. And you can be ashamed of it if you feel like it's down and grim and nasty and genuinely evil stuff. And in that case, seriously, seek help. Like, you might genuinely need help with something. Not even because it's bad, but because you have something horribly broken in you that's wounded needs help with. But if you're looking at it, and you're just ashamed because none of your friends like it. I have a really good buddy who's a contractor, and he is a hardcore gamer. He loves D&D, and we go to Comic Cons together, and he'll dress up and like a full cosplay outfit with like a bustier and stuff like this. He's like full steampunk. He doesn't wear that to the job site because he just knows the reaction is not going to be helpful. So he went out and found a second community, and it enriched his life because now he gets to do the job stuff he loves and he's got this community he loves. So look at the difference between something that's evil, and something that you just haven't found the community to share with. Those are very different things. I think most of us get caught up in a confusion between them. Joanna: I agree. I think being open to that. I mean, when I've spoken at things, I'll say, “Okay, who in the room likes graveyards?” And it's usually about 30% of people in a room. And this isn't a horror convention or anything. And I'll be like, “Okay, you'll probably like my J.F. Penn books.” Like, there's just a thing that we have in common. I've just found that's a really good way of doing it.  The other thing I was going to say is, I mean, a lot of erotica writers and some horror writers, a lot of romance writers, will use a pseudonym as a way to almost protect their ‘normal' life. You use your same name for everything. But as you said, you go to church, you're a family man, you're writing middle grade. Have you ever thought about writing under a pen name? Michaelbrent: Not really. I mean, I did for a while when I wrote some Western romance. I used Angelica Hart, but it wasn't like a shame thing. It was just women writers sell better in that genre. I actually ditched it because women were starting to write me, and like this 40-year-old divorced woman was like, “You're my best friend, and nobody else understands me, and those men…” And I'm like, oh, she's going to kill me when she finds out. So I ditched it because it was just too hard being two people for me.  If you feel like you have to be protected that way, that's a rough situation. I've never had massive amounts of blowback. I have very often had confused looks. Like in church, I used to teach, I used to be in charge of the Sunday school for my congregation. A new person would come in, and I'd be talking to them after Sunday school, after I gave a lesson, and they'd be like, “What do you do?” because it comes up. And I'd be like, “I write scary books.” And they're like, “Like Harry Potter?” You know, that was kind of their default, like Harry Potter. And I'd go, “Yeah, sort of, but like, Hermione gets really mad in the middle of it and blows Harry up and then sets fire to Ron.”  They were so taken aback by that. And I, of course, did it for effect and as a laugh. I'd chuckle and I tell them about, like, the scariest book I've ever read was this one about this guy gets nailed to a tree. Joanna: Yeah, there's some horror in the Bible! Michaelbrent: Right. And so again, it's timing and it's understanding. And I'm going like, whatever you think of when you're thinking about horror, person who hates horror, that's probably actually not what I write because most of us actually overlap a lot. Another thing my parents taught me was don't ever be ashamed to raise your hand and say, I don't understand. We worry about doing that because we worry about looking stupid. And they're like, 80% of the class has that question. You're going to have 20% of the class that thinks you're stupid, and 80% for whom you're the hero for finally asking the question that they needed asked. I find it's very much the same in literature. I'm going to write a book all about graveyards, but, oh, I don't know if anyone know people love graveyards. As soon as you said graveyards, I was like, those things are cool. It wasn't because I think of zombies and I think of evil, you know, the evil dead coming out. I just think they're beautiful. Actually, when we're traveling and I see a graveyard, we will very often stop off and enjoy kind of the vibes and the feelings there. There's so much love in a graveyard. So for me, it's not a dark place at all.  So you find that overlap and you realize, oh, the horror lover and the horror hater, they both love graveyards. They love them, maybe for slightly different reasons, but there's still that huge commonality that we can talk about. If I try and sell the horror hater on a horror novel, he's going to say no, or she's going to say no. But if I say, “Hey, I wrote this book about this cool thing that happens at a graveyard and it turns into this thrilling adventure.” They're like, I'm totally in. So again, it's a way we present it as much as anything. Joanna: It's so interesting, isn't it? But maybe these things come up over time. For example, I was mentioning to you before we started recording that I'm coming up to, oh, no, I am actually 48 years old. And I almost feel that age — I mean, we're fine with death — but I think age, and maybe you're used to mental illness, but I almost feel like physical illness, old age, the things that change us as we get older, being a woman going through hormonal changes and the stuff that comes up at this time — These are all things that just suddenly appear in the shadow and that you didn't even have to acknowledge until they start happening to you. Michaelbrent: Yeah. Joanna: And that maybe that's part of why we write is that we deal with these things as they come up by writing. Like in my memoir, Pilgrimage, I talk about a lot of this stuff. And almost by writing it, it comes out of the shadow, and now it's out there, and it's fine now. I can talk about it because it's out there. But do you think that's why, I mean, horror writers are, I think, psychologically very healthy because they kind of take the things out of the shadows, put them in the light, put them in a book, and it's kind of done. Is that how you think it is for you? Michaelbrent: Yeah, I think so. And I think you're right, it is for most horror writers. Most of them are very well-adjusted. Everyone has demons, the difference is the demons that horror writers have, we make them sing for their supper. We don't get rid of them, we just harness them and make them kind of useful. I think what you said is so incredibly important, you know, about aging. I'm going through that too, like, I just can't sleep through the night anymore, simply because I have old injuries that have cropped up. And I've always had a bad back since I was in my early 30s, and it's just impossible to sleep in one position anymore. That's really rough, and it's terrifying because it's like, well, I thought I understood the way my life is, and now, I'm not assured that I can pick up a shopping bag today. And that was kind of a thing, you know, I could do that. That was a basic idea.  We write about these things as a way of defining them. As soon you describe it, you have to use words to do that, and those words have definitions, so you've defined the problem. If you look at the word define, I mean, the literal etymology of it has to do with placing boundaries around something. So we've contained our terror within this definition. I don't understand aging. Well, I'm going to write about it, and now I do understand it. Maybe not fully, maybe not completely, but I understand it enough that it's just not as terrifying for me, or I understand what will always be terrifying about it. I wrote a book called The Deep because I'm scared of the ocean. Joanna: You know I love that book. Michaelbrent: Thank you. But the ocean is so scary. And I wrote it, and I was like, well, my conclusion is the ocean is still scary, and so I will avoid the ocean. But I can deal with that, you know, I moved to a landlocked area, and I'm fine. I say it in jest, but that really is part of what we do. We're figuring out our boundaries, we're figuring out where we can go mentally and physically, and we're like, well, I'll enjoy the areas that I can enjoy, and the other areas, I will avoid them. That's just healthy living. I do think horror does that a lot. For the authors, they're like, I'm going to talk about the stuff that terrifies me until it no longer does. I feel like that's part of why I've managed to write so many books, is I'm just scared of a ton of things. Joanna: I think it's super healthy to keep writing about these things. So you have written a lot of books, and you also help authors a lot through lots of different things, you do lots of speaking, and you've got a new course for authors at Bestseller Life. Tell us a bit about that course and how it can help authors? Michaelbrent: So it's at bestsellerlife.com, and it's about becoming your own best story. That's the slogan, “Become your own best story,” or the logo or motto or however you want to say it. It came about because during COVID, my wife and I share computers, and so we get each other's Facebook interests popping up, and she started getting all these ads for people teaching her how to write or to how to be a best seller because I'm constantly learning that stuff and taking classes and courses and trying to improve.  So I was like, oh, send them to me, I'm always interested. And the great majority of them, you go to their Amazon page, and it's someone who's written like three books, maybe, and has a total of eight reviews, maybe, and has sold maybe 10 copies, you know. So I finally was like, I'm going to build one that's real, based on all the stuff that I know. So essentially bestsellerlife.com, it is a full suite of information that's like, this is how Michaelbrent does it from start to finish. So it includes my writing methods, my marketing methods. It's still being built out, I update it weekly. The biggest job of an artist and an author and a creator is to make the world better and bringing people together and helping stuff. You know, you put 100 artists or 100 authors against the wall and say, “What's the secret to your success?” and you're going to get 100 different answers because we all approach it differently.  There are still principles that work, and so that's what bestsellerlife.com is about is those principles and fundamentals that will help you kind of build your platform, and build your audience, and jumpstart your writing, and get it so you're on to the next level. So you can become your own best story and be satisfied with not just where you are, but where you're going. Joanna: And just to be clear— Is that just for people who want to write horror, or is it for any genre? Michaelbrent: No, that's any genre. And again, I've written literally everything except erotica. If you can name a genre, I have done it and done reasonably well in it. So it does have specific genre breakdowns in some of the classes, but a lot of it is just marketing that works across the board. I even provide my marketing copy and the things that I specifically use, with breakdowns where I'm like, here's what I do. Obviously, you can't write an ad that's about Michaelbrent, that wouldn't make any sense, but here are the elements that I use, and here's how you can hopefully adapt them to you wherever you are. So yeah, I wanted it to be across the board super helpful to anyone no matter what they're writing, because again, I'm not talking about specific metabolisms, as much as I am like, here are general principles that work. Then I break them into, and here's how I specifically do them to this effect, and hopefully allow people to empower themselves a little bit more. Joanna: If people want to try your fiction, where can people find all of that online? Michaelbrent: Easiest way is just to type the word Michaelbrent, all one word, because I'm the only Michaelbrent in the world. That'll bring up my Amazon page, and my Facebook page, my website is writteninsomnia.com. Written Insomnia is stories that keep you up all night. You can go there and check out my stuff, but just honestly, the easiest way is to Google Michaelbrent because there's just one. Joanna: Well, thank you so much for your time again, Michaelbrent. It's been great, as usual. Michaelbrent: I love being here with you, Joanna. My only regret about ever coming on a show with you is that we're not neighbors because I would totally hang out with you. Joanna: In a graveyard! Michaelbrent: Yes.The post Writing From Your Shadow Side With Michaelbrent Collings first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What are the pros and cons of traditional publishing vs self-publishing? How can you combine multiple options for a more creatively satisfying — and profitable — author career? Rachael Herron gives her tips. In the intro, Power Thesaurus and editing tips for audio; How Writers Fail — Kris Rusch; Finishing energy; Sidekick for Shopify; Shadow Survey (please complete before 31 Aug 2023). Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with Scrivener, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 25% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna Rachael Herron is the internationally bestselling author of more than two dozen books, including thrillers, romance, memoir, and nonfiction about writing. She has taught writing at both UC Berkeley and Stanford, and now teaches authors online with courses and coaching, as well as through her podcast, How Do You Write. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Combining traditional and indie publishing Deciding which route to go with each project The locus of control with indie publishing Publishing a series — indie or trad? Pitching an agent as an already independently published author Differences in money between indie and trad publishing Tips for developing author friendships You can find Rachael at RachaelHerron.com where you can find her latest course and Magic Query Letter. Transcript of Interview with Rachael Herron Joanna: Rachael Herron is the internationally bestselling author of more than two dozen books, including thrillers, romance, memoir, and nonfiction about writing. She has taught writing at both UC Berkeley and Stanford, and now teaches authors online with courses and coaching, as well as through her podcast, How Do You Write. So welcome back to the show, Rachael. Rachael: What a treat to talk to you, Jo. It's just a delight, as always. Joanna: You were last on the show in 2018, talking about Fast-Draft Your Memoir. Now obviously, lots has happened since then, which is kind of crazy. So give us a bit of an update on what your author life and your business look like now. Rachael: Okay, so first of all, five years, oh my god. And second of all, when Fast-Draft Your Memoir came out, I have not listened to that episode since we recorded it, but I remember you saying, I'm going to write a memoir, and I'm not ready to do it yet, I'm not ready. Look at you now. Joanna: Yes, well, for people who don't know, my memoir, Pilgrimage, came out earlier this year in 2023. Rachael: It's lovely. Joanna: Thank you. Rachael: It's lovely. So yeah, so that had just come out the last time we chatted. Since then, I was thinking about this because five years is a long time, especially in the last five years. So since then, I have published two thrillers, one was called Stolen Things, and one was called Hush Little Baby. Both of those were from Penguin. I got the rights back to, I think I counted, I think it was a total of eight books. So seven novels and my first memoir, A Life in Stitches, I got the rights to all of those back. Those have been subsequently self-published, indie published by me. I just sold a new book, which I was talking to you about recently, so that is actually going to be my new genre of paranormal women's fiction. So that's out there. And my wife and I have moved to New Zealand, so it's been a busy five years. Joanna: It has. It has, absolutely. We're going to come back on the New Zealand thing. But I mean, obviously there you've got traditional publishing, you've got rights back, you indie publish, you do all these different things. I wanted to talk to you because you've got this new course out, How to Publish Your Book in Today's Market, which I think is super useful because it seems like there are more choices than ever, and also a lot of people like yourself, you're mixing and matching all these things. So talk a bit more about how you combine traditional and indie publishing, both practically and also the mindset. How do you know what to do with each project? Rachael: Oh, it's such a good question. So I wrote the book that just sold, it's not coming up till 2025, thank you traditional publishing, but that is the paranormal women's fiction, and I wrote it with the entire intention, 100% intention to self-publish this as the beginning of a series. I had the idea, I was in love with this idea, I was in love with the idea for a series. It was really one of the most joyful projects I've ever written. I had no intention of offering it to my agent. Then when I got done writing it, I thought, well, this is really great. I love this book, and I don't want to do a series. I was just kind of exhausted by the thought of starting a series. I have written series before, and I just get kind of burned out on them. So I offered this one to my agent, and I'm in that fortunate place of being able to do that, but it was a very frank conversation with her. I said, like, “If you can sell this for an amount of money that I'm cool with, fabulous. And if not, I'm going to happily self-publish it.” So that's the way I thought about that book, but when I start thinking about a book, overall, I like to decide in advance as much as I can. I really surprised myself with this one by giving it to my agent. I've finished this memoir about moving to New Zealand, and I am not offering that to my agent. Period. She doesn't know that yet. I know what I'm going to do with this. I have a plan in place. It's based on Patreon, I wrote these as a collection of essays on Patreon. I'm going to Kickstart it as the full book. That's all thanks to you. Thank you, ma'am, for doing that to me. I'm going to Kickstart it, and then I'm going to launch it into all of the places that I usually do. And having that solid plan in place feels  really good to me. I know that this is a book I will be able to sell. I know how to sell on my own. Then there's another memoir that has been completed and finished for about a year now, and it's a recovery memoir, and honestly I don't know as well how to sell that one. My agent has been helping me revise that one. So that one, I leave on her desk, and she's going to handle trying to get that sold. But again, if she doesn't sell it, if she can't sell it, then I will happily indie publish this because — I like being traditionally published for different reasons that I'm sure we'll go into, but I love being indie-published for so many more reasons. But I do like to have both. Joanna: Hmm, gosh, so much to unpack there. Okay, we're going to come back on the series thing, and the money thing, and the agent thing. But we have to tackle the emotional thing which you've just said, which was: ‘I like being traditionally published, I love being indie.' So can you talk about why you feel that way emotionally? Rachael: Oh, you're going right for the gut here. I think it has to do with the way I want to control things and the way I want things to go in my dream world. When I have a book that is traditionally published, I always, always, always expect it—because I think writers are just these hopeful unicorns—I expect it to rise to the top and to sell a bajillion million copies, and when it doesn't, and we're talking about a traditionally published book, there is nothing I can do. I mean, I can obviously do my own author marketing, all of the things I can do. But I can't change the cover, I can't change the categories that they have chosen for it, I can't update or change anything. It leaves me feeling kind of frantically unsettled, to the point that now I've traditionally published enough that I used to experience what a friend of mine recently called ‘a crash' after your book comes out, like two weeks later, you're like, oh, what have I done? How can I help this book sell more? I don't experience that with traditional publishing anymore because as soon as it comes out, the day it comes out, I kind of kiss it goodbye forever. I cannot affect this book anymore. That's the only healthy way I can hold onto that side of my career.  In indie publishing, that unicorn hope never dies. If it is not selling the way I want it to, there are things that I can do, that I can play around with, that I can change, that are under my control. And for some reason, the idea of not selling a lot of books because it's my fault, because indie published, is much easier for me to handle than not selling a lot of books in traditional publishing where I have no control. Does that make sense? Joanna: Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Psychology talks about locus of control as being a reason. Like people are happier when they have some locus of control over whatever it is, whether it's choosing something in your job, which is basically what this is for us, it is a job, and being able to control stuff. We just feel more empowered. I love how you combine things. So I want to come back on this idea of series. So you had originally designed this paranormal women's series, which as we know, is normally the thing that we do as indies. We write series because we know that it's a longer-term game, that you're going to do promotions on the first book, and there'll be sell through and we know how that works. When you decided it wasn't the series, that's when you decided to do traditional for this book. So can you talk more about this? I mean— Is there any point in trying to pitch series books to traditional publishing at this point? Rachael: Oh, what an interesting question. I think that selling series right now to traditional publishing, from what I have seen, is something to be careful about. When we presented this book, when my agent shopped this book, she didn't say that this has series potential. It was bought by Grand Central Publishing Hachette, and when I was in conversation with the editor, it was a conversation between the three of us, my agent gently said, “So do you see this as something that you would want another book in a series from?” Because we had said this is just a one book deal that we were talking about. The editor said, and this is kind of mind-blowing, the editor said, “Well, you always have a fall off to the next book in a series. So I don't think so. I think if you'd like to pitch us something in the same world, or also magical realism, or the paranormal angle that you've got here, but it doesn't have to be in the same town, or anything like that, we'll take that.” And that to me, was a very traditional publishing answer. Yes, as indie publishers, we all know that the first book will get the most reads, the second book will fall off. However, the person who goes from the second book goes to the third book and the fourth book and the fifth book, and that's where the long tail money comes in. I'm not sure that they are thinking like that right now. What I think they're doing, and what I'm happy to play with them in the sandbox for, is they buy books from writers and they hope that this will be the big hit. It's pitched as Queer Practical Magic meets The Parent Trap. And maybe it'll blow up, but maybe it won't.  The other thing is that when I was making this decision, this calculated decision, number one, the series idea was kind of falling away from me. And number two, I had a couple of very serious conversations with some people that I trust saying like, look, paranormal midlife women's fiction is a small niche, and queer paranormal midlife women's fiction is not even a niche. I couldn't find anybody else writing in it. And yes, I could be the outlier and blow up if I indie published it, but I could also just find eight readers. I didn't want to invest that time in creating a series that I wasn't sure I could really outright market in the best way I could possibly do. So I enjoyed the heck out of writing the whole book, and then was just so happy when it sold because I don't have to do things like covers, and the stuff that I do enjoy doing. They didn't give me a bajillion million dollars, but they gave me enough money to basically say, yeah, I don't have to think about that book again. I'd already had it developmentally edited and copy edited. It was ready to go. So the edits that I will do with that editor are really minor because she loved the way it landed on her desk because it was ready to go. Joanna: I think that's fantastic. I mean, I've been thinking about this. I've had these standalone book ideas for years now, and with the indie model, I just can't make that work. It's so funny because this is exactly what I was thinking around like, okay, well, maybe these are the ones that I do pitch because I've done some standalones, and I know how hard they are to sell in the indie space, but maybe these are the ones to pitch. So obviously this is an entirely selfish conversation. People listening are just listening to you coaching me! But I think one of the things that comes up for me and comes up for a lot of indie authors, however successful they are, and I guess I almost feel that my platform and my sales may be at the point now where it's even harder, and I'm even wondering whether to pitch under another name. So the question is really— What do agents and publishers think of indie authors at this point? And when we're pitching should we like double down on what we've done as indie? Or should we just focus on the book? Rachael: I love this question. I think that if we are indie-published writers who have books out there, I think we need to focus on the book itself in the query letter, if we're trying to get an agent. Focus on the book itself, to the exclusion of the book. We want to keep the query letter as simple as possible, and you want that agent to want the book. There is one exception. And honestly, Joanna, I would say that you would fall in this exception. If you have books that have sold tremendously well, so not like a hundred copies a month, but thousands of copies a month or more, or if you have a sizable platform, that's when I would put it in the query letter. But if you are querying agents, and it's just your book, and you have a bunch of indie titles out there but they're not blowing up like lightning, I think the least said, the better.  Then when that agent is in love with your book and you're on a phone call with them, that's the time to say, “I'm also indie-published. I've had success with this and this. I haven't had success with those three books, but I really liked that series and maybe I'll revamp it.” And of course, an agent who is interested in you will Google you, and your books will come up.  Things have changed so much now in the world. We would not have had this conversation five years ago. They've changed so much now that— Agents absolutely know that their authors are making more money with their indie titles. They know that they are, and editors know this too at traditional publishing houses, they know that they need to bring their best game, their best self, to this party too. If they love your book, they're going to want you. That said, I think there was a question in the questions that you sent, like when would you not mention a book? Or would you ever pitch a book that was already out there? That's something I wouldn't do. If this is a book that you've already published by yourself, you've self-published it and it's done reasonably okay, or it hasn't done well at all, I wouldn't pitch that book to an agent because what they will do is look and say, like, okay, so maybe they've had a thousand sales of this book, but that's a thousand sales I can't get for the editor to whom I sell this book. So they want to see something else from you. And again, the exception to that is if you have self-published something that has I'm absolutely blown up, agents will be knocking on your door and they will want to sell that book for you to a traditional publisher. Joanna: Yeah, it feels like some of the authors, like Hugh Howey would be the classic one, or Andy Weir with The Martian, like they were a decade ago now, those early authors when indie was new. In the Kindle store, they did get the sort of print-only deals, and some authors are still getting those. But as you say, most indie authors who are then doing hybrid, writing new series or new books, like it has to be new, basically, when you pitch. Rachael: There are some exceptions. My friend AK Mulford, who was in New Zealand, but now she lives in Australia, she came out with two adult fantasies, and they did so well that she was approached by agents, and then she was picked up for those books and another series, and a multimillion-dollar deal with Harper Voyager. And she was absolutely brand new on the scene. She published one book, and then I think that was four months later. Joanna: That was TikTok, right? That was a TikTok deal. Rachael: Yeah, she's a TikTok media perfection person. So you're right. They had that going on. Joanna: To be fair, that's a platform deal. Rachael: You're right. Joanna: She could have written anything. Rachael: You're absolutely right. That is a platform thing. But the thing about agents nowadays is, like I said, they know what they're competing with. I've told my agent flat out that I make more money every year from my self-pub titles than what I make from New York. So I think that they're looking and they're hungry, and they're also scared. Agents are scared, editors of traditional publishing houses are scared of how publishing is changing every year, just like we're all frightened of a lot of things. I always think that writers are perpetually like the sky is falling in the sky, and the sky is never actually falling. But they're also feeling that. So does that help, or did I just like confuse waters? Joanna: Oh, no, no, that's good. I think the point is that this is confusing. And every time we say, oh, this, then there'll be an example of something the opposite. So I think the point is that there's always opportunity if you're looking Let's talk about the money because I feel like it's really important, like you said, to say agents are scared. Agents get paid a percentage of the money that their author gets paid. This is important to remember for people because we're so obsessed with our own business, which is as it should be, we forget that these are business people who are trying to make their own living. So maybe you could talk about— How is the money different between indie and traditional for you? And when is it a good deal for an agent? Rachael: So agents across the board are almost always going to get 15% of what you make. If it is a foreign deal, if you're making foreign money at all, then they get 20% because 5% goes to their foreign sub-rights agent. So they're making 15% of what you make, and they want to make that money for you. For the first few years of my career, obviously I wasn't indie publishing yet, all of my money was coming from New York. I had some good years with some bigger deals, and so I know that when my agent got those checks, she was happy. My agent got a check today, she got the signing portion of that traditional deal, which means the money goes to her first, she takes out the 15%, and then she sends me a direct deposit into my bank account. So how the money works in traditional publishing is you get an advance. And it has been that they have been splitting this up into smaller and smaller chunks. Both of my thrillers were parceled up into four different chunks of money. So say I got $40,000 for a book, parceled into four chunks meant that I got $10,000 on signing the deal, $10,000 on what's called delivery and acceptance, which means after I'd done the edits that they wanted me to do, and the editor had said, yeah, these are good, then that's another $10,000. And then I got $10,000 when the first version was published, which for me was hardcover in both cases. Then another $10,000 a year later when the paperback was published. Or if the hardcover did so badly that it never went to paperback, I would have still gotten that payment a year later.  That's difficult because that's $10,000 every once in a while, minus the 15%, minus taxes. You're really taking home about 45% of that. It's not that much. But this latest deal that I just signed actually came in two payments, on signing and delivery and acceptance. So I'll get those full moneys this year because the book is already done and deliverable, and I've already signed. So that's kind of nice. In indie publishing, we have that gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous long tail of the money that just keeps coming in. And I am in that wonderful position that you are in too, of just having a large backlist. It means that I can make a good amount of money every year just by continuing to sell to new readers as often as I can. Every year on the very first episode of the year on my podcast, How Do You Write, I do this incredibly awful and awkward and just feels terrible conversation about how much money I've made the year before and where I made it. I do it because I believe in transparency, and every year it makes me feel a little bit weirder. I should have looked these numbers up to have them right at the top of my head, but I think I made about $80,000 last year from books, and I want to say that $60,000 were from my backlist.  I hadn't had a new indie pub book out for more than a year. I haven't done anything. These are just my backlist books continuing to sell. I have an amazing assistant who does things like apply for BookBubs for me because I would never get around to doing it, but he does those kinds of things. But otherwise, that money's just kind of rolling it. Whereas New York is a lot more unpredictable. Joanna: Yeah, and I think that's important. It's almost the difference between spike income, so you get a big payment, but you don't necessarily know when it's coming in, and big may be relative. With indie, it's a smaller amount (each time), but it is pretty much every month. I feel like it's more, not a salary because we're not employees, but it is more like a salary in that it's coming in, and you know how much is coming in, and you can pay your mortgage with that eventually, when you have enough of a backlist. Okay, so I want to come back on agents because you've been working with your agent a really long time. You've got a really good relationship with your agent. But for people starting now, I mean, it feels like if you are un-agented, then new agents who might not have a big list might be a more obvious partnership because they're kind of hungry. But then also, people want an agent with good connections and who knows what they're doing. What are your tips on finding an agent and pitching an agent? Rachael: I have so many tips. I love the whole process of pitching to agents. The query letter, it is something I actually used to coach people on. I don't do it anymore, but I have this thing called a Magic Query Letter, basically form, that I'm happy to give to your listeners. Because the thing about query letters is they can't stick out, and they can't take too much time for the intern to read. Because agents for the most part are not reading the slush pile, which is that inbox of query letters. It's an intern who is trained to read until the word that makes her delete the email, and they're getting 300 a week, 400 a week. Your only job with sending a query letter is to not allow her to find any word that makes her want to delete it. Then by the time she gets to the end of your email, she's like, oh crap, I've got to ask for a partial on this because I don't hate anything. So it has to be a little bit formulaic. It has to be simple, the query letter. And the thing about agents is, like exactly what you said, of course, we all want that agent who is incredibly high-powered and knows everybody in the industry.  My agent, Susanna Einstein, we started working together in 2008. I was her second client, and her first one was dead. She was representing a rather famous author's estate because she was a sub agent for a larger agency. I did not know who she was, I had run out of agents to pitch that I was just desperate for. I had my perfect list of 10 agents that I would die to work with, and they rejected me so quickly or I didn't hear back from them.  Then I took like maybe the next 10 who were like they'd be okay, I could work with them. Total rejection. I just kept going until I was in agentquery.com or querytracker.net, which are free places you can go and look for agents who are looking for your genre. And I was now just pitching pretty blindly. What I would do is I would go to their website, and I would make sure that they really were an agent and they weren't a scam, and that they were representing books that looked like my book could fit in there somewhere with them. Then I would just send an email query out and I wouldn't care. That's one of my biggest tips: Don't get your heart set on a particular agent. The most brand new green agent could be the one that you work with for the next 15 years who becomes your friend. Susanna is now the head of her own agency, she is high powered, she knows everybody in the industry. But we really grew up together. Also, the thing about signing with an agent is it's not that big a deal if—I mean, it would hurt—but if you got one and you just didn't like working with them, you can drop them. It's a business arrangement. The only time you can't do that is if you're working with an agent, and they sell your book. They've sold your book forever, you can't take that book away from them, they will get 15% of that book for the rest of time.  We also have to be, and you're so good about talking about this, we have to be savvy with our businesses. In this new contract that I got, I had her ask them if they would change some of the rights reversion clauses. And that was awkward because what I was asking Susanna to strike out of this contract was a line that said something like, “If you ask for your rights reverted, we have the right to refuse you if there are 150 copies of your book in the warehouse. We also reserve the right to reprint your book, 150 copies or more.” So what that was saying to me was that they could just say, “Oh, Rachael wants her rights back. Go ahead and print 150 copies and put them in the warehouse, and now she can't have her rights back.” Joanna: They don't even have to prove that to you. It just makes it difficult. Rachael: Well, HarperCollins had told me, because I wanted a bunch of my books back from them, and they had told me, “Well, there's still 120 copies in the warehouse.” I said, “Fine, I'm going to buy those.” And I bought them, and then they had to send them to me, which was the worst. Why that's difficult with Susanna is that that's me saying like, if this fails, as so many of my books have failed in the traditional publishing world, I will come back and I will get these, and then you won't get the 15% anymore. Once I take them back from the publishing house and I self-publish them, she is cut out of the whole deal, which kind of makes me feel terrible as her friend, but as a business person, that's just the way it works. Joanna: Yeah, exactly. I've done a lot of shows on contracts, so we will just say, watch out for your contracts. There's lots of stuff on that. I mean, of course, you talk about this in the course in terms of being careful with the legalities. I just want to come back on there, you mentioned the word ‘failed.' And I also want to mention ‘ego,' because I still feel like in the early days, people used to call indie vanity publishing. And it was like, oh, you're so vain, you want to print your own books. Now I feel it's the other way around because it's like, you're so vain, you want your name on a book in a bookstore. And that's fine, because we have to acknowledge the ego. I feel like as writers, ego and self-doubt coexist. There is a sense of ego, and we should be proud of that, and ambition and all of this kind of stuff. But you also mentioned failure, and disappointed, and you mentioned the word crash after a publication. This is a tough roller coaster. And in fact, some of the unhappiest authors are those whose books come out and then don't perform. Can you talk a bit about what does failure mean as a traditionally published author? How can people deal with that, as well as kind of holding onto the dream of ego? Rachael: Yeah, well, I'm kind of an expert in what this feels like. I love what you say about the dream of the ego. And I will always tell anyone who listened that I wanted to be a traditionally published author because I wanted the ego boost of walking into a Barnes and Noble and seeing my book on a shelf and I didn't put it there. And that is an absolutely valid thing to want. It is a great thing to move toward, if that is something that motivates you to keep writing and to keep getting better at your craft.  