The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

How can you find the intersection between what the market wants and what you love to read? How can you strategically seed book sales to improve your marketing? Rachel McLean talks about her 5 steps to indie author success. In the intro, how to predict and profit from publishing trends [ALLi blog]; my live, in-person events IRL and online; Trends for 2023 webinar with Alex Newton, K-lytics. Today's show is sponsored by IngramSpark, which I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 40,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries, and more. It's your content—do more with it through IngramSpark.com. Use promo code PENN at checkout for 1 free book upload, print, ebook, or both, if uploaded at the same time—until December 31, 2022. Rachel McLean is the award-winning and best-selling author of the Dorset Crime novels and the Zoe Finch detective series, and she writes nonfiction for writers under Rachel McCollin. Today we're talking about Five Steps to Author Success: Write Books Readers Love and Become a Full-Time Writer. 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 Rachel chose to become an indie author — and why her first books didn't sell so wellHow to find the intersection between what the market wants and what you want to writeThe importance of characters in a seriesResearching locationsStrategically seeding book sales to improve book marketingAdapting to change as an author You can find Rachel at RachelMcLean.com Header image by Joanna Penn on Midjourney. Transcript of Interview with Rachel McLean Joanna: Rachel McLean is the award-winning and best-selling author of the Dorset Crime novels and the Zoe Finch detective series, and she writes nonfiction for writers under Rachel McCollin. Today we're talking about Five Steps to Author Success: Write Books Readers Love and Become a Full Time Writer. So welcome, Rachel. Rachel: Thank you for having me on. It's lovely to be here. Joanna: Oh, yeah, this is gonna be so fascinating. But first up, just tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing? Rachel: Well, I mean, like many writers I've been writing since I was in primary school. I think I wrote my first serialized story when I was about nine. And I loved to write stories when I was a child, and then went to secondary school and had it drummed out of me and had to write essays, went to university much the same process. And then quite a few years later, I was working at the Environment Agency and I was responsible for communication skills training. I had to test out a business writing course. It was all about plain English and also about writing for an audience and understanding the needs of the reader. And on this course, we had to mind map a piece of writing that we were planning. I wasn't actually planning a piece of writing because I was there to trial the course, as against because I was doing the kind of writing where I needed it. So I thought, I know, I’ll mind map a novel. And so I did, and that eventually became A House Divided, which is one of my political thriller trilogies. I started writing that when I was pregnant with my oldest son who's about to turn 18, and it took 15 years to get from that point to publication. I write a lot faster now though. Joanna: That's brilliant. And then, okay, so just bring us up to date then because he's 18 now, and so you said 15 years. So three years ago you really started getting into publishing. Why didn't you go the traditional route? Rachel: So yeah, three or four years ago, I was a member of writers' group, Birmingham Writers’ Group, which I joined to get some motivation to write. And I had a couple of friends through that group, Heide Goody and Iain Grant, and they’d been publishing independently, they'd been self-publishing for a few years. And I'd seen that they were doing well, they were making money, building up a readership, getting quite a loyal following. And at the same time, I was querying agents and not getting anywhere. And then I went to a festival of writing in York which is run by Jericho Writers. And there were people there from the indie world and the trad world talking about the differences between the two. And I thought, actually, I think this could be for me, because I've always run my own business, I've got a head for marketing, and accounting, and all those kinds of thing that you need to do to run your own publishing business. And I like to have autonomy over what I do. So I started publishing in December 2017. It was slow at first, but I stuck with it and did a lot of learning around the marketing and the publishing and also improving my craft. And then eventually, it was July 2020 that I released the book that took off and made my career, which was the first Zoe Finch book. Joanna: What I love about your book, The Five Steps to Author Success, you do break all this down. And it's very evident that you do have this head for business because I love that you studied this. I mean, it annoys me how people think, ‘oh, I'm just not a good writer,' therefore, I'm not selling, or I'm not good, I don't have talent, or whatever. So you've done so many things to study about this. But I want to first ask you about mindset. Those first books weren't so successful. How did you change your mindset to make the shift to where you are now as an award-winning, best-selling author? Rachel: I think the simple thing is I stopped writing books that were just for me and started writing books that I enjoyed writing, but also that readers would enjoy reading. And I got a much better grasp of what the market wanted. But also, there's a human side to that. It's about understanding what readers respond to and what they enjoy. And I know people can sometimes be a bit sniffy about the idea of understanding the market and researching the market, that it seems quite calculating. But actually, it's about writing things that other people want to read, which to me, is what writing is for. Joanna: It's interesting, I've been thinking about this because you actually say this in the book as well. That we are not normal, like writers are not readers. So we are readers, but we're not normal readers. I've got here on my desk, a book on the Arctic, a book on robots and AI, and I'm reading a Richard Osman cozy mystery. I mean, you know, I read all over the shop. And so how do we go from being eclectic readers and people interested in all these things, to going down to that human side and identifying what particular niche genre authors really like to read without taking it too weird? Which I know I do with my books. Rachel: I mean, I think what I did was I see it, and this is in my book as a kind of Venn diagram, where you've got what you like to read, what other readers like to read, and what you're good at writing. And I looked at that and I, like you, I like reading all sorts of things, but I like reading crime and I like reading thrillers. In terms of what I'm good at writing, I know that I'm good at writing suspense and mystery. And I tend to write the darker side of things better than lighter, more humorous books. And then there's finding what the market wants. And for that, the sweet spot there was crime, particularly with the British market, because I'd already tried writing books aimed at the US market and not done very well. And I know a lot of indies find that you need to hit the US market to achieve success because obviously, it's so much bigger than the British market, but the British market for crime is massive. And you just mentioned Richard Osman, if you look at his reviews on Amazon and those are going to reflect sales levels, it shows that there is room—he sold 10 times what I have, and I've sold a million books in the last few years, and it shows that there is room for many more sales of books in those genres. Joanna: Congratulations, by the way, that’s a hell of a lot of sales. And again, I love in the book that you're super honest and you're like my early books didn't do that, and then I did this process and then I started selling a lot. Tell us about your research process to figure out how to write to this market. Rachel: Yeah, well, I read Chris Fox's books — Write to Market. I found his book really useful because they're short and pithy and they get straight to the point and they give you some very practical tips. And one that I picked up from him was looking at your comps and reading the reviews of your comps rather than your own reviews. So while I look at some of my own reviews, I don't go into the rabbit hole of reading all my own reviews because that’s where madness lies. But I looked at what people were saying about books by people like LJ Ross and JD Kirk and other successful indies in the crime genre, and also the people who are published by the digital first publishers like Joffe, to find out what it was that readers were responding to, what it was they liked, what it was they weren't so keen on. And then I looked at how I could—without copying what other people have done—but how I could bring those aspects of what readers liked into my own writing. Joanna: And then what did you do? Did you turn that into like a blueprint that you followed? Rachel: The first book, Deadly Wishes, which was the first Zoe Finch book, I wrote that in the first lockdown sitting in a campervan in my front drive. And for that one, I actually produced a spreadsheet to plot the book. I don't plot in such detail now. I like a good spreadsheet, I’m a bit of a geek like you. I had a spreadsheet that had all the chapters, and then in each chapter, it detailed what was happening in terms of advancing the plot, developing the characters, bringing readers into the location, because that's something that really came out in my research is that readers love a strong sense of location in crime books, whether there was any action, and also what the clues and red herrings were. So I plotted that out on this huge spreadsheet that I printed out and put on the back of my door in my living room at home. I couldn't fit it in the campervan. And I used that, I worked through that to write the book and it gave me a very detailed blueprint for how to do that. And I sort of slowly, over the next few books, reduced the amount of detail I was doing in terms of the planning as I got more familiar and more comfortable with it. Joanna: And I mean, I've read some of your books and I've also read quite a lot of crime books over time, and I've written some myself, but I did kind of get bored because they do have a formula. So how do you stop yourself from getting bored or burning out in such a voracious genre? Because crime in the UK is a bit like romance, I guess. It's super, super fast moving. Rachel: It is. I get readers emailing me the day after a book comes out saying, when's the next one out? And I say to them, not for a few months, but read one of LJ Ross's books in the meantime. And we all recommend each other, the crime genre has got a big community of authors in the UK and we all help each other out and recommend each other's books. But in terms of not getting bored, for me, it's all about the characters. So I have underlying story arcs within each series. So there's a plot, there's an arc in each book, which is the crime and the solution of the crime. But then under that there is an arc, which in the Zoe Finch series is all about police corruption and in the Dorset Crime series is about organized crime and the fact that the main detective is in a relationship with a lawyer who's tied up with organized crime. And I find developing that storyline is what keeps me motivated as I work through the series, because actually, that's sort of a slightly trickier and more fun storyline to develop because it's not formulaic, it's not something that all crime authors do. It's something that I can be more creative with because it's something that I've come up with. And readers love it, it’s what keeps readers going from one book to the next. And also the characters. So in lockdown, the characters in the Zoe Finch series were my mates, they kept me company in lock down. And I really enjoy going back to writing characters. So for example, I've been writing the Dorset Crime series for quite a while now, but I'm currently writing a Christmas Zoe Finch book, which I'm almost finished, and it's really nice to go back to writing people who I haven't written for about 18 months, and just spending some time with those characters again. So I think that's what keeps me going. Joanna: And Angela Marsons said that, of course, she's a very successful crime writer as well. She said that people feel that about the characters. And it's so interesting, I resisted reading the Richard Osmans because I was like, oh, it's because he's famous on TV that he's so successful. Have you read his books? Rachel: I have. And they are really good. Joanna: They are, they are. Rachel: I love the tone they're written in. Joanna: Yeah, and also the characters. If people listening, especially if you're not in the UK you might not know them, but they are cozy mysteries but they're set in a retirement home and the characters are all in their 70s, really. And I've just whizzed through the four books or whatever it is, three books, and preordered the fourth because I love the characters. And I think, I mean, it can be difficult with a crime genre, which is why it's interesting his detectives are not the primary characters, actually, they're side characters. How can we write original characters and plots without using the tired cliches? Or do we need to use the cliches because that's what crime readers want? Rachel: There are some tired cliches that crime readers expect and there are tropes, but then I think it's just about putting your own twist on it. I deliberately don't read huge amounts of crime because I don't want to end up aping all of the other books that I read. I read enough that it just keeps me on top of what's happening in the genre and how other people are writing, but that's by no means what I'm reading all the time. So I mean, it's also about having characters who feel real. So I sat in an author event in Swanage library, which is one of the locations in my Dorset books, and witnessed an argument between two readers about whether or not they liked the main detective. And I just sat back and thought, my job here is done, because if these people think this woman is so real that they're prepared to have an argument over whether they like her or not, I've clearly written her well. And actually, it's a spin-off series, she was the boss of Zoe Finch in the first crime series I wrote, and I really enjoyed writing her. So I thought, I'll move her down to Dorset because I love Dorset, and I had all my childhood holidays there, and show her trying to fit in in a rural community and struggling with it at first, but eventually developing relationships with the other detectives down there. And the process of that, and the humor in that, readers have really responded to and they really enjoyed. Joanna: You say in the book, “if you want to write a book that sells in the tens of thousands, or even the millions, then find ways to tweak your readers' heartstrings.” So obviously, you've talked about real characters, but how do we tweak those heartstrings? How do we write more emotionally? Rachel: I think it's about having characters that readers feel that they know and that they can relate to. They don't always love them, but they respond to them in some way or another. Taking time to develop those characters. I actually think the development of the characters is more important in a long-running crime series than attention to detail on the actual crimes. Although, I am quite fastidious with my procedural aspects, I have all the textbooks and I have a retired detective who checks them for me. But I think it's building up those characters to a point where readers care about them, and then having things happen to them. It’s the old thing about you create a character and then have horrible things happen to them and see if they can get out of it. And I also think, twisting the relationships between the characters and making things happen there, and people discovering things about people that they've got either professional or personal relationships with that throws that relationship on its head, and that is often linked to the crime, but pulls together the personal and the professional for those characters. I’m a member of a Facebook group called UK Crime Book Club. And when I started writing crime, I asked the question, do people like to read crime books where there's quite a lot about the main detective’s personal life? And the overwhelming response was, yes, people do like that. So I made sure I included things about Zoe's son and her partner who she got together with over the course of the books and that kind of thing. Because readers really like to feel that those characters have got some depth, and they're not just turning up to work and solving crimes. Joanna: No, absolutely. Although, again, I mean, you mentioned being fastidious. I feel like there's almost a bar that you have to reach, which is a certain amount of reality and then the characters, otherwise people pick apart the procedural aspects and forget the characters. Whereas if you can get the plot and the procedural stuff right, then it's almost like they can focus on the stuff they really, really love. Rachel: Yeah. And I think it needs to be credible enough that it doesn't draw attention to itself. So research into police procedure is much like research into location or world building in that it's a bit like an iceberg, where only a 10th of what you've researched actually shows up in the book. But it's about having that confidence in what you're writing about that you know that what does show up in the book is correct. Joanna: So on location then, because this is another kind of thing with UK crime writers, is specific areas in the UK, specific counties. And I don't know if LJ Ross was the person who made this more obvious, but it really does seem like everyone's picking out a part of the country to focus on. So you've had holidays and things in Dorset, but you don't live there anymore. Do you do research trips or is it all online research? Rachel: I do. I go regularly. When I was writing the first six books, I was probably going to Dorset more than once a month. And when I started writing the series, I spent a week in Dorset, and I planned out where all my crime scenes were going to be and I walked them all. I made them all in places that were fairly inaccessible, so it meant I got to have a really nice walk, but it also meant that I could imagine that you've got this beauty spot with an amazing view and we're going to spoil it by dumping a body in it and then putting forensic tents up and all the rest of it. And as well, have a bit