The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

Memoir can be one of the most challenging forms to write, but it can also be the most rewarding. Marion Roach Smith talks about facing your fears, as well as giving practical tips on structuring and writing your memoir. In the intro, Amazon's category changes [KDP Help; Kindlepreneur; Publisher Rocket]; Book description generation with AI; Thoughts on New Zealand and how the river forks; AI is about to turn book publishing upside down [Publishers Weekly]; Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable – Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Plus, Japan and copyright for AI training; Microsoft rolls out Designer to Teams; Google Docs text generation with Bard [Ethan Mollick]; Photoshop and generative fill [NY Times]; Drug discovery with AI [BBC; Alpha Fold]; Amazon generative search job listing [Venture Beat]; ChatGPT official app; My webinars on using AI. Today's show is sponsored 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 Marion Roach Smith is an author, memoir coach and teacher of memoir writing. She has online courses on writing memoir and hosts the Qwerty Podcast about memoir. Her books include The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Discovering what to shape your memoir around The writing process of memoir Deciding on the structure of your memoir The importance of the title to convey your book's message Fears faced when writing memoir and how to overcome them How to know when your memoir is finished Traditional vs. indie for publishing your memoir You can find Marion at MarionRoach.com Transcript of Interview with Marion Roach Joanna: Marion Roach Smith is an author, memoir coach and teacher of memoir writing. She has online courses on writing memoir and hosts the Qwerty Podcast about memoir. Her books include The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life. So welcome back to the show, Marion. Marion: It's a joy to be here, particularly to talk about your fabulous memoir. So I just want to get that in real fast. Joanna: Thank you so much. You were last on the show, and we were talking about memoir, in July 2020. A lot has changed since then. So for those who don't know you— Tell us a bit more about you and your writing background, and why you are so passionate about memoir as a genre. Marion: Well, I've learned that — Memoir is the single greatest portal to self-discovery — and I've learned that in my own career. I was a young New York Times employee when my mother got sick with a disease that no one understood, it's now understood to be Alzheimer's disease, and I wrote about it extensively.  After that, in the 40 years of my career since then, I've written a lot of pieces of memoir, all of which allow me to explore things that I didn't actually understand when I sat down to write about them. And I do understand them a bit better now. I genuinely now believe, having worked with people for almost 30 years on their memoir writing, that everybody benefits from it. So I, in COVID, have had the great opportunity to meet a lot more people because a lot more people decided to write books, op eds, essays, long-form essays, and even just blog posts in COVID, and do a lot of exploration. What I've witnessed has been really informative. So I think this introspection, this global introspection that we were plunged into, has resulted in a lot of good copy. Yes, it's been tragic. Absolutely. But your book is an example of the time taken after the plunge to see what we really think. I think that that is the best up-to-date I can give you, is that there's good memoir out there, and there's lots of it. I'm teaching a lot of it. I did record all of my classes during COVID so people could have them on demand. That's probably my news. But mostly my news is that I think that people have spent time thinking, and I'm deeply grateful for it. Joanna: Yes, I did want to ask you about the pandemic. I mean, I wrote Pilgrimage in the pandemic. It did feel like that chance to pause. And also, for me, it's always this idea of memento mori, remember you will die. Is that a common thing with memoir? Not just with the pandemic, but in general, is it sort of confronting our mortality is why we almost want to write these things? I mean, with you, you mentioned with your mum, I mean, that was a mortality moment facing Alzheimer’s. Is it fear of death or thoughts about death that makes a lot of people write? Marion: Well, as you know, there's nothing like a deadline, Joanna, and we all need them. I do best, literally, when the thing is due in two hours. I can whip it out better than if you give me two weeks. So what COVID brought very clear to all of us is that we're all on a deadline. I think that whether it was conscious or unconscious, the memento mori idea is positively motivating. I need to get this out. And that's what I saw was an astonishing amount of input worldwide from people. I did hear from people all over the world, and this is one of the few things we've shared is the global recognition that we're all on a deadline. Joanna: I'll tell you one of the things that I have heard from people and that I felt myself is, well, but what does it matter? When we sit down to write these things, will anyone care? You know, there's all this stuff going on in the world, should I write this? How do we get over that sense? Marion: We share our humanity when we write memoir because this is not autobiography. This is not the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday version of your life, which really, very few people should have to be exposed to. I don't want to read your date book. I want you to do the curation from your life, to show me your transcendent change, just the way you do in Pilgrimage, in your beautiful new memoir. You show us what's at stake in the beginning, that you're discontent, that you've got a real issue that you would like to walk through. We get to see that transcendent change as you generously pluck for us, from your total experience, just those scenes that we need to see, and to witness transcendent change. We're not reading your book because of what you did — albeit three remarkable pilgrimages. We're reading your book for what you did with it.  That's what the humanity piece of memoir does so beautifully. It allows us to witness your transcendent change. Always a memoir writer should keep this in mind. We are reading your book for our own feeding, our own ideas of transcendent change. Your book gives us the sense that we can change, that we can evolve, that we can have a portal, walk through it, and come out with a new consideration of life. So people do care, written well like yours is, we change reading it. Joanna: You talk about that transcendent change, and this is definitely something that I was struggling with the shape of the book, in terms of I had loads of material and I didn't know what it was going to be. So I had the notes from my walks, I thought maybe it was some travelogues, or some guide books, and then I had these essays about my travels. I thought this sort of bubbling up from the bottom up is what I was thinking, that somehow it would turn into something. But as you say around the change, I didn't know that it might even be a memoir until I realized my own personal change from the beginning to the end of the process. Jo Frances Penn with Pilgrimage So can you give us some more examples of what that transcendent change might be? I mean, transcendent change seems life-changing or something massive, but it might be smaller things, too. What are some things that people might find in their own lives to shape a memoir around? Marion: It's a great question, because it doesn't have to be a bummer, it doesn't have to be misery based, and it doesn't have to be huge. It can be an absolutely huge story set in a war where you have some effect on that, but more often than not, it's the small stuff of life that changes us. The recognition that I am going too fast, and that if I don't learn to meditate, if I don't learn to bring a little zen here, I am going to be that person who is trying every day to demand from others what they simply cannot give to me. So that small change. If you've ever witnessed a type A person trying to learn to meditate, it's torturous, right? Because what do they do? They buy all the meditation apps, and where do they listen to them? In their car while they're driving. It's like, no, that's not going to work. And it makes for an amusing, but also universal, peace. So you can learn to love a dog. You can learn to love a garden, that it came with a house that you just bought. I always say to people — If you write from one of your areas of expertise at a time, you will never run out of things to write. You will have a writing life if you say to yourself, what do I know after what I've been through with the caregiving of my mother? What do I know after raising twelve dogs? What do I know after going on three pilgrimages? What do I know after living in this world with a sick child? Those are each separate pieces. They're either blog posts, essays, op eds, long form essays, or books. People can write 8-10 book-length memoirs in this lifetime if they write from one area of their expertise at a time, and stop writing that autobiography that begins with their great-great grandfather and ends with what they had for lunch today. That is a book you're never going to finish because there's always lunch tomorrow, and no one's ever going to read. So everything is memoir if you look at it from one area of your expertise at a time. How did you learn to accept your illness? How did you learn to love that dog that your sister insists you must care for while she goes off in the army and fights? But you know you don't want that dog, and we know that your sister knows that you need that dog more than you need anything. Small stuff, areas of expertise, you will never run out of things to write. Joanna: I love that. And yet, this is also the problem with me. I had like 100,000 words, and the final book is I think less than 30,000. I mean, it's crazy. There was a heck of a lot of writing that did not go in this book, and may never go anywhere. So is that how it works for most people? Or what are the pieces that will go into this? Is it just a case of sitting down and writing it end to end, and I just did it wrong? How do people come at a memoir? Marion: You did it absolutely right because you did curate so that the book moves. As soon as a reader knows something, they don't need to be told it again. In an alcoholism memoir, we don't need 19 scenes in act one that show us that you have a drinking problem. Once you've established that with the reader, we now want to know what the drinking problem's effects are. Do you make bad decisions? If you make bad decisions, do they include people you hang out with? Like you can take it a few more steps, but I just don't need to see 19 scenes of you in different bars. And you think ,oh no, but they're different bars. No, the message is the same to the reader, “I have a drinking problem.” Now we need to see what choices you make after that, and then we need to get out of act one because now we want to know if you can sober up. So you did beautifully curating, simply stating for us in your act one what the issue is, what the problem is. You use this beautiful German word, which I'll probably mispronounce, but fernweh, the longing for far-off places. How do you pronounce that, by the way, Joanna? Joanna: Yes, I mean, almost. Fernweh. Marion: Fernweh. So you've got that combined with this collective grief that we've got, this global grief, and you stated definitively that you couldn't control the pandemic, but you could walk out the door with your backpack. That was a very good selection amid probably other things that are going on your in your life, which you said, well, we don't need all of those. So you made this curated attempt. So you did do this perfectly. 100,000 words makes perfect sense to me. I frequently say to people when I'm teaching memoir writing, first you have to pack a trunk, the kind of trunk you might take to camp for two months. Then we're going to turn that trunk into an overnight bag, but I have to see the trunk to be able to select which sweaters are going to go with you and which are not. Mostly people write big and then we sculpt it down after that. I call it the vomit draft, that first draft, that 100,000-word behemoth. And you know, you should treat it like a vomit draft. I mean, it's going to be stinky, and it's going to have everything in it that you threw up on this one topic. Then we get it down to the overnight bag. And you did that exactly right. I didn't feel there was repetition. I felt as soon as I knew something you moved on. And that's exactly your assignment as a memoir writer. Joanna: It's so interesting, though, because, I mean, this comes down to the editing process versus the writing process. That introduction and the epilogue, they're the last things that I really wrote, or I rewrote, and rewrote, and rewrote, until I did have a clear opening and closing to the arc of the character, which was me. But coming back to how other people can write their memoir, I mean, you've been giving us questions. So is it a case of just starting? I mean, you mentioned essays and things. How do people get started with a memoir? Should people start writing little essays or little journal pieces on things they're thinking about? Or is it that they almost give themselves questions around various aspects? Or, for example, with your mother, is it journaling while someone is going through suffering and then looking at that later? How are people writing that main meat of what turns into the trunk? Marion: Well, those are a couple of great questions that allow me to really reflect on what we're doing here. So first of all, your comment about how you wrote the intro and epilogue last, that is some of the best advice you can give to memoir writers. If you write your introduction first, you're going to be forced to write the book to that. And you don't even know what you know, until you write that big 100,000 word vomit draft. You think you're writing a book about mercy, and suddenly you're writing a book that's all about the particulate matter that goes into mercy. That's a very different thing. So you want to wait till you've written a first draft to ever write your introduction and your epilogue. I just wanted to say that you did that exactly right. In terms of starting out, in terms of are you going for the snippets that you have in your journal, or are you answering big questions, I would say that — Memoir is always based on a question. Can I sober up? Can I live in this world the way it is? Can I completely and absolutely love this child who is so ill and who is going to require my time in a massive way? How am I going to navigate with love and care through this experience? So, frequently it begins with a question. Sometimes, however, it begins with keeping a journal on something. You know, you just got a garden journal, or a knitting journal, or a journal of a caregiving experience, and you find that you really are quite interested in the process of your own change. So you go back and you look at those journal entries, and maybe you do start with a personal essay. I genuinely believe that testing your material on the public is a great idea. Op-eds, opinion pieces that appear in the newspaper, are great ways to attract the attention of an editor or an agent. They're also great ways to hone your argument, and every piece of memoir is an argument. What I mean by that, I don't mean argumentative. I mean, it is a state for the record, stating for the record what I know after what I've been through, what you're willing to share with someone. So, frequently a piece will start with a recognition. “I think that dogs do things for people that people can't do for themselves.” Oh, what an interesting place to write from. Or that closure is a myth, or that grief is a process that must be gone through slowly in order to go through it. If you rush it, you're going to stay in it forever. I think I know that. So you can start with a question, you can start with a conclusion, you can start short with an op ed or an essay, you can call from your journals, but you have the ability to enter this process anywhere along the line. A small piece is a perfect place to start, as long as you don't start with that intro or epilogue, because that will confine your work and curtail your discovery, and there's lots of discovery of memoir. Joanna: Yes, absolutely. And it's interesting, you mentioned testing ideas there, and I started my second podcast, Books and Travel, in 2019 just before the pandemic. It gave me a chance to do solo episodes around reflecting on various travels. They were essentially sort of mini-essays about various places I've traveled and the effects of those travels. So I had originally thought that—talking about titles—the original title was Untethered, and it was about finding a home after traveling around the world. Then I wrote and did the solo episodes, and it just didn't hang together. This idea of how it hangs together, the structure of a memoir, I mean, Pilgrimage is both a journey, a sort of A to B journey, the moving across the world, but it's also an emotional journey.  There are other memoirs that are these sorts of essays within a theme. What are your thoughts on trying to decide what the structure of a memoir should be and finding models in that way? Then we'll come back to titles. Marion: So the structure of a memoir should always be taking an idea from here to there. From when you could not do something to when you could. From when you did not know something to when you did. From when you had to shed something to when you shed it, and how life got better. Everyone takes on too much, just go from here to there. So that's your basic structure, and those are your bookends. From when I didn't know something to when I did. So what you want to do is to consider how would I best portray my here to there via my argument. Would it work to do it in shards? Little, tiny, half-a-page-each pieces. They're not essays, they're really like patches. And because I'm having a very disjointed experience with this problem, those might work. In other words, that might support the argument. These are just little ideas that I have about this very big problem I have. So that structure might really support the argument. Essays sometimes support the argument best, a series of essays that still run from here to there. From what's at stake, Act One, to what I tried, Act Two, to what worked, Act Three, is the way I think of the three acts. The essay structure can work very well because they are self-contained. They allow the reader to sort of pop a lozenge in their mouth and let it melt and then pop another one in. That sometimes works for some arguments. But in your case, and going from this, ‘what's at stake' all the way through, works beautifully with the narrative, the way you did it, combining the Pilgrimage workbook with it, giving us a sense that we're learning along the way, including the references that you do. It's very well annotated, as it should be, because you're backing it up with a lot of material about the places you've been. Structure should be something that furthers the argument. What best furthers the argument? So, you know, little shards to essays to narrative length chapters that work, included with a workbook, it makes sense the way you structured it. As to the title, I get why you started with Untethered, but you worked to Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways. This tells us, the reader, the potential buyer, that there is going to be this exploration of pilgrimage, that there are lessons that are learned, that you did this alone, that you're a woman, and that there's an ancient aspect to it. The delivery on this title is excellent. The title itself does a great job of pulling the reader in. There's something there for everyone. So I think that you did a terrific job of moving from untethered, which you present in Act One as your problem, right? You are untethered. We get it, you needed to do something in this pilgrimage. Nobody goes on a pilgrimage lightly, I don't think. So the untethered gets in there, but it just isn't stated in the title. Joanna: Let's talk more about titles because it was really hard. I mean, originally it was Untethered: Travels in Search of a Home, which included a lot more about, for example, my mum taking us to Africa and moving to Australia and New Zealand, and none of that made it into the final book. I mean, like you said, it actually does start with being untethered and finding a home by the end. So the whole thing is already there.  I've been writing 15 years now so I did think about keywords when I was doing my title. This is obviously difficult, especially if people are writing a memoir, it's a very emotional topic. [If you need help choosing keywords for your title and metadata, check out Publisher Rocket.] What are your recommendations around deciding on a title and combining the keywords with the emotional side of things? Marion: I love that you brought up keywords because we are selling a product. And people get so emotional, they say, “Oh, my publisher is treating it like a like a widget.” Well, yeah, they are because they want to sell it. So we need to have some recognition of that.  When we're choosing our title, it's best to think about not being pretentious, and not being too literary, and not trying to communicate too much over the heads of the person who's in the bookstore or online. And instead, think about what are the reader is looking for. Not that you want to just always cater to your reader, but you want to consider your reader. This title allows us to know what the promise of the book is, which is deeply important. I remember in my first book, I was 26 years old, I was with, at the time, the greatest editor in New York. I was so lucky. I actually fought with her to put a ridiculous title on my first book. I wanted a quote from Emily Dickinson because I loved Emily Dickinson, and I wanted to call the book The Hour of Lead. Now, let's just be honest, that is terrible idea. What is that about, and you know, with some really esoteric subtitle because I wanted to be taken seriously. Well, that's not my publisher's problem. That's my problem, right? So don't try to solve your problems and become, quote, “legit” with the title. Instead, what does the book cover? What does the book do? What is the promise in the subtitle of the return on investment for the reader if we read this? I'm going to learn the lessons you learned solo walking three ancient ways. I'm also going to get this great exploration of what pilgrimage really is. And I must tell you, I found myself deeply considering the idea of pilgrimage, even from my own armchair, and the transcendent change that happened. So I think that the title needs to be considered, but you absolutely don't go over the heads of your reader. Joanna: It is super difficult. So talking about one of the emotional sides of the process is fear. I mean, I had so much fear in this process, mainly fear of judgment, which I always struggle with, about what people might think of me because of what I've written. There are some mental health issues in the book. I guess I was just scared of what people would think of me and some things that I haven't shared on this show, even though I podcasted throughout the last few years. So that's my big fear — fear of judgment.  What kinds of fears do people face when writing memoir? What are your tips for overcoming them? Marion: Well, memoir has consequences. The consequences may be as simple as that you did not include your sister. And depending on your sister, she might not take that well. But if the story covers some period of time, and it's about a transcendent change that isn't, in fact, part of your story with her, then she doesn't need to be in the book gratuitously. So one of the first consequences is limiting the scope of a story. You may leave out your husband, you may leave out your parents, you may leave out your kids. So not everybody's going to like that. That does obviously touch into judgment. There can be consequences if you write about something that can be potentially litigious or actionable. In other words, in abuse memoir, we have lots of experience with people who change their name, change the name of the people. I always recommend that you don't just change the names, but you find a more literary way. Give the people diagnoses, you know, maybe call the person the abuser, call your mother the complicit one, call your father the deaf who didn't hear your pleas. Think about ways to do this. And I don't give legal advice ever, but at least get the story on the page before you change your mind about writing it, and change the names to something that's a bit more literary. But there's all this fear, right? Fear of judgment and doubt keep a lot of people from writing. So what I always say to them is, there's so many reasons not to write. There's kids and houses and jobs and dogs that need to go to the vet. Let's take fear off the table. And let's do that by getting involved with maybe one, or a small group of people, who are invested in your success. In other words, in a writing group, with a writing coach, with a developmental editor, with a one-on-one person, so that you can just not tell anybody else that you're doing it, not tell the family that you're doing it, get the job done, and let's see what you've got. Then when you're going to take it to market, there will be fear of judgment. You were very transparent here. You talked about your failed first marriage, you talked about your mental health, you didn't tell us everything, but we don't need everything. And what you did instead of us judging you, was you allowed us to be with you. You allowed the kind of transparency that makes us feel that we're sitting together next to each other having a talk, as opposed to you preaching to us which I cannot tolerate, or being really dogmatic, which I cannot tolerate in a narrator. So the fear, we should try to take it off the table by through several devices. Certainly changing the names if you need to do that. Certainly writing to only a very small audience that accepts and is invested in your success. And then the fear of publication and the fear of rejection is going to be there, you are, after all, taking something to the market. Here's the deal, you need to bring the best possible writing to this because this is a book, and it will be judged by its writing. So if you bring the best possible writing, you tell the truth, you make a product that you can live with and standby, you're doing what writers do every day, which is contributing to a conversation that we all need to have. So maybe you can raise your sights knowing that you're doing this good thing and contributing to some major conversation and it'll blow past some of that fear. Joanna: Yes, because I guess there's the fear of writing, itself. Even when it's just you on your own, and the people who have deep trauma to get through, there is fear of just bringing that even to the page, versus the fear of putting it out in the world when other people will see it and potentially read it. Although perhaps not as many people read these things as we would kind of like, as well. Marion: Well, the deep trauma thing is a very good point. I'm glad you brought that up. Because what are we asking a memoir writer to do when we ask her to go and write about a past trauma? Are we asking her to reanimate it? Are we asking her to relive it? Are we asking her to stand coolly back from it and have a look from some distance? And every memoir writer will answer that question differently. I've asked every memoir writer that I've interviewed on my podcast that question, and they all have different answers for it. I believe my own answer to that question is I'm not asking you to relive it. If it is a trauma, you probably should have some kind of counseling while you're writing it because any number of things could come up. What we're looking for you to do, is to tell us the truth and to show us the transcendent change. So right in there is a key to how to get this done. You get to choose how the story goes from here, and that is not something that maybe you got to choose before if you are the victim of some trauma. Maybe it's been told to you, maybe it's been labeled in a certain way. Now you get to get your hands on your own story. I hope that the invitation of that allows people to enter it. I'm not saying you get to make up an ending, but you do now get to choose when this thing is over.  That's a very powerful thing. I've noticed it with a lot of MeToo memoir that I've handled is that people get their voice back. One of the things that's taken when someone violates the territory of your body is your voice. So to get your voice back, I have been happily reduced to tears, constantly, over the last five, six years, editing MeToo memoir, watching people get their voices back. So my invitation to everyone is — Use your voice. You'll be astonished at what it'll do for your life. Joanna: It is a very powerful process to write this and understand — like you mentioned, at the beginning, it's a portal to self-discovery. But one of the big questions is really when is a memoir finished, in terms of when is the book finished? I felt I understood when it was, it was when I returned from my Camino de Santiago and I realized that I'd come home, and it was like I've been through the character arc. But it was only once I'd been through the character arc that I realized it, and then I could write the memoir. So is that the feeling that everybody gets? How do you know when the book is finished? Marion: I think there's a variety of feelings that people get. And some people, you know, when I wrote my first book, there used to be these things called safe deposit boxes that you had at banks where you kept your valuables locked up. And I used to go down, this is true, to the bank every day with my pages and put them in the safe deposit box. Less, you know, my apartment buildings should burn down. But it was the day that I got to carry them all home when I was finished. I'll never forget walking up Columbus Avenue in Manhattan, carrying my, whatever it was, first draft, 325 pages, and holding it to my heart and knowing that I had something. Nothing in this earth has ever quite come close to that first feeling. But when is a memoir finished? Well, a memoir is finished when you've proved your argument. And this is a really important thing to remember, many, many, many memoirs will be finished 15 years ago, in terms of the chronology of your own life. It'll be done when you did experience that transcendent change and you can show us the proof of that. Yours, you wrote right on the heels of an experience, almost writing it in real-time. But it's still done when you've proved your argument. It's still done when you've discovered what you've discovered about home. You're still done. So you can move on to your next book. So it's done when you've proved your argument. Joanna: I was just imagining you walking along the street thinking, oh, my goodness, don't get mugged or fall over I drop it, or I mean, that just seems crazy now! Like everyone — backup your work in multiple places, email it to yourself. That's terrifying. But yes, in terms of just the size, because that book that you mentioned, that's a lot bigger. I did notice with mine, I mean, I'm quite happy with the length, but there was a point where I thought this should be longer, like this should have more in it. Is there a length that people should be aiming for in terms of word count? Marion: So it used to be that the rule was don't even think of handing something into an American publisher anything under 75,000 words. Happily, that's no longer the case. There are still old-time editors who like to have the heft of a book, but what I've seen, especially in this generation of younger writers, is much shorter copy. I think it's the Twitter influence. I think it's a lot of this social media influence. I think that the people who write miniatures in America, we have people like Lydia Davis, and people like Abigail Thomas, who have written books that have very short, sometimes half a page is a chapter. So there's the exploration of that that's really warranted. So I encourage people not to set a word count in their own minds and hearts. That doesn't mean that you're not going to run into an agent or an editor along the way who says it's too short. I don't feel that your book was too short, I felt that your book was digestible and it happened right in the timeframe it should happen, and it was the right length. But you really, really, really want to, again, prove your argument and see what form fits that argument best. It might be shards, might be short chapters, it might be long narrative chapters. But I worry less about word count these days than I used to. Joanna: Well, you've mentioned editors and publishers a number of times. And I mean, I'm an independent author, so I was always going to go the indie route for this. I know memoir writers who have traditionally published and who have chosen to go indie because of the control aspect of such a personal project. What are the pros and cons of choosing a particular publishing direction for a memoir? Marion: I'm so glad you brought that up, because yes, of course, you've always been indie, and I've always so admired that about you. You do a great job with it. I think this is the greatest time in the history of writing for writers because there are choices. There's independent publishing, which we no longer call self-publishing, thank goodness. It is independent publishing, meaning you have total control. You can design the cover, you can make typeface decisions. I mean, I've seen brilliant typeface things these days, you know, in typography, but also how the layout appears on the page. Including a recipe, or including a poem, or including a picture, you have so much more control over what the book looks like. You also have control over how the book is distributed and where it's distributed. I think for those people who are entrepreneurial, this is the absolute way to go. This hybrid publishing, which is a mash-up between the two, where you put some money into it, and you also get the benefit of the distributor of the publisher. We have a bunch of them now. Well, we have more than a bunch, we have so many of them proliferating in the United States. Then there's traditional publishing. In the US, that means only the Big Four, which they're referred to, that everybody knows. There are advantages and disadvantages. You have to keep in mind that with traditional publishing, the liability is entirely on the publisher, so they want their money's worth. If they gave you an advance, if they're going to incur the entire cost, they're also going to extract the most amount of money per book until you ever see any money, if you do, in royalties. In hybrid, you get royalties faster. And an indie, you're in control of the money. So depending on what kind of person you are, I think that you've got options. The only thing is I always say to people is do not think because you're going with quote, “traditional publishing,” that you're going to get a big advertising and tour budget. Those days are long over for almost 99% of the writers. You're still going to have to do the promo yourself, meaning writing those letters out to magazine publishers, or online places that you can publish. You're going to do all that work yourself, you are. So if you're going to do it anyway, why not indie publishing? So I think this is a great choice. It depends on the person. Joanna: I mean, if people do want a traditional publisher, I mean, the sort of famous one in my head is Wild by Cheryl Strayed, which sold a gazillion, or I guess, Eat, Pray, Love was another famous one that got made into a movie. So people think, oh, if I just get a publisher then that's what will happen to me. I mean— Are traditional publishers even looking for memoir now? It just seems, unless you're famous already, that it's difficult in that way. Marion: Yeah, I still see lots of book sales. I've got 70-something books on my shelf of people that have worked with me who have published, and they've published in these various realms, indie, hybrid, and traditional. So I know it's possible. I just had on the podcast, somebody who actually lives in the UK, it was her first memoir, and she sold it, and she sold it big. She sold to a big publisher and got a big, wonderful advertising campaign for her book. So I think I'm pretty sure that it's going to be the value of the writing, and that's what's going to sell it. I do not see any diminution of memoir sales in this country. I'm getting approached by publishers every day with huge lists of memoir to have on my podcast. I think that you've got to study the market and understand the territory, but then you've got to do the best writing you can possibly do to sell a book. Joanna: Maybe it's also about the topic or the question, as you've mentioned, underlying the story. So I remember it was back in the 90s, it was ‘mis-mem,' the misery memoir, where there was a lot of like abused children type of memoirs. Then like you've mentioned MeToo, and that, I guess we're still in that moment. There are also different themes that I guess come up when people tackle that in a memoir. Obviously, we're not going to write something to market with a memoir, but perhaps that also has an impact on whether publishers are interested. Marion: I think so. I mean, it's the job of a writer to understand what's coming in the ether. That's just true, right? Writers react, that's our job. And that is the first piece of information I give to writers. Writers react. You are supposed to be reacting, in essays, op eds, long form essays and books, reacting to what's going on in the world, what's in the ether. So the question was at the beginning of COVID, are we going to want to read books coming out of COVID? Are we going to want to read a COVID diary of someone else? Or are we going to leave this whole thing behind? Well, interestingly, yesterday, and this kind of timestamps this, but let's just say recently then, the Pulitzer Prizes for fiction went out in the United States and a book that is absolutely a bummer, but is a wonderful bummer, their retelling of a Dickens story, won the Pulitzer Prize. It is positively and absolutely not a book that you don't have to work through. It isn't just joyous. So that's interesting to me. In other words, the public's appetite for a bit of misery is still very rich and very accepting even though we've all been through three years of misery. We didn't just emerge saying, I only want to read happy stuff, that's it, no more bummer. Well, so we have to respond, right? Writers respond, and writers react. So think about what it is that we might be interested in at the time that you can get this book published, to some degree, to some degree. That doesn't mean you write entirely to the market, but what will be talking about? What will we be thinking about? That, I think, is your greatest consideration in terms of the outside market. Then you've got to remember, and I say this to the writers I work with every day — You better love the work because there is no controlling the market. Things happen in the world. I have so many friends who had books coming out in the spring of 2020 whose books never saw the light of day because COVID stopped the distribution of books. That does happen. So try to love the work every day, because you don't know what the market will bear. Joanna: Absolutely. And I guess circling right back to the beginning, it's well worth it to write a memoir. I mean, it's crazy. This has taken me longer than any of my other books, and yet it's shorter, and yet it feels like it was three years or more of my life. And yet, it's so worth it. It doesn't really matter about the sales, it's a brilliant project to do anyway. Marion: I think it is. I think that the great writers of the world, the Virginia Woolf, Zora Neale Thurston, Emily Dickinson, whoever you love, James Baldwin, Charles Dickens, they're the Amazon. But we are the tributaries, we are contributing, we are definitely trickling into the conversation. So write. Contribute to the conversation. We share our humanity in memoir, and it is absolutely life-affirming, and I believe in it with all of my heart. Joanna: Brilliant. Where can people find you, your books and courses, and your podcast online? Marion: How kind of you to ask. I'm at MarionRoach.com. That's where the Qwerty Podcast is housed. I run the transcripts of it. It's also everywhere podcasts are available. The books and everything else are available at MarionRoach.com. It's just a joy to talk to you, Joanna. I'm just delighted. And the book is wonderful, so I hope you sell a billion copies of it. Joanna: Well, thanks so much for your time, Marion. That was great. Marion: You're welcome. Be well. Talk to you again soon.The post Writing Your Transcendent Change: Memoir With Marion Roach Smith first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What are the crucial linchpin moments in your novel and how can you keep a reader turning the pages? John Fox gives fiction writing tips in this interview. In the intro, writing and publishing across multiple genres [Ask ALLi]; Pilgrimage and solo walking [Women Who Walk]; My live webinars on using AI tools as an author; Cowriting with ChatGPT: AI-Powered Storytelling by J. Thorn. Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with Scrivener, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 25% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna John Matthew Fox is an award-winning short story writer, a developmental editor, writing teacher and blogger. His latest book is The Linchpin Writer: Crafting Your Novel's Key Moments. You can listen above or 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 a book based on a blog — what needs to change? Linchpin moments and why they are important How to write emotionally moving stories The difference between scenes and chapters How to write wonder Writing better endings Using AI tools when writing fiction and editing You can find John at TheJohnFox.com or on TikTok @johnmatthewfox. John has courses for writers here. Transcript of Interview with John Matthew Fox Joanna: John Matthew Fox is an award-winning short story writer, a developmental editor, writing teacher and blogger. His latest book is The Linchpin Writer: Crafting Your Novel's Key Moments. So welcome back to the show, John. John: Thank you, so wonderful to be back. Joanna: Yes, indeed. Just in case people don't know you— Tell us a bit more about how you got into writing and publishing. John: I started my blog way back in the day, 2006, just to join the literary conversation. And over time, it evolved from a blog on literary news and commentary into more of a craft blog, just helping writers with their novels, short stories, children's books, any sort of fictional storyline.  Now, I've been editing for quite a while for authors, doing developmental edits. I offer courses, both on-demand courses and live courses. I'm starting up a publishing branch, which is self-publishing assistance, I like to call it. Not traditional publishing, not vanity publishing, but something in between. Joanna: There's certainly a call for all of that. Your courses are great. I think you've got some fantastic information on your site. Is this the first nonfiction book you've done? John: Yes, it is. I had the short story collection, and then the nonfiction book just came out in October, so it's relatively new. I've been getting lots of feedback from writers who have been enjoying it and using it to write their books and revise their books. Those are lovely emails to get. I guess I'd been helping writers in one way or another for a whole decade through emails, and articles, and developmental editing and whatnot. So I'm like, well, why don't I try to put down some of the things that are most helpful for writers. Why don't I try to put that down on the page? I have a good amount of stories about the writing life as well, so I thought I'd include those so it's not just cut and dry, boring, do this and do this craft information, one, two, three. I think it has been helpful for writers. It's been a joy to interact with them on another level.  