In terms of quote, unquote, “failure or failing,” when you are given this advance, it's a bet that the traditional publisher is making on you. They're saying, I bet you make this much money. If you make this much money, that'll be a good thing. We're going to make the money up that we gave to you, and we're going to make some extra money. When you do that, then you can go back to that traditional publisher and say, “You know, that last book, I made you some money. Here's another book. Would you like to make some more money with me?” And they say, “Well, sure. It's a good book. You made us money. Let's do it.” Then there are the times where they give you an advance, they make a bet, and you don't make back the money. So for my Penguin thrillers, Stolen Things did great. It earned out, it performed the way they wanted it to, and I made royalties on it above and beyond my advance. Hush Little Baby, the next book, which is to be very honest, my favorite book and the best book I've ever written that is currently published, I looked this up before we started chatting today, I have sold 2500 copies of it. That is not a lot in terms of traditional land, and I cost them money. So they don't want to work with me anymore. I always joke and I say that I've gotten fired from all of the publishers. I haven't gotten fired, but what that is, is that my agent goes back and says, “Would you like another book from Rachael?” And they go, “No, thanks. We're good. We've done that.” And I think in terms of my ego and my own choice to deflate ego, I laugh about it. I say it's failure, and I say I've been fired, and it kind of covers up the sting of it a little bit because there is definitely a sting. I jokingly say that I have PTSD, and the P stands for publishing. It's not easy, and I still want to keep doing it. Joanna: And as we said before, you also do indie. So you kind of have both of these things. I love that you're planning to do the Kickstarter, you have a Patreon, obviously, you do courses, you have your podcast, you have all kinds of things. And I think this is the important aspect of your business, is you don't just rely on sending a book to traditional publishing and then expect that to be the only thing. That seems to be when people struggle is if that's the only thing they have. It feels like the secret to being an author success is having multiple streams of income. Rachael: Yeah, it is. Also, I love that for myself because I am the kind of person who was basically born an entrepreneur. This is what I've always wanted to do. I think I had three businesses before I was 12 years old. They made $7 total, but I love doing this. The thing that is hard I think sometimes, is talking to people who they want to write this book, and then they want to get an agent, and they want to sell it for a bajillion million dollars, and then retire to their private island. And you and I both know, that's not the practical reality. We have to be thinking about how we can support ourselves in other ways. Whether that is multiple income streams on the writing side, or do you have a supportive partner that can help you while you do this, or do you work a full time day job, or a part time day job, while you support this desire and longing and yearning to be a writer. Because I think that the people who know that we want to write will do anything for it. We'll do anything to get it done, and knowing that that's okay. I worked for the first 10 years of my career, so from 2006 when I finished my first book that was sold, to 2016, when I retired from my full-time day job, I worked both jobs 80 to 90 to 100 hours a week. I had to. I wasn't making enough money not to. Joanna: I remember when you were a dispatch officer. Rachael: Yeah, I was a 911 dispatcher. I lived in the firehouse, and I was there for 48 to 72 hours at a time. I do not miss staying up all night and napping in the firehouse! Joanna: Yeah. I mean, we do what we do. I mean, the first five years I wrote while working my day job. And of course, now I kind of see this podcast and my nonfiction almost as the day job that support my fiction. Although my fiction does reasonably well, I still like having good multiple businesses.  I do want to ask you about New Zealand. We're almost out of time. And what's really interesting, so you and your wife moved to New Zealand from the USA, which is a really big deal. A lot of people are lonely, just wherever they are in the world without even moving, and it looks like you've done a really good job of connecting with community. So I actually wondered if you had any tips on making author friends in a new place or in your existing town if you haven't tried before? Because I remember my early days in Brisbane when I started writing, I couldn't find any author friends and authors seemed very remote. I had all these friends in my existing life, but I wanted to kind of move into this new life, and I just didn't know how to do it. How have you developed these relationships? And any tips for people on building a network of author friends? Rachael: I love this question because I think it can help anybody who's feeling like they want more of a writing community, which I think is one of the most important things that we need as writers. When we moved here, I was incredibly deliberate. I was also, I think we talked about it, I was terrified. It was the scariest thing I've ever done, selling the house and everything we owned, and leaving my family and all of my friends, to move around the world. So I was incredibly intentional as soon as we got here that I wanted to make friends, and COVID made that a lot trickier because Omicron got in right after we did. My goals—or actually the decisions that I made—I had two of them in my mind, I wanted to be brave and I wanted to be picky. And together those two things, in terms of finding writing community, I think has worked so well for me, and I see this working with my students too. I would go to writing meetups, I would go to writing groups. There's the Romance Writers of New Zealand, I don't write romance very much anymore, if at all, but I knew that that was a place where writers would gather, so I went. I was brave because I am truly an introvert and peopling makes me want to die sometimes, but I was brave and I went to these. Part of that bravery extended to making my mouth say the really scary words, which were, “I just moved here. I'm really scared about making new friends. Would any of you like to have coffee with me?” And that, as a, you know, I was 49 then, I'm 50 now, that is not easy to say out loud. People respond so well to that kind of honesty because they felt that way too in the past. Then number two is to be picky. Like I had a lot of coffee dates with a lot of amazing people, and I liked them all a lot. Like I went out to coffee with nice, nice people all over the place. But I fell in love with a small group of writer friends that those were just the ones I knew they were my people. They were my people. And for them, I was also brave. You know, I would say, “Can we please hang out again? Can we do this again?” So we've been here now two years, and I have this group of writing friends that we go away on retreats together for four days to little houses all over New Zealand and we just write together. It's paid off, the bravery plus the pickiness. If you go to a meetup in your small town, there's going to be seven people. And the guy named, I don't know, George, is going to be old and kind, and he's not going to be your best friend. Then there's going to be a woman who creeps you out, just don't make friends with her. And then there will be a woman or a man that you can just feel it. And those are the ones you need to be brave about and say, “Do you want to go have coffee and talk about your book? I would love to talk about my book with somebody like you.” Doesn't that sound terrifying? Joanna: Oh, I completely get it. I call it a kind of ‘friend dating.' And you mentioned deliberate. You do have to be deliberate. These things don't happen by accident because otherwise, we just stay in with our laptops in whatever space and we're in our head. And then we don't have any friends. So I think you've done an amazing job of putting yourself out there. And I know, I mean, you get migraines, and I get a lot of head pain as well from people. But we have to do this, otherwise, it is lonely. Yeah, so I wanted to encourage people that way. But we're out of time— Tell people a bit more about the course, How to Publish Your Book in Today's Market. Also, you mentioned a query letter form, which you offered, so you have to talk about that too. Rachael: Oh, absolutely. So the course is How to Publish in Today's Market. And it will always be today's market because I will always keep it updated, but it's the difference between traditional and indie publishing. I think it's 22 modules, and it goes through everything you need to know about traditional publishing, and how to write a query letter, how to write a synopsis, how to format things. Then it goes into everything you need to know for indie publishing, or at least as much as I can fit into one course. It talks a little bit about marketing, but not too much. There is a little bit about it, but it talks about finding cover designers, and how to find a good editor, all of those things. I do not talk about AI because I just send everybody to you. And thanks to you, I am obsessed with GPT-4, and I was just using it earlier to help me figure out this Venice book that I've been trying to figure out for years. It's helping me with that. It kind of feels like your Shadow book, I think that's the one. ChatGPT is helping me. So that course is available over at RachaelHerron.com/publish. And it'll be there. And the Magic Query Letter, your listeners can get for free just by going to RachaelHerron.com/magic. And it's got all of the instructions you need in terms of formatting, and what to say, and how to say it, and how to make sure that that intern cannot delete your query letter, and they will ask you for that partial or that full. Joanna: So also, just tell people about your podcast as well. Rachael: Of course. It's called How Do You Write. I'm about 370 episodes in, and I am obsessed with process because I'm always looking for the magic bullet that will finally make writing easier for me. And it doesn't exist, but I really love to talk with writers about it. You have been on the show, and yeah, How Do You Write is available everywhere. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Rachael. That was great. Rachael: Thanks, Jo. What a joy.The post Your Publishing Options With Rachael Herron first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you exploit the unique in your stories, as well as amp up the conflict? John Gaspard gives writing and creative business tips based on movies and TV. In the intro, Meta launches Threads, the new Twitter-like app — you can follow me @jfpennauthor; Possible Podcast episode with Ethan Mollick; Moonshots and Mindsets podcast about De-extinction; Copyright and AI with Kathryn Goldman; plus, adapting Catacomb to a screenplay, and I'm speaking in Paris in Oct. Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, where you can get free ebook formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Get your free Author Marketing Guide at draft2digital.com/penn John Gaspard is the author of mysteries and nonfiction film books, a podcast host, and film director. His latest book is The Popcorn Principles: A Novelist's Guide to Learning from Movies. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes How to “exploit the unique” to help our books stand out Ways to add more conflict, regardless of genre Creating a satisfying ending for your readers — and when cliffhangers are a good option Contracts and the importance of reading the fine print Thoughts on the best way to get your book onto the screen You can find John and his books at AlbertsBridgeBooks.com and listen to his podcast Behind the Page: The Eli Marks Podcast Transcript of Interview with John Gaspard Joanna: John Gaspard is the author of mysteries and nonfiction film books, a podcast host, and film director. His latest book is The Popcorn Principles: A Novelist's Guide to Learning from Movies. So welcome to the show, John. John: It is so great to be here. I'm such a fan. I'm going to try not to fanboy out on you. Joanna: Oh, thank you so much. John: The podcast has been so helpful for me as I've gone along this journey. You do a great job. Joanna: I appreciate it. So first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and filmmaking. John: Sure, I was given what was called a regular eight camera, which was a windup camera, when I was a teenager. I started making movies, and those grew into feature-length movies. Even as a teenager, I was making things were 90 minutes long, with dialogue and sound and all that. And I quickly learned that if you're going to make movies, you have to write movies. You have to know what it is you're going to shoot.  So I started learning how to screen write, I was very lucky right out of high school to be able to take some screenwriting courses from a guy named Frantisek Daniel, who was one of the founders of the American Film Institute and a really good screenwriting teacher. I just started making low-budget or no-budget feature films where I would write, I would shoot, I would edit, I'd direct. As it turns out, if you're going to be a novelist, that's a really good way to learn how to write a scene and how to structure something, how to put pace into what you're doing, and only write the things you need. Because when you're writing a screenplay, if you write a scene you don't need, that means getting up at 5 am and casting it and shooting it. It's a real pain when you get into editing and find out you didn't need it. It's a little bit easier as a novelist because you can just hit delete and you're done. So I did low-budget movies in my spare time and worked for about 30 years in the corporate world producing videos and meetings and events. I did some writing for a TV series called Lucky Luke, which was very big in Europe. I took all that I had learned about making low budget movies and then interviewed about 60 filmmakers and put out two filmmaking books. Over the years, I've actually spoken to probably 100 or so filmmakers. Then I segued into writing novels because it was a little bit easier. Making low budget movies, there's a lot of lifting involved, and a lot of early mornings and late nights. So I'd always planned when I got close to and into my retirement years that novels might be the way to go. As I was learning how to do that— I realized there are just a lot of crossovers between creating a low-budget movie and self-publishing. More so today than ever before, the path we go down to do each of them are quite similar. I found that there were a number of things that I was doing as a novelist that were based on things I'd either learned from making a movie or I'd learned from interviewing filmmakers about their movies. One of the things that I'd learned in my corporate life, listening to business speakers, there was a guy named Joe Callaway. And Joe Callaway would talk to different companies about how to improve what they were doing. He would use examples from other industries, and he would always end it by saying, “What's your version of that?” And that's what I'd been doing with the things I'd learned in filmmaking. I'd look at an idea and I'd go, okay, what's my version of that in the world of novel writing?  Because of that unique crossover that I have between those two worlds, I've been asked to talk about it a lot, and I put together a lot of notes on it. That became the book, The Popcorn Principles, which is 25 ideas that filmmakers use that you can adapt and adopt for your own novel writing to make them better. You're not going to learn how to write a novel from the book, but you are going to get some ideas, I think, on how to make your novel better. Joanna: I like the way you've set it out. They're quite short chapters, but they cover a whole load of important stuff. So we're going to pick a few of the craft things, and we're going to come back to the business side. But from the book, you say, “Exploit the unique.” So what do you mean by that?  “Exploit the unique.” How can we find those unique aspects that can help our book stand out? John: I always think that people downplay what's going on in our lives when it comes to writing, that everybody has something that is unique about them that they should add to the book because it's unique to them. I have a songwriter friend who wrote a song years ago about a breakup, and it became one of her most popular songs. I asked her why, and she said, “I don't know. These aren't song lyrics, they are a police report.” By which she meant it was something very personal and very specific. And because it was personal and specific, it became universal, and people loved the song. So you have to ask, what's my version of that? What do I have that is personal and unique that will make my story universal? In the book I quoted Jasper Fforde, who's one of my favorite writers. He writes the Thursday Next books and other great comic fantasy books. And he said, and I'm going to quote him here, “Readers are interested in the way a writer sees things; the unique world-view that makes you the person you are, and makes your novel interesting. Ever met an odd person? Sure. Ever had a weird job? Of course. Ever been to a strange place? Definitely. Ever been frightened, sad, happy, or frustrated? You betcha. These are your nuts and bolts, the constructor set of your novel.”  I looked at movies that had done that same thing, that had made it very personal and had kind of, by doing that, created something that everybody was interested in. There's those obvious examples, Clerks, the Kevin Smith film from the late 90s, where Kevin worked in a convenience store and dealt with odd customers all day, and he wrote a movie about working in a convenience store and dealing with our customers. It was hit because it was very personal to him, but everybody could identify with it. There's another filmmaker named Tom DiCillo, who wrote and directed a movie called Living in Oblivion. And that was the trials and tribulations of a film director in a low budget movie. It was basically what had happened to him on his last movie. So he had very specific things in it, but because they were specific and real, they were universal and people glommed onto them. Then there's the idea of just stuff in your everyday life that you should be taking notes on. From the movie world, my favorite example is George Lucas. When he was editing a movie before Star Wars, I don't think it was American Graffiti, I think it was THX 1138. He was working with the editor and the editor said to the assistant editor, I need reel two, dialogue two, meaning he wanted the reel of edited dialogue from the second reel, so the second reel, the second dialogue track. But that's not what he said, he said, I need R2, D2. And George Lucas went, oh, that's interesting. So he just pulled something out of his life. Another fun movie example is, I had a chance to talk to Dale Launer. Dale was the screenwriter for My Cousin Vinny. And in My Cousin Vinny, Joe Pesci and Marissa Tomei have a really interesting relationship, in that throughout the movie, I don't want to say they argue, but they debate on any point that one of them raises. Did you turn off the faucet? Yes, I did. How do you know? And they drill down to it. And that becomes an important feature at the end when she's giving her testimony. And I asked Dale Launer, how'd you come up with that relationship? And he said, “I didn't, it's just two friends of mine and that's the way they are. And I love that, and I took it, and I put it in the story.” And we all have that, we're just not maybe willing or looking to take that out of our own lives and drop it in. Joanna: I mean, sometimes I guess people worry about putting people they know into their writing, so kind of avoid that. The other thing that springs to mind is that many of us have a lot of books. So I'm currently writing a book, which is like novel number twenty, or whatever it is. And I feel like in our beginning books, there's a whole lot more of that, and then as time goes on, maybe our imagination stretches or things change a bit because we do use a lot of what we know. So, I mean— How does this spin into a long-running series? John: Well, I think it just comes down to being observant. I mean, you're right. I remember hearing a screenwriter talking about how hard it was to write her second screenplay because the first one was, she said, it was like going to a cocktail party and telling every great story and being a hit. And then at the second cocktail party, you've run out of things to say. It's just really a question of, well, A, letting your characters grow. That's a huge part of it. And also just constantly being on the lookout for what's going on with me. How can I use that? I mean, when I wrote the second book about Eli Marks series, I was at the time, kind of out of the blue experiencing these weird panic attacks having to do with being in a situation of height, being anywhere near a balcony or anything like that. I don't know where it came from, glad it went away, it was a pain while was going on.  I absolutely used that because it was something that I could write about, effectively and realistically. It was also a great little twist for Eli, that all of a sudden he has to deal with this along with everything else. No one has ever come up to me and said, “Was that you? Did you have that?” Nobody cares. They just want to read the story and enjoy it. So it's just a question of constantly being alert to the things around you that would help your stories and asking yourself, what is my version of that? Joanna: Absolutely. So one of my favorite shows is Succession, which I know is kind of popular among some people and other people just don't care for it, but I consider it one of the most violent shows on TV. I have an interesting family, with various relationships. I mean, the family relationships in Succession are the conflict, they are brutal. But compare it to a horror movie or something with a huge body count, and that's not what we mean by brutal. But in terms of conflicts, Succession is all conflict, all the time. You say in the book — “If you don't have conflict, you don't have to drama.” Can you suggest some ways we can add more conflict, regardless of the genre? John: Sure, but first, I have to say we tried Succession and gave up because it was just so mean. We went, you know, yes, there's a certain degree to which we can watch things that are horrible. I remember James Blatch said you've got to watch Happy Valley, but beware, it's grim. And I went, well it's called Happy Valley, how grim could it be? Joanna: I couldn't watch Happy Valley. John: It's a ride. It's not a Happy Valley. As it turns out, they're being sarcastic about that. You know, TV and movies are a really good way to learn about how to create conflict, particularly when you see it done, I don't want to say badly, but when they do it lazily. We're currently working our way through the Inspector Lewis series right now, and I've noted, as has my wife, a couple of times when Inspector Lewis wants to interview someone how rude they are to him. Now, I know there's a certain Oxford thing going on there and hoity toity people and all that, but if the murder police come to you want to talk to you, it seems unlikely that you're going to say, “I can give you five minutes.” It's just not going to happen. Yet, they do that all the time because it creates conflict and it gives you drama. They can't think of anything else to do to have conflict in that scene. I understand that that's a long-running series and you got to come up with stuff. But one of the things that I found from making movies was as I learned to write scripts better, I learned from my actors, because really good actors, when they walk into a scene, if you haven't put it in the script, a good actor will make up a reason for why they're there or why they want to leave or what they want. They will put an intention in. They'll create an intention. If they're working with another great actor, that actor will have their own intention. And if you're lucky, that creates an obstacle between the two. It really helps if you've written it for them, and you've given them that sort of thing. The example I use all the time, because it's just a masterclass, is just about any scene in the West Wing seasons 1-4. Aaron Sorkin has a thing that he prays at the altar of intention and obstacle. Every character in a scene has an intention, every character has an obstacle. And if you watch the series, you can see that in every scene. Every character in that scene, even if what they want is not to be in that scene, they have something going on that they want and something that's stopping them from doing it. And it goes from, you know, I hope to stop World War Three, to I wish I could teach the president how to use the intercom system. And it runs that whole gamut. When you're writing, make sure that everybody in a scene has something they want and something that's stopping them. With my Eli Marks series, it's easy because it's first person. So I always know what Eli wants. It might be generally if he wants information or he's trying to figure something out, but sometimes it's as simple as he wants a piece of candy out of a bowl and he can't figure out how to get it. Or he wants to get out of the couch that's hard to get out of. You also have to know what everybody else in the scene wants and what's stopping them. A lot of times with Eli if he's with his ex-wife, what she wants is for him to go away. You just have to know what everybody wants and what's stopping them from getting it. And like I say, it might be harder do that in novels and figure that out how they're doing it, but you watch some procedural detective stories, you can see immediately whether or not they have cleverly set up the tension going on between the people in a scene. And I think the important thing here is you don't always have to reach for like a fight scene. Joanna: People think conflict has to be war, but it can be emotional war. There doesn't have to be any sort of physical altercation. I mean, you are a mystery writer, so you mentioned murder. But I mean, there's plenty of conflict in smaller stories, right? John: Absolutely, just think about any family gathering. Joanna: Yes, that's why I like Succession. I just sit there going, oh, my goodness. There's a lot of truth in the family dramas that are like the ways that we might have more conflict in our real lives, as opposed to like, I write action-adventure, so I blow stuff up all the time, and I kill people and there are monsters. And that's not actually conflict that I experience in my real life, apparently. So there's so much in the book, but I did want to ask you about endings because you suggest that we like a satisfying ending to a story. I agree, but I have heard many authors say their sales figures suggest that readers are more likely to buy the next book if there's a cliffhanger, even if they're complaining as they buy the next book. So this, to me, seems like a conflict, as we mentioned. What are your thoughts on endings? John: Well, good for them. I'm glad that's happening. I just have to mention the 3 Fs that you brought up on a recent episode were so helpful for me. The freedom, fortune or fame. I'm definitely a freedom guy. So do I care whether or not to read the next book? Yes, I do. But I don't want to provide something unsatisfying to that end. Looking at movies and how we can learn from them, the Back to the Future movies give a perfect example, I think, of how to do a cliffhanger and how not to do a cliffhanger. In Back to the Future I, Marty returns to present day. Every single emotional beat in the story has been tied up, every callback has been called back. I have a whole section in the book on the importance of planting callbacks and paying them off, and there's no better example of that in the world of movie scripts than Back to the Future. It's a brilliant script, and they pay everything off.  At the end of the movie, Marty has returned home and the story has wrapped up to a point where you as an audience member are super satisfied. It was just great because everything tied up very nicely. And then, boom, Doc Brown appears. The DeLorean looks a little different. He says, “We've got to go, your kids are in trouble. We've got to go back to the future.” And they hop in the car, and Marty says, “There's not enough road to hit 88 miles an hour.” And Doc Brown says, “Where we're going, we don't need roads.” And boom, it says, “Coming soon, Back to the Future Two.” That's a perfect cliffhanger ending because you've emotionally satisfied all the beats. The audience is completely happy, and now you've set up, hey, there's going to be another adventure, would you join us? Now let's flash ahead to Back to the Future Part II. At the end of the movie, Marty's on a dark and deserted road, everything is lost, he can't get where he needs to go. The time machine is broken. A car arrives with a guy from Western Union, who says, “We've been hanging on to this telegram for 100 years. We were told to deliver tonight.” And Marty opens it and it's from Doc Brown, you have to come back to 18-whatever it is, and help me. And Marty says oh my goodness, and he runs down the road to try to find the present-day Doc Brown. And it says, “To be continued in Back to the Future Three.” When I was in the theater watching it, because that's how old I am, people yelled at the screen some words that I'm not going to use here. They were very upset because that was a bad cliffhanger. None of the emotional beats had been resolved. It was literally just the first half of a movie, and we didn't tell you it was going to be the first half of a movie. Now you got to watch the second half.  So when you're crafting your cliffhanger, look at it and say, am I doing a Back to the Future I? Or am I doing Back to the Future Part II? Another really great example from around that era, maybe a little earlier, is the Three Musketeers Movie that Richard Lester made. It was going to be one long movie, and they realized that they could stop after about 90 minutes. Everything was pretty well resolved, mostly. D'Artagnan was now part of the group and everything was cool. They would just take the rest of their footage and make The Four Musketeers, which is its own fine standalone movie. They didn't even do a cliffhanger, really. They just said there's more to come, and people were fine with it. Everyone was fine with it, except for the actors who'd been paid for one movie. I think they ended up suing the producer and saying you have to pay us for two movies. But it was, again, a case where the emotional beats had all been satisfied, the audience was happy, and they're okay with a cliffhanger because it just is inviting you to the next adventure. I've only done it once in my writing. I have a new book coming out this summer that's a prequel to my Eli Marks series, with Eli at age 13. It's 10 chapters, and at the end, I think they're emotionally satisfied. And then at the end, he gets a postcard from someone saying, “I have an idea for you for an adventure we could go on. I'll tell you more later.” To be continued. And I'll find out if readers are okay with that, but I think I hit all the beats and then tied everything up before I did that. Joanna: It's really hard. I mean, I guess the advice is you just have to judge it by your book. I mean, I try and do this, but most of my books have a proper ending, I think. I mean, I like a proper ending. But then I know if a book is in a series, like an episodic mystery, similar to you. But then I also do have a fantasy trilogy, my Mapwalker Trilogy. Mapwalker fantasy trilogy by J.F.Penn I wrote the first book as a standalone, and then it turned into I thought it was a series, and then it turned into a trilogy, which is the discovery writer way of doing it. And the trilogy, each book is fine, but the trilogy is a clear ending to a character arc. So I don't know–I think we just have to figure it out per book. And just see what happens along the way and what kind of response we get. Maybe it's genre-specific as well. I think fantasy readers are far more sort of okay with long running arcs. John: And trilogies and that sort of thing. And particularly if you branded it as book one of three, then they kind of know they're in for three books. Joanna: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, that's interesting. So you mentioned the actors that are suing the studio, and as we speak, there is still a strike, the screenwriters in the US are striking. And we're, I guess, also at a point with AI and things, where people are really thinking about the fine print of contracts. You have a section in the book about reading the fine print of contracts. What are some of the lessons you've learned? And how can we both make the most of our intellectual property—because we do need to do deals if possible—but we also need to not screw it up, basically. John: Yeah, I know. It can be hard. There was a film called What Happened Was by a filmmaker named Tom Noonan. Noonan would be probably best known as an actor. He was the Tooth Fairy in Manhunter, which was the first Hannibal Lecter movie, and he's played a lot of villains, but he's also a playwright and an actor. He made a little movie called What Happened Was, which was a two person thing, which he did as a play, and then he shot the movie. He did it very cleverly. He knew a lot about movies and about distribution. And as he told me, he said, “I screwed up. There was one line in the contract for distribution, and I screwed up. It was the line about who pays the actors when the movie makes money. And normally, it's a distributor, and I didn't notice it. So every time the movie made money, I had to personally pay the cast.” Even though there were only two actors in the movie, him and another actor, but he had to pay them out of his own pocket. And that's an example of someone who's very knowledgeable about what he's doing, who just screwed up. He didn't have another set of eyes look at the contract and thought he knew what he was doing. I'm one of those people who started out with a traditional publisher and then bought everything back and am now self-published throughout. But when I was given my first contract for the Eli Marks series, I had sold screenplays at that point, and I had sold other books in the nonfiction world. So I had a pretty good idea of what the contract would look like and what I needed to do with it. I know there is a lot of bubbly excitement when you get a contract to have somebody publish your book. I mean, it's very exciting, but you have to set all that aside and go, what are they really asking for here? Because in the case of my contract, they were asking for a series, and they wanted to contract me for three books. And I didn't want to do that. I am a freedom, right? I wanted to do them when I wanted to do. I'd spent 30, some years writing professionally and wanted to have control of when I did stuff. They also wanted first right of refusal on my next book, and I changed that to you can have first right of refusal on the next book in this series, but not beyond that. They wanted foreign rights, which I gave them, but I put a cap on it of a couple of years. They didn't do anything with it, so I took that back. When I did my audiobooks, I emailed them to just let them know I'm doing the audiobooks. And they said, “Well, okay, we'll give you permission to do it.” And I emailed back and said, “Look at the contract, you don't have the rights to the audiobooks. I took those back, those are mine.” So you just need to figure out how much you want to give away.  Think of a publisher like you would think of your book cover designer. Who's going to own what parts of the whole process that you're letting them take hold of? It's hard in that first flush of, “Oh my god, I found a publisher, a real publisher who wants to publish my book,” to set all that aside and go, well, where am I going to be in five years? What am I going to want to do in five years? And look at the contract that way. And probably if you've never done it before, or if it's more than two pages long, hire an attorney who knows something about the book world to look at it. Many years ago, I was contracted write a situation comedy for our local PBS station. And I was paid, I think, $1,100 to write that script, which is a lot of money back then. And I ended up paying $1,500 to the attorney to get the contract right. And so you go well, you're down $400. And yes, I was down $400, but if I hadn't done that, the thing I would have missed was that in their version of the contract, it was up to me to make sure all rights on everything, everywhere were cleared. That is an easier thing for a TV station to do than it is for me. So yeah, I didn't make any money on it, but it was a much better contract, and I was happier going forward. It also had a revision clause, so I was able to use the sitcom later on. I remember being on a panel at Malice Domestic a couple of years ago. It was right after lunch and we were sitting there waiting for the people to come in. There were writers on either side of me and one said, “I just met with my publisher and signed for the next three books.” And the other one said, “I just met an agent and signed with her.” And I just thought, I hope you didn't literally just sign. I'm glad you're excited, but please sit on it for a while, and think about it, and look at it because the movie world is full of examples where people didn't read the fine print and regretted it forever. Joanna: Yeah, well, just to recommend another book, Hollywood vs. The Author. I don't know if you've seen that one. It's an excellent book full of some pretty famous authors and some pretty big mistakes that they made. But just to mention there on the agent, one of the first agents who offered me a contract, basically, it was years ago now, and it was in my earlier days of self-publishing, and the agency contract was that we will take a percentage of all your self-published work, as well as the books that they bought. Their opinion was they were building my brand, therefore, they would get a percentage of everything under my brand. And I was like, ah, no, that clause needs to be removed, and they wouldn't remove it. So even though it was really early on, and I hadn't really made much money as an indie, I was confident that I could make this into a business. I didn't sign that deal. But it's so funny, sometimes I do think about it because I know some of the other authors they represent who've done incredibly well. And you do wonder, don't you? But like you said, it's about freedom.  I did want to ask you, just coming back to the low-budget thing that you said earlier. This is a really interesting thing because I did pitch my Mapwalker series at a screenwriting thing to an agent. And he said, “Look, this idea is very, very expensive. The project you're talking about is super expensive, you should pitch something that would be cheaper.” So given that you've done these budget movies, like why is this important?  How can we write books that could be turned into cheaper movies? John: Well, you know, that was then, this is now. Because of the use of CGI and green screen, things that used to be really, really expensive, aren't as much anymore. You can do big movies all in a studio. Look at The Hunger Games. The Hunger Games is an expensive proposition, yet a studio had no problem putting up the money to do that. And the reason they didn't have any problem doing it was it was a hit book.  