of an opportunity for some conflicts and some humor around how the detectives and the forensics people are going to get there and the logistics of working in that sort of environment. So the location is really important. Fortunately, my parents had a caravan in Wareham on the Isle of Purbeck when I was a child, probably for about five or six years. And then they had another one when I was in my 20s, so I didn't go to it so often, but I still went down. So I know the area very, very well. A lot of my formative memories are down there learning to ride a bike, learning to swim on the beach, that kind of thing. And the beauty of it is the area hasn't changed that much. So I went back to Wareham, bought chips from the same fish and chip shop that I've been going to when I was eight years old. I went to the same cake shop, same pub, all the rest of it. So the beauty is it's not as if I have to suddenly change all those memories and catch up. And there are some things that change, and that's why I go down. I've had occasions when it's short notice I've decided just to go down for two days or even a day, because I can just about get down and back in a day from Birmingham, because I needed to walk a specific location. So I had a climax scene in I think the fourth book in that series that was set on Peveril Point in Swanage, and I thought, Peveril Point I know has changed because there's been quite a lot of development work there, a lot of holiday homes being built. But I thought, I've got to go down there, I've got to walk this cliff where this big scene is taking place, because if I get this wrong, my readers will know because a lot of my readers are local to Dorset. So I went down for a couple of days. I managed to get some other research done as well. And something else I do, which I did then, was I also do a face to camera video at all my crime scenes. And then on publication day, I release that on social media to celebrate the fact that it's been published and generate interest in the book. And readers really enjoy that as well. Joanna: Well, that's great because I did want to ask you about book marketing. You talk in the book about ‘strategically seeding book sales.' So how did you do that? What is working for you in terms of marketing? Rachel: This is something I was very much inspired to do by Chris Fox and his books. And what I wanted to get to was a point where Amazon was doing most of my marketing for me, because I'm exclusive, I'm in KU. So that was where my focus was. So that was all about getting the algorithm to really understand who my readers were and who it should be targeting when it's recommending my books to people, so that the chances of people buying the book is obviously maximized. So that started with seeding sales of crime readers to start with using Facebook, because one of the things I discovered trying to use Amazon ads for previous books was, as people often say, it's very, very difficult to get your Amazon ads to serve. And I read Amazon Ads Unleashed by Robert J. Ryan. And he explained that Amazon ads, because Amazon have data not only on what you're bidding and what keywords you're using or whatever, they also have data on how well your book is selling and how well your book page is converting, unlike any other advertising platforms. And Amazon uses that when deciding whether to serve your ad. So I thought, right, I need Amazon to know that people who land on my book page are going to buy the book. So I started by running Facebook ads at a low budget just about three pounds a day, I think something like that, and testing copy, testing creative testing audiences, and getting to a point where I was getting a really good conversion rate from those ads. This was when the first book was on pre-order. And so at that point, I got to a point where I had a certain level of sales, and I think by then I had two books out and the third book on pre-order. So I wanted to have enough read-through that it would make it possible for me to spend more on an ad for the sale of book one. I started running Amazon ads, and I did that very, very strategically aimed at specific authors and specific books. So instead of using keyword targeting, I used product targeting. And I still do, I target products and categories. I started out by trolling Amazon using a scraper called Data Miner, and getting all the ASINs of my comps, and then targeting all of those with my ads. So I had within each ad, I had an ad set for each author that had all those ASINs that it was targeting. After a while that didn't have enough targets to show up the ads on because you've only got a certain number of books. So I switched to using category targets instead. And I still do that instead of using keywords. And it's working very well for me. I'm finding that on a sale of book one I'm doubling my money with read-through on all the ads that I run across Facebook and Amazon. And obviously seeding a lot of organic sales because that only accounts for about 10% of my sales overall. I get emails from readers saying, oh, Amazon recommended your book to me and I really enjoyed it. And I think, yes, good ol’ Amazon doing your job. And I get emails every day from Amazon telling me to buy my own books, and Amazon probably thinks, why is this woman constantly looking at her own books? But it's worked really, really well for me. And it was a process that took a while. I did use BookBub ads when I was first doing it. I wouldn't actually recommend doing that now because it's so hard to get them. Not so much to run profitably because I wasn't expecting to make a profit, but actually to run at the sort of levels you need for it to provide Amazon with data that will help your also-boughts. So it's better, I would say, to use product targeting to populate the also-boughts by making sure that people who are reading the authors that you want in your also-boughts are getting your ads. Joanna: You've clearly got a super analytical brain, which is great. But it's interesting, so we're recording this in October 2022, and a lot of people are saying that Amazon ads are too expensive, Facebook ads don't work anymore since the privacy stuff, like you just said, BookBub might not have the volume, especially in the UK, like you're doing the UK specifically. So what are your thoughts on ‘things don't work anymore’? Rachel: I'm not denying it. It probably is a bit harder now than it was a couple of years ago, particularly with Facebook having fewer targeting options. So I was targeting specific authors, and you can't really do that now. So I target crime readers, I target the entire genre. And I have got the benefit that Facebook has got two years and thousands and thousands of ads served in data to understand better who to serve my ads to. I've also got the disadvantage that my ads have been served to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people. And obviously the longer that goes on, the less conversion you're going to get from those ads because people get fatigued from seeing them. But I've got ads that are still making a profit. I've got one from the Zoe Finch series that I started running in June 2021. And I ran it because it was a quote from a review that said, “If you like Line of Duty, you'll love this.” And it was when Line of Duty series six was running. So I thought I've got to take advantage of this. So I started running that ad it did fantastically while Line of Duty was running and continued making a profit. And it's still, what, almost 18 months on, it's still making money for me. So you can run do long-running ads as long as you keep an eye on them and tweak the budget, because the budget does have to come down over time because your clicks get more expensive. But it is possible to do it. I think it takes a lot of work in terms of understanding what your targets are and who your readers are, so that your advertising is working in conjunction with the algorithm recommending to people. And that's what's helped me build a career. Joanna: And it's interesting, because part of what you're talking about there, some people listening are excited by what you said, and other people are going, I do not want to do that, that is too much work. And you said something to me before we started recording, which was you had looked at my website and found which elements would work for me. And this seems to be the most important thing, right? Because I'm not like you, in that I don't do spreadsheets, I'm kind of a different kind of geek. But I don't like running ads myself, I just don't enjoy it, basically. And there are people listening who will feel like that, too. So how can people work out what elements are going to work for them? Do they just have to give things a go? Rachel: I think there's an element of giving it a go. And there's also an element of just understanding what your own preferences are. So for example, with TikTok, that's the hot thing at the moment in book marketing that everybody's talking about. And I dabbled in it for about a week and got bored, but I think I knew already that it wouldn't be for me because I couldn't bear to watch TikTok. Joanna: Me too. Rachel: Just oh, it just does my head in. Joanna: Kill me now! Rachel: And I mean, I don't know whether that just shows I'm old. But I put it on my phone and I talked to my son about it. He's 14, and he's exactly the same. He says, “oh, no, it's full of rubbish.” I said, “don't you even watch cat videos on it?” He says, “no, I watch those on YouTube.” And he will watch hours and hours of cat videos on YouTube. So I think that stuff on TikTok isn't long enough for him. Joanna: Hmm. That's interesting. And again, it's the same with our readers, right? Us as writers and also our readers, we don't have to be on TikTok to sell books. I mean, you're doing it one way, people do it different ways. And we just have to figure it out. But I just want to ask you, like you mentioned fatigue with your ads, for example, and fatigue with readers. How do you know when to start another series? Because a lot of crime series are just episodic, you know, by book 21 or whatever. Is it that you will keep all of the series going on and on and on? Or do you plan to spin off a new series every time you get to a point of reader fatigue or advertising fatigue? Rachel: Yeah, the way it works for me is it's around the underlying storyline. So my series arc will come to a conclusion, and that's the point at which I will spin off a new series. I always have at least one character for an existing series in the new series, which helps pull readers along to the new series, which readers respond really well to. And also it means I can pick a sidekick and give them a bigger role. Sometimes you develop those characters, and they're not your main character, but you really enjoy writing them, and you think, oh, I'd quite like to write a series around this person. It's quite interesting because I've been talking to a TV production company about pitching the Zoe Finch series, and what they like is they say I've created a universe and that it's what's called franchisable. And I think, well, I wasn't intending anything like that, but it sounds great when you put it like that. Readers love it because I've created this world with all these people and they will pop up in each other’s series, and sometimes not physically there, but on the other end of the phone giving advice or something like that, or support. And it means that I don't leave those characters behind, even when I stopped writing their books as well. They're always there as a possibility. Joanna: You talked about your spreadsheet for the first book in terms of plotting. Do you have a world bible? Or how the hell are you keeping all of this stuff organized? Rachel: My editor, Joe Hames, he has a fantastic memory for this stuff. I have tried to keep a series bible so many times, and I've tried different ways of doing it. I've tried doing it in Scrivener. I've tried having spreadsheets. I've tried having in the back of a notebook. And I get about 10,000 words into a book and I stop adding to it. But Joe remembers things, so I will write a scene in book four of a series in which somebody pulls up in a blue car and he'll say, “no, in book one, they were driving a brown car.” And he'll remember all those things. And he'll say, “oh, but so-and-so went off to this place. They got transferred to a different location in book three,” or something. So it's really useful having an editor who can help with that stuff. Joanna: I have a Vellum document actually that I put every finished book in. And then I literally just use the search function. I'm like, I know I had someone who did this, let me just search and find them, and then I have to reread it. So I've also tried to build a world bible over and over again, and I don't know, maybe it's just because we want to write another book, but I just cannot be bothered. Rachel: Yeah, yeah. I want to be writing stories, not bibles. I like that idea about a Vellum document. I use keywords in Scrivener, so I have all the characters and the locations and the themes, and in each chapter I will add the keywords of which ones are in there. And when I start a new book, I always take the last book I wrote, even if it was in another series, because of the fact that I have characters coming over from series, and I will start with that Scrivener document, remove all of the chapters and everything, but keep the keywords, and then start writing the next book. So I've got those keywords already there. So that's one way I do it, but to be honest, I don't go into the sort of level of detail of the bible. Joanna: Well, if you do end up with a TV series, that's one of the things they often want is, “so Rachel, just give us the world bible, the series bible for this.” And you're like, “ugh.” Well, then you can just outsource that. You have a great chapter on adapting to change, which I think is so important. And you do talk a lot about mindset in the book. There's a lot of change in like the Amazon charts, and I mean, change is a constant. But you are a successful full-time fiction author, and you do have some nonfiction too. What are some of your tips for authors looking to make it full-time? Rachel: I think it's about not being too set in your ways in terms of expecting to continue working in exactly the same way from one year to the next. It's about having some buffer or some backup. I know something that I've seen you talk about at SPS Live and listened to on your podcast is about the concept of multiple streams of income, which I don't do because my brain works better with focusing on one thing and really doubling down on that. But I have financial backup in that I put money aside, and since I've been running a business, I've made sure that I've got six months’ worth of income sitting somewhere that I can't get it, so that if my sales dropped off a cliff, I would have that buffer to be able to do something about it. I mean, this year, I've had to adapt to quite a lot of change in that I haven't been able to write as much because I've had a lot of stuff going on in my personal life. And that has disappointed readers at times because I've gone from writing a book every two months to a book every three months, which is still a lot by trad publishing standards, but I have had queries from readers about it. At first, I found that really, really stressful. And I started to think, like how am I going to manage to write more books and go back to writing that fast? And then I thought, no stop, just give them other books to read in the meantime. So because my newsletter goes out every week, and it used to be that that cycle half of those newsletters were about a new release because each new release would get four emails, and now they're not. I've replaced some of those with recommendation emails saying, “here's an author that you might want to try.” And readers love that because they think it's really generous. And I'm just, you know, trying to support other indies and keep readers happy and find some content for my newsletter as well. So readers are getting used to the fact that I'm writing a little bit slower now. And I think the fact that I forced myself to sort of hang tight and not respond to the pressure on that, I'm glad I did that now. Joanna: You're right, because things change. Like when I had COVID I could barely do anything for ages. And things happen, life happens, and we cannot be driven by the reader demand in that way. Because like you said, they email you the day after. And it's just impossible, you cannot keep up. You just said that, “I don't have multiple streams of income. I'm very focused.” And I do think this is a personality difference. You do have multiple streams of income. You have how many books now? Rachel: That's true. 13 crime books at the moment. Joanna: And then other books as well. Rachel: Yeah, yeah. Although I have the other thrillers and I have a few nonfiction books, but they don't come anywhere close to making a living for me. But I think the fact that I have two series does give me a bit of a buffer there because I have some readers who read both, and I have some readers who just read one. I have more readers for the Dorset books. As it turned out, and this wasn't in my plan, releasing a series of books set in Dorset in a summer where people can't travel abroad was a really, really successful thing to do. And when I started planning them, I didn't know that was going to be the case. I got so many emails from people saying, “I'm lying on Bournemouth beach at the moment reading your book, and nobody's been murdered yet.” That was great. It was really nice to have all those people in the location. I got a tweet from somebody recently saying, “we recently went around to Dorset and we decided that we would visit all the locations in your books, and that's what the structure of the holiday became.” And that was amazing. I felt like, you know, that's something people do for Jane Austen books. Joanna: That’s true. Rachel: It was so gratifying. Joanna: Yeah, I've heard people say that about some of mine as well. And that's why I'm quite looking forward to the augmented reality options where maybe we can do a tour. You know, like you said, you do these visits and you do a thing to camera. Well, in the future, I believe, you will be able to record that, and then when people are there, they'll be able to see with their glasses on, they'll see you superimposed over the environment talking about your book. So I really love that idea for those of us for whom sense of place is super important. I think that's going to be an interesting, either a licensing deal, or to do ourselves. I think that's quite cool. Rachel: Absolutely, I'd love to do that sort of thing. Something I'm planning—which I was planning for this Christmas, but it hasn't happened in time, so I'm planning it in time