I do think nonfiction, in general, is a lot easier for me to write than fiction is. There's so much imagination that has to go into fiction, and so much plotting and characterization. Nonfiction, man, I just sat down and wrote it. It just spilled out so easily, so it made me enjoy the process of writing quickly. Joanna: We'll get into the book in a minute. I know a lot of people listening, they might also have years’ worth of blog posts and articles, and you have a lot of really well-crafted articles on your site. How did you turn some of those into a book? Or did you start from scratch? You know, because a while back there was this sort of ‘from blog to book, just output your WordPress files into a book format.' And it's like, no, that's not how you do it. Did you use elements of your blog articles and rewrite them? Or did you start the book from scratch? What was that process? John: I definitely started from scratch because if you know anything about how to write for online media, it is just vastly different than writing a book. You definitely can't take that blog post and just throw it in a chapter and be like, alright, I'm good. It doesn't work like that at all. So what I did is I took topics that had been really important to my readers, certain topics that I'd written a post on, and then I just wrote on that topic, but completely from scratch. I don't think I used a single sentence from the blog inside the book. It's all new stuff. Then there was some stuff that wouldn't work as blog posts, like, I don't know, like writing about wonder or writing about emotion, like that's stuff that people aren't going to search for. It's really difficult to write a blog post about that, but they work really well inside of a book. That's probably because not a lot of authors talk about them or not a lot of authors like study those topics. So the book gave me a lot more latitude to go into areas that I hadn't been able to cover with the blog. Joanna: I think that's good advice. I do think starting from scratch is a good idea. Okay, let's get into the book. So the book is called The Linchpin Writer. What are these linchpin moments, and why are they important? John: So linchpin refers to these little pins that go inside the hub of a wheel so it doesn't fall off the axle, right? That's the original term, and then what it's become is a term that refers to like really key people or objects or ideas inside of an organization. I think a linchpin moment inside of a book is a make-or-break moment where the reader might stop reading, or if the reader doesn't like that particular scene, it's going to ruin the book for them. So they are the most key places in your novel where you absolutely have to get them right. So as writers, we should probably concentrate on those places more and make sure we really nail them. It's stuff like when you became a writer, it's a death scene for a character, it's stuff like romance, or a particularly climactic romantic scene. It's describing a character for the first time, or ending a chapter, or ending the whole book. All of these are really critical moments whereas the writer, you've just got to nail it, you got to nail them to make your reader happy. Joanna: Well, first up, you mentioned a linchpin moment for an author, and I think that's really interesting. In the book, you say, “when they became a writer,” and I find this a very interesting phrase, “became a writer,” because to me, these days, there are a lot of different routes to market. I mean, someone might be a blogger for a decade, that makes them a writer, but that doesn't necessarily make them an author. Someone might have millions of Kindle page reads, or millions of views on Wattpad, but no physical book, and these days, obviously no traditional publisher. What do you mean by a linchpin moment for the author? And how might people measure it? John: I don't think the medium is very important, right? I mean, if they just have millions of eBook reads, or millions of reads online, that doesn't matter to me as opposed to a print book. I feel like if you're writing, you're a writer. And if people are reading your writing, in whatever form, then you're an author. You know, I don't think it's super, super complex. I think, ultimately, writers feel nervous about calling themselves writers because there's this crisis of confidence inside yourself. And I'd say just, hey, summon up the inner confidence, like you are writing, you're putting words down on a page, they will find readers if they already haven't. So just call yourself a writer and feel confident about that. Joanna: Easier said than done! And actually, I do think this is important, because I've been talking to a lot of people, and after the pandemic, including myself, we haven't necessarily been writing a lot because of various reasons, mental health reasons or burnout. There are a lot of people, myself included, who make a good deal of money from backlist books. So actually, you can still be an author and not be an active writer. So actually, I think these definitions become important when your self image is based on these things. John: You mentioned people taking breaks or not writing for a time, and I actually think that's key to being a writer. I think a healthy writer takes breaks. I mean, after my first book, I didn't write any fiction for a while. I think I probably, I don't know, I was burned out, or the book didn't launch with the fanfare I expected it to. I had to recalibrate my expectations for being a writer and come up with a new project to work on. To me, that's not an aberration. You're not failing as a writer if you're not writing for a time period. Life happens. Parents get sick, children are born, like, it's fine to take a break from writing. I think writers end up having ideas and coming back to writing at some point, that's what makes you a writer. I think people shouldn't feel ashamed just because they're not writing for a period of time. Like, that's part of the writing process. Joanna: I like that because one of the most common questions I get is, “Oh, so you say you're a full-time author, but how much time do you actually spend writing?” As if that's the thing that will make a difference to being a full-time author. Let's move into the book, so someone is getting into their novel. You talk there about some of the linchpin moments, now for me, with fiction, the opening of that first chapter, really is a linchpin moment. What are some tips for getting the linchpins of the beginning right? John: You're absolutely right. That first chapter is one of the biggest linchpin moments because, you know, you don't write it right, and suddenly the readers sets your book aside and never returns to it. So in the book, I talk about four different steps that you want to get in that first chapter. One of them is characterization. I think you have to deliver a character which is set apart from other characters, who seems unique, who is doing something a little bit out of the norm, something strange, something that attracts us to a character and makes us think, yeah, yeah, I'd like to go on a journey with them. Another thing I think that's really important for the first chapter is your energy or your tone. This comes through just the type of sentences you write, what you're talking about, whether there's a chase going on, whether there's conflict on the first page. Like, what is the feeling that the reader gets from reading this first chapter? Is it grim and dark? Is it ebullient and exciting? You know, you're setting expectations for the rest of the book. I feel in many ways that — The first chapter is a promise to the reader. You're telling them, “Look, this is what this book is going to be like. Here's the style of writing. Here's the character you're going to fall in love with, or hate.” And you want to fulfill that promise for the rest of the book. I think a third thing would be some sort of mystery. It doesn't have to be a classic mystery, like who done it, like who killed the butler. Just any sort of question that the reader has about, oh, what happened in this character's past? Or what is going to happen in the near future? Something that makes the reader wonder about the storyline. Then I'd say the fourth one would be emotional resonance. What does the reader feel like in this chapter? If your first chapter doesn't make them feel something, whether sorrow or happiness or jealousy, like any emotion that you can evoke from the reader. If you get at least one strong emotion from the reader in your first chapter, there's like such a higher chance that they are going to continue reading for the rest of the book. Joanna: Yes, that beginning really has to signal the genre, and I have to know that, yeah, that's a book I want to read. I guess it should also tie in with the cover. I feel like I sample a lot of books based on the cover and the description, but then a lot of the times I start the sample, and I'm like, oh, that's not what I expected. So I guess that's a hint for people around book marketing, is these things have to work together. It's not just a great cover. It's the cover, and the blurb and the first chapter. Right? John: Yes, if I had to choose between an incredibly beautiful cover that sort of misled readers to what the book was about, and like a pretty plain basic cover that actually matched what the content of the book was, I'd choose the plainer cover, right? Because the cover is also a promise to the reader about the genre, about what's going to happen in the story, about the characters if you're showing a character on the cover. Like all of that stuff is setting the reader up so that when they get to your book, they're prepared to read it. Joanna: It's interesting, you mentioned emotional resonance there. This is all tough to get in the first chapter, right? So I mean, you can't really put everything in one chapter. But I was thinking about Colleen Hoover, I mean, her books really are so popular because she is so emotional. What are your tips for writing these emotionally moving stories? Because not everyone wants to write gritty romance. John: When I talk about emotions, I'm talking about like any emotion, like making the reader feel anything, from anger, to sadness. I mean, it definitely doesn't have to be romance. So I think there's some common mistakes that writers make when they're trying to make the reader feel something. The most common mistake is just showing a character feeling that emotion. Like the best way to get your reader to cry is not to show a character crying, that actually doesn't transfer. Like we can see a character crying and be like, oh, like, okay. But if you show them in a situation where we think we would feel sad, then we're going to feel that sadness, whether the character is crying or not. For instance, I was just reading The Great Passion by James Runcie about Bach. There's this poor kid who goes to a music school, he's starved, he's beaten, he's bullied at this all boys school, and I like really felt bad for this kid. Like he's just going through the worst experience at this boarding school. Now, I didn't need him to like cower in his bed every night and cry for me to feel that emotion as a reader. I felt that emotion because there was a situation that was terrible for him, and I pitied him. So I think it's important to focus on situations in your book that are sad or happy or jealousy-inducing, or whatever, rather than just characters feeling that emotion. Joanna: I mean, is curiosity an emotion? That's what I want in a first chapter. I want to feel curious about an open question. John: I think my point about mystery probably fits best with the idea of curiosity. You know, there's something that you don't know and you're interested to learn more. Absolutely, that's key for a first chapter. Joanna: Then I was also just thinking about James Patterson. Obviously, he's famous for writing incredibly short chapters. You think about James Patterson's books, reading one of his chapters is a masterclass. In fact, he has a Masterclass on it. But he manages to get all of that in one chapter. John: I think he does a great job with starting chapters and ending chapters. You know, both of those are some linchpin moments in your book. How do you get the reader in? Do you start in the middle of a scene? And then where do you end to make the reader turn to the next chapter? I think having short chapters makes readers feel smart because they feel like they're reading faster. It also gives these really bite-sized narrative bits that always make you want to turn to the next one because it's very low obligation. Because sometimes if you read a long chapter, and you're like, well, I don't want to start a whole other giant chapter, but if it's a really short chapter, you're like, well, just one more, and just one more, and just one more. You know, it's tough to stop reading. Joanna: And actually, this is a good tip that you mentioned there, splitting the scene between chapters. I think we write in scenes as fiction authors, but when we structure a book, we structure in chapters, and they're not the same thing. Maybe you could explain the difference between a scene and a chapter, and how we could maybe create a linchpin moment by splitting a chapter. John: Well, I think writers often think that the end of a chapter is the end of a scene. And the best place to end a chapter is at the beginning of a scene, when characters arrive, or when some new information happens. Because then if you split it right there, the readers like, oh, well, I want to turn to the next chapter to continue this situation. It's very non-instinctual to end a chapter that way, but I think it's the best way to end a chapter to keep the reader reading. As far as the difference between scenes and chapters, it depends on how long your chapters are. You might just have one scene or a couple scenes per chapter. I mean, you could structure in so many different ways, like a chapter could be in a singular place, but there's like three different scenes within that place. I think what's key for scenes is making sure there's a reason why you're breaking that scene. A really good reason to break the scene is because you want to skip the boring parts. You know, sometimes my authors that I edit for, they'll have a scene and it sort of feels like the end of a scene, and then they'll do like connective tissue. They'll write, like, “and then this person went there,” or, “then they did this,” or something like that. And I'm like, no, you should cut that whole section, put a little asterisk in there, and just start once they're already in the new place or once they're already in the next part of the action. So what scenes allow you to do is to cut all the boring connective tissue and just focus on the absolutely best parts of your story. Joanna: I guess, just to be basic about it as well — A scene is a character in a setting, performing some kind of action for a reason. That's just a basic description. Is that how you describe it? John: Yes, I would describe it that way. Sorry, I feel like I always jump to something I haven't heard before. I feel like I'm often giving advice to authors who, I don't know, maybe have a little bit more experience under their belt. So yeah, that's a great basic definition of a scene. In a particular place, doing something, there's some conflict happening, there's some tension happening. There's some dramatic action. Sometimes, like a character just sitting by themselves thinking really isn't a scene, right? Something needs to happen, they need to do something, they have to talk to someone, there has to be conflict with someone, otherwise the scene doesn't really work. Joanna: Absolutely. So let's get to some of the other things. You mentioned wonder. There is a chapter on wonder. What do you mean by wonder? And what are some examples and ways to write it? John: Man, sometimes when I'm reading a book, I just have this experience of laying the book down and sitting back and being like wide-open-mouthed and being like, woah, like, this author is so good. Usually they've described something that's just incredibly beautiful, or like a crazy scenario with bioluminescent waters that just like wows me.  I love those moments as a reader where I'm just flabbergasted about how cool this book is right now. So I wanted to think about, as writers, how can we create those moments? And I think it's really important to give like otherworldly senses. If you're writing something like sci fi, or fantasy, or even literary, I think it's easier to get to those otherworldly moments because you're writing such fantastical stuff. But I think it's equally possible in realism or historical or romance, because the job there is to take everyday life and make it feel strange or wondrous to the reader. Like how can you take something which the reader experiences every single day and make them feel it in a new or different way? I think that's really the job of the writer is to take these experiences and make the reader feel something and experience something that they haven't before. Joanna: So how do we do that? Is that through sensory detail or through metaphor? John: I think you can do with metaphor if you are describing extremely different things. I read this author once you described a flock of birds rising up from a tree all at once, like a net. And I've always loved that metaphor. And every time I see birds rising from a tree, I see her metaphor. Now I see this very thin mesh net rising up and falling down.  I also think you can do it through description. I feel like description is one of the main ways to create wonder. If you describe something really well, especially if it's something strange—like I'm thinking of Cormac McCarthy describes all these men riding through the desert between the US and Mexico, and there's like little lightning bolts, little frictions of electricity that sort of are running all over their clothing. So it's completely dark, but there's these little blue flickers all over their bodies and the bodies of the horses. And I just imagined that and thought, wow, that's really crazy, and really beautiful. Yeah, that made me feel wonder. Joanna: That's interesting. I mean, the examples you've given are more literary fiction, really. Are you expecting that in genre fiction? John: That's a good question. I guess it depends on the author. I do think you can feel wonder at a romantic relationship. You can feel wonder at like the beauty that their love is finally coming together, something like that. I think if you're writing like a historical novel, or something that's more commercially based, describing like a bustling street with all the wares and people selling things, like that sort of level of description I think can make the reader be like, woah, like, that's a really cool place. Like, I'm glad I'm reading about this book because it's transporting me to a new location and giving me all this fun information about this. So any type of world-building you're doing or anything where you're introducing the reader to something that's strange to them, I think can create wonder. I think that applies for commercial books as well. Joanna: Me too. It's interesting because a lot of my book research is around trying to make these moments, because that's what I look for in books, and trying to kind of think what would my readers really love reading about. So I try and find cool settings or cool things that I can write about that make people go, wow, that's really awesome. So I think, just on that though, some people find that difficult. I was going to say about book research, you don't have to make it up from your brain, you can go on to YouTube. Like I wrote a scene in my thriller End of Days, which was about this Appalachian snake-handling church. I watched YouTube videos and took loads of notes, but I mean, it's just like a ‘wow' situation. I'd see what these people were doing and I'd just try and capture that in writing. So I guess that would be a tip. You don't have to make these moments of wonder up, you can go looking for input into your brain. John: That's exactly right. Yeah. I mean, snake handling is real, like it happens. And yeah, to watch that actually happen on the page, I think would definitely inspire a sense of wonder. Joanna: And then we talked about endings of the chapter, but the ending for the whole book is also really important. I mean, personally, I really need a resolution in my ending. Some people like cliffhangers at the end of a book, I do not. How can we write better endings? John: Well, whenever I have an author who tries a cliffhanger at the end of their book, they almost always do it a little wrong. So let me give a little piece of advice on that. You can include a cliffhanger at the end of the book, but it has to be like a sort of minor storyline cliffhanger, if that makes sense. Like you have to end the book with some sort of resolution to the main problem or conflict that's been happening for the whole book. Right? You can't leave a cliffhanger about that. So as long as you end the book and satisfy the reader on all the levels, all the mysteries that they were wondering about, all the major plot points, as long as you satisfy all those things, then I think it is possible to give like a tiny cliffhanger at the end of the book. The trouble is when people try to make like some major part of your story, not resolve it, and leave it as a cliffhanger. No, no, no. No one's going to read the next book because they feel so unsatisfied with this book. So usually when I recommend cliffhangers, it's not at the end of the book. Usually they are for the ends of chapters. I feel like that's the proper place for cliffhangers. I feel like your sole goal at the end of the book is not necessarily to set the reader up for the next book,  but really to make sure that this book resolves well and leaves them with a good emotional feeling, and that way they will read the next book. Joanna: And also — Be surprising, but not too surprising. I always use the example of Stephen King's Under the Dome. I'm not going to give any spoilers, but I read all the way through that book, and then when the ending happened, I was like, that was the wrong ending. I don't know if you read that one, but I love Stephen King. John: No, I haven't. I haven't read it. But I like what you said about surprising. I tell people it needs to feel both inevitable and surprising. Like when readers get there, they have to think, of course, it couldn't have been any other way, but also, they couldn't have predicted it. And those are two very contradictory things.  If you're setting the reader up for the ending, then the danger is they're going to guess it, and it's not going to be surprising. But if it's almost too surprising, the reader is going to feel like that doesn't feel real, I don't believe your story, you just did that to mess with the reader. So it's really holding both of those things in your hands when you're writing an ending, both surprising and inevitable. Joanna: Well, it's interesting because it is hard to write a novel, and many of us use various tools to help us when we write. There are plenty of books, obviously yours, I've got a book on How to Write a Novel, and then there are books that can help us with plotting and emotion and blah, blah, blah. And now, as we record this in April 2023, we have tools like ChatGPT, which is AI-powered. Now, you came on the show in 2021, and we talked about NFT books. You have definitely kept up with the tech and you've actually got some blog posts on how novelists can use ChatGPT. Tell us how you think novelists, and authors in general, can use these tools and your thoughts on using AI with fiction. John: I think all writers are underestimating the way that AI is going to radically change writing. I think very, very few writers have really grappled with the enormous sea change which is going to happen. And not like enormous sea change which is going to happen in five or 10 years, the enormous sea change which is going to happen in like six months or a year. I'm talking about people writing a book in a week with the assistance of AI. I'm talking about basically all copy editors and proofreaders being put out of work because AI is going to do your copy editing and proofreading. I mean, those are the big-level things, but there are tons of small things as well. Everything from if you're having trouble describing a certain place, like ask AI to describe that place for you.  Maybe you don't like how they write it so you rewrite it in your own voice, but then you can also get AI to write something in your own voice. Describe how you want it to be written. Like write it more colloquially, or in a breezy tone, or write it in a gritty 1920s style noir tone. You can get AI to mimic all these styles of writing as well. I mean, I just wrote a post on 26 ways that writers can use AI, and it's everything from writing the summary of your book, to writing your query letter, to describing things in your book, to developing your characters. I mean, it's like Google on crazy steroids is the best way to do research, that's for sure. The one thing I've discovered it can't do is give developmental advice, though. It's great at copy editing, it's not so great at line editing. But when I asked it to developmental editing on a chapter in a novel, a short story or a children's book, it gave really bad advice. Joanna: Well, that's at the moment, I mean, we are recording this in 2023. So if you're listening in the future, that may not be true anymore because it's about the context window of how much you can feed it. In GPT-4, it's a lot bigger. So you could pretty much do a novella now with GPT-4, which is in the paid version, because the input is a lot bigger so it has a lot more it can review. But of course, a full-length novel, you can't put 100,000 words into the chat box for it to think about. [If you're interested in this, check out ChatGPT 32K, and also Anthropic's Claude with 100K. Both of these are expensive at the time of publishing this, but costs will keep coming down.] John: No. I mean, I've been using ChatGPT-4 and it wouldn't even allow me to put 16,000 words in there, and I have the paid version. So I don't know. Joanna: The playground, the API. John: But the problem isn't putting enough in there, the problem is when I ask it to critique point of view, it can never say like, “You're doing great with point of view. Point of view is great.” Like it's mimicking what a developmental editor does, so it says, “Oh, you're in limited third. Here's what you can do to change it.” Sometimes that's not the problem, right? So it's a little weak on problems of judgment and taste. While it's really good at following the rules, which is why it's amazing at copy editing. But you're absolutely right. Like this is the first iteration, like, we're only at the beginning, what's going to happen in a year? In three years? In five years? Like, the exponential growth is going to be pretty crazy. It's going to get smarter much faster than we think. Joanna: Personally, I feel like I'm excited, and I feel like it's an augmentation of what I can do. I can move much faster with the help of GPT-4. One of the cool things I've been doing, I was just checking to see if you've put it in, I don't think you have, is that I can actually interview a character who is a certain thing that I don't know much about. More on my thoughts in this episode on the ai-assisted artisan author So for example, I've got an urban explorer in my next novel, and I said, “You are Maxine, who is this urban explorer in Edinburgh. Using your knowledge of platforms and chat rooms and things, respond to my questions as if you are Maxine.” And this was so good, because you know, we struggle to write the dialogue in the voice of a character we might not know that well.  In the past, authors have written character bios and stuff like that, but this is actually almost channeling the voice of someone and it's coming back with words that I wouldn't have used myself because I didn't know them. And I'd have to do a heck of a lot of research to find the right words. So this kind of channeling of characters is really interesting. John: Oh, that's brilliant. Joanna: It's really fun. It's really fun as well. John: I mean, the ability to talk with your character, that's so cool. Joanna: It is very cool. John: You might not even use what they actually say, but it's giving you their language, it's giving you their perspective, like it makes it much easier for you to write them. Joanna: Exactly. And then I've been using it for loads of things, like coming up with different monsters, combining different monsters. I'm writing a monster book at the moment, it's called Catacomb, it's a standalone horror book. And coming up with, what are the different monsters in these different cultures? And how could we combine them together? And what could be the names? Like names are really good as well. What are the names that mean this or that or the other? John: Yeah, yeah, I've played around with world-building aspects as well. You know, Tolkien took decades to create all the languages and everything of Middle Earth, and I can say, “Hey, create a language that mixes Sumerian, Turkish and Pawnee Native American dialects. Like create the alphabet, create the 100 most common words.” Then get DALL-E or Midjourney to draw you a map of your fictional land. Like, it's so easy to have all this stuff generated now. And you're like, oh, wow, now I have a language, and a culture, and land, the species, the languages, the cultures. You can just ask ChatGPT to make all this stuff up, or to give you five or ten examples, and then you pick the one you really like. Joanna: Well, it's interesting, because you mentioned Midjourney, and I'm doing a lot of generative art as well. And there's a new word that people are using, which is synthography. I don't know if you've seen this. You know, like photography is pictures that you generate with the device and synthography is pictures that you're generating with AI. And I was thinking about this with how writing might change using these tools. Given that you are an editor and you see people's work, how do you expect books to change with AI? John: I think revision might become easier. Like, say you have a character and I tell them, like, you know what, this character's dialogue is really flat on the page. Okay. And they can go back to ChatGPT and be like, “Okay, well, here's all the examples of this character's dialogue in my novel. Take an excerpt from every time this character speaks and tweak it in one way.” Make it a little bit more slangy, or make her sound like she has an accent. You can just give the character some dialogue, and then you can just take all those revised bits of dialogue and put them back into your novel. And suddenly, you've done a revision which could take a really, really long time and be tough to figure out, and it's done pretty quickly. Joanna: Yes, I mean, even incorporating the ideas like asking for twists. Like I've been saying, “Okay, so this is how I think this plot is going to go. Give me ten other ways that the characters could behave in this situation that would be plot twists.” And it's coming up with things that I haven't thought of that are better ideas. Then I'm like, okay, cool, I'm going to use that idea instead of what was originally my idea, and that makes the book a lot more twisty, in this particular example. I think having a co-pilot for ideas is also really powerful. John: Yeah, yeah. I suggest something pretty similar to that, and I couch it in terms of like writer's block. Say you're stuck in the middle of your novel and you don't know what to do. Well, you could have ChatGPT summarize your novel up to that point or you can write a summary and then say, “Yeah, give me five different ways the story could develop from here. Make sure to add a plot twist and a surprise,” and something like that. Like you can direct like, alright, these are the type of narrative developments that I'm looking for, give me suggestions. Yeah, a couple of them are dodgy, but there's almost always at least a few that you're like, oooooh, that sounds interesting. Joanna: Okay, well, we're almost out of time. But you also had another blog post where you said, “When will AI start writing novels?” And you've said, they will write novels, not great novels, but readable novels. I kind of disagree. I think that the quality of what we're even seeing now with us driving is great. But again, you're an editor— Will you know if someone gives you a fully generated novel, or even one partially driven by a human? Do you think you'll know? John: That's a great question. I don't think I will know. I don't know. And remember, we're right at the very beginning of this technology. I mean, think about in two years or three years, I really do think that AI will be able to put together an entire novel. What I mean by maybe not a great book is I mean, you know, there are some books that, geez, and I guess I am thinking of literary fiction, where it's like the density of language and everything is quite astonishing. I feel like what ChatGPT will be best at, and other AI programs will be best at, is looking at ones that are based on models, looking at books based on models, whether like plot models, or characterization models, and hitting all those plot points. I think that very soon we're going to see entire books written by AI. I think humans will act more as editors. They'll go through and be like, “Okay, look, AI. That one chapter didn't work for whatever reason. Rewrite it.” And so you're giving feedback, you're almost acting like a beta reader for the AI program, being like, redo this part, redo this part, let's change the ending to this. But in general, the AI will be doing most of the heavy lifting of the sentence writing and the plot development and everything, and you're just guiding it. Joanna: It is interesting because I think people will choose the way they'll create depending on how they're feeling. So I definitely think you'll do different things depending on what you want to achieve. And as humans, we still want to create. I think that's the basic thing. So people listening, you'll still write how you want to write. We're not saying that this is the way it has to be, but it's another way to create. In the same way that I love taking pictures with my iPhone, I'm not a painter, and I love using Midjourney. I don't draw. I think as a writer, I still hand write in my journal, I still type on my laptop, I still dictate, and I use AI. So you can use all these things to create what you want. I guess that's how I see it. John: Yeah, I think a lot of writers aren't going to use AI because they get a lot of pleasure out of doing it themselves. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I mean, I get a lot of pleasure out of coming up with something out of my own brain rather than having AI do it for me. That doesn't mean you can't still use AI as a great tool to help you with revision or to help you with idea generation, and then you actually do the writing of the sentences. You just got to navigate those sorts of relationships for yourself. What I don't get is writers who are like, oh, like, I hate all AI. It's like, well, do you use Microsoft Word? Like, there's like spelling and grammar correction on there already. Like you've already been working as a hybrid author with technology for the last 20 or 30 years. This is just better software, so I don't think you should hate it. You should use it to whatever extent that you want to use it. Joanna: Fantastic. Where can people find you, and your books, and your courses, and these blog posts online? John: So you can Google Bookfox or the URL of my website is TheJohnFox.com. The name of my book is The Linchpin Writer which you can find on Amazon. All my courses are on my website. Then of course, I'm on socials. I'm mainly on TikTok, but also on Instagram and YouTube as well. Joanna: Well, thanks so much for your time, John. That was great. John: It was a pleasure talking with you, as always.The post Crafting Your Novel’s Key Moments With John Matthew Fox first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can we write about places that inspire us in an authentic way even when they are not our own country? Tony Park gives his tips for writing setting, and also outlines how his publishing experience has changed over the last two decades. In the intro, KDP printing costs are changing from 20 June; plus, join me for AI for Writers online webinars. This podcast is sponsored 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.  Tony Park is the author of 20 thriller novels set in Africa, as well as the co-writer of several biographies. You can listen above or 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 Tony's publishing experience has changed over two decades Splitting territories when licensing your rights and tips for rights reversion Tips for writing setting and how it incorporates into all aspects of your book Research and avoiding stereotypes Writing outside of your own country and personal experience Balancing writing a compelling story with advocating for a cause (without lecturing) You can find Tony at TonyPark.net Transcript of Interview with Tony Park Joanna: Tony Park is the author of 20 thriller novels set in Africa, as well as the co-writer of several biographies. So welcome, Tony. Tony: Oh, Joanna, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. I really appreciate it. I'm a huge fan. Joanna: Thank you so much. First off— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. Tony: Look, it might sound a bit cliche, but it's absolutely true, that the only thing I ever wanted to do in life, from the time I was a little boy growing up in Sydney, in Australia, was to write a book. My family weren't particularly well off, and my mum was working two jobs and used to leave us in the library after school. I just thought, wouldn't it be cool if this could be your job to write books. Of course, as we all know, listening to this podcast, it's not like you can wake up one day and say, okay, I'm going to write a book, and publish it, and away we go. I loved writing as a kid. I wasn't any good at English or maths at school, and so I pinned my hopes on writing. After I left school, I got a job working in local newspapers, and that cemented my love of writing. Then I just tried and tried and tried. I had a number of false starts over the years as my life progressed. I'd wake up early in the morning before work and try and start a novel. And I'd try after work, and I couldn't really focus. This went on for years and years. Too long, I think I waited too long to get serious about it. I got married, and got a mortgage, and real life intruded and everything. The two biggest challenges I faced were time, right, that everybody faces, you know. But a place was what eluded me, and I know we're going to talk about that a bit later on. All I knew is I wanted to write a novel. I hadn't even really thought long enough to think where I was going to set it or when I was going to set it. When I was about 32, 33, I went to my wife and I said, “I've got an idea. How about I leave work and you support us for six months, and I'll try and write a book?” Joanna: Nice one! Tony: And to my utter astonishment, she said, “Yes, go for it,” because I think she was sick of me, you know, going on about how much I wanted to write. And so I did. I left work, and I wrote a book. I bought a couple of books about how to write books. I wrote this book like textbook style, like I plotted it meticulously, I had character profiles, and a timeline, and chapter breakdown and everything. The place I picked for it was wrong because I made a fundamental error. I was writing a book that I think I wanted other people to read, rather than something I was passionate about. So I set it in the Australian Outback. And there was one tiny problem, I've never actually been to The Outback. Joanna: Even though you're Australian. Tony: Even though I'm Australian. I'm a city boy, you know, I was living in the suburbs.  I took six months, I wrote a book, and I failed spectacularly. I didn't enjoy the process of plotting. I didn't know that you could not plot, that you could just make it up as you went along because I had no formal training. And I found it very mechanical and very boring.  [More on discovery writing here!] Around about that time, my wife and I went on a holiday to Africa, which was supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime trip. Instead, we got hooked on Africa and went back the following year, and back the following year.  On my third trip to Africa, we had a long trip, about four months around Southern Africa, and I had another go at writing a book because I once more had time. I'd had to go back to work, but I once more had time. And here I was in a place that I had kind of started to get to know, and was amazing and inspirational and fascinating, and there was so much going on here. I thought, I could write a book set in Africa. And instead of plotting it, I'll just make it up as I go along. So it was set on a fictitious tour around Africa, as my wife and I were travelling around Southern Africa. Each day as we moved camp, I just wrote another few pages and made it up as we went along, and just copied the landscapes that we were in into the text.  I sent it to a publisher, and the first publisher I sent it to, Pan Macmillan Australia, published it. And my publisher said you can write the books in Africa. And here I am 20 years later writing the books in Africa. Joanna: I love the story. There's so much to learn from that. So 20 years later, and we're going to come back to Africa and the setting thing, but you said 20 years later, you're still writing and publishing. But of course, things have changed in 20 years. One of the things I picked up from your website is that you also run Ingwe Publishing. Tell us how your publishing experience has changed over the last two decades? Because things have really changed and you have too, obviously. Tony: It's massive the amount of change. Yeah, my life has changed, it has moved on. Technology has changed. Everything has moved on. And I think like, you know, when we talk about those days, it seems like a long time ago, is that people would pin their hopes on getting a commercial publishing deal. And I did, and I was absolutely thrilled and over the moon when I got it. A funny little side story, I was in the Australian Army Reserve for 34 years. I was actually in Afghanistan. I was deployed there in 2002 when I got the email from my publisher saying, “Hey, good news. Open this email, we're going to give you a publishing contract.” And I couldn't even have a beer to celebrate because we were on the dry out there. So I was really thrilled to get a publishing deal. I thought that was the be all and end all. And over the years, I had some limited success, it started to grow. My primary market was my home market in Australia, even though these books are all set in Africa. It is a thing, it's almost like a genre of its own, African fiction. I had some success getting commercial publishing deals in the UK, and later in the US, but the books didn't do particularly well. I had gone from this high to thinking, “Oh, no, why aren't I selling many books there?” And that really started to affect me quite badly. Then things changed dramatically, you know, over the last few years, and I learned so much. Not least of all from your podcasts and hearing from other authors who were independently publishing.  Of course, 20 years ago, when I was first publishing, there was quite a bit of stigma attached to self-publishing. You know, it was called vanity publishing, because you had to be very vain, and you had to be very rich to do it. You'd have to print thousands of copies of books, and then pay a distributor to try and get them in the shop. So it was this hugely involved, expensive process.  I have found in more recent years, that what made more sense for me was to kind of do a civil sort of deal with my UK publishers and the distributors and say, “Look, guys, it's not really working for both of us,” because it wasn't. I was losing so much, because I had an agent at the time, I was losing so much on all of the in-between cuts that come out of a royalty. It wasn't worth it. I was down to about 30 pence per book, I think I was making, you know. So I set up Ingwe Publishing, Ingwe means leopard, and took back my rights. I was then able to start exploring print on demand and eBook self-publishing, and indie publishing. And I found that for my sales in the UK and US, which I'm very proud of, but you know, I'm not selling hundreds of thousands, or millions of books, I make a really, really good second income out of it.  I think having your own imprint and taking control of those matters, not just from a business side of things, but from a personal side of things, has been really rewarding and fulfilling, far more so than chasing those kinds of overseas publishing deals and trying to define yourself by those sorts of deals. Which they quite often aren't really in the interest of an author. Joanna: So you're, I guess, what we now call a hybrid author, in that you still license to traditional publishing in Australia? Tony: And South Africa. Australia, New Zealand and South Africa are my commercial markets, or traditional markets. Yeah. Joanna: Okay, that's really interesting. And so just for people listening, that's English language that you have split into territory. So you're not signing contracts for World English, you're splitting the territories. Tony: Absolutely. And I made so many mistakes when I started out. Like I was so pathetically grateful to my publisher, and I still am, you know, but I had to look at this now as a business. I wouldn't say I didn't read my contracts, I didn't really understand them that well, maybe. But yeah, I was willy-nilly signing over English language rights worldwide. I then had to go back to my publisher and say, “Look, I'm going to start doing my own thing. So I need you to please give me back all those worldwide rights.” The same thing went for audio. I've been really interested to hear you talk about changes in the audiobook world. I have a good relationship with an audiobook publisher, with Bolinda, in Australia. And I now keep my audio rights to myself, and I do with them what I want to.  I think too many authors that chase that commercial publishing deal are so grateful, that they think I'll do whatever you want to, you know, I will give you anything that you possibly ask for. And of course, that doesn't make sense. So yeah, I'm a hybrid, I guess is the best way to talk about it. I really enjoy doing my own thing. Of course, it is such an amazing, constantly changing environment that we live and work in. It puts a lot of onus on authors to stay on top of that, but I enjoy it. I enjoy kind of the buzz of the business side of it. Joanna: I think that's a good tip as well. I mean, you do have to enjoy the business side. I think you can learn how to enjoy it. I mean, like you said, you didn't start out that way, you just learned it over time. That's important Just a question on the process of getting your rights back. So there'll be people listening who have signed those contracts, maybe a while back, or even more recently, and now they're like, oh, dear, I shouldn't have signed that. Give us a few tips on the process of getting rights back. Tony: Yeah, well, I think if you have a good relationship with your publisher that certainly helps. And I was lucky, I always had a good friendly relationship. I never at any stage got the feeling that they were ever trying to rip me off or pull one over on me or anything like that. It was more a matter of saying to them, “Look, I signed over all my English language rights. You had a go at getting me some foreign translations deals or foreign publishing deals, maybe a UK deal because I was based in Australia, and it didn't work. I would like to take those back.” I didn't have any resistance for that. Certainly, when there's no money involved, there's no resistance. In the case of one of my earlier books, Pan Macmillan Australia got me a publishing deal with Pan Macmillan UK. That book was in print for a year or two and didn't do particularly well. They didn't want any more of the books. So then when I said, “Can I have all my English language rights back?” they didn't really have a leg to stand on. They had tried to get me a UK deal, it didn't work. So I had to do it in writing, it's quite an involved process. I've got to do it in writing, and then the rights people within the publishing house have to do an amendment and send that back to you to sign. Where there's money involved, I'm also looking at taking back some rights from the UK from a publisher that still distributes into South Africa, which is one of the deals I did in the past. And if I want those rights back for South Africa, I'll have to pay for those. They will calculate that based on my annual sales and any advances that are still outstanding.  In my personal experience, if there's not really any serious money involved in it, publishers are very reasonable on this kind of thing. Joanna: Yes, it's interesting, isn't it, that paying for things. I actually recently paid out an audiobook narrator in order to get the rights back for an audiobook. I mean, it's funny, because when we sign these things originally, we have a certain thing in mind, then years later, we're like, okay, I've changed my mind. That's fine. So it's good to know, and people listening, you can go back and renegotiate contracts. That is part of it. As you say, trying to be less emotional is probably the best idea. Like whose business interest is it in and try and think about it from the publisher's perspective as well. Try to come to a business arrangement, not an emotional thing. It's good to know, or at least be interested enough, to read about copyright and how these contracts work. It's kind of fun once you once you get into it. It's really interesting.  