This is one of the few areas, I think, where being a traditional publisher makes life a little easier for an author if you're trying to get a movie or a series made out of your book, which is that big publishers have departments that all they do is they sell rights and they look for deals like that. It's much harder to do if you're on your own and, you know, an independent author. How do you get it out there? But as with The Hunger Games, as with Harry Potter, as with Louise Penny having done Three Pines recently, the cost of doing it is secondary. It might even be tertiary, might be way down the list. What they're looking for is how pre-sold is this idea. How well-known is this property? Because they want it already marketable. They want to just tag onto existing fans with it. Steve Martin had a joke in his early act that said, I'm going to teach you how not to pay taxes on a million dollars. First, get a million dollars. And the same thing is true here — I'm going to teach you how to make your bestselling book into a movie. First, write a bestselling book. And that's really kind of the most likely path, is the more popular your book is, the more likely someone's going to be interested in taking it and making into a movie. However, there are ways around that in the movie world. I'll just recount one example, which was that there was a filmmaker who had written a script for the actor Campbell Scott. Campbell Scott is the son of George C. Scott and Colleen Dewhurst, and an excellent actor in his own right. He'd written a great little low independent, low budget independent movie called Roger Dodger. It was perfect for Campbell Scott, but he had no way of getting a hold of Campbell Scott, and agents don't generally want to forward stuff for things that aren't going to make them a lot of money.  He lived in New York, and he knew that Campbell Scott lived in New York, and he just carried that script with him everywhere. And one day in a coffee shop, he ran into Campbell Scott. He struck up a conversation and he said, I've written a script just for you. He handed him the script, and Campbell Scott read it, and said, let's make this movie. So if you've written something for someone specific in mind, if you can get to them, that might be a path.  The most surefire direct path is to write a bestselling book and they'll come knocking at your door. I know there's all kinds of scams online, like, “Pay us and we'll get your book in front of producers who want to make movies out of it.” Those are scams. It doesn't work that way. It absolutely doesn't work that way. But if you know someone or know a way of getting to someone who might have some interest, by all means, approach them. It really is on that scale of fame, fortune or freedom. I think you really have to have the fame value strong to want to go that path because you really have to get a bestselling book out there to get that kind of interest. Joanna: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, we had Johnny B Truant on a few months ago now, and he was talking about his book Fat Vampire that's become Reginald the Vampire, which I think got renewed for a second series. And that is an example of an idea situation, where some dude was looking at Apple books and saw this and the title really caught him. So that was an idea book, and they didn't really have any relationship, but eventually made it into that.  It's such a lightning-strike situation, isn't it? I mean, even if you have a bestselling book, not all bestselling books get made into TV shows or films. So yeah, it's kind of interesting. The other thing you mentioned is about knowing people. So I've had people say to me, “Oh, you should come to Cannes.” You know, come along to Cannes, you go to the parties, and you meet people. And I'm like, yeah, I'm an introvert, that's really not going to happen. It's so funny. So I guess the question is— Should we just give up the dream and focus on trying to make our books sell better? John: You know, I think that's the way to go. However, if it's that important to you, if that's what you want to do is get your book into that lane, then put all your energy into that. There's also a flip side to that, and I'll go back to Louise Penny on that, because I heard her speak somewhere, and she was talking about the first time she sold the rights to her Three Pines series. It was a heartbreaking story because the people who bought it didn't understand it. They didn't know what they bought, they didn't understand that Three Pines is driven by those people, those characters. What they made was not what she had written, and it sort of broke her heart, although obviously, the books are still there. Joanna: I'm sure the money helped! John: The money probably helped a little. I don't know how large a check you need to write to make Louise Penny impressed at this point. But you need to keep that in mind. The Reginald the Vampire story is a great example because he's talked about how he was invited to the set, and got to see some stuff, and they did run the scripts by him, but his first objection was he didn't like the title. And they said, yeah, well, sorry, that's the title we're using.  It's going to be like that throughout the whole process, unless you are someone who, like Dennis Lehane, who is a novelist and a screenwriter and can become the showrunner on something he's written and can really shepherd it through. You're going to be handing it off to people who probably 50/50 chance they're going to be on the same wavelength as you. What you see up on the screen is not necessarily what you thought it was going to be. Joanna: Yeah, but I mean, on the other side of that, I heard Lee Child talking about the first Reacher movie with Tom Cruise. And he had to talk about this so many times because, of course, Jack Reacher is like six foot four, whatever it is, six foot seven, and Tom Cruise is not. And Lee Child basically said, look, whatever, I'm selling more and more of my books. Then the TV show of Reacher is fantastic, the character is exactly right. I do want to come back on this because, like you said, that was then, this is now. That agent said to me, you should write something cheaper, like a low budget horror movie. And hilariously, my new novella, it's a long novella, Catacomb, is exactly that. It's a low-budget horror monster book. So I'm really thinking about it because it's very visual.  With AI, we've got these wonderful tools coming out at the moment. We've got, obviously Midjourney, and I'm doing loads of images in Midjourney, Adobe Firefly, and also RunwayML. I don't know if you've seen this, which is generative text to video. So generative video is now a thing. You mentioned making low-budget movies, and now people are doing that and putting them on YouTube. What do you think about book trailers or short films that then advertise a book? Do you think that's going to be a way to go or are we looking at a future where it just splinters, everything splinters so much? John: I think that's a great way to go. What screenwriters today are facing, and the pandemic had a little something to do with this, is that when they go on to pitch a screenplay now to a studio or producer, they are expected to have a deck and to talk through the project with a deck, with visuals, to really bring it to life. That's new. They didn't used to have to do that, and now it's kind of expected.  It helps because sometimes when you're talking to people at the other side of the table, they are not necessarily the most creative or most imaginative. And if you can show them, here's what the sky city is going to look like, or here's an idea of what it looks like, and here's what the monster looks like coming out of the lake. Well, at that point, in their mind, the movie is done. Yeah, that's perfect. Let's do that.  You can do the same thing with your own book into a trailer. I had a short story in the Eli Marks series that I had turned into a comic book, because it was kind of perfect for comic book. And I realized I had essentially what's called an animatic. I had all the frames of what would have been the movie, except nothing moved, but I was able to make moves on them and make it look like a semi little animated movie. That's a great way to sell the Eli Marks series. People get into it by going, oh, I see what he looks like, and I see what his magic store looks like, and I get the sense of humor. The guy who did the audiobooks did the voice, and so they're hearing what is now the voice of Eli Marks, in everyone's mind, as my narrator. I can certainly see, after I finish taking your course next week on how to do this, trying to create something a little more elaborate with AI to help pull people into the Eli Marks series, whether it's just getting them to read the book, or listen to the podcast, or hear the book. And maybe someone will get excited and say, hey, that would make a great series. Joanna: And it's so funny because—It's much easier for people to imagine something if you give them a visual. I mean, that's why book covers are so important. But the reality is that none of these agents or film people, they're not going to read the book. I mean, they might not even read it ever. It might just be something that goes into the script machine and then comes out the other end as the script, as opposed to the book that they read. I feel like we get too romanticized around the book itself as the only thing that can communicate our ideas. Whereas sometimes, like you mentioned, a pitch deck with some slides and some visuals, that can be a much better way. So yeah, I do feel like authors need to try and turn their books into more images in order to get the attention if film and TV is something people care about, because of course, it's a visual medium. John: Right. But one thing I would warn them about with AI, and I've seen a couple different posts on this, is now you can take your book and put it into this program and it will turn it into a screenplay. And it's not going to turn your book into a screenplay. It's going to take your words and put them in a screenplay format. Joanna: Yeah, exactly. I totally agree with you. Yeah. John: When Emma Thompson wrote her version of Sense and Sensibility, I remember her saying that somebody said, “Well, you had this book to start with.” And she said, “Well, yes, but if there's more than three lines of dialogue in the finished movie that are in the book, I'd be surprised.” As an experiment a couple of years ago, because it was COVID and there was nothing going on, I took the first book in my series and thought, if this were a streaming series, what would the first season be like if it's just this first book? And I took the first book, which is called The Ambitious Card, and I broke it into five episodes and did kind of a beat sheet on it. Then I sat down and said, I will write the pilot. I'll just see what that 60-page script looks like.  Yes, it's the story. You bet, it's the same story. Is the dialogue the same? It is not. It wouldn't work in the screen. Are the scenes the same length? They are not. To make that leap, it might help if you have a third-person novel, makes it a little bit easier, but you still have to make everything visual. I mean, everything visual. I remember reading a script once from a student, and there was a line in it, something like, “Our main character crosses the street, thinking about going to the laundry.” Like, well, okay, how do we do that? How do we do that? The degree of changes you have to make, just to kind of even still make it the same as the book, are enormous. It isn't just an easy leap from the page to the screen. Joanna: No, absolutely. I went down the rabbit hole of screenwriting a few years back and decided in the end that it is basically a job that I wouldn't want to do. What I wanted, and again, it may be the freedom aspect, is I would love to license my books for film, TV, whatever, but I'm not going to write the script. I won't even try.  [Update: Hilariously, after this interview, I decided to adapt Catacomb into a script … so watch this space for an update!] In fact, someone even said to me the other day, I think it'd be easier for us to pitch this if you write a draft of the script. And I was like, no, I'm absolutely not going to do that. Because, like you said, it's an adaptation. I feel like we're too close to the material to adapt it well, whereas someone coming in from the outside can just look at it and go, well, chuck that, change that, do that, the other. So definitely adaptation rather than just straight use AI to turn it into a thing. I totally agree with you there. John: Yeah, that's not going to work. And one of the things I realized in my twenties, because like I said, I was very fortunate. I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, middle of nowhere, but I got to study every week with this fantastic screenwriting teacher, who was world renowned and respected, he just happened to be teaching at a college here for a year. And I was learning from him how to write a screenplay.  I spent the next few years writing what are called spec screenplays. Here's something I could sell, here's something I could sell. I quickly realized that just because you've written a screenplay and you're trying to sell it, doesn't mean it'll ever sell. And even if it does sell, doesn't mean they're going to make it. It's such a long process, and I just went, you know, I used to make these myself, why don't I take what I think is my best spec script, rewrite it so I can do it for $30,000, get all my actor friends together, and over four weekends, we'll shoot it. And it's just like I said, the process for becoming a novelist and screenwriter are the same. You can either keep asking people to do this thing, “Hey, would you do this? Would you publish this? Would you represent me? Would you, would you, would you?” Or you can go, I'm just going to do it myself. And that's what I want to do is make the thing. I don't need to have a book that's on the bestseller list, I just like a book where I occasionally get an email from readers saying, “Is there another one? I really want to read another one?” Joanna: We're fun creatives. We just can't help ourselves creating more stuff, which is awesome. So the book is great. Where can people find you, all of your books, and everything you do online? John: Well, you can find The Popcorn Principles and just about everything at our book website, which is called AlbertsBridgeBooks.com. And you can listen to the Eli Marks Podcast, where you can hear every season as a different book. You'll hear the whole audiobook, plus interviews with cool people like The Amazing Kreskin, Teller of Penn & Teller, and people like that. And that's called Behind the Page: The Eli Marks Podcast. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, John. That was great. John: Thank you.The post Writing Tips From The Movies With John Gaspard first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Four years ago, in July 2019, I put out a podcast episode that went through the 9 disruptions I saw coming for authors and publishing in the next decade. It turns out that most are happening faster than even I expected. In this episode, Nick Thacker and I discuss some of the main points. In the intro, I go through other aspects of the nine ways (notes and links below), the USA Today Bestseller list is back; TikTok moves into eCommerce [The Verge]; and Orna Ross and I discuss generative AI for authors on the Self Publishing Advice Podcast. This podcast is sponsored by Written Word Media, which makes book marketing a breeze by offering quick, easy and effective ways for authors to promote their books. You can also subscribe to the Written Word Media email newsletter for book marketing tips. Nick Thacker is the USA Today bestselling author of over 40 books, including thrillers, action-adventure, and nonfiction. He also helps indie authors through his courses, coaching, and also by working with Draft2Digital. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Enthusiasm for AI tools as part of the creative process Collaborating with AI as an author Using AI for tasks outside of your “zone of genius” How Draft2Digital may handle the explosion of content The future of generative search for book discoverability Creating audiobooks with voice clones Copyright issues around AI-generated content How to stay positive and what to focus on You can find Nick at NickThacker.com Overview of the 9 disruptions Here’s the overview. These are in no particular order. Click here to read or listen to the original episode. You can also find more podcast episodes, articles etc here on my Future page. Non-fiction books, blog posts, and news articles will be written by AI [discussed with Nick below] Copyright law will be challenged as books are used to train AIs which then produce work in the voice of established authors [discussed with Nick below] Voice synth technology will replace human narrators for mass-market audiobook narration [discussed with Nick below] Voice search will disrupt text-based SEO and if you don’t have voice content, you will be invisible. [In the intro, I mention that I think generative search will likely be more disruptive.] Translation will be performed by AI — for books as well as other content. [In the intro, I mention my own process with Deepl.com, as well as Google's Translation Hub, and Meta's new translation model.] Content will explode exponentially, and AI discoverability and marketing tools will help navigate the tsunami [discussed with Nick below] AI-augmented creativity will develop and more people will want to be writers. I mentioned ‘centaur publishing,' and suggest you check out AI Writing for Authors to find thousands of authors already experimenting with new ways of co-creating with AI. Print publishing will shift into a green, sustainable model with AI-assisted micro-print-on-demand. London Book Fair 2023 focused on sustainability, and even talked about carbon emission labeling for books; plus The Society of Authors Tree to Me Expansion of mobile reading + micropayments enabled by 5G mobile and blockchain technology + four billion new people online = explosion of reading. Subscriptions have certainly cannibalized sales of ebooks and audiobooks, leading to the rise and rise of selling direct. On blockchain, while the crypto crash of 2022 has stopped the speculation, the work of building blockchain solutions continues. The EU IP Office launched a blockchain for registration, and the WIPO is looking at it. As discussed with Roanie Levy on blockchain for copyright registration. Transcript of Interview with Nick Thacker Joanna: Nick Thacker is the USA Today bestselling author of over 40 books, including thrillers, action-adventure, and nonfiction. He also helps indie authors through his courses, coaching, and also by working with Draft2Digital. So welcome back to the show, Nick. Nick: Thank you for having me again. It's a pleasure. Joanna: Yes, indeed. Now you were on the show three years ago talking about writing action-adventure. But tell us a bit more about what you're up to now and— Give us an update on your author business because you do lots of things. Nick: Thank you. I do. Yeah, I still write action-adventure. I'm still definitely pushing books out as fast as humanly possible. You’ve got to feed the beast. But over the years, including three years ago, and before, when I first got started writing, I think you know this, I was a marketing guy. I came out of a marketing background. So I never had a very organized or formal way of putting my nonfiction, let's call it knowledge, together until about maybe six months ago. So I've started putting all that together on a website called Book Career in a Year, which is just me teaching, coaching, training, whatever. So I have courses and books and things like that, that are all nonfiction related. Teaching authors how to be authors, teaching authors how to write, publish, marketing, market their books, that sort of thing. So Book Career in a Year is where all that lives. As you said, I do still work for Draft2Digital. I believe I had just started then, maybe three years ago, when last we talked. I'm loving it. It's a great company full of great people. I knew this before I joined, but working there for the past, I guess it's four years now, has really showed me that they really are authors first, authors forward. If authors don't win, we don't win. So I love that mentality that they have there. Hopefully, I'll be there for a long time because of that. Joanna: That's great. I think, inevitably, those of us who write fiction will start writing nonfiction and try and help other people at some point. It just seems to happen that way. Let's get into the AI disruption topic of today. It's funny, you said there you put out books as fast as humanly possible, but we are talking today about collaborating with AI. First up, at the beginning of the article that I would have talked about in the introduction, I said: “Humans are innately creative, and in this new AI-powered world, we can create even more than we ever dreamed possible.” And I want to talk to you because you're also enthusiastic. So why are you so enthusiastic about AI for authors and the creative process? Nick: I think there's two main answers for why I'm so enthusiastic. One, I believe I'm an optimist. I really do think, generally, the best for humanity. I think we strive, and obviously we make mistakes and we falter, but I think we're on a trajectory taking us to better places. Two, I figure if we're going to have robot overlords take us over like Skynet, we might as well just embrace it now and be good to them and nice to them and hope that we get killed last. That's a little bit tongue-in-cheek of an answer, but truthfully, I think it's the first one. I think the optimism I have carries over into this realm of AI as well because I feel like we haven't even scratched the surface of what's possible. That excites me. Joanna: Yeah. And just to give people listening some other things there. So Marc Andreessen just recently posted an article, really long article, Why AI Will Save the World. So I'll link that in the show notes. Also, Mo Gawdat's book, Scary Smart, which really talks about we're raising the AIs on our writing. Although you and I blow things up, kill people, [in our books!] but you know, we are trying to be nice to the AIs. Nick: Right, Right. Exactly. I think it goes back into that. I think part of the way to be optimistic about this is to realize that we're not really seeing what Ray Kurzweil calls artificial general intelligence (AGI). I mean, we're not there yet. And while I believe this could be a route toward that, I'm not worried about that. We don't have to get into the details of why or why not.  What we're seeing, of course, and this is probably what we'll talk about today, is these are large language models, these are generative AIs. They're not really artificial intelligences. They're just trained on a corpus, on a body of work, and they spit out the next most likely outcome when we give it a prompt. So I'm not terribly worried that it's going to turn into this sentient being that all of a sudden starts bossing us around, yet. Joanna: I agree. And there are lots of them, I think this is another thing. Today I've been playing with ChatGPT-4 and also with Claude from Anthropic, and these are two models built differently that behave differently with the same prompts. So this is what's so interesting. But let's just put a couple of my predictions together. Number seven on my list was: AI-augmented creativity will develop. And number one: nonfiction books, blog posts and news articles will be written —I said, by AI—but I would now change that to say with AI. So clearly this is happening, but— What are your thoughts on AI-assisted creativity? And how are you using the tools? Nick: I fully agree with your predictions. I think we are there in some small way, specifically with the nonfiction. I don't know why, but it seems like it's easier to use AI for nonfiction, or at least it seems more believable when we use it for nonfiction. When I say nonfiction, I don't really mean the narrative nonfiction. You know, this isn't going to write a Malcolm Gladwell diatribe, right? It's going to write, like you said, blog posts, news articles. These things that are factual based, we can feed it a few facts, and it can spit out a news article. And this I think becomes eventually the new kind of BuzzFeed, where it's—sorry, Buzzfeed—the lowest common denominator of writing quality, just to get information out into the internet. I think that that's an easy box to check. I think we're there already. Joanna: I want to come back on that because BuzzFeed did win the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting back in 2021. But I know why you use that example because that's what we think when we think about BuzzFeed. I also think this brings up what people think about AI content, which is that it is just kind of regurgitated stuff, let's say crap. But a lot of it isn't, and I guess that's what we're thinking about as AI-assisted creatives. How are you using these tools as a writer and a marketer, without outputting a load of crap? Nick: The way that I use these tools is adjacent to writing, is the way I think of it. So I will use ChatGPT, it's my favorite right now. I use GPT-4 most of the time, and I use it to produce things like book cover blurbs or marketing promotional materials. So I can give it a prompt that says, “I wrote this book, here's the blurb that you just wrote, and I would like you to give me five tweets or a blog post about what this book is about.”  Of course, I then go and read it and make sure it is accurate, make sure it's what I want to say and tweak it a little bit. This saves me so much time because, for me, I'm not in that headspace, I'm in fiction mode. So I want to get in there really quickly, you know. I've written this book, and I want to upload it and publish it, and oh shoot, I gotta come up with a description and all that. So I'm not in the right headspace. So ChatGPT, specifically, for me, helps do that kind of thing.  On the fiction side, I've also played around with tools like Story Engine from SudoWrite, to just help generate some creative ideas. I think the challenge is, or the problem we run into as authors, is we kind of try these things thinking, well, once it gets better, it'll just be able to do all of this for me. We'll just say, write this book about, like you said, a bunch of people shooting each other and killing each other. And then it's going to say, okay, great, here's 90,000 words on people killing each other. But that's not where we are right now. I don't want to use these tools like that because that takes away what I like to do. That takes away what I want out of my writing career. I will use it to generate ideas. So for example, Joanna, in my current work in progress, I wanted to think of the book in terms of a series of set pieces, like in Hollywood when you make a movie, you have these big set pieces, these big action scenes. And I wanted to think in terms of set pieces, but I'm not very good at coming up with set pieces. My set pieces end up looking like Michael Bay, where it's just, okay, we'll get in another car and then it'll blow up— Joanna: But we love Michael Bay! Nick: I love Michael Bay, don't get me wrong. But again, I think he probably might write for Buzzfeed, before they won a Pulitzer. I asked ChatGPT to come up with some possible set piece ideas, and it spit out five or six really good set piece ideas. There were 10 total, and some of them I just threw out, they weren't very good. They were like, here's a car chase and the car blows up — but some of them were really good. I had never thought of, okay, I'm in Moscow, let's go into the subway system, which I now need to research to make sure it exists, and that they can have the chase scene in a subway car. Well, that's something I've never done before. That's really cool. I'm going to write that personally, as Nick. I'm not going to ask ChatGPT to write that for me. I want to use these tools to speed up the process of brainstorming and the process of planning because I want to spend my time writing. Joanna: Great example there. I think asking these tools for lists of ideas and combining different things too. I was doing this earlier, and I said, “I've got this character and this character and this character, and they are all of these different things. They are an archaeologist and a builder and a whatever, and they're in this situation. Give me 20 ideas for interpersonal conflict that could come up based on these backstories.” So this is an example of a complicated prompt.  It's so funny because on the one hand, we say, ‘oh, it's just regurgitating what comes next,' but actually, when you ask it for creative ideas that combine different things. Or for example, I asked it for book marketing ideas related to nonlinear and non-obvious industries, and got ideas for things like what the fashion industry does for marketing and what all these different random industries that we don't know anything about really, and what they do for marketing. So I guess what we're trying to encourage people to do is, yeah, I mean, let's just take away that whole thing about, ‘oh, don't let it write your book for you.' Like all the other things is what it's really for, right? Nick: Right. I think that's what you and I have been saying when asked and when we talk about this stuff. And I go to conferences, and I can be talking about email marketing for an hour, and I get a question about AI at the end. I think it's that popular and that important for us as creatives. So you're exactly right. I think if there's any bottom line, it's that don't ignore this tool because you think it's going to replace a job or you're worried about helping our future robot overlords. Use the tool for the things that you are either spinning your wheels on or wasting time doing, or that you just don't need to be doing because it's not the most creative outlet for your genius. Joanna: Yeah, I mean, even you mentioned email marketing there. I did actually earlier ask for 20 different headlines to put in an email about a particular book. I gave it the synopsis of the book, and then I said, “Give me 20 different headlines that will make people want to open the email.” I mean, again, we are so bad at this kind of thing that asking for help is a good idea, right? Nick: Right. And I've had it draft those emails for me, too. I said, “Great, I love number 1, 3, 7. Please write the subject line and the email first draft.” And then of course, I go back, I read it, make sure it's accurate, make sure it says what I wanted to say.  A tool like ChatGPT, and some of these other ones that have a quote, unquote, “memory,” they know based on at least that chat thread, what you've told it in the past. You can give it a style guide, you can give it a tone. You can say, “Okay, this is who I am. This is how I write. You've read all my stuff. Can you write this email in terms of how I might sound?” And a lot of times it gets it pretty accurately. Now to be fair, I'm no Cormac McCarthy, right? My style is pretty much just, ‘and then the man got shot in the neck.' That's not terribly verbose, I guess. Joanna: And this is a tip as well. I don't advocate using prompts that include another author's name [or artist's name for images]. So I will never say, “Write me this in the style of Cormac McCarthy,” or in the style of Nick Thacker. Yeah, I mean, it's the same, right? And with images, with everything, there's no need to even use anyone's name in any prompt. You need to think a lot more about the kind of output you want. You also said it's a first draft that you then edit, you check it. We're not just generating and then publishing, right? Nick: Correct. Correct. Never. I've tried, I would love for it to be good enough to do that. Even if it were, Jo, I think there's something about—again, it comes back to that creative process. It may one day be good enough to write a whole Nick Thacker novel for me. And we can talk about whether that's good or bad, ultimately, ethically, whatever. I don't care because I'm still going to write my books, unless they tie me down and say you can never write again. I think that's what I'm getting at here is I'm going to go over that stuff, I'm going to read through that stuff, not because I don't trust it—I mean, that's definitely part of it at this point of the game—but I also want my voice to be in there, I also want it to be from me. So I'm using this as an assistant, almost. I would say I use it as an assistant for things that are, I'm going to say, not important. That word probably carries more meaning than it needs to. An email to my list, I'm not saying that my list isn't important enough to hear from me, but I am saying that it's not important enough to spend two hours crafting the perfect email because it's just going to get lost in the ether. I mean, 20% are going to open it in the first place, right? So it's just not the most important task that I do during the day. So I'm going to use ChatGPT for something like that because it can spit out something that's very, very good. Certainly good enough with a little bit of tweaking and crafting. Then I've spent 15 minutes total, and I can send it out to my list and move on to the things that they are paying me for, which is writing more books. Joanna: Yeah, actually, there's a good book called The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, and he talks about the —  Zone of Genius — You should really spend the majority of your time doing the thing, not necessarily that you're a genius in, but that you feel only you can do. And exactly what you said, writing in your voice, writing Nick Thacker novels, is actually part of your zone of genius. Whereas—I mean, you are more market-y—I mean, certainly for me, writing email headlines and all of that, writing sales copywriting, writing ads, this is definitely not my zone of genius. So that is definitely using different tools. So I feel like maybe that makes a difference. This applies to generative AI for images too. So I've been doing images, but then I give them to my cover designer because it is not my zone of genius to create book covers. Nick: Exactly. I do the same thing. I've got a book cover designer these days, I used to do my own covers. But again, when we talk about things that even if I like doing it, I'm not the fastest, and I'm not the best at it. And when I found somebody who was, and affordable, then I just said, you're going to do all my book covers from now on.  When we talked about the AI thing, we came to the same conclusion that, look, I can sit over here—me, Nick—can sit over here, use something like Midjourney, and say, this is kind of what I want you to do. I don't have to spend any of my time designing something that's going to look horrendous, you know, and then give it over to my cover designer. He can immediately see like, oh, I see what you're trying to do here, let me go take this and run with it. Joanna: Yes, and it's so funny because with my cover designer I used to be say, okay, I've got this book coming, this is the title, this is the genre, here's like four different things that are in it that might work for some ideas. Then she would send me like a whole folder of stock photos, and I would go through the stock photos and say, yes to that vibe, no to that, yes, yes. So I would spend time doing all that. Now what we do is, like you said, I go on Midjourney, I generate a whole load of images myself, and I send them to her. And I say this is the whole vibe, and then she puts them all together into a cover. So this is what's so fascinating. It's changing our processes, but we're still trying to stay in the zone of genius. I mean, you and me, because we're action-adventure, my ARKANE series and your books, they're quite similar. We like the high-concept explosion action-adventure stuff. And it is very visual, so it's fun for us to do the visual stuff, isn't it? Nick: It is, and I like to say that we, over time, we're in a groove, we're writing and we're producing, it's very difficult to realize that we've gotten into a rut. And what I mean by that, which was exactly what you said, is my set pieces all started to sound the same, all of my descriptions started to sound the same, all of my action scenes started to kind of blend together. It didn't matter, you could take one out of this book and put it in another book, change the character, and it was the same thing. AI has been a huge boon for that because, again, I can use a visual tool like Midjourney, I can use a text tool like ChatGPT, and both are going to give me some ideas that I can then use in my own book. And again, I'm not going to lift it and put it in. It doesn't work that way. You know, that probably would be great if I could just take it and say, good, here we go. We're just so far from that, and I don't even know if I'd want to do that for reasons I said before. Joanna: Yes, well, that brings me to my number six of my list, which is: Content will explode exponentially, and AI discoverability and marketing tools will help navigate the tsunami. So it really feels like we are about to enter this prediction. You and I have both said, we're not going to just generate and publish, but some people are. There are going to be a lot of these types of books. Now, I wanted to get your opinion. First of all, you work for Draft2Digital as one of the many things you do, and Draft2Digital publishes books. So how will Draft2Digital manage this explosion of content? [You can also hear Dan Wood from Draft2Digital talking about this in a previous episode.] Nick: Very carefully. I can't give details, but we are going through this daily. We have probably the best customer support team on the planet. I mean that. They are in the front wave of that tsunami, or I guess they're on the shore as the tsunami is coming. I don't know where to go with the analogy, but you know what I mean. The tsunami is the AI, and they're standing on the shore looking at it, trying to protect all the rest of us from it. It's happening now. It's already happening. They're doing the best they can. Our policy at Draft2Digital is always authors first, and we want to support authors. However, we also want to make sure that we're supporting authors, not AIs. Not because we're all anti-AI there. It's a tool, that's how we approach it, but we want to make sure that we're not getting bombarded by crap, as we said earlier. It's just very challenging. It's very challenging because we don't have, and you know this, there is no tool that can predict something was written with AI. If there are too many false positives, up to 50%, I think, or more with some of these tools, and that gets into some people just not writing very well. But it's also, I can put my book that I wrote 10 years ago, when AI didn't even really exist like this, through one of these tools, and it will spit out 30% of it was written by AI. So we can't trust these tools that quote, unquote, “predict” that something is written with AI. So as a company, we don't really have an automated way to find this stuff. We have to vet it all manually. We've got some ways that we're doing it internally, and we're trying to figure it out as we go, but it is challenging. It's very challenging. Joanna: Yeah, well, I should say, the Bible, and Jane Austen, and all these books that are massively represented in the training data definitely come out as AI-written. Nick: Are you trying to claim that God is not an AI? Because that might actually fit. Joanna: Well, who knows? We may be in the simulation! Of course, Dan Wood from Draft2Digital was on the show a few weeks ago, and we were talking about this then. Basically his point was, look — If you use AI to make good books, and you're writing them in your voice and you're using it as a tool, then we'll be happy with that. So if you're a real author doing real things with real tools, then that's all good. If it's just another spammer, scammer uploads a load of crap, which there are those books around, then again, regardless of the tool, Draft2Digital doesn't want to publish bad books. Nick: And that's hard because we don't also want to limit an author who hasn't quite figured out their own voice. They're not using AI, but they just sound like it. You know, so there's things like that that are just it gets a little squishy. But we're doing our best, and the people that we've got on staff are the best at what they do with finding this stuff, and looking for this stuff, and trying to do exactly what you said, which is support authors, without supporting the race to the bottom of quality. Joanna: Yes. Yeah and I often say — Double down on being human. If you are someone, including me, I have published so far as we talk, just one short story that has generative AI texts in it as part of it, and a cover as well: With A Demon's Eye, which was a few months ago now. But if that got blocked by Draft2Digital, I would email the team and say, “Look, This is me.” And I mean that you guys know me, but if it was someone else who had never emailed you or didn't have a personal friendship, then I would do that. I would say, look, email the team, explain the situation, explain what you did, and just connect with the Draft2Digital team as humans. And that kind of proves that you're not just a spammer, scammer uploader, right? Nick: Exactly. Do that with Draft2Digital. Do not try that with Amazon. We actually do have humans working for Draft2Digital, unlike… Joanna: Yes, exactly. No, you're right. I mean, the Draft2Digital team is much more approachable than the KDP help, for example. But I do think the same applies, we do just have to prove that we are humans, and they will be more of this. I did want to come back on the AI discoverability because I have found something very cool, which is— I'm using Bing to discover books. So for example, I tried to compare my search on Amazon with my search on Bing. And if people don't know it's Microsoft's search engine, but it's powered by GPT-4. I basically said, “I'm writing a book, I'm researching stone carving. Give me some nonfiction books around stone carving.” And it gave me a whole load of books. And then I said, “Okay, I want fiction books that feature stone carving as part of their plot or their setting.”  