for next Christmas—is a coffee-table book which is a walk around Dorset taking in all my crime scenes. And with lots and lots of photographs of the area around them and the locations and some personal stories as to what those locations mean to me and my history with them. It's something that I was inspired to do by Ann Cleeves who's written a coffee table book about Shetland with lots of photos in it. And I'd really like to do that, and something like that will be fabulous in VR. Joanna: Yes, interestingly, Val McDermid did one on Scotland as well. So wait, LJ Ross is going to have to do something around Northumberland. I love that idea. So will you put that under your fiction name as well? Rachel: Yes, yes, yes. Because that will be aimed at my fiction readers. Joanna: Yes. And I will be putting out a book on pilgrimage, which will be my first nonfiction book under my fiction name. And you also put out Five Steps to Author Success under your fiction name. So you have multiple author names, I have multiple author names, and so far, we have both kept those fiction and nonfiction. So tell me, why did you put a nonfiction book under your fiction name? And this photography book as well will be a nonfiction. Can we use this kind of content marketing as fiction authors or are we messing up are also-boughts? Rachel: I think for me, the reason that I wrote the Five Steps book as Rachel McLean was because it was all about how I'd written and sold books as Rachel McLean. Whereas the Rachel McCollin books, they started because I was traditionally published writing WordPress development books. And there were a few published by publishers and then a couple that have been published by me independently. One of them is WordPress for Writers, for example. So they're very much about IT, those books. There are a few more that are about writing that are workbooks and that kind of thing. But I'd sort of left that behind because I put quite a lot of work into that in 2019. And then I used a piece of software called Toggle where you can track your time and I tracked my time spent on fiction and nonfiction, and the amount of time I was spending on content marketing on nonfiction was huge. And it was meaning that my efficiency in terms of sales was really, really low for nonfiction. So I left that behind and focused on the fiction. So because I haven't really been using that pen name for quite a while, I decided that I would publish this book as the name that is associated with the successful author, so that people could see that this is a book about how to succeed as an author, written by somebody who is genuinely successful as an author. Because you get so many books and courses by people who aren't successful or pretend to know how to do it, and I wanted to make it very clear that I was speaking as somebody who knew what I was talking about. Also, and this is something I say in the book a lot, this is not a one size fits all approach. And what I've done will not necessarily work in exactly the same way for you. So don't assume that I'm telling you exactly what to do. It's a series of tips and experiences that I've gone through that hopefully will help people. Joanna: It's a great book. So tell us, where can people find you and everything you do online? Rachel: Yeah, they can find me at RachelMcLean.com which is the hub for all of my books under the pen name Rachel McLean, so it's mainly around the crime fiction there. And on RachelMcLean.com they can get a free novella from each of my Dorset Crime and Zoe Finch series. Joanna: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Rachel. That was great. Rachel: Thank you.The post 5 Steps To Author Success With Rachel McLean first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What are some of the fundamentals behind self-publishing success? James Blatch shares tips and insights. James Blatch is a historical military thriller author. He’s also the co-founder of Self-Publishing Formula, Fuse Books, Hello Books, and the co-host of The Self-Publishing Show.  You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Lessons learned from writing a second book in the series — and why ‘show, don't tell' is so difficult for new authors. You can also find James's interview about his first book here. How marketing a second book differs and why free books still work for finding readers Different measurements of success when you're starting out, and writing for love vs commercial success Why the ‘language' of self-publishing is important to learn — and it might take a little time, but you will get there! How to navigate the choices as a self-publishing author Some fundamentals of marketing — using email lists, and free books in KU or permafree Tips for rebooting an older series, or when you've got your rights back on older books You can find James at www.JamesBlatch.com and on Twitter @jamesblatch and also @selfpubform You can listen to the Self Publishing Show on your favorite podcast app and find the backlist here. Header image generated by Joanna Penn with DALL-E 2 Transcript of the interview with James Blatch Joanna Penn: James Blatch is a historical military thriller author. He's also the co-founder of Self-Publishing Formula, Fuse Books, Hello Books and the co-host of the Self-Publishing Show. So welcome back to the podcast, James. James Blatch: Hello Jo. Thank you so much for having me back on. I'm, excited to be here as always. Joanna Penn: Well, it's good to talk to you again now. You were on the show last year, May, 2021, which I guess is almost 18 months now, talking about the launch of your first novel, the Final Flight, and now you have a second book out in the series, Dark Flight. And I wanted to talk to you a bit about this because many authors obviously put out their first book and they do all the stuff, and then they put out a second book in the series and it's quite different. What did you do differently with your second book in terms of the creative writing side, since you must have learned a lot? James Blatch: Yeah, I did. I mean, writing the first one was a ramshackle, ridiculously long-winded process of me having no idea what I was doing and gradually over four years, probably of the intense part of it, learning parts about the trade and what I should be doing and being directed and finding it hard to learn. And rewriting and rewriting. And I had a book that was huge and unwieldy, 210,000 words at one point, and then a book that was ridiculously short, 50,000 words that made no sense because I got the wrong idea of what ‘show, don't tell' meant. And then eventually got to this point where the book was done. I got there and I'm proud of the book. I mean, I think it's a kind of ‘story for my heart' type book. Book two, honestly, it could not have been different. I had the idea when I was marketing and releasing book one, I started to think about this idea. I had the story fully formed in my mind. I wrote it down over two pages on the Word document of the whole story. And that never really changed. And I wrote it in a fraction of the time. I wrote it probably in nine months. And it didn't change very much even in the edit, which is so far apart from the first book. So everyone said to me, the second book will be easy, and I hadn't anticipated quite what a different experience it would be. I mean, it was a slightly different book. I'll say Jo, I think the first book is like that book from the heart about my dad and everything. And book two is much more influenced by me reading in the genre, reading Clive Cussler and Len Deighton and trying to work out what it is in these books, these multi-selling books. People just burn through those series. That's the type of thing commercially that's going to work for me when I've got 10 books out, they will do the selling for me. Each one can't be kind of a Blatch family blockbuster type thing. So it was a different type of book, I think, but anyway, it was a ridiculously short experience. Joanna Penn: Well, nine months is still not ridiculously short. James Blatch: That's true. Joanna Penn: You said there that you got the wrong idea about ‘Show, don't tell.' Can you expand on that? What did you think it was and what did you get wrong? Because it is one of these things that new authors find really difficult. I did too. James Blatch: Yes. So I've been from one extreme to the other. So I went through writing the first book and writing the first draft, which is, as I say, quite long and unwieldy. Then writing a second draft that's stripped out everything to the point where — Stephen King's very big on this, that you trust your reader. And I think that's a really good thing. You trust your reader. You don't have to spell everything out but I did it to such a degree that the reader was confused, it was a confusing narrative. So then I did it again, and this time I got probably some bad advice at the time, but turned out to be quite good. Someone told me after my scene, they'd read the scene and they would say, Yeah, but what are people thinking? I need to see what people are thinking. So after almost every sentence, there was some italics of internal dialogue from that character. Of why they just said that. And what they were thinking, which might have been different from what they said out loud to somebody, as life is, and that made the book very, very long and full of these italics of internal dialogue, which is obviously not what you want to do. But it was a brilliant way of me then understanding from my final draft of taking, basically take everything out to italics. You don't have to tell the reader what people are thinking. You have to make sure that what they've said indicates that. So show that. I think it's a really hard concept to explain quickly and easily. But I think I went both ways on it, on my journey to getting somewhere now where I catch myself now writing, I'm drafting book three now, and I catch myself occasionally, either over-explaining or under-explaining something and thinking, Yeah, but what's the action? What's the story bit that will show that to the reader? Joanna Penn: It's definitely one of the hardest concepts and yet it is the thing that makes a big difference. But also, I guess I would say like your experience with that first book to the second book is exactly what happens. And I think by book five, like I really felt book five (Desecration) was where something really changed for me, when a lot of pieces fell into place, and this year actually I went back and rewrote the first three novels in my series because I felt my writing had moved on so much. So it's kind of crazy how much you learn, even though you think you know it all. So I love that you learned so much, but what about marketing? Of course you're part of SPF, so you know a lot about marketing. Marketing a first in series is so much easier than a second in series. So what did you do to market the second in series? James Blatch: So I wrote the first one set in the UK in the sixties at a Royal Air Force base and I always knew that would be a hard sell in America. I run Fuse books as well with Mark Dawson and so I have some experience marketing books and I know the American commercial audience is quite fussy, I would say. So, one of the series we market has a Royal Marine who's a commando, sort of part of the Royal Navy in the UK. But when I advertise in America, I always call him a Marine. Because I don't get the clicks when I say Royal Marine. I don't think the Americans know what that is, and it turns them off a little bit. So I think selling an RAF book in America was difficult. So my commercial choice was that book two would be set entirely in America with an American character. There was an American Exchange guy in book one so I used him. And it's set entirely at Edward's Air Force Base. So that was the idea. And I thought, well, what I'll end up doing is I'll be running ads in America to Dark Flight and in the UK to Final Flights and that'll work. Now, Final Flight marketing in the first year paid me a profit of about £900 and something pounds, nearly a thousand pounds, which I wasn't expecting. I was expecting simply to be audience building, to be spending maybe a thousand pounds a month on advertising, but to make only that back, but be finding an audience and readers who would go on to read my books in the future. But actually I made a small profit, which I was really pleased about. So with book two, I sort of thought on that equation, well, book two will be profit for me already because they will go on and read book two, but it hasn't turned out like that. I'm actually about the same, although last month was better, but I'm still making just a little profit every month, £120 or something a month. Not much more. And I think that's because now that I think about it, having one book for one audience, one book for another audience is two book ones, right? And two book ones that don't really have the read-through, So I haven't done anything massively different. I'm a big Facebook ad runner, I'm starting to spend more time with Amazon ads and I have a mailing list building. So I do all those traditional self-publishing things. But I think probably the bottom line here is I need more books. I need books for five and six to get to the point where that might work for me and I need to make them more similar. So I think book one and book two are quite different for the reasons I outlined earlier. Books two onwards are going to be quite similar. Joanna Penn: Right. Oh, that's interesting. A lot of people adjust their series later on, don't they? And almost make their first book like a prequel, almost like a prequel book zero that's become trendy. Like people make a book zero and then book two becomes book one. And almost your problem is, you know too much and you have so much information in your head and I know how that feels because it's definitely happened to me over the years. It's like I just know all the options. So the character carries over. There's a character in book two that's in book one. So is it not an episodic series? Is it a series of standalones? James Blatch: Yeah, I definitely have written them so they could all be, I mean there's only two and a half so far, but hopefully all my books, you can pick up any one of them. A bit like James Bond, you can pick up any Bond book and it's a standalone story. It does make sense to read the story in series because there are things that happen through Bond's life and episodes, but it's not necessary. And I think commercially that's quite advantageous. You know, there's pros and cons of course, because that serial, you know, there's certainly the romance genre that what happens next? Serial works really well. And so I've deliberately done that. Funnily enough, book three is going to be my novella. That's the idea. It's a novella. In fact, I passed 25,000 words today. I'm doing NaNoWriMo. I should get it done. I'm about to start rewriting it, but that'll take the rest of the month. That is a prequel. It's kind of going to be a book zero. So the character from Book one, the main character book one, it's his first tour in Iraq, and I've chosen Iraq because Iraq works for both Britain and America. They know where Iraq is in America and they've heard of it. And although it's historic or I think that will be a market, it'd be an easier market than something set in provincial England. Joanna Penn: It's really interesting. You've got this love of the military and the Air Force and flying and things that come from your passion completely, but then you've also got this business head on as well. How much of writing this genre is love and how much is research into what sells and writing to market? James Blatch: I think it's more love than it is commercial. I think it's me writing what I love and then thinking, Well, what's the best commercial approach I can do? So let's set this book in America. Let's do a book one that will work in both America and Britain. Those decisions are commercial, but I am writing what I really want to write at the moment. And funny enough, I've just had a video call with one of our authors in Fuse Books about this subject who's been writing books he loves, but they don't do as well as another author in the stable who writes very classic kind of MI6 washed up agent type, John Milton, Jack Reacher type things and he's now having to mull over that Venn diagram of writing something that he wants to write but is it going to be commercial and that's a difficult thing to find. And I haven't really done that Jo, to be honest. I'm writing what I really like. Each story I keep coming up with is because I'm really interested in that and I love getting under the teeth of it and learning more about a subject I already know quite a lot about. If I was going to be brutally commercial, I guess I would be writing an MI6 agent. Maybe I will one day. But at the moment I don't think I could do it still where I am at the moment. I'm so busy with everything else. Writing is still hard for me to sit down and do. It's much easier this month cause I'm really, really getting into NaNoWriMo. But otherwise I prevaricate and don't do anything for months and I think if it was something my heart wasn't completely in, I would find that it's a non-starter probably for me. Joanna Penn: But I think that's really good that you said that because look, you have a day job and your day job is all the things you do. Self-publishing Formula, Fuse books. Hello Books. The Self-Publishing Show. You're a busy guy as a day job and like you mentioned, you make 150, 120 pound profit a month or something. This is not a full-time income, and it's not intended to be. This is such an important point. We want to say to people listening — none of us are suggesting you have to be a full-time author. Like, it doesn't have to be a hundred percent of your income. It can be dinner out every month. It can be a mortgage payment a year. It can be your full-time living. But equally, lots of us do other things. Like this podcast is one of my other things. We both do courses, so I want people to feel like that's fine. And I've had too many people recently say to me, ‘Oh, there's so much pressure in the indie community to be a full-time fiction author,' for example, and I'm like, ‘No, no, no. Let's not go there.' Right? I don't think you feel like that's ever what you are intending to be. James Blatch: No, I completely agree with that, and I think there are lots of other milestones that you can use. So I'm coming up on 10,000 book sales soon, and I'm coming up on a thousand reviews on my first book, and these are really important milestones for me. 10,000 books is 10,000 people, most of whom I don't know, have bought and read my book and been as far as I can tell from the reviews, relatively entertained by it. That's not going to buy me dinner, but it's important to me. So I think, why are you writing? You've always been like this, Jo. You've always said what do you want to get out of this? And it's opened my eyes a little bit to having that conversation with people more often at conferences and stuff, like what's your aim here? And if they say, I want to make money to pay my mortgage, or I want to be rich, that's a different conversation with them than I really love writing. Joanna Penn: Or I've got this book of my heart and I want to get that into the world. And actually that's more common, especially for new authors. We are going to move into now the course from SPF which is now called Launchpad which aims to help new authors get their books into the world or help existing authors revisit the basics because even if you are not intending to make loads of money at this, we all want to get our books into the hands of readers. And as you said, there are other things that are important to us and one of those is usually at least getting some reviews, having a great quality book, reaching readers. The course used to be called 101. Why this rebrand to Launchpad? James Blatch: Yeah, so self-Publishing 101, we came up with like everything in SPF we came up with probably in about 10 seconds at some point when we needed to name it. And I don't think any of us really loved the name for start. It is very American and we are very British. 