Let's return to Africa. So hopefully people can hear from your accent that you are Australian, and obviously you mentioned it before. But your books are set in Africa, and you live between Sydney and South Africa. So tell us a bit more about the books and how you weave in your fascination with Africa and how you write setting when you're not from this country. You set it in South Africa, obviously Africa is not a country, South Africa being the country. What are your tips for writing these settings? And why Africa? Tony: Yeah, well, why Africa, I think because there's that great adage that says, “Write about what you know,” but I think write about what you're interested in. And this is a continent that continues to fascinate me, you know, more than 20 years since I first visited here because it's always changing. There's so many different cultures, so many different countries. The countries that I write about within, broadly, Southern Africa, have also changed dramatically in some cases over the last 25-26 years or so. So there's plenty of inspiration there, which is important. I'm passionate about things like the continent, wildlife, and also social issues that are going on in some of the countries that I write about, and the politics. That's my hook, I guess, and that's what I'm interested in. When it comes to setting, it's crucial because a lot of the people who buy my books I'm sure just buy them because they're set in Africa. I know so many of my readers who will just read every Wilbur Smith book or every Rider Haggard book or they'll read everything that they can possibly find set in Africa. Perhaps they've lived it. Perhaps they're an expat who's moved to the UK or moved to Australia, and part of them misses their home country. So there's an interest in setting. Setting becomes like a hook for someone to buy a book, so it's very important. I have come up with a few tips. I did a presentation on it recently. The first thing I'd say about setting that I've learned is — You have to make setting work for you. You have to give it a job. It's not just window dressing. It's not just describing a lovely location or just to anchor a character in their scene. Setting can show us how a character is thinking or what they're feeling, and that'll be colored and enhanced by the environment around them and how they view it. You know, say a character is up or happy, they'll revel in the rich beauty of the Savanna landscape, the wildlife, and they'll be fascinated by the heritage and the people. But if they're down or facing adversity or in danger, then you weave in things like the laden skies, the dirty streetscapes, the tatty old buildings, or that lion lurking in the long grass with the chilling golden eyes as a portent of doom. So you give your descriptions of location and setting a job, I think is something that I've learned over the years. Then setting and place, they're more than just the physical description of the landscape. I think people can fall into that trap of waxing lyrical about what the area looks like. But of course, it takes in things like the history of the place, the politics and culture which go to the mood of that particular place and setting. It's the people in the street, the music that's playing, the public art or graffiti, the food on the streets, or the absence of food, what people are drinking. When it comes to people, the different cultures, fashions, languages, and backgrounds of people are crucial in the sort of books I write. Quite often, these are sources of conflict as well as kind of celebration and enrichment in the countries that I live in. Quite often, things like culture and politics are life and death matters in the background of where I write my books.  Then of course, there's the natural world. The wildlife, the birds, reptiles, the environment and the state of the environment, the problems with the natural landscape, which certainly are things that I touch on with things like poaching and environmental issues, and climate comes into it. So the third thing I would say to people is— When you're writing place, use all of the key elements of writing, not just description. Also use narrative and dialogue because with the narrative you can weave in a little bit of the history and the impressions of the streetscape and the country from your character's point of view. Certainly use the description, this is your excuse to exercise your skill and your flair in describing a scene, painting a picture. That's good, but also use dialogue. I always say to people, a simple example is, rather than say it's hot or come up with some metaphor for how hot it is, just have a character say, “I'm melting.” So work in a bit of dialogue into the setting. If I can just continue, the fourth one, I would say, I always love to tell people, “Show, don't tell.” I don't have any tattoos, Joanna, but I always tell people when I'm giving writing courses or instruction that if I was going to have tattoos I would write, ‘Show, don't tell,” on one hand, and I would write, ‘Trust the process,' on my other hand to sort of keep me motivated each day. I think show, don't tell is a good thing to keep harping on about it and to keep bringing back. So when it comes to describing a setting, show us, let us feel it. Drop us in the middle of the bush or the marketplace — Engage the senses, at least a couple of them at a time. I mean, let's have your character smell the street food cooking, or the musty dirty laundry smell of an elephant, because that's what an elephants smells like, like if you've left your washing too long in the hamper and it's all dead. Get that sort of thing in there. There's some good advice that I picked up from Stephen King's book, On Writing, which is I guess if I could say, my Bible. I hope I don't offend anyone by saying that, but it's my go-to book is Stephen King's On Writing. He talks about zooming in on the little things. Don't just say the birds were singing, but give us the name of the bird and what its call is. Show us Charlie's doll in the rubble of the burned out building. In some of my books, I pick up the most amazing things as I travel and research. I put in one book, Safari, that's set in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I had a character drinking Guinness and Coca-Cola, which is a particularly popular drink in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A few people messaged me after that saying, “Do people really drink Guinness mixed with Coca-Cola?” And they do. Stephen King says a few well-chosen details will stand for the rest.  The final thing I want to say about place is something I've learned the hard way — You've got to get it right. This is our job, you know. We have entered into a kind of contract with the reader where if they want to be taken to another place, they expect it to be done accurately and faithfully, particularly if they've lived there themselves. If you're lucky enough to go and visit a place that you want to set your novel in, to travel as part of your job as a writer, that's great, but you have to make sure that if you've got characters that are living in that area, that the places and the experiences are relevant to them. Just a very quick example of that. I read a crime novel not too long ago by a very big name, a world-renowned crime writer, who had obviously been to Sydney, to my hometown, and they've obviously had a very good time there because this author had a character, an Australian character, who was a policeman, a Detective Sergeant who lived in a place called Brighton, which is actually called Brighton-Le-Sands. It's not called Brighton, so that was a mistake, he kind of abbreviated that. But this detective sergeant couldn't meet the lead character because he was taking his son sailing that afternoon at a place called Rushcutters Bay. Now Rushcutters Bay and Brighton are at two opposite ends of the city. And Brighton is on Botany Bay, it's a very good place to go sailing. So why this detective sergeant would be taking his son to Rushcutters Bay sailing in the afternoon didn't make any sense. I have yet to come across a cop that owns a yacht in Sydney. Joanna: Maybe in Auckland. Tony: Maybe. I've yet to come across one who probably wasn't crooked that would be able to afford membership of the Rushcutters Bay Club. So they're all these like jarring references. The descriptions were probably spot on, but it's about context, right? It's about getting things right, and it's about context. And I would say to people, as I do whenever I'm talking about research, the same thing goes to place, is visit these places, read about them, learn about them.  The best way to research or to capture place accurately, particularly if you're not from there, and this is the situation I have found myself over the years, is talk to a local. Spend your time finding a local, online if you have to, and just ask them a few questions about their hometown and what it's like. So sorry, that was quite long, but that's my five basic tips. Joanna: Good tips there, but you know, I'm going to have to challenge you. Yeah, we have to talk about the ‘elephant on the podcast,' which is, at the end of the day, you're an Australian and you're writing about Africa. You're also a white guy. And obviously, there are a lot of white Africans, but there are also a lot of other people in Africa. One of the things in this current writing climate is a perspective on writing authentically based on your own background. Now, and also like you mentioned before, African fiction being a genre, and you mentioned Wilbur Smith, who, again, someone from the outside. So how are you addressing this? Has it come up for you? How are you addressing it? And what are your recommendations for people? Tony: Yeah, it sure has. And it's a really, really good question. It's very topical, very relevant as well, too. Also it can be a tricky one because people will say, you know, you can't appropriate a particular culture or a particular race or something like that to write about if you're not from there. And yet, on the same hand, I don't want to be criticized for only having like all white guys in my books because that's not reflective of my readership over here in South Africa anymore. The interesting thing is, there's two strands to it, publishers are certainly becoming more aware of it. So my South African publishers will do a sensitivity read these days. They're looking at sort of cultural aspects, any issues to do with race or background and those sort of things, which is good. The other thing that I've found, from a personal point of view, my books have changed over the years in line with my experience. So my earlier novels tended to be about outsiders who found themselves in Africa, tourists or people visiting for work or something, who then got themselves in a bit of trouble because the books are thrillers, or got tangled up with poachers or something like that, because that was my experience, I was learning at the time. As time has gone on, and I live here now most of the year, my circle of friends has grown. My readership has changed because South Africa has a really good vibe about it at the moment. Publishing is doing well and changing as socio economic standards and demographics and things changed here in South Africa. So there is a growing affluent, middle to upper class, I guess you would say, here of African people that has kind of emerged in the last 20 years or so. They have more leisure time, more time to spend going visiting national parks, more interest in reading fiction. There's quite a boom here in African women's fiction here at the moment, which is fantastic to see. And what I'm finding is my readers here in South Africa are from the various African cultures, from the Indian culture, from the English-speaking South African culture, from the Afrikaans-speaking South African culture, and they're my friends. So I feel like a need I have to tap into those cultures and reflect them in my writing. So I go out of my way to do my own sensitivity checks. You know, it's a really important thing to say, and it's not to be glossed over because when I have seen when I've done a bit of mentoring, and if I've seen other people talking about some of the cultures, I want to ask them, “Have you actually checked a lot of this stuff?”  It's not good enough to go online and say, I'm going to have somebody speaking a few words in an African language. This is a mistake I've made. Well, this was a mistake that was caught before publishing, but I had a book set in Zimbabwe called African Dawn, which is a bit of a sweeping saga over 50 years of Zimbabwe's tumultuous history and all the politics and conflict that have gone on in their country. And I'm lucky, I've got quite a few Zimbabwean readers. I got a lady called Takram Woodsy who was living in Australia to check this book. And thank goodness I did because I had things like I had a character greeting another character, she was a female character greeting an older male, and she says to him ,”Kanjani,” and Kanjani is hello in Shona. It's like in Australia it would be ‘G'day' or ‘How's it' or whatever. And she said, no, no, no, no, no, you can't do that. She says, she has to say ‘Mangwanani baba,' which is ‘good morning, father' in the formal tone and with a term of respect, because it just jarred her to the core. And she says, you can't do that. And here am I waltzing around Zimbabwe saying Kanjani to everybody I meet. You've got to have a little bit of knowledge. And the other thing, Joanna, is a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Again, it's about research and researching place. I don't even like really do a lot of research when I'm writing. If I don't know something, like a piece of language, or even a technical thing, like how to stitch up a wound or fly a helicopter or something, I just leave it blank, and just put ‘check' in my manuscript, and then I read search retrospectively. So after I've done the first draft, I'll go out and find a person. I've had about six people read my forthcoming book, a book called Vendetta, which is set partially in the 1980s in South Africa, when the country during the apartheid era was engaged in a war in Angola. And I've had quite a few people read this book for accuracy and sensitivity because the best way to research is talk to people. I am 100% convinced of that after 20 years, that that is the best and most accurate way is to find a subject matter expert, or someone from that culture or community, to read and check your work, if they'll do that. I find people are very generous. It's probably more work than reading lots of books and researching online, but the human element is just crucial for me on that sensitivity side of things. Joanna: And obviously, you love the research process, too. I mean, that obviously comes through in what you're saying. I also love the research process. So I think research and respect, respect for all of these different cultures. Of course, Africa, particularly every single African country has so many different groups as well. You can't possibly know all these things, whoever you are, you cannot know everything. So yeah— Respect and research. I think that those are really good tips. Tony: It's a beautiful way to put it. Yeah, I must say that's a really, really good way to put it. Joanna: I certainly encourage, as you do as well, we encourage people to write about things outside of their own culture and experience because, like, why would we be fiction writers otherwise? It would be so boring. But yes, those are some ways to avoid trouble.  I also want to ask you, you've mentioned the wildlife, and you've said that your books include social issues, politics, the environment, and many authors want to bring attention to causes they care about, but equally, these things can turn into like a lecture. And it's like, oh, gosh, not another book bashing on about the environment when I just wanted a thriller. How do you balance writing a compelling story and then advocating for things that you want to bring attention to? Tony: Yeah, another really, really good question. And I think there was something I read, it might have been in Stephen King's book, that the story is king. I don't know whether that was a play on words, but you got to keep the readers turning the pages. Whether it's comes to describing a location, or history, or having to give some historical background, if you get too bogged down, the reader is going to stop turning the pages. And the same thing goes for causes as well. I am passionate about those things that I mentioned about wildlife and some socio economic causes and politics, but I am acutely aware that within my readership, there are people on the polar opposite sides of these issues. I don't want to alienate anybody for commercial reasons, but I want to kind of be honest. As I said, I did work as a journalist for a few years. I don't think there's an awful lot from having worked as a journo that really helps you to write fiction, but I would say the two exceptions to that are dialogue, because you kind of get taught and used to putting words in people's mouths as a journalist. You get used to capturing spoken speech in a written format. But the other thing is balance. And when I present an issue, say rhino poaching, which is an issue that comes up in a few of my books. Rhinos are killed for their horn, and it's a big problem here in South Africa because this is, unfortunately, where the last most of the world's rhinos live here. So this is kind of Ground Zero.  There is an ongoing debate in Rhino conservation about whether or not to legalize the trade in Rhino horn. I have my personal views. I'm actually opposed to it, but many of my friends are vehemently in favor of it. And so when it comes to an issue like that, I try to weave in both sides of the debate. Again, in a respectful manner, as you say. So I will have a character who is kind of pro-trade, pro-legalization in trading rhino horn, and I'll have one who's stridently against. I'm sure that, I hope at least, that the pro-trade people look at their character and feel more sympathy for them than they do for the other one. And the same thing comes with politics as well, too, because like I said, politics is a life and death business over here in some countries. Joanna: For sure. Tony: And so, I am not kind of afraid of stating things, but— I try to approach it as I would if I was a journo: objectively, with balance, and respectfully. So you don't go into a diatribe about why this particular policy or politician is bad, but you try and show the effects that their policies have had on an individual person. Like Stephen King says, zoom in. So if you see people obviously poorly dressed, they're starving, they're perhaps begging for food, and you see a politician driving past in a brand new Mercedes Benz, you don't have to be told there's something wrong with that scene. You show, don't tell. People reading that will nod their heads and say, yeah, that's accurate. That's pretty well how it is in some of the countries that I write about. So you fall back on the good old show, don't tell. My editor and publisher are very good at putting little notes in the side of the margin saying, “Stop downloading, Tony. You're downloading information.” Joanna: That's the problem when you love research, right? I want to tell you everything. Tony: It's the classic trap, isn't it? And we've all fallen for it. Joanna: But then I would say as a reader, like I grew up with Wilbur Smith as well, and Rider Haggard, and I actually loved that. I'm sure you've heard me talk about how I went to school in Malawi, and so sort of reading about Africa, and that's how I came to know of your books. Connecting with you is quite thrilling for me because I've seen your books for years. So that's quite kind of cool, you know. That's because of reading books set in Africa that I've done since I was a child. Tony: Fantastic. Yeah. And I think if you look at someone like Wilbur, who is unfortunately passed away, but the books of his that I like the most were those early ones set in the 70s and 80s, when he was writing a lot about contemporary Southern Africa and the issues that were would be at the time. And I think that's what strikes a chord with people, as well, because it's a funny continent as you've been acutely aware. There's lots of problems here. There's crime, and corruption, and political mismanagement, and poverty, and health issues tend to be exponentially worse here.  The interesting thing about this continent, it comes back to the people, is that I think if there's one thing that struck me that's greater than the scale of problems that people face, and you would have no doubt scene this yourself, it's the ability of good people, more often than not at the village level or the grassroots level or the volunteer level or the park ranger level, to just come together and do the most extraordinary things. They go out of their way to get their children in education, sacrifice so much so that the next generation will be better off.  In the case of rangers in the anti-poaching area, they literally put their lives on the line to protect wildlife. That's the sort of thing that I like to capture because that's what kind of inspires me. That's what I used to like reading about in some of those other African books as well too, that kind of raw effort at the grassroots level of people to sort of do the right thing. Joanna: The other thing, I mean, you're talking a lot about the historical aspects of Africa and South Africa, but I mean, things are obviously very different now as well, in that it has one of the biggest mobile economies, that leapfrog idea of tech where everyone's using mobile payments and mobile, not even banking, just mobile apps for money. And we were reading this article the other day about blood delivery by drone, like the drone deliveries in to places in Africa is really exciting. And we can't do that here because different regulations and just overcrowding and things like that. And, of course, Nigeria is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. So I feel like another issue is how people are thinking, and like you say, if they haven't visited places. How do we avoid the stereotypes? Because I feel like books written about like 1980s South Africa, for example, that's just not the reality of what South Africa is now. And any of these countries have just changed so much, and I'm sure there are still some people living in some areas where it hasn't changed.  How can people avoid writing stereotypes about place? Tony: Yeah, well, I think when it comes to travel, like if you're lucky enough to say I'm going to go on holiday to South Africa to research as well, one of the problems is you might end up cocooned. You might end up stuck on the luxury private game reserve or something like that, and you won't see what's going on outside in the big wide world. I'm not advocating that people, you know, go out to areas where they might not feel safe or comfortable, but it does go to talking to people. That's something that I keep coming back to is that my best source of research is human beings, is talking to people. To give you an example about not falling into stereotypes as well, too, is during lockdown, I read a book called Blood Trail. Blood Trail is like a couple of my other books about rhino poaching, but it's about a particular aspect of that struggle is that poachers, and sometimes Rangers, will enlist the help of traditional healers, sangoma, to give them talismans, or medicine, or potions, if you like, that they believe will increase their chances of surviving in the bush. Whether that is they're a Ranger or whether they're a poacher, they will buy a potion that will make them invisible or will turn them into an animal to avoid detection or to avoid being shot. And these are serious, serious beliefs. Now, many people will just dismiss this out of hand. And to those sort of people that say, well, that's a load of nonsense, I'd say, have you never prayed? And there's a wonderful saying that there are no atheists in foxholes. People do turn to religion and other belief systems in the context of high-risk, high-reward environments. And that can be a war zone or it could be going out in the bush trying to kill a rhino and being against armed Rangers. So the way I got around that, and the way I did my research for that book, was to have some pretty in depth conversations with some friends of mine about their belief systems. And in the course of doing that, I was able to get so much rich information about their current attitudes to politics and how the country was going, just by conversations. I think one of the great things about being a writer, and it sort of is the same as being a journalist, is that you kind of have a license to ask the most in depth and personal questions of people. And that's the best way to avoid stereotypes because you're getting the information straight from the person's mouth and from the heart.  I was able to learn so much more about some of my friends by asking them, “Hey, do you believe in traditional medicine? And would you use it yourself and why?” And again, I found so many parallels with Western culture, and our belief systems, and superstitions and things like that. So that's how I try and avoid it. You know, it's that human contact, that human element. Joanna: Fantastic. Well, there's so much we could talk about, but we're out of time. Tell people where they can find you and your books online. Tony: I've got my good old website, which is www.TonyPark.net. I do sell wide, as we said, everywhere outside South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. So yeah, I'm online, on print, audio, and eBook everywhere. So TonyPark.net is my home base. Joanna: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Tony. That was great. Tony: Thank you so much, Joanna. I really appreciate it. And can I just say again how much I enjoy your podcast. I think we talk a lot about social media, and I love through social media that I have a direct conduit to my readers and we can have a genuine conversation with each other. And podcasts such as yours and others I've learned through your podcast are so great because now as authors we can have that same level of communication with each other and learn from each other. So thank you for everything that you do. Joanna: Thank you.The post Writing Novels Inspired By Place With Tony Park first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What are some of the common mental health issues that writers face? How can we use writing to help us process our problems, and turn our life into art through our books? Author and mental health therapist Toby Neal shares her thoughts and tips. It's Mental Health Awareness Week here in the UK with a special focus on anxiety, which so many of us experience in different ways. Get 20% off The Healthy Writer, The Relaxed Author and The Successful Author Mindset on my store using discount code: HEALTH. In the introduction, Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity by Dr Peter Attia; Menopausing by Davina McCall; Ultimate Guide to Selling Print Books Online [ALLi]; TikTok publishing? [TechCrunch]; Google rolling out generative AI, Duet for Workspace; Generative Search, Marketing Against the Grain podcast; Did we consent to our data training generative AI? [The Author Analyst]; Writing memoir & Pilgrimage. Today's podcast sponsor is Findaway Voices, which gives you access to the world's largest network of audiobook sellers and everything you need to create and sell professional audiobooks. Take back your freedom. Choose your price, choose how you sell, choose how you distribute audio. Check it out at FindawayVoices.com. Toby Neal is the award-winning USA Today best-selling author of mysteries, thrillers, and romance, with over 40 titles, as well as writing memoir and travel. She's also a mental health therapist, which is what we're talking about today. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Common mental health challenges for authors Tips for dealing with post-COVID anxiety Dealing with the overwhelm of social media Journaling as a tool to help process and make sense of our lives Writing as a way to turn life into art Tracking self-care How to find a community of like-minded people Working through fear of the future and how to weatherize your author business You can find Toby at TobyNeal.net Transcript of Interview with Toby Neal Joanna: Toby Neal is the award-winning USA Today best-selling author of mysteries, thrillers and romance, with over 40 titles, as well as writing memoir and travel. She's also a mental health therapist, which is what we're talking about today. So welcome back to the show, Toby. Toby: Thanks so much for having me again, Joanna. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you about this really important topic. And before we get into it, we should say, this is not medical or professional advice. Please see your medical professional for your situation. So you've been on the show several times before, so we're just going to jump straight into the topic. As an author yourself, and someone who helps authors with mental health challenges— What are some of the most common challenges that authors face in this area? Toby: Well, I see that most authors who are working in the field at full-time to semi full-time are struggling with isolation, a lot of times anxiety and overwhelm. Many authors have triggered episodes of depression based on the sales of a book, rejections, etc. There are a lot of sort of cyclical challenges that we face in this creative field. Joanna: So interesting. We're going to talk about some of those. Let's start with anxiety because I feel like it can manifest in different ways. I love that you say cyclical there. I mean, chronic self-doubt, fear of failure, perfectionism, imposter syndrome, and it can end up in panic attacks. Lots of anxiety, really. What are some of the things that you've seen or even experienced yourself? Any recommendations? Toby: I don't think we can tackle this topic without talking a little bit about how COVID and the isolation of the last few years have sort of exacerbated the challenges for not just authors, but everyone. And they've also exacerbated the dearth of professionals that are available to help. At least in my area of rural Oregon, you can't find a therapist, even if you are begging for one. A lot of people left the field, and there's just been a gigantic situation with isolation. And whatever your challenge was going into COVID, it might have gotten amplified. I feel that that is something we just have to mention. So circling back around to the issue of anxiety. Another one we see a lot now is fear of leaving your home, which is agoraphobia. And because we spent so much time in our home, getting out can become something you have to begin to overcome again. And what if you gained weight? And what if you don't like yourself right now because, you know, of that COVID 10 pounds or what have you? All of those things get to be, like I said, amplified by the last few years. And we're not entirely out of the woods with that. Joanna: I mean, it's interesting you mentioned fear of leaving home and agoraphobia. I feel like anxiety, and depression, and many of these words we use in mental health, people are like, “Oh, I don't feel that. It's not that bad.” Like, certainly for me, when you say agoraphobia, I'm like, “No, of course, I don't feel that.” But equally, I had to really get back into expanding my comfort zone. That's kind of what I'm calling it. Maybe a light version. I think maybe a lot of us have light versions of these things because we're not talking necessarily about things that need medication here. What we're talking about is things that play a part in all of our lives. So I have to actively, and I'm someone who travels, right. It's like, oh, it would be much easier to just stay at home, but I have to push myself out there. What are some ways that we can deal with some of these things? Whether we call it anxiety, or whether we call it stress. Toby: Stress, or just, you know, getting out of our comfort zone, what became comfortable during COVID, you know. I kind of forgot how to put makeup on and how to dress and basic things like that. My hair, it's a mile long and hasn't been styled in forever. All of those things become something that you kind of have to put your big girl panties on and deal with.  I'm going to talk a little bit about a couple of tools that I feel are really helpful and easy to access for anyone. One of them is called tapping, Emotional Freedom Technique. I use an app on my phone called The Tapping Solution. I am not an affiliate, so I'm going to always say if I'm an affiliate of something. I am not an affiliate of The Tapping Solution, but it's got a wonderful library of these different scenarios that you might face with anxiety, from turning your day around, to ten days of gratitude, to increasing your immune system. What tapping is, is a sequential series of pulse points on your face and hand while repeating different affirmations. So what's really nice is the people on the app have this lovely mellifluous voice and talk you through first owning the anxiety that you have, and then turning it around to an affirmation. And meanwhile, you're doing this little tapping sequence. It's very noninvasive, you can learn it in five minutes.  I can't say enough good things about it because I've seen it have actual lasting clinical benefits for clients, as well as being completely accessible to the general public. So again, The Tapping Solution and tapping, or EFT. You can look it up online, there's all kinds of YouTube videos also. So that's one tool I want to mention to everyone. And it cannot just be anxiety, but whatever that you want to work on. Like I've often worked on, I have a sugar addiction, releasing my attachment to sugar. And really trying, when we get into other tools, for me, diet and exercise are huge in managing mental health. So I am a clinical therapist licensed in the state of Hawaii to do therapy, and I have all those degrees and what have you, but at the core of it, I'm a person who has struggled with an abusive past growing up in an alcoholic home, overcoming a lot of trauma, and trying to heal myself. All of that led me to become a therapist, and ultimately, a writer, which was always my dream from the beginning. So that's kind of my background. So I'm not like speaking to you from a place of “oh, I have it all figured out.” I struggle, and I'm in the trenches right with you trying to use these tools. So I want to share the ones that have been particularly helpful. Another one I love is hypnosis. And when I was trained in clinical hypnosis, my teacher said, “All hypnosis is basically self-hypnosis.” We basically allow our minds to open us to a suggestion, and then we engage with that suggestion. Hypnosis is a super powerful tool along with tapping. I, for my clients, sometimes I will work with them to create a list of beliefs and affirmations that they want in their lives. Then I'll use my special hypnosis voice to use their own words to create a hypnosis recording that they can listen to over and over. And we've had lots of people see really big breakthroughs with that. You can get your hypnosis done online. There's all kinds of things you can buy. The Calm app even has some in it. Like if you want to listen to different hypnosis for sleep, or hypnosis for getting rid of sugar or whatever. So I want to mention these because to me, tapping and hypnosis are hacks. They just like cut through the need to talk about the problem and get right to the solution. Does that make sense? Joanna: I really love that. I've tried hypnotherapy for phobia and I've tried cognitive behavioral therapy. Also, there are other apps, non-sleep deep relaxation, for example, yoga. I mean, the ones that you've suggested, and I think this is the overwhelming thing that I feel with mental health and probably with physical health, is you can dismiss things and roll your eyes if you think, oh, that's too woowoo or that's not going to work, but just try things out. And if they don't work, try something else because the reality is that it all goes up and down all the time. There is a place for medical help if that is something you need. I felt my mental health was greatly improved by going on HRT as a midlife woman, and that was one aspect of anxiety, depression, that kind of thing. [I recommend reading Menopausing by Davina McCall if you want to understand more about this.] You can't just let it carry on. I think that's what I would say to you. Like we have to deal with this. This is our lives, isn't it? Toby: Right. It does. What we know about mental health issues is they can start small and then they can build. And the mind is an amazing thing. It's plastic, it's expansive, it can be incredibly resilient, and it can also be very resistant, and it has a tendency to catastrophize and always to go to the dark side. If you look at our evolution, it's clear that fear and anxiety were there to keep us safe. Then fear of a large dog then generalizes to cows and deer and goats and all these things because your mind is trying to keep you safe. And pretty soon you're afraid of any large animal, you know. So that's why you need to nip it in the bud when you see something getting out of hand. Like, for instance, hoarding is another thing I see a lot of after COVID. We surround ourselves with stuff and somehow think that's going to make us feel safe or like we have what we need, but it's a black hole. There's never going to be enough stuff. The hoarding is a form of anxiety, in case people wondered. It's not a lack of willpower, it's a branch of anxiety. Many people need like a clinical intervention to, A, get rid of the stuff and, B, have the wherewithal to dig into what does the stuff represent. And that can be mental stuff as well as physical things that we're collecting and surrounding ourselves with. So my advice is, at this moment, is: If there's an area of your life that's causing you concern, don't waste time and allow it to grow and expand and generalize. Because that's the way the mind works, that's one of the predictable ways that phobias grow and populate. They get bigger and they get more, rather than smaller, unless you do an intervention of some sort with yourself. Joanna: Yes, and it's being aware of what's going on. So just a very practical thing around social media, because the internet has brought us many good things, and also many bad things. And one of those things is the kind of doom scrolling that some of us get into, or the constantly checking, whether that sales figures or whether people have liked a certain post or you know, every day checking ad spend, all of that kind of thing. Now, you can do this in a healthy way, but also you have to be aware if you're doing it in an unhealthy way. How do you, personally, as an author, deal with overwhelm of what other people think on social media? This is definitely something I struggle with. Toby: It's tough, it's tough, because I'm right in the trenches with you. I have a very large platform, I have, for the most part, lovely, lovely, loyal fans. And I wish everyone could have a fan group because my little fan group on Facebook is a place where I go, and I created rules in the fan group to make it a safe place, not just for me, but for everybody who's in it. I basically limit my social media exposure and my news exposure. I'm very not on the grid with any of that. And I only do what I have to do to maintain my presence as an author in the areas that I see as useful. Again, everybody's going to find that to be different. For me, Facebook has been the platform where I focus most of my energy. My fan base is older, that's the platform they're on. That's the platform they're comfortable with. So finding where your readers are and creating a niche for them around that can be also really lovely for you. So when I have a down day, maybe I'll say something, I'll throw something into my group. This is so sad, I mean, I'm just like admitting my own weakness here. But I'll be like, “Which character is your favorite in my series?” and then I just wait for the fans to pop up with their little stories. And of course, I do a giveaway, usually, you know. “Just enter to get a mug and tell me which is your favorite character.” And that will boost my mood and my self-esteem, and they're getting a prize, and they're happy. So there's ways to harness it, you know. But for me, it's really all about limiting everything and just keeping my phone off a lot. I have no notifications enabled whatsoever on any device. I try to control my access. There will be the inevitable harsh review, some of them will penetrate my filters, and usually I'll do a giveaway to counteract that. Joanna: I love that, turning it into something positive. And yes, I'm grateful for the Patreon supporters of this podcast. I also have a folder in my email which is nice fan mail folder, where people send me emails that make my day. Sometimes I'll even print the good ones out and put them in my journal because it feels like it's too easy to pay attention to the negativity when most people are silent. Like the silent majority is not commenting at all, but we seem to remember the negative so much. I did want to ask you specifically, so a lot of your background is in Freckled, your memoir, and that book you put a lot of your family in it, you put a lot of your struggles in it. And with your other memoir writing and your travel writing, you're putting a lot of this out there. A lot of people have anxiety around putting their personal stories out there, so how have you dealt with this? Because you've also had some negativity around that memoir, haven't you? So how have you dealt with that? Toby: That's a really good question. I kind of come back to the core reason why I do it. And that's what I have to keep returning to over and over again when I'm feeling vulnerable. So Freckled is actually my best-selling book out of 40 plus titles. It's sold close to 75,000 copies in full price at almost $9 apiece, and it sells in print as well.  