I compared these lists with Amazon and with Bing. And my goodness, the Bing one was so much better. It gave me really quality results. Whereas the Amazon one was full of ads, and it was full of nonfiction books. It really couldn't find me fiction novels with elements of stone carving. [Note: You can use Bing Chat powered by GPT4 through the Edge Browser, and then go to Bing.com and click Chat button.] Nick: Yeah, Amazon has always been a search engine. And yet, I've said this from day one, I think you and I talked about it three years ago, that discoverability was the biggest sore spot I have with Amazon, or the biggest lack of development that's going on there. I love that Bing has an option. I mean, I detest Bing, but I might actually have to use it because I trust your opinion. Joanna: It's well worth getting on. So for people, like I'm a Mac person, and I downloaded the Microsoft Edge browser. Nick: You're less of a Mac person now because you did that. I hope you know. Joanna: I know, but I love Bing. And actually, Bing answers the other question which people say, oh, well, there's no point using these things because it's not connected with the Internet. But now you can do ChatGPT-4 browsing with Bing within the app. And you can also go on Bing, which is powered by GPT-4. If you want actual citations for the things you're researching, then just go on Bing Chat and try it there. Also, Bing chat is free, whereas GPT-4 through open AI you have to pay for. Nick: Yeah, in order to not get throttled and that kind of thing. With the discoverability, I've always thought, we have this device called the Kindle we read at night, and I'm talking about myself here. And because of data and my Kindle being connected to the internet at all times, Amazon knows exactly how much I read every night before I close that and go to sleep. Amazon has that data. They know what time, they know what time zone, they know what type of thing I like to read, and they know how long I read. So this was a prediction I made probably five or more years ago, but I said I hope one day we'll have a discoverability engine that is suggestive. Like, I open my Kindle at night before I read and it says, “Hey, I know you like to read for about an hour and a half before you fall asleep. Here's a story that fits in that timeframe. You'll be able to finish it by then. And it's in the genre you already like.” Joanna: Well, actually, as we record this, on The Verge on the 15th of May 2023, there was an article saying Amazon is building an AI-powered conversational experience for search. They are looking to reimagine Amazon search with generative AI. Very interesting, could definitely disrupt the way we've all been working. But equally, it's going to be what we need because I'm now using Bing. Nick: Exactly. I think it might be too little too late, but I'm not surprised at all. That sounds exactly like what a company that is data-backed, like Amazon, should be doing. Honestly, I mean, if you're a shareholder, this is what you want them working on. Even as a consumer, I don't have a problem with ads. I don't have a problem with somebody telling me what to buy because I just recognize that that's a reality. We just live in a reality where we're going to get bombarded with ads, fine. I'd much rather have them be things that I want. Hockey gear or new phone or something like that, that's interesting to me.  We're certainly at a point, at a juncture where the data that the world has on Nick Thacker is enough to suggest things for me to buy that I'll actually like. So I'm sort of eagerly awaiting that moment. And that goes to what we're talking about with Amazon. I would love to get on Amazon, and actually have the recommendations be things that I want, not just, “Would you like to reorder this, that you ordered these sponges three months ago? You can reorder that, and then also here's eight new books in the genre that are from authors you've never heard of.” Joanna: I think the difference is really this chat mechanism. So with the Bing experience for finding books to read, it's going backwards and forwards. It's like, “No, actually, that's not quite right. How about…” So I did it with action-adventure, and then said, “You've given me a list of only male authors.” It was a classic Clive Cussler, and all this, Wilbur Smith and everything. And I was like, “Okay, I need female authors with female protagonists, written in the last decade, and with archaeological elements.” Obviously, I was trying to fish to see if it would bring up mine, and it did. And also, I found some other authors to read I've never known about. So I kind of have this hope that this will disrupt the—and I know a lot of people do write to market. I don't, but also I don't want to read to market. I don't want to just get a whole load of books that have been written to the same things. And I'm kind of hoping that this type of generative search will help readers find different kinds of books. I'm not sure how that's going to disrupt things, but as a reader, I'm pretty excited. Nick: Sure. Yes, I think there are definitely some downsides to any new technology, but I think I'm with you. One of the big upsides here is discoverability seems to always have been largely missing for us, as indie authors, especially. Hopefully this will help. Joanna: Yes, absolutely. So we kind of talked there about how Draft2Digital is going to deal with it. But you're also Nick Thacker, author. How worried are you as an author about this tsunami of content? Are you thinking of changing the way you're marketing? Or how are you thinking about this? Because many people are just worried their books are going to be drowned out. Nick: Sure. I think that is a big concern. I'm not worried about it. Look, I think the key here is if you're starting this now, you're starting this journey now, you hear me say all this stuff and you might think doom and gloom, it's not. I think the key is the same key that was true for all of time, and that is engaging with your reader. And that's not tongue in cheek, that is literally the strategy that I still use. That is all you have to worry about, ultimately, is engaging with your reader. Finding readers is going to look different, and how you might talk to them is going to look different, but if you have nothing else to go off of, start emailing people who read your books, and start building relationships with these people, because they're humans just like you. And there is a connection point that you can make through email, social media, whatever it is that you decide to choose, whatever works for you. And by strengthening that relationship, you are going to be successful as an author. Of course, you still have to write books, you still have to publish and do all those things. All the marketing tactics will change, and all the tools will change, but what won't change is writers are writing books that readers want to read. If you are one of those writers, there will be readers for you. It just all starts and ends with engagement. Joanna: Yeah, and also, I'm going to call it. I think write to market is done as a business model. Not right now, but in the next couple of years. Because if you do write to market, generating a book to market will be easy. But something that's your own voice, that is your own unique idea that is based on just your creative, unique brain that comes up with stuff. I actually think that this will mean a renaissance in far more original work because we will have to stand out in different ways. Then you will find, like you said, you start your email list. And yeah, it's going to take some time, but— I think I trust in the discoverability tools. I mean, I've always said, and again, we're using Amazon because they're the biggest data driven kind of company, but Amazon has had our books, has had the text of our books since as soon as we published. So why the hell do we have to put in seven keywords? Why do we have to do these ridiculous things when with sentiment analysis and with all of this, they could deliver books based on much more granular and interesting things than just keywords. I kind of see this as a disruption, and therefore my call to people is, yes, connect with people, but also write the books really of your heart and the things that are driving you to do this. And yeah, I think that will make people stand out. Nick: I think it will. Here's my prediction, I don't think it'll be Amazon that comes out with this discoverability tool. I think you're exactly right, because the content is going to explode exponentially, really the only way forward is for discoverability to also explode exponentially. Because otherwise, then we have no idea how to wade through any of this tsunami of crap we've been talking about.  I do believe that we will find discoverability tools. I don't think Amazon is the one that's going to push that forward, at least with books. It doesn't seem to me like they're interested in innovating anymore in the book side. We've seen Kindle Unlimited payouts changing, sometimes going down over time, when we predicted they might go up, things like that. I don't know that it's going to end, I'm not saying again, doom and gloom, but I would love, personally, and this isn't just me as a Draft2Digital guy, I would love another store to build something that actually works as far as discoverability goes. Joanna: Well, I'll give you another one. That is the Shopify plugin for ChatGPT. So I also did these experiments with the Shopify plugin. And for example, I asked it for books on how to write a novel and then used the generative search on the Shopify app within ChatGPT. Woohoo, it came up with my books! You can click on them, and it goes straight to Shopify. So it was another reason I went with Shopify, because of the sort of future-facing stuff they're doing. [You can find my books at www.CreativePennBooks.com] I think there are going to be some very cool new ways of doing stuff. And hey, look, it's about time, because I feel like our business model has been stagnant really for a while. I know disruption is hard, but I think there's going to be a lot more cool stuff ahead, rather than being worried about it. Nick: That's really what I want people to hear because as I said, I'm an optimist. Yes, I can acknowledge and recognize that there's downsides to any new technology, but I'm not focusing on those things. I'm focusing on the future and what is possible for my career, for your career, for anyone who's getting started in this. I love authors, we need more books. And this is a tool—I say this, meaning AI and whatever comes in the future—will be a tool for us to be able to do that. And I'm hoping, again, we've been talking about the discoverability side, I think that needs to come with it. I think what you said with Bing, Shopify, some of these tools that are already out there experimenting with this, we're getting closer that every day. Joanna: Indeed. So let's talk about three on my list. I said: Voice synth technology will replace human narrators for mass-market audiobook narration. And I did expand this and basically say, that's for mass-market audiobook, but that there would be more of a stratification of audiobook rights. So you might have a human-narrated edition, and then an AI-narrated addition, which is what I've done for my own books. You are doing some interesting things with AI audio. So tell us about that. Nick: I'm doing the same thing you're doing. I saw this technology become a way for me to get books produced that never would have been produced in audio format. That was it. I'm not anti-human narration, I'm not saying I don't like human narrators and they should all be out of jobs, but I would never have produced some of my books because they just weren't cost-effective. AI technology gave me the ability to do that, and to offer that to my readers for a much lower price than what I would have to charge for a human-narrated version. So just like you, I said, well, I'm going to have two different price points. I don't think one necessarily will cannibalize the sales of the other. Meaning somebody can pay for the bespoke premium human-narrated version for $15, $20 $25. Or they can buy the AI-narrated version for $7 or $5 or $1, or whatever it is. I have found that both sell just fine. Joanna: Well, that's interesting. Tell us what tools you are using for that because there are a number of different options. And also, how are you selling them? Nick: Yeah, so I was working with a company called ElevenLabs. I say was, I'm still working with them, I still use them. Early on in their development, I was—I wouldn't say consulting—but chatting with the owner and the main developer of that company, trying to build a tool where I could upload an entire manuscript and have it spit out a book narrated in AI format. They're not quite there yet, but their tool is still very, very good. One of the things that they were heavily developing was the ability to vocal clone. Similar to like, I think you taught me about Descript having their vocal clone feature. ElevenLabs has one as well, it's better though. It's very, very good. And so I tested it with my own voice, they gave me like a vocal clone premium version or whatever that would be called with them, and I've been producing a lot of my books read by Nick Thacker, but it's my AI audio voice. It's been really cool, because it's certainly good enough. I mean, it is me. It's based on tiny little pieces of audio files. It's literally my voice, I just didn't sit down in front of a microphone for eight hours to produce it. Joanna: That is really interesting. Give us a title of one that people could go find and where they can find it, and if there's a sample so they can have a listen. Nick: Yeah, so if you go over to where I publish all my books on Conundrum Publishing, conundrumpub.com is the website. Go find my book and there's a sample right there on the page. You'll be able to hear what this sounds like, you can compare it to how I sound right now, because it's again, it's my voice reading it. I'm sure we can drop it in the show notes if you want.  That's my voice, but I didn't sit down and read it for eight hours. I think that's really powerful because, again, and I'm going to get into the whole don't be exclusive, especially with something like ACX or Audible, because now I can also produce a version of that read by a real human narrator, somebody I like and that can do voices and can really act, you know. That's what's missing from something like this, and they can go do that. So I can sell both of those, as long as I'm not exclusive to Audible. Joanna: Just to explain that to people, and it also is the same if you've signed a contract with a publisher, that it's story rights. You're often signing story rights. Whereas what we want to do is if you sign a contract, you might want to sign human narrator rights or a specific, you know, just stratify the rights instead of all audio. So yeah, if you've signed an exclusive contract with ACX, you cannot produce an AI version, even though it might be a different voice, it will be a different voice, because you've signed away the whole project, essentially. So this is such a good point, and I love this stuff. I'm going to go listen to a bit of that because I'm very interested. Now, I have said to people I've been excited about a voice clone too, but then I have also said it, and this is me, this is real you, real you and me, that this is not voice cloned. And at the moment I'm kind of like — I don't want to do a voice clone now, because this is me doubling down on being human. If you hear my voice, it is actually human me. Even though originally I said I wanted a voice clone. So I'm actually quite conflicted about this because of kind of protecting that, but you're clearly over that. Nick: Well, you know, it was never an issue for me, but I can completely respect that it is. And that's what I think the challenge is, is we want everything to be so black and white. You know, black or white, it's either this or this. It's unfortunately, or fortunately, it's both. I understand that there are ethical concerns with the way a lot of these bodies of work get their body of work. That's something that we're dealing with, that's something that in the United States, Congress is looking at. So there are certainly ethical and moral concerns here. But, for me personally, and I do think this is a personal choice, I don't have a problem with having a vocal clone of my voice. That is not the same as Nick Thacker saying everybody should go have a vocal clone of their voice. That's a totally different thing. I can absolutely respect that you don't want one or that you're still dealing with the pros and cons. Go for it, absolutely. Have those concerns. For me, no, it was never an issue. I don't have a problem with it. Joanna: That's interesting. And I know ElevenLabs have updated their terms and conditions where you have to warrant that you own the voice that you want cloned, because of course, all of these technologies can be used in bad ways. I have heard a lot of people say existing law protects us from bad actors, as in people will do bad things, but existing law actually covers it. So one of the other things I said, my number two in my list was: Copyright law will be challenged as books are used to train AIs, which then produce work in the voice of established authors. And the same with images. And of course, that is actually happening right now. There are lots of court cases on it. But yeah, how were you thinking about this? Because obviously, we're both using these tools. How do you feel about the whole copyright law? This is not a legal discussion. This is just our opinion, obviously. [For a discussion with a lawyer, check out this episode with Kathryn Goldman on AI and copyright.] Nick: Yes, thank you for saying that. I am not a lawyer. I'm not even adjacent to lawyers in any way. I'm not a lawyer. Here's the deal, I was a musician. I still am, but I went to school to be a musician, trained as a musician. I was neck deep in all this copyright discussion as it came to things like sampling, taking a song from someone else that has been recorded already and using a small bit of it in music. In the United States, at least, that was about all I could keep up with, there was constantly a debate about whether you could use this amount of somebody's music or this amount or this or that. My takeaway from all of that was, and still is, copyright law will always be challenged. That's why we have copyright law. The goal is to protect the integrity of the intellectual property and the copyright that that copyright holder has. That's a good thing, I believe that it should be challenged. That doesn't mean that all AI needs to be banned or all AI needs to be allowed. I think it's a gray area, and that's the really challenging part is that until we have some not just laws and legal structure, but some court precedent, some case precedent, about how we're handling individual situations. We, you and I, who aren't lawyers and who are just using these tools, can't really make—I don't want to say uneducated, we can make educated guesses—but we can't really make a good prediction as to where this will all land 10 years from now, or 15 or 20 years from now. Joanna: I mean, the US Copyright Office essentially says it's how much of your project has your authorship. So for example, I am saving pictures of my prompts, I'm saving my edits, I'm saving my drafts, I'm saving my versions, I've got evidence that this is my authorship. Also, I do for AI voice stuff, I have banners that say this is AI-narrated, I have author's notes. So I feel like there's a lot you can do to show that you're trying to be on the right side of the law. Plus, as we said earlier — Do not use anyone else's name or IP in your prompt. Nick: Have some integrity, of course. That's baseline. I would ask you, how will you prove that? Because you have the screenshots, those can be faked. You have samples of prompts that you use, those can probably be faked as well. And I'm not saying that you're doing any of that, of course. Joanna: I have actual photos of my actual handwriting because all my edits I do by hand. Nick: Well, still. Again, that's why I said case precedent. We can have laws that say you have to have a statement if we're using more than 50% of AI tool to create it. but how do we define 50%? Is it that you prompted an AI tool, and then edited the feedback? Well, how much of it did you edit? Or did you just use it copy/paste? And how do we prove that? Because again, we don't have a good tool to detect AI use in fiction, and I don't think we ever will. So there's all these questions that I think will be very challenging to answer. I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong, I love that you do that. And we've had this conversation before, you and I, about how much of this to be open about and not. There's all kinds of things going into this, and it's a very, very squishy gray area. That's why I say I just I don't think we can make a decision on whether or not to use it 100% or 0% at all, until we've got not only case law and legislation, but also the court case precedent. People have been tried and accused, basically, and more than one, because it's going to make a difference. Joanna: Yes. I think at the end of the day, we're saying: Use AI tools responsibly and ethically. Nick: Yeah, don't be a jerk. If you wake up in the morning and go, I'm going to go be a jerk today and I'm going to use AI to do it, you're going to go to jail. Joanna: Nobody listening is going to do these things, anyway. We all want to do the right thing. But also being part of the change, if people like us in the community are part of the change, we can actually shape things around what is ethically correct and good for the community, I guess. So we're almost out of time, but— Any final thoughts and encouragement for people in this time of change? Because there is a lot of fear. Nick: I want to encourage you, actually, and hopefully this will encourage people listening. But last time you and I talked, we were at a conference here in Colorado Springs, actually, and you are at the forefront of this, and you are someone we should all look up to because you're doing these things in an ethical way as much as you can, as much as possible. That's visible, we see that, and that is the way forward. So anyone listening, follow Joanna. Obviously, you are because you listen to this podcast. People like you are going to be, just as you said, the ones at the forefront of how do we approach this stuff ethically, legally even, and you are setting a good example as a role model in this community of authors. So I appreciate you for that. I think more of that is what we need from every indie author on the planet who has a platform. Joanna: Thank you for that. I do think people are afraid, potentially, of putting their head above the parapet because then you get shot at. Nick: Of course. It's messy being on the top, for sure. Joanna: It is. I appreciate you, and obviously Dan Wood was on the show from Draft2Digital, and everyone who is talking about this. As I said, I think —  If we can be part of shaping the future, this is going to help a lot because we care about creative quality. We care about authors and creatives making a living. So as you said, we just care about authors first. That's the way forward. Nick: Absolutely. And when it comes time for legislation in whatever country to look at what's happening, they're going to look to what's actually happened. So if we're not talking about this, if we're not showing how we do this, they're not going to have anything to go off of. But I believe they will. They're going to see you, they're going to see me, they're going to see Draft2Digital, all the people that are doing something and talking about it in the industry. Hopefully, they'll listen to us, but that's all we can hope for. Joanna: Indeed.  So where can people find you, and your courses, and your books, and everything you do online? Nick: Thank you. I am at NickThacker.com. And that is in a constant state of disarray, but I think I've got the homepage nailed down that has links to all the other stuff that I do. So if you're interested in my fiction, it's all there from one link away. And if you're interested in the nonfiction, The Book Career in a Year stuff, that's all there too. I would recommend starting there. And of course, I'm on all the places. If you like Facebook, I'm on there as well. You can find me on any of those. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Nick. That was great. Nick: Thank you for having me again. Hopefully we'll do this again.The post 9 Ways That Artificial Intelligence (AI) Will Disrupt Authors And The Publishing Industry. An Update With Joanna Penn And Nick Thacker first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can fiction authors use Sudowrite to assist with writing tasks they need help with? What functionality does Sudowrite have that will be useful to different types of writers? Amit Gupta gives his tips in this interview. I use and recommend Sudowrite as part of my creative process. You can try Sudowrite through my affiliate link: www.TheCreativePenn.com/sudowrite Amit Gupta is a science fiction writer, entrepreneur, and founder of Sudowrite, an AI-powered creative writing tool. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes What is Sudowrite and how can it help authors Using Story Engine to write faster How to train AI tools to write in your voice and style Dealing with criticism of using AI as a writer Possible legal issues when using AI tools as a collaborative approach Should authors discuss their AI usage? The changing view of AI tools as they become mainstream You can find Amit and more about Sudowrite at Sudowrite.com Transcript of Interview with Amit Gupta Joanna: Amit Gupta is a science fiction writer, entrepreneur, and founder of Sudowrite, an AI-powered creative writing tool. So welcome back to the show, Amit. Amit: Thanks, Joanna. Happy to be here. Joanna: So you were last on the show two years ago in June 2021, when we talked more about your origin story. So we're just going to get straight into the topic today. So if people don't know— What is Sudowrite? And how can it help authors? Amit: Sure. Sudowrite is an AI writing partner for authors. It's the first AI tool built specifically for writing fiction. My co-founder, James and I, we're both writers ourselves, we began experimenting with writing with AI back in 2020. Initially, we built it to help us with some of the problems that we encountered ourselves, like getting unblocked or, for me, suggesting rich, evocative description, or automatically rewriting passages to improve pacing or conflict or tension, that kind of thing. Over time, it's grown a lot as people have suggested new ideas. We have thousands of authors who are always kind of suggesting what we should be doing with it. So now, it also helps with a bunch of other things, like creating or fixing outlines, or writing dialogue, or even taking writers step by step from idea all the way to first draft with AI assistants. So the way we think about it, musicians, photographers, filmmakers, other artists all have had powerful tools like Photoshop, or Final Cut Pro, and so on, to execute on their creative vision for decades now. And our ultimate goal here with Sudowrite, is to create something just as powerful as those tools, but for authors. Joanna: It's so crazy, because two years ago when we last spoke, ChatGPT had not launched. So AI for writing wasn't so well known, although I've been covering on the show for many years.  How have things changed in the last six months or so, since AI for writing has pretty much gone mainstream? Amit: Well, as you know, two years in the AI world is like 20 years in the real world. There hasn't been a moment in the last couple of years of AI development that hasn't been exciting. The release of ChatGPT was definitely a big one because it opened up so many people's eyes to what a powerful tool AI could be. It also had a big effect on our business. Initially, I think we had some fear, because ChatGPT was out there. It's pretty good. It's not as good as Sudowrite, but maybe it'll be good enough for people who don't know the difference. So we were really kind of interested to see what was going to happen. What we found was that as authors tried ChatGPT, some of the people who are initially skeptical began to see how it could help with their workflows, too. Many of those people went on looking for something purpose-built for fiction. So that's when they would invariably find their way to us. It literally doubled our growth rate overnight. Now there are five times as many authors using Sudowrite, today, as were six months ago.  The other thing that's changed with the release of ChatGPT, and so much of what's been going on in the last six months, is the level of energy and attention around AI and writing. And you alluded to this, it's really gone mainstream. There are a lot of fears when ChatGPT came out, whether it would take people's jobs, would it replace people, would students use it instead of thinking for themselves? And those fears are still out there, of course, but I think we've come to see that some of them at least were a bit hyperbolic of the doom and gloom variety.  AI is absolutely changing the world, but we're also adapting to it. In the best cases, I think we're taking advantage of it to do more. So Sudowrite, in particular, and I think ChatGPT too, are both are being incorporated into writing curriculums at the high school and college level now, which I think is really exciting. And large language models, like those that power Sudowrite and ChatGPT, are being woven into so many of the apps and services we use every day to help them work better. So I think it's, I mean, obviously only the beginning, but I'm incredibly excited for all the change that's yet to come in this year and next. Joanna: And obviously I'm with you. And it's encouraging that I mean, again, with teachers, there was this initial, ‘oh no, all the students are going to cheat.' And then it was, ‘oh, okay, then we'll just teach in a different way.' Also, students have to learn these things because of their future. I mean, it might not be the things we're using, but there will certainly be something. I love that you've used the word ‘partner.' I guess the word ‘copilot' has been used in many cases. But one of the big fears is, as you mentioned, ‘AI will take my job.' It's so funny when you think about it from our perspective, because we know about this. But it's like, my job and my life, it's not one thing. Maybe you can explain how we should be breaking down what we do into smaller tasks. And then thinking, as you said, about the workflow— What kind of tasks can Sudowrite help with? Amit: Sure. So I think every writer has got something about writing that they struggle with. It could be writing description, like me. Or one of the things I also struggle with is getting an idea for a world and then figuring out what's the conflict in that world, and what's the way it's going to emerge once the story begins, like what happens. And once I know where the story's going, I'm great to write it, I actually enjoy that. So every writer's got their pieces of this puzzle that don't quite work as well as they want them to. Well, I should say, not every writer, I know there are some who don't, and for whom it just flows out like music without stop or interruption. And I know this because my partner is one of these people, and I envy her so much. But everyone else, all us mortals, have something that we get stuck with or something that we have trouble with.  I think the trick here is figuring out which are the parts of writing that are uniquely us or uniquely our own. Where are the parts that we bring our voice to the story? Where are the parts that are draining for us, and that are really holding us back that stop us from finishing? And how can we get AI to help us with those parts? So that's kind of where we've been focused with Sudowrite. Initially, it was really about getting unblocked and having a collaborative partner that could bat ideas back and forth. As we've developed, we've added all these other parts of the picture because different writers have different struggles. So writers can pick and choose which are the features that are going to help them, and which are the parts that they just want to do on their own. Joanna: And again, it's so funny, because I feel like some people say, ‘oh, the writing is all just crap because you just click a button and output a book, and it's terrible.' And it's like, seriously, why don't you have a go with this stuff? I mean, I feel like having been playing with all kinds of tools now, I don't think I'm any faster in my process. I mean, I may get faster at some point, but I find myself going deeper. So for example, on Sudowrite, using the describe function, the metaphorical stuff that it comes out with, I often will kind of be like, ‘oh, that's amazing.' It doesn't suit this particular piece of writing, but I'm going to write it down because I want to think about that more. I find the ideas that it comes up with generate more ideas. It's almost like a creativity booster. Amit: Yeah, totally. And like you said, I think some authors find that it helps them go deeper and build a richer, more grabbing a story. And other authors are really focused on volume, they really need to get the next book out. So they're using in very different ways, I imagine, than you're using it. Joanna: Well, another difference is I'm a discovery writer. I write out of order, I kind of write this scene and this, and then I use Scrivener, and I put things in different orders, and then I try to figure out what goes in the middle. One of the interesting tools that Sudowrite has just put out is Story Engine. So tell us a bit more about that function—I'm finding it fascinating—and how it can help authors. Amit: Sure, yeah. So we're always talking to authors using Sudowrite. We do these weekly conversations over Zoom, we teach free AI writing classes every week. One of the things that we hear from them over and over, especially from our most successful and prolific authors, was that they'd finish a book, they'd put it up for sale, and then the very next day, their readers would start asking them for the sequel. They just literally could not keep up. Story Engine is helping these types of authors [with a ravenous audience] write dramatically faster. They're able to get to that first draft two to three times as fast. And in some cases, it's taking them days instead of months. What we didn't expect with Story Engine is how helpful it would be to authors just starting out. So people who started novels and set them aside time and time again are telling us that Story Engine got them over the finish line. They were able to finish that book that dreamed of writing. Those types of stories really get to me. But what is it? What is Story Engine? So we think of it as an entirely different approach to writing. Story Engine takes you step by step from your initial idea, those scratch pads or napkin scribbles about what the idea is behind the story, the germ of the story, to fleshing out a synopsis, to bringing to life with characters, to building a plot, to beating out each chapter. And then finally, to actually writing the first draft. It's highly interactive. At each step in this process, you write what you know, you can get the AI to fill in gaps, and you can revise what it provides before moving on. It's actually really, really fun, but very different from how I think most writers work. The way I think about is if you're the type of writer that puts together character sheets and story bibles, or Excel sheets of plot lines and character arcs, or the type that hates planning, Story Engine is like a version of that planning process that feels a whole lot less like homework. So you do all this setup, you kind of architect it, and when you get to that final step, you've already planned out your whole story. Now you get to write it in collaboration with the AI. It can write a few beats. You can stop it and edit them, give it some direct and tweak some settings, and then incorporates those changes as it continues to write. So we found that as you get better working with it, it can write more and more of the prose for you, in your voice and style.  