101's an Americanism, nothing wrong with that, but I'm not sure it was a perfect fit for us. And also it seemed to me to say this is a course that will show you where all the things you need to learn are. There's KDP and there's MailChimp. But what this course does is that, okay, so this is the difference between MailChimp, ConvertKit, MailerLite. This is what you need to use those programs for. Anyone can set up the program and log in and set up a price plan and join that. But this is why you are doing it. This is how you get to turn yourself into a friend of readers and show your personality and stuff. So really under the surface of 101. So that's why we came up with Launchpad. It's something that will — once you follow it — give you the maximum chance of finding readers, which might be for you to make a profit. Or it might be simply that your books will find readers, which, is where I am at the moment and I'm delighted with it. Joanna Penn: That's great. And to me, having looked at the course and had a look at what it covers, it is more than like 101 implies that someone doesn't know anything. Whereas I also think that the idea of a launchpad is if you are someone who has a number of books or if you've come out of traditional publishing, for example. You might be an experienced writer or you might have some books already, but what you don't have is how to launch into more of the self-publishing world and taking control of all these different things. So I think this rebrand is a good idea. And I went through it and I was like, Oh, that's interesting. I mean, we can all do with revisiting the basics, to be honest. Even years later. And of course when I started there wasn't any of this around anyway. But you mentioned a few things that you dropped some words like ConvertKit and Maite and MailChimp and people are like “Ah, Stop talking to me! It's too much.” So I mean, there are a lot of tools, there are a lot of decisions like which platforms, whether to be exclusive, whether to pay for things or learn to do it yourself. How can authors decide what's best for them? How do they navigate these choices? James Blatch: Well, I think it starts with what are you are using the service for? And that's what I mean really about launchpad, the difference between 101 and Launchpad. So, those services are all email service providers. That was just one example. Launchpad will tell you that you need a mailing list, a newsletter you send out to your readers every few weeks or whatever frequency you want. And in the course we explain why that's so important to you. And it is very important for things like launching your books. But what do you put in the emails? You know, you have an email sequence that you send out to new readers who've joined your list because they've read a link in the back of your book. What do you say to them? That's what our course really focuses on — that relationship building, about turning a reader into a fan and a fan into a super fan and that sort of structure. So in the end, your choice of whether you use MailChimp or ConvertKit or MailerLite is irrelevant. Almost. You can use any of them to be honest. There's a tech library which I mainly do, and that is nuts and bolts of how to actually do that and put the email together. But the key information that you are paying for really in this course is the purpose behind it. So I think once you understand that, I think that choice about what mail service provider use, what domain registration service you use, even if you don't know what I'm talking about now, those choices become easier when you understand why you are making them. Joanna Penn: And I guess, it's kind of a bigger question. People say, Oh, self-publishing is really hard and complicated. There are all these things I have to know. I have to know what an ePub file is so I can upload it to Amazon, for example. And, and I feel like there's this big barrier that a lot of people feel. And I guess I always say to people, Look, you at least have to be willing to give these things a go. I mean, have you noticed any particular points that are important for people coming into this? James Blatch: I mean, I don't what an ePub file is, by the way. I mean, I know I have to spit one out of my formatting program and I upload it to KDP, who knows what it is. Yes. I think you get a couple of types of people who approach this. I often meet people and I'm thinking now people like Deborah Holland is a sweet romance writer and Andrea d Mansky who also writes Contemporary Romance. Those two told me that they're just not technical at all. But the reason the course worked for them is they paused, it, pressed the buttons that Mark said, ran it a bit longer. Pressed the other buttons, created that first email, and just followed it very much like the way Mark described it. And they did it like that. They literally followed it bit by bit. Whereas other people, I think, come at it from a much more sort of hands on and techy point of view of perhaps don't need a lot of that handholding. In terms of your question, I mean, have I noticed a particular way that people go with this? I mean, is it more technical now than it used to be? I don't know. I think one thing I'll say is when I first joined Mark and started getting into this world, it took me 12 months, a year, just to kind of catch up with the language that you and Mark spoke. I didn't really understand what you were talking about most of the time, and I got ticked off by Mark a few times, so not when we started a podcast. I didn't understand the purpose of the podcast or how you marketed a podcast. And it took a year of just being around, of just having conversations, of being in the Facebook groups for it to seep in, to get under my skin a little bit, to understand the culture in which indie publishing operates, and I think that's an important thing to do. I think if you come in cold from traditional publishing or wherever and you do our course by itself, it's probably not enough. There's got to be some amount of involvement in the Facebook groups and the discussions and paying attention to the environment and let it all soak in. Joanna Penn: Mm. Language is really important. And it's funny because we've all done this in different arenas, right? Like, I remember when, it was probably about a decade ago now, and I was like, I really need to get to grips with my finances and pensions and things like that, like superannuation and investing. And like I wanted to understand shares and all that stuff. And so I started reading and listening to financial podcasts and reading financial magazines and books and Money Week and the Financial Times, and I literally did not understand so much of the stuff. But then little by little you learn how to do these things and then it's not complicated anymore. The decision behind it is the important thing — and your attitude to learning. That's the main thing, isn't it? None of this stuff is rocket science. Really, it is creative work reaching readers. And I mean, at the end of the day, the writing the book is still the challenge, and the marketing I think is a challenge. But you can learn all this stuff. It is just a language. And what's great now, of course is there are lots of courses. Obviously I've been podcasting way longer than you but you have a popular podcast. There are lots of ways for authors to learn things, but I think courses and investing in education is definitely something that both of us have done over the years. But I did want to ask about marketing. We've mentioned a few things for marketing. Given that you know so many authors, what are some of the things that you consider to be most important around marketing? You've mentioned email lists, but I know you particularly care about TikTok, but is it actually working? James Blatch: Yeah, TikTok is definitely actually working. I mean, obviously it's like all these things. For some people, it's going great guns and for other people it's not working at all. And for most of us, we're sort of in between that point. When I put time and effort into TikTok, it works for me. I sell books organically and I can prove that with the nuts and bolts. I do a lot of benchmarking with my sales and I know people who've been selling books, well, who've got to number one in the entire store because people have picked up their books on TikTok and started moving, you know, pushing them. So TikTok is definitely working, but that's kind of its own thing at the moment. In terms of the other sort of fundamentals I've learnt, I think probably the biggest single thing is once you've got the rest of your platform, right? And by platform I sort of mean your cover, your blurb, your formatting of your book, your price, your mailing list, you've got all those bits and pieces in place. I think the free days you get with KU or putting a book to free and using list services, like Freebooksy, or Hello Books which we run and BookBub and having a sort of cycle based around those is critical is the word, I suppose. I think it's absolutely part and parcel of the way that I sell my books and sell books for Fuse. So understanding that I think is a really number one thing. Perhaps we don't talk about it enough, but it's a part of the ecosystem you really need to understand. But yeah, I can talk about TikTok if you want more. I can talk about TikTok for about an hour. Joanna Penn: Well, as much as I would love to hear about TikTok (!) I have been very clear on this show that I am not a fan of TikTok. So go and listen to the Self-Publishing Show to find out more about that. But I do think one of the most important things with marketing is choosing what works for you. So it's really good that you mentioned there using your KU free days or having a permafree book. So my mum writes, well, she did write, she's stopped now, as Penny Appleton, so there's five books in her Summerfield Village Sweet Romance series and I manage them for her, but all, I literally do every 90 days is put another five free days on every single one of those books. That's literally what I do and it gives her a couple of hundred bucks every month just from doing that. And that actually doesn't cost any money. Obviously, if you want to use Freebooksy or Hello Books, that does cost a little bit of money, but not too much. And of course permanently free if you are a wide author. I've had permanently free Stone of Fire, the first in my ARKANE series for almost a decade now. And I do exactly the same thing. I just have a Freebooksy a couple of times a year, maybe three times a year, and I just do that. So you don't have to do TikTok, it's a very active form of marketing, whereas there are I guess more relaxed forms of marketing where you can just almost set and forget these things or just pop in every few months. James Blatch: Yeah, just have a calendar and I've got quite a few books I look after now with Fuse as well as mine. And one of the things I'm trying to do is be better about having the calendar together so we know when they're coming around. But there's one book series in particular that I market that only really makes money through those periods of sales and in between, the sales tail off. So when we can force it in front of readers, readers love it and immediately buy the other books. So for that series, this method of putting the book out for free is crucial. And the book I'm writing now, I am writing to be a permafree book. And the idea is that maybe in 10 years' time when I'm back on here, if you're still doing the podcast, we can say, I've got books been free for 10 years, Joanna Penn: Oh goodness. I just can't imagine that at the moment, to be honest. We've both mentioned some examples and we only mentioned romance and thrillers. The question that many people often ask is, does all this self-publishing stuff only work for the big genres in fiction? Like, fantasy, sci-fi, thrillers, romance, it just doesn't work for anyone else, right?! James Blatch: Well, we always have examples when somebody says to us does it work for my genre? Like does it work for children's books? We know it does because we have examples of children's authors who go great guns using the methodology that we teach. We call ourselves self publishing formula, like we've got some secret formula, like the Colonel's secret recipe. But we don't have that. We just know the nuts and bolts of the ecosystem and put that all together in one place for you. Nonfiction as well. I mean, often, I think you'll say this as well, I think nonfiction is easier to market. It's easier to advertise than fiction because you are basically answering a question most of the time and advertising, when you're putting keywords together by posing that question is easier to find your readers when they, or your potential readers, when they type in, How do I do X and your thing pops up, you're answering that. So I think that is easier and it's absolutely necessary to get all this stuff right for nonfiction in the same way. Having said that, Jo, clearly, and this is the conversation I've had today with one of our authors and Fuse, if you write a book that looks and feels like Jack Reacher and fits neatly into a big selling genre, life is a bit easier for you. And then if you write, in my case, historical military fiction, you've got a smaller potential audience. But the great thing about the internet, it's better than the old days of putting billboards up in London on a busy thoroughfare. You can much more easily target your advertising spend on people who are at least likely to be in your niche, but you've got to understand how to do that. And that's where we come in. Joanna Penn: We are at a point where a lot of traditionally published authors are getting their rights back and some people might be coming into self-publishing. Now they've maybe heard about the indie way, or maybe someone like me who did this more than a decade ago and wants to relaunch. And I do think that relaunching and using the stuff from Launchpad can really help. But what have you seen work in terms of people coming in with books that might have been more than a decade old, for example? What are the types of things that people are doing to relaunch older books? James Blatch: Well, the obvious things are to re-cover them, re-blurb them because language changes in advertising. But I think when you've got a series re-covered in modern looking covers, you effectively treat it as a new series, but you'll be advertising to people. You don't have to put any reference to it being 10 years old because to that person, it'll be new to them. Right, and so I think it's really important to do that because not only during our lifetime, but actually after we've died as well, these books potentially can make money for us and for our estates. But again, the mistake people perhaps make is if they've changed genres over time, their ecosystem — I hate using these kind of buzz words, but I can't think of a better one at the moment — the sort of ecosystem you've created might be working for one genre and you actually need a different set, not a different set of tools, but a different version of those tools for a different genre. So what I mean by that, to give you an example and make it clearer, if you've got a Facebook page and you run adverts and you've been selling your thriller series on that, if you then go back to the sci-fi series you wrote 10 years ago, which you want to dust off and relaunch, you need a new Facebook page to do that because you can't re-target the people who are connecting with your thriller audience. And you are going to weaken your ad spend there and probably not get such good results. That's the sort of thing that we go into in Launchpad. It does become a bit of a pain that's sort of multi-genre advertising. But if your series is the same genre over the years, then I think it's a coat of paint, isn't it? Joanna Penn: What was funny when I re-edited my book one, which I had written in 2009 and we are recording this in 2022, and I had old language. Like I was trying to explain what a flying mini helicopter was, with an arm that would reach out and do something. And I'd done this really long, complicated thing and then now of course you just say drone. And people know what a drone is. But back in 2009, this was not a mainstream word. And I had this whole sort of virtual reality thing, but I didn't use the term virtual reality because again, it just wasn't known. So it is quite funny to read back how things have changed. So I mean you mentioned re-covering re-blurbing, but I do think a light re-edit can go a long way. I had words around, it was the early days of smartphones and I used the word ‘smartphone,' and of course who uses that anymore? James Blatch: So that's one of the advantages of writing historical fiction is that it tends not to date in the same way. That's interesting. At what point does something become historical? And in its own right become quite interesting and fun to read. I quite like reading old books where they describe something and you think, Well, that's a sat nav. There is a satnav in a Bond book. He describes this moving map, which of course people are reading think, Wow, that's ridiculous, how would that even work? Now we've all got it in our back pockets but I wouldn't want that Bond book re-edited. Joanna Penn: I think you are right. And that is a good question. Like when does something become historical — in the same way, like will Stephen King only be considered one of the finest writers of the generation once he's dead? Like I feel like while he's still alive, I wonder whether he'll get a Pulitzer or I don't know, whatever, something, when he's gone, because in his lifetime he hasn't been appreciated so much. But it's so interesting how history changes things. But that's a completely different conversation! If people want to find out more about you, the podcast and everything, where can they find you and the podcast online? James Blatch: So we have a website, selfpublishingformula.com and that's the home of the podcast as well, the Self-Publishing Show. You'll find links to the courses there as well. We have a blog every week and so on. I'm at JamesBlatch.com should you be interested in very exciting tales of jet aviation in the 1960s. It's got to be jet aviation, I don't do propellers very often. Joanna Penn: Oh, fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, James. That was great. James Blatch: Loved it. Thanks Jo.The post Self-Publishing LaunchPad With James Blatch first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you create an ecosystem of children's books around a central idea? How can you market books for children? Ada-Ari talks about how she writes, publishes and markets her children's books based on African folk tales and African languages in the USA. In the intro, Court blocks the PRH S&S merger [PublishersWeekly]; Spoken Word Audio report; Amazon Prime includes 100m songs [TechCrunch]; Spotify pulls audiobook purchases on Apple [The Verge]; Changes to Twitter Blue [The Verge]; Facebook and Instagram are introducing digital collectibles – yes, NFTs. [FB] Join me for Your Author Business Plan Live. 