I think it's because two reasons. One, it's a very unusual book. It's written about growing up in the 70s in Hawaii, and I wrote it in an unusual way. So it's a very immersive experience for the reader. I age up the writing, and it's in first person present tense, and you're just in Hawaii having all these experiences with me, until it ends when I'm 18. So it's a very unusual memoir. It was totally mind-blowing for my relatives who had no idea what was going on in our home, and what were the situations we were living in. They all thought it must be so much fun in Hawaii, and really, we were homeless and camping on a river, and eating boiled chicken feet for food, and wearing dyed clothes because my dad was having a paranoid episode, and there was all these things going on. So I had my aunts and different relatives contact me, like we had no idea. We would have helped if we had known. And I had to work through all of this feedback from people. So yes, if you're going to write this kind of book, you had better be prepared. My mom, who was also the most strong supporter of the book, also got to read an early draft, but somehow didn't grasp what would happen when the book was public. And later, she got very, very upset with me, and we went through a really difficult period of working through where she felt super vulnerable and exposed and like, did I do that for revenge and all these things. So I'm not going to downplay that. That is a risk. What keeps me going is this calling that I felt in my heart to make art from life. So to me, memoir is making art from your life. It's not therapy, it's not your personal journal, it's not your story, per se, just throw it out anyway. It is a curated art form that you work very hard on, if it's going to be any good at all. And you do that because you have a desire to make art from the life that you've had. So that's why I do it. Not for money, not to hang my family out to dry, but because what I believe is that when you make art from life, you bring healing to others. You draw back this curtain for everybody who has suffered silently in an abusive home with alcoholism, or put on the happy face of the achiever, because that was my role as the oldest child was to go out into the community and achieve, achieve, achieve, no matter what was going on, so that the family looked good. So when we draw back that curtain, we heal others. We give others permission to tell their story and to bring air onto that wound. Joanna: It's interesting that you say that a memoir is not therapy but writing itself can help us. I've kept journals since I was about 15. I have them here in my office. Some of my many journals! And I mean, when I read some of my journals from—I'm married for the second time—when my husband left me, when I read those journals, I don't even recognize that person. And I've never published those words. This is an important thing, right? You can write for therapy, but that doesn't mean you have to publish it. Whereas what you did there was turn your therapy, once you had processed it, into a memoir. How can the act of writing, even if it's in your journal, help us? Why does writing help us process things? Toby: It's the act of becoming aware of being aware. And when you think about thinking, that meta work, we draw back a little bit from being in our lives, to assess our lives. And in therapy, and in CBT when I was doing therapy full time, CBT cognitive behavioral therapy, is the best practice recommendation for anxiety and depression and even trauma. So what you need is a tool in order to capture your thoughts and look at them and evaluate their validity. I love what Robert Fulghum said. “Don't believe everything you think.” That is a central premise. It's a central premise of therapy. Don't believe everything you think. And a journal, and the act of writing, is a way that you can capture what you're thinking, and then do a little bit of a pullback and go, “Is this true? Is this real?” That is the process of therapy and CBT is evaluating your thoughts and for their truthfulness. Even when you're doing it really formally, you use a form of journaling that is like tracking. You have: “Situation: going to the grocery store. Thoughts: everybody thinks I'm fat, my hair looks terrible, when I go through the aisles, they're judging me, and there's germs.” Right. So then over here, “Likelihood those thoughts are true: probably 15%.” You have to rate the amount of percent that you give to the truthfulness of those thoughts. Another way to look at the situation. Yes, there are germs, but I can use hand sanitizer. Yes, I don't look my best right now, but most people are also at the store to just buy food. Joanna: Nobody cares! Toby: So see the four-column structure I just gave you, that is the CBT form of tracking and writing that you would use in therapy. But I have a different form, and like you, I've been a lifelong journaler. And those are going back to the Morning Pages, Julia Cameron's The Artists Way, that's just barfing it out on the page. You know, “Here I am today with all of these things, and this is what's on my mind.” And all of that it is still valid. Writing is a way that we make sense of our lives. We write to know more deeply, to remember, and to understand our lives. And for me, that form of writing is separate from memoir. Memoir is for public consumption, but what I write about in my private time in my journal, that is for me to make sense of myself, and of the world, and of the experience I've had. And you know what? Now it's sort of to remember because I still have some lingering effects from long COVID and memory has been impacted. So I want to write every day so that I don't forget. Joanna: That's interesting. And yes, the reasons why we do things change over our lives. And it's interesting, I'm more of a binge journaler, so when I was going through that divorce, there were books and books and books. I might have had four whole journals across one year, when I was going through processing things. I would write multiple times a day. Then when I'm going through happy periods, like at the moment, I only journal like every couple of weeks. I feel like it's almost like it builds up inside me until I feel like I really, really must go and sit in a cafe and write my journal because I feel like that is something I need to do every now and then. I think this is important, especially as professional writers, because there's this pressure that all the words we write are publishable, but it's just true. Toby: No, there is the garbage and luggage, we called it when I worked for a social service agency. And when we had morning check-in with our employees, the head social worker would say, “What's your garbage?” You know, the garbage is the ‘blah' and just get it out onto the paper and release it. But luggage is, “What are we taking with us? What do we need to work through? What is the ongoing theme that we need to take action on?” So I wanted to say a few words about the ways that we need to keep going with self-care. I actually do tracking. If I could show it to you, you'd crack up. It's on the side, I call it ‘the routine.' So on the side, I've got written down five sun salutations, 2 x 15 kettlebells, 45 minute walk, no alcohol, no sugar, spirit time, 1500 new words, supplements and rest. This is all written on the side. Then I have Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and every day that I achieved doing that activity, I've given myself a little sticker or a smiley face. Or if I didn't do it, like, oh I had that glass of wine. So I'm trying to cut back on alcohol, I feel like it makes me fuzzy and unproductive the next day, even a small amount, but I love a nice nightcap. So it has been a rough habit to give up. I don't give myself a censure if I don't make it, I just give myself the tracking cute little stickers. So I go and buy them online or I buy them at stationery stores. This stuff works. Even when you're a therapist, and you know this is behavioral reinforcement, and I know I'm giving myself behavioral reinforcement, I still get motivated by seeing a row of the cute little stickers. Spending money on myself to buy the cutest ones, and I only get those when I'm like, oh, I made it through a week of no glass of wine at the end of the day. So I highly recommend that if you're trying to build a habit, and again, these self-care activities are habits that we need to deliberately add to our lives or take away from our lives. When we take something out, we've got to put something in. So again, instead of alcohol, I substituted an expensive bubbly water with a slice of lime, which I had to go buy, and I got the experience of that special drink, and so forth. If I didn't do anything, then I'm having a rougher time replacing the habit. Does that make sense? Joanna: For sure. And the stickers, I've always done sticker charts. And in fact, now I use MOO.com to print my own stickers with my own meaningful images. Toby: How fun. You know, it's brilliant. That's what we need is fun. We need to treat that inner child self of ours with respect, with love, with nurture. And it is more lured out to play than flogged with punishments. So for those of us in a creative field, it is a tough, tough thing to make a living doing creative work. Whether it's painting, or music, or writing or any of the arts, dance, what have you, it's a rough way to make a living because you're counting on that inner child to be able to keep performing. It can only really do that when there's a nurturing environment, and the only person who could really do that is you. So those are my little confessions, is that I, quite frankly, use behavioral reinforcement on myself. When I get those words, every 500 words, I get a sticker. So I've got a separate chart for that because sometimes it's rough. It's real work. It's a job. You know? Joanna: I think what's important too is that you—and you have a lot of habits on that list. I mean, I also have various stickers for various things. I also have a logbook. So my journal is separate to my daily logbook, and in my logbook I write down what I've done. So you're on my logbook for today, this discussion. And also, if I'm feeling something particular, or like you said, I mean, I also try to reduce my alcohol, but I really like a drink. So I will actively choose to drink on occasion. Like if you and I were hanging out, I would hope we would have a glass of wine. Toby: We absolutely would. Joanna: Exactly. Or if I'm going out for lunch with Jonathan, I'll have sticky toffee pudding, or something like that. So it's that 80/20 rule, I guess. Can we live in a sustainable way 80% of the time, so that 20% of the time we can indulge or do other things? Again, like exercise or our physical health, I walk almost every single day, but sometimes it just doesn't work out or whatever. So that's okay, it's not like I beat myself up. You mentioned a nurturing environment, and obviously, we have to look after ourselves first. But you and I are also very lucky, and we've chosen this life, but we have supportive partners and we have friends, like you and I. We've met each other through the community. So if people listening, if they don't have that supportive environment or author friends— How can people find a community or attract other like-minded people and have that online? So how can you do that if you're just starting out and don't have friendships like we have? Toby: I would look for an online group that already existed. There's various Facebook groups with different kinds of author gatherings, so that's a great place to do it. Or Discord, or one of those other online social media type places is a great place to just start looking for like-minded people. I also just moved to a new state and a new town. And I really determined that this time, because I lived in a place for about four years and did not get connected with my community at all. I felt like I was going to be there temporarily, but there was actually no data to show that I was going to be there temporarily. My own attitude and withholding. So again, we create our own self-fulfilling prophecies. We ended up leaving there, and I was glad that I hadn't put the time in to invest in new friendships. Then we came to this new town, and I decided two things. I was going to get involved with my community, and I was going to start volunteering in person again. It's so easy to do everything online again. And now we're coming out of COVID, it's time to be IRL. So the first thing I did was joined my Rotary Club in my town. And not because I felt like “my people” are in the Rotary Club, they couldn't be more different from me, you know. I'm there, kind of sort of hippie-ish, the writer, and these are very staid, upstanding, retired, local kind of power brokers in my town. The mayor is in my group, and things like that. What I wanted to do was, I want to be a part of this community, I want to show my face, I want to get to know people, and I'm using my background as a therapist to become a court-appointed special advocate. So I work with children in the foster care system. And this is, again, a volunteering thing. I had to go through this big, long training. Many times, I was like, oh, this is too much with my writer business and my travel. I can't, people look out on me, and then I was like, no, I need to be in contact with people who need me and people who remind me how fortunate I am. That is really key to mental health is like there's always somebody worse off than you, and it doesn't hurt to be reminded of that, to be called out of yourself to go and give. And so I think for anybody who's struggling with depression, get a pet, get an exercise routine, and start doing something in your community that's giving back. Because staying in that little cocoon of your own negative thoughts and that dark place that can pull you under, it's just going to snowball. Joanna: That's great. I feel the same. I'm like, we do so much online and in our own heads, and it's almost remembering that you have a physical body. You are a physical human, not just a brain. Because sometimes we're just brains online. I mean, you and I right now, we're not looking at each other. So we're two brains connecting over the internet. Toby: Isn't that a wild thought? Joanna: It is a totally wild thought. When we write books, it's a brain connecting with another brain through the medium of a book. So we overemphasize that because that's our strength, but yeah, we need to remember we're a physical body, and therefore keep the physical body healthy by exercising and healthy eating and meeting other people in a body. So yeah, I think that's really important. But we're almost out of time. I do want to ask you a question. I can't go an episode without mentioning AI. And one of the biggest issues right now in the community is people are very afraid. They're already burnt out, overwhelmed, too much to learn. Now, there's an anxiety about the author career and all of this changing technology. How are you navigating the challenges? What is the career going to look like for the next decade? And I mean, you're not retired, you're still writing, you have an author business. How can we think about the future and acknowledge the fear, but also move through it? Toby: I think it's really key to get to know the thing that you're afraid of. So for me, I am exploring AI actively. I have been fooling around with Sudowrite and got a membership with that. And I'm getting to know what does it do, what doesn't it do. And then again, there's the ChatGPT, which also has a learning curve to it. So I think the key to the fear around AI is to get to know the tool before you judge because when we're afraid, we're reactive, we're defensive, our minds are closed, and we become prickly, and anxiety builds. So that's one aspect. The second aspect is look at what has happened in other creative areas, such as the music industry, it's all accelerating. And you can sort of see where things might go. There's streaming constantly, there's tons and tons of material available for pennies. All of that is very fearful for authors. What you can do instead is dig into your niche. So for me, that has meant moving to web-based sales, and a reader subscription plan on Substack where I'm writing to my audience who are paying direct. I know you use Patreon, I've chosen not to use Patreon, I'm using Substack and my website. What I'm doing is digging deeper into my loyal fan base because that is going to weatherize me to the cheapening of everything. Right now, if you are an author whose main income is coming from Kindle Unlimited and that kind of subscription model, I would be nervous about it because there's going to be even more schlock added to the mix. It's going to be even harder to get that visibility that's all important. So now is a time to connect with your readers in a personal way and give them opportunities to support you. Create ways that they can give you money direct. They can buy from you direct, they can support you with a subscription, that kind of thing, because readers want to do that. Just like they support the musicians that they love, they will support writers that they love too. So that's my two-pronged approach. Get to know it and dig deeper into direct sales and direct contact with my reader base. Joanna: That's fantastic. That's multiple streams of income, which we love. Tell us a bit more about your books, and where people can find you and your Substack, and connect around coaching if they're interested. Toby: Definitely, it's all on TobyNeal.net. And if you're interested in talking with me about setting up your own hypnosis, recording or talking about coaching in any form, or coaching plus mental health, look for the author coaching tab on my website. I write police procedural mysteries, thrillers, memoir, romance, and an ongoing travel and life blog on Substack called Passages. So you can look up Passages and follow along and see in real-time as I'm writing a third memoir, which will be crafted from these travel experiences and life experiences. So again, TobyNeal.net has it all. And that's my tip is weatherize your business by focusing everything on what you can capture. Your newsletter, your email address list, and your website for direct sales because those are the ways that you can weatherproof your writing business going forward. Joanna: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Toby. That was great. Toby: Thank you.The post Making Art From Life. Mental Health For Writers With Toby Neal first appeared on The Creative Penn.

AI tools can generate words, but the human intention behind it, as well as the skill of the author, drives the machine. Stephen Marche talks about the creative process behind Death of an Author, 95% written by AI, out now from Pushkin Industries. Today's show is sponsored by my wonderful patrons who fund my brain so I have time to think about and discuss these futurist topics impacting authors. If you support the show, you also get the extra monthly patron-only Q&A audio. You can support the show at www.patreon.com/thecreativepenn Stephen Marche is a Canadian novelist and journalist. He's also the creator of Death of an Author by Aiden Marchine, a novella written 95% by AI tools out now from Pushkin Industries. You can listen above or 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 Stephen co-created Death of an Author with various AI tools: ChatGPT, Sudowrite, and Cohere The importance of specificity in prompts and why those who know what they want, and have experience with writing and different forms of literature have an advantage Why the intellectual process is more important than the mechanical process Why co-creating with AI tools is like being a hip-hop producer On copyright: “I am its author legally, but a machine wrote it based on my instructions.” How authors might approach co-creating with AI if they want to work with traditional publishers What remains the same despite advances in technology: “Creative AI is going to change everything. It's also going to change nothing.” Death of an Author is out now from Pushkin Industries in audiobook and ebook formats. The press release also has more details about the process, and there is an Afterword in the book where Stephen goes into more detail. You can find Stephen at StephenMarche.com Header image created on Midjourney by Joanna Penn. Transcript of the interview Joanna Penn: Stephen Marche is a Canadian novelist and journalist. He's also the creator of Death of an Author by Aiden Marchine, a novella written 95% by AI tools out now from Pushkin Industries. So welcome to the show, Stephen. Stephen Marche: Hi, how are you? Joanna Penn: I am good. So first up, tell us a bit more about you and your writing background and how you came to become interested in AI. Stephen Marche: Well, am I speaking to a robot at this moment? Joanna Penn: No. No! Stephen Marche: Okay. I just had a sudden sense that I was, I don't know why but like, I've become more skeptical of these things all the time. I've been writing my whole life and I've written novels and so on. But the beginning of AI writing for me was actually a piece I wrote in 2012 for LA Review of Books, which was Against Digital Humanities. And you know, as I was sort of critiquing digital humanities, Which I still, I mean, I don't think I changed that critique at all. I started to know about some really cool things that were happening, and I became very interested in them and very fascinated with them, particularly with, at that point it was programming around R, and it was analytics mainly, but then in 2017, I wrote an algorithmic story for Wired, like we used computer models to generate. We created our own program, Sci-Fi Q, me and a computer scientist to make that. Then with the birth of the transformer, of course, which changed everything in this field, I began to work on other aspects of it. I wrote a 17% computer-generated horror story for the LA Review of Books in, I think it was 2020. And then an auto-tune love story, where I used Cohere to build these bots, to create stylistic bots. Then I would each generate one sentence of a love story, and I published that in Lit Hub a couple of years ago now. But then when Jacob came to me with the Death of an Author idea, it was of course just a completely different scale of things, and I was fascinated with what it could do. And it was sort of a much broader project than any AI fiction I'd ever worked on before. Joanna Penn: Wow. So you've been involved in this for over a decade now, but of course, as you said, things have changed and it does also sound like you're quite technical, like our programming and things like that. So most people listening are authors and writers, but they're not very technical. So I wondered whether you could explain — How did you co-create Death of an Author with AI tools? Stephen Marche: Well, I mean, I would say that like I'm not technical like that. I mean, that would be a gross exaggeration of my abilities. I mean, I did learn to program in R briefly, like, I mean, to say that ‘I can program in R' is like saying if you can plunk out Mary had a little lamb on the piano, that you know how to play the piano. Like I knew I did it just enough to know what it involved. Right. And I would not say that I have a major technical facility in this stuff at all, but with Death of an Author, I did have access to three technologies really that I had used before in which I used, so one was ChatGPT, the big one that everyone talks about and which really has sparked the interest in this, right? Like before ChatGPT, I had a great deal of trouble selling articles and essays about AI to publications. They just weren't interested right? After ChatGPT — it has since become the most important story in the world really. But, so I used ChatGPT to create very specific blocks of text. Then I would take those blocks into Sudowrite, which is a stochastic writing instrument. Do you know that? Do you know Sudowrite? Have you ever used it? Joanna Penn: Yes, absolutely. Amit has been on the show as well. [I also have a tutorial on Sudowrite for fiction.] Stephen Marche: So I've used Sudowrite before to do things. I wrote a piece about them for The New Yorker. I used the shorten button, the add detail button, and I used the customize button a lot to reshape the text. I mean, almost everything was in that process. I tried other large language models, like I tried character.ai and I tried a bunch of other ones because people were sending me like, ‘come check out our stuff,' because I'd been writing about it and I really didn't find anything comparable to that except for Cohere. Cohere is a large language model out of Canada. I've done other critical and creative work with them before and I used a different system for them. I created prompts and then I framed those prompts and then I got the prompts to generate images. I wanted the book to have good lines in it, like lines that really stood out because ChatGPT is not as good at that. ChatGPT is good at creating functional prose, but for real beauty, which you want in a novel, I felt I needed other techniques and Cohere was really that. All the good lines in the book come from Cohere. Joanna Penn: I think that's fascinating. So just coming back to ChatGPT, because a lot of people listening have tried it and they're finding that they can't even really create blocks of functional prose. And mainly it's because they don't really know how to prompt. Even at the beginning, they might say, ‘Write me a novel about a guy in a dungeon' or whatever, and so they're just writing one line or two lines. How can people start creating with more specific prompts? Stephen Marche: Well, the key is to be incredibly specific about what you want, right? The thing that's fascinating about writing prompts for writing is that you have to actually understand what you want, which I mean very few people do when they set out to write a novel, right? So it would literally be, write a paragraph in a mixture of simple and compound-complex sentences with variable lengths between the sentences in the style of —and then maybe five or six adjectives to describe the style containing the following information, colon, and then the information, and then it would generate something. That was unwieldy. And then you would take it into Sudowrite, and use that to change it and alter it till you got to something interesting. So much like the prompts for text to image, the longer the prompt, the better the reaction. But the prompts and literature have to be incredibly specific about syntax and grammar and substance and style, like very, very specific. I mean, to me that's what I got. Other people have had different experiences, I'm sure, but that to me is the key. Whereas the Cohere system where you train it on prompts actually doesn't require that same level of control. I mean, it does when you create the prompt, but if you train it on like 15 examples of great images, it does produce great images, which is another method. Joanna Penn: And when you say images, you mean like metaphorical images for it to come up with text? Stephen Marche: Yeah. Correct. Joanna Penn: So, just coming back to ChatGPT, because I've written nearly 20 novels and so I actually asked it to write in my voice, as my fiction voice, and it actually did a really good job. Did you try prompting it as you? Stephen Marche: No, I mean, I'm a very incoherent personality, right? Like, I mean, my books are just really, really different from each other, and like they're incoherent basically. There's nothing I would say that I could identify as specifically mine, right? And also I'm writing in a particular genre, right? Like the murder mystery. And that requires a different approach than one that I would use to say the piece about the coronation that I just wrote for The Guardian or the novel that I wrote that was about werewolves and billionaires. Also, I think when you're using this technology to write, you have to understand the limitations and run into the limitations, right? I mean, that's true of every literary form, but in this case, there are certain things that ChatGPT is good at and there are certain things that it's really bad at, and you want to not do the bad things and go towards the good things. Joanna Penn: Yeah, I totally agree. I'm co-writing a horror novel at the moment with GPT4 and it's interesting because I'm doing a lot of editing, as you mentioned, that the prose is not what exactly what I want. I wondered whether you found that it just wasn't any faster, that in fact, it was a slower process? I wonder with fiction, actually, it might be a slower process, but a more interesting one. Stephen Marche: Well, I think this is still being, I don't, nothing is slower or faster. Right. I mean, people thought that having a computer would make it more able to write faster, right? We no longer have to handwrite things and then have them type set — It's the intellectual process that's the effort here, not the mechanical processes that are at work. So, no, I don't think it's any easier. I mean, this is why the discussions about the WGA being like, this is gonna replace screenwriters. I'm like, who are you kidding? If you think an executive can just go to ChatGPT and say, write me John Wick 5. Well, that's a bad example because John Wick 5 is pretty the same as John Wick four. Yeah, well, John Wick 4, it easily could have been written by a machine, right? I mean like, there's no life in it whatsoever. But like the idea that they're gonna be able to do that is just totally ludicrous. Anyone who's used this machine for 10 minutes knows that, right? So I think what the real question here is, what can it do that people can't do? Because you have to remember that the world is already full of overproduction of texts. It's not like we need to automate the process of writing fiction. Like the question is, what can this process do that nothing else can do? And that's a really interesting question to ask. Joanna Penn: Or address our own limitations or help us have more ideas. I mean, I find it gives me loads of ideas and different directions and it really is like co-writing. Did you feel that? Stephen Marche: Well, it was interesting because there was a balance between control and I guess how I thought of it was like the alien speaking. Like I got the alien to talk. That's how I sort of feel about this tech, right? Is that I got an alien to write a novella. And the point where I felt the alien meant something, I thought those moments were extraordinary to me, like very aesthetically powerful where, because most of it is just me controlling this machine, right? When it created things that I would never have thought of, when it created images that I found beautiful, even though no human being had ever written them, there was a kind of, I mean, the word majesty occurs to me. There was something awesome about it, like in the old sense, like you just felt in contact with some larger force, if you will. And I think that's very exciting to me. Although what ChatGPT to me can do so well is it can imitate voices. Right, and like I think if I were to think of a project that would naturally be written by AI, it would be something like Dracula, Bram Stoker's Dracula, which it's a collection of documents, right? A collection of ships logs, and letters, and letters from lawyers and all these incredible formulaic forms that contain different information. And it is unbelievable at imitating voices, at imitating formulaic forms of language, and that it can do better than any human being. There's no writer alive who can get as precise as it can in its imitation of modes of speech. My aha moment with this technology was when I got Sudowrite and I asked it to finish Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and it created a completely believable conclusion to that famous unfinished poem. It was able to do that in a completely coherent way. I think actually recovering lost texts is another. Particularly like the unfinished Austen books and unfinished PG Woodhouse books where there are very clear stylistic parameters. I absolutely think this technology is gonna be used to do that. Joanna Penn: I mean, you've mentioned beauty a couple of times and awe. Some people are saying, oh, well, we'll be able to tell, or readers will be able to tell when something's written with AI. What do you think about that? Will people be able to tell something is written with AI? Will they care? Stephen Marche: I would hope that some of it they would know and they would recognize and that, and they would be okay with it. But the truth is like, do you know that a text is spell-checked? Like I guess you do, but most of the time you just forget about it there. There's a famous thing about CGI in movies where it's like, oh, CGI is so bad. But of course, the CGI that's bad is the CGI that you notice, right? And then it does look bad, but actually 95% of the time you're using CGI, and nobody notices it and it creates effects that could never be gotten with just a camera. So, I mean, this is just another tool. And once we get over this fear spiral that we're in, we are in basically a panic spiral about AI right now, we will start to realize this is a tool. It's not gonna replace anyone. Just in the same way that Photoshop did not replace designers. In fact, it just accentuated the capacity for designers to create. We're gonna realize that this is neither as scary as we think, nor as crazily transformative as we think. Joanna Penn: But it does change the job. I think that's the thing. I mean, the definition of a writer has been outputting text in a certain direction. But if these tools can output text, which they do, do we play more of a director role or an orchestral role? Directing the orchestra of these tools rather than the making words role? [My take on this is in my solo episode, The AI-Assisted Artisan Author.] Stephen Marche: Well, it's curatorial, right? I mean, that's how I think of it, right? Like it requires a familiarity, like when I was using this, the reason I was able to use it so effectively is because I did a PhD and I know that they made me do my special field examination and they made me read everything in major in English literature from 900 AD on. And so I know the history of style and I know how things stylistically work. So when I go to Sudowrite, I can say, okay, I want this to sound like Dickens and then filter it through Ernest Hemingway, and then you get to something that might actually be good. The closest analogy I come to is hip-hop producer — Where they have this enormous familiarity with popular music and this scholarship ultimately around popular music, and they use that in ways to recombine and reconfigure the music in a way that is pleasurable to people. And in a sense, it is a different task. Like you're not playing the guitar anymore, instead, you're using a Moog or whatever. But on the other hand, like the end result, for an author is an output of texts, that's for sure, but they are also the editor of their own texts. The difference between a great writer and a good writer is not necessarily what they output, but what they cut and what they know is bad and recognizing what's good when you see it, and that is totally unchanged in this process, as you know. Joanna Penn: Absolutely. So coming to the book, you have this great afterword, which I highly recommend everyone read after the story. And in it you say: “I am its author legally, but a machine wrote it based on my instructions.” So this idea of legal author, I mean, the aspects of copyright are very difficult with the legality of the training dataset, fair use, plagiarism. So I know you get this question all the time, but what should people be feeling about this? Like should they not do anything until all the legal cases are settled, or what do you think? Stephen Marche: I really don't know. I mean, I think we're in a really new state here where it's going to be worked out. Ultimately, I think I am the creator of this work and I have a moral right to it, like, and everyone understands. The legal dimensions of it are really strange and have yet to be worked out, but I'm just a writer. I'm just going to go do what I want to do and pick up the pieces after the fact. A and that's my strategy. So it is a totally gray area right now, although, I mean, I think you've read Death of an Author, like no one else is entitled to that work other than me. Like, everyone knows I made it. And so ultimately that's going to be recognized on some level. And the people who say like, it's plagiarism and it's stolen, and they don't know what they're talking about. They haven't used this tech for five minutes and, and they're just wrong. So I don't know. I mean, on the one hand, it isn't a very confusing moment. On the other hand — New technologies always bring with them new, complicated realities. I mean, it took a long time for people to figure out who owned a photograph, right? And like, was it the person whose photograph was taken or the taker of the photo? You know? So I don't know. It's all gonna be worked out in the future by other people than me, but I'm not particularly worried about, at least the intellectual realities of it. Joanna Penn: I like that you say, “I made it” and, and that is absolutely right, and of course, if you compare the finished product with any other finished product, you can see that it's not plagiarized. And so I think many authors think that these tools are some kind of database where lots of things have been put into it, and when you are writing it pulls out exactly the words that other people have written, but that's kind of a misunderstanding of how the technology works, isn't it? [I recommend reading Monica Leonelle's article on What is AI and how is it being used in publishing for more detail on this.] Stephen Marche: Well, I mean, technically that is how it works, but the truth is that we don't know how many parameters there are in GPT4. We know that GPT3 is at 175 billion, so I mean, when you use Palm, it has 540 billion parameters. Let's take that as a start. That's more variety, that's a level of transformation that is literally inconceivable to the human mind. So I mean, anytime a human says something, it has been said before, like the sentence I just said, somebody has said it has been said before, but that doesn't mean it's not mine. Right. That doesn't mean I didn't create it, right. These debates around it, I think they're written out of fear that people think this is going to replace writers. And I mean, it's just not like the idea that this is gonna replace the considered judgment of language. What this is going to really replace is rote linguistic tasks. So if you have to write a letter of recommendation from a professor for a student, I don't know why you wouldn't use ChatGPT. It just does it so much better and all. That's entirely a formula to start with, right? Like so it fulfills the terms of that formula. The human intentionality is what we register through language, and that's not going anywhere. Death of an Author is very much a work of my intentionality. No one else could have done it. No one else would've done it, right? So the mere means of application are not necessarily even relevant. Joanna Penn: Absolutely. But it's interesting, and I obviously, I agree with you and I've already also published a short story co-written with GPT3, With a Demon's Eye. What's so interesting about what you've done, it's been published by a publisher, and so this is kind of the next question, which is a lot of authors who work with traditional publishing don't know what to do because they've signed contracts or they are going to sign contracts. Maybe traditional publishers won't accept work where there's AI involved. How do you think authors should approach the publishing industry when co-writing with AI? Stephen Marche: Well, I mean, this is not informed advice like, it's not like I really understand the legalities of this, but I would say make sure you get yours right. First of all, be clear. You should be very clear with any publisher that you deal with, that you're using this technology, and make sure that they're okay with it. And if they're not, then you shouldn't use it. But I actually think the specifics of how this is going to be used are really like if you're using this to write, say like a historical biography of somebody and you just like randomly put it into ChatGPT and have it cough it out and then don't edit it, it's going to be poor and everyone's going to know it. And that's not what you should be doing anyway. So, I don't know. I mean, that's such a non-answer. I know, but like, obviously be honest. Also, if you are using ChatGPT in a way that is creating meaningful work that only you could create, which is the only kind of work that I'm interested in, then you should be paid for and you should have a right to it. Joanna Penn: I certainly agree with that. And I mean, you mentioned the fear spiral and the panic spiral. I mean, how long will it take to dissipate? I mean, in a way we had a similar thing like over a decade ago with ebooks and all the internet kind of disrupting publishing thing, but eventually, it was embraced. So will this be the same, do you think it'll just take a couple of years to settle down? Stephen Marche: I don't know. I mean, the doomism really is, it's just such a human response. Like first there's greed, then there's fear, and then there's fear, and then there's greed. Like I have a piece coming out in The Guardian about this pretty soon. I think the fear will probably dominate for a while, but on the other hand, I'm just going to make this stuff and see where it goes. Do you know what I mean? Like there are people doing this work and there was a lot of fear of photography and there was a lot of fear of hip-hop. It took hip-hop practitioners took a long time before they were considered serious artists, right, and or even artists at all. And the same thing is true of photography and at the same, but that was real. Like that created something beautiful. So, I don't know. I mean, the discourse has gone completely off the rails, I think. But on the other hand, I have hope. You know, I'm not a super hopeful person, and no one's ever accused me of being optimistic before. But I also think as this stuff gets used, like, one thing about the hype machine around AI is that it uses doom as a promotional mechanism, right? Like they, Silicon Valley does this all the time, like crypto's gonna end central banks. We should prepare for a world where governments don't control the flow of money. Well, actually no. Like actually that's nonsense, right? And like WeWork is gonna end commercial real estate and actually WeWork didn't end commercial real estate, Zoom ended commercial real estate, or, I mean, there are a million examples of this kind of hype and around AI. I've been reporting on this stuff basically since 2017, and I've heard that the trucking industry was going to disappear, that China was in possession of a trillion parameter, large language system that had shown superhuman abilities, and I really have come to a place where I have two rules. One is if I don't see it, I don't believe it. Like I don't believe it until I see it. And the second rule is when I see it, I believe it. So if it does something, I want to see what I can use it to do. And that's my only way of staying sane. I mean, that's the only way I can stay sane with this stuff because there's just so much hype and nonsense. Joanna Penn: Yes, and I mean, I say on this podcast often, please go and try it before you leave a comment saying that it's all ridiculous and useless. It's not even that hard to try anymore, is it? Stephen Marche: No, I mean, well, you can just go to chat.openai.com. It's not complicated to use and I mean, I think five minutes after using it, you sense, okay, wonderful things are afoot. Like really crazy things are possible with this, but it's not a superhuman consciousness. You don't feel bad turning it off. Like it's a tool like, like a pocket calculator or it's a thesaurus. You know what I mean? Yeah. And like it's just a hugely powerful tool and potentially transformative, But yeah, I find the doomism just exhausting and pointless. Joanna Penn: Me too. And in your afterword you do say: “Creative AI is going to change everything. It's also going to change nothing.” So you have mentioned, I guess a few things that won't change in that the humans will still be needed. What else will remain constant? Because of course we're only at the beginning, these tools will become more powerful, but what will remain constant? Stephen Marche: Oh, the understanding, the value of something that's written, the value of a good paragraph in a good sentence. The sense of an intended personality behind language. I mean, that's, people go to language for a lot of reasons, but when they go to artistic language, for lack of a better word, they go there to feel a human being behind it. And that is absolutely not going to change. Like there, I mean if you're looking for mechanized language, you can find that too. But I think one thing to remember is that all of this is at the service of human urges that are very foundational, and which have not really changed since the epic of Gilgamesh. To be recognized, to be seen by people who are not with you. And to have your own soul explained to you. And none of that has changed. Like I mean, I just don't think it's changed even one millimeter. Joanna Penn: It's interesting. I mean, the AI artists now, or the people using AI for art have a new word, which is synthography. I wondered, because you've mentioned art and beauty, do you think we will move towards a new art form in this way, and do we need another word? Stephen Marche: Yeah, I mean, I think we do need another word. What's the word they're using? Joanna Penn: Synthography, like photography, but synth. Stephen Marche: Synthography. That's not bad. I mean, right now, I think we're still at the cannibalization stage of this art form. Like you're using it to write novels. I'm using it to write novels in short stories. The really interesting thing will be what it's actually used for, right? Like, because it took them a long time to figure out what photography was for after it was invented. One of the things interesting about the printing press is that it almost took 200 years after the printing press for people to come up with the idea of using it to have a continuous narrative voice, which we think about now is like the defining feature of print. But that didn't happen until almost 200 years later after the technological invention. So, you know what this is actually for and what new forms it would be in. Like what is the true usage of a creative chat bot? We're still in a very primitive stage with that, and I think after we find out what that is, then we'll come up with a name for it. But yeah, the interesting work that's going to come out of this is going to be new, and it's actually probably gonna be a bunch of new things. So it is interesting to see. Joanna Penn: Interesting times indeed. So where can people find Death of an Author as well as all your other books online? Stephen Marche: Just go to pushkin.com to get the audiobook, or I think you can buy it as an epub now on the website. pushkin.fm, death of an author. And then all my other books are just wherever you get your books. Joanna Penn: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Steven. That was great. Stephen Marche: It was a pleasure.The post Intentionality, Beauty, and Authorship. Co-Writing With AI With Stephen Marche first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What are the implications of generative AI for the indie author community? How can we make choices for our own creative business while respecting the decisions of others? Dan Wood (Draft2Digital) and Michael Anderle (20BooksTo50K, LMBPN) and I discuss our recommendations for the way forward. In the intro, Ingram Spark offers free title setup and revisions (up to 60 days); Findaway Voices cuts Spotify distribution fee; Lessons learned from selling a million books; Go Wide or Run Away or Amazon Fail by Kris Rusch; Reputation Revolution Podcast; Pilgrimage is out on every store and in every format; Cover design split testing with Pickfu; A Note from the Author by Kevin Tumlinson. This podcast is sponsored 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. Michael Anderle (LMBPN), Joanna Penn (The Creative Penn), and Dan Wood (DRaft2Digital) at London Book Fair, April 2023 Dan Wood is the COO of Draft2Digital, which helps authors self-publish alongside excellent support. Michael Anderle is the award-nominated internationally bestselling author of more than 40 urban fantasy and science fiction novels. He's also the co-author of many more with other authors under his company LMBPN Publishing. Michael is also the founder of the 20 Books to 50 K Facebook group and community. 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 Why generative AI offers opportunities for authors Michael explains his audacious publishing goal and breaks down how it could be achieved across multiple formats and languages, along with the help of generative AI Tackling some of the fears and anxieties that authors have — flood of content, quality, marketing competition, copyright, and more Will books co-written with AI be flagged or banned from the distributors? Why you shouldn't use author or artist names in your prompts Uses for AI in marketing Making your own choices — and respecting others whose choices might be different from your own You can find Michael Anderle at LMBPN Publishing, and Dan Wood at Draft2Digital and on Twitter @danwoodok Transcript of the discussion Joanna Penn: Dan Wood is the COO of Draft2Digital, which helps authors self-publish alongside excellent support. Michael Anderle is the award-nominated internationally bestselling author of more than 40 urban fantasy and science fiction novels. He's also the co-author of many more with other authors under his company LMBPN Publishing. Michael is also the founder of the 20 Books to 50 K Facebook group and community. So welcome to the show guys. Hello. Both: Hello. Thanks for having us. Joanna Penn: I'm excited for this talk. So Dan, let's start with you. What are you most excited about in terms of generative AI for authors and the publishing industry, and what are you playing with personally? Dan Wood: I'm very excited by the opportunity to use some of the large, large language models to help authors when they are stuck. It's like having a writing partner that you can run ideas off of. And with ChatGPT and some of the others, you can just say, you know, I'm thinking this, give me like three or four scenarios of how this might play out. I think that's very cool. Like many other people, I've had just a ton of fun with products like MidJourney to make images and just making outrageous images and seeing how they turn out. I think when you think about what that could do for helping authors communicate with their cover designer and help them understand their vision and then the cover designer coming in with their knowledge of how the cover should look for that genre, and typography and all those good things. I think it just makes communicating between artists a lot easier. As far as what I'm playing with, for me, my job, I came from a very technical job originally and my role at Draft2Digital has largely been around people's skills and managing and all of that. And so I've had a ton of fun just playing around with the way in which you're gonna help you code. I was never a programmer by trade, but I did learn it in college and so it's enabled me to just kind of play around with little projects that I thought would be fun. I've used it for helping me write marketing copy because I hate writing, like doing marketing speak. So it's helped me with my job some. And then like I'm looking at how it might help some of our younger members of our team with things like Excel, because it's very powerful at helping people write things like macros for Excel. They used to take classes and classes to learn how to do all the different things Excel can do, and now you can basically tell ChatGPT what you want it to do and it will come up with a macro for you and that's just awesome. Joanna Penn: I love that you mentioned fun there because I definitely have a lot of fun. And you also said ‘writing partner' and I really feel like I'm co-writing with GPT4 now for sure. But Michael, let's come to you. So at 20 Books Seville where we all met up and for that conference you talked in your keynote about how AI developments have enabled you to think much bigger as a publishing company — and as I always say to you, your ambition is hella bigger than mine and I really appreciate that. Tell us what you said at 20 Books Seville about the 10,000 books in a year in case anyone hasn't heard that and why you are excited about AI. Michael Anderle: Goodness gracious. So one of the things that people probably either know or don't know about me is I got in trouble six years ago for saying that someone could put out 20 books in a year. And it caused a kerfuffle. And now people need to understand, I didn't say necessarily the 20 books in a year. What I said was 20 books to get to 50K a year. And now I say, I have a big audacious goal of getting to 10,000 books produced. And that all of a sudden became a big kerfluffle. I guess they didn't understand some of the ramifications of that. But when I'm looking at things, I am looking at my competition. And for me, unlike perhaps a lot of people, for me, my competition is Delray, my competition is Penguin Random House, and they have the ability to put out hundreds, if not thousands, and tens of thousands of books. And that's where I kind of look at this and I see the opportunities. Now. LMBPN has already been down the path. We've already put out 350 books in one year. You know, we've already challenged, if you will, the mid-tiers. The next challenge for us are the biggest guys, and I believe that with what's going on, AI is going to allow us to do that. A lot of the things that Dan had mentioned before come into play. How do we allow in all of the aspects of our publishing business to run way more efficiently? How do we get out the pieces that don't work well, whether it's an Excel spreadsheet or whatever it is, and AI is gonna allow us to do that. I completely agree with the aspects on the creativity. I've done well over a hundred series. Not too many people can claim that. I have had to go down the path of how do I get the next idea? Stephen King talks about ‘read every day.' Well, when you're writing as much as I wrote for the first few years, you don't read every day, I did suffer the well of what the hell? What do we do next? And AI has engendered creativity and enthusiasm for new ideas. I understand that a lot of writers have aspects of writing they don't like. One of mine is I don't like to create really engaging universes before I start writing. I tend to find the universe. However, if the universe was created before, I have learned by using AI that it engenders explosions of dopamine hits on my creativity of, that's a genius idea. I can put that into the book. And so there are so many things that it facilitates. All the way up to other aspects, and so I think there's something for everyone in AI. If you choose not to use it, absolutely fine, but from the standpoint of going after a Penguin Random House without trying to get 5,000 employees, all of a sudden I see it as viable. Joanna Penn: Well, I think that's maybe what confuses people about you though, because you are an author, you are one of us, and you have your books that you've written yourself and with other people. And then you also have these audacious goals that you are competing with Penguin Random House. So this goal around 10,000 books in a year — which is a goal, not an actuality right now for sure — but is that the publishing head, not the Michael author head? Michael Anderle: Yeah, it is. Because I mean, one of the things, and let's talk about the publishing side head, and we spoke about these things. I think most people say, okay, that's 10,000 books in English. And it can be, I'm not saying it couldn't be, but I'm also saying, The whole thing I express is all stories from the company. And this isn't LMBPN by the way. LMBPN is strictly human first. 