I like to think of it like architecting a story. You're creating the structure, bringing the elements together, and then directing its construction. But you don't have to pound every single nail or lay every single brick, only the ones that you care about. So that's kind of in a nutshell what Story Engine is. It's been a whirlwind since we launched it. It's been kind of exciting to see all the new writers flooding in to use it. It's been challenging just to keep up. Joanna: Yeah, and it's so interesting. Again, as a discovery writer, this is not how I write. But what I've really found with Story Engine is it has kind of helped my brain think about things in a different way. And I'm someone who loves to learn. And also, I have read so many books on plotting over the years, like I've read all the books, I've done so many courses, I've been to classes, and I think I'm someone who doesn't read instructions, so I don't take instruction well. I kind of learn by doing. I found with even just playing with Story Engine, I was like, ‘oh, this is how it can work.' I want to go back to it. I found that my brain needs to kind of figure it out. And I think that's another tip isn't it, don't expect to just come into Sudowrite or any AI tool and just, bing, it works. I say bing, Bing being another AI tool, of course. But you know, suddenly everything's in and you don't need to do anything else. That's not it. It's very iterative. You have to learn how to use these tools. And I guess playing and not taking it too seriously are important. Amit: Yeah, absolutely. And I think we've really discovered that some people are willing to put in that work right at the beginning and figure it out. And some people are trying a few tools here and there. Like they'll try description and get those metaphors out and then slowly they’ll learn the rest of it. We also encourage them to take the classes. We now have weekly classes multiple times a week, where we show you how to use the product, show you how to get it worked into your workflow so that it works the way that you want. We also have people in our community who hold author hours multiple times a week, where they share how they use it. So I think those classes are a great way to understand what this type of tool can do for you. And of course, there's YouTube videos and documentation and stuff like that, too. Joanna: Which is great, because I remember when we first met a few years ago, and I was like, I really think you need some videos. You put it out there, and it was so early. But it's wonderful to see the growth. I want to come back— You said it will write in your voice and style. So how is that possible? Explain how that works. Amit: Yeah, sure. So the way it used to work was that you'd have to describe your style. And yesterday, we pushed out a new feature where you can put in up to a couple thousand words of your writing, and from that writing, it distills down your style, the elements of your style. Then it'll show them to you, and you can take that description and edit it or just use it wholesale. But basically, that description becomes a reference for the Story Engine. So maybe you're someone who uses very punchy dialogue or very short declarative sentences, or whatever it is, it will suss that out from what you gave it, and then it will use that as it writes prose. So it tries to mimic the voice that you've got. Joanna: That is good. This is the other thing, I mean, you have to know what you want. And I feel like people listening, I mean, we're authors, we're writers, we genuinely know what we want on a big scale. Like we know the story, we know the kind of vibe we want, we know the tone, and eventually we figure out our voice. So it doesn't change any of that, and I think that's really important, isn't it? You drive the tool as the author. As the creative director, you are driving. So it's not like it's taking over. Amit: Yeah, exactly. I think you're still very much in control, setting tone, direction, giving feedback, and revising wherever it's necessary. Joanna: So the demo of Story Engine, particularly on Twitter, attracted a lot of negativity. Many of us who were AI positive writers, that's how I describe it these days—I am AI positive, and this is an AI positive show. But many of us have received criticism. I know you and James have had to deal with this. How do you deal with the haters and stay positive about the impact of AI for creativity and writers? Amit: Yeah, so you're right. When we announced Story Engine on Twitter, some writers reacted with fear. I saw a lot of claims being made, things like that we trained our models on authors' writing without permission, or things that were completely untrue. It was pretty hurtful. If I'm being honest. You know, James and I spent the last couple years making something to empower writers, and we wanted to help them take advantage of AI instead of being replaced by it. And even though I could tell myself, oh, this is negativity coming from a place of fear, it was hard not to take it personally. I think what helped for us, especially after that first day or two, was just seeing how much support we were getting from our own community. We have thousands of writers using Sudowrite now, and they've been unequivocally encouraging. We hear so many stories of how Sudowrite and Story Engine are changing their lives for the better. One writer told us that she's not an emotional person, but she literally burst into tears the first time she used Story Engine because she'd been blocked for years and had felt hopeless, and Story Engine finally got her through it. Another person wrote in, he's a newer writer, a man in his 80s, and he told us he started writing his first novel, and it had been on his bucket list. He had had a stroke, he'd retired, and two months ago, he found Sudowrite. Now he's 20,000 words into that novel, and he says he couldn't have done it without it. So those stories are really exciting. I think those are the kinds of stories that we'll hear more and more of, and those help us stay positive about the effect that we're having on the world. Joanna: Yeah, and I think that's one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you again, because I feel like people assume that people who found tech companies, like yourself, are a particular type of character. And yet, when I talk to you, I feel like here's another writer who cares about the creative process, who is, yes, more technical than me, but is excited about creativity and technology. Thus, we have a lot more in common than we don't. I feel like this is so important, and that what I don't want to happen is what happened when I first became an author back in 2007/2008, when there was this, ‘self-publishing was evil, self-publishing was a load of crap,' a tsunami of crap, it was called. This is also being leveled at AI. It's like, well, all the stuff being generated is going to be so terrible. How long do you think it's going to take before all of this calms down? Amit: It's a very good question. I think given the types of people you've had on the show, I think you probably have a better answer than me, because I think you've got a broad perspective on all the different sides of this type of issue. But for me, I'd say things are moving so quickly, and the next version of Microsoft Word, the next version of Google Docs, Gmail, all these tools have the same [AI] models under the hood. They're not tuned for fiction, but they're going to be able to write prose for you. They're going to be able to write business documents and stuff. Even the next version of Windows has a sidebar that's going to be following you from app to app, like a little version of ChatGPT always available. So I think that it's going to become ubiquitous. I think more and more people will use these tools, and they'll just become a part of how we use computers and how we create. I think it's going to happen very quickly. I think especially the Windows, and Word, and Google Docs implementations coming this year will make a huge change. Joanna: I agree with you. I think this is moving so much faster than the self-published versus traditionally published thing, which probably took about five years. It was 2012 when I first got to speak at a conference where I thought, okay, yeah, this is really happening. So it was five years. But as you say, once everyone is using AI within Word, within PowerPoint, Google Docs, all of this stuff, and all the designers are using Firefly, Adobe, this kind of thing, it just becomes more normalized. I totally agree.  Just coming back to when you mentioned the guy with the medical issues. I've heard also from a lot of people who have long COVID, or who have various issues like chronic fatigue where they can only work an hour a day. But even myself, like I don't have those issues, but — I suddenly feel like I might be able to create all the stories I want to create in my lifetime. Which before I'd kind of thrown out as I will never be able to write all the stories I want to write. Now I feel almost released around what I can do. So I feel like that's the exciting part of it. Amit: Yeah, totally. And I think it just gives me so much joy to think about people like this man who wouldn't have been writers before. They just wouldn't have gotten over that hump. And so it's people like you who can get more of your stories out, and people like him who might never have been able to tell their story at all, who now can. Joanna: Well, in fact, my mom who's in her mid 70s, I helped her write some romance books a few years ago, and then basically she stopped writing because it's too hard for her to be on the computer for very long. So again, she's an example of someone who like only has maybe an hour before she just can't deal with it health-wise. So I'm like, okay, once I've figured all this out, I'm going to show her and hopefully she'll be off again.  I did want to come back to—like you and I, we're so AI positive. But we do need to address a couple of issues that there are legal cases underway around the impacts of copyright, both for the inputs of the training data and for the output, and whether it can be copyrighted under the name of the person who generated it. What are your thoughts on the input side of the copyright discussion? Because, of course, Sudowrite is built on large language models, and thus is potentially using this input. Amit: Yeah, I'm glad we're talking about these issues. I think it's very important that as a society, we come to an agreement on how we want to treat copyright and copyright for training for these types of models. It seems likely to me that we'll see differences in policy across nations. For instance, I think the EU will have a different stance than the US. And I saw recently in Japan, there was movement to protect all rights to train models. But ultimately, we need a system that fairly rewards everyone involved. I think it needs to be a standard that operates at a systemic level, at the level of government, or at least at the corporate level for anyone running a sufficiently large language model. In terms of copyright, I'm not a lawyer, but I believe the current stance is that something generated completely by AI, with no or very, very minimal human involvement, cannot be copyrighted. And that seems pretty reasonable to me. Our tool is heavily oriented towards collaboration between author and AI, kind of a creative back and forth, so it gives the writer a lot of involvement and say over the final product. Given that every major creative tool, like we were just talking about Microsoft Word or even tools like Photoshop or the tools you might use to edit this podcast, a lot of these things are now using generative AI. Having an AI creative partner will quickly become the norm rather than the exception. I think we'll start to see a lot more clarity around these issues. It seems very unlikely to me that someone using Microsoft Word the way it was intended would find it impossible for themselves to copyright the piece of work they create. Joanna: I totally agree with you. So for example, I love Midjourney. I have great fun on Midjourney, but I don't consider those images that I create to be my copyright or copyrightable. I mean, like I just did one earlier, it was a kind of macro, incredibly detailed macro image of a blue ring octopus swimming under the ocean. And it was stunning, I mean, absolutely stunning. And I did not take it, it was generated. There was barely any human involvement in this photograph, or not photograph, this generated image. But when I write with these tools, so when I use Sudowrite, when I use ChatGPT, it is so collaborative, and so much backwards and forwards. My ideas, it coming back to me, me thinking of some other idea, editing the words, putting them back in, adding some more, editing by hand, putting it back in again. Like, I just cannot see how anyone could ever question that this is not like my writing. What's so crazy are these things we're seeing every day, which are, “this tool can detect AI writing,” and authors are worried that if they publish a book on Amazon or any of the online stores, that it will be marked up somehow and there'll be penalized. So what do you think about that? If authors are using AI tools in a collaborative approach, are there any issues there? Amit: I don't think so. I mean, first of all, those detection tools don't work well. I think there's been a number of studies where they've tried to see how accurate they are, and they seem to have a lot of false positives and false negatives. It's hard to say what will happen in the future with this type of tool, but if you're taking output from ChatGPT or any kind of AI tool wholesale and just slapping it onto a page, probably you're doing something that you shouldn't be doing anyways. You shouldn't expect it to be totally okay. But if you're working with the tool and creating something new and putting yourself into it, I think it's very unlikely that it's going to be picked up by a tool like this.  As for what Amazon is going to do, I mean, Amazon's impossible to figure out. Who knows what Amazon's going to do. I think Amazon has always put the needs of profits and the needs of their customers above anything else. So they're very good at squeezing everyone else to make their customers happy, and then to make their shareholders happy. So if people are using AI to write books that customers love, Amazon will probably be happy with that. If they're using AI to write books that customers hate, Amazon will probably be unhappy with that. I think it ultimately comes down to if you are creating something that is worthy of being read. Are you creating something that people want? Joanna: Yes, and this is the crazy thing. I mean, the people listening to this, the people who care about this, you and I and people listening, we want to make good art. This is what we want to do. And the people who are not worried about this stuff are the same as the plagiarizers, the pirates, the scammers who already don't care, and already have been doing all this stuff. So I mean, and of course, this is the issue. There will be a whole load of push button crap that comes out, not necessarily from Sudowrite, obviously, but certainly using some of the other tools which aren't so themed around fiction or whatever. And as you say, those are the ones that should get flagged. I just brought up the US Copyright Office, the United States Copyright Office, has guidance around AI. And essentially they say, a work containing AI-generated material will also contain “sufficient human authorship” to support a copyright claim. So a human can ‘select and arrange AI-generated material.' So essentially, it's that the resulting work is an original work of authorship. I think this is a mindset shift that I have had to go through with these tools, which is, suddenly it is more about this back-and-forth relationship than just the straight, ‘I write every single word and that is my job.' It's like my job is creating the very best possible version of the thing in my mind. Amit: Yeah, yeah. I mean, in some ways, it's always been the job. It's to have this creative vision and to execute on it. It doesn't matter if you use pen and paper, or a typewriter, or Microsoft Word or Sudowrite, it's your vision and you have to find the way to get through the struggle and to get it down on the page. Joanna: And then I also wanted to ask you, because as I said, I'm very unstructured. And I found writing with GPT-4 to be as chaotic as my brain. Whereas I feel like Sudowrite suits things once I know what I'm doing. And I wondered, you mentioned a bit before, that it does suit those people at the beginning of the process.  How can different types of authors use Sudowrite? And do you see that some people might just suit other different tools? Amit: Yeah, well, I think it's so exciting that we get to live in a time with so many amazing tools for authors. ChatGPT, Grammarly, ProWriting Aid, or other forms of AI beyond Sudowrite. I think every writer has parts of their writing they struggle with, and for some, it's the things we've talked about before, whether it's like description, or dialogue or pacing. And for some, it's keeping in flow or getting feedback or staying motivated. I think every writer is going to gravitate towards the tools that help them with the pieces that they struggle with. With Sudowrite, in particular, I think that Story Engine is being used in a lot of creative ways that we didn't expect, which has been really cool to see. I think we have this incredible community now that is constantly sharing tips for how to use it and how they use it. We originally intended as something that would get you from the start to the finish, but we didn't have a good entry point for people, for example, who already had something in progress and wanted to use a tool like this. And our community has hacked it to make it work for things like that. So now we also teach how to do that.  Similarly, we originally made it just for novels. People are using it for short stories. We originally made it for kind of this structured start to finish, going through the flow that I outlined before, step by step. And now people have come up with ways to do it completely out of order and just start wherever, with what they know, and fill out the rest as they go. So yeah, I think there's a lot of ways to use these tools, as you've probably experienced with both Sudowrite and ChatGPT. There's a lot of flexibility there. It really comes down to how you can be creative to find the ways to use it and to make it useful to you. I also encourage everyone to join the communities out there. Our community is great, but there are a lot of other AI writing communities out there now too. And people just have so many suggestions and tips and ways that they're using these products that we don't even know.  Beyond all that, I think even for those writers where the writing just flows out, like my partner, and they don't need an AI tool, even for them, we've found that many have told us Sudowrite can make the writing process a bit less lonely. So that's fun to see as well, just that it can be a partner. It can really feel like somebody who's there along for the ride. Joanna: Yeah, and I must say, I was one of those people who loved having written. Like, I did struggle, especially with fiction, I find fiction, or I did find fiction, so much harder. I've really found in the last six months since playing with all these tools, I'm really excited to get to the page because I have so much more fun. And I just delve down these ridiculous rabbit holes. I think part of the feeling is that when I did everything myself, I was super, super careful. Like super careful not to head off down a rabbit hole because every word was precious, and every word was hard won. And now I feel like, oh, I could just play in this direction, and then if that doesn't work, I can play in another direction. Or sometimes I'll be like, give me a load of ideas as to what could happen next. And then it's like, oh, this is cool. I guess I'll go here now, and I didn't think of that. So I feel like the fun aspects, it is so much more fun now. Amit: That's cool. Yeah, that's awesome to hear. I think for me, too, it's a little easier for me to kill my darlings when they're not the darlings that I came up with myself. So if the AI comes up with an idea that I think is very good but it's not right for the story, I'll kill it. If I come up with an idea that I think is very good, man, it is hard to edit it out. Joanna: Yeah, this idea of abundant creativity and abundant words, just feels like a big shift. One thing I did want to ask you, so personally, I have used Sudowrite for over a year, 18 months, and in the end of the books where I have used it, I have a statement of AI usage. And I've said, I've used Sudowrite, I've used Amazon ads, I've used ProWriting Aid. I put everything in as to what I use. And this has suddenly become something controversial to kind of use an AI statement of usage. Some people say it's just like Microsoft Word, so why would I have to tell anyone? So what do you think? Should people be disclosing their AI usage? Do readers care? Amit: I don't know. It's a good question. I don't think there's any moral obligation to say what tools you use to create something. Obviously, as a creator of one of these tools, I'd love for people to say that they used it. Do readers care? I'm sure some do, and I'm sure some don't. I think it's up to every author to choose how they want to represent themselves in the world, especially at a time where I think there's a lot of confusion about how we should or should not be using them. So I don't think I can make that judgment for others, but I think that it'll probably become a moot issue in the year to come. Joanna: Yeah, I agree. And I feel like maybe it won't be something I do in the future, but I have an author's note in every book, so I just put a whole load of stuff in there anyway. And I've literally had nobody comment on it. I do think the people who do care right now are things like magazine, short story competitions, some publishers, some author organizations are starting to. This kind of stuff, I just don't know. I don't think they know what they're doing. I don't think most of them have tried it. Also, we've seen this in the visual art world. Some AI-generated images winning competitions, and then people finding out it's AI and being very upset about it. So that's I guess another reason I'm deliberately open about my usage. I mean, I wonder in a year's time, will we be having competitions for AI-positive writers? Or— Will everything have moved on and it won't matter how you write? Amit: I think eventually everything will move on, but I don't know if it's going to be in a year or longer. We're already seeing some AI specific competitions. I think you were mentioning those genre of fiction sci fi magazines, I think there are now some magazines that are doing competitions just for AI fiction. But I think in a year or two, probably it just isn't as novel as it was before, so that sort of thing doesn't happen. It's just part of the toolset. It's just part of how you write or how some people write. So it seems very novel today, and I think there's a lot of interest and excitement around it. But yeah, I just don't see it lasting when these tools become ubiquitous. Joanna: Well, just kind of taking things further, we're writers, so we love words, we like writing, but of course, readers buy our books. And I'll tell you one of the things I'm thinking about is, as we're seeing the text-to-video happen, like RunwayML and things like this. Even Midjourney, like I am on it like a lot every day, generating pictures of characters. And I definitely feel like some of my time is going into that kind of creativity as well. Do you think that this type of fun creativity will take up kind of more hobby time? It's like this is a hobby as well as more serious. It is fun to create stuff with these tools. Amit: Yeah, I mean, we're artists, right? So we love to create. Some people really like to stay in their lane stay very narrowly focused on the particular art form that they love, and some people like to dabble on all sorts of different things and bring them together. I think we are seeing new people trying to create visual art because the tools have made it easier. So people are using Midjourney and other things like that. And we're seeing new people try to create written art because the tools have become easier and made it easier for them to enter. I think both are really exciting. I think that certainly you might see some people who thought of themselves as writers become something else. Maybe they start to think of themselves as storytellers in a video form. I think the reverse might happen too. Y ou're going to see people who never saw themselves as writers dabbling in writing and then discovering that that is the thing they really love. And of course, you'll have people who want to do it all, and I'm excited for them too. I think all of it is good. I think as long as you're creating, and you're expressing yourself, and you're creating good work, it doesn't matter what format you're putting that stuff out in. It just matters that you're creating. Joanna: And obviously, we're not touching on marketing because Sudowrite isn't for marketing at the moment, but I am really excited about things like book trailers and sort of generating all that. Now, you did early on do images, and I created some images with the tool you did. And I think you've now put some of that back. How do you see some of these other multimodal things working with Sudowrite in the future? Or are you going to concentrate on text? Amit: Well, we really want to concentrate on the needs of long-form writers. So I think that long-form writers do need to create images, like you said, for book covers and other marketing materials. So it's possible that we'll add features like that in the future. But we also want to stay focused on the things that we can do better than anyone else. So when we started working on image generation last year, we were competing with Midjourney. And we just liked what Midjourney was doing better than the stuff that we were able to do. So we decided to focus on the text. We would love to bring in some of those tools in ways that are really customized and built purposely for writers, but I don't think we want to do anything just for the sake of doing it. So yeah, I think if we can think of a way to bring something really unique and useful for authors, that's a multimodal interface, or a way to bring video or imagery into their process, we'll definitely look at it. And if people are asking us for it, we'll definitely get it. But we want to be careful not to do it just for the sake of novelty. Joanna: I was also wondering about developmental editing because the benefit of developmental editing is to have someone give an overview of the whole book. So given that the whole book can be in Sudowrite— Is the developmental side of editing something that you're looking at? Amit: Yeah, I think that's definitely something we want to do. And we've had some experiments along the way, where we have like a feedback tool that's more geared towards a chapter or short story. And we have a tool called Shrink Ray that will take an entire novel and condense it down to different formats, like a logline and a summary and one page treatment, that kind of thing. We definitely want to look at the developmental editor side of things. I think there's a lot we can help writers with there. There's a lot of unique challenges for narrative fiction there. I think that the models are now getting to the point where we can do some really interesting things in that space that we couldn't do just six months ago. Joanna: Yeah, I mean, that's to do with the amount of input you can put into the model, right? I had a play with the Claude Anthropic, Claude 100k, which if people don't know, is another model. [Note: You can access Claude through Poe.com.] And I use this short story and asked it for developmental edits and things, and it was really interesting to be able to get that from a machine. And editors listening are like, what? But then translators use AI, and we use AI for line editing, so I don't want anyone to be scared of tools. I think this is just a natural thing. It seems to me that it would be a great direction for Sudowrite to go in. Amit: Yeah, definitely. And I think like you said, the context window of these larger models is one piece of the puzzle. The other piece, I think, is just the variety of models that are now available. So Story Engine wasn't possible for us to do last year, but it's possible this year because we can combine GPT-3, 3.5, 4 and multiple versions of Claude to bring this puzzle together.  Even some of those older models—older, you know, two years old or whatever—but they're actually better at some things than the newer models. So some part of this multistep pipeline that we have for Story Engine requires an older model, because it performs better at one piece of this. So I'm really excited as more and more models come online, as some of the open-source models get better. I think it opens up a lot of possibilities for what we can do with them. Joanna: Yeah, and it's funny you say that, because of course, the older models have more of what people call hallucinations. As in, they make stuff up. And of course, that's what fiction authors do. So we kind of want the weird stuff. I do remember playing with, it might even have been GPT-2, I can't remember, but like some of the stuff was so weird. Now everyone is like, we don't want it to make stuff up. We want it to be always exactly right. And it's like, well, what about if you want more creative stuff? So yeah, I like that you're combining all these different models. We could talk forever, but we're out of time. Where can people find Sudowrite online? And how can they reach out to you if people have a question? Amit: Sure. Well, they can find Sudowrite at Sudowrite.com. And they can always reach out to us by emailing hi@Sudowrite.com, or find us on our community Slack. We're there every day listening to feedback from authors and making the product better. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Amit. That was great. Amit: Thanks for having me. This is wonderful.The post Using Sudowrite For Writing Fiction With Amit Gupta first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you stand out in a crowded market of non-fiction books? How can you build a business around your central topic? How can you deal with failure to move on to success? Stephanie Chandler shares her experience and tips. In the intro, HarperCollins and KKR make bids for Simon & Schuster [The Hotsheet]; more details from the Indie Author Earnings report [ALLi]; Thoughts from SPS Live; Photo of my boxed set (in a box); Amazon launch their Generative AI Innovation Centre. My books related to this interview: Career Change, How to Write Non-Fiction, Your Author Business Plan, Public Speaking for Authors, Creatives, and Other Introverts. Today's show is sponsored by Ingram Spark, which I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 40,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries, and more. It's your content—do more with it through IngramSpark.com. Stephanie Chandler is the author of multiple nonfiction books, a professional speaker, and CEO of the Nonfiction Authors Association and Writers Conference. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Changes in publishing and marketing for nonfiction authors over time and what still works How to stand out and build your community Content marketing and long-term marketing strategies Deciding what nonfiction book to write—should you stay in your lane? Letting go, quitting, and moving on Dealing with failure and using it to find the right direction for your writing — and your life How nonfiction authors can leverage their book to generate multiple streams of income The Nonfiction Authors Association and how it is useful to authors You can find Stephanie at NonfictionAuthorsAssociation.com Transcript of Interview with Stephanie Chandler Joanna: Stephanie Chandler is the author of multiple nonfiction books, a professional speaker, and CEO of the Nonfiction Authors Association and Writers Conference. So welcome back to the show, Stephanie. Stephanie: Joanna, it's so fun to chat with you. Thanks for having me. Joanna: Just an introduction to the audience, back in 2007 I read your book, From Entrepreneur to Infopreneur, which helped me decide to start my own author business. You've been teaching nonfiction authors about marketing since then, but it has been a decade since we talked last in 2013 about book marketing. So for those who don't know you— Tell us a bit more about you and your background in books and marketing. Stephanie: Yes, thank you for referencing. I love that we have that connection through that book. I am a Silicon Valley refugee, I left in 2003 and I opened a brick-and-mortar bookstore here in Sacramento, California, and thought I was going to write novels in the back office. It turned out I was a terrible fiction writer, I just did not have the imagination. It was devastating because when you spend your whole life wanting to write, it was just really disappointing. I didn't know what to do next, but I kind of took a U-turn and discovered how much I loved nonfiction and the fact that it blends that ability to teach, which I've always wanted to do. And I hated running the bookstore, by the way. It's not nearly as romantic as it sounds. So I wrote my first book, it was a business startup guide. I had an agent call and tell me, I like what you're doing but nobody knows who you are, you need to build an audience. And I started a website called Business Info Guide, and this is back before blogging was a thing. So I was creating new articles, which is very tedious back then, and every time I created new articles, I was attracting more website traffic and I was building this email list. So a year after the self-published business startup guide came out, I had the idea for From Entrepreneur to Infopreneur. I sent proposals to three publishers, and Wiley gave me a book deal. So I was beyond thrilled. I was walking the talk, I was selling digital products off the website, and building an email list, and creating workbooks and eBooks. I mean, before eBooks were a thing, right? Ebooks back then were PDFs.  It just kind of evolved from there. I ended up signing with an agent, I sold a couple more books, and then — I got really turned off by traditional publishing and the lack of control. I had titles change, I had book covers I didn't like. One publisher called and said, we want you to remove a chapter, we don't care which one, we're trying to cut costs. And I thought, oh my gosh, I'm never letting that happen again. Meanwhile, I'm speaking at writers' conferences, and I am wondering why isn't anybody talking to those of us who write nonfiction. I was at a conference with 350 people, and from what I could tell I was the only business book writer there. So in 2008, I started my own publishing business. I took back control of my publishing rights, and started working with nonfiction authors exclusively. Then in 2010, I launched the Nonfiction Writers Conference. It was a three-day event, entirely online. And back then we were doing this by teleseminar. Remember that, Joanna? Joanna: Yeah, yeah. Stephanie: Right. And three days on teleseminar, which was unheard of, and I didn't know if people would come, but they did. And each year after, we'd run the event, and people would say, well, how do we keep in touch when this is over? I'm so grateful for that because it led to the launch of the Nonfiction Authors Association in 2013, and I built a community. We launched in May of 2013, and in October my husband died unexpectedly. And it was just absolutely devastating. I kind of checked out for a year, and I had one assistant helping me run things. And despite being almost completely disengaged for a year, the community grew. I thought, you know what, we're onto something. There is a need for this community. So when I returned a year later, I really got involved in the community, and we've just continued to grow from there. The conference has grown from there. And it's been a wonderful ride ever since. This was the 10 year anniversary of the Nonfiction Authors Association this year, and it was our 13th Nonfiction Writers Conference. So it's been an amazing ride. Joanna: I'm so sorry about your husband, by the way. Stephanie: Thank you. Joanna: I mean, it's just awful. But coming back to business things, it's amazing how you—well, and this is what's so great, like I said, you and I've been connected for all this time, and you've just taken one step at a time into new opportunities. I've done the same. We've both ended up with quite different businesses, but it has been successful for both of us. But there's been a lot of change. So I guess you mentioned a bit about trad pub and going indie, but— What have been the biggest changes you've seen for nonfiction authors in terms of publishing and book marketing since you started out? Stephanie: Oh, my gosh, so much has changed. I mean, I think back to remember when we thought eBooks were going to overtake print books, and there was all this frenzy around that. And now we've got AI coming out. Just this morning, there was this news story about Paul McCartney and The Beatles may be able to release new music using John Lennon's voice because of AI. So that's been really exciting. We didn't have social media, or podcasts, or any of these things, Joanna, back when you and I were starting. Then there's tremendous competition. There are more books released every year now than ever before. I mean, some people are saying there are a million titles being released a year. And Amazon has, quite frankly, made brick-and-mortar less relevant, like it or not. So I honestly think — Book marketing is easier because we have more tools. If you have a really focused plan, if you carve out a niche for yourself and focus on building community, there's actually a lot of advantages to the change that's happened. Joanna: That's my attitude, too. You have to make the most of whatever situation, but yeah, we had nothing. It's so funny, people are like, oh it was so easy for you back then when you published in 2007. I'm like, hell no, it wasn't. That's so crazy. But just a couple of things to come back on. So first of all, traditional publishing. You advise a lot of nonfiction authors. For authors who want to go the traditional publishing route, when is it a good idea for them? And what should they weigh up, whether to go traditional or to go indie? Stephanie: Yeah, so my feeling on traditional publishing, I've been fairly soured over that experience, just because my personal experience wasn't great. I also understand that it is a goal for a lot of people. It was certainly a goal for me to be traditionally published. I found that to be very rewarding, but today it's different. So my advice is, if you have a book that has broad appeal and belongs on brick and mortar bookstore shelves, and it's a real goal for you, then it may be worth considering. It is harder than ever to get a book deal. You really have to come to the table with a platform, especially in nonfiction. So if it's your goal, I think that it's worth making the effort. Go through the exercise of writing a book proposal, whether you plan to traditionally publish or not, it's such a great exercise to help you get focused on your book, and then give it a timeframe. So give yourself six months, and if nothing happens, if you're not able to get an agent or deal by then, then maybe you return to self-publishing. Honestly, Joanna — I think self-publishing makes a lot more sense for 90% of the nonfiction authors that I speak to. It's faster to market. You're going to do all the heavy lifting anyway, it's a myth that these publishers are doing all the marketing for you. So you can make more money per copy, you maintain all the control over your work, and that was really important to me. So I personally think it's a much better path for 90% of authors. Joanna: That's interesting. And then the other thing you mentioned was the amount of competition. You mentioned a million books, but I think with the rise of AI, also translation and all kinds of other things, there are a lot of books. There's more books than anyone can read every day being published. I've been thinking about this around the value of curation. So in the old days, I got your book back in 2007 because a publisher, Wiley, put it on the shelf in Australia, where I was living at the time, and that's where I found it. But now we're in this very busy world, so the importance of curation. I mean, like you mentioned this podcast, for example, I'm a curator with this podcast. I pick you to come on the show because I value you and your expertise. How can authors either start curating and guiding things themselves, or contact people who are curators to try and stand out? Stephanie: I love this question. So really, Joanna, what you've done with your podcast is build a community. And I think this is a key, especially in the nonfiction space. I am still a huge believer in content marketing. I feel like every author should have at least one piece of foundational content, whether that's a podcast, a blog, or a video channel on YouTube. I think that it's really important to be producing content and building out your website so that you're attracting your ideal target audience and building a community around that. Without that you're kind of just flailing in the wind. Then certainly you can also leverage sites and podcasts and things that also reach your target audience. So for example, I talked to nonfiction authors about what trade associations do your target readers belong to. Can you go and speak at those associations? Can you contribute to their blogs? Can you contribute to their magazine or newsletter? So you want to find out where your target audience is spending time to reach them, and then bring them back into your foundational content and really build that sense of community. Joanna: Yes, I think this is going to become more and more important. Although, you mentioned AI before and I kind of hope that AI will help us surface our books, or will surface our books in a much more nuanced way. Like I've been using ChatGPT to surface quite nuanced things. Like I asked it, “What kind of books are on the shelf of this character who is a Vatican Exorcist? What kind of books would be on his shelf? Give me a list of 20.” And they were all nonfiction, but they gave me a ton of other books to read that I wouldn't have found otherwise, which I think was really interesting. I feel like people despair over this volume of things out there. but I also feel that things will change as we get better tools. We never despair, do we? There's always something new. Stephanie: No, and I'm so with you on that. I think there's a lot of fear around AI. There's still a lot of fear around social media for a lot of writers. And there's also trends, trends come and go. You know, in the US, we may be getting rid of TikTok any day now. [NY Times] So I think that it's exciting. I also feel the same way about AI, I view it as a potential tool that really helps us. How exciting that The Beatles could potentially release new music as a result. I am not worried about copyright infringement. I think that there are so many rules and laws in place that will protect us from that, if that becomes an issue. So I think we should look for opportunities within these new technologies that are coming on board. Joanna: For sure. So you mentioned TikTok there. And as you said, there are some states in the US banning it and various government things, but TikTok wasn't even a thing when we spoke like a decade ago. Personally, I don't use it. I'm still a Twitter girl from way back. But I guess the point is that these marketing tactics change all the time, but some of these strategies do last for the long term. So, I guess you've mentioned content marketing, but— What are some other long-term marketing strategies