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.  Ada-Ari is the author of books for children, including The Spider's Thin Legs, and The Turtle's Cracked Shell, as well as language learning books for African languages. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Creating books for children as a connection to African cultural heritageFinding an illustrator outside the usual freelance platformsWorking with a printer and distributor vs. print-on-demandOn book sales expectations vs. realityMarketing books for children in schools and storesWhat keeps us going when the going gets toughTurning a book idea into a much bigger vision for a creative business with a mission You can find Ada-Ari at Ada-Ari.com. Header image generated by Joanna Penn with DALL-E2. Transcript of Interview with Ada Ari Joanna: Ada-Ari is the author of books for children, including The Spider's Thin Legs, and The Turtle's Cracked Shell, as well as language learning books for African languages. Welcome, Ada. Ada Ari: Thank you, Joanna. Joanna: This is such an interesting topic. Tell us a bit more about you, and how you got into writing in the first place. Ada-Ari: I am a Nigerian immigrant to the United States. I moved here back in 1996, as a teenager with my family, and fast forward to now I have a parent with two young children. When I started reading to them, I wanted them to also have some of the stories that I grew up on. Some of our African folktales. I realized quickly that there was no way that I could share these stories with my young children if I didn't tell them myself. They were so young that I felt they needed a picture book version of the story, just for retention, like that age of infancy and toddlerhood. They really need the pictures to go along with the stories for it to make sense. And so that's in brief my story. My children are my inspiration. Joanna: I know a lot of people listening want to write books for children because of their own children. I think that absolutely comes through with people. I guess growing up in Nigeria, you heard those stories. But why did you decide to focus that on doing in a book? You could have retold them in a different way or come up with different stories? What is it about these stories that you care about so much? Ada-Ari: Before putting pen to paper, I was also thinking that it would be great to actually animate some of these stories, or in general just have more representation of black characters, and the different animated series that my children watched. But animation is a completely different beast altogether. I happened to be reading a book when I just thought to myself, you know, why not create these stories for my children. The first book that I wrote was actually The Turtle's Cracked Shell. That's a story that I remember from my heart growing up. It's amazing, but I still remember it, remembering it and all the details. When I wrote it down, I shared it with some friends to get their feedback. And another friend from Ghana, she said, ‘Well, there's this story that I remember from childhood as well.' That just birthed the idea of why not look at all the different stories that came out of Africa, and put them in a book format. I will say I also wanted something that could be shared easily. So with a book, my children can easily take them to daycare and share them with their teachers, it can be part of reading time. And so I suppose that's why I thought books. I want to say that pre-pandemic, I was super anti-TV. So my children weren't doing much screen time. So maybe books were just the obvious medium. Joanna: My sister-in-law is Nigerian and I went to school in Malawi, in Africa. So I've got a few ties into the continent, but a lot of people listening won't know much about Nigeria. When you were growing up and hearing these stories, were you learning in English or is English your second language? Ada-Ari: English is my first language. And for pretty much every Nigerian who goes through the education system English is the first language. It's the national language of Nigeria. Interestingly, we are surrounded, literally every country that borders Nigeria is French-speaking. So like here in the US, Spanish is taught very popularly as a second language, or foreign language back home, French was that for us, but we all speak English fluently. And then we have our native languages that we learn if we aren't living in those parts of the country, or that we grew up with, if we do live in the parts of the country that speak that language, specifically. Joanna: Yes. That was why I was interested, because you've also got these language learning books. Tell us about the language learning books. Ada-Ari: It's interesting how it all came about. Things don't quite follow a chronological order or the chronological order you had in your head. From day one, I wanted to retell these different African folktales. And I thought to myself, well, if my children who are growing up as Americans can enjoy these stories, then all children who identify as Americans to an extent, will enjoy them as well. But I think also any child who can read a story in English will enjoy the stories. I already had that fire burning, but then my sister-in-law came to me and she created something that I consider amazing for teaching our native Nigerian language to young children. So our language is Igbo, and she created this brand called That Igbo Child. And she would just curate different charts, books and tools to help teach children in the diaspora or language people. So I said, ‘Hey, why don't we come up with a completely new product?' You have your wall charts or your flyers, you have storybooks. But what about a very simple board book that just has word image association. And that was how that was birthed. It was in that brainstorming session, we decided to create a set of books. So each box has three books in it, one that translates body parts, one that translates animals, and one that translates things at home. And then on the back of our book, we have a link to our website where you can actually go for pronunciations. That was a start, just our language. But then quickly we realized that we could expand this. So fast forward to today, we have 10 different African languages, from Amharic, which is in Ethiopia, to Swahili, which has been most popularly recognized African language in the world, all the way to smaller languages, like Ewe, which is spoken in parts of Ghana and Togo, it's been a very exciting journey. Joanna: I think that's brilliant, because you're tapping into a culture you left for your children. Obviously, your parents left and took you as a child and trying to bring that to your children, but also much bigger. I love that you're looking at other African languages. That's fantastic. A question about licensing: this model is reasonably new for you. Have you considered licensing those language books back into various countries in Africa, or licensing books out of those African countries to distribute in the US? Ada-Ari:  I have not, I'll be honest, it's kind of a one-man show. So I have to really limit myself based on capacity. I do know that I have the copyrights to all these different products that I've put together. And I am toying with different ways to distribute them throughout the world. I actually do have distribution set up in the UK, Nigeria, Australia, of all places, just starting in Canada, so in a few markets, but beyond that, everything is kind of in a backlog I'm working through. Joanna: Oh, yeah, it's always like that, isn't it? You mentioned the UK, obviously, we have a lot of diaspora Nigerians and a lot of other diaspora from other African countries here in the UK, which is a very different culture to the US African American culture. But there's still a lot of people here who would share the desire to have their children speak Igbo, I guess? Ada-Ari: Absolutely. Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, we have all different kinds of languages. What I find is that people are absolutely drawn to the packaging. So the first thing that I did, and again, remember, I was thinking of my children as I created this. So it was really great when I got our sample. I showed my children, and they just wanted to open up the box and immediately find out and learn the contents of these books. That was the validation for me like, okay, yes, this is hitting the target market, we're enjoying this. It's really a great way to actually get them excited and interested in learning our language. So, again, mine is Igbo, but we have like Twi, which is a Ghanian language – really great sellers. And I keep hearing the same feedback from different customers like, oh, my gosh, these are making it exciting for my children to learn. I will also say I have adults who want to learn African languages. And so they buy those books as well, because it's very simple. Then the other thing, I completely assumed that the only people who would be interested in these books were diasporans, African diaspora. I remember going to my children's daycare when I took my sample, and trying to pinpoint which parents I thought might be from this particular part of Africa, that had the book where these languages came from. My daycare director pulled me aside almost instantaneously. And she's like, ‘Oh, my gosh, we would love this in the daycare.' Daycares in the United States have a mandate for diversity, and also languages for children. And that was the first time that I realized that non-Africans actually would be interested in teaching their children a variety of different languages. So it's been interesting to see the customer base is just unpredictable. You have those who really want to pass their languages on. And then you have those who want to broaden their horizons or the horizons of their children, and go beyond Spanish or French or European languages and teach them African languages as well. Joanna: I'm so glad you said that because there are plenty of countries in the world. I'm thinking of Finland. I worked in Finland for a bit and all the Finns speak English but they also speak Finnish. There are a lot more people in Nigeria than there are in Finland, for example, I know Nigeria is a huge country. And the African diaspora obviously is massive, but I think the languages that people learn are not necessarily related to their heritage. We all learn different things. We learn all kinds of different languages, even if there's a smaller group. Obviously, something like Spanish is spoken a lot of places in the world. And I guess a lot of people learn the languages that are most common. I learned French at school, but then I'm in England, and I'm right next to France, and we go on school trips. I'm glad you found that. That's great. Ada-Ari: I will say that, like I said, nothing really followed any sort of preset chronological order. I don't know that I ever imagined that these two book products would marry each other and create this entire suite of offerings. But it's interesting, because my African folktale storybooks, those are in English, and when I was designing them, I was literally thinking, Oh, this would absolutely be applicable to every single person in the United States because they're in English. But these are literally retellings of what I would call historical artifacts. These are stories that every child of African descent would have heard growing up all the time. If we think of stories from Disney, or we think of stories from the Brothers Grimm, things along those lines. These are stories that to this day, as adults, we remember, and I have children now I'm telling them those stories as well. I thought, wouldn't it be so awesome for us to also share our stories, not just with our children and keep them insulated, but to share with the world, and just have the world explore our African legacy through our stories. So I thought of those as two very different things: African languages, and then African stories. But I'm definitely seeing like a marriage of the two now. And I will say this on the back of each of my books. Each book represents a story from a specific country in Africa. The goal is to tour the entire continent and have one story from each country. On the back, I also have a geography lesson. So you get to learn about the country, and where the particular story came from. And then on the inside, I have these are like the winning piece, I think every time I'm out in public, and I introduced the books and I opened this, people's eyes just light up. I have these culture cards, and they talk about the culture and tradition of the people who brought the stories to us. For example, my first story is an Ashanti story from Ghana, the Ashanti kingdom in Ghana. And on the inside, you have culture cards that teach you about the Kente cloth, the Ashanti golden store. I'm now just kind of seeing the link between that and then my Twi language books, which is language that they speak in the Ashanti kingdom. I see a lot of people buying the two products for their kids or for their friends. So it's a full cultural experience. Our stories and languages. It's been a very exciting journey. Joanna: You mentioned about adults wanting that too. I can see you and also many children's authors, as their children grow, they start doing books for the different ages. As the children grow, they start changing the types of products they do. So I think you've got a hell of a business on your hands there. You've mentioned there that you were designing the book and that the packaging is really cool. Are you the artist as well as the writer? Or how did you find your illustrator? And how did you do the design? Ada-Ari: Oh, no, my talents only go so far. So I am the writer. And I use social media extensively to find illustrators. For the language books, I happened to connect with a Nigerian illustrator who is amazing. He literally designed the entire package. I pretty much just gave him the concept and he took it and ran. He drew all the images, designed the packaging, which is extremely popular with customers. For the storybooks, that was a completely different look and feel that I was going for. So I looked all over social media sites. I discovered Behance. I was on Instagram, Up Work, Fiverr, all those sites. At the end of the day, the illustrators that I really thought captured what I was looking for I found them on Instagram. And it was an interesting journey. On platforms like Upwork, and Fiverr, there's a money back guarantee, if you will. So if you put money into this particular illustrator, or service provider, and they don't deliver the work, you have some sort of an assurance that you'll get your money back. Because at the end of the day, we don't know any of these people, right? They're complete strangers all across the world. With Instagram, I was very nervous because I wasn't doing the work of transacting on that platform. So it was definitely a leap of faith, if you will, trying to determine the best way to guarantee deliverables and things along those lines, but it ended up working out. Joanna: That's fantastic because it does take time for people to find an illustrator. But if you find someone who matches with you, then that's great. You want to hold on to them. Another issue for children's books is printing costs the materials and say print-on-demand. How are you doing your publishing and distribution? Are you using like print-on-demand services like Ingram Spark? Ada-Ari: I have to be honest. If I had thought this entire initiative out properly, I probably would never have started. I discovered as I was going, and I'm grateful for that, because here we are today. For printing, I actually worked through Alibaba and that was an entire process on its own. I was vetting all kinds of printers getting all different kinds of product samples. And fortunately, I was able to narrow down to one printer for my two different book products. And they are pretty different. One is a box set of board books. The other one is a picture book. So hard paper, hardback. And that ended up working out, of course. I really had a look that I wanted, right for the storybooks, I wanted them to have pockets in the back where I would have those culture trading cards. Ingram Spark in your regular print-on-demand would not offer those customizations. So I felt like I had to go with my own private printing process, if you will. And that definitely requires a lot of upfront capital. But I really believe like that differentiator is worth the investment. So that's how I'm doing it. I'm not print on demand. But the products, the quality is really, really good. I definitely wouldn't trade that at this point. Joanna: So you found a printer through Alibaba, and you're doing print runs. So let's say 5000 of a book, and then you mentioned that you are distributing obviously, in the US, but also UK, Australia, Canada. How are you getting those printed books into places in those countries? Ada-Ari: It's not very easy. And I'm just starting out as I speak to you, I think, I don't know if I mentioned this, when I first reached out to you, I was brand new, so I'm just about a year in the entire game. So I'm still figuring things out. In the US, it's really easy because I live here. My