10,000 books can be all stories and all modalities Which means e-book, paperback, hardback. Then you go to audio, which can be synthetic audio, synthetic multicast audio. It can go to comic books, graphic novels. story scripts. It can go all modalities and all languages, all modalities everywhere, which means around the world all at once, which is obviously a digital manifestation. And so when you do that, even if you took 10,000 books and you divided it by five modalities, which be easy to accomplish with the ones I just announced, and 10 languages, which also easy to do, that's 200 books. 200 times, five times 10 is 10,000. And a lot of people don't want to either clue into that. And over the last seven years I've tried to explain to people at times and either fear, anxiety, or overwhelm, I mean, there are a lot of honestly justifiable reasons of why someone could react in a perhaps negative way. But I'm not here to explain everything, I'm here to provide a hint of what can happen. And some of the things that I say aren't because I think they can happen is because I know it can be accomplished. And so, but I'm not gonna sit here and tell people, this is what we've done, this is what we've accomplished, this is what I know we can do. And after I've put that down, I watched the responses for a little while, and then I ignored them. You know, mentally, emotionally, it just really wasn't worth it. But I did see one of them where someone was trying to ascertain, and I got a little annoyed because I'm like, we haven't put out one AI-written book yet, period. And I'm like, where are they getting off go wondering about these things when they have no understanding that this is what I'm goal oriented toward. Joanna Penn: Absolutely. I think that's interesting. And there are a lot of fears and anxieties. So Dan, you've been immersed in the author community for so many years now, and you understand a lot of this, and we've read it in the comments around things, but we also hear it in the community. What do you think are the main fears and anxieties around the implications of AI for writers? Dan Wood: That really is like the heart of why I wanted to be here and why I thought it was so important when you suggested that we do this discussion that it happened is there's a lot of fear, there's a lot of uncertainty. Some of it has to do with people being afraid that they can be replaced. We're seeing that in the artist community. We're seeing it in the narrator community, and we're now seeing it in the writer community. Because I think there was a certain assumption among authors that AI could replace jobs, but that it would never come for creative jobs. I think people are perhaps worrying a little bit too much because I think what really, yes, the large language models can generate text, but really the things that really get to the hearts of readers are the things that are unique, like the human struggles. And that's always gonna take a human component, I feel like. I feel like we do need to take a stand and say we're seeing the same sort of rhetoric being used in the same sort of people trying to force us into black and white of there is only one way. There's AI. You use AI and you're wrong or you are completely human and that's just not the case. It very much reminds me sometimes of the rhetoric that was used by traditional authors about indie authors 10 to 15 years ago and they're like, ‘oh no, this is gonna ruin reading. It's gonna ruin publishing because there's just gonna be too much content. And I think what we've seen from the indie movement is that there's never enough content to keep up with what, how much readers want, and how quickly readers can read. I think everyone has a choice. I don't think anyone has to use AI to help them with writing, but you can. And we should be accepting of people using AI as a writing tool. You might choose not to do that, but you might want to think about using AI to help you with your marketing copy. Cause those, they're things that people complain about all the time. They're like, I just wish I had somebody to do this. And they don't realize that generally, that's what traditional publishing was providing. And they were having to pay a salary for people to do those things that they didn't like to do. And technology has enabled the indie movement to happen to where suddenly an author could also be a publisher and take care of all their business needs. That's all technology. I guarantee you. I've hated that we've started talking about it and calling it AI, because I think that's very misleading. It's machine learning. Draft2Digital, Amazon KDP, the only thing that enables us to work with so many authors is that we're using machine learning to help us with reviews. There's just no possible way our business models would work if we had to read every book to review it. And so we're using tools and so you as an author are gaining through what we're now calling AI, and you have been, for 10 years, you've been using things like spell check and Grammarly that are AI, that took away some things for editors to do, but there were other jobs available for people. And if you are willing to transition, jobs are still gonna be there. Like they're gonna change. There are things that we could not have dreamt of, like people getting paid to play video games on Twitch or YouTube. Those are things that technology has enabled. And so yes, there are fears and uncertainty about all of this, but I think there's going to be room and humans are going to be a vital, important part of any creative endeavor going in the future. Joanna Penn: Absolutely. And I agree with you on the rhetoric and it can't be AI or no AI because there is no ‘no AI' in the world that we work in online. I mean, even people listening to this right now on a podcast player, whatever they're listening on is, is all kind of AI-powered these days. So like you say, we need to dial down the negativity in the rhetoric on this kind of thing and be more accepting of people. But let's carry on with some of the concerns because one of the things I've read from people is that “readers just won't want to read books that are AI-generated.” We are all planning on using elements of humanity in our books anyway. Like it's not, they're not AI books about AIs or anything like that. But the criticism is that people will be able to tell because the writing is somehow soulless. But I'm co-writing GPT4 and I can tell it's not that. But Michael, what are your thoughts on this kind of anything that involves AI in the writing process will be soulless and will be able to tell? Michael Anderle: I guess the first thing I would say is: We already have millions of human-written books that are soulless and people can tell because they don't buy them, they don't read them, and they don't continue with them. And so I think we've already been down this path. The question, which I think is at the heart of where Draft2Digital is too, with Dan's comment related to machine learning, crap isn't going to go up. What you're worried about is people who understand how to use the large language models and the generative pre-trained capabilities in order to create quality work. If you can't create quality work with GPT4 at the moment, that's actually on you. It's been done. I've seen it. We've edited it, we know it can be done. So that's not the question. Crap's just not gonna get sold. Joanna Penn: Absolutely. Well, I guess that does come back to Draft2Digital and Dan obviously representing the company as well. So one of the other things that people are saying is, oh, “you'll be able to tell and things will get machine banned.” So you mentioned there about the tools that you have that kind of make sure certain books get through. I know people are worried and that they're, but if the authors who want to use elements of AI, myself included, some people are worried that those books will get flagged and banned and other people would like them to get banned on the way in, or there are rumors and they are rumors about books being banned from Amazon, either with AI text or AI images. Will books that use AI as part of the process be banned or flagged during the publishing process? Dan Wood: I think one of the things we discussed while we were in Europe together was that we really don't think there need to be a lot of rule changes and that's something that we're communicating with our partners and they're still trying to figure it out as well. So the retailers, the library systems, the subscription services, essentially we want good content and we don't ask someone if they use a ghostwriter. We don't ask someone exactly how they made their content. We have tried all the different tools to at least try to identify if something was AI assisted. None of them have a good success rate. And that seems to be the academic consensus is that. There will never be a great way to detect things are written by these large language models because they are very, very good and there are a lot of humans to write very, very poorly. And so what we are looking for is just quality content. Like I mentioned, we're scanning books to look for things that we know the retailers have told us they're concerned about. In our system at least then we have a human look at it and apply that judgment that only a human can. That's the way it scales. Like there has to be a level of scanning all of this. Often what we will have people from, I would call the scammer community, or perhaps, and this is a separate community entirely too, the low content community or the passive income communities, that will try to just post a bunch of content. They will be very repetitive in nature and we generally will reject that kind of content because this content's readily available on the internet, like when those answers are out there. So if someone is just coming around along and using GPT to generate things that people can find easily with internet articles, we don't want that content. Our partners don't want that content. If you're trying to make quality content and something this unique and appeals to a reader base, we will always take that. And I don't see that changing ever, and it really doesn't matter what tools we used to make it. Joanna Penn: Okay. Well let's talk about another thing that is not legally decided yet, which is around the copyright side of things. So, Michael, as a businessman with a number of businesses, you are very careful about these things. What are your thoughts on the copyright aspect of works created with AI, even though there is no legal ruling on it? If we are publishing these books, then we have to think something about it. And you also do foreign rights licensing, you do all these kind of things. So we are signing contracts or using terms and conditions that are legal contracts. [Check out this episode with intellectual property lawyer Kathryn Goldman for more in-depth discussion of AI and copyright.] What are your thoughts on the copyright aspect of books co-written with AI? Michael Anderle: Well, this is an interesting aspect and I have looked at it and I've spoken to one of our lawyers yesterday, actually at length and another lawyer over in Amsterdam at the 20 Books Holland. And so I ask them aspects of this, and I understand that a lot of people, and my belief is that some who have fear of anxiety are trying to hide behind this, but the reality is easily explained this way. Let me ask the question to both of you, we both agree that the law says right now that if you use a Midjourney image, you cannot copyright that Midjourney image. Is that correct? Joanna Penn: Unless you change it in some way to make it more specific. Dan Wood: It's confusing. For me, being risk averse and what I know about the law right now, I probably would not recommend people use Midjourney images on their covers. But I think it's fine to use for a number of other things like social media posts, but I think there are some very strong arguments to be made that you probably can and probably won't have a legal problem if you do. Joanna Penn: I have a cover that is on Draft2Digital, With a Demon's Eye is a Midjourney image that my cover designer then turned into a book cover. So I am on that side of it. So, Michael, carry on. Where are you on this? Michael Anderle: So let me, in general, just that y'all, you actually answered this very specifically, which I think is awesome, but in general the answer is no. You can't. Right? Just in general without the specificity that you're talking about. Now, let me ask you the question. If you as a Midjourney person say, give me Batman in this amazing pose with something behind them, and you take that image of the dozens that you do and you put it on a t-shirt and sell it, do you expect to get a takedown notice from DC comics or somebody, a very clearly worded, you have broken my copyright? Joanna Penn: Yeah, for sure. Because that is someone else's character. Do not use Disney prompts or Marvel prompts or any of that for sure. Michael Anderle: And there's your legal answer for all of it. It's the same for words because if you, if a human created it, you are legally protected if a human created it. So the aspect in talking to the lawyer, and I'll go just a little bit more into this because once again, people should go and connect to their own lawyers. They should get their own. But generally speaking, the individual words that are in your book right now, you may not copyright. If I pull out three, bush, building, you can't copyright those. So at that level, or even concepts, tropes, you cannot copyright tropes. If you have a book that basically says a woman went here, she got attacked, and then this guy came in, tried to save her, but she kicked his — you know, whatever. You cannot copyright the overview of what's going on. It has to be what they call materially, materially similar. So even in those aspects, you can't copyright those things. But you actually, when you start creating a character, right? So why don't you as a human, create your character? Dan Wood: I think it goes back to that idea that we have laws for all this already. There's still things that have to play out in the courts. There are, I think at a certain level there are things that are problematic about the image generators because they did just scrape the web in general without a lot of supervision against scraping content that is copyrighted. So that's kind of some of my qualifications earlier was why I don't necessarily trust it to use it on covers is because there are a few prompts where there's such a small number of images that fit that, that it's trained on, that it will generate something that's almost identical to an image that is under copyright. But yes, I think what you're saying as far as we've already got loads of precedent and case law for those things that are created by a human. And then it doesn't really matter what tools they use to put that out in the world. And I can't come along and make something that looks like a character of yours. And I mean, it does get squishy with, if I come along and give a prompt that is “give me a book in the style of this particular author,” if they are in the public domain, that is certainly legally fine. Is it ethical? Maybe not. Michael Anderle: To clarify that one, the way I understand where we are at the moment is if I try to build a large language model on the aspect of James Patterson, which is completely doable right now. And then I try to build thrillers and compete with James Patterson, I am going to be probably screwed in the courts period. Now, if I were to say, not try to train something and I go in there and I build a thriller and I say, Hey, write this in the voice of James Patterson, I'd probably still be incredibly shaky ground if I chose to say something like, all right, I have this thriller, and give me the dialogue of Elmer Schnitz and the description of J R R Tolkien, it's a little bit vague. However, if I come in and say, and this is what the lawyer kind of said yesterday, he said, but if you go in there and say, “Hey, write me a thriller in the style of the 1950s bestselling pulp writers,” you are really not gonna have that much of a problem, cuz what are they gonna say? Joanna Penn: Well, and this is what I wanted to come back on. My overwhelming recommendation with people for images and text is: Do not use any names in your prompts. Do not use an artist's name for images. Do not use an author's name in writing. So I'm using like you are an award-winning horror writer, although I've also used my own name and my own name brought out some pretty cool stuff for me. But ethically, just in general, and coming back to the Midjourney image where my book with the cover is selling on Draft2Digital and elsewhere, that is a character cover. And again, no artist's name was used in the prompts. It's a combat photographer, a female combat photographer that then my cover designer edited and changed. So, I don't see any problem in that. This is a really important point because one of the reasons people want to use these images is because there are no stock photos of some of these things. So for example, fantasy characters of color, or for me, like a female combat photographer, there was no such character existing in stock photography. I know images are slightly different to words, but I think our whole point here is don't use names in your prompts. Don't use other people's IP in prompts. I mean, that's what it comes down to. Dan Wood: Yeah. I very much agree with that. Joanna Penn: Right. Well. Let's come on to another fear that people have. Now, we have mentioned that, Michael, you said that the good stuff will rise to the top and Dan said the same thing. Things won't be rejected because of AI, but let's think about marketing because I mean, People say, oh, there's no competition, we're all here being nice to each other. But let's face it, more books means more competition. And for example, bidding on keywords is a very specific example where there is a clear winner for every auction of keywords on a platform. So in that case, there is some competition. What are your thoughts on how AI might impact marketing? Dan, you said it in a good way in that we can do social media posts and blurbs and stuff like that. What are some of the other potential ramifications or things that people are worried about? Dan Wood: I do think very much that people are worried about there just being too much content and that is, making it very difficult for their marketing and very difficult for them to stand out in the content. I think that they're underestimating how the different retailers will use AI to help them curate and help readers find books that they really love. And so I think generally, when people are very scared about how it's gonna impact marketing visibility, it has to do with the idea, there's just gonna be more content without thinking about the ramifications of the technology and how it will improve discovery in general for marketing. I feel like there are very few places in our industry where it is truly like a fixed pie, where, you know, KU by far and by KU, I mean Kindle Unlimited. If one author's doing better, then it does mean like there's only so much money in the pool. As far as the general book community goes though, the more authors the better because authors are readers and authors read a lot more books than your typical non-writer. So the more people we get into the author community, the more people are buying books, the more people are reading. And so I think that is all good. I think AI will make your marketing spend go further. The AI tools will probably be able to help people do Amazon ads better. They'll probably help people be able to do Facebook ads better. We'll have new tools that we've never seen before because the different language models right now help people with a moderate understanding of coding and programming develop things very, very quickly. And that's something that within the industry, there's just not enough developers because developers tend to go on to jobs that pay a little bit better, and there's just not as big of the margins in books to draw the top talent. And so now I think we're gonna see people like people like me and Michael that have some knowledge of how to write programs, but didn't love it and had a problem just sitting down and writing a program from scratch that we'll be able to make new and exciting, innovative things. Michael Anderle: I meant thought about this a while ago when Dan was saying something. Using ChatGPT for sales descriptions / blurbs is useful for book marketing. For all of you authors who hate to do blurbs, please raise your hand. You know, you can physically do it in the safety of wherever you're at at the moment. If you have not tried any of the large language models, try this. Go in there. Grab three blurbs from bestselling authors that are in your genre. Tell GPT I want you to take these blurbs and let me know when you are ready. Paste the first one. Hit enter. Paste the second, hit enter, paste the third. Hit enter. And then say, write me a blurb where and give it information about your book. And then you can thank me in the morning. Now, if you don't wanna use AI, you won't be able to do this because you're not for it. But I hate blurbs. I created a methodology to write blurbs years ago based on something that I'd looked at on just the way that they would do their little way. But I go and grab three of ours, paste them in, because I had this happen to me two weeks ago. I needed to do a book nine blurb. I hadn't done anything in this particular series for two months, and could not remember what the heck was going on. And I went and pasted in seven, no, six, seven, and eight, and I, and then I looked back and say, okay, here's the core of what this book is about. I pasted, Hey, write me a blurb, blah, blah, blah. This is what happens. Go. And I had my blurb in a minute and I'm like, fantastic. Looked at it, made sure it was right, sent it on. Happy camper. Happy happy camper. And so from the marketing perspective, that's just one example of how AI can help us in other areas. Now, related to your cost-per-click things, I've come to the conclusion a year and a half ago that Amazon's taking us on a pay-to-play just like Facebook did years ago. It's no different. Therefore, I looked at what we were doing at the time, which is about 300 books a year and still is. And so I looked at that and I said, okay, pay to play, they're going to slowly take the money that they give us. That's very similar to what Facebook did, and I'm like, we're gonna have to leave. So the whole question, in my opinion, the whole question related to KU versus Wide is going to play out because at a certain quantity of books, you can't play in Kindle Unlimited is my assertion. So if we were to use what I just said, and the aforementioned 10,000 books, 97% of them would be wide. Out of the 10,000 books, 97% of them would be wide. Joanna Penn: So Dan, what do you think about that? Because obviously, Draft2Digital is all about wide publishing. Dan Wood: I 100% percent agree. The unlimited model takes care of a lot of things and it certainly is exciting to a reader and readers have gotten used to things like Netflix and Spotify that give them kind of all-you-can-eat for a certain amount of money, but those models kind of break down. Like the early days of Netflix were incredible, but now everyone is realizing and walling off their content and their own subscription service, and so now there are dozens of subscription services and we're all getting sick of paying. You know, I have to have a Paramount Plus account, I have to have a whatever they're calling HBM Max these days. I have to have Spotify, I have to have Netflix, blah, blah, blah. I think we're also seeing Amazon is under new leadership and that leadership doesn't seem to care as much about books as perhaps the previous one did. We're seeing more and more people go wide. We're seeing the pandemic really helped ebook adoption take off in markets and other languages where it hadn't been. Most people had not tried an ebook before, and so we've seen growth outside the English language market over the years, and I think AI is just going to be more fuel on that fire as it makes it easier for both English language content to be available in some of these other markets, but also for those authors in those markets to reach the broader English language market and to to do their own translations. I think as more as authors are able to do more formats, that helps their author career. The great thing about the indie movement is that it allowed for much, much greater diversity of content because what was getting published before was largely groups of people from the same basic backgrounds. You know, people who had connections to New York publishing, people who had connections to London publishing, people who had connections to Sydney publishing. Generally these were affluent people and publishing has always favored the affluent. Even within the indie community, you have a leg up if you've got the money to spend on a good cover, if you've got the money to spend on editing upfront, you're gonna have an advantage. And then when you have the money to spend on marketing upfront with AI, I think it will level the field even greater for all those authors who are just starting out so that they can have a competitive product that can be in all formats. They can get more bang for their buck with their ad spend. Joanna Penn: And I think if people are concerned, what we are really saying is new tools are going to emerge. If old ones stop working, new ones will arrive. AI will enable new marketing tools for book discovery. In fact, what I did the other day, I really wanted some more Dan Brown style, action, adventure, religious thrillers, like my own ARKANE series. I was like, okay, so there must be more authors out there other than just the ones I keep finding. And so I went on ChatGPT and I was like, these are the types of books I like What are 20 other books and authors I should check out? It gave me a list and they were all guys, which is normal because Action Adventure is a very traditional, it's a lot of the old guys like Wilbur Smith is dead, lots of old dudes, Clive Cussler, all of that. And so I was like, well, how about some books by female authors or books that have been released in the last decade and it gave me a whole load more. And then I said, I want books that make me feel like this way. And talked more about the emotional side of the books I like to read and some with architecture in, and that's why I actually had a chat around finding books to read and it gave me a whole load of new authors and I was like, this is fantastic. This kind of discovery that you can chat to book discovery is brilliant. And first my marketing brain went, how do I tell it more about my books? Like this whole thing around, ‘oh, we don't want our books in there.' Well, it's like we do perhaps, I mean there's Google Bard and there's Bing and all of this. But that's what I was thinking. I was like, there has to be something that will do this. We have to encourage people to chat to find more books. Dan Wood: I know for me, using any of the retailers for discovery kind of got unwieldy because the way in which they list things is not the way that readers think or talk about books. I started going to Reddit for all of my, you know, I would follow the different subreddits that were genres that I liked for recommendations. And watching how they describe books is fascinating to me. And it's like, I think every author should be looking at that. The cool thing for us is that those large language models were trained on Reddit. Now Reddit is starting to respond and realize the data trove they have and trying to protect that, but there's a lot of information out there to help you find a particular trope or feeling or author that's much better than the discovery platforms for books that are out there right now. Joanna Penn: So I guess what we're saying is there'll be a lot more things coming along the way. So there was one other thing I did wanna mention because we're almost out of time and that is that we don't want to see more polarization. And we touched on this a bit before, but when we were in Seville, we were like, this feels like the first AI-centered conference that we've been to where it was a mainstream topic conversation. Your opening speech touched on it, Michael. And then there was a session on Midjourney towards the end, so it was like a bookend of the conference. So, how do you think the author community is going to shake out with the discussion on AI? Because again, I remember when Joe Konrath's tsunami of crap blog post came out back in like 2012 whenever it was, and that was when the indie versus trad thing was there. [I have an episode talking about the ‘tsunami of crap' argument and how it pertains to AI-generated content in this episode on responsible use of AI.] And then of course there's the KU versus wide, and none of this should be so polarized. Michael, given your position in the community side of things, how can this shake out so we can all move on? Michael Anderle: Well, that's a really good question because we do need to realize that some of the individuals that are being, what I would consider negative, have a vested purpose in being negative. There's a value to them to be against AI, and so just recognize that sometimes the individuals that are saying things that they're trying to get you to act in a certain way that is not in your own personal self-interest. Just read, get out there, and make your own decision, and just realize you're an adult. You might have to go against something that people want to vilify you for. My whole purpose of saying what I did was that, you know, throw the arrows my way, it's not going to do anything to me cause I'm gonna ignore you anyway. Just like I've ignored everybody who is upset with me for the last seven years because I don't get on social media. I'm not personally trying to ignore you. I'm just not there. I'm rarely on social media because I have a business to run. I have authors who need to be paid and I, they need marketing, and I'm in those conversations and I have Robin Cutler who grew Ingram Spark and she's running the publishing side. I have conversations with her and guess what? It doesn't leave me time to sit on social media and wax poetic about whatever's going on. I'm here to grow a business. So if you wish to sit there and wax against something, yes, you might be hurting somebody that's right next to you who could really hear the message and it could help them grow. And just, the reason I wanted to start 20Books is help somebody make enough money in order to feed their kid to be able to buy some Enfamil. And if I'm going to say something about AI and make it okay for them to go check it out, then so be it. Joanna Penn: Dan, obviously you and the folks at Draft2Digital go to a lot of conferences and you go to more traditional conferences as well, not just indie. So how are you going to deal with this, and how do you think it will shake out? Dan Wood: Yeah, I have been going to a lot of conferences. I have many, many friends in the author community, and I have friends that are scared to let their friends know that they're using AI and that they're experimenting with AI. And that's why I wanted us to talk and I wanted to make sure that there are people speaking out for them because — Some of the rhetoric is awful and we should really try to give each other as a community more grace. We have the opportunity to make something much better than traditional publishing ever was. And we've been great at sharing how to succeed in so many other aspects. But we always, there seems to be something like the indie versus trad, the KU versus wide, where we let it divide us for a couple of years and people say awful things and we need to get past that. Something we've talked about is Draft2Digital has been working with Apple on their digital narration product. It's a great opportunity for authors that have just never had the money or the technical know-how to get their books made into audio. Out of that, I've been in contact with thousands of authors and I have gotten emails back. They were just like, I can't believe, how dare you. How can Draft2Digital support this? I think it's fine for you as a person can decide. I don't want to have anything to do with this. Like, that is the great thing about being in indie is — You get to control your business. Trying to tell someone else how they might run their business, I believe is neither good nor is it helpful. I believe it's also a waste of your time, like all this time that you're spending on social media complaining, you're trying to hold back a flood and you just can't do it. This stuff is going to happen. Legal things may slow it down a little bit, but for the most part, you have to change with the times. Things will never again be like that 2012, 2013 period where you could just put a book up on KDP and it had a good chance of getting discovered. Things will never again be like those first, that first year of Facebook ads where nobody knew how to do it and so the people that did got huge visibility. Things will continue to change. The people that will be successful are the people that will try to change with the tide. Michael Anderle: There there was a comment, Joanna, that I read yesterday. ChatGPT has a hundred million users. [Note: That was in January, so it's likely a lot more now.] Just look at that right there. And they got it in four months that, you know, so the fastest growing software usage and things all across the world, it is here. If you believe it isn't. That's not actual reality. Joanna Penn: So, I feel like part of the reason we wanted to talk was to try and make it a more AI-positive or at least AI-curious environment for people to be exploring this type of technology and be able to talk about it with other authors without being completely shut down. And there are other communities being started because people feel unwelcome in different ones and like we don't want end up completely splintered. We've all been doing this way too long to end up with a splintered community. I enjoyed the 20 Books Seville more than a conference I've been to in a long time. Like I felt really part of what this movement is becoming and it's very exciting. So, Michael, I have booked my ticket to Vegas, but 20BooksVegas, as you know. I haven't been to that one before, because I'm such an introvert and it just seems so big. But I'm I want to be part of this movement. What can we expect at 20BooksVegas around AI? Michael Anderle: So you asked me this at 20BooksSeville, and I had to call Craig because everyone knows because I say it on stage, Craig is the one who runs the 20BooksVegas situation and he said that he already had three classes on it already. I suspect more will be done and we can certainly do an opportunity and an Ask Me Anything with you and myself there if you're up to it and we can make something happen. And so, it's going to be part of what's going on. Joanna Penn: Well that's great and Dan, you are coming? Dan Wood: Yes, I will be at 20BooksVegas, and I think I've been at every 20Books event except for Edinburgh. Joanna Penn: Fantastic. So tell us where people can find you and everything you do online — although individually, you are not particularly contactable! Michael Anderle: Certainly for the fiction books because that's the only thing that we do, got to LMBPN.com for all of that. If you would like to see about getting published with LMBPN, we actually hide that quite a bit, but if you look at the bottom left-hand corner of the main page, there's an opportunity there for you to get involved. Dan Wood: Probably the best is the Draft2Digital blog, or we have our Self-Publishing Insiders Podcast that you can check out. I am personally on Twitter @DanWoodOK and I share a lot of information about the publishing and AI stuff that I find interesting that I think could be helpful to some of you if you are into that sort of stuff. Brilliant. Joanna Penn: Well, thanks both of you for your time. That was great. Dan Wood: Thank you for having us. Thank.The post Generative AI And The Indie Author Community With Michael Anderle And Dan Wood first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What is the AI-Assisted Artisan Author? How can we use AI tools in our creative and business processes while still keeping our humanity at the core of our books? As generative AI development continues apace and new possibilities emerge every week, the focus of AI discussions in the author community has been centered around productivity gains and high-volume output; copyright, plagiarism and piracy; and the fear of losing the artistic human aspect of being an author.  But there is much to be excited about if we can move past fear and doubt, and approach these tools with curiosity and a sense of wonder. We are only at the beginning of the opportunities of AI for wider society as well as for creativity and art, and it’s important that authors, writers, and other creatives be involved in order to shape the future as we want it to be. In this article, I’ll outline the concept of the AI-Assisted Artisan Author, which is how I intend to surf the wave of change ahead, rather than drown in the deluge. Today's show is sponsored by my wonderful patrons who fund my brain so I have time to think about and discuss these futurist topics impacting authors. If you support the show, you also get the extra monthly patron-only Q&A audio. You can support the show at www.patreon.com/thecreativepenn Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-nominated, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller and dark fantasy author as J.F. Penn. She has sold almost a million books across 169 countries and 5 languages. She’s also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker. Her latest book is Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways. 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 Acknowledge the risks and understand the human response to change How generative AI has made me re-examine my self-definition Adopt an AI-curious attitude What is an AI-Assisted Artisan Author (or A4 for short)?   Create beautiful books and products Double down on being human Write the books only you can write and include personal elements that can only come from you Foster connection and community with other humans Sell direct so readers connect you, the human, with your books (and other products) How to move forward You can find more future-focused episodes here. Acknowledge the risks and understand the human response to change I have been talking and writing about the possibilities of AI since 2016, when AlphaGo beat Lee Sodol in what many consider as the first creative AI move. I have covered the topic as it relates to authors regularly since then and even written a short book on the impact of AI on authors and publishing. I am the technology advisor to the Alliance of Independent Authors and helped formulate a submission on AI and copyright to the UK government in January 2022. I am an optimist and AI-positive, but I also acknowledge the many questions and issues humanity must work through. There are risks and dangers associated with AI, in the same way that there are with other transformative tools that humanity has developed, and many smart people are working on how to figure out the way ahead. Former head of Google Brain and co-founder of Coursera Dr. Andrew Ng, describes AI as “the new electricity.” Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google Alphabet, said that AI “is the most profound technology humanity is working on. More profound than fire, electricity, or anything we have done in the past.” Fire, electricity, and indeed the internet have huge benefits — and can also destroy lives. But we have adapted and they are an essential part of modern life. Do you want to live without fire, electricity, or the internet? These are Tools and Weapons: The Promise and Peril of the Digital Age, as covered by Brad Smith in his book, written before the emergence of generative AI.  Yes, there are risks — but there are also incredible opportunities. I focus on creativity, specifically writing here, but if you research any sector right now, you will see incredible potential emerging with AI tools.  Let’s face it, things are not all rosy and wonderful right now. Humanity has some huge challenges and we could use the help to solve issues that are way too complex for us to figure out. For example, DeepMind’s Alpha Fold is revolutionizing biology, which in turn will accelerate solutions for healthcare issues; and there are many applications for AI in helping to mitigate or even solve climate change [BCG], as well as re-imagine education [UNESCO] and other industries. Pick an area you’re interested in and research how AI is being investigated for future developments. Of course, there are also legal ramifications around fair use, copyright, and plagiarism, which may take years to work through. I covered these in more detail recently in my interview with intellectual property lawyer, Kathryn Goldman. But technology always emerges ahead of regulation, and the latter will come, in the same way that laws around driving and internet safety emerged after those technologies started to be used more widely.  People always resist technology. That is human nature.  In Build for Tomorrow, Jason Feifer gives many examples of how people have reacted to change. Bicycles were considered damaging to society, and books were considered dangerous for women. US Founding Father Thomas Jefferson even said that novels were “poison [that] infects the mind.”  Cars were known as ‘devil wagons,’ and “people on the side of the streets started throwing rocks at [those in cars]. Oftentimes, bystanders would yell, ‘Get a horse!’”  When I was growing up in the 80s, TV was rotting our brains and computer games caused violence in children. Now we live in a golden era for TV and the gaming industry is bigger than music and movie industries combined [Gamerhub]. In the creative sphere, Feifer reports that musicians initially resisted recorded music, seeing it as a threat to their live performances, but then pivoted into embracing it when they began to make money from recordings. As I write this in May 2023, there is controversy over Heart on my Sleeve, a viral hit song created with the AI-synthed voices of two human artists, with debates over the ramifications for copyright and fair use legal frameworks [The Verge].  But some artists are embracing the change, with musician Grimes saying on Twitter, “I'll split 50% royalties on any successful AI generated song that uses my voice.  Same deal as I would with any artist i collab with.  Feel free to use my voice without penalty.  I have no label and no legal bindings.” The development of photography might be the closest comparison to where writers are now. As The Guardian notes, “For 180 years, people have been asking the question: is photography art?” It uses a machine to capture an image, and you don’t have to learn the skills of drawing or painting with a brush to create a finished picture. Some considered photography cheating and unfair on those who take longer to create by hand. Since anyone can do it, it’s essentially worthless, and it certainly can’t be considered art. But now, of course, photography is considered an art form and people pay for beautiful photos to put on their walls. They visit galleries and exhibitions to see photos, and they buy photobooks and prints. The skill in photography is the choice of subject, the expert use of both the camera as a tool and the subsequent post-processing software, and the deeper human meaning behind the image. Obviously, some photos are not art. Some are functional, some are just for fun, some are personal, many are worthless. Nevertheless, photography remains and the argument that it’s cheating and unfair to those who paint or draw by hand has largely subsided. But photography is once again in flux. The winning image of the prestigious Sony World Photography Awards was later revealed to be created partially with AI. There is even a new word being adopted by some: synthography, defined as “the method of generating digital media synthetically using machine learning,” [Wikipedia] and the same arguments are being raised all over again. Technology moves on, and you get to choose how best to achieve your creative vision by utilising new tools, or remaining with existing methods.  But I know this goes deeper than semantics about what art is or is not. There is much more at stake. How generative AI has made me re-examine my self-definition When people ask what I do, I say, “I’m an author and a podcaster.” I write books and I record and publish audio, although I also do some professional speaking and teaching as well. Enough people pay me through multiple streams of income that I can make a living this way (thank you!) and I have been a full-time author entrepreneur since 2011.  This self-definition has worked for me — until just over a month ago, in March 2023, when Open AI released GPT4 (in the paid version of ChatGPT). I’ve been trying out various AI writing tools for several years and, while interesting and useful, nothing has blown me away in terms of quality. I have happily used many of the tools in various ways without having an existential moment. Earlier this year, I even used Sudowrite and other tools to help me write my short story, With a Demon’s Eye. But when I started co-writing with GPT4 (and it really does feel like co-writing), I had a moment of reckoning.  It is a step change from what has come before.  Based on my ideas and my structured prompting and using my own J.F. Penn fiction as examples to guide voice and tone, I was able to output words much faster than I could write them myself. I was so engrossed in the story as I prompted and GPT4 generated, that I enjoyed the experience far more than writing alone. It was so much fun that I was desperate to get back to the page to continue turning what was in my head into reality.  