that you advocate? Stephanie: I will tell you, I am such an advocate of build your email list. You mentioned Twitter, we had a Twitter account that evaporated overnight a couple of years back. We lost 70,000 followers overnight for no reason. It's not like we were violating policies or anything like that. I spent months trying to get a hold of someone at Twitter to get it back. It just evaporated. So social media, to me, is rented real estate. It has absolute value for those who use it well, but I would much rather focus on building my email list. That is part of that community-building process. That is an asset that you own. Nobody can take away your email list. Even though we borrow a tool to deliver emails, you own that database. That's also where you have a really engaged audience. So to me, email marketing will always be one of my favorite strategies, and doing things like contributing to those sites that reach your target audience. Also, Joanna, I've become a big fan of Amazon ads. I realize that they're challenging for a lot of people, but we're seeing some really cool success stories in the nonfiction space. Author Mark Paul, he's a memoir writer, he has sold 45,000 copies of his memoir using nothing but Amazon ads. He has no platform whatsoever. So I think there are some strategies that have some great long-term value if we learn to use them well. Joanna: It's funny you mentioned Amazon ads there and memoir, because Amazon ads are essentially keywords and categories. And I know some other memoir writers who do very well with Amazon ads because so few memoir writers are competing for those keywords. Most memoir writers are not interested in the technological platform side of things. So that's really interesting. But coming back to the email list there and the asset that you build, I also wanted to mention backing things up. You mentioned losing your Twitter there. But I mean, we can all back our email list up on the sites that we use. As you mentioned, I mean, since we first connected I think I'm on my fourth email provider. Stephanie: Yeah, I mean, for sure, protecting your data. I also think of, when you talk about backups, I just had a catastrophic computer issue with data transfer, and the people that did it completely destroyed my data. So backups just make me want to say please go get Carbonite and/or Dropbox or both, because I now have three times of redundancy on my data. Thankfully, I was backed up and I was able to get that data recovered. But yeah, I think our tools are so important. And like you said, if your tool is no longer working for you, there are other options out there. So having those tools make our jobs easier. Joanna: So let's just take a step back to the creative side, because one of the things that I have as a nonfiction writer and I know many people do, is I have so many ideas, or there are so many things I could write about. Should I stick it all in one magnum opus? What are the top challenges for nonfiction authors when it comes to deciding which book to write? Stephanie: I hear this all the time. And I think as creative people, I relate to this as well. I mean, there are so many things I would love to write about, but is it in my lane? So this is the conversation I have with authors, is get your lane figured out first. Really focus on one niche, if you can, because that will make this marketing job a whole lot easier. And Joanna, you straddle different markets, and so it's challenging. Joanna: Don't do it! Stephanie: Don't do it. Right, exactly. And I've heard this from so many authors who've really established themselves in one niche, and then they release something totally different, and they're disappointed that it falls flat. You literally have to build two different platforms for two different topics. So my advice is — Think about what you're most passionate about and ask yourself, is this something I still want to be writing and talking about in five or 10 years? Because if it's just a passing fancy, and it's because you happen to know it that you want to write about it, that may not be a great focused strategy if you really want to build a career as an author. If you're a hobbyist and you're just having fun, go do it. But if you really want to build a career around your authorship, then I think it's important to choose a niche. Joanna: And I mean, I joke ‘don't do it,' but I feel like this is a personality type. I am someone who cannot just do one thing. I mean, even like this podcast, I tried to give it up so many times and come back to it. I mean, this might even be episode 700 by the time it goes out, which is kind of crazy. But what's so good is I have just covered different topics over the years. I mean, if people are like, well, I don't want to focus on one thing, or I don't want to stay in my lane, or I want to have multiple lanes—How can they deal with that? Because you know, creativity is what it is. Stephanie: Yes. well, if that's what you want to do, you really have to build marketing plans for both lanes. So you need, maybe it's one focus per site for one audience, and then a separate site. I mean, if you're writing about dog training, and you're also writing about parenting, there's very little crossover there. I went through this myself, Joanna, because remember, I started writing business books. I had a business website, I had corporate sponsors, I was speaking on growing your business, and then I was really drawn to working with authors. There was some crossover there, but at one point, I just had to make the decision — Did I want to keep managing two different entirely different paths? Or did I want to let one go? And I chose to let the business one go. It was a big decision. I made a lot of money in that space, but this is where my passion was. So if you're very creative, and I'm with you, I need to constantly be doing different things, I get bored very easily. But you want to just make sure you have a plan to reach those audiences. Again, if you want to build an author career. Joanna: So you mentioned there that you let go of that other side. I mean, I do have these two main brands, Joanna Penn Self-Help for Authors and JFPenn, which is my fiction. But even with my fiction, I do loads of different genres, and I have a memoir as well, Pilgrimage, that we put out earlier this year. So I kind of do all these things. But I mean, this letting it go, I'm really interested in how you came to that decision. So can you talk more about how you made that decision, how difficult it was, and what was the process? Stephanie: Oh, my goodness. Yeah. So letting go of that was really tricky. Honestly, I've let go of a lot of things over the years. I mean, I let go of a six figure Silicon Valley career to open a bookstore, and then I sold that bookstore. It was just exhausting to run it. Letting go has actually been part of my career path for many years. I realized that I don't operate well when I'm overwhelmed and stressed out. So there was that critical point where I was running the business site, and I was starting to run an author site and it was just not fun. So I think that we're supposed to have a little bit of fun as we're building our businesses. Maybe that's not the only goal, but it certainly is one of my goals that I want to enjoy getting up and coming to work every day. Otherwise, I might as well just go back to corporate America and get another soul-sucking job. So letting go was a decision I wrestled with for a very long time. Ultimately, it just made more sense, because I had to ask myself those questions. Am I still passionate about talking about how to build your small business? No, I had lost my passion. Am I passionate about working with nonfiction authors? Absolutely. I really thought about life purpose, and I really find purpose in helping nonfiction authors because I feel like I'm helping them live their purpose. So I just asked myself a lot of really important questions, and then took the leap and invited people to come along with me. Some did, and some didn't. And I've never regretted those choices to let go of things, ever. Joanna: I mean, I left my corporate job, as well, to become an author. But it's difficult, isn't it? I know some people listening, they might be wanting to do that, too. How do we have the confidence that something is going to rise from the ashes of letting something go? Stephanie: I love that. So I think that it's really important for me, planning has been key. Before I quit my Silicon Valley job, I built a massive business plan for that bookstore. I had it evaluated by consultants, and I built a marketing plan, and I did a lot of planning around it. Now, of course, nothing ever goes according to plan which you learn that kind of hard way. But I had contingencies, I had savings. Same thing when I gave up the business site. I had savings, I had contingencies, and I had a plan. I think that a plan removes a lot of the fear, and if you have that kind of clear path. I'm somebody who likes to see things in writing. I love a checklist. I love just seeing projections and numbers. What can be done here? What's the potential? If you build a plan, you can absolutely do what Joanna and I have done, and leave your job. But you have to get really clear about what that path is going to be. I have a great success story I can share with you if you'd like to hear. So Dana Manciagli was a Microsoft executive, a VP, and she called me up maybe five years ago, and she said, I'm going to quit my job and become a job search coach. And I was like, are you sure? Like, is that really what you want to do? should we narrow that down? Do you want to be a job search coach for executives? Nope, this is my path. This is what I want to do. She wrote her book, she got herself a column writing for The Business Journals, which was a national publication at the time, and then she built training courses, Joanna. She built a how-to-get-your-job course, a self-study digital course that she sold for $1,000 a seat to unemployed people. She got 50 people to buy the course out of the gate. So that was her first launch. Then she went back and said, I love supporting veterans. She created a course for veterans coming out of service into civilian life. Then she went back to companies and said, why don't you sponsor seats in my course for veterans coming out of service? I'll sell it to you at a discounted rate of $600 a seat. She's doing multiple six figure deals, selling seats in her digital course to companies to donate to veterans. Joanna: And actually, that really brings up a good point, which is you mentioned that this lady wrote a book, but that was not the thing, actually, that turned into her business or her service. So maybe you could talk about how the nonfiction author ecosystem and business works? Nonfiction authors don't just make money with book sales or change lives with book sales. What are the other ways? Stephanie: Yeah, it's so rare that somebody actually makes a living from their book sales. What I love about nonfiction is our books make a difference in the world. So you're teaching something, you're inspiring people with your personal story, whatever it is, and that book becomes a tool. So that book gave her credibility in the job coaching space. So it's a credibility builder. It truly is a business card if you want to be a speaker. You can build a business fully around your book. That could be consulting or coaching, those online courses which I feel are hotter than ever. You can get paid as a speaker. You can create companion products, toolkits, workbooks. I love workbooks, as a reader, as a writer, I'm a huge fan. I created a workbook for the Book Marketing Mastercourse that I teach. I've been teaching that for several years now, and my students kept saying, this book stands alone. So it is going to be another product that will be released as a book later this year. That is yet another marketing tool for me, another way to reach new readers, people to attract to the association and my courses. So you create these revenue streams, almost like veins that are spidering out from your book, and it's by following the things that you enjoy doing. I love teaching. I love writing. So I'm able to build this very sustainable, fun business by doing the things that I love to do. Joanna: It is interesting. And I mean, just to say, like this podcast, I mean, I've sold a lot of nonfiction books, but this podcast goes out to more people than buy each of my books. Sometimes we think, ‘oh, this book is the thing that will change people's lives,' but sometimes it's the other things we do. Whether it's, like you said, speaking at a conference, or a podcast interview, sometimes it's just one line that might change someone's life. So I feel like that's the other angle, is that we have to consider that our message goes far beyond the book, and not to just be wedded to the book being the only thing. Stephanie: Well said, and completely agree. The book might be the heart of your strategy, but you need to build your strategy around that with that foundational content. Whether it's your podcasts, or your blog, or your videos, which by the way, all get posted to your site as blog posts, which drive traffic to your website. So yeah, it's building around that, doing the things you love. When authors come to me and say, oh, I'm gonna launch a course because this is the hot thing to do. And then I'll say, well, are you interested in actually teaching? Does that appeal to you? Well, not really. Well, then that's not probably your best choice. Let's choose a revenue stream that you will actually be excited to do because that passion also comes through to your audience, as well. Joanna: Let's just come back to what we talked about earlier about standing out and the competition in the market. One of the other issues with nonfiction is, I mean, you mentioned the lady with the career coach, that like career coaching or helping people find a career, this is not original, it's not an original thing to do. And then authors are like, oh, I've got this idea, but there are so many other books on this topic. How can people write a book on a topic that's been covered before, but make it something only they can write? Stephanie: Oh, yes, great question. So there's tons of competition. And then there's a lot of authors, especially new authors, struggle with that imposter syndrome. But there's other people doing it, and they've been doing it longer than I have. My perspective is, you know more about your subject than your target audience knows. So you have your unique perspective on your topic. I think it's essential to study your market, see what's already out there, and how are you going to do things differently. I could have created another community for general writers, right, and had a ton of competition. But I narrowed that focus because that is where my passion lies, and there was a need in the market for it. Therefore, my books are able to stand out a little bit. So look at what's already there and how you can contribute something unique and different to that conversation. I say niche, niche, niche all the time. I really believe if you narrow that focus, you can actually reach more people. Joanna: And it's often related to who we are, and our personal story and our voice. I mean, you and I, we don't know each other very well. but we have similar interests, and we think similarly in many ways. But even just the fact that I am British, and you are American, this actually creates quite a big difference between us, in terms of our experience in our life. So even if we write a book on exactly the same thing, we will always bring a different angle. I think people forget this, that they are special just because of who they are. Stephanie: They are. And Joanna, another real-life example comes to mind. I have a friend Karl Polytec, he decided to become a consultant for people who own IT businesses. This is a tiny niche. People who own IT companies, computer technologists. Now, he could have become a general business consultant and helped people grow their businesses, but he decided to focus on IT companies. And he is basically a rockstar in this niche. He puts himself on tour, he speaks all across the US and the UK, has got a really big following in Australia. He's done this because he has narrowed his focus, and he has a few others in his field that do the same thing, but guess what, they're all friendly, just like you and I are. I don't view anybody as a competitor, because like you said, we all have something unique to bring to the table. I'd so much rather work together than work against anybody. Let's honor the fact that people are all attracted to different things, that we all have different perspectives, and there's always room for a new voice in a genre that even could be very crowded. Joanna: I wanted to come back to the mindset stuff and the deeper side of things, because you mentioned impostor syndrome earlier. Another thing stopping people, well, for me, it's always been fear of judgment. So what will people think of me? But the other thing that people have is the fear of failure. I want to come back to your bookstore experience because you left this corporate job, you bought a bookstore, and basically, you failed. You failed at that career. And I say this as someone who also left my corporate job, originally to start a scuba diving business. I don't know if you know that about me. I started a scuba diving business, and then I tried property investments. So I have also failed at other careers before I found this one. So it's not just like, ‘oh, leave corporate job, make a success as an author.' That's not how it's been for either of us.  How do you deal with failure? Stephanie: I think failure is part of being human, and it's also part of this process. I mean, I think about book reviews, right. You're never going to get 100% perfect, great book reviews. Nobody's ever going to love everything you put out in the world. I remember early on arguing with a book reviewer on Amazon. Joanna: Never do that! Stephanie: Yeah, I'd never do that now. But way back then at the beginning, this guy had written a rave review for one of my books. Then the next book came out and he panned it, and I was so devastated and hurt by that. So I've really had to evolve from that fear of failure and fear of letting people down. You know, one of my Silicon Valley careers was as a technical instructor, I used to teach software classes and develop courses, which by the way, it was a skill that's really come in handy today. But one of our rules, when we taught a course, was we would drop the bottom 10% of reviews. And if you saw trends in the 90%, the top 90% of people saying there's an issue with your course, or delivery or whatever, then you would address it.  You're always going to have, you know, 10% is a high number, so maybe 5% of your audience isn't going to agree with you. At some point, you have to accept that. Then you have to just be aware, failure is going to happen. I've launched courses over the years that fell flat. I mean, there's been countless failures, but there's also been countless wins. Focus on the wins, and don't let the failures bring you down. Read Brené Brown, like she's my favorite author because she really helps you overcome a lot of those fears. Joanna: It's interesting. I mean, my first book was called How to Enjoy Your Job or Find a New One. [Later rewritten as Career Change] It was a classic leaving corporate book, and that failed miserably. That was back in the day, as you said, before eBooks. I printed 2000 books, and I basically sold about 100 of them and put the rest in the landfill. I mean, it was a super failure in so many ways. But the lessons I learned helped me decide to embark on this career. So we learn the lessons.  I always wonder if when we fail at something, so for example, my scuba diving business also failed, but what I learned from that was I don't want to run a scuba diving business. What I learned with my first failure of a book was that I want to write books and I will figure this out. Can failure and then the decision to carry on almost be a signpost that this is the right direction? Stephanie: Yes, yes, it can. And, you know, I think about that bookstore and how much we struggled to build it that first year, but what it led me to do was learn how to do online marketing. I learned about search engine optimization and how to advertise online, and that helped make the store profitable. At the same time, that became a skill that I would use still to this day. Learning that I was not meant to be locked in a single box of a space for eight hours a day was a huge lesson, that I didn't like talking to the general public every day, and being robbed, and having just all kinds of crazy things happen in a retail business. So I often like to say my path found me. And I think part of that is listening to the failures and listening to the wins. I never set out to be a speaker. I really didn't want to be a speaker. I was exhausted from doing all of that in my corporate career. Then the books come out and you get asked to speak, and you realize, oh, gosh, okay, I'm gonna have to learn to be a good speaker. So listen to those lessons and take them in stride. And things like overspending when I ran the bookstore. I overspent on I can't even tell you how many print ads and things like that. Then I learned about internet marketing and how I can optimize traffic to the website. It was a game changer. So I think you're 100% right. Those failures help lead you to the next step. And letting go of things help lead you to the next step, so that you can focus on what you're feeling more called to do. Joanna: It's so funny, too, because when I printed all those books back in 2007/2008, and I did all the things were told to do, I did the press releases, I got on national TV in Australia, I got in the national newspapers, and I did sell like 100 copies. And that's when I also went, screw this, I'm gonna learn digital marketing. Later that year, I set up this website, and then started a podcast, got on Twitter. And again, I was like—Why am I spending all this effort for so little return? I think there's a better way of doing it. So I think you're totally right. But it's so funny, our journeys have been quite parallel. Stephanie: Yeah, because we've had the same failures. Joanna: Yeah, we really have. And it's so funny, because that brick and mortar thing, because obviously, I mean, the scuba diving business, same as you. I mean, I was renting a boat, I was paying insurance, we were buying fuel, and, I mean, talk about the costs of filling up a boat with fuel before going out for scuba diving — there was the weather. And that was another thing, I was like, I am not running a physical business again. Like you, I was like I am not going to run a business that's dependent on the elements. Stephanie: Absolutely. The freedom that we create with online businesses is just phenomenal. And the brick and mortar thing, Joanna, I always flashback to a book signing that I did with the Chicken Soup for the Entrepreneur’s Soul. This was years ago, right, but they had put us ten steps inside the local Barnes and Noble, we had local media coverage that morning, it was a Saturday morning, it was amazing. And we thought, oh my gosh. There were, I think, three or four of us who had contributed to the book, so it was a huge launch. And in three hours, we sold eight copies. I swore from that day, I will never do another bookstore signing again. So, you know, another failure. A lesson learned, right? That's not the way to sell books. Go speak to an audience and sell 50 copies at the end of your presentation. That's a way to sell books. Joanna: Yes, well, I still haven't done a book signing or any kind of signing, actually, outside of my own events. So I totally agree with you. And I heard that from people, so I didn't even bother trying it. We're coming to the end, and given that we've been doing this so long, and we mentioned AI earlier, but it feels like we're at the beginning of perhaps the next 15 years. It's been 15 years since I read your book, From Entrepreneur to Infopreneur. And I feel like this may be the beginning of the next 15 years of change. Like it feels to me like 2007/2008, the early days of eBooks and digital publishing and social media and all these things, and now another change. Many authors are concerned for the disruption and all kinds of stuff. How can authors have the right attitude to surf the wave of change, rather than drown in it? Stephanie: Ah, you know, I think fear. Fear just ruins so much fun for all of us. So rather than fearing AI and all the trends that are coming, I really believe that we should look for the benefits and the opportunities within these changes and ride that wave, rather than getting drowned by it. I'm seeing a lot of fear in our author community around what's happening in AI and these things. I just would rather look at it from, how can I leverage this? Like you said, finding a list of books from it. There are so many great ways that we have even yet to learn how to use this technology. We've also seen so many trends come and go. Social media sites, hello, Myspace. You know, what happened there? So I would much rather just try to stay on top of what's happening and be open to how it is going to benefit us  moving forward. Ebooks, like I mentioned, we were so afraid eBooks were going to take over the market. And now they're a must have, and you should absolutely publish an eBook if you're publishing a print book. And we learned from that, we learned that not everybody wants to read eBooks. Now audiobooks are growing, that audience is expected to continue to grow massively over the next 10 years. Look for the opportunities and take advantage of them so that you don't get left behind. Joanna: Yeah, I think so. And as we've done, you pivot when you need to pivot. If you fail, you try something new. Yeah, I mean, things will disappear, but you will find the way forward. I mean, I think that's probably a lesson from both of us, isn't it? Things happened that we didn't want, that we couldn't control, and yet, we're still here. Stephanie: That's right. Blessings in disguise. Lessons in all those failures. Just keep moving forward. Joanna: What is the Nonfiction Authors Association, and why might it be useful for authors? Stephanie: Well, thank you for asking. I'm really proud of this community. We are just focused on educating authors. We have a massive database of templates, checklists, reports, recordings. We even have legal agreements. We send out media leads every week. Our members are getting all kinds of interviews as a result of that, podcasts and blogs. We have a private Facebook group. We recently launched nonfictionbookclub.com, which is so much fun. So we're able to now promote our members over on that site as well. And then of course, we've got courses. Joanna, I don't know if you're aware of this, we created basically a professional certification program for book marketing, book publishing, and book publicity. As you're well aware, there really are no industry standards for these things. We have professionals in our community, virtual assistants, book coaches, things like that, who wanted to have specific steps to build a marketing plan, specific steps for helping an author publish. So we created professional certification.  Then of course, we have our annual conference completely online, done by Zoom now, we're no longer on teleseminar format. We had Cheryl Strayed open for us this year. We've had Anna Quinlan, Don Miguel Ruiz, Seth Godin, Martha Beck. So we work really hard to serve the needs of our community. I'm just really proud of it. It's a lot of fun to build this community. Joanna: Just two questions on that. So what genres? Because nonfiction is so big. I mean, it can go from, like you said, the business book to the memoir. And also, is it global? Or is it just US? Stephanie: For sure, we're global. And, I mean, on average we're seeing eight or nine countries coming to our conference because it's online, and they can do that without travel expenses. Then as far as nonfiction genres, we cover the gamut. I would say, from our surveys, we've learned that a lot of people are writing health and wellness, business books, certainly memoir, narrative nonfiction. We have historians, we have a lot of spiritual type books. So really, the gamut is represented here. And we try to serve everybody within their subgenres of nonfiction. Joanna: Fantastic. And then what about you personally? Where can people find you and everything you do online? Stephanie: Yes, thank you. So really, you can find me within our social media. Although we have a social media manager, I'm the one that responds to comments. I always want to stay connected to our community. You can find me through nonfictionauthorsassociation.com. I'm actively engaged there. We have a very active Facebook page where you can connect with us there as well. It's just so fun to talk about all of this, Joanna. Thank you so much. Joanna: Oh, well, thanks so much for your time, Stephanie. That was great. The post The Craft And Business Of Writing Non-Fiction Books With Stephanie Chandler first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can Bookfunnel help authors reach more readers, sell more books, and sell direct? Damon Courtney outlines features of Bookfunnel that you might not know about. In the intro, Hello Books and Written Word Media have joined forces for promo stacking; Call to Action (CTA) tips [ALLi]; my free Author Blueprint; Bundle for writers [Storybundle]. Plus, Paul McCartney is using AI to create a new and final Beatles song [The Guardian]; Boosting creativity, AI, and book cover design [Damonza]; Storytel has invested in ElevenLabs and the possibility of voice switching [Publishing Perspectives]; The Ethical Writers Guide to Harnessing the Power of AI: Using AI with Integrity – HJ Philips; my live AI webinars. Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with Scrivener amongst other software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 25% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna Damon Courtney is a fantasy author, entrepreneur, and founder of BookFunnel.com, which I consider one of my must-use tools as part of my author business. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show notes Damon's journey to creating BookFunnel The struggles of sharing Reader Magnets and ‘side-loading' before BookFunnel How to use BookFunnel for list building More BookFunnel features — Gift a Book, ARC delivery and Print Codes Author Swaps vs Group Promotions Tips for using BookFunnel for direct sales The benefits of going wide with audiobooks You can find Damon at BookFunnel.com Transcript of Interview with Damon Courtney Joanna:: Damon Courtney is a fantasy author, entrepreneur, and founder of BookFunnel.com, which I consider one of my must-use tools as part of my author business. So welcome back to the show, Damon. Damon: It's so good to be back. I can't believe it's been as long as it has. When was last time we did this thing? Joanna: It's like almost a decade or something ridiculous. Damon: It is a decade in indie publishing, right? It's probably two decades in indie publishing since we last talked like this. Of course, we see each other frequently. We just saw each other back in February in Colorado, but me being on the show and chatting like this in an official capacity. Joanna: Yes. And I mean, like you said, you are at a lot of author conferences. I wanted to make sure people know a bit about your origin story as well, because unlike a lot of the service companies that work for and with authors, you're an author yourself. That's how I originally met you all those years ago. Tell people a bit more about you and your background in writing and tech, and why you're also a book geek as well as a tech geek. Damon: Well, we'll go all the way back to the tech thing first because that really came first, which was I actually started programming and writing computer code when I was seven years old. My dad brought home this really old ancient computer, especially ancient by today's standards. It was called a TRS-80, but we call them a Trash-80 in the tech world. It plugged into your television, and it had no hard drive and had no disk drive, it had no nothing. You just wrote code into it. It came with this giant floppy book that you could learn to code with in a language called BASIC. Everybody else kind of toyed with it, even my dad, and then just kind of left it sitting there on the living room floor. I was the only one that was like, what is this thing? So I've been doing tech for my really my entire life. I became a reader, probably around the age of 12. I had a fantastic librarian when I was in sixth grade, who introduced me to The Hobbit, and The Black Cauldron, and all these amazing fantasy books, which were always my thing. While the other boys my age were playing Cowboys and Indians, I was playing Knights and Dragons. But I didn't have any books to read, I couldn't find them. I remember going to the card catalog—that was a thing, for you younger kids—there was a card catalog in the library. I remember literally going to the card catalog and opening up ‘D' and looking for the word dragon and then going to ‘W' and looking up wizard, because that was all I knew how to do to find the things that I wanted to read. So the tech thing really came first, and then the reading, and then becoming a lifelong reader. I mean, just absolutely. I still read every single night. That's my wind down when I get into bed. I put the kids to bed, I get in bed, and I sit and I read every single night. Now eBooks, I don't read paper anymore, everything I do is on eBooks. But that started all of that. The writing thing really came about because of indie publishing. So I'm going to admit some of my geekery, I play Dungeons and Dragons, and I have my entire life. I have been what we call the Forever Dungeon Master. So I've been the dungeon master of my group, the same group, for about 30-plus years now. I mean, being a dungeon master is just writing stories, right? You're writing stories that you play around a table with a bunch of other people, but that's really what it is. You're writing stories, you're making up stories, for other people to experience. So there was always this sort of secret dream that maybe one day I could be a writer. I remember looking it up and trying to read about it and learning about the process by which a book was published. You basically query it and you send it out into the world and they reject you a billion times. Then maybe if you're lucky, and you spend 10 years toiling away at it, you might get someone to finally anoint you and approve that your book was good enough.  I thought, well, I have absolutely no interest in doing that. Part of my tech background is that the beauty of being a computer programmer is if you want to make something, it doesn't require any other person in the world. It's you and a computer, and you can just sit down and start hacking out code, and you can make these amazing things. That's where BookFunnel started, and we'll get to that in a second. But that's been my whole life. If I wanted to do something in code, I could just sit down and start making it. So when indie publishing really blew up, which was around 2010, that's when I got my first Kindle, I lucked out. I was looking for a book to read, I found a fantasy book that was on Amazon for $2.99, and I'd never seen a book that cheap, right? None of us had. Books were $20-$25 if you wanted to buy a book, maybe $8 If you wanted a mass-market paperback. I was like, three bucks, sweet. So I picked that up and I read it, and I say I lucked out because it turned out to be, now, one of my favorite authors who I'm a super fan of. It was just a fantastic book, and I got to the end of it and the author's note, and started reading the author's note and went, wait, what? You can just publish your own books with this? That's not a thing. Then you start Googling it and looking it up, and holy crap, it really is a thing. You can just like put books up on Amazon and publish them. That started the wheels turning. Like, well, I mean, you've always wanted to write a book, why not you? You can write a book. Why don't you give it a shot? So that was like the long journey. You know, starting off in tech, being a programmer, being a lifelong lover of books and fantasy and reading, and then eventually leading to ultimately writing and publishing my own fantasy books. Joanna: Wait, you have to tell us who that author was. Damon: His name is David Dalglish. He actually went from indie, and he's now traditionally published almost exclusively. Although, I think he has put out a few indie books. So that's a little disappointing, not because I'm disappointed that he went traditional, but him going traditional means I only get one book a year from him, when he used to publish like four to six books a year. So that is where my disappointment lies. That said, I actually just finished his most recent book. So I'm a David Dalglish super fan, right? I will read every book that he publishes now because he's one of my favorite authors. I discovered him through indie publishing in the indie world. I just finished his most recent book, and it's just as fantastic as it always is. He's a fantastic writer. And that's always my journey, anytime I finish a book or a series. I actually just finished a 16-book fantasy series, and I read the entire thing. I'm one of those, if I start, I have to go all the way to the end. I mean, unless I'm not enjoying it, then I'll stop. I'm no longer a book martyr. I used to be a book martyr, and I'm like, well, I started this book, I don't like it, but I feel like I should finish it just to show respect to the author. Now, I'm like, man, I don't have time for that. So I just finished a 16 book fantasy series, and as soon as I finish as series, you know, it's always the same. Okay, what is the next either series I can find or the next author I can fall in love with so that I can read all of their books. Joanna: My husband is also a fantasy reader and listener, he listens to a lot of audio, and he's the same. Like each audiobook has to be at least 40 hours, and there has to be a hell of a lot of books in a series for him to be interested. So you fantasy listeners and readers, you're difficult to please. But let's just come back to your own books. So you published how many books? And then— Why did you start BookFunnel? Damon: So I published three books. And I started BookFunnel because I'd actually published the second book of my trilogy. So I tend to be, or used to be, I'm a little better now, but I tend to be a little flighty. You know, I have these great ideas, and it's all part of my ADHD, but I started writing these books, and I made myself a promise that if I was going to publish. So I finished the first book, I had it professionally edited, and I really liked it, and I wanted to publish it. But I sort of made myself a promise that if you publish this book, you're going to have to finish the trilogy.  At that point, especially in indie publishing, I'd run into several cases where I started reading a series, I fell in love with it, and then the author just fell off the planet. They stopped after book two or book three, and we never heard from them again. I did not want to be one of those authors, knowing that I have an absolute tendency to be one of those authors. So I said, okay, if you're going to publish this first book, you're committed to three, because it's a trilogy, and we like our trilogies in fantasy. So I published the first book, and I was getting ready to publish the second book, and I'd had a few sales. Back then you could just put a book out for 99 cents, and you could get sales. So I'd had some sales, and people were reading the books, and I was like, okay, well, how do I find more readers? I was listening to Joanna Penn, and I was reading Hugh Howey's blog and Joe Konrath's blog, and like all of the people at the time.  The whole idea of list building and getting your own mailing list so that you could contact and talk to your readers directly was really coming into its own. People were starting to talk more about it. Then thus beget the Reader Magnet, which back then we didn't call a thing. It was just a free story or a free book. And I was like, oh, I can do that. I could write a short story, and then I give that away, and people get on my list. That's how I can work on selling these books more. At that time, I wasn't thinking, well, I'm going to go build more software. I was actually, at that point, I was thinking, I wonder if I could leave the software industry and become a writer full-time. Even though I love software, right? It was never a case of I absolutely hate my job and I would just love to be a writer so that I can get out of this terrible drudgery. I love writing code. But it was sort of like, wow, but I mean, being a writer, pretty cool, right? You know, to get to tell these stories.  