home is my warehouse. And I have my books available on platforms like Etsy on Amazon, on my website, of course, things along those lines, but I distribute all of them. I'm now getting into the bigger stores, so your Whole Foods and your Targets and things along those lines. But for those ones, I literally had to get a couple of middlemen to get into the stores. But at the same time, at the end of the day, I'm still delivering all these books, to these warehouses, and then they're being shipped to the different end locations. For the UK, Nigeria, Canada and things along those lines, I'm really relying on a network of personal relationships that I have with people for the most part, and I'm getting my books directly from China, shipped to their locations, and then they are distributing on my behalf for now. Joanna: That's interesting. Sometimes we have people listening from different countries who have other connections so hopefully, you might get some people reaching out. Because I feel like that person the way you're doing it, and I love that you're like a year into it, and you're doing all this stuff. It's amazing. What I would challenge you on and would like to suggest is that perhaps you do — in addition to your special print ones — you also upload a version to say Ingram Spark as a print-on-demand book, and/or Amazon KDP print, so that you can reach every other country in the world without having to do all of that. Because even if they don't have that little pocket in the back, it's like it's a 95% product, or it's a 90% product, which still communicates what you want to do. Do you have ebook versions? Ada-Ari: I don't. Joanna: That would be another suggestion. Ada-Ari: I'm just trying to manage my capacity, honestly, because I'm still a mom and I still work full time, all those different things. So I did look into I think I've been trying to upload a version into Ingram Spark for that very same reason. I can't remember why I kind of abandoned ship, to be honest, if it had anything to do with reformatting and things along those lines. I was like, okay, too much. Eventually I want to transition them to making sure that I can do that or reach all the different markets. I'm also discovering that marketing is the largest piece of this. Because I created my books and I just thought, oh, everyone's going to just know about them. I have a few thousand people on my Instagram platform and Facebook. I'm going to just post this and everyone's going to see it and buy it. I'm discovering that Instagram doesn't show every one of your followers the posts that you do so I'm having to pull back from all these different additional, I guess, processes or backlog items I call them. And I'm trying to learn the marketing aspect, like how do I actually get the word out there to create the demand for the books. That's been a very exciting process in some ways. And I'm focusing on market by market. I'm very heavily focused in the US right now, because that's where I am, so I can control that a little bit. And then I'm trying to figure out how to expand that model to different markets. Joanna: I love that you said that. I know it's hard. I did exactly this, back in 2008 or 2007, something like that, I printed a load of books, I had them in my living room, and I thought, Oh, I'm going to just sell them all in five minutes and make loads of money. Awesome. Joanna Penn with the first edition of what became Career Change. Most of those boxes went to the landfill! (2008) And then I was like this, I've got this brilliant picture and I hope you've got one of these: I'm standing in front of these boxes looking so proud and the picture captures my face when I didn't know what the hell I was doing. Ada-Ari: I'm telling you, it is something else. But I've discovered something in marketing right now and it's really very literally direct to customer, I would say. So in addition to going to street fairs and things along those lines, I now do school readings. I was talking a little bit about like the culture cards in the back the geography lessons. My school readings are beyond an author talk and the book reading. I actually have an entire what I call an African storytelling reimagined program. So it's really cool because I bring with me clothing, instruments, our brooms, our Calabashs. For the entire session that I'm reading to children, sometimes I do a one hour session in school, or I do a full day, some schools booking for multiple days, children get to just experience a day in the life back home in Africa. With the focus on diversity these days and culture this is driving this really big demand. What's amazing about the school readings is that they tell parents that I'm coming and so parents now get to learn about what I'm doing about my books. And so that's really taken off. But like I said, I'm just literally trying to discover different ways to market these books. These ones are still very like in person, heavy, trying to think of the best way to market a picture book digitally. So I haven't cracked that nut. Yes, but I'm enjoying the school reads live in the meantime. Joanna: I absolutely recommend Karen Inglis's book. I'll send you some links afterwards. Karen Inglis has been on the show and her book is in the second edition now: it's How to Self-publish and Market a Children's Book. Karen is doing incredibly well with digital marketing as well as with schools. So there's definitely ways to crack at it. But it's definitely a challenge for children's authors because of course, your market is not actually the children, it's the parents, the librarians, the grandparents. So when you said you're doing Instagram, and I know you have Facebook as well. How are you finding online marketing? Or is it literally just the in-person stuff that's working?  Ada: I'll tell you, right before we got on this call, I was just trying to battle the Facebook Help Center. And Instagram is owned by Facebook, or Meta now. So they're all one and the same. So one thing that I do, in addition to the school readings, I do a lot of library readings. And I have a partnership with Nordstrom. So I'm traveling around the US doing readings at Nordstrom. What I've discovered that is working for me indirectly is boosting the ads to my Nordstrom reads. So for example, I have one coming up in Dallas in a week and a half. So I just posted that and I'm I put a boost. So that gets the attention of people digitally, they come to the reading, they enjoy the session, they buy the books. That's all I've really been able to do on social media for now, Facebook or Instagram, I find that when I do put an ad on Instagram or Facebook, it plays throughout Instagram and Facebook, because like I mentioned earlier, they're all part of the same company now. But when I do direct ads for my books, I'm not quite getting that traction. Again, I think it's just difficult to differentiate yourself. Well, and I could be completely wrong. But to really differentiate myself as a picture book, like why buy this compared to the 1000 other picture books that are on the market today. What's different about this one? Why do I need to grab this? I'm still trying to figure out the best way to capture that with the storybooks. When they see it in person, they get it because I show them the back. I show them the cards they automatically love it. But digitally it's a challenge. I will say for the language books, though, that's not as difficult when I market on social media, especially when I try to target those niche markets. Because they say oh this is my language. Oh my gosh, this exists. I want it. So that translates a little bit differently. But again, I'm not quite there yet. It's still very in-person heavy, I seem to be getting the message across in person. I'm open to tips. Joanna: I love that you've come on anyway, only a year in and in five years time, if you're going pitch me again, because I feel like I've had people on here, obviously, it'd be like Karen, who I mentioned, she's been doing children's book self-publishing for probably a decade. And I've been doing this for almost 15 years. I feel like there's so much we learn. And there are so many things I could tell you what to do, or that Karen could tell you what to do. Like you said, if someone had told you what it would involve, you would never have started. But equally, you're doing great, you're doing amazing. Ada-Ari: Thank you. I hit my first 1000 books sold as a first time self-published author. I think three months or so, since publishing. So I know that the demand is there, I know that especially in this part of the world, the United States, diversity is a huge topic. Again, it's just figuring out how to market it digitally. Because what people see in person that gets them wanting copies of the books and telling people about it, I'm not able to translate in one second of the Instagram attention span you have before they determine if they're going to swipe or if they're going to stay on your page. And actually, it's interesting, because the first video I have on my Instagram page, it's pinned is a video of me talking about the books. But against that point, in one second or two seconds, people are making a decision whether to swipe or to sit down, turn the volume up and watch. So I'm constantly playing around with that. I really want to check out Karen's book, her tips. For those of you who've been doing this for a decade plus, there's a lot that I can learn from that. Joanna: I love your attitude. You mentioned you're doing readings in Nordstrom, which is a department store if people don't know. How did you get that? Ada-Ari: So it's interesting when people ask me that question, because the answer is I just asked. The same way I'm here on your podcast, the same way I've been able to get into schools, hundreds of schools around the country, I just asked. I literally have a team that I work with. They're a bunch of other ladies based in Nigeria. But I set up a process to reach out and ask these questions. And apparently Nordstrom is all about promoting small businesses that align, obviously, with what it is they're doing. And they love the idea of the reading, the cultural aspect. Again, I'm really writing that because it's needed and there is a huge appetite for that in this part of the world today. So I reached out, I told someone Nordstrom about my books, and I was actually asking if they would sell the books there. And they were willing to buy wholesale from me directly. I think as I mentioned at the very beginning of our session today, these department stores and the chains, they don't buy directly from the author, they have their distributors, so I have to literally have two different middlemen to get into the stores. So that was not an option. But they said, You know what, you can come and do a pop up. I said, well, in addition to a pop up, why don't I share my culture in this way and do the readings, and they just love it. They love the idea. And before you knew it, here we are today. I've been in a ton of different Nordstroms and am going to have a ton more to go this year. No end in sight. Joanna: Great. That's great. I love that you asked you mentioned this team in Nigeria. Are these freelancers that you're paying to email pitch? You said you ‘just asked,' but how are you asking? Ada-Ari: My background, I should explain, is in process and operations and strategy professionally before becoming an author. So I'm always thinking about processes and how to create things that can be repeatable and repeated by different people. So my first foray was to actually reach out, look into different schools or different retail centers or different places, and ask if they'd be interested in me doing the reading. Actually, rewind a little bit: I published my first book in February. And I thought to myself, that's Black History Month in the United States, I wonder if places that would have children there would be interested in me coming to do a reading. So I was pitching to indoor playgrounds, because in February it's cold, parents want their children to be indoors, but still playing. And so I created a little pitch message. And now I've expanded that a little bit more because I've gotten some media traction. So I've added those links on there. I've had successful storytimes at Nordstrom and schools so I can add some of those imagery to the emails. And I'm always tweaking it just a little bit to really help drive what it is that I'm doing because again, people have lots of different things coming their way. How do I grab their attention in the first line of my email? And now that I have that in place, and I have a process of how to target the right customers? I just have a team who does that for me repeats that task and does it for me. Joanna: And their email and their signature line refers to you or that they're your team basically. Ada-Ari: Absolutely, yes. So all the responses come back to me. And I can follow up from there. Joanna: I think that's great. And what's so interesting with this in-person marketing, and I don't do it much myself, but I've heard this from people who do what you're doing, which is department stores and schools is you don't know who those parents are, or who they are, or who those store customers are. There could be someone from a local radio station, or someone from a TV thing, or someone who does have a bigger Instagram channel, or someone who's puts your video on Tiktok. Or there are lots of opportunities for in-person marketing that then turns into other forms of marketing. So I think what you're doing is great. And like you said, I mean, we're recording this in October 2022 and you only published this year. So look, hats off to you, I don't think you realize how well you've done. I really can tell that it's really hard. But you're doing really well. And I guess that would be the question: Did you start this with a commitment to a decade, because that's the other thing, it takes time to compound into people actually knowing about you? Ada-Ari: Initially, and like you said, I'm picturing the picture, the image of you standing around these boxes of books, I thought I would print 1000 copies of each of my books and sell them in a week. I also thought that the entire initiative from end to end will probably take like $1,000 maximum. So worst case scenario, I could just get these books out, no harm, no loss. Before you knew it, before I actually had books printed, I had sunk in significantly more than that amount of money. So the driving force for me was I need to make this money back, I need to put this back into the savings account that came from things along those lines. And so that spurred a lot of the creativity. For example, I started off just sending messages to my family and friends, putting it on Instagram, I found that that wasn't working. So I started reaching out to indoor playgrounds. Then I discovered bookstores, some independent bookstores, who would link me up to street fairs. And again, like you mentioned, at some of these in person events, I've met one of the libraries that I'm working with now. I've been trying to get their attention, and then I never could. But someone I met at one of those readings happens to be the decision maker at the library. So now here's the conversation we're having. So I'm really looking at those opportunities as ways to kind of get my name out there. But like I mentioned earlier with my storybooks, my goal has a map of Africa on the back of each book with a specific country that the story comes from shaded out. And my vision is to see like a collector's item, if you will, where by the end of the day, there's one book from each country. So we've shaded out every single country in Africa. With that in mind, and if I can write one book per year, I actually am currently illustrating my third book, which is coming out in February 2023. That's a story from South Africa. If every year I could put out a new story from a new country in Africa. But I have a pretty decent pipeline, I'd say, of, of books of stories, Joanna: I love that. I've actually got in front of me, I have a map of the world, obviously, which includes Africa, right in the middle. I look at it every day. When I was a kid growing up, we did a lot of traveling. And obviously, like I told you, I went to school in Malawi. We weren't allowed a TV, well, when in Malawi, we didn't have TV. And when we moved back to England, my mum was like, we're not having a TV. So I have this map of the world on the wall, as a child, and I would learn all the countries and all the capital cities, that was fun for me at the weekend. Although, of course, countries obviously change over time. I love your vision. I think it's brilliant. And actually, by the time you get to say number 10 or number 12, then you're going to be a lot further along in the process. What you'll find is all those relationships will compound, and things will get difficult in a different way. Ada-Ari: I can only hope. But also to go back to what you were just saying that was kind of the vision that I had as well, because I actually initially just wrote these stories. And I thought, Oh, these are cute stories to share with the world. I thought what an amazing way to introduce children to Africa, what Africa is, the different countries that exist in Africa. When I moved to America, as a teenager, there were a lot of people who didn't realize that Nigeria was a country that was very different or far away from, say, Kenya and things along those lines. So if I could help this new generation, my children's generation realize that Africa is this big continent, with many different countries. In all my school readings, we have those discussions. We talk about continents and talk about the countries in Africa. What a great gift to give to this next generation. That's my that's one of my hopes and dreams. Today we're living in a world where it's important to raise global citizens. And so this is my hope that this initiative that I'm doing can help to foster that raising children who are global citizens that they're just a little bit more aware of the world around them. They don't have passports quite yet. Joanna: I never understand that about Americans. It's one of the first things we get here, especially after Brexit, we can't even go across the pond to France. But I love what you say. And also, I have lots of ideas. For your business as well, you could branch out much further than books, you could be importing things that you can turn into other products that link back to Nigeria and other African countries and that people will buy because they're related to your book. So there, you have a great idea here, I think it's fantastic. I'm excited to see where this goes for you. We're almost out of time. I did just want to come back on your Facebook page, which I was having a look at. And you say, “I can't tell you how