As science fiction author Hugh Howey recently wrote, “The most impressive thing about Chat is the most difficult thing for any writer: the ability to spin out words. To do the work. With Chat, paragraphs pour out like rain.” Of course, a rain of paragraphs, and thousands of coherent words, does not make a story that readers will love, or an engaging non-fiction book. A lot more goes into the process of crafting a finished book. But ‘outputting words’ has always been an important part of the job and what is a writer if not someone who can turn thoughts into words on a page by typing or dictating or hand-writing? The problem is how we have defined ourselves — and that needs to change in order to move forward. As Jason Feifer says in Build for Tomorrow, “We are not what we do. We are why we do it.” I spent some time reassessing my self-definition, and perhaps this approach might help you too.  I help writers and authors with my non-fiction books, courses, speaking, and my podcast as Joanna Penn. My mission at The Creative Penn has always been to empower authors with the knowledge they need to make decisions about their career, to write and publish and reach readers in a more effective way. I want to be useful and I have always loved reading self-help. Early on, I wanted to be the introverted British Tony Robbins! The Creative Penn Podcast has now been downloaded over 8.5 million times across 228 countries and I have wonderful Patrons who support the show, and people often email me or tweet me or leave a comment to say how much the show has helped them. Many of you have also said that you tune in for my introduction just as much as the interviews, and find my personal take on the industry useful.  While text and audio generated by AI can certainly help you with practical tips and information on writing craft and business, it cannot bring my personal experience or share the emotional rollercoaster that is the reality of being a human author.  My recent midlife memoir, Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways, is an even better example of a book that cannot be replicated by AI. The words could be duplicated, for sure, but it’s going to be a long time before an AI walks the Camino de Santiago and shares that emotional experience in such a personal fashion! What about my fiction as J.F. Penn?  I write thrillers, dark fantasy, and crime. But that is not enough.  Plenty of other human authors can deliver books in these genres, and even if you don’t believe AI can do this now, then check out AutoGPT and generative story apps and consider where we will be in a few years.  AI tools can absolutely do that. And if you don’t agree that AI tools can do this now, how about in a year or two years’ time? Why write fiction then, if readers can get their stories elsewhere?    You’re a writer. You know why! We can’t help ourselves.  Writing is how I figure out what I think. For non-fiction, it’s what I think about the more practical things, and in my fiction and memoir, it’s the deeper aspects and fundamental questions of life. My fiction has underlying themes of good vs. evil, memento mori (remember, you will die), and whether there is more than just this physical realm (Is there a God? What about demons and angels? What lies on the other side of the veil?) I’m writing this article because I need to work out my approach to co-creating with AI tools and figure out the next steps in my author career. Sharing my words as I work through this might help you.  I write fiction as I have this constant flow of story ideas. As I walk through the world, my mind constantly spins off into fantastic adventures and dark corridors that I want to get onto the page and into the world. I am overflowing with story ideas that I have yet to share and more arrive every day. Some of the stories that make it into book form touch other people and provoke deeper thoughts, or at least an escape for a while. At heart, I write fiction for the old me. The Jo Penn who worked a corporate job for over a decade and who read thrillers and crime and dark fantasy to escape a job she hated. I read on the commuter train every morning, with lunch most days and on the way home as well as in bed every night. I still read fiction every day for pleasure and fun and escape in a different way, but back then, it was my lifeline. So hell yeah, I’m going to keep writing — but since I intend to use AI assistance across my creative and business processes, I need to shift my idea of what the job of an author is.  The Merriam Webster dictionary defines author as “the writer of a literary work (such as a book), and also “one that originates or creates something.” The latter half of the definition works perfectly if you want to embrace AI-assistance. You can use AI tools through the creative process, with your ideas as the origin of the story or the non-fiction book, your hand-crafting through multiple prompting layers, your guidance and editing shaping the final version of whatever you want to create. So yes, I’m an author and a podcaster — but I am not someone who just outputs words in text or audio format. It is the purpose behind the words that matter and the connection I make with other humans that has an impact.  As Joanna Penn, I help writers with inspiration and information based on my human experience as an author. As J.F. Penn, I help readers and listeners escape their lives for a time into a world of imagination, and explore the deeper aspects of human life through my themes.  I already use tools and services in my one-person, multi-six-figure business, and going forward, I intend to expand my use of AI tools to help me achieve these goals in different ways.  If you’re still with me, and want to do this too, how can we move forward?  Adopt an AI-curious attitude Too many people are making pronouncements about AI in the creative sphere without trying the tools — or without trying them again, since there are developments every day and the tools are changing and improving at high speed. An opinion you held last week may now shift based on new developments, so question and test your assumptions.  Too many people are stuck in panic and fear and/or avoidance — which I completely understand as I have had those feelings too — but we need to move forward into curiosity and adaptation, as generative AI is not going back in the box.  Every week more companies roll out these tools in workplaces around the world. Just look at the pace Microsoft is releasing OpenAI tools into their Office products, and yes, that includes MS Word, which many authors use for writing. This is driving acceptance and awareness of AI tools in the workplace far faster than previous product iterations. The biggest tech companies in the world — Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta — are rolling out generative AI tools for creativity, search, and office admin functions. Huge multinationals are embracing these tools. The Wall Street Journal reports that accounting and consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers is pouring $1 billion into generative AI and using GPT4 with Microsoft Azure to transform their business and client offerings. Law firm Allen & Overy is just one of the legal companies embracing AI to help draft legal documents, as reported by WIRED. Even if the popular tools we use right now are shut down because of various legal cases over fair use and copyright, others will emerge built on top of new models created from appropriately licensed work.  For example, if you don’t want to use Midjourney because you’re concerned about its dataset, then check out Adobe Firefly, trained on Adobe’s copyrighted works. Since the tool is integrated with Photoshop, many book cover designers will soon be using it. If you don’t want to use GPT4, then it won’t be long until you can fine tune a model built with proprietary data on Amazon’s AWS Bedrock using the Titan model. Since it only needs 20 examples to fine-tune the Foundation Model, even individual authors could use it with a backlist. Imagine what a publishing company could do with thousands of genre-specific books. You are already AI-assisted and you already use AI tools as part of your daily life and your author business. If you use Grammarly or ProWritingAid for aspects of editing, Google for research or Maps for navigation or email with auto-anti-spam, Amazon for publishing or advertising or shopping, Facebook or TikTok or Twitter for social media, Spotify for music discovery, or Netflix for TV, you are using AI-assisted platforms and tools. Even if you only use Microsoft Word, it will soon be enhanced by generative AI with Co-Pilot. You can go back to writing by hand on paper and avoid AI altogether, or you can take a breath and follow your curiosity. Experiment. Try out the tools (many of them are free or cheap) and see how they might help you create what you could only dream of before. If you are AI-positive or at least AI-curious, check out the Facebook groups AI Writing for Authors, and AI Art for Authors, which are full of great tips and tricks and recommendations for various tools and prompts to get started. You can also get ideas from The AI Author Assistant by Elisa Lorello, or check out tutorial videos like Elisabeth Ann West’s videos on Sudowrite, or join J. Thorn’s newsletter about the impact of AI on creatives at creativeaidigest.com, or check out Monica Leonelle's essays at The Author Analyst. This is the beginning of a new form of creativity, and everyone is finding their own way. We are all new at this. Try things out and find your own process, in the same way as writers have always figured out their own way of doing things. You can learn from others — and people change their process every day right now as new options emerge! — but in the end, it’s your brain, your ideas, and your creative vision.  It’s also a great way to continue learning the craft of writing. In the same way that experienced artists construct the best prompts for AI art — The better you are at writing, the more deeply you understand the craft, the more you can prompt the AI tools into what you want to generate — and of course, edit the output with your creative vision in mind. While you experiment, I recommend that you don’t use other author or artist names in your prompts, whether for words, images, music, or voice. While this may not legally infringe on the originator’s intellectual property rights for doing so at the moment since the law is not certain, it crosses an ethical line (in my opinion) and you are far more likely to plagiarise if you use someone else’s name in a prompt. These are powerful tools, so let’s use them responsibly.  [See the Alliance of Independent Authors Ethical use of AI for other guidelines.] After all, you are creative. You are an author. You want to create something that is uniquely you, so use your writing to prompt and fine-tune. You can use samples of your writing in your prompts even if you have never published anything, so just give it a go.  What is an AI-Assisted Artisan Author (or A4 for short)?     An artisan can be defined as “a worker in a skilled trade, especially one that involves making things by hand,” or one made “in a traditional or non-mechanical way using high-quality ingredients.” [Oxford English Dictionary] I tried to find a better word than artisan and no doubt some will argue with my use of the term, but I think it works because I intend to personally oversee and hand-craft my books and products while also incorporating AI writing and creativity tools into my process.  Some will choose to use AI tools in a high-production model, but that is not the only approach. I aim to produce books of higher quality and work with the tools to go deeper into my themes and write in an ever more personal way than I have done before. As Anais Nin said, “If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.” Because it’s not about the production of words. It’s not about the paragraphs pouring out like rain.  It’s about meaning and connection.  Jay Acunzo summed this up on Twitter recently..  “A bright line is being drawn between creators today. Some think the job is to create content. Others know the job is to create connect. When you learn to matter more, you need to beg for attention less. Keep making what matters.” So how can we do this? Double down on being human I often talk about this as a concept, but what are some ways you can practically demonstrate your humanity even as you use AI tools as part of your process? Write the books only you can write and include personal elements that can only come from you In Futureproof, Kevin Roose explains more about how he leaves handprints in his work as a reporter. “I start every reporting assignment by figuring out how I can put my unique stamp on it, and not have it feel like a generic story that any other reporter (or any piece of AI software) could have written.” As authors facing the same question — If a bot can write this book, what’s the point? The goal is to make every book resonate with your humanity even as you use AI tools as part of your creative and business processes. If you’re writing non-fiction, fill it with personal stories, not just tips that could come from anyone. If you’re writing fiction, explore the personal themes that keep you awake at night, or delight you and make you laugh, or help you escape into another world and inspire a sense of wonder. It’s a call to center your humanity and put more of yourself into your work.  I know how hard this is. Fear of judgment is my deepest struggle — with my books, with my podcast, and especially on controversial topics like this! I was scared to publish my darkest book, Desecration, for fear of what people might think of my darker side. I was worried when I published The Successful Author Mindset, as I shared snippets from my diaries around the reality of being a writer. Even after 15 years of being an author, I was terrified of publishing Pilgrimage as it laid bare my midlife depression, and thoughts I hadn’t even shared with my husband, let alone the wider world. But that’s what we need to dial into.  AI tools can generate unlimited words in very little time, and never tire, never stop. But that doesn’t matter. Your books are your ideas. Your prompts. Your curation. Your editing.  Your creative direction. However you create — with or without AI tools — it’s more important than ever to find your voice and reach readers as one human connecting with another. Create beautiful books and products While digital products (ebooks, audiobooks, online courses) will continue to be important, generative AI will result in digital abundance, which will drive revenue down as there is so much supply.  Scarcity, therefore, becomes ever more important, and as such, I am excited about creating beautiful physical products (alongside the usual formats for my books). While I read every day in ebook and audiobook formats, my bookshelves are full of beautiful hardbacks that I spend more money on. My most expensive book is an oversize edition with full-color images of Carl Jung’s The Red Book (which partially inspired Stone of Fire). Others include Death: A Graveside Companion, Heavenly Bodies by Paul Koudounaris, Dark Tourism by Rebecca Bathory, Lost Cities Ancient Tombs, and Anatomica: The Exquisite and Unsettling Art of Human Anatomy. If you like the sound of these, you might enjoy my fiction as J.F. Penn. Yes, I am a dark little soul! I produced my first beautiful hardback book this year for my Pilgrimage Kickstarter, with silver foil on the cover, a flyleaf cover with a silken finish, full-color photos, and premium paper. (You can buy the hardback on my store, CreativePennBooks.com, also available in other formats).  I am proud of all my books, but this is the first physical product I have made that I truly love. While the content of the memoir is available in all the usual formats in all the usual places, this premium physical product is both an expression of my desire to make something beautiful for a book of my heart — and also makes me a decent profit. This satisfies my artistic and my business sides and helps my books stand out. I intend to do more beautiful books and I have loads of ideas about future projects, potentially working with AI-assisted artists as well as my existing team. I will still publish all the usual formats on the usual platforms, but I will also be doing more special projects on Kickstarter and selling direct-only products from my store, CreativePennBooks.com  In this way, I can “Leave handprints,” as Kevin Roose suggests in Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation. “What will make us stand out is not how hard we labor, but how much of ourselves shows up in the final product. In other words, elbow grease is out. Handprints are in.” [I also recommend Kevin’s podcast, Hard Fork, with Casey Newton, which offers weekly insights into AI developments.] Foster connection and community with other humans You can also use AI tools for marketing, and even some of those authors who are adamant about not writing with AI are using it for social media and marketing copy, character images, advertising, and more. But even as we use the tools, we have to ‘leave handprints.’  Share aspects of your personal life that would be hard to replicate consistently over time by a machine. Yes, there are deep fake photos and there are photo-quality AI images of people who don’t exist, but you are real, so share real photos on social media or your website, preferably of your face so people can see you. In this vein, human me will still present this podcast until I tell you otherwise, even though my voice double gets better every week. Of course, you need to protect your boundaries. I don’t share pictures of my husband on social media, but I share enough pictures of random things regularly that you know I am a real person with a varied life. It’s not just all about branding, or on-message photos like the kind generated by fake media purely for sales purposes. Be a human with a physical body Attend events in person so you can meet and connect with other humans. I know this is hard. I’m an introvert with a touch of social anxiety. I’m overly sensitive to sound and light, and find crowds and noise difficult. After 20Books Seville recently, I spent a day in bed recovering in silence and darkness and then I had to leave London Book Fair early, spending another day in bed, this time with a headache that completely shut me down. [Thanks to everyone who sent me tips on how to manage my energy better!] This kind of person-to-person connection is critical, and increasingly so as the digital world becomes even more pervasive. People do business with people they know, like, and trust. After 15 years of building a digital, scalable, online business, I am now searching for ways to be more physical, immediate, transitory, and in-person. Less scalable, more personal.   Of course, it can be expensive and impractical to travel to events and conferences, so try arranging a meet-up locally with other authors, or organize a reader event at a local library. Or consider how else you could do something in person. What might intersect with your books/stories/world? Sell direct so readers connect you, the human, with your books (and other products) When you choose to buy direct instead of through a big brand store, you connect with the creator. When you sell direct, you have a closer relationship with the buyer. You get paid more quickly and you can email them over time, fostering the relationship  — and yes, encouraging more sales! The same happens with Kickstarter or other crowdfunding platforms. You connect with the author/creator more directly and you are choosing to help them create and make more of a profit. For more on this, check out my resources and interviews on selling direct, including how I built my store and lessons learned from my first Kickstarter campaign. You can buy my books in all formats at www.CreativePennBooks.com (or at your favorite online store, or order at your library or local bookshop). These are just some aspects of doubling down on being human, and I’m sure more will emerge as this industry changes and shifts over time.  As Jason Feifer says in Build for Tomorrow:  “Do not panic. Do not focus on what is lost. Focus instead on what can be gained.”  Fifteen years ago, I embraced a new form of publishing, as one of the first generation of indie authors to use ebooks and digital audio as well as print on demand. I originally self-published back in the days when it was seen as ‘vanity’ and a bad decision that would destroy your reputation. Now it’s seen as a valid choice for business-minded authors who want to write and publish the books they choose, own and control their intellectual property, connect with readers directly, and make a full-time living as an author. I didn’t know it would turn out this way when I first self-published in early 2008, just a few months after the Kindle and the iPhone launched in late 2007. All I knew was that I wanted to join this exciting movement full of authors experimenting and forging their own path on the back of a new wave of technology.  I’ve experimented and tried new things along the way, pivoted and shifted, and grown since then — and I am still here, still writing, still creating, still running my own business. In many ways, I am a successful author. But as Aidan McCullen says in Undisruptible: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention for Individuals, Organisations, and Life: “When individuals are at their most successful, we are also at our most vulnerable. We become so preoccupied with optimizing, enjoying, and defending the competitive advantage that made us successful today that we neglect to prepare for tomorrow.” Indie authors are successful right now, but the old model is shifting, and I need to change in order to be successful in the next 15 years of my author career. I am only 48. I have a lot of life left in me (touch wood!) At 20BooksSeville recently, someone described me as one of the ‘old guard’ of indie because I have been doing this for so long. I’m grateful for the last 15 years, but I don’t want to be the ‘old guard.' I want to be in the vanguard of this new exciting movement full of authors and creators forging their path on the back of this next wave of technology.  I’m experimenting and playing and trying new things. I’m pushing the boundaries of my existing creative process and slowly, I am shifting into being an AI-Assisted Artisan Author. How about you?  Let me know any questions or thoughts in the comments, or Contact Me here, and please be gentle. We are all still working this out together! If you found this useful, please consider supporting the show at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn or BuyMeACoffee.com/thecreativepenn P.S. Could you tell which words were generated by GPT4 and what was all me? Does it matter if you found it useful and/or thought-provoking?  P.P.S. Human me wrote every word, but again, does it matter as long as you found it useful and thought-provoking?The post The AI-Assisted Artisan Author With Joanna Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can we build a creative life based on following our curiosity? What are some important attitudes to hold that will help us with a sustainable life and career? Kevin Kelly shares some Excellent Advice for Living. In the intro, author newsletter tips [BookBub]; Mark Dawson's 20+ year writing journey; Thoughts on 20Books Seville and London Book Fair with me and Orna Ross [Ask ALLi]; HarperCollins is testing AI-generated content, reported by Jane Friedman [The Hotsheet]. Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with Scrivener, ProWritingAid will help you improve your 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 Kevin Kelly is the New York Times bestselling author of multiple books, including The Inevitable, Cool Tools, and Vanishing Asia, as well as being a Technologist Senior Maverick at Wired Magazine and co-chair of the Long Now Foundation. His latest book Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Following your curiosity for an interesting, long-term, project-based career Experiencing different cultures and the creative process Creating art as “imperfect beings” Letting your author voice emerge instead of finding it Reasons for optimism for writers with generative AI Why 1000 true fans is still relevant You can find Kevin Kelly at KK.org or on socials @Kevin2Kelly Header image generated by Joanna Penn on Midjourney. Transcript of Interview with Kevin Kelly Joanna: Kevin Kelly is the New York Times bestselling author of multiple books, including The Inevitable, Cool Tools, and Vanishing Asia, as well as being a Technologist Senior Maverick at Wired Magazine and co-chair of the Long Now Foundation. His latest book Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier. So welcome to the show, Kevin. Kevin: Oh, I'm really delighted to be here. I really appreciate you inviting me. Thank you. Joanna: Oh, no, I'm excited. And there is indeed a lot of excellent advice in the book. So I've pulled out some particular quotes for writers to explore further. And the first is: “Draw to discover what you see. Write to discover what you think.” What part has visual art and writing played in your life? How do you balance creation with consumption? Kevin: That's a great question. I, for some reason, have been a maker, which is what we call it now, all my life. I didn't call it that when I was growing up, I was just a kid who liked to make things, and not just little things, but larger things. So I made a model train layout with plywood with, you know, a little city and lights and things when I was probably 10ish, maybe. Then I went on to make a nature museum when I was 12. I found a book at the library about how to make a nature museum. And I was doing collections and making exhibits, and I went on to make other things like that. I don't know, it was just something in me that wanted to make stuff.  I got into art as a kid, and I almost went to art school after high school, which I should have done, but I didn't. So it's always been a part of how I see things. I eventually kind of gravitated to photography because it was a combination of my other love, which was science. So it's kind of technical and art at the same time. And when I started, you had to do the chemistry, and go into the darkroom, and do the magic chemistry, and so it's very technical. And that was very much a part of me. I would go out to photograph to see. I mean, there was something about doing the art that enabled me to see things. Partly, it was an excuse to see it, and partly, it was that act of trying to look and see. Then when I was drawing, I realized that most of the effort was actually to see the thing. It wasn't the hand, it was your eye trying to see something, and then you could transfer it to your hand.  Later on, when I started to write, it was the same thing. I don't have an idea, and then I try to express it. It's quite the opposite. I don't even know what I'm thinking. I don't know what my idea is until I try and write something, and that act of writing it kind of puts the idea into my head. It's very weird. It's sort of like I try to think what I know, and I realize I don't know, and I try to get somewhere. And that act of trying to write actually creates the idea, so that's what I meant by that. Joanna: Well, we call that discovery writing. That's what we call it. Kevin: I'm a discovery writer. Okay, I didn't know that. Thank you. Joanna: Some people in the writing community call them ‘pantsers.' And that is a very American word, obviously, because in England, pants is underwear. So we kind of adopted the word ‘discovery writer,' because you know, that's better than pants. Kevin: I don't get the pants reference. Joanna: Writing by the seat of your pants. Kevin: Ah, okay. I think discovery writing is more apt. That is definitely my style of writing. I don't write as much fiction, but I would even imagine I'd probably do the same when I write fiction. Joanna: Oh, good. It's interesting, because you talk there about almost changing your process over the years and changing the way you see and you learn to write by writing and figure out what you think. But I wondered how your writing process, in particular, has changed over the years because you've written some very different types of books. Like The Inevitable, I've got it here in hardback, and I quote it often. It's about technology, it's about art as well, but it is mainly about technology. And then Vanishing Asia, of course, is a photo book. And I wondered, how has your writing process changed? How do you decide on what book to write next because they're so diverse? Kevin: Yes, you're absolutely correct. The Vanishing Asia book, which you mentioned, does have 9000 captions. There are some words, even though there are 9000 images as well, but that was a matter of, you know, its labeling rather than creative writing. Although I had to condense a lot of information about a picture into a few words. I tend to write telegraphic, and as I've gone on it's become more important to me. That's one of the things happening with this Excellent Advice book, which was me trying to make it as telegraphic as possible. I somehow enjoy that process of trying to distill something down to as few possible words. I don't know whether that was my background editing. I'm a more natural editor than a writer, let me put it that way. My natural tendency is to edit. I'm comfortable editing. I am just in pain trying to write that first draft, and it's just excruciating.  I work with writers. So I work with writers who love to write. I don't love to write, I love to have written. And so I'm much more comfortable in that kind of distilling something down and removing words, rather than adding words or making up words. Over time, I'm not sure how I would say it's changed. So maybe, one, is that kind of appreciating the distillation process. It's a piece of advice which I put into the book, which is this idea that all professional writers get to where you have to generate lots of bad stuff, first drafts that you're going to throw away, but know that. And I didn't know that in the beginning. I didn't realize that you would do that. That seemed kind of like a waste, or a failure or something, that you would generate stuff that you would throw away, knowing that you're going to throw it away. I mean, that's the difference. And so now I understand that I'm just going to write a whole bunch of stuff that I'm just never going to use, and that's sort of the point of it. That took me a long time to understand that. And that's true for anything I make now. I just assume I'm going to get there by making prototypes, going to make different versions of it as I go along, knowing that I'm not going to save the initial ones, that I'm not going to hold on to them. That changed over time where I understood that. So it's much more about the process now, rather than about the artifact. Joanna: And with your photography, because I mean, you started taking pictures in Asia decades ago when digital photography was not as it is now. So now you can take millions of photos and then spend the time editing, but originally, you would have had to take fewer photos, I guess. So is that maybe part of why your process has changed because you do have this abundance? And that must make editing also a lot harder. Kevin: You're absolutely right. So when I started off 50 years ago, 1972, photographing in Taiwan, Japan, and I had precious rolls of film, which had 36 exposures in a roll. And the cost of that developing and buying the film, in today's dollars, is about $5. So imagine each time you clicked your camera phone it was $5. That really tends to focus what you're going to shoot at.  So that habit of really trying to sort of edit in the camera, they were calling it, where you spent much more time thinking and moving about and pretending you're photographing, but not actually photographing, that kind of slows you down. And that habit, I still maintained even as I went to digital of trying not to take a lot, and really trying this decisive moment idea of like waiting for the right moment and then taking as few as possible. I'm not the auto motor. There's a motor-driven mode in a lot of cameras where you just ‘click, click, click' and then later on you pick out the one that you like. I'm still much more trying to time it myself, kind of like as if it was film. So I think it's true, that model of trying to minimize the things and trying to edit in the camera as much as possible, is an old school version. There's really no reason not to take a lot of pictures, they are all free. But to me, there's a different joy in it. Joanna: And then just staying on Asia, because another quote from the book says: “Expand your mind by thinking with your feet on a walk, or with your hand in a notebook. Think outside your brain.” Which I really love. So how have your travels in Asia, in particular, being so many different cultures, helped you think outside your brain? How has Asia changed you? Kevin: Well, the way that Asia changed me, I mean, it's just so immense, it would be an entire book in itself. Because I went to Asia from when I was very, very young, I was 20, and I had never been outside of New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts. And in the 70s, early 70s and 60s when I was growing up, it was a very, very different world, a very different America, and I had never eaten Chinese food in my life. I had never held chopsticks in my life. It was a very parochial world.  So going and winding up in Taiwan in 1972, it blew my mind. It just was so utterly different from anything I experienced in suburban New Jersey. And there was an openness, meaning that everybody was working out on the streets, so everything was visible, their sense of privacy was very different. You could kind of walk into anything without any objection, or people will be welcoming. People did things differently. It was just mind-bogglingly different for me.  That was the beginning of it, and I just kind of went on to most of the Asian countries from there, photographing, but also learning. I mean, after I was done, I awarded myself an honorary degree in Asian studies because there was so much. And the diversity within Asia is much greater than even from any Asian country to America, really. It's just huge. From Turkey, to Japan, Siberia in the North, down to Indonesia. It's just vast. So I learned from those things, primarily, this idea of the benefit of otherness, of having differences, of thinking different, and having a different way of doing things. Because we are now in a world where we're connected all the time with each other 24 hours a day. And yet, the engine of all the innovation, and even the wealth, is coming from being able to think different.  It's harder to think different when we're connected together. And I find that traveling, it being physical, having those hurdles that your body has, and being outside of your head and actually immersed in the world, and using your hands to do things, it ignites different ideas. It ignites ideas that you can't get just by thinking about things. This is one of the reasons why I preach embracing technologies is because we can think about what these technologies are going to do, but we have to use them and do them in order to actually see what they're good for and know what they're not good for. So engaging in the physical world is the ultimate trip, and it's the ultimate way to make something happen. And it's the ultimate way to learn and to understand what's happening. So I think the value of travel, we should subsidize it to the youth because it is so so valuable. Joanna: Yes, I have another podcast called Books and Travel, and it's definitely one of my obsessions. I was wondering whether you have — this is something I struggle with, which is being at home. In that when I'm home, I am always planning my next trip. And so whether wanderlust is just part of us as a character, our innate, and that's just from curiosity, or whether you think you'll ever stop traveling? Have you found ‘home' or is your home everywhere? Kevin: Well, I was shocked, utterly shocked by COVID because for two and a half years, I did not travel anywhere. And I mean, I was a rolling stone until that point. And the shocking thing was I did not miss it at all. It was like if I never got on a plane again, I'm perfectly happy. It was so weird because I would not have ever predicted that. I haven't actually gotten back to the level of wanderlust. And so it turned out that I was happy not traveling. I didn't hate it, it wasn't that I was burned out, it was just like, oh, okay, well, can't travel, that's alright, we'll make stuff at home. And so that was something surprising that I did not know about myself, which was that I was going to be happy not traveling. I've picked up again, a little bit, but not as much as anywhere near what I was doing. And it's been fine. So I don't know what that says. I'm not, as you know, as obsessed with finding these little corners of the world that are special. I'm maybe figuring that I've done a lot of that, and it's okay. And now I'm kind of doing other things. So for me, that was a surprise for myself. Joanna: Was that at the time you were doing the Vanishing Asia books? Kevin: Yes. Yeah. Joanna: So maybe with that, you were kind of virtually traveling every day because that was such a huge project. Kevin: Yes, yeah. I had a half a million images that I was going through and editing. And I did the layout and design for all 1080 pages. Each page has a different design and I had to color process, or you know, basically touch up every single one of those 9000 images. Yeah, there was a huge amount of work. So yeah, I could have been satisfied, my wanderlust could have been satisfied by reviewing all these images, some of which were taken almost 50 years ago. So that could have been a large part of it. Joanna: It's interesting. And then I wanted to ask, another quote that I really liked was: “Only imperfect beings can make art because art begins in what is broken.” And that really made me stop and think. So how has being broken impacted your art? Kevin: As I said, superheroes and saints don't really make art. Mother Teresa, Jesus, they weren't doing art because there was nothing to complete. So it's our incompleteness. It's our kind of search for things, this yearning to restore something in some ways, that I think is this fundamental thing of making the art, the expression. My definition of art, there's lots of definitions, but mine is cool and useless. It's things that we make that really aren't practical in that first-order sense. They're kind of existing just because, and that sense of that they're there for us, the primary audience is ourselves. So there's a question that we have that we're kind of answering. And we may not even know what the question is, but we're making an answer to it. And so if you don't have questions to yourself, if you're perfect, you don't have questions about yourself. And so the art is kind of a way of trying to answer a question that you're not even sure what it is. And for me, that's what it is. It's kind of my inner self talking to my conscious self, or making itself conscious and aware. And so there's a lot of subterranean work going on because I'm imperfect, and I see the same in other people as well. Joanna: Well, it's interesting, you say subterranean. I mean— Do we even know what it is that is broken in ourselves when we make our art? Kevin: We often don't know. My basic stance is that we are totally opaque to ourselves. We don't have great access to our own inner self, how our minds work and why our minds work. Some people use dreams and other things to try and access that, or therapy, and art is certainly in that same category. And we use other people's around us to help us understand ourselves. I mean, even on a kind of a scientific level, we don't understand how we work very well. We don't understand how our minds actually work. And so this is another tool in trying to access our inner workings and what makes us tick. And if we're lucky, maybe by the end of our life we have a slightly better idea than when we began. Joanna: Yeah, hopefully. Well, it's funny because there's kind of an obsession in the writing community about finding your author voice.  From what you're saying there, it's potentially we might never really find it, but that it might emerge. Kevin: Well, so I have some other advice in the book about kind of the journey, which I think is close to last week, which is like basically, your goal is to be able to say on the day before you die, that you fully become yourself. So we want to kind of like become all that we can be, we want to become what is possible, what we're kind of arranged to be, all the talents and geniuses that we have. Everybody's is different, like we have a different face, we have a little slightly different arrangement to things.  For me, my goal is then to try and, another piece of advice in the book, not be the best, but be the only. And that is kind of coming to where you are doing something that only you can do, and that's a very high bar. It's a very high bar because it requires some kind of self-knowledge and knowing what you are better at than most people or any other people. For most of us, that will take all our lives. It will take all our lives to get to the point where we have a grasp of what it is that we do much better, if not better, than anybody. And there may be some people who are prodigies, who very early in life can see and know themselves well enough that they know what it is that they can do better than anybody else, but most of us, it's going to take a long time. So it's a process, so it's never done. That's another piece of advice. Like basically, you're getting lessons all your life, and if you're still alive there's another lesson to come. I don't see our lives having destinations, I see these as journeys, and we're always going to be working on it. And if you're alive, you're still trying to become yourself.  So it's a direction. I think that that's one of the reasons why I say, another piece of advice from the book, is that when you're starting out, it doesn't really matter where you start. Particularly for young people, don't get too hung up on your first job or your major or anything, because it's very, very, very rare that anybody stops or ends up where they started. Most of the remarkable lives that you would admire, people that you might respect, heroes that you have, they started somewhere way, way, way far from where they from where they are. And any remarkable person's life is meandering, full of detours, and setbacks, and sharp turns. So it doesn't really matter where you begin, as long as you're kind of going in a direction and making progress, in the sense of becoming more of who you are.  So that's my advice to young people is just master something. You've got to master something, that's the platform. But it doesn't really matter too much where you start. Joanna: And it's interesting, again, looking at everything you've created as a maker. And the things you've started, in many ways, they're not related in some way. I find that fascinating. Does curiosity drive everything you do? Kevin: Yeah, I'm always trying to surprise myself. So I did a piece of daily art every day for a year, I used Procreate and made and painted and drew a piece of art every day, and it's on Instagram, and Twitter, or on my website. If you look at them, it's like, there's no style, no theme. I would try and surprise myself. So I would sit down, and like I would have literally no idea what I'm going to draw today. Then I would like to try and get an idea. I wanted to surprise myself with something that I didn't know how to me. So my projects are a little bit like that too, where I guess I do have a fear of repeating myself. But that's really mild, it's more of understanding that there's so much to explore and trying to use each opportunity to draw as opportunity to learn. So I'd say, oh maybe today, oh, I had this idea of a map, I'll try to make maps. I don't know much about maps, so I'm going to learn. You know, so I'm going to be learning about how to make a map as I try to make a map.  So that's why I'm a total addict for YouTube because this is the learning machine. So my art for me is learning about the world, learning about myself. And I try to keep moving in different kinds of projects to maximize and optimize my learning. Joanna: It's interesting, given your different projects, and as I said, I've been following your work really since 2006, 2008, around the 1000 True Fans post. And I've always been like, wow, that's a completely different project. And in this author community, a lot of the listeners, we do have to kind of please certain people. And you've got these books, but one of the tips in the book is: “If you can avoid seeking the approval of others, your power is limitless.” And I read it and I was like, well, that's great, but as authors, we need approval from agents, editors, publishers, readers, critics. So how do we put that need for approval aside to just create these things that we want to create? Kevin: Yeah, it's a weird balancing act, this work, particularly the work of authors, but works of artists and creators. It is a really weird balancing act between ignoring what everybody else says and paying very close attention to what everybody else says. The reason why we have people in our lives, family, friends, customers, readers, clients, colleagues, is to help us see who we're becoming before we are, to help us to see who we are, because it's impossible for us to do this journey alone. As I said, we're just so opaque to ourselves. We need others around us, including readers and publishers, to help us see, to understand, because we cannot understand ourselves by ourselves. There's a little kind of recursive loop that you get caught up in, so you need that outside perspective all the time. But we don't want it to be binding, to imprison us, to prevent us from moving or progressing. So there's this weird thing, I think it said somewhere else in the book that you need three things to really create something really great, which is the ability to never give up. And secondly, the ability to give up when it's time to give up and move on. And then your friends and family around you to help you discern the difference between those two modes. So there is this sort of inherent paradox in creating where you want to use the feedback and the signals you're getting from readers or publishers. At the same time, you have to be willing to ignore those at certain times. And it's that art of making those compromises. You're not always going to get it right, and that's, again, another piece of advice about why, if you're going to be creative, you have to do it iteratively. You have to do it on an ongoing basis, you have to do it lots of times, because you're not going to get that mix right. Sometimes you're going to be incorrect and wrong about ignoring what people say. And other times you're going to be wrong by paying attention to what they're saying. So that's the value of professionals and others who do this on an ongoing basis because you can keep trying, and over time, you'll get that balance correct. Joanna: Yeah, it's really hard. I guess it's seeking approval after you've already made it, as opposed to during the making of it. Kevin: I think you put it very, very well. So yeah, while you're making it, you don't want the editor or anybody around making judgment. And then once you've made it, you may abandon it as well, which is fine, because that's part of the process. And then at that point, yeah, you don't care.  