Of course, I had notes, and reams and reams of notes of all of these things, and these ideas, and the world-building because we're fantasy authors. So we just spend gobs of time building worlds that sometimes we don't even write the books. So I had started this idea of like, oh, I'm going to build my list, and I'm going to write a reader magnet, and I'm going to put that out there. Okay, so how do I deliver the reader magnet? I signed up for your list, and I signed up for Joe Konrath's and I signed up for Hugh Howey's, and I signed up for all of these, the biggest authors at the time, some of whom obviously are still huge. It was like, “Oh, thanks for joining my list. Here's your ePub. Here's your mobi. Good luck and God bless.” And I thought, you know, I'm a techy guy, I know how to get the book onto my Kindle, that's fine. But I don't know that average people are going to figure out how to do this. Joanna: Just to interject there, many people listening won't remember this. It was like— We spent however many years it was trying to figure out sideloading the devices. That's what we used to call it back then. It's so funny now, that's what we used to talk about. And no one talks about this anymore because of BookFunnel. So it's kind of amazing that you managed to sell this. I mean, we used to have this download page, and it would say, “If you have a Kindle, click here, and here's the thing.” We would always get these emails that were like, “I've got an old Samsung, whatever, and I can't get the file on.” And it was a nightmare. It was so much of a nightmare to people like me, it just became like, oh, why do I bother? I feel like it's such a huge thing, and like you said, most people cannot get files onto their devices. Even now, if people try and do it manually, it's a struggle. So yes, coming back to what you decided to fix this problem. Damon: Yeah, that was it. So my wife will tell you that I think I can solve every problem with software, because that's my hammer, right? To every carpenter with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But I tried this, and I was like, I think I could solve this. Let me try this. I have a Kindle, I have an iPhone, let me play around with this and just see if it's possible. And I started to see how it could be done. How you could, at the very least, with the most common devices like Kindles and iPhones and iPads and Android phones. Like, okay, if you could cover all of those, then you're going to get 90% of the way there. Sure there's Kobos, and there's Nooks, and there's Sony Readers, and there's Tolino Readers, and there's all kinds of other stuff, but if you could get most of it covered, I think you could make something that would work. So I started building it, really initially, just for my own books, for my own reader magnet delivery. Because I was at the time, remember, I was still thinking I was going to be a famous writer, and building my list and giving out my reader magnet was going to be the way that I did that. But the more that I started to build the tech, the more that I realized, oh, this is really good. Like this actually works, it gets the books to most of these major devices. I thought that other people could use this too.  I started to see the other authors, I would hear them on podcasts saying, like, “Oh, I love building my list. I love having my list and talking directly to my readers, but man, dealing with the support is such a pain in the butt.” And I was like, oh, wait, I think I could solve that problem. That's where BookFunnel was born, was to solve my own problem. I personally think all the best software in the world is built by people who wanted to solve their own problem first, and then thought, hey, maybe other people would like this too. If you set out from, hey, this is a great idea that can make me lots of money, I don't think you have the passion for it, and you don't have the insight into why do people need to do this. So we launched BookFunnel, and our initial—I'm sure you can find it on like the way back archive—our first homepage was all about solving this problem of tech support and delivery, and delivering the files to readers devices. Because at the time, that was the problem that BookFunnel was built to solve. But two years on, we had to rewrite our whole website because new authors that were coming into the indie world didn't know this was a problem. That's because all of the biggest authors had already signed up for BookFunnel and were using it. So nobody talked about it anymore. Nobody talked about the sideloading problem. So people would get in and be like, “Oh, I don't know why I need BookFunnel. Can't I just attach an ePub to an email?” And people would go, no, no, no, don't do that. Joanna: Have fun with that! Damon: Exactly. You can do that, sure. You're going to have a grand old time supporting all of those readers. Joanna: Okay, so let's fast forward to now because, obviously, things have developed over time. And why I particularly wanted to talk to you was, quite recently—I will come to Shopify and selling direct a bit—but I was like, oh, why can't I do this? And I emailed you or one of the team and said, “Can I do this?” And you were like, “Yeah, you could do this this way.” And I didn't even realize that I could do that. So we want to know all the things that BookFunnel has turned into that can help authors today. As you said, you have great insight into what authors need, not just because of your own experience, but because like we'd said, you're at every conference and you talk to a lot of people. You're very friendly and approachable, people should definitely chat to you. So let's start with the list building. Where are we today with how authors can use BookFunnel for list building? Damon: So again, originally why I built BookFunnel was I was trying to build my list. So the delivery was the problem that we were solving, but very, very quickly, once we solved that problem, which we put out our first version, we didn't know what we didn't know, and as an engineer, we think we solved all the problems and this couldn't possibly be confusing for anybody. So we put out the first version of BookFunnel and very quickly found that I was wrong about a lot of things, but within a few months, we had worked all those issues out. So once we felt like we had solved the sideloading problem pretty well, the very next thing is like, well, great, but how can BookFunnel help me build my list? Because I'm already out there doing all these other things, wouldn't it be great if BookFunnel could help with that. So that was why we built it. The first thing was just getting people to understand that you've written this reader magnet, you've put it out there into the world, and you really need to start pushing it everywhere. Put your reader magnet at the back of every book, every short story. Everything that you publish should have a call to action that says, “join my list.” Every email you send, your signature should say, “Hey, join my list. Get a free book.” You know, putting all of that stuff out there, and obviously using BookFunnel as the delivery. Then we started to build features around that. Initially all BookFunnel had was what we call a download page, which was, we didn't accept the readers email address, we didn't do anything but sort of give them the files and then walk them through their devices and instruct them on how to get the books there. We very, very quickly realized that we needed to be in greater control of the collection, mostly because in the beginning, a lot of people didn't know how to even build a website or a web page, or what we call a squeeze page, which is sending them somewhere from the back of your book to get signed up.  A squeeze page is one where they can't leave the page. There's no other links that take them somewhere else because if they can, they might click on something else. And it's great, they start browsing around your website, but really what you want is like, I got your eyeball, I want you to sign up for my newsletter right now while I got you here. So we built that. We built signup pages very, very shortly after we launched all of our initial products because authors wanted us to do the signups. Then it became a whole rash of, well, we have to integrate with MailChimp and then MailerLite, and now we integrate with like 15 different email services because people just kept asking. Well, what about ConvertKit? Have you guys heard of SendinBlue? Like, we get those emails all the time.  All the features that we build at BookFunnel come directly from our authors. When our authors email us and say, “Hey, you know…” You talked about the experience that you had, we get that all the time. Anytime I go to conferences, people will come up and they'll say, “Oh, you know what I would love to do with BookFunnel? I would love to do this thing.” And the answer is, you can do that. Or, “You know what would be great? If BookFunnel had a feature that did this.” We have a feature that does that. The problem that we have is that when we launch our features, we call them feature grenades. So it's not a good thing at all, and it's not at all how you should run a business. But we create a new feature, we write a blog post, we send it out, we throw it at everybody, and then we run away and we never talk about it ever again. So if we built something three years ago, it's likely that we haven't talked about it since the initial blog post that announced that feature. So every one of our users can be forgiven for not knowing that we do something that we do, because we're not really good at going back in and talking about those things after the fact. Joanna: Well, then this is a kind of rapid-fire section where you're going to try and give us a sort of rundown. I mean, perhaps mention some of the things that you're surprised people don't use more of, or things that I know I've asked for as well. Audiobooks are a big one, so we can certainly come back to that. But ARCs are something I know people worry about. Tell us some of the things that people can use that they might not expect. Damon: The first feature we built after the initial delivery was ARC delivery, Advanced Reader Copy delivery, — which is very different than just sort of general delivery. You know, somebody writes a reader magnet, and you put it out there into the world, and you're giving it away to everybody who signs up for your mailing list. It's the loss leader, it's the thing that you're giving away. Now, of course, I want you to sign up for my list, but if somebody turned around and shared that link and gave it to somebody else, it's not the worst thing in the world. You might gain a new reader out of it, somebody who read your reader magnet and then falls in love with your writing and goes and buys the rest of the series. Not so with ARCs, especially if you're a very popular writer. If you're a big writer, your books are likely to get pirated almost instantly because there are so many fans that love your book. Sadly, you would think they are fans wouldn't be out there pirating your books. I will say from our evidence, it's usually almost never your ARC team. It's always once the book actually gets published out into the world. But there's so many people that are waiting for it, that it's out there. So for ARC delivery, we knew that what authors wanted was something that was going to be a bit more secure. So when you have a link, even just a sign up link, and say, “Hey, sign up and get my ARC.” If somebody shares that link with somebody else, well then somebody else could also sign up. And technically you get their email address, but now they've got your brand new book that you weren't really intending for them to get. So when we built ARC delivery, we built a feature called certified mail, that you give us the email addresses, we email every single reader their own unique individual download link that is protected from them sharing that with other people. We have lots of different features that are built into that. One of the features that we just launched last year was what we call restricted delivery. Over the years as BookFunnel has gotten bigger, we built our own app for Android and iOS, we built our own cloud reader where readers can read eBooks in their browsers, audiobooks, and all of that sort of stuff. But what restricted delivery does is lets you restrict the delivery of that book to only reading within BookFunnel's platform. So they can install our reader on their iOS or their Android device, they can read in our browser reader on pretty much any device in the world. The reason that's really, really good for ARC delivery is I don't want this book getting out to everyone in the world until I'm ready for the world to see it. This book is really intended for my small 60 person, advanced team. And you know, I trust my team, they're a great team, but I really don't trust them completely. And I'd rather that this book not get shared out into the world, or worse, get pirated before I've even had a chance to publish it. So the needs of an author who's putting out an advanced copy are very different than somebody who's putting out a reader magnet that's there for public consumption. So the kinds of features that we built into certified mail for ARC delivery were all designed around this idea that you don't want this book escaping out into the world until you're ready, until you're ready for that book to be released. Then as far as other features that we built, we have a super simple feature, but I love it, it's called ‘Gift a Book.' It really is just selecting a book that's on your BookFunnel account, give me an email address, you can create templates for all the different kinds of emails that you send, and then you just, boom, send them a book. It's sort of like certified mail, but for one person. It creates a unique link to that book that is just for that person to download. Then of course, it tracks everything that they do. So if you're looking back at your gifts, you can see, oh, hey, they got their link, they downloaded their book, they are reading it on their Kindle. Like you have all of the data available to you. We have a lot of nonfiction authors that use that because if you're at a conference and you're talking to somebody and you say, “Oh, you know what, I think my book is perfect for you. Hey, what's your email address? Let me send it to you.” And you just pop up your BookFunnel account on your smartphone and bop, bop, bop, tap in their email address and boom, you send them a copy. You can't do that with anything else in the world, right? You can try maneuvering your way through Amazon's system of buying a gift copy for somebody and kind of sending it to them, but it really sort of sends them a gift card which can be used to buy other things. Joanna: You can't gift across countries. So this is an important point. I mean, you're in the US, a lot of your customers are in the US, but I'm in the UK. Sometimes US authors will say to me, “Oh, I'll just give you a copy on Amazon.com.” I'm like, no, you can't, because the gifts don't work. This is another thing about BookFunnel, it's truly international. And this is an international show, so we like to think of products that are global, as opposed to specifically for the USA. So I think that's really important too, is that you really are offering like a global service. Damon: Yeah, we get the question sometimes. We have absolutely zero geographic restrictions. Everything that you send through BookFunnel can be read by anyone in the world. If they can get an internet connection, they can get a book from us. And so yeah, our Gift a Book feature, it really is just a simple feature. Give me the email address, you can put in their name, but like I said, it's kind of nice because you can track everybody that you've ever gifted a book to. You can see if they got it, you can follow up with them after the conference and say, “Hey, it was lovely meeting you. It looks like you haven't downloaded your copy. Here's that link again, if you wanted to grab a copy of the book. It was so great to meet you.” Like, it's just such a great little feature, but it's super, super simple. We built that at the same time that we built the ARC delivery because I'd already built all the tech for sending out little short private links for everybody on your ARC team. And I thought it would be really cool if people could just send one at a time because I had, even in my very short author career, had bumped into people where I thought, you know what, I bet they would like mine. They were like, “Oh, I love fantasy books,” and I'm telling them about the books that I've read, and I think that they would like my book. Well, I obviously don't carry copies with me in my back pocket. And I thought oh, hey, I'll just email you a copy. Even with BookFunnel, initially, that wasn't possible. I could maybe find and copy and paste a link and open up an email in my mail app and send it to you, but it wasn't as simple as, let me get your email address, click, boom, you've got a copy. We have authors using the templating that you can build and gift a book. They have templates for like birthdays, so when their readers have a birthday, they just go in and say, Gift a Book, select the birthday template, here's a free book, and they just send them off and away they go. It's such a neat little thing. Speaking of carrying books with you, we have a feature called Print Codes. We call it Print Codes because we specifically designed it so people would use it in print, but you can really use them anywhere. We have authors that are using them a ton now for Kickstarter delivery and fulfillment. But what Print Codes are is you take your book, you go into BookFunnel, and say, “Hey, generate 100 unique codes for this book.” Each one is a little nine digit code that's unique to that person. You generate those codes, you go off and you print them, and you put them onto the back of the business card or a bookmark or a postcard or something like that.  Now when you're standing around talking to somebody or you go to a conference and you've got a table set up, and somebody says, “Oh, I love your books.” I can say, “Oh, great. Let me give you a copy of my reader magnet, or let me give you a copy of the new book. Here you go.” And you hand them that little card, and that little code on the back of the card is unique to them. They can go and use it, redeem their copy of their book, and then that's it. The code is dead, and it can't be used again. So we call that carrying your eBooks in your pockets, right? Because that was not something that authors could really do, certainly not easily. You know, you have these great eBooks, almost no author is carrying just random copies of their paperbacks in a bag slung over their shoulder. But how nice is it that you can just carry a few business cards in your pocket, and now you can hand people a copy of your eBook. Joanna: What about the author swaps and the group promotions? Because I know that some people are using that to work with other authors. So I guess tell us about the feature, but also who it's good for, because I have tried it before and different levels of authors get on differently, I would say. So let's also give some advice there. Damon: Sure. So we built two major features. The group promos came first, and that was that you are wanting to work with other authors in your genre, find other authors in your genre, who they have a list and you have a list, and we both write space operas. So your readers are already predisposed to like my books because I write space opera, and my readers are probably going to like your books. We're always fond of saying in the business, that it's not a zero sum game. You know, readers don't just read one book and go, well, that's my book for the year, I guess I'll have to wait till next year to read that Joanna Penn book. Like, they don't do that. If they're readers, when they finish one book, they're going to go on and say, what's the next book that I can find? So they're going to read all of your books, and when they're done with all of your books, they're looking for someone else to read. And as we all help each other, I can offer you up some books that you might like because these other authors are also indies in my genres. So group promos is just that. We're all joining together and working together because we all write in the same genre. When you talk about who is it really for, any author can use it. You do have differing levels, and as you go through the group promo board on BookFunnel, which is just a big giant board that's separated out by genres so you can kind of see what is available and what is recruiting in your genre as you're looking for other authors to join in, you will find some that are geared towards bigger authors. Authors that either have a bigger list, or have more books, a bigger back list sometimes there'll be looking for because they're looking for authors that are a bit more established to introduce their readers to. Then other times, you'll find promos that are really built and catering towards newer authors. Sometimes they're sort of all over the place. If you take 20 authors, and all 20 of those authors, even if they have a small list of only 100 readers, well, that's still 2000 readers that everybody's going to get introduced to if we all work together, and we all send it to our small, tiny little lists. Usually what group promos end up with is you'll have a few tentpole authors that have much bigger lists, but are willing to share their lists with other readers. Because even if you've only got 100 readers, some of those readers on your list have never heard of me, and I'm just trying to get my reader magnet in front of as many readers as I can possibly get it in front of because those people read my magnet. And then if you're doing your job right, your reader magnet leads into your series, and then people are going to go on and read the rest of my series, if they like it. If they don't like it, well, then they weren't going to be my fan anyway, and that's okay.  You want to get your books in front of as many readers as you can because you don't know how many of those readers are going to take you up on your offer and then become readers. Then you don't know how many of those readers are going to go on to become super fans, people like me that when I become a superfan that's it, I'll buy every book you've got for the end till the end of time. So that that was group promos. Author swaps came along later, and it's really just a one on one. So we like to consider them like a bit more personal. If I'm going to swap with Joanna Penn, and I'm going to tell my readers, you'll love this book series by Joanna Penn, then I probably want to make sure that your books are good. There's a little bit of vetting because it feels like a more personal recommendation if you're recommending just one person. If you're saying, hey, I'm in this great promotion with these 30 other space opera authors, nobody's expecting you to have read all 30 of those space opera authors' books.  So we sort of layer it and say, if you're just coming into list building, if you're just joining BookFunnel, you probably want to look at group promos first because you can be a bit more anonymous and you can work yourself and with other authors in your genre. You can also build your list a lot faster. Group promos are going to build up your list very quickly. Author swaps are going to be a little more slowly, but you're going to be able to reach authors' audiences that may not want to participate in larger group promos. They want to do more targeted things. Joanna: Absolutely. So let's go on to direct sales because I was using BookFunnel for Payhip for eBooks. Then you moved into audiobooks, which are kind of a game changer for many of us because audiobooks I feel have become more difficult to make a lot of profit than it used to be. When you sell audio and eBooks direct, you can make more profit. So I'm now using Shopify, and I built everything to integrate with BookFunnel for eBooks and audiobooks. The thing I mentioned earlier, for people listening, was that I wanted to sell a bundle. So three eBooks or multiple products within one Shopify product, but multiple BookFunnel products. And I could set all of that up, which was very exciting to me. So talk a bit about direct sales, why you've gone into that, and any tips. Damon: So we launched direct sales in September 2017, so two years after BookFunnel launched. Even though the very first week that BookFunnel had existed, we got our first email saying, can BookFunnel deliver sales? Joanna: It was probably me! Damon: Probably. I bet I could go back and look and find it. I mean, we had not even had our doors open a week, and people were saying, can you deliver sales? So there was always this thing, sort of like, oh, yeah, that would be really cool. But we still had a lot of other features to build. We did launch direct sales two years later, in 2017. I really built it because so many authors kept asking for it, but I'll be honest, I didn't think it was going to be successful. I truly believed that readers really just want to buy from Amazon or Kobo or Barnes and Noble, or wherever they're comfortable buying from, and that they weren't going to buy from your store. So I almost built it out of protest, so that people would just leave me alone and stop asking me for it. Like, fine, here's your direct sales, and you're not going to get any sales, you're never going to make it.  I'm happy to say I was proven very, very wrong. Even in the early days, we launched it and within a few weeks, we'd already had several thousand sales from authors websites. And I thought, how was that possible? And it's possible because I was just completely wrong. What I was wrong about was that there are some readers and, you know, I'm trying to be diplomatic, there are some readers that are very loyal to their platform. They only want to read books on their K-shaped device or A-shaped store, and their loyalty lies with the retailer. There are lots of readers though, like me, I don't care where your books are. My loyalty lies with the authors that I fall in love with. And for them, if you are selling direct and it's easy for me to get the book from you, I will absolutely buy from your store. I would much rather that my money be going directly to the person who is producing the thing that I love.  So again, I was really wrong about that. And I'm happy to be proven wrong because — Now direct sales is one of the largest growth features that BookFunnel has, as more and more authors have gotten into it. That came about because I think more authors were willing to try it after we launched audiobooks. So we launched audiobooks a little over two years ago. It's still in beta because I haven't written the building software, if we're just being completely honest. But when we launched audiobooks, and again, that came about because people kept coming up to me at conferences and people kept emailing and saying, “When is BookFunnel going to do audiobooks? Oh, I'd love to use BookFunnel for audiobooks, is that a thing you guys are working on?” Audiobooks was almost like writing an entirely other BookFunnel. A lot of the things that we'd already built for eBooks did not translate into the audiobook world. An eBook might be one megabyte. An audiobook might be a gigabyte with 180 different files and chapters. So it was a very, very different beast. Audiobooks had been blowing up for years, but more and more people kept asking us about it. So when we finally launched it, we didn't know what people were going to do with it. We didn't know like, oh, are people going to start doing audio reader magnets? Or what do they really want all of this for? And what they wanted it for was for direct sales. And the reason is, as you noted, it's all in the money. If you publish a book on Amazon, or any of the other stores, but let's just take any given store, right? Most of the stores take 30% to 35% of your sale and you get the rest. So you put your book up on Amazon, you're within their magical pricing range, and you get 70% of the list price and they get 30%. Most authors are okay with that. I think we all wish it would be lower, we'd all would love it if it were lower than that even. But given the pound of flesh that traditional publishing has taken from authors for 100 years, I think we're all okay with a 70/30 split being pretty decent. It's not so when it comes to audiobooks. On Audible, if you're not exclusive, they take 75% of the sale. And it's even more, I don't want to get into the math calculations, but most people— Joanna: You can't even set your own price. So it's really very, very small. It's why going wide with audio, to me, is like a superpower. It's almost the only way to make a really good profit on audio is if you are wide, which I am. Damon: And we've seen more and more authors who were willing to go wide with their audio because of that. So back at the beginning of last year, in January, we started getting a lot more people asking us for that specifically. They would literally join BookFunnel and go, “Yeah, how do I set up audiobooks? How do I do direct sales?” Immediately, those two questions would come out of a lot of the newer authors who are signing up.  More and more really big authors, authors that had been Audible-exclusive for a very long time, were suddenly asking us about direct sales. I couldn't really explain why. I mean, I was happy about it, but I couldn't really explain like, what was the impetus? What was the catalyst that sort of set that thing in motion? From what we learned later from some of the authors after talking to them at conferences about why they had started to move in this direction, was back in January of 2022, or for Christmas in 2021, Audible did not change their pricing, they changed the way they advertised their pricing. So previously, if you went to audible.com, they really push the signup for $14.99 a month, and get one credit, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's been their big push for a long, long time. But as of Christmas in 2021, they started pushing the sign up for pay one year in advance and get all of your books for $11.99 a piece. They've had that forever. You could pay for a year in advance, and they would give you a break on the credit from $14.99 down to $11.99. But they started pushing that yearly subscription harder than they were pushing the monthly, where they used to push the monthly subscription. Well guess which price Amazon pays your 25% on? It's not what they price the book at, it's what the reader ultimately spent to get the book. So if the reader is on a monthly subscription, I give you 25% of $14.99, but if the reader bought yearly credits, I'm giving you 25% of $11.99. So now your cut is even lower, but I'm in great shape because I'm Amazon, I'm Audible. I now have you locked in for an entire year, which I would much rather have you sign up for one full year, and pay me hundreds of dollars in advance, then have you go along at 15 bucks a month, but maybe decide to cancel halfway through the year. So we suddenly got an influx of authors whose revenue went down because they were selling just as many books, but now they're getting their cut of $11.99, not $14.99. But audible was still sitting pretty. So yes, direct sales and audio really started to blow up more as authors realized—I don't want to be impolite—but how much they were getting screwed. Like Audible is taking so much of the money.  The thing about an eBook is you could probably put out an eBook today for 50 bucks or 100 bucks, even if you bought a premade cover, you could probably put it out for 50 or 100 bucks. So putting it out there in the world and then getting 70% of every sale back is a really good deal. That's not the case with audiobooks. Even today, it's still pretty expensive to develop and produce audiobooks. So it's like the more expensive thing that you have to create is the thing that they're taking the lion's share of the profits on. Joanna: Yes, and just to be clear to everyone listening, you can listen to my audiobooks on whatever device you fancy and whatever platform. I would just rather you bought direct. But yeah, so BookFunnel doing direct sales has been fantastic. So we've mentioned Shopify, WooCommerce, Payhip. Any other platforms for direct sales? Damon: Gumroad we added last year, which we hadn't had from the beginning, but we added them last year. I really like their platform. ThriveCart was one that several authors were asking us for. So Shopify will build your entire store, and I will say of all the platforms, Shopify is absolutely the most complete. Their system of plugins and extensions where other people can make all the cool things that you can just kind of buy and add into your site, and then of course host your website, can really give you an all-in-one complete solution. ThriveCart is not that, but ThriveCart is really good at driving direct readers directly to a landing page that has upsells and what they call bump products and things like that. Joanna: It's super exciting to see all the things you're building. The direct sales, you mentioned the audio, all these exciting things. But of course, you are a technologist, you go to all the author conferences, and you anticipate the future or build as you go. What are you excited about in terms of what's coming?  Are there any new features that you might be developing? Damon: Well, I mean, we were just talking about direct sales, and I would say the thing that most excites me both as a technologist and an author and a reader, is putting more power into authors' hands to control their own careers. We all started as indie authors because we wanted that power to publish our books the way that we wanted them. I'm with you, I love the authors that are putting their books on all the platforms. We have some authors that are only, like they're exclusively selling direct from their website. You can only buy their books when you go to such-and-such.com and you buy my books. I don't necessarily agree with that. I don't see any reason why you can't have your books on Kobo, and Amazon, and Barnes and Noble, and all the places in the world. Wherever readers can find you is the good place. For me, it's so exciting to see authors taking back their careers and saying, I am in control of where my books go, I'm in control of selling them. And of course, taking all the profits, that's the exciting part, but it's also taking all of the data. I know who my readers are, I know where my readers are coming from. They're on my list. I can see a direct line from somebody who's on my list, who clicks on my link, who then buys my three book boxset. Like I can make all those connections. Like I can see that person bought the eighth book in my series. Nobody's buying the eighth book in your series who's not already a huge fan of your work. People drop out at the second or third book if they weren't interested in your books anymore. So having that data and knowing more about your readers means that authors are in control. As far as like the techy things that I'm excited about were, you know, we built our own—so if you haven't seen the BookFunnel app, it's actually really incredible. We built it, initially, because we needed audiobooks. Sideloading for audiobooks is not a thing, like you can't just drop a bunch of mp3 files into the Audible app and listen to an audiobook. So we knew that we were going to have to build our own app in order to facilitate audiobooks. At the same time, we made our app the best eReader experience. We built our own eReader from the ground up. Like I built the whole thing because I'm really, really picky about my readers, and I want to read exactly the way that I want to read, and I don't want the book telling me how I should read my book. So we built our own eReader. We built, of course, the audio player. Then we also made our app the best fastest way to send a book to another app, to do the sideloading piece, which is what BookFunnel was built for. So we didn't build our own app and then abandon the concept of sideloading eBooks. That's what BookFunnel was founded on. We actually made it better. If you download our app and put it on your iPhone, you can send books to Kindle in just a few taps, it's like an instant. You don't have to email them and forward them and do all of this garbage. You can just send them directly from your BookFunnel library straight onto your Kindle device.  So the more that we build out our own tech, the more that BookFunnel is actually just like giving indie authors the ability to own their future. The more that we build our own stuff, the more that we own our own future. That stuff really excites me, from all the way back and being a kid and typing, “10 PRINT, HELLO, 20 GOTO 10,” and building my own code and making my own things. You know, I'll be honest, it worried me for a lot of years that if Amazon decided that you could no longer sideload books to a Kindle device, like if they just decided one day that that's not a thing they want to mess with anymore, BookFunnel probably wouldn't exist. So many people wanted to read on their Kindle apps and whatever else, that it felt like that would just be a crushing blow to what we do. Now we have millions of readers that read their books in our app, that listen to audiobooks in our apps, and I feel like we are in far more control of our future. And by that token, giving authors more control of their future. Joanna: Fantastic. And that is what it is all about for indie authors. So how can people get started with BookFunnel, if they're interested?  Where can people find you and the team online? Damon: BookFunnel.com. We try not to be too clever about it. Getting Started, just sign up for a BookFunnel account. Our cheapest account is $20 a year. It doesn't have all the features, a lot of the things that we talked about, but you can deliver direct sales. For just 20 bucks a year, BookFunnel will deliver all of your eBook sales.  I would probably recommend trying the midlist account, which is $10 a month. Try it for a month, sign up for 10 bucks. If you don't like it, we'll refund your money 100%. We don't want anybody using our service that doesn't find it useful or who doesn't need us. But we think that we're pretty useful, we're a pretty useful service. That has been our pricing since we launched in 2015. We've never gone up on our prices because I think it's really important that every author be able to use our service. Joanna: Fantastic. If people want to meet you in person, what conferences are you at this year? Damon: So I'm actually going to be—I know that this podcast is going out pretty quickly—I'm going to be at the Self-Publishing Show Live in London. We're actually taking the whole family. I'm flying my whole family to London and we're doing a tour of Great Britain. So I'll be in London, and then I'll be at NINC, Novelists Inc, in Florida in September. Then I will be at the big 20Books show in Vegas. I think that's it for conferences for the rest of the year. Joanna: Fantastic. Always lovely to talk to you, Damon. Thanks so much for your time. Damon: Thank you so much for having me on.The post How Authors Can Use Bookfunnel To Reach Readers And Sell Direct With Damon Courtney first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What are some of the most effective ways to market your book? What strategies have remained the same despite the rise of new tactics? What are the best ways to reach a Christian audience? Thomas Umstattd Jr. gives plenty of tips in this interview. In the intro, Freedom, fame, or fortune — what do you want as an author?; Built to Move: The Ten Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully by Kelly and Juliet Starrett; and my AI for authors webinars, plus Audio for Authors: Audiobooks, Podcasting, and Voice Technologies, and money books. This podcast is sponsored 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.  Thomas Umstattd Jr. is the CEO of AuthorMedia.com, an award-winning professional speaker, nonfiction author, and host of the Novel Marketing Podcast and the Christian Publishing Show. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes The fundamentals of marketing fiction Content marketing for fiction Utilizing the nonfiction themes beneath your fiction for marketing The hallmarks and history of Christian publishing Why readers choose certain genres Tips for pitching a podcast You can find Thomas at AuthorMedia.com and listen to his podcasts at NovelMarketing.com and ChristianPublishingShow.com Transcript of Interview with Thomas Umstattd Jr. Joanna: Thomas Umstattd Jr. is the CEO of authormedia.com, an award-winning professional speaker, nonfiction author, and host of the Novel Marketing Podcast and the Christian Publishing Show. So welcome to the show, Thomas. Thomas: Thanks, Joanna. It's great to be here. Joanna: Oh, yes. It's exciting to talk to you. But first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and podcasting, and now running a business for writers. Thomas: So back when I was in college, I started writing a book, as many college students do. I went to a writers' conference to sell my book, and I was in the marketing session, and the lady speaking was like, “You've got to start a blog. You've got to have a website.” All of the authors were terrified, like, how do I do that? I've been building websites since I was a kid. I met a real author there at this conference, and I was like, ‘well, I'll build your website for free, no problem.' So I built her website and she told all of her friends, and I started charging them. And pretty soon I was going to conferences and selling websites because everybody was interested in my websites. None of the agents were particularly interested in my book at the time. So by the time I graduated from college, I had started a website business. At our peak, we had 12 people building websites for authors all over the world. We built the MyBookTable plugin to help make our websites better. We eventually allowed and sold that to people who weren't buying websites from us, anybody could use that plugin to add books to their website. So my way into the publishing space was actually from the technical side. I was the nerd at the conference who would give the tech talks, rather than on teaching on craft or something like that. Joanna: But you have got books, right? Tell us about those. Thomas: I do. So I wrote a blog post about dating and relationships that went viral. It got a million views in around a month. A lot of the people reading that article wanted me to write a book about it. I was like, I don't know if I want to write a book. I've been working with authors for years at this point, and I knew how much work it was. So I thought I got out of it by calling everyone's bluff, and I said, alright, if you raise $10,000 on Kickstarter, then I'll write the book. So I put the book on Kickstarter, and they raised $10,000. So I was like, well, I guess I have to become an author now. So I wrote the book, and it ended up having a big impact. I'm glad I did it, but yeah, writing a book is a lot of work. I have a lot of respect for authors who are willing to walk that journey. Joanna: Well, it's so interesting that you say that because you and I are also podcasters. You have two shows, I have had two shows, but I've cut back on my second show. But you've been podcasting on Novel Marketing since 2013, so a decade now. You said that it's a lot of work to write a book, but a decade of podcasting is a lot of work. So I guess— Why did you decide to get into podcasting? Thomas: It's interesting because the reason I got into it was to help sell websites, but it turned out, I really enjoyed podcasting. So I don't build websites anymore. I've spun off that business and sold the plugin business. Now podcasting is the business. I just do the podcast and courses. I always loved listening to talk radio as a kid and being able to talk into a microphone and to teach online, either through courses or through podcast is really enjoyable for me. I love that ‘aha' experience that people have. So yes, podcasting is a lot of work, and it's become even more work. You know, as you raise the production values of your podcast, you have a bigger team, and there's more cost and more labor that goes into it, but it's worth it in the end. The end product I feel like is worth all of the work. Joanna: That's so funny because it's just me right now. Then I use some AI tools, and then I have one VA who does the blog post, the show notes. I've actually reduced to that I don't really have a team anymore. I've gone the other way. It's so interesting you say that. So I mean, we all use the tools we want to use. But I do want to come to the topics on the Novel Marketing Podcast. Although, I feel like you do cover things for fiction and nonfiction authors, a lot of marketing crosses both.  What are some of the fundamentals of marketing fiction that have remained important over the decade? Thomas: It's interesting because you and I have both been doing this long enough to see fads come and go and often come back. Like launch bonuses, we've seen that come into fashion, go out of fashion, come back into fashion. So it's interesting, like what has stayed effective for this whole time? I would say — The most important thing is writing books that readers want to read. A lot of authors see marketing as this thing that you add to a book at the last minute so that it can find its audience. It's like sugar that you sprinkle on the top of a cookie. If you really want people to eat the cookie, if you really want people to read the book, you need to bake the sugar into the cookie. The cookie itself has to taste good. You need to write a book that resonates with readers, which means knowing who your readers are and crafting the book to be the kind of book that they not only want to read, but want to share with their friends. If you don't do that, none of the other things matter because you can't fix a bad book with good marketing. There's no amount of money that you can spend to make people want a book that they don't want. You can't change other people. This is useful knowledge for marriage, but it's also useful knowledge for marketing. That's not our job. Our job is not to change people into the kind of people who liked the book we wrote. Our job as a writer is to write the kind of book that people already like. It's much easier to change your book than it is to change another human being or tens of thousands of human beings. Probably the most powerful technique back when I first got started was having an email list, and — The most powerful technique now is having an email list. That has not changed. I was a marketing director for a publishing company for a time. In the midst of the podcast, I was still doing the podcast, but a publishing company brought me in. That was a really great experience because I had access to all of their marketing data. So I'm approaching it as a marketer, and I'm doing all of these experiments, and I learned some things that kind of blew my mind. One was that Facebook did not move the numbers. Facebook activity didn't sell books at all. And this was back in 2015/2016 when Facebook was still like people thought it worked. I was like, I'm not seeing these Facebook promos moving the sales needles at all. The other thing that we saw was that email really did. An author with an email list sold so many more books than an author without an email list, especially at launch, which then gives them that momentum to carry through often for months ahead of time.  I would say probably the next most important thing, again, that hasn't changed, is owning your own platform. So if you're a chicken, the food is free at the chicken coop, but the reason the food is free at the chicken coop is because you are the product being sold. So if you're unhappy with Facebook, there's no one to talk to because you're not the customer of Facebook, you are the product that Facebook is selling to somebody else. They're selling your attention, they're selling your time to advertisers. If you want to have effective marketing, you need to be willing to be the customer, to pay. Facebook will talk to you, if you spend enough money on advertising on Facebook, suddenly you get a contact person, a customer success manager or an advertising consultant, and the whole game changes. So I'm not saying that Facebook advertising should be the tactic for you, but — If you want to be effective in your marketing, you need to see it as something you spend money on, rather than just time. The idea that, oh, I can create funny memes and share them on social media and that will make me famous, I just have not seen anyone show numbers that that is the case. Joanna: That's so interesting, because again, you and I are podcasters. And this is content that takes time, doesn't cost that much money, you know, time is money, but it is a very different form of marketing to Facebook ads. I've been hot and cold on Facebook ads for a long time, and I've recently gone back into it because now I have my own store, creativepennbooks.com. Conversion ads with Shopify and Meta, Facebook, actually is like something entirely new because we were never able to do conversion ads with Amazon or any other place. So you really talked there about if you're going to do the marketing you need to pay, but you and I are both using content marketing for, I guess, nonfiction-based businesses. What are your thoughts on content marketing? I mean, I agree with you in terms of the don't bother posting memes on Facebook or whatever, in terms of selling books, but— Is there still a case for content marketing for fiction? Thomas: There can be. Podcasting is interesting because it's a very deep medium of communication. Your listeners have your voice in their head more most weeks than they have their own mother's voice in their head. Like that's a really powerful place of influence. And you're listening right now, you're like, is that true? Like, when was last time you called your mom? How long did you talk to her? How much time do you spend listening to Joanna Penn? That's an incredibly deep source of connection, but it's not super wide. Podcasting is the least viral of all of the mediums. It's hard to share. You have some great quote and I want to share it with a friend, there's not really a good, easy way to do it. Sure, there's some tools. If someone's really tech savvy, they can clip the audio and send it, but it's way too much hassle. So when somebody starts listening to a podcast, they tend to keep listening, but it doesn't spread very much. Whereas the blog version of your podcast is much more shareable. You send an email, you can copy that link and send it to a friend. So podcasting is for deepening the relationship. It's an engagement tool. It's not a very good attraction tool. So if you think of marketing, you have kind of three phases. You have attracting, engaging, and converting. Getting people to know who you are, like you, and trust you. Those are the three steps. When I'm kind of troubleshooting an author's marketing, often the first thing we're trying to figure out is where is it breaking down.  For most authors, their challenge is in that first step, the attraction step. People don't know who they are. If they did, they liked them. Like, wow, you have a great podcast or wow, you have a great book, but getting the word out in the first place is the challenge. That tends to be the most cash-expensive mechanism. There are free ways to do it. I'm not paying you to come on your podcast, and some people are hearing my name for the first time. So guesting on podcasts can be effective, writing guest blog posts can be effective. And it can be effective for a novelist. There's more podcasts focused on specific genres now, which is what the superfans listen to. The kind of fans taking risks on new authors and new books are listening to a podcast about military science fiction or Amish fiction or whatever that micro-genre is. If you can be a guest on that podcast, it can help introduce you to a new vibrant audience of potential superfans. Joanna: It's interesting, you mentioned military sci-fi, and my husband listens to a lot of podcasts, as do I, and he now is now listening to Jack Carr's podcast. He's a military thriller author, actually ex-military, and he's interviewing other people who are military writing books, fiction and nonfiction. I thought it was really interesting because this guy is a really big-name thriller author in the niche, and yet he's doing a podcast that is around his author brand as such, that also relates to his fiction, which I thought was really interesting. It's what I kind of tried to do with Books and Travel, which is interview people who use places in their novels and their nonfiction, but it morphed into more of a travel thing for travel people. So I kind of got that wrong. When I was thinking about this idea of podcasting for fiction, I was thinking around, is it best to go after the nonfiction themes that lie beneath your novels? So for me, it's religion, history, European culture, that kind of thing. I heard Jack Carr's gone after military, and that could have been military sci fi, but it's actually, for him, military thriller, not military romance, or anything like that. So what do you think about that idea? Thomas: It can work. And the question determining whether it will work for you and for your genre is: does my genre have an otaku? So this is a Japanese term for like somebody who's obsessed with something, it's like fan, but like stronger than fan. So the classic example that Seth Godin shares, and I forget which book, but he talks about how hot sauce in America has an otaku. There's hot sauce magazines, there are hot sauce TV shows and YouTube channels, and people are really into hot sauce. There is no ketchup otaku. Ketchup is very popular. In fact, arguably, ketchup is more popular than hot sauce on a per ounce or per kilogram basis, except everybody just eats Heinz ketchup. Like everybody's got the same ketchup. So if you wanted to do something around ketchup, people are like, oh, that's boring. But if you're gonna be like, I'm gonna have a podcast about the spiciest hot sauces in the world, and if you can eat them while answering interview questions, right, you'll get millions of views. Joanna: On YouTube, for sure. Thomas: Oh, it exists. It's called The Hot Ones. He gets celebrities on, and he tortures them with hot spicy wings, and then ask them hot questions, and you'll get to watch famous people cry. It's quite fun. But that show wouldn't work if they were eating ketchup. The same is true with certain genres. So some genres, they just don't have that kind of fan base. People buy them and read them, but they do it quietly. They don't talk to each other about that genre. And also, does that genre connect well with a nonfiction topic? So an area where it does work well is Christian books, Christian nonfiction, Christian fiction. C.S. Lewis, one of the most famous Christian authors, he writes a book Mere Christianity, and he makes the case that Jesus is either Lord, he's a liar, or he's a lunatic. Then he writes Narnia, where Lucy comes back from Narnia and tells everyone about Narnia. And the professor says, well, Lucy's either lying, she's crazy, or she's telling the truth about Narnia. He's taking that same nonfiction argument straight from his nonfiction book and embedding it into his fiction book, and they both support each other, both in a marketing way and in a messaging way. Joanna: That's great. Well, let's come to Christian publishing because you also host the Christian Publishing Show. Some people might be Christians listening, but might not publish Christian books. Then there's people like me, I'm not a Christian, but I have a Master's in Theology and pretty much all my fiction as J.F. Penn has religious elements, a lot of religious history, Christian in particular, as well as my recent memoir, which is called Pilgrimage. So one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you was about this Christian publishing niche. What are the hallmarks of Christian publishing? What are the kinds of genres that sit within that for fiction and nonfiction? Thomas: So Christian publishing and Christian books are different from other genres in a very interesting way. Back in the 1950s, the big publishers stopped publishing Christian books, and a lot of the bookstores stopped carrying Christian books. So the reaction of Christians, particularly evangelical Christians and conservative Christians in the United States, was to create their own bookstores and their own publishing companies, and even their own distribution companies. So Christian books, while they look like a book, like any other book in terms of like size, and printing and technology, they're in almost this like parallel universe of distribution channels, retailers, all the way up to the publishers. In that way, they're more like comic books, which are the same. Comic books have their own printers, they have their own stores. I don't know how it is in the UK, but here in the States, you go to a comic book store, and it doesn't have any normal books. It might sell Magic The Gathering, or it might sell Warhammer figurines, and there's tables to play board games, and there's all these comic books to buy. It's its own subculture, right? Somebody might spend $50 a month at a comic bookstore, and no money at a Barnes and Noble or on Amazon on traditional books. Christian publishing, when we say Christian publishing, what we're referring to is that kind of conservative evangelical side of publishing that got kicked out in the 50s and 60s. Now, what's interesting is that with the Left Behind books in the 90s they were brought back in. So the Left Behind books sold a billion dollars worth of books. Joanna: I was one of those readers. Absolutely. Thomas: And not only were bookstores happy to carry Left Behind and give them prominent feature, but even Walmart would sell Left Behind books. They'd have a big bin of Left Behind books in the 90s. So then Christian books got kind of invited back into the mainstream a little bit. There are actually fewer Christian bookstores now than there were back in the 90s because there's no way for an independent bookstore to be able to compete with Walmart if Walmart's cherry-picking the most popular books. That just doesn't work that way. The subculture, the readership, is still separate. So if you want to write for that “Christian market,” you're not actually writing for Christians in the sense of people who assent to Christian views, what you're really writing to are those conservative, kind of holiness-minded Christians that are a little bit separate. They tend to be—and again, these are marketing generalizations, not universal observation—but they tend to be more rural, more small town, maybe some in the suburbs, but kind of the farther away from the city centers, a little bit less sophisticated with technology, a little bit less online. So if you're really trying to target them, they're not as online, they're not super online all the time. The biggest force in Christian publishing right now, in terms of book sales, are homeschool book fairs — which are these kind of rolling book fairs that will move from town to town. Authors will go to these book fairs once they've established a reputation, and it's not uncommon for an author to sell $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 worth of books over a weekend, cash on the barrel since it's not tracked by BookScan. You know, the NPD Group doesn't know these numbers. It's just handing cash for a book or swiping a square credit card.  It's not just books for kids, it's this whole community of conservative homeschoolers who are creating books for each other and buying those books in very large numbers. The authors who are big in that world, often people don't even know who they are, but they're making, in some cases, millions of dollars a year, reaching this very different, very separated target market. Joanna: It's so interesting to hear that and, as I said, I did read those Left Behind series. I think the spiritual warfare books were what kind of brought me into writing the types of books I do now and why I think about angels and demons and all of that, because that's what I, as a teenager, that's what I was reading about. On Amazon, though, talking about the online bookstores, there are categories of things like Christian fantasy. I don't where Left Behind sits — is that Christian fantasy? Or is it post-apocalyptic Christian fantasy because the rapture hasn't happened and that's what the books are based on? But just coming back to the genres— What genres sit within that Christian category on Amazon and can people sell well online? Thomas: Yeah, so that's what's interesting now because it used to be Christian bookstores would screen, and they would make a decision what is and is not a Christian book. You could call yourself a Christian book, but if the bookstores don't stock you, then you're not a Christian book. It gave companies like Lifeway a lot of influence. But on Amazon, anybody can put their book into a Christian category. Actually Alex Newton, with K-lytics, I was working with him to add a report for Christian books, and he had to go a whole level deeper in his analytics because a lot of the Christian categories on Amazon are five subcategories down. There's Religion and Spirituality: Christian: Fiction, and then there's dozens or hundreds of subcategories underneath that. Many of them are genres that exist in the general market, right. So there's Christian fantasy, but there's also regular fantasy.  There is one genre that's uniquely Christian genre, and that's Amish, which is a very big genre in the United States. Millions of copies are sold every year, and that is a uniquely Christian genre. There may be some secular authors who started writing in Amish. And what's interesting is that these are not books by the Amish or for the Amish. Joanna: Yeah, I was gonna say, because they're not very technological. Thomas: So I can explain real quick why Amish is really popular. I think this helps you understand how to write books that people want to read, because if you understand the pain that somebody has that your book is addressing, your book will be far more resonant. So there was this concept that was developed in the 1970s called future shock, which is like culture shock, but in your own culture, where everything's changing so quick around you that it's disorienting, and everything is really different. We've been experiencing future shock, right. The old people are constantly complaining about, you know, “back when I was a kid, things were different.” But that's a real psychological pain. If somebody is experiencing that pain of change, an Amish book, which takes place in a world where nothing ever changes, is a kind of beautiful respite. It's a break from the frenetic pace of technological and cultural change, and that's why that genre isn't a fad. It's been around for 10-20 years at this point, and it's because it's touching that point of pain, that future shock pain. So once you understand, oh, there are psychological pains that cause people to want to read, once you can identify that for your reader, and in your genre, suddenly, going back to what we talked about the beginning, you've written a book that people want to read and won't shut up about. They're like, oh, my goodness, I was in pain in this way—and they may not articulate it consciously—but now I read this book and it made me feel better. I was depressed and this book made me feel encouraged. I was hopeless and the book gave me hope. Right, whatever it is that your book touches on, once you can put your finger on the pain, suddenly your book becomes alive for that reader. Joanna: It's interesting. I really started reading thrillers when I was really miserable in my corporate job, and I just wanted to escape. I wanted something fast-moving that I could escape into, and I really love explosion movies and all that kind of thing. So I don't know— Is that the same thing as what you're saying, the psychological pain? Or could you give some more examples, because I think people will be interested. Thomas: Yeah, that's exactly it. So somebody who's bored may look to thrillers for some adventure. Fantasy is often really popular with people who are struggling with mental illness. Not that everyone who reads fantasy has mental illness, but particularly for depression and anxiety, it's really encouraging to read stories of people who have hope, who are making a difference, who are acting, and who are doing scary things. What are the quintessential elements of fantasy? It's big monsters, big bad guys that get defeated in the end. You don't read an epic fantasy to find out how it ends, you know that the bad guy is gonna get defeated in the end, but you read it because you want to spend time in that world. You want to spend time escaping from the world that you're in, the mundane or the boring or the stressful, and spend time in Middle Earth or spend time in Hogwarts or whatever that world is. The different worlds will resonate with different people differently. I actually have a whole episode kind of breaking down different genres and why people read that genre, and like the social triggers, psychologically, that caused them to want to read that genre. I just barely scratched the surface because every genre has a reason why people want to read that kind of book. Some genres go in and out of fashion, which is really fascinating. Like Westerns aren't nearly as popular now as they were 50 years ago, 70 years ago. So that's fascinating for me as a marketer, and also as a reader, to watch those trends. But also to ask that question of like, what is it about this book that makes people want to read it? Because it's really easy to be like, oh, people who read that kind of fiction, they're crazy. Like, that's really intellectually lazy. They're not crazy, they're just different. If we can understand how they're different, we can understand the world a little bit better. Joanna: Absolutely. Well, then an interesting question with book marketing in the last six months, what we've seen is the removal—coming back to Meta, Facebook, and some of the other ads—the removal of things like religious preference, or religious orientation, sexual orientation, gender, a whole lot of things have been removed from our targeting in various advertising mediums because of Apple's privacy changes, which is kind of interesting in many ways. In some ways, it's really great because it means more privacy, and in other ways, as marketers, it's difficult because I thought, well, Christians like pilgrimage, I met loads of Christians, I'll see if any Christians like my memoir Pilgrimage, and I wasn't able to use that as a preference in my ads. What are your thoughts on other ways of marketing if we want our books to reach people who are Christian? Is it a case of specific Amazon keywords or other keywords? Or what are your recommendations there? Thomas: Yeah, they're kicking us out again. Christians are specifically discriminated against on Facebook. If you write a romance, you can target similar romances to your book, but if you write a Christian romance, you can't. Joanna: To be fair, it's not just Christians, it's all religion. All different religions. Thomas: That's true, but the other religions don't have a genre attached to them. You can have, say, Muslim elements in your romance, and you can target other romances that have Muslim elements because they're not published by a Muslim publisher. And so there it is, in a sense, kind of uniquely targeting Christians. You can't target like Muslims as a category, but you could target books, potentially, that have Muslim elements in it. What's interesting is it's constantly changing because there are certain keywords or certain brands that a lot of Christians will like that some authors will target. So like Hobby Lobby is really hot right now. So Hobby Lobby is a craft store in the United States. It's the one that's very popular with Christians, and so Christian authors will target fans of Hobby Lobby. But you're also grabbing people who are in fan of quilting, and maybe they're not a Christian, they just like Hobby Lobby on Facebook. So you have to start thinking outside of social media.  I will say, starting in 2016, Christians often started pivoting off of social media, and especially starting in 2020. It was very clear we weren't very welcomed, especially to have conversations about Christian topics. So a lot of the online conversation has moved to invite-only smaller Telegram, Signal, and to a lesser extent, Discord channels. So it's not that Christians aren't on Facebook, they're still there, but a lot of the conversation and a lot of the time has moved off of Facebook. So it's not as effective of a tool, even if you could target them.  You can still use Amazon ads. So Amazon will let you target Christian keywords, and be related product on Christian books. So it's not like all of the tools are turned off. But Facebook, particularly, has become pretty hostile to any kind of Christian marketing. I have to kind of be really clever and trick it into placing your ads in front of your audience. Joanna: Yes, I must say with my book title, pilgrimage is a pretty keyword-specific book. So it's going to be very interesting who has been finding it. But our titles can have different words. I mean, some of my book titles are the same as the Left Behind titles because there are some really good words that tap into some religious themes and stuff like that. We mentioned email before, what about the big email lists for marketing? I mean, things like BookBub and other email lists sort of marketing things. Are paid email services something that you think is still worth doing? Thomas: Yes, and it still works for Christians. BookBub has at least one, if not multiple Christian categories. I think has a Christian nonfiction category and at least one Christian fiction category, and that responds really well. Christian podcasting is actually really vibrant. There are more Christian podcasts than any other kind of podcast by a large margin. If you look at the chart of podcasts per category, Religion and Spirituality: Christianity has, last I've looked at the numbers, like twice as many podcasts as the next most popular category. And you're like, why is that? It's like, well, every church puts their sermons as a podcast so that the childcare workers can listen to the sermon later on during the week. There's thousands or millions of churches that have a small podcast feed in addition to a lot of standalone Christian podcasts. So it's actually a really powerful mechanism that is completely outside of social media control because nobody controls podcasting. It's a technology, not a company. It's censorship-resistant, as we like to say in podcasting. Not only that, but a lot of Christians learn how to subscribe to a podcast to get their church's sermon podcast. They're sick or they can't go to church on Sundays, so they download the episode on a podcast. So both guesting on Christian podcast, but also advertising on Christian podcasts can be very effective. Email is still very effective. It's very forwardable. Christians live in communities, so if you can get one person in a church to like your book, there's a chance they'll tell all their friends at their church about your book. So there's still virality, especially if you bake it into the book itself. If you put elements into the book worth talking about, people will talk about the book. So you still can do it, but you kind of have to set aside the sort of techniques that work for genres that target very online people, at least to a certain degree. Joanna: I love that. In fact, I was just thinking there about Christians who go to a church that does sermons every week, which is, I guess, most churches. People are used to listening to someone talking about a theme for a certain amount of time, which really suits the podcast format. So I can see why people would want to go and listen either, obviously to their own pastor, but also to other people's churches. I mean, they might want to go listen to a sermon on a particular topic or Bible verse or something. So I can see actually why this is so good. I did want to ask you, therefore, if there are Christians, or other people listening, who would like to pitch Christian podcasts or any podcasts, in fact—you and I both get tons of pitches. What are your tips for pitching a podcast, especially for fiction authors? Thomas: The most important tip is to listen to the podcast before sending your pitch. I know it's time-consuming, but Joanna, you probably get 99 pitches for every one that you say yes to. Maybe more than that. Joanna: Oh yeah, it's a ridiculous number. Thomas: And the key to fishing is that the bait needs to fit the fish. If you're trying to catch a catfish, you're gonna use different bait than if you're trying to catch a salmon. The only way that you can adapt your pitch to the podcast is to have listened to that podcast first. It's very obvious getting a pitch that they have no idea what the podcast is about. Whoever did this just got a list of podcasts on publishing or whatever, and then they're sending the same pitch to all the podcasts and just swapping out the name, or sometimes not even swapping out. Somebody sent me a pitch just the last week, and they're like, I really like your podcast, and it had some other podcast's name. It's like a copy-and-paste fail right here. There's this idea of like, well, if I just do it enough, some of the podcasts will say yes. What you'll end up doing that way, is getting kind of the most obscure, the smallest podcasts that maybe no one's ever pitched before. Those might actually say yes to you. There is some advantage to going on a very new or very small podcast because it gives you a chance to practice on a new audience, but it's not going to be effective in reaching a large audience because the podcast is new and has a small audience. So listen to the episode first and then listen for how that podcast host is trying to thrill their audience. When you craft your pitch, craft it in such a way where you demonstrate, ‘hey, I know who you are, I know who your audience is, I know what your audience wants, and I can help you give them that.' If you craft your pitch that way, suddenly people are like, “Oh, thank you, I needed a guest for Thursday, and you would be a good fit.” You have to actually do the work to demonstrate that you're a good fit. They're not going to spend 30 minutes researching you to see if you're a good fit. You've got to do that work yourself. Joanna Penn with Audio for Authors Joanna: The value to the audience is always so important. And as you say, we both get pitched for ridiculous things. Like a credit card thing, I'm like, really? Why are you doing that? Or someone who says, “Oh, I watched your podcast of this interview and I watched the video of it, and it was amazing.” And I'm like, yeah, there was no video, so you just blatantly lied. I mean, that's the thing, the scattergun approach doesn't work. But let's say someone listening does a pitch, they get an interview— What is the best way to deliver value to the host and the audience? Thomas: The first thing I'd recommend is to buy a good microphone because you as the guest, you are half, maybe more depending on the format of the show, of the audio quality. So if you come to that podcast with bad audio, you are lowering the overall audio quality of the podcast significantly. It's no longer expensive to get a good microphone, it used to be. Back when we were starting, Joanna, there were not a lot of microphones available, and the ones that were available weren't very good. Back 10 years ago, the Blue Yeti was considered a good microphone. It's not a good microphone. But back in 2012, it was pretty good. It was maybe the second or third best microphone. Now there's probably 30 microphones better, and in some cases, cheaper. Joanna: Can I ask you what microphone you use? Thomas: So well, I use the Shure SM7B, it's a very expensive microphone. This isn't the microphone I recommend for an author getting started. For somebody getting started, I recommend the Samson Q2U, which is a $70 microphone, it looks like a stage mic, or for $100, you can get the Q9U, which looks like a podcast microphone. It's a dynamic microphone, it's blind to room noise and road noise, unlike the Yeti, which is very sensitive to room noise and road noise. You don't have to treat your room if you're using a Q9U or really any dynamic microphone.  What's nice about the Q9U is that not only is it a dynamic microphone, but it's a dynamic microphone with USB, so you can plug it directly into your computer, and it also has XLR. So if down the road, you want to get a mixer or a board and get a fancy setup, you don't have to throw away your microphone, it can scale with you. Let's say someday you do want to get the SM7B, which is the $400 microphone that all the big podcasters use. Well, you can then put that Q9U as your backup microphone for your guest, you can still use it. So it's a purchase that scales really well. Joanna: I'm still using a Blue Yeti for both this podcast and my audiobooks. [Click here for my sound booth setup.] This is my podcasting setup So I would say that you can make the most of any equipment, but as we established earlier, you do have a higher quality production than I do. Thomas: To be fair, I didn't know you were still using a Yeti! I'm not trying to single you out. Joanna: It's really funny. Like, it's actually really funny. For people listening, I think you can make the best of whatever you've got. Use a separate microphone and earbuds. But the main tip is having a microphone is better than nothing because, you know, how many people come on and don't even have a separate mic, they just talking to the computer. The other thing I would say is earbuds, so you can separate the input and the output because that is the worst kind of annoyance, I find. Thomas: Absolutely. And it also reduces echoes, having headphones or earbuds is critical. This actually really illustrates a good point, you don't care which microphone that Joanna is using, you care that what she has to say is useful and helpful, right? She's useful and helpful every week, and so you keep listening. That really is the most important thing. Yes, a different microphone, less room noise or whatever might help a little bit, but if you're not useful and helpful, it doesn't help at all. You have to thrill the audience. That's the first most important thing, both as a host and as a guest. So if you can convince somebody that you've got the information or the story that will really thrill their audience, they may put up with you not having a good microphone. But have something, don't talk into your laptop. Your laptop microphone is really bad. Joanna: Exactly. The other thing that I've sometimes found is that people will be hesitant about sharing aspects of their book. Obviously, if you're talking about a novel, you don't want to do any spoilers, but I always have the attitude— You have to give as much away as possible in order to give value. And then if people are interested, they will go buy the book, right? Thomas: Yeah, there's this view that if you blog your book ahead of time, people won't want to buy the book. And that's like saying, oh, if you release the story of the movie as a book first, people won't want to go watch the movie because they already know how it ends. And you're like, that's crazy. The people in line at midnight for the movie are the people who already read the book for the movie. I was at the midnight showing for Lord of the Rings, not because I wanted to know how the movie ended, but because I knew how the movie ended and I wanted to be there for the movie. So yes, giving people a sample, the experience of reading something on a screen or listening to something on a podcast and then reading it in a paper book is very different. Brandon Sanderson's first Kickstarter campaign, the one that raised $6 million or $7 million, was for a book everyone had already read. It was a 10th anniversary edition for $250. No one was backing that Kickstarter campaign to find out how The Way of Kings ended. They were backing it because they already own The Way of Kings, they bought the cheap paperback, it was split in the middle several times because they'd read it two or three times, and the idea of having a nice leatherback copy was appealing. And yes, I'm willing to spend $250 for a nice copy of a book I already own. So if you thrill people with your story, they'll want to buy it in multiple formats. Joanna: For sure. I think we could talk forever, but we're out of time. Where can people find you, Author Media, and your podcasts, and everything you do online? Thomas: So you can search in your podcast app, the one you're using right now, for Novel Marketing, and then the Novel Marketing Podcast will come up. Then if you want to listen to my podcast, Christian Publishing Show, just do a search for Christian Publishing Show. You can also find them at NovelMarketing.com and ChristianPublishingShow.com. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Thomas. That was great. Thomas: Thanks for having me.The post Novel Marketing And Christian Publishing With Thomas Umstattd Jr. first appeared on The Creative Penn.