many times I questioned myself and wonder if I should quit.” And you have told us about some of the difficulties. And that vision is a long-term vision. What stops you quitting? Because I know that first year particularly is very hard. Asa-Ari: Very hard indeed. I try to be as open and transparent because as I'm discovering today, and of course, having been in the game for well over a decade, it's not as easy as it looks. People see me at Nordstrom, and they just think, oh, my gosh, it was probably easy, or she must have been doing this for ages. I have other entrepreneurs who I've been brainstorming with as we start out our journey. I'm very passionate about being transparent. So I like to let people know that these are difficult things, every single deal. This deal with Whole Foods, for example, has been in the work for significantly longer than I would have thought it would things along those lines. I love to share not just the highs, but also the lows. I don't think we see enough of that. And we come in thinking as you and I did at the beginning that oh, this would just be a walk in the park, we'll sell all these books instantly. But I truly believe that this is what I meant to do. I'm deeply spiritual. I don't believe that this is something that I just picked up out of nowhere. I feel like this is the calling that God put into my heart. I wake up every day refreshed, renewed. I'm learning to take a break instead of quitting. So when things get really challenging when the juggling act just gets a bit overwhelming, I'm learning to just pause, take a step back, and then come back tomorrow, come back next week, in essence, take a vacation from the business. I think there's just this inner driving force that's keeping me going. And I also say every time that I get a yes, it's another like piece of validation that this is going the right way. So every time a school gets back to me, or a store gets back to me, or I see a sale on my website, or I get a comment or review from someone who's bought my books or something along those lines, that just helps to fuel the flames. And I think that it doesn't take much when the fire is already burning so deeply inside of you to push you a little bit further. There are all these different hoops to jump through. Like you were mentioning earlier, I need to go ahead and get my stuff on print-on-demand things along those lines. But I'm learning to just compartmentalize some of the more difficult ones, and focus on what's going to bring me energy. As that energy comes, I can build out teams to automate some of these processes, I can go back to some of those really difficult pieces and re look at them with fresh eyes. Joanna: I love that. I think you've re-energized me there. It's really great. I know it's hard for you. But I remember all of this. And I can only hope that you can also look forward and see that I'm a decade ahead of you. And you can do this and obviously I have a very different business. But yeah, it sounds amazing. Tell people where they can find you and your books and everything you do online. Ada-Ari: My name is Ada-Ari, my website is Ada-Ari.com. My Instagram account is Ada_Ari. You can also find links to my Amazon page, my Facebook page, my YouTube channel, all of those things are on my website. I'm in many places online. I need to get on Twitter and TikTok but you know what, those are some of the things that I'm going to just put to the backburner Joanna: And you don't need to. I'm not doing Tiktok ever. I said it's not happening. We all find our places but thank you so much Ada, that was great. Ada-Ari: Thank you so much. I really do appreciate the platform. Thank you for having me.The post Writing And Marketing Diverse Books For Children With Ada-Ari first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What are tropes and how can you use them to strengthen your fiction? What are some examples of horror tropes, in particular? With Jennifer Hilt. In the intro, Why book sales are down and what to do about it [6 Figure Authors]; Undisruptible: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention for Individuals, Organisations, and Life by Aidan McCullen; Sadness about sales [@LouiseVoss1]; How pop stars really make money [The Telegraph], Impact of subscription models [Ask ALLi]; Shutterstock will sell AI-generated stock images [Digital Trends]; Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain and Virtual Worlds; The Creator Economy for Authors. 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 Jennifer Hilt is the USA Today best-selling author of over 24 books across four pen names, writing in urban fantasy, supernatural suspense and paranormal romance. Her books for authors include The Trope Thesaurus, Trope Your Way to a Stronger Story, and appropriately for Halloween, The Horror Trope Thesaurus: Killing it with Tropes. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Creating the time to write despite a full lifeWhat is a trope and why are they important?The five categories of tropesThe diversity of the horror genresWriting familiar tropes without becoming clichéExamples from horror TV — Stranger Things and Midnight Mass — as well as booksUsing tropes in book marketing You can find Jennifer Hilt at jenniferhilt.com and on Twitter @jenehilt Shareable image generated by Joanna Penn with DALL-E2 Transcript of Interview with Jennifer Hilt Joanna: Jennifer Hilt is the USA Today best-selling author of over 24 books across four pen names, writing in urban fantasy, supernatural suspense and paranormal romance. Her books for authors include The Trope Thesaurus, Trope Your Way to a Stronger Story, and appropriately for Halloween, The Horror Trope Thesaurus: Killing it with Tropes. Welcome to the show, Jen. Jennifer: Oh, thanks so much for having me. Joanna: This is such a great topic. Before we get into it, tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. Jennifer: I've always loved storytelling, even as a kid, I was able to walk to my local library and spend tons of time there, which is a huge gift. And so I just read everything possible. I thought that I would become a writer. And the way to do that would be to go to school. So I went and got two degrees, one in linguistics and one in language and all the time thinking about, ‘Oh, I'm going to write a book someday when I know enough to do that.' When I got into school, I realized that school didn't really teach me how to write. I needed to figure that out myself. Reading and thinking about how books are put together is really the way to do that. I didn't really feel like going to school to learn to write a book was the way to do it. So that's what led me to a lot of self study and thinking, how is the story put together and just being intensely curious, that led me to doing some plotting with others, because I do have lots of story ideas. I'm helpful at helping them develop their ideas into like a full-blown book. As I was doing that process, I started to really think more in detail about the specifics of how stories put together, particularly tropes. Joanna: How did you get into going the indie way? Do you have a day job in this kind of thing? Or how do you manage that side of things? Jennifer: I had two children who had health problems. So I even though I did have a day job, I wasn't able to keep that up. So I ended up just doing lots of writing to help my mental health when I had some free time to escape all the stuff that was going on with the kids. That was how I managed that. I wasn't able to keep working outside the home, doing teaching and writing things. Joanna: Thank you for sharing that. I think it's really a strong message that you've written, how many books did I say? Over 24? I think I lost count. Jennifer: Yes, it was really interesting. When my first son developed his health problem, I was always thinking, Okay, I'm really going to push this when I have time, and when the kids whatever. And then when he got that illness, it was like the horror of that. But also, I did feel some shame as a mom/storyteller in that, I realized, I'm never going to get the time, I'm going to have to find it somewhere. Nobody's going to give me this time, because now there's this big thing that we need to do to keep him alive. So I really can identify with people who are trying to juggle multiple things. And you just have this need to let this part of yourself be expressed, even though there's a lot of forces on you that are trying to push that down. I think it's important to do that for yourself. Even if it's not a thing you published. I have also plenty of books that I haven't published, but I just had to write that story. I feel like as storytellers, it's important to know, it's fine to do that, too. Joanna: That's great. We will get into tropes, but you said, I'm never going to get the time, no one's going to give it to you. How did you manage to find the time? Did you sacrifice your sleep? Jennifer: Yes, usually that's what parents or caregivers find is you're giving up sleep somewhere. I am by my nature an early riser. So I ended up getting up an hour earlier, which is also a thing that you've heard. The other funny thing, which people always find odd, was that because I would have to leave the house because it was really hard for me to work even if things were quiet. I just couldn't get the mental space. But we had a McDonald's nearby. So I would get up at five in the morning and go sit and work in McDonald's for an hour before I would come home. My non-writer friends never understood that. But I've since talked to a lot of others who were like, ‘oh, yeah, we work in our cars' just have to go to someplace where you can get a little mental space so you can enter that other world. But for me, it was getting up an hour earlier in the morning. But some people end up staying later or lunch hours or it is hard if you have to find the time where you can. I think the trade off is I would feel better if I got that hour in as opposed to just kind of suppressing my need to escape and storytelling. Joanna: I love that. In my head, I've got this vision of you sitting in McDonald's. And I think actually, these chain restaurants, Starbucks is kind of the same, people don't bother you, if you sit there longer as long as you get a drink or something, then you can kind of sit there and people don't interrupt. Whereas if you're in a smaller place, you can feel kind of guilty about that, but you don't feel guilty about sitting in McDonald's. Jennifer: Exactly. And the other thing that I found, and this could just be me was, first of all, at five o'clock in the morning, McDonald's is mostly groups of retired men. Sitting in these like, tables of six, six to eight, it was always really interesting to see the same ones, but and I would sit far away from them, because I didn't want to be distracted by their sounds. The nice thing about going and working at someplace like that is I didn't feel like I had pressure on me. I felt like I was escaping pressure. Where I live in Seattle now if I go sit in a coffee shop in Seattle, even now it's like, oh, my gosh, I feel like every other person there is writing a book. It's just very serious and intense. It doesn't matter which coffee shop it is. So I'm still partial to McDonald's and various chain places to sit with a coke and do my work and just kind of feel like, ‘Oh, I'm free.' And I'm not in somebody else's headspace. Joanna: I love that, great productivity tips there. So let's get into the book. What is a trope anyway? And why are they so important in our fiction? Jennifer: I'm so glad you asked. Because we're hearing that word trope so much more now. I think with social media and all the visual storytelling out there, I'm amazed how much I hear the word trope. Even two years ago, it wasn't being talked about the way it is now. For me, what I've discovered in a lot of my digging and and research is, I feel like a trope is just a building block. It's a commonly understood idea that when we say a trope, for example, like orphan, I don't need to go into a lot of depth and definition with you about what it is. People get what tropes are they understand it's this general idea. So I think they're super important because we can take that general idea and then expand with it in our story. It's a way of getting the readers or audience hooked early into our world. And then we go in deeper into building it to a specific place. Joanna: I like that. So it's a kind of shortcut to the reader's subconscious, like you said, we could say, ‘writer in a coffee shop'. Jennifer: Exactly. Joanna: That's a truth these days, certainly on this podcast, that would be true. You said they're building blocks: What are the different types of building blocks? Jennifer: I found when I started this journey of looking at tropes, I found there's lots and lots of lists, and they're almost always alphabetical. So I started to think, well, that's kind of overwhelming for me. I'm used to writing stories so how can I think about these objects as more than just an alphabetical listing. In my mind, I started to break them up into basically five categories. First is person, second place and then object. And then I also thought of them as secrets and changes. So I would take the trope lists and divide them up into those categories. It really helps with storytelling, because I could say, oh, it helps me break these down further. Do I need a secret? Do I need a change? What what's going to happen? What do I need to happen in the story? And then what are some options I have? Joanna: I think person, place, and object, we're going to come back to these for Halloween. Go into Secrets and Changes a bit more, because that doesn't bring up obvious examples in my head. Jennifer: Secret baby is my favorite trope of all time, I think, because I pretty much find it in any genre I read. And it's what I think of as a twofer. Because you have the secret of you know what happened with that thing. And then you have the physical baby, which you're dealing with, and it doesn't have to be just a baby, it can be a grown person, but it's especially in mystery. It's amazing how much secret babies are there. You find out at the end, Oh, that was so and so's secret baby. Joanna: Give us an example because this is one of those things, apparently is a romance trope. I just don't understand how anyone can have that. What is the secret baby? Jennifer: Since it's Halloween, one of the examples I can do with secret baby to talk about is Midnight Mass. And in that one, the doctor is actually the secret baby of the priest and her mother. Joanna: Oh, you're right. What you mean is it can be in the past. It doesn't mean to be a baby right now. Jennifer: Exactly. Joanna: Ah, okay. I thought it was like someone's pregnant but they're hiding it somehow like they go and hide. Jennifer: You can do that too. I think the thing with tropes is that we don't need to be, because it's a building block, we don't have to be super specific about it. I mean, yes, it can be a physical baby, you can do it like that. Or you can use it as something that happened in the past. And then it's your head, you're dealing with the result in romance, a lot of times it's a shorter term thing. It's a nine-month, they get together, they break up, she's pregnant, then they get together again, and it's all happily ever after, usually when the baby arrives, but in other genres, you see the results is what you're dealing with down the road of, oh, I didn't realize this person was related to that person. Joanna: Ah, okay. And that then brings obviously, inherent conflict. I like it. So secrets, good example there. What about Changes? Jennifer: Changes are really important, because at first I was like, we know our stories need change, but it's like how to do that is the rub. My favorite example of a trope with change is the ugly duckling. Because at first I was thinking of it in the traditional Cinderella way; she's got this rags to riches thing. But then it occurred to me more and more, our characters often are undergoing a change in that same way. And particularly I loved with horror, how often it's a monster that we're having that change, either becoming one or the characters of monster, and they're becoming more human. So it's really an evolutionary kind of trope is what how I came to think about it. Joanna: I quite like that. Let's do some examples of person, place, and objects as well, since we're putting this out on Halloween. So we're going to talk about those. Let's do a Person. What's a popular horror trope with a person? Jennifer: Tortured hero or heroine. Pretty much every horror story is going to have a protagonist who has horrible things that have happened in the past and if it's a horror story, most likely those things are going to be ongoing happening in our current story. So I think that's a trope, really, that you find also, though, in romance, and particularly also in mystery. I love mysteries, and there's always the hard-boiled detective who's an alcoholic, and he's divorced, and nobody's speaking to him, and he's had this horrible thing happened in the past. I really feel like that trope is used in all kinds of genres to really good effect, because as people we have really varied experiences. And we all have past traumas to some degree or another. So why shouldn't our characters? Joanna: I guess this brings up a question around. Obviously, none of this is cut and dried, but with person, so let's say vampires in the past, vampires would be a horror trope. You'd expect something with a vampire is going to be horror. But that's not true anymore, is it? Jennifer: No, it's interesting, because I think now the fantasy tropes, there's so many great mashups and things that you can do with them. For example, I'm thinking of What We Do in the Shadows, which took the vampire trope, which at the time, I thought, what else could you do with vampires? And the we've seen so much done with them, how could you possibly do something new? Then the show comes out with the idea of basically a fake documentary about vampires living in a house on Staten Island, and it blew my mind. It's so well done. And it's so obvious, but obviously, nobody had thought of it before these two guys. So even though there are tropes that have been around a long time, like vampires, there's still people who are finding new ways to use them and make them engaging stories for us. Joanna: Coming back to Midnight Mass: I read horror, but I don't read slasher horror, but I like supernatural horror, but I hardly ever watch it because I feel like my imagination is a bit much and gives me nightmares and stuff. But I started watching Midnight Mass on Netflix, and it's quite a slow start. Let's talk about Places. Midnight Mass is on this island that's cut off, which I always think is a good horror trope. But it's such a slow burn show. And what they