There's another bit of advice, too, which was when someone is telling you that something is wrong, they're usually right, but when they're telling you how to fix it, they're usually wrong. Joanna: Unless they're an editor, of course. Kevin: Well, yes. I have a maxim to myself, which is the editor is always right. And I believe that both as an editor and as a writer, is that I generally will follow the advice of the editor. Very rarely will I just insist and push back. But generally, my default mode is the editor is right because I value that outside perspective . You want to find someone you trust, but they can be incredibly helpful. And of course, while I was editing, I believed the editor was right. So yeah. Joanna: Yeah, that's great. And I think it is about finding people who you trust to listen to, which I love.  I want to move on to the AI stuff that's going on because you actually wrote a piece in the last Wired Magazine about generative AI. And you're now posting AI-generated art on Instagram and Twitter @kevin2kelly, and I've got you on my feed, so I have a look at that. #AI_ART #DailyAI #ImadeAIart pic.twitter.com/QFbRGqfI26— Kevin Kelly (@kevin2kelly) April 17, 2023 One of your pieces of advice is: “Don't bother fighting the old, just build the new.” Which I thought was great. What are you enjoying about this AI-generative art phase in technology? Kevin: Well, partly I'm exploring. If anybody sees the feed, they'll see like every day, it's like, again, I'm trying to surprise myself. Like, I'm just trying to do something weird and different and take advantage of the fact that my drawing skills are very limited. And here's this machine that can do tremendous drawing, so what can I do if I've been able to amplify my abilities to render things. So it's mostly exploring to see what is capable. I get pleasure out of the images. And this was one of the things that I kind of realized, working on Midjourney or something, is that most of the images being created, have an audience of one. It's like having your own little museum and you're just seeing the beauty of these images. It's like, wow, I just really enjoyed it. And that's simply just to see them. No one else may ever see these again, but that's the genius of this thing is it doesn't matter.  I just get the pleasure of seeing these cool images. And they do take time to generate, and they almost take as much time as if I was really good drawing and I was drawing them, to get a really good one. You can get any image instantly within seconds, but to get a really, really good one that you just kind of want to stare at, and look at, and enjoy, it will take up to half an hour. So I'm learning that process. It's a little bit like photography. You know, the painters in the 1800s were very concerned about photographers because they said all you do is push the button. Anybody who's a photographer knows that photography is not just pushing the button. There are a whole lot of other things that go on to make a really great photograph. That's the same thing we're finding about AI art. It's not just clicking, it's like you're a photographer, you're kind of hunting for things, you're moving through this latent space of possible images, hunting for things and looking, and kind of setting it up, and you've got your bird blind, and you're kind of waiting there to see what comes up. There's this engagement and this sense of hunting for these things and discovering them and kind of co-creating him. That's what I enjoy as well. And that process of, okay, just one more, I think I'm getting close, wait, it's almost there, wait, wait, oh, I got to shift over. So the process of the creative process is that work as well. And I just enjoy discovering these things and kind of finding a little corner that nobody has ever been to before. That's the thing, you make these little worlds, and you're there, and you're kind of discovering what's in this world. And there's never going to be anybody to go back to that because it's almost impossible to get there again. That's kind of fun. Joanna: Yes, and I've been having a lot of fun on Midjourney as well. But like you said, you're a photographer, I mean, I do take photos, but I don't consider visual art to be a medium where I'm any kind of expert. But a lot of people listening, I mean, we now have obviously chat GPT has gone mainstream, but we also use tools like Sudowrite, and there are tools for writing as well. So what are your thoughts—and obviously, this is the beginning, this feels like day one for this kind. And you also say that the future is decided by optimists, so I like your positive spin.  Are there reasons for optimism for writers with this kind of generative AI? Kevin: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It's really great. I think right now the current framing for these chat bots, and we'll call these maybe image bots, Midjourney and Dall-E and Stable Diffusion. So the image bots and chat bots, so these bots, right now the best way to think of them is as the universal intern. They're interns. They're capable of doing a lot of stuff, but you need to check the work. You can't release it by themselves. It's like, it's embarrassing, and people will see it and they'll begin to notice. Already people are becoming very sensitive to say, well that's an AI-generated image, I can just tell. Also, again, going back to the prose and the writing, is if you don't push the bots, they're going to generate something very, very bland and middle of the road. It's kind of the wisdom of the crowd intelligence. It's based on the average of humans, and so they tend to predict what the next word an average human would say. That's remarkable, and it's useful. The point is that a lot of this stuff is useful. Summaries, research, suggesting the details of a scene, generating names, maybe a punch line, it's all really great stuff. But it's like the intern doing work, you still need to add your voice, your angle, the bots have problems with continuity, they have very short attention spans. They can do the scene, okay, maybe, but anything longer, they have kind of dream logic at work. So there's currently just lots and tons of problems, that even though on first draft is kind of amazing, it's the interns report, its interns help. And I mean, I'm using it all the time, and I have tons of friends who are using these in many different ways as interns. So like they're saying, okay, intern, give me some headlines for this blog post. And the intern will give a bunch of headlines, and there will be one kind of pretty good, and I'll just tweak a little bit. So that becomes sort of a habit, where you're giving the intern all kinds of stuff, and maybe they're making a first draft that has some points. Or vice versa, you're doing your first draft and sending it to them to proof. I've had some friends who are putting scripts in and saying, “Where are the plot point weaknesses in this?” It's like having another pair of eyes, another brain working with you. They will get better, but we will get better at working with them. And I see this as a partnership. Some of these might get big enough that you feel like you have a co-writer, which is great. And so what we're going to be able to do is actually make the best human written stuff slightly better, and a lot of stuff will be written where there's nothing writing right now. And so that's good, it's like the images. A lot of the images are being generated for where there is no art being made. It's where they're already blank. I'm using a lot to make pictures for my PowerPoint presentations, or my assistant does her dreams, and every day she creates a dream for her newsletter. And there were no images before, so now there are images, and that's sort of one of the things we're going to do is we're going to have better writing where there was no writing at all, and some of the best can be a little bit better.  Joanna: Well, it's interesting because creation for the sake of creation, which we've talked about, and making our art. But it's interesting, given that you wrote 1000 True Fans back in 2006, whenever it was, and it feels to me like we're back there again. Especially with the mass amount of content that will be created now with generative AI, is that in order to make a living this way, in order for me as an author, to make a living as an author, I still need to come back to my 1000 true fans. Has 1000 True Fans been true for the last 15 years? Or do you think things have changed? Kevin: So just to maybe rehash it for those who may not be familiar with it, the idea is that if you, as a creator, and you can be a writer, but you can be a photographer, or sculptor, songwriter, anybody who's creative, you're kind of an individual, and that with the new technologies which have since come along since I first wrote it, like Crowdfunding, Kickstarter, or Patreon, all those kinds of things, and other tools, that with this new technology, you could have direct engagement with your audience. Then if they were true fans and could give you a certain amount of money per year and you got all the money, you got to keep it all, you didn't have to share it with a label, or publisher, or studio, then you need far less of an audience in size. You didn't need a million people, you didn't need 100,000, you need something in the 1000s. That would be able to give you a living. If you could get your fans to pay you $100, and you had 1000 true fans, and they were true, crazy, loved everything you did, bought everything you made ever, the hardcover, the softcover, the audible version of it, and you can get $100 directly, then with 1000, you have $100,000. And that was the theory. When I first proposed it, there was really nobody doing it at the time. But these new tools have come along, and there are tons and tons of people who have a livelihood, a living, not a fortune, but a living, with fans in the thousands. And I think the technology has continued to make that better, easier, broader. Social media has helped that process because the idea is that if you only 1000 true fans, and let's say your interests, your niche, is one in a million, only one in a million people are going to find the same passion and fascination that you have with some weird thing, maybe it's that you write crime novels for left-handed skateboarders. I don't know, I'm making something up. So there's one in a million people who really are into that, but with several billion people, that's 1000. That's 1000 potential people in the world who are going to love your stuff. So the hurdle, the challenge, becomes matchmaking, finding them, having you find them and having them find you. And that's where social media has helped in that process. We're still inventing other tools for discovery so that you can find those 1000 true fans and they can find you. Having said all that, what we also understand is that this option is not for everybody. It's a full-time job, or it's a half-time job. I mean, it's like there's a lot of work tending fans, and true fans, and a lot of creators don't want to do that. They just want to write or they just want to paint and they want to photograph, they don't want to tend fans on social media.  So all right, well, then they would employ publishers and editors and all that kind of stuff. And that's fine, so it's just an option. And there are people who shouldn't be doing that, they're just not cut out. They don't have the personality to interact with fans. So we have other options. I've always said that this is just a possibility. It's a good place to start. Also, by the way, lots of people will start this way, get going, and realize, hmm, this isn't really what I want to do, but I now have enough visibility that I can transition into something with more of an institutional process, and that's a perfectly fine path as well. So I think the tools continue to make this option more viable, a better choice, particularly for those who are beginning, and something that can serve more people around the world. Joanna: Brilliant. You mentioned possibilities, and certainly, I've found that your work has expanded my possibilities over the years. So we're out of time— Where can people find you and your books online? Kevin: Thank you for that. My website is my initials, KK.org. On the socials, I'm Kevin2Kelly. Some of my books are actually posted for free, my first book is completely online, I think my first and second books are there. I have a newsletter every week called Recomendo, where we recommend six cool things. All kinds of stuff to read, to watch, to go to, to use. It's free, called Recomendo. So yes, I'm still producing stuff, working on a next project about a desirable 100 year future, a world of high tech that I want to live in and maybe other people do too. So that's my optimism at work. Joanna: I'm looking forward to that one. Kevin: And right now, this book will come out in May, Excellent Advice for Living. There's about 450 of them, and they're kind of little, tiny, tweetable things as you could hear, but they're short. I wrote them for myself, primarily first, because I like to have little things that I can repeat to myself to remind me. I'll take a whole book of advice and try to reduce it down to a single sentence. Like I'm just opening up the book at random right here. It says, “Work to become, not to acquire.” I keep reminding myself that. You don't want more things, I want to become something. That's what I'm aiming to be. So yeah, I had fun writing it. This advice is really for anybody young or young at heart, and I hope you enjoy it. Joanna: Oh, well, thanks so much, Kevin. That was great.The post Excellent Advice For Living With Kevin Kelly first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can publicity form part of your book marketing strategy? How can you research the best media and craft a pitch or a press release that might get you and your book some attention? Why is publicity still useful in an age of pay-per-click direct advertising? Halima Khatun shares her valuable tips and experience. In the intro, Alliance of Independent Authors Indie Author Income Survey results; Experience of book to TV show [and previous episode, Johnny B Truant's creative pivots]; Michael Anderle expands on his AI-assisted goals [20Books To 50K Facebook]; Loop earplugs. Plus, Build for Tomorrow: An Action Plan for Embracing Change, Adapting Fast, and Future-Proofing your Career by Jason Feifer; The future of publishing is now on the Dialogue Doctor podcast; Content vs connection [Jay Acunzo on Twitter]; Why I'm focusing on being an AI-assisted artisan author; Death of an Author, from Pushkin Press. Today's show is sponsored 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 Halima Khatun is the award-winning author of romantic comedy novels, including The Secret Diary of an Arranged Marriage. Today we're talking about her nonfiction book, Priceless Publicity: How to get money-can't-buy media coverage for your business. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Halima's writing and PR journey Finding the “story behind the story” Pitching your story from different angles Balancing PR and protecting personal stories/privacy Tailoring your press release How to prepare for an interview Is PR worth it? You can find Halima at HalimaKhatun.co.uk Transcript of Interview with Halima Khatun Joanna: Halima Khatun is the award-winning author of romantic comedy novels, including The Secret Diary of an Arranged Marriage. Today we're talking about her nonfiction book, Priceless Publicity: How to get money-can't-buy media coverage for your business. So welcome to the show, Halima. Halima: Thank you for having me, Joanna. Joanna: I'm excited to talk about this topic. But first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing, and also PR. Halima: I always wanted to write. There was never any other creative outlet or any other career option for me, even when I was growing up. So I sort of lived in libraries when I was younger. The funny story I always share is at the age of 12, I actually wrote a book, believe it or not. 60,000 words, a coming-of-age children's book, which I thought would be the next JK Rowling with a slash of Stand By Me for girls. It didn't do any of those things. I remember sending it to Penguin and the likes, thinking they're going to love it, they're going to bite my hand off. They didn't. And I was 12, and probably had a bit more work to do. As I grew up, I parked that idea because I always thought writing isn't really—being an author—isn't really a career, per se. You know, you get the people that make megabucks, and then there's everyone else. So I did what I thought was a sensible option. I still wanted to write, so I went into journalism. I did broadcast journalism for my post grad. And I did ITV and BBC, and that was great fun, but I quickly realized that it's less about the writing and more about getting stories short and snappy and to the point, and camera angles, etc. So I navigated to what they call is the dark side of PR, which basically is sitting on the other side of a journalist. So my job was then to bring stories to the media. So I'd be on the other side, and speaking to clients, trying to really find the story behind the story, if that makes sense. So I did a lot of healthcare PR. So for example, if I was speaking to a hospital consultant about a procedure, that might seem like quite a dry subject. So what I would do is I would find a case study, a patient who had the procedure, and talk about how their life had changed from how it was to how it is now. I'd go into the national media, the regional local broadcast media, and I really enjoyed it to the point that I still do some private consulting to this day. I then went freelance. So I set up as a limited company, and I had my own clients, with a view that—I laugh now—with a view that it'd be great when I think about having children, having a family, I could work around them. I had this notion that children nap, and then I had my babies. So I didn't quite do as much, but one of the beauties, and I think it came full circle, with my circumstances with not really working as much in PR purely because of time when I had my daughter, I revisited this idea of writing a book. The idea of The Secret Diary of an Arranged Marriage came to me because I found that nobody had really written about it. So there's already a fixed narrative in the media, often the term arranged marriage gets interchanged with forced marriage, it gets mixed up. And I thought, why don't I write something that's like the ‘brown Bridget Jones' and show the funny side, and the cringe-worthy side, and really give a nuanced picture. And people loved it. That was the best thing. So I didn't know anything about self-publishing. I assumed I'd go to agents and go the traditional route. I quickly realized I didn't want to spend years shopping it around and sending query letters. I kind of stumbled upon this whole amazing world of self-publishing, and how you can actually be in charge of your career and your author career. I learned the notion of you're not just an author, you're a business owner when you have books and you self-publish because you're in charge of every aspect of it. I really got my teeth into that. So that was one book, and then I did The Secret Diary of a Bengali Bridezilla, and then there was a third book, and now I'm working on the fourth. All while I raised my children. My daughter is now five and my son is two. And luckily, my husband has taken them out while I'm doing this podcast. You know, got to keep it safe. You don't know who's going to scream while I'm in the middle of talking! So the Priceless Publicity idea came about because firstly I thought, I've built my career in this. And one of the beauties of being able to do my own PR was I thought, well, I've done it for clients all these years, why not get some publicity for myself, for my books? It was a no brainer because one of the things, for me personally, was I had a little bit of impostor syndrome when I self-published. I think a lot of authors do because you don't have that gatekeeper and that sort of validation of, even if it's a small press, oh, it was published. You know, it was published by somebody else in the traditional route.  I didn't have that, and I thought, I really want it to stand up alongside traditionally published books. So I set about generating my own PR. So I wrote press releases around the angle of the story. I talked about my backstory being a mom at the time. My son was a newborn and I was nursing my daughter before he was born, writing the draft. And then I published it the month before he was born, which was crazy, in hindsight. The idea was that I had all these different angles to pull apart. And it did great. I generated lots of media coverage and regional coverage. I was on the BBC. BBC Radio, they had a whole topic around my pitch, which was around arranged marriages. Are they outdated? Are they misunderstood? And I was on a panel with other people.  I think for me, it sort of culminated in a full page spread in Good Housekeeping, where I was talking about my career as an author and how I kind of had this almost second career trying to write a book when I was much younger, gone into PR, and now doing this. So I just suddenly thought, when I was going through the self-publishing process and learning about all the different nuances, I saw a lot of parallels between independent authors and business owners, because we're constantly told, you have to think of it like a business for it to thrive.  I remember in my PR career, when I'd gone solo, when I'd become a limited company, one of the things I started doing was training up business owners because they wanted to learn about how to do their own publicity because they couldn't afford me on retainer. They couldn't afford a PR agency that charges four figures a month, five figures a month. They needed something that they could do themselves, in their own time, while running their business. So for me, it was almost a lightbulb moment. And I thought, I generated this great PR that I felt leveled me up with traditionally published authors, and I didn't have this hang up of kind of, “oh, it's self-published, people will think it's not as good.” Because if it was good enough for a journalist to publish stories about my books and me, it was good enough to stand up there and be read.  The other thing is I noticed that I was getting traction and recognition through PR. I know that sort of PR is seen as a bit woolly and a bit vague because you can't necessarily quantify it the way you can pay per click. However, it was one of those touchstones of marketing. We talk a lot about seven touchstones, and it was that sort of recognition and sort of planting that seed that you're out there, and you have a book that people started recognizing. I remember one of the reviews on The Secret Diary of an Arranged Marriage was someone saying, “I bought this as an impulse buy after reading about her in Good Housekeeping.” And I was like, well, it works, you know. And I thought more people need to do this because as authors, we juggle a lot of hats, and there's a lot of focus on social media, and rightly so, TikTok is blowing up. But actually, and when I say traditional media, it's not just newspapers and magazines anymore. I mean, I'm on your amazing podcast talking about my book, that is me PR-ing my book. So actually, there are so many different outlets. It's about having the confidence and the tips, and the know-how to be able to get out there and pitch with confidence to a journalist, and find the story within your business, within your books, and what you probably have under your nose and don't realize. I thought more people need to know about this. So that's why I wrote Priceless Publicity.  Then on a personal level, it was also really nice for me to marry my kind of new career as an author with my career I built over the years as a PR consultant, and putting them together to really help others. It's been quite amazing. It does feel like it's come full circle on my journey. Joanna: That's fantastic. There's so much in what you just said that I want to explore further. So you've mentioned a couple of times the story behind the story. And having done some of this myself and seeing other people—well, I get pitched all the time, obviously, I get pitched every day. And one of the most common pitches is, “I've written a book. Can I come on your podcast?” And like it could be any book, like without even thinking what my audience is about. Can you explain what ‘the story behind the story is'? How can an author go beyond “here's my book?” Halima: Well, there's a few things. I think the first thing I wanted to say was, I think with a story behind the story, “I've written a book” actually can work for some media outlets. And the reason I say that is because I think authors forget this, but your book is a product. So if for example, you went to your local press and said, “I've written this book, and it's about X, Y, Z,” they would be interested because essentially it's launching a new product. You might think, “oh, but it's just a book.” But actually, mobile phone, I always use this example, but mobile phones have been around for decades now, but it still doesn't stop iPhone bringing a new one out and then getting coverage off the back of it. So for certain outlets, it is worth remembering that your book is a product, and that's a story in itself. The story behind the story, now there are different ways of looking at it. So for me, the example from my fiction books, the story behind the story was I had an unusual writing habit. I was a mom, and I was literally nursing my daughter and writing the first very rough draft of my book on my iPhone notes. To this day, that's my initial method. I take walks with my son in his pram, and I'll dictate to myself, looking a little bit like a crazy one walking down the street. But that works for me, and that was quite unusual because it was the human interest angle. It's kind of writing against the odds in a way, because you know, I still don't have the seafront office working on it, but it is kind of showing the different ways of doing things. Joanna: Can we just be more specific on that one? So were you pitching, “Mom does unusual thing whilst nursing?” As in, was it a mom pitch or was it a writer pitch? Because obviously, I get a lot of writer pitches. And to me, that is not unusual at all. That is not an unusual way to write. I'm wondering how you pitched that. Was it like the mom side? Or what angle? And to what kind of press, I guess? Halima: Yeah, so there's different angles. And this is the thing that's really important — Different press require different angles. So an example of that story was actually the Manchester Evening News, which is a big regional in where I live in Manchester. And that came about because I actually won an award, I won a Best Adult Fiction award for my book, which may seem arbitrary in the author space, but actually, the media loved it. So when he was interviewing me and talking to me, I mentioned my unusual writing habit, and that was the most interesting thing for him. The headline was “Mom drafts book on iPhone notes and wins a national award.” If I went to the mom press, absolutely that would be the angle. The Good Housekeeping angle was a bit of that. And again, it was an award-winning book. But if you went to, for example, and I would advise this to all authors, if for example, you started with your local media, they want to champion a local person done good. So they would be interested in the fact that you've written a story and you've published a story. I think this is a really important point you mentioned, that it's not unusual to you what I mentioned about the writing habit. Sometimes I think we can discount potentially interesting stories because it's usual for us. However, it might be interesting to a reader who knows nothing about the author world. So the fact that you say it's not unusual, but actually the interesting thing is to another person, they're like, “Wow, how did you manage? How did you do that while pushing a pram? How does that work?”  I think there's definitely a balance, and I talk a lot in my book about this, that there's a bit of a litmus test where you can ask yourself certain questions to see if it's a story. I think sometimes it's always worth bearing in mind that sometimes we can be our own worst cynic in a way, and we can be our own biggest barrier because we assume something's not interesting, but actually it's because it's so normal to us. Another example might be, you know, you could have had a complete career change and gone into writing, and it could be the complete opposite of what you were doing. That's another interesting angle.  Another thing could be, for example, and like I say, I know they're arbitrary, but — Book awards do generate media coverage, because again, the media loves an award stories. Local media, regional media, they love to champion someone that's done well. Another angle could be if you've got an unusual take on a story. So for example, you've written a sort of Northern English take on Game of Thrones or something very against norm, something you wouldn't expect. And I know in sort of author world, we talk about tried and true tropes, but actually there is room if you did a twist on a traditional genre or traditional tale, that would be of interest. So it's really kind of asking certain questions. The things to begin with, you know, before you even think about what media, I would say find the stories and go, What is new? What is different? Are you bucking a trend?  A really simple thing, and again, a lot of us will forget this day-to-day, business development, which might not necessarily make your books fly off the shelves, but it does add to your whole roster of media coverage. So for example, if you're writing by yourself, and suddenly you've hired a PA, you're growing your business. That's development. And a lot of people would think, “So what? I would never think to pitch that.” But actually, you're growing your brand. You doubled your business growth in terms of personnel. So it's really looking at—and I talk about this a lot more in detail in the book—looking at the different areas that might be of interest to a journalist. And then thinking about, okay, would it be of interest to my local press? Would it be of interest to my regional? If, for example, you have a niche topic, there are magazines out there. So with my work, The Secret Diary of an Arranged Marriage, it was a lot of my readers, I've actually got a broad spread of readers, but there was within there a niche of British Asian people, British Asian women. So I went to the niche media. So I was on the BBC Asian network, I was on certain niche publications, and I went to a lot of the local press. So there's lots of different things. There's lots of different angles. It's really about starting from the beginning and asking yourself the questions and thinking, “Okay, what is different? What is new? What have I got to say about my books?” And then you can look at marrying that with what media would potentially be interested. Joanna: That's fantastic. And again, your book is so full of tips. But that's the thing, you didn't pitch me about The Secret Diary of an Arranged Marriage, because, well, I just don't know if that would have stood out. What you pitched me was what will help my audience, which is this Priceless Publicity book. So that's a perfect example of tailoring it. I did want to come back on a couple of things. So you mentioned niche publications there. But you also mentioned before that you got on a panel around the arranged marriage thing. Now, obviously, culturally, you can talk about those things. You mentioned the ‘brown Bridget Jones' earlier, which I thought was a great little tagline. But this is something that I've worried about in the past, and something I'm also thinking about now, which is sometimes PR people want the personal story behind the story, and sometimes we don't necessarily want people to know more about that. So for example, I've just written this memoir called Pilgrimage, and there are aspects in there about midlife and menopause and mental health. On the one hand, I want people to hear about it, and on the other hand, I'm kind of terrified that I might end up on TV talking about something that's frankly terrifying, I guess. How do we balance the desire to get the book out there but also protect our personal lives? I mean, it's a tough thing to balance, right? How have you dealt with that? Halima: Absolutely. And it really is, as you say, a balancing act. So I think, for me, it was being very clear about boundaries of what I will talk about and what I won't, and really being clear in your mind. So if you're pitching a personal story, which by the way, thank you for sharing, that sounds great. I had a little nosy. So it's what is within your comfort zone to talk about. So with my book, it's not my memoir, but of course, like with all fiction, it's snippets of my life, others, etc. And a lot of people obviously will naturally say, so how much of it is your story? And I was very clear about how much I could mention that would still be interesting enough, and what things were off the table, which journalists are very receptive to. To give you another example that helps around that is—and I know a lot of authors struggle with things like if you have a pen name, if you want to be quite anonymous. So certain things, if I'm honest, will be harder. So you're not going to be able to get the human interest angles if you don't want to be pictured or you don't want to talk about yourself.  It's not to say all media will be shut off to you because there are other opportunities, like I mentioned about the business development angles, the award angles. The example I have is aside from my books, I write a lifestyle blog. And it started off very frivolous, talking about lipsticks and things like that. And then as I had children, it pivoted slightly towards being a mom.  One of the things with my boundaries is I don't put pictures of my children publicly on social media. That's just my thing. So certain journalists would say, “Oh, we would like to have a picture of your children, if possible.” But the workaround was, I'd explained, so for example, I was in Mother and Baby Magazine, and the angle was I gave birth in the midst of a pandemic. And then I got to also mention my book within the article. So the story, you know, the photos we did required strategic work, where I kind of like was holding my son, but you couldn't see his face, and my daughter was holding a toy, and they were fine with that. Not to say everybody necessarily will, but I just wanted to stress that there are ways around it and certain publications will be very receptive. The thing to bear in mind is, they will only know the information you give them, if that makes sense. So when you write a press release, when you have your pitch, when you have your points, if there's something you don't want to mention or you don't want to go there, you wouldn't include that in your pitch. Perhaps the thing to be prepared about—and I appreciate the feeling of terror because I get it. I mean, I was talking about a subject that doesn't really get talked about, so I 100% understand. Thinking of every eventuality and being prepared is a big help. So it's almost like, and I don't want to sound scary but I taught a lot of crisis communications, which is coming up with and having to think of all the questions. And I know you mentioned that people often criticize in the media on subjects around your books. So think about, well, what are the criticisms? What do they bring up? What do they sort of say? What does the media publish about them that's negative? And then thinking, okay, how would I combat that? How would I account for that? What can I say about it? What's my narrative and my story? So with my books, the back of my mind was, what if some journalists think, oh, you're trying to promote arranged marriages or some kind of archaic out-of-date tradition. So luckily, that didn't actually come up. However, I was prepared for those questions that might come up and how I would answer it, and say, well, I'm not actually promoting it at all. It's a very nuanced view. It's not a negative view, but I'm showing the good, bad and the ugly. And ultimately, it's a story that all women can relate to, all people can relate to, that have that desire to settle down. And that was me being prepared. So it's worth sitting down almost and thinking, okay, what could they ask that might be tricky? And how would I answer that? What can I say? What can I bring to the table? Joanna: That's great. Okay, well, let's get into some more specifics about actually getting some attention. So I mean, one of the things many of us get as authors is as soon as you self-publish a book, you'll get emails from some spam companies who say, “Pay us $200, and we will send out a press release.” And they'll put it on that PR Newswire or whatever it is, and it will just spam go out to hundreds and hundreds of people. What is the best way to do a press release? Halima: A much more tailored approach than that, I would say. So we talked about the key points you'd want, the key angles that might be of interest. And then once you think of a few angles, or even one angle, think, “Okay, who would be interested?” And that goes back to looking at the media and sort of reading the magazines, newspapers, listening to podcasts, looking at online magazines and news sites, which is huge now, and thinking, “Okay, do I have a place within that? Can my book sit within that?” And this is the thing, when I pitched to come on this podcast, it wasn't about, as you say, it wasn't about The Secret Diary of an Arranged Marriage, because to all intents and purposes, that's another fiction book. It was about, what can I do to help? So that's absolutely the right way to go into. Think, what can I do that would be of interest to this magazine, or newspaper or website? So for example, if you're a nonfiction author, and you're writing about finances, and how to keep your finances in check as a family, are there any money websites? Are there any family websites that would be interested in the story? If you're doing a fiction book, again, it’s the story based in another area? Would that area's local publication be interested? What about my local publication? Would they also be interested? You know, once you've got the angles. If you want to go more national, it's looking at, do they have a section that I could actually see myself in? So for example, I got a national piece in Metro magazine. And again, it was talking about the misconceptions when I got married. And it was kind of people asking me certain questions about how I met my husband. And it's kind of like well-meaning welfare questions, but I remember the awkwardness around it. So that was a pitch because they have a section called first person. And that's a national mainstream magazine, so it's any kind of first person story they take. It's looking at what you can bring to the table when you've got your angles, and just seeing how you marry your story with what they need. And that's almost the simplest way of looking at it. But actually, once you strip away all the, how to write a press release, how to do it, how to pitch, that is simply what we're doing. We're giving a story that promotes our work to a journalist in a way that they would want to write it or present it. Joanna: Okay, so we've got our topic, we've got our publication that we want to pitch. So do we need to find a named journalist? Or do we email it? Do we put it in the post with a copy of our book? What do we do to get this to the right person? Halima: So well, the way I would go about it is email, for sure. And I would find the journalist, and this is a little secret I'm going to share. So obviously, swanky PR agencies, of which I was a part of a while ago, will subscribe to these super expensive databases which throws up hundreds of journalists names. I would honestly say Google is your friend. If you go on to any, even the magazines and newspapers, they always have an online version. And there you'll see a list of the journalists. That might be a local area journalist, it might be a journalist on a topic, like a political journalist or a lifestyle editor. Find the journalist that writes the kind of stories that you can see being featured with, and then just email them and get in touch. What I would suggest is, for authors that are first starting to do their own PR, a full press release is quite daunting and quite a big undertaking. I would actually start with a pitch, and it would be as simple as, “Hi, name of the journalist. I think this would be of interest to you because…” and literally a two or three sentence pitch, which is, what my story is—and when I say what my story is, I don't mean about the book necessarily, unless you're pitching your book to an editor who's doing the book curation, book features. I mean, the actual story. So for example, with your story, you want to speak to lifestyle press. With your nonfiction book it would be, “This is my story. I'm writing this book on keeping fit and healthy through menopause and going on walking and pilgrimages. This is why it would be of interest to your readers.” Give them the why, and then you've offered them your story on a plate. Then it's simply saying, “For more information or pictures, do let me know if you need anything else.” And that's always a lot better than sending a blanket email to all and sundry because they will know it's a blanket email to everybody. Joanna: Yeah, it is very, very obvious. I mean, I get pitches that say, “Dear podcaster,” and then it's about a Visa card offer or like utterly ridiculous things that obviously are just spam pitches, but they still seem to get through and it's just very annoying. But, I really like your tips.  So let's take it a step further. Let's say someone's actually interested. Someone said, “Yes, I'd really like to talk to you.” So I mean, you mentioned first up really thinking about like we've got our points, and we've now thought about the negative things. Anything else we need to do in terms of preparing for an interview? Whether that's on a radio station, or whether that's someone coming and taking photos of you, or an interview. What are some things, or lessons learned, or things to avoid, I guess? Halima: So the first thing is, don't panic. I think it's really important to remember, it's a great thing. And I've had clients when I've trained them up in the past, saying, “Oh, my gosh, this journalist has come back and said, ‘Can you write an 800 word article about it,' and I'm terrified.” And I say, that's an amazing thing because an 800 word article is huge, and that is a big space for you to talk about what you're trying to promote. So there are different ways a journalist will get in touch. And the first thing is, and I joke and say, don't panic, but really don't, they're just like you and me. I always mentioned this, and I say in the book, they are overworked, underpaid, and that's why sometimes they might be a little bit to the point because your email will be among a sea of hundreds. And they're always on a deadline, so that's why they have to be quite picky and sometimes, like I say, get to the point of the story. They will come back to you saying what they want. Often they're quite receptive. If they know you're not a PR person, they'll see if you've got any more information and you can put together a few bullet points, then you give them that. If they want to interview over the phone, which I must say is a little less and less these days, more because journalists don't have the time that they used to. It's a different world for them now. They're often on a deadline, and they're often short staffed. And sadly, they might not be based in even the area that they cover. So what they'll often say is, have you got a press release? If they call you for a phone interview, which I'm not saying they don't, I've been asked a few times, again, it's preparations. Maybe having the key questions to ask yourself, so it's kind of what they might ask you. Why is your reason for writing the story? What's different? What's unusual? The things that also you want to get across, it's really worth having written down just in front of you, so you're not nervous and tongue-tied. I think if they ask for a photo — It's always worth all authors having a photo ready. Whether that's a great shot of your book, but more often than not, if they want the story behind the story and the person, a photo of you. And I have to stress, this isn't the time for sending your grainy Facebook photo, they want a decent high res image of you. I've got one of me casually leaning against a bookshelf, and it works really well. Very, very casual, head cocked to the side. And the thing you don't see in the photo is my two children are on the bed opposite playing with each other while my husband was taking the photo. But that's the story behind the story. Yeah, having a photo ready. If they send around a photographer, they'll often be led by you. So with Good Housekeeping, they did send a photographer, and they asked me if I knew of a local cafe. And luckily I did, and it's a great, quite quirky independent cafe that had some nice artwork. They sent hair and makeup, which I have to stress doesn't happen often, before anyone gets excited. It's rare, it's rare. And it was a lovely treat as I had a baby at that time. So it was nice, it was like a spa day. So they're few and far between, more often than not, they'll ask you for a photo. And that's really it. It's thinking of the questions they might ask, and it's just being as helpful and as accommodating as you can. I think I must stress this, the easier you can make their life, the better it is and the more chance there is, that they'll cover your story and also be receptive to stories from you in the future. And just to roll back actually, and I was talking about when emailing them the story, I wouldn't attach a photo. I wouldn't go and attach a one megabyte picture because often they have very limited email capacity, and they wouldn't want to open it just in case it spam. Just as you mentioned with your podcasts, they get any manner of random pitches that are irrelevant or not even aimed at them. Joanna: Never attach anything to a first email is basically the thing. Halima: Never attach anything to a first email. You can always mention in the email, “If you need pictures or more information,” that's always really helpful. Because sometimes they're so quick and they're on such a deadline, they might just print a paragraph of what you've got. And you're like, oh, I wish I had mentioned a photo. So offer that up in the body of the email, just say, “I've got pictures if you need. Do get in touch for more information.” And it's as simple as that, really.  Like I say, we can dress it up and overthink it, but it is simply giving them what they want. And it goes back to know the publication you're pitching. And by that, you might only need to read a couple of articles or listen to a few of their podcasts or read a couple of their stories online, but just get a feel because I think there's nothing worse than poorly pitching something inappropriately to the wrong person. Joanna: Just on timeliness, because I mean, this book, Pilgrimage, as we speak, I did a Kickstarter, but it's coming out officially, it's on pre-order for the first of May. So I've still got a little bit of time. We're recording this in mid-March, so this is about six weeks before the official launch of the book. Pilgrimage is a kind of timely thing, but that's when the book comes out. I could keep pitching it forever, really. I'm not intending to write another book on pilgrimage. When we're doing this, can we pitch for older books? Or does this really need to be timely? Halima: Absolutely, you can. And the thing to bear in mind is, again, it depends on the angle. If you're pitching it saying, “Hi, this is a new book and haven't I done great,” then yes, it has to be timely. But if it's a story around the book, so the fact that like I say, for example, you've won a new award, then that's the story is that you've won the award. But it's about a book, and that might be a book that you wrote last year, and it's just won an award. Or if, for example, you're building your business, and you've recruited a couple of PAs, couple of members of staff, your books might be years old and you're continuing to write books, but the story is about the fact that you're growing. So it depends on the angle. Like I say, if you're talking about a new book coming out, then that's slightly different. But most of the media I've had has been on different angles, like I say, the story behind the story. So the Metro article that came out, I think it was middle of 2022, so we're going back to last year, but they pitched The Secret Diary of an Arranged Marriage and they mentioned it at the end with a link, and The Secret Diary of an Arranged Marriage came out in 2020. So often when it's sort of, and I don't want to overcomplicate, but sometimes you can call it a case study or something that's not time sensitive, that's when you don't have to worry so much about your books being older.  Other examples are, I get a lot of love from my London magazine because that's where I used to live. And the book is first based up north, but then it goes into London, and they get in touch with me or I get in touch with them, and we have a conversation when the new book has come out or is coming out. Yeah, so it depends on how you pitch it. Joanna: That's really helpful. Because also, I mean, you mentioned at the beginning about the imposter syndrome. And I say it's funny, it's completely natural. I've been doing this 15 years now, and I still have impostor syndrome —  which is why I mostly avoid traditional media because I don't want to have to deal with the “Oh, you're just an indie author,” or whatever. I do think things have changed now, and certainly with this book, Pilgrimage, I really want to push my comfort zone a bit.  Coming back to another reason I don't do it is, and this is where we need to say, is it worth the time and the energy, right? Because back in 2008, I did all of this. I was in Australia. I did a press release. I got in the national press. I got on national TV. I did all the things with traditional media and I got all the results, and I hardly sold any books. Because I guess the books weren't in the bookshops, but also traditional media is pretty much more scattergun. And like you're talking about, okay, a mom walking and dictating, does that translate into book sales? It comes down to the question — is PR worth it? Because it might not lead to book sales. Like even if you get on national TV, you're not going to sell 200,000 copies of your book that day. So is it worth it? Halima: You're absolutely right in asking that question. And what I would say, and any PR person worth their salt would say, PR alone isn't the answer to everything. It sits in alongside all of your marketing. So the thing I say about a PR is, it would be false of me to say, “Oh, write this press release and go to this journalist, and they'll print it, and your sales will spike.” There are exceptions to rule which I'm going to go on to in a minute, but it doesn't necessarily work like that. What PR does is you're using it alongside all your branding. So to give you an example, it has so many other areas to leverage. If you're featured in a magazine, or a newspaper, or you go on a podcast, you can then add that to your about information on your website. You can add it to your email signature, as featured in. You can add it to any ad copy for any Facebook ads or Amazon ads. You can share it with your newsletter. So you suddenly have another talking point —  It gives you gravitas that you don't get from other marketing.  I should say I use Amazon ads, and I do use pay-per-click because I wouldn't just do PR. I think it needs to sit with other things, like your TikTok and your other areas. It's a complement to everything you do. So another example is, when I get great media coverage, I always share on my social media, and people that are sort of thinking about buying my book go, “Oh, that's amazing. I've just ordered your book.” It gives you more content. So with your podcast and your blog posts, you have more content to add, and write, “Oh, and I was featured here.” It gives you the gravitas that I would say money can't buy, and it is about leveling up. You're absolutely right that a lot of certain international non-niche publications are scattergun. And you're right, because they are read far and wide, and not necessarily people looking for those books, but it's planting that seed. Within that I want to add, there are also niche publications which do really make a difference. As a point, I actually was on the Self-publishing Show Podcast about Priceless Publicity, and that is PR because it was me pitching my story and speaking about it. I got a spike in sales because it was very niche to the audience of authors who are interested in doing their own PR.  In your answer, I would say, give it the time it deserves. So I wouldn't say pause the book you're writing and just spend two weeks learning about PR, or I wouldn't say hire an agency and spend four or five figures a month. There is a place for that, and the big corporates who don't have time to do their own PR do outsource and it makes sense for them because they need to be seen and they need to be making noises on a sort of peripheral level about their brand. For an independent author, I would say do it in your own time around your business. And I use my own example, life is quite full, I have two small children, so I'm not hammering on the phone speaking to every national, every local. I simply don't have the time. So I am getting PR as and when I can around my business. It's bubbling along. And it's something you certainly can do in your own time, and give it the right amount of time to get yourself publicity. It's very effective. And like I say, it gives you things that aren't so tangible and aren't so measurable. And it's the things that really helped build your brand over time and show that you're basically a serious contender as an author. That in turn, it does lead to sales. They might not be the obvious sales, they might not be the spike necessarily, but they will trickle through. So I wouldn't say stop everything you're doing. I would say it's great to learn and do alongside your business because over time, it really does help. And quite simply, if I didn't believe in it, I wouldn't be doing my own. Joanna: The book is excellent. I mean, you obviously sent me a review copy. I've also ordered it in paperback because it's one of those books I'm going to put on my desk and like look at and go, “Right, I could just do something. I could just do a little pitch.” And you've definitely given me some ideas for my book, Pilgrimage. And I guess for people listening, it's got to be the right book, you know, it's got to be the one that you feel perhaps has the most stories. Like I've got 40 books, a lot of people listening have a lot of books. So it's almost like the book is definitely not the point anymore, but it is that story behind the story. So that's been super useful. Where can people find you and your books, both fiction and nonfiction, online? Halima: They're available everywhere. I'm wide with my books. So the usual return is Amazon, Kobo, Google Play. And also, I'm a big fan of this, you can order it from your local library if you request the book. I'm quite passionate about that, and I think in this time, I think it's really great for people to be able to go and use their library. So you can get my books everywhere. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Halima. That was great. Halima: Thank you for having me.The post Book Marketing: How To Get Publicity For Your Book With Halima Khatun first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What are the most important aspects of becoming a successful publisher? Jon Barton talks about his lessons learned and how to avoid the pitfalls. In the intro, Amazon AWS Bedrock for generative AI; Impromptu: Amplifying our Humanity Through AI by Reid Hoffman and co-written with GPT4; reflections on the fantastic 20BooksSpain Seville conference; Ideas and execution by Hugh Howey; The Creator Economy course; AI Cover Design for Authors; Today's podcast sponsor is Findaway Voices, which gives you access to the world's largest network of audiobook sellers and everything you need to create and sell professional audiobooks. Take back your freedom. Choose your price, choose how you sell, choose how you distribute audio. Check it out at FindawayVoices.com. Jon Barton is the founder and managing director of the award-winning independent publisher Vertebrate Publishing, as well as the author of several bestselling mountain biking guides. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Challenges in publishing other people's works The ecosystem of Vertebrate Publishing Pivoting business models Sticking to a niche and why it works Tips for pitching to a publisher RRP royalty rate vs. net royalty rate Understanding contracts and seeking outside advice You can find Jon and Vertebrate Publishing at AdventureBooks.com Transcript of Interview with Jon Barton Joanna: Jon Barton is the founder and managing director of the award-winning independent publisher Vertebrate Publishing, as well as the author of several bestselling mountain biking guides. So welcome to the show, Jon. Jon: Hi, Jo. How goes it? Joanna: Good. I'm excited to talk to you today. First up, tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Jon: Well, the one thing that's worth knowing about me is I've never had a CV and never been to a job interview, I'm older than I sound as well. I discovered rock climbing when I was probably 13 or 14, and that's pretty much all I did until I was about 30. In fact, when I met my wife and I was about 31, 32, and she just presumed I'd been working for a decade and had savings and houses and all the rest of it, like normal people had. Then she discovered later on in life that a hadn't, I'd just been going around the world climbing. So I was very much addicted to climbing. I was a professional climber, but that probably suggests I made money out of it, which I didn't. And then I used to do a few odd jobs, sort of construction type jobs, and we used to clean windows of skyscrapers and jobs like that before it became sort of more professional to earn money. And I used to find that fairly soul-destroying.  I think it was on some US trips, where people were very interested in the sort of cultural history of British climbing. And people were asking us about Lady Diana, and the Queen and all sorts of weird stuff in some of the climbing areas we were. But they were very interested in these sort of almost legendary stories of British climbers. I sort of inadvertently became the British correspondent in some American climbing publications, and just sending over news items. I realized I quite liked writing, and I quite liked recording things and documenting things in a roundabout way.  Then the other thing that happened is — I was doing a lot of mountain biking in the UK Peak District where I live, and the guidebooks that were available didn't reflect the kind of people you see out on the trails. So the guidebooks would be, you know, the traditional routes, it would be some pictures of men in out-of-date gear. And what I was seeing was young people, women out there cycling, latest gear, latest bikes, going into some fairly—I mean the Peak District is not remote—but some fairly challenging terrain and pushing themselves. So I decided to write a guidebook to what I saw, and it sold really well. And that's where the publishing business came from.  We have now 300-400 titles. And ironically, our Peak District Mountain Biking Guide, which was published 18 years ago, is still one of our bestselling books. I don't know how much. So yeah, that's really it. So it came from my climbing roots.  The other thing I used to do when I sort of hit my 30s and realized I needed to make money, I worked in a graphic design business, which is what this business eventually became. We used to make all of our money out of selling more stuff to people. So we design them a logo, but then we'd sell them stationery, and we'd sell them branded T-shirts and plastic pens, endless plastic pens with logos on.  I was always a bit uncomfortable with this idea that I was just putting more stuff in the world. And the more stuff I can persuade somebody to have, the more money we would make. I didn't really like it, it didn't sit very comfortably. When we published books, I felt I was adding something to the world that people were getting something from and would keep and treasure. Maybe not treasure all of our books, but I found it a much more wholesome thing. That's where it all started from. Joanna: That's lovely. Obviously, book lovers are listening as well. So fascinating, you said at the beginning that you never had a job interview, and you're basically an independent-minded chap, and a lot of independent people listening as well. So I really love that you've come into it this way. But it's a really big difference to go from writing and publishing your own book to publishing other people. How did you transition into deciding to publish other people? What have been some of those challenges? Jon: Well, so we did—I did my first book. I always use the word “we” because I can't spell or I can't do layout or anything. So I've always been very good at working with people who are brighter and cleverer than me that can do stuff, which I think is one key thing. So the success of the first Mountain Biking was great. And then I had somebody I knew who did a lot of mountain biking down south of England, so I said, “Well, this is the template, this is the format we've done. Can you do it for the south of England?” So they did do that. We learned—this might sound daft—we learned that people in the north of England aren't interested in buying a guidebook to the south of England. Who knew?! So all of a sudden we can had to get wise in how we were going to sell books that weren't on our backyard. We had to learn marketing and distribution and sales. Then sort of going back to this idea, this American idea, that a lot of stories do get lost. Particularly niche sports, I'm from a rock climbing mountaineering background, and some of the stories to us seemed quite normal, you know, 10 people living in a room because we didn't earn any money and we just needed to climb, and living out of dumpsters when food gets thrown away at the end of the day in a supermarket, you can go and retrieve it.  I think on one trip to Australia, I lived for 800 pounds for six months. I've told my wife when we go away for the weekend, and we spend 800 pounds just on the hotel bills for the weekend, I remind her we could have gone to Australia for six months. Joanna: You were in your 20s. It was a different time! Jon: I was younger, and I could live on out-of-date pasta for days. So we discovered that these stories, I mean, the one about the dumpsters is possibly not very interesting, but the stories would get lost. And so I tracked down the people that had made these stories, have lived these lives, and persuaded them to write books. So we produced mountaineering books, climbing books, and running books, just by documenting these stories. And you then start attracting submissions, and one thing and another. We made huge, huge numbers of mistakes because I found it very hard to say ‘no.' And some things I would find interesting, might not necessarily be interesting to the wider public. Joanna: Well, let's get further into that then because obviously my listeners, we are mainly authors, but many of us are also publishers. So I publish my own books, obviously people listening might publish their own books. Some people are starting micro publishers, almost like yourself. Maybe a decade or two ago, someone will say, oh, can I publish this book or somebody has died and left their copyright to someone. So what's emerging in the independent author community is a whole load of micro presses, like there were in the beginning. I guess that's how publishing was until all the big conglomerates. So you mentioned there, mistakes. One of them you said was trying to sell stuff for the north of England to the south and vice versa. So geographically specific books, I guess.  What were some of the other mistakes or lessons learned? Jon: I think the stepping out of our niche. Just because we can produce the best climbing book or the best cycling book that the world has ever seen, it really doesn't mean we can produce a good children's book or a good fiction book. Whenever we stray out of our niche, we have a failure. And I think failure is the wrong word in publishing, I think in traditional publishing, a better way of saying it is you just printed too many. But certainly, when we step out of our niche, that can be a failure. We will have a loyal readership and a loyal base, like many independent authors will have, and we put a lot of time and effort into managing that and growing that and looking after that. But I think expecting them and wanting them to buy books that aren't the sort of thing we publish is not a good tactic. And the other thing we learned is that people like local guidebooks, they don't like national guidebooks. That's, again, the bigger publishers can be better at that. But the main thing was operating in our niche. Joanna: I think that's a really good tip, and it's much easier to grow your brand when you're known for a certain thing. You also said there, printing too many copies is a mistake. So I wondered, because again, most of us use print-on-demand, very few independent authors will be doing print runs. I mean, even for a Kickstarter, you print them after you've got the number of books you need to do. So how does your model work in terms of are you doing mainly that sort of print runs? Or do you also use print on demand? How does your publishing ecosystem work? Jon: So we have a commissioning editor and the brightest people in the business, or the three people with the loudest voices, four people with the loudest voices, form a commissioning team, and we will review submissions and review this publishing strategy. So in theory, it starts with very robust commissioning. And for a book to get through the commissioning process is quite a lot of work. Included in that is forecasting.  We use a lot of information to produce the forecast. A lot of historical data, we benchmark against other books, we look at the market, we look at the author profile, we look at their social media profile, we look at their track record. So saying that they're willing to do lots of marketing is often very different to doing lots of marketing. Then we will produce the book, and we will typically with our books, we will go to a good size print run on the first printing. It used to be 5000 copies, it was just always 5000 copies. We haven't had many books where we haven't either made a good dent into that or gone to a reprint, but now it's much less. It's very rare for us to print 5000 upfront because we can be holding stocks for five or six years, in some instances, with that amount of print. Sometimes we'll print 3000 or 4000, and we've had occasions where they've sold out before publication date, which is good, but embarrassing. So it just tends to be that model. Because we've always done that, and a lot of our books aren't suitable for print on demand because one thing we've been very bad at is format control. So at one point, every book coming out had a different format, and many of them just weren't suitable for print-on-demand. We don't do a lot of mono books. So we don't do a lot of 200 page, black and white reading books, narratives. Our books will be different sizes, highly illustrated, flaps on the cover, all those sort of things. So we've just done some short run printing to fill a stock hole, and we're pretty much making ten pounds or losing ten pounds every time we sell a copy of the 200 we had to print quickly. Just because the economies don't work for us on short run and print on demand. I think now the technology is really changing. The printing processes have really come on. We're having to look at our format so we can be much more—I won't say digitally led or digital first— but we need to be digitally available. Joanna: It's interesting. So I did go on your website, and I noticed I could buy a paperback from your website, but I primarily read ebooks. I do buy some lovely hardbacks, and obviously you have beautiful print books as well.  What about digital? What about ebooks and audiobooks? Jon: Yes, so our bestselling books—so if we take something like Swimming Wild in the Lake District, or The Climbing Bible, which is a sort of a climbing training book, we won't sell very many digital copies. Certainly a book about wild swimming, it's a large format, it's got lots of big photos in, it doesn't sell at all well as a digital book. And of course, the audio will just be somebody splashing around. (That's a joke in case everybody missed it!) So they just don't lend themselves. So we will do an eBook version, and we'll do an audiobook version, if appropriate, but they just don't lend themselves to digital sales. Some of the books with more global appeal, so the climbing training books we sell a lot globally. And because the only way we can ship them is from a US warehouse and a UK warehouse, we will sell a lot digitally globally of those books. So some of them work on Kindle, but mostly it's the physical books. Around about 10-15% of our revenue is digital. Joanna: And when you say digital, you mean ebook or audiobook, rather than books bought online. Because this is the thing now, people say, “oh, digital,” but of course someone who buys a print book from you on your website, is that a digital sale or no? Jon: No, that's a physical book. So when we talk about digital, we're literally talking about ebook or audiobook. And then I probably can't be clear on print on demand whether it is, and then print on demand then merges with sort of micro print runs. So it depends on the book, but probably 15% of our revenue is eBook and audio. Joanna: It's interesting because I have for the first time just done a hardback with color photos for Pilgrimage. And I've used Bookvault.app here in the UK, and I've done that with Kickstarter. So it was kind of a small print run, and then I sort of sent them all out. But it's the first time I have done this, and it makes me think that doing more of these beautiful books is a good thing in a world where, for example, there's a lot of digital creation where it's hard to stand out. Do you think on balance that your business model will get better? Or are you thinking of changing what you do? For example, you could do some more narrative stories or narrative versions that are just plain text for digital sales in order to expand. Are you thinking of pivoting your business model at all? Jon: Very much so. I think one of the problems we generated for ourselves is some of our narrative titles were very heavily illustrated. They had all the bells and whistles on the printing, and they were very labor intensive, lots of editing. Somebody had written a foreword, somebody wrote a postscript to the book, or even the preface, there would be photos everywhere. There'd be fancy endpapers and oil blotting on all the rest of it.  It was okay while we were fairly new and people were hoovering up our stuff. Once margins got a bit tighter, and once the printing really started going up, we were sort of stuck with that. People expected 24, 36 pages of color plates in the book. It did make for some quite expensive books. What we're looking at now, which is, when I when I listened to—I must make a criticism about your podcasts, they're not quite long enough, because I listen to them when I go running, and I tend to run for about an hour and a half. I literally had to stop—get this—I had to stop in the rain two nights ago to change podcasts. Joanna: Oh, I apologize. But thanks for listening! Jon: Yeah., but if you could just do a special long-distance runner podcast every now and again, just put that in. Or if I was a bit more tech-savvy, one could follow straight after the other. Joanna: Or you could change it to the slower speed. You can speed podcasts up, you can also slow them down. Jon: But then that would be the tempo for my running. I'd just get really unfit. I'd be waiting for the next word. We've almost forgotten the question, haven't we? Joanna: We're talking about pivoting business models. Jon: So what we do need to do is we need to get a workflow in place for narratives. We get a lot of submissions, a lot of good books, and we had sort of found ourselves in this situation where we're producing these very lavish books. But in the autumn, when printing basically doubled in price, and we're all panicking about the cost of living crisis, we actually put a few books out with the minimum basic work. We found the sales weren't really affected. People wanted a good story, they didn't particularly need 24 pages of the author showing them how great it looks. They can get that off their Instagram feed. So yeah, we are actively now looking to put a lot of our narratives out in B-format paperback, we can launch digitally. we can do things like instock protection with Amazon. So while we'll have a print run, we'll also have a POD edition there available. And certainly with some of our American publishing, rather than shipping pallets of books to America, we're just setting them up as PODs. Joanna: And printing them there just makes sense, doesn't it? The other thing I was going to ask is about Kickstarter, because there's a small press I follow, Microcosm Press. I don't know if you know them. Jon: Yeah. Joanna: They do a fantastic job of Kickstarters for all their books. That's how they do every single book. It's what seems to be is they do a Kickstarter, and then you can buy it from their store. And I think you did it for Waymaking, that was one of yours. Jon: We've done three or four Kickstarters over the years. Waymaking was the Kickstarter that was most successful. I mean, the obvious downfalls for us with Kickstarter is it's a lot of intense marketing, because you've just got that opportunity, haven't you. And that marketing doesn't go anywhere because you're putting all that into a Kickstarter campaign. Meanwhile, you have gotten the names and the addresses and one thing and another, and it just sort of sits on a Kickstarter platform. So we've just done a caving book, it's very easy to find all the caver in the world. They all drink in the same bar. So Kickstarter, I think it's very good to sort of, I mean, I'm not a Kickstarter expert, but it's very good to reach new audiences and market and do new things. But I think with us, strictly hill walking, we're mountain running, we're climbing, mountaineering, wild swimming, we can find those people quite effectively. Joanna: Even, I guess, old school media, just that there are magazines and things that you can advertise in and Facebook groups and all that kind of thing. Jon: Exactly. And there'll always be the world's best climber. And you can always—well, you can't always persuade them—but you can often persuade those sorts of people to promote your book. I found Kickstarter for Waymaking was very good because we were, with the Waymaking book, we were publishing all these mountaineering narratives. And we have some Australian climbers and US climbers and European climbers and lots of British climbers, and we do a preorder offer that people come to the website and order the book. I started doing some analysis on the names that were ordering it. Now at Christmas, there was a gender split fairly 50-50. Lots of women, lots of men. If it wasn't Christmas, it was all men. I think one preorder, 98% of the orders were male names. And I think we deduced that at Christmas, wives, girlfriends, mothers were buying books for their boyfriends, sons, husbands. And during the rest of the year, it was just men buying books for themselves. I think we came to the conclusion that the adventure narrative market was pretty much male dominated. And this was when we did Waymaking, which was probably six or seven years ago. The mountaineering bestseller list on Amazon would usually be 98 out of 100 books would be written by men. The two that weren't, one would be written by Bernadette McDonald, and that would be a biography of a man. And one would be Nan Shepherd's The Living Mountain, which is a great book, it always sits there. So we did Waymaking because it was an anthology of new writing, poetry, and art by women about adventure. And really, the idea was to sort of bring some women to the fore, hopefully, I don't sound patronizing, and just give them the confidence— Joanna: And the platform. Well, I bought it. I bought that book. I mean, I would comment, and I'm not saying this is about you, but the adventure niche in general, it's a lot of sort of blokes with beards on the front of books. In terms of branding, it's not so accessible. It is interesting, now, to me, the travel niche is different to the adventure niche. So I think you're more broadly travel. Although it's funny, isn't it, because like mountain biking, you could say is kind of adventurous. Or is it hobbies? Does it go in hobbies? Jon: I mean, in all honesty, while we have some books we would call travel, we are strictly adventure, sports, outdoor pursuits. And the reason we went to Kickstarter with the Waymaking is because we had to go and find some women. Not in a creepy way. Joanna: No, no, not at all — and the book is wonderful. So I'll have a link to it in the notes. I think it's interesting, like you said— It comes back to niche, and you stepped out of your niche for that book. But it did really well. I think it got a lot of press as well, didn't it? Jon: Yes. The aim of that book—and I know we're talking about Kickstarter—the aim of that book, and it would have failed had the women in it and other women, not started publishing in the adventure pursuits market, and they have. A couple of the women have actually started their own micro-publishing businesses up from their work on that book. Either last year, well, certainly last year, I can't quite remember the year before, we published more books by women than we did by men. And in this year coming. We've got more books coming out by women than men. I think for us and the niche, I won't say it was all Waymaking that did it, but it definitely achieved what we wanted to achieve.  It goes back to what I was saying about my first book. When we were going out, when I was climbing when I was younger, you know, women were climbing, men were climbing, but women weren't writing the books. With mountain biking, there'd be plenty of women mountain biking, but you wouldn't see any guide books written by a woman. One of the first rules we had in the publishing business is we wouldn't publish a book, a guidebook, without a photo of a woman in it because it just wouldn't represent what was happening out there. We've gone as far as saying now that we have to make sure we have diversity in our publishing with our authors. Joanna: I think that's great. And again, it's about seeing somebody like you doing something out there. So I applaud your diversity push there. Let's just come back to the idea of authors who might want to pitch publishers. So maybe there are some people listening and they're like, oh, I would really like to pitch you, or pitch another publisher or an agent. And you mentioned earlier, you said that you look at an author's profile and an author's marketing and their track record. What are your tips for authors who want to pitch an idea, whether that's to you or someone else? Jon: So I think the crucial thing is you have to look at the output of that publisher you're pitching to. So really, I mean, we don't publish poetry, we don't publish narrative, we don't publish children's books anymore. So there's literally no point sending us crime fiction or really fiction at all. We only publish in the sports that we publish in. So we're not interested in skateboarding or surfing or anything like that, or sailing books. So do your research. Don't just send stuff in. I think I think getting to know the publisher is useful, if you've got the time. I mean, certainly following them on social media is just crucial, unless you don't use social media, which is fine. Going to some of their events, reading their best sellers is all good. This might sound stupid, the phone will often go, people will start pitching the book down the phone, which is not ideal, but I understand it's fair enough. And I will often say, “Well, we like books like Waymaking, and this is what we did with Waymaking.” And we will often get that book criticized. “Oh yeah, my books really good. I didn't like Waymaking because the stories were too short or I hadn't heard of the authors or it was all women.” Literally those sorts of things have been said to me. “But my book is better.” That's just like, oh, well, thanks very much. “Stick a copy in the post, we don't return manuscripts,” is usually the answer that you get. So it's respecting what the publisher has published. Realistically, we want an engaging story, we want a relatable story, we want something that's in our strategy. But it does often come down to the marketing plan. As self-published authors will know, there's nobody better to sell a book than the author. Even if you're working with Penguin Random House, you will always be able to sell more books, more of your own books, than any other process, realistically. The author profile is key for us. We have to be commercial. So it's what the author brings to the table from a marketing point of view is crucial. Joanna: So if someone wants to send a pitch email, it should be the first paragraph about the book and the second paragraph about the author, platform, and marketing ideas. Jon: Well, we just have submission guidelines. So we need to know about them, we need to know what their competitive titles are, in their opinion, we need to know their marketing reach, some samples of the work, have they written before, all those sorts of things. So we have quite detailed submission guidelines. Joanna: And a big tip is to follow those. I mean, it's so funny, I've obviously been to these events where they tell you stuff and everyone says, no, follow the guidelines. And I imagine a lot of people don't follow the guidelines. Jon: Yeah, yeah. I mean, only about one in 10 of our submissions follow the guidelines. The other thing to appreciate is, we're not a bad company, we've got quite a slick operation. In terms of new authors for Vertebrate, we're taking on very few a year. It's less than 10 brand new authors a year, probably less than five brand new authors. Joanna: So as in you're commissioning books from people who've already written books, like on rock climbing or mountain biking? Jon: Yeah, well, we have books we want, so we will often go out and find that author. In terms of interesting submissions that come into the in tray that we end up subsequently publishing, it is actually very few. It's very difficult to get into, even us, and I'd say we're quite open and receptive. It's very difficult for us to publish something that's just landed in the submissions tray.  Equally, we will look at submissions, and we will feedback where we can. If it's something we're interested in, it might go right through to the commissioning meeting. So we produce what we call a book investment proposal, and that can iron out a lot of stuff. And we will give feedback even if we refuse the book, I have seen quite a lot of books we have refused subsequently published, whether they've taken our advice or not, but they have actually gone on to get a publishing deal which is always great to see. Especially if they send me a copy, that's always nice if I had given them feedback. Joanna: And I think one of the questions, I mean a lot of indie authors listening is, are publishers interested if an author who has published themselves and now are interested in a deal? Let's assume this is a new book. So if I came to you and said, “I've got this new book, and I've got 30-plus titles, and here's my sales history.”  Are you as a publisher interested in independent authors? Jon: Yes, very much. I mean, one of our bestselling books was actually published independently. He published two books independently. One's called Bothy Tales, one's called The Last Hill Walker. Really nice guy. And he'd got so far with what he could do, and he wanted time to write more books. We republished them under our imprint, and have subsequently done two new books with him. So the book was established, so his royalty rate is actually 50%, so it's a stonking good royalty rate. So it works for everybody. And we've been able to take what he did, which was a lot of digital sales, and have the confidence and the cash flow to print good numbers and have them distributed globally as well. So yeah, so we'll work on merit, and if an indie author is successful, then it makes forecasting so much easier because they're bringing real sales data to the commissioning meeting. Joanna: It's good to hear because I mean, I remember coming to the FutureBook / The Booksellers Conference here in the UK back in 2012, and I was really treated like an outcast and indie authors were not welcome about a decade ago. It feels like things have changed. And with a business mindset— Certainly, a lot of indie authors have a business mindset. That's what you have as a publisher, right? Jon: Yeah, I mean, one of my things, it's not massively commercial, but I tend to just want to work with people I like and like working with. What their track record is, and their material, I think indie authors are good because you know, straight away, you know what they're like to work with. If they've managed to get books out before, they are an achiever. I mean, writing a book, as you know, is a lot of work and you're putting yourself out there. You're really putting your head above the parapet and asking people to like what you do. That can be quite a challenge. And if you're working with a first time author, we've had some horrendous problems with getting them to let go of the manuscript. It might be because they are climbers and they don't like letting go. That's a rubbish joke, you should edit it out. Joanna: No, that's a good joke. I like it! I did want to come back, because we're almost out of time. I want to ask you, originally, you emailed me and said you wanted to address my ‘publisher bashing.' I'd love to know what you particularly disagree with, or whether it's just the type of publisher? Because all publishers are not the same, right? Like all authors are not the same. Are there any myths or issues you want to correct around publishers? Jon: I think this always comes back to haunt me. I was on Alastair Humphrey's podcast, and he dug out something I said about ‘pseudo-adventurers trying to write stories about something that anybody could have done.' So he also called me out. I mean, we hear quite a lot. I mean, we're nice people, and we work hard, and we put our authors first, and all the rest of it. And you do hear that phrase, “Oh, I got ripped off by my publisher,” or, “My publisher didn't listen,” or my publisher this, my publisher that. At the end of the day, they're just human beings. If you've got a deal with Penguin Random House, you're actually working, but you might be working with some really nice editors and marketing people and book designers. And so I think when I hear that, that sort of, “the publisher did this,” I think it's not necessarily fair on the industry of publishing. We are commercial organizations, obviously. But the best favor a publisher can always do for its author is to be solvent, and that requires making money. What a lot of authors don't do is scrutinize the contract and really understand what they're signing. Just knowing the difference between a net royalty rate and an RRP royalty rate is huge. I think authors have to just sit down with that contract and understand every line in it, as boring as that might sound, before they sign it. And have some real-world examples, you know, what does 10% mean? What does actually that mean? How much money will I get per book sold? How many books are you expecting to sell? How much marketing support will I get? Will I get paid expenses if I get asked to go to a festival? I think all that should be asked. You didn't sign your house mortgage without understanding what your repayments were and how long those repayments had to be done? Well, maybe some people do, but I think that can often lead to conflict down the line when you realize that your royalty check is only 18 pounds. Joanna: I'm so glad you said that because that is a lot of it. I mean, I talk a lot about this and try and educate people around contracts. I have absolutely no problem with people signing with traditional publishers, and have done myself for foreign rights and things like that. Exactly as you say, you have to understand what you're signing. I guess one of my issues is often the clauses that are in the standard contracts. You know, and publishers, to be fair, they're going to offer the best deals for themselves and it's up to the author and/or the agent to negotiate it. But it's the taking all rights for the life of copyright, all formats, that kind of thing. An author shouldn't sign that, and yet, it seems like some of the big companies, they want everything and otherwise there's no choice. Just coming back on what you said— What is net versus RRP royalty rate? Because I know people listening are like, what is that? What should I do? So can you just explain that just so people know. Jon: So if the published price of the book is 20 pounds and you're being offered a 10% royalty, that's not two pounds, that will typically not be two pounds. So an RRP, so that's the recommended retail price in the UK or the sales price or whatever. So if you're being offered a royalty on the RRP then the percentage will be two pounds, if it's 10%. Joanna: Well, that's never done. Jon: Well, you say it's never done, but lots of authors think that is exactly what they're signing. So that must be clear. And certainly with agented books, we find that with agent books, they always try and get an RRP royalty, which is fine. We had a small children's imprint, and many of those books were RRP. So then the net rate is, so if it's 10%, it's 10% of what we receive when we sell a copy. And that can be very, very murky. So if we sell a book on Amazon, Amazon will give us 40% of the retail price. So if it's 10 pounds, we'll get four pounds, and we'll give the author whatever the rate is, 10% or 20% of that, depends on the book. In John Burns’ case, with his The Last Hill Walker, it's 50% of that. So that's four pounds. But we don't get four pounds because for that Amazon sale, we have a distribution charge, which is another 10%. And we might have a repping charge, which might be another 5%. And we might have some delivery costs. There can be all sorts of costs that you could potentially lump in, and you might end up receiving 50 pounds for the books, and then you might end up paying the author 10% on 50 pounds, which is not very much. I don't think many publishers do that. We certainly wouldn't. But I think this is why some real world examples are required. And obviously the net rate is very good if you're selling direct. So if you sell a book at full price, then the net rate is obviously higher. So also understanding what the split of sales is for a publisher. So 30% of our books are sold via Amazon, which is the highest discount we give. Obviously, we give Amazon the highest discount, why wouldn't we? So that's what the net rate means. I've looked at plenty of contracts for people I know who've been offered contracts with big publishers and they've asked me to look at them. And the other one to look out for is special sales. So you can often have a lower net rate for special sales. I think it's very important to understand what the publisher means by special sales. Joanna: Because it could mean anything. Jon: Yeah, you know, so for special sales, you will get a net rate of 5%, and it's just buried there in the contract. And then all of a sudden, you might find that 90% of your books are special. Joanna: And to me, this is interesting. And people listening, this is publishing, this really is. I mean, the writing for us, for you and me as well, I mean— The writing of the book is completely separate, really, to the business side. And I'm an artist, and I'm a businesswoman. And those are two sides of the coin. In the same way, you are still an author, but you're a businessman being separate to the, “oh, I love this book” type of thing. You can absolutely love a book. but the business is very specific. You have to be interested in both of these things, I think, to be successful. You can't just be interested in the art. Jon: No, you can't. And I will often say to people at the start of their book project, just so I can manage their expectations and make sure they're happy at the end of it is, “What are you trying to achieve from the book?” And invariably, the answer is something like, ‘I just want to get my story out, I want to inspire other people, I want to put something down on paper for my children or whatever.' When the book is published, I'm sorry to say, you know what the phone calls are about. Joanna: Yeah. Where's my million pounds? Jon: Yeah, the phone calls are all about sales. Now fortunately, I understand that. So I think it's important at the very start to understand what that sales and renumeration is. You know, a lot of our authors will only write one book. They've done something amazing, and they want to tell the story, and they have a day job. And if they make money out of the book, great. If they don't make money out of the book, it's not the end of the world. Understanding what that return is, is important. We welcome, and I often advise, particularly if we get into a tricky situation on negotiation, I'll often advise the author to go and speak to—in the UK, it's a Society of Authors, and apologies, I don't know if they're global, but there will be representative bodies all around the world—go and speak to the Society of Authors. We find they're very helpful, they will come down on us as a publisher very hard, but then they're actually very reasonable. And when you actually get to the point where you're signing, you very much get a better contract and a better understanding out of it. So seek advice. If you've not signed a publishing contract, you shouldn't sign it blindly. You should get advice. Joanna: And if you're doing it through an agent, then you still need to understand all the clauses. I think the other thing people don't necessarily understand is that relationships change. You might change agents, the publisher might change, publishing houses get bought, they get sold, things change. You know, you and I are not going to live forever. So there's lots of things to think about because of course, copyright goes on after your death. Jon: Yeah, I mean, particularly in the genre I publish in, I'm sending lots of royalty checks to estates. Joanna: Oh, God, climbing is a nightmare — [joking around] Oh, happy times, Jon! Where can people find you and Vertebrate online? Jon: So our website is adventurebooks.com, all one word, and there's contact details on there. If anybody's got follow up questions, I'll happily try and answer them. And Vertebrate Publishing, we're all over social media Twitter, the Vertebrate Publishing Instagram, is a bit more professional. Joanna: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Jon. That was great. Jon: Yeah, thanks for that, Jo. I enjoyed it.The post The Challenges Of Small Press Publishing With Jon Barton first appeared on The Creative Penn.