do with vampires in that TV series, it is definitely horror, but what they do is they almost flip it with this religious idea. There's this one scene where the vampire is wearing priest's outfit and it was so shocking to me. I'd never experienced that particular way of spinning vampire even within horror. I'm sure a lot of people listening have seen a lot more like that but I thought that was quite interesting around what to do with both a character and also a place Jennifer: Exactly. I thought the idea behind Midnight Mass was really fascinating, like you're talking about. I also found it extremely slow and personally in my mind was editing about three episodes so we could get things moving. Joanna: Just on that. It's so interesting you said that because I found it just drew me in and I loved it. In fact, I've watched it twice. I loved it. I'll probably watch it again. I think because I have a very strong religious education and I write a lot of religion, that there was such a dense layer of religious imagery and kind of callbacks. So to me, the series was not just a straight horror, where it sounds like the way you like these things to go is a bit faster. And with perhaps less heavy symbolism and slow religious development. That's a great example of what people like I suppose. Jennifer: I think that's really also a wonderful point about the diversity of horror, because I think when I started studying it more specifically, I was like, Oh, I don't really like horror, because I don't like slasher things. But then, as I studied it more and like horror is huge. I think it it's such it's so much more diverse than probably any of the other genres because you don't have to have a happy ever after. You don't have to have the villain brought to justice. You can have so many different things happen in such a mashup. Yes, I really do tend to like things that that move along and have more a certain tightness and a pacing to it. And I generally like stories that are shorter. There's very few books that I'll read that are really, really long. I think, are all these words are necessary. Joanna: I love that. That's hilarious. I get what you mean. I do like that in some things. But I think it was interesting. You said about the diversity of horror, because I find more and more that so much of horror is almost literary, it doesn't really suit series, because so many people die. With a standalone novel, people can really experiment a lot more than they might have done in a clearer genre series, for example. So I agree with the diversity; it just seems much broader than some of the other genres. Horror lies under so many genres, doesn't it? Jennifer: It does. And the other thing I love about horror is I find that it has a real acceptance of the absurd. I personally love that myself. An example would be What We Do In The Shadows, where some people just like, oh, that's ridiculous. I couldn't possibly be interested in that. I love that when you can take something and set it in a fantastical setting and you're like, Okay, I'm going on this journey, but actually what's happening is so intensely personal and real, and you're able to relate to, but it gives you like a little bit of a distance to do that. I love that you can do that in horror, and I don't see it obviously as much in other genres. Although sci fi and fantasy can do cool things which can be absurd too but it's one of the things that I noticed when I was reading all these different books and looking at all these different movies and things I'm like, oh, yeah, it's okay. It'll slip some of this in and the audience is going to go along with it. Joanna: Let's come to place because I love setting. Setting is a big thing for me as a writer, but also as a consumer. Obviously, I mentioned there, the deserted island and the village where things keep burning down and it gets smaller and smaller and smaller. Really interesting churches feature a lot in a horror. But also we wanted to talk about Stranger Things because I feel like Stranger Things is almost built on horror setting. What are some of the examples Stranger Things? Jennifer: I love Stranger Things. I was just going to backup to say that when we were talking about Midnight Mass, forced proximity is really what they've set up pretty obviously with that island. And I think horror is a genre that uses it almost exclusively. It's pretty much in every story. You'll find forced proximity in romance and mystery too, but it's a such a great way to prevent any kind of physical or mental escape for the characters. So definitely Midnight Mass was working with the island and burning the boats. And the end. That's fantastic. But yeah, Stranger Things. The setting is just fantastic with that too, because I felt like it's the details in Stranger Things which I think transport me there. I was thinking, it's almost like you can smell Joyce's cigarette smoke. And you can imagine what it's like to sit around the table and have the casseroles that they're serving, and everything's laden with cheese. It's just that level of detail was what really puts us in the setting. I think they did a fantastic job with that. And in a mash-up kind of way too, because they're showing us like the 70s/80s time, which is very familiar to me. I grew up in that time. And they're introducing that to like a whole other group of people who haven't experienced that before. But then those of us who did we get to relive it. So I thought it was really clever to do it that way instead of setting it now. The other thing with the setting was they made it feel like forced proximity in this small town even though technically you could have left, or you could go somewhere else. But the way they set it up, there was really no escape from being there. Joanna: Absolutely. And it's kind of interesting, the latest series has this classic haunted house. And there's the haunted house on in the real side. And then there's in the upside down and these evil tree roots, the almost alive, evil tree, I feel like they always took a checklist of horror tropes. And we're like, how can we put this in in a way that people who love this still love it? But without thinking, Oh, it's been done before? That's the thing with horror, isn't it? And also, they had the abandoned nucular bunker mentioned, forced proximity, no escape. Any of these things in one way could be considered a cliche. But for me, the reason Stranger Things work so well is because it's so familiar. How do we balance familiar tropes without becoming a cliché? Jennifer: It's a great question. I end up talking to authors about this quite a bit. I think the difference a cliché is something that hasn't been developed. The example that I think about with a cliche, you're going to write a story about a character who is an athlete, or the cliched version of that is the dumb jock. So the difference is, I can take an athlete, and I can make that into any kind of character in any kind of genre. But if I'm supposed to write a story about a dumb jock, it just mentally makes it harder for me because it's negative. It's really fixed. I'm like, okay, so what am I working with here? I feel like the problem with cliches is they're just not developed ideas, where we take a trope, and we're going to twist it and develop and add our own spin on it. And that's exactly what they did with the Stranger Things. That's why it's so good is because there's things that are familiar about it, yet they've added all their own details to it. And that's what keeps you coming back. Also, the idea of what's going to happen next, I don't feel like we give that enough credit. As storytellers that's really the most important thing. We can talk about craft until the sun goes down, which I'm fine to do. But really the most important thing is we want to hook our audience into knowing what's going to happen next. And if we can do that, then we're successful as storytellers. Joanna: Well, that's interesting. Because do we want them to know what's going to happen next? Are we using tropes to make them feel like they know what's going to happen next, and then twist it so that it's more original? Jennifer: What we want is we want them to want to know that. You're going to be thinking, Okay, I'm going to be done after this episode. A good show like Stranger Things, even though you're like, I'm turning this off at the end of this episode is going to give you two minutes of like, oh, well, I didn't see that coming. Now, I want to know what's going to happen next? The power of binging is that we don't have to wait until next week to get the new to new thing. But the trope, like I said, I feel like they lay the groundwork for what we know, the general language of what we're talking about. But then it hooks us into the specifics of that world. Joanna: I feel like character is a really good way to do this and in horror we can do this a lot because you expect body count, but often, the way things are written or the way things are filmed, you don't expect certain characters to disappear. So I was just thinking there, again, when it's difficult to talk about this without doing spoilers. At the end of season one of Game of Thrones there is a character who dies, who originally we thought was a significant character who might go all the way, but ends up dying. In the same way with Midnight Mass, I felt like again, there's a significant character who you think this is the hero, this is the character who's going to make it through. And then it's almost like the shift in expectation or keeping the interest is that a lot of the times these characters don't make it through. I feel like horror has a lot more freedom to kill off characters, whereas other genres almost don't have that freedom. Jennifer: I think that's true. And you were talking about that where you can do stand alones versus having to have a series. I think it's interesting because having the courage to kill off a character like they did with Midnight Mass, it was so interesting how it didn't change the focus from him to the young woman he had a relationship with and those others. There was all of a sudden these other characters who were more secondary rising to the surface, and that's a really interesting way to do that. And I too, didn't think that would happen and it made me wonder Okay, so now what's going to happen with I was thinking of the doctor, that she ended up playing a much more prominent role in it than you would have guessed from the outset. Or at least I would have guessed. Joanna: Yes. Jonathan Maberry, who's one of my favorite authors, he works in horror as well as other things. He says ‘horror is not about the monster, it's about the people who kill the monster.' And so to me, almost the mystery is, how are they going to resolve this? How are they going to kill the monster, when certain things happen that look like therefore it's all over. Let's talk about plot tropes. Because I guess that fits into Secrets and Changes in a way. Plot tropes. For example, in horror, when a baddie is killed, they are very likely going to come back one more time. That's a horror trope of a plot or do you think that's more of a character trope? Jennifer: Whatever it helps you visualize the story better. I think the thing with the with plot and tropes is we're trying to think of how to advance the story. I use tropes that way. I guess I'm thinking about kidnap, or revenge, or jealousy, or those kind of elements of plot, which it's a one word thing, but we can break it down into all these little micro scenes that help us get there in the end. And I just have to back up and say, I love that quote by Maberry, because to me, that was the biggest realization, reading all these horror and looking at all these horror movies was it's all about relationships. Yes, there's blood and gore. But it's really the relationship that it's about. The closer the relationship is to the protagonist, the more the agony, the greater our experience is an audience. And that was really fascinating for me to realize that to about relationships, because I just didn't get that going into it. Joanna: Maybe people who don't like horror have stopped listening. But I feel like it's a genre with so many different elements. Cosmic horror, for example. Whereas a lot of elements of sci fi, and huge world-changing horror, it's so different. And like we've both said, we don't read any slasher stuff. So there is blood and death, but it's not in a written in a way or, or visually in a way, where that's the focus. And it's actually funny with Midnight Mass I did have to look away a few times. But I keep wanting to go back to it. It's kind of addictive to have these these different layers. I did also wanted to return to Object because we were giving examples of everything. Give us some good horror objects. Jennifer: The MacGuffin is the classic object of the thing that you're looking for. And you can again, find that in any genre, it doesn't have to just be in horror. But that's kind of like the main one, but also, or a main one. But objects could be like a secret baby. So say that there's somebody who had had this relationship in the village or whatever, and you're looking for that it can be anything that helps move the story along in that way. Another good, I even think of Ugly Duckling is can be an abject trope, because of if it's a monster, and everybody's like looking for the monster. Joanna: I guess for me, it's think well, and that this is happening I write which is sort of a cursed book. So in A Thousand Fiendish Angels, there's a book of human skin, which releases this curse that destroys the world. And that book is an object and it's cursed and people transform. And so that is a classic. To me, a horror trope is a cursed grimoire or a cursed book or a cursed sword or cursed objects that wreak havoc in whatever world you're writing in. To me thisis a very horror trope. Jennifer: Exactly. There always seems to be a thing. In Midnight Mass when they pull in, we don't even know who it is, they pull in that giant trunk. I thought, Oh, that was great. And just the way they did it with like the thump, thump thump of how heavy it was. And I mean, there's nothing good in there. But you want to know what it is. I just thought that was a great way to do it without it being a smaller specific object and have it be literally you're opening it to find another thing. Joanna: I love the cursed object thing. I live in Bath and in the southwest of the UK, and there were Roman Baths here. So a 2000-year-old bath complex, it's still there, you can come visit. And they when they dug it all up the first time they found all these curse tablets. So these little scrolls of metal were in Latin. There were all these kind of curses on people who had wronged them or lovers or whatever. And it was so interesting. They were thrown into the sacred spring because the spring here is sacred to a pagan goddess. And then the Romans took it over. This idea of cursed objects is so human, because clearly it's in every culture. It's in different genres. But it is so interesting how some of the horror tropes particularly I feel, like demonic possession. Again, it's in every culture, the idea of something taking over someone. And some of it might be explained in modern times. There are things in horror that I feel are really ancient in terms of tropes that you can read in myth as well as in modern books. Jennifer: Absolutely. And it's not a horror. A movie that I kept going back to thinking about was the first Indiana Jones movie where they're looking for the Ark of the Covenant. It is a perfect example of what we're trying to do in a variety of stories. They're basically taking this ancient thing and still trying to capture the power of that. So it works in with the curses that you were mentioning, and I think it's just the idea of looking for monsters. And who is the monster? Joanna: Of course, another Indiana Jones film was the Temple of Doom, which is so funny you brought that up now. In my head, I remember it was one of the first movies my dad took me to, and I left the cinema when the priest reaches into the guy's chest and rips it out. I mean, that is totally a horror moment in an action-adventure movie, that I don't know how they let children watch. Jennifer: It was a different time for sure. I'm amazed at like some of this stuff. And I'll go back and watch a movie. Like really? This was PG. Joanna: It's crazy. It really is interesting, actually thinking about twisting horror tropes a bit. Teen Wolf was a movie with Michael J. Fox, back in the 80s. And this is a werewolf in a school. But it was a funny, as far as I remember. It was quite funny. We've been switching around these tropes for a long time and making some of them funny, like Shaun of the Dead. Have you seen Shaun of the Dead? Or is it just a British thing? Jennifer: I love it. And it's again, for me the example of the absurd. Yes. comedy horror. And there's that that is discrete again, where you're just like, oh, how could you possibly do another thing on it? And then they just that slight twist or mashup of kind of this poor slacker guy and Zombies. Joanna: Just epic. I'm sure everyone listening is like, why are they only talking about movies and TV? Well, it's mainly because when we were thinking about this, and more people have watched these shows and have read different books. I think we should mention at least Stephen King in the horror genre. I always like to bring up The Stand, which is so important to me as a book. But it's funny because I went to listen to the audiobook at the beginning of the pandemic. And if people haven't read The Stand, essentially a plague with flu symptoms wipes out 99% of the world. I couldn't listen to it. I couldn't read it because of obviously, the pandemic and with COVID. But it's interesting how some of these tropes go up and down, isn't it? They wax and they wane depending on the situation. I think pandemic books were popular for a bit and then they've kind of gone out of fashion now. Jennifer: I think we need more of an escape than that. But yes, I remember too and that when the pandemic was first starting there was actually reading an article, there was a huge spike in viewership of movies and things like that, that narrow thinking. Personally I wanted something is opposite of what was going on. But then is the pandemic and just kind of kept going and going, that dropped way down. And then it was hard for people who are trying to get books published that they've been working on a long time that are about a pandemic at a time when everybody's like, I don't want to hear any more about a pandemic. So it's interesting how there's that kind of waxing and waning of tropes and of things that people find interesting and what really we have appetites for. Joanna: That reminds me; I remember Anne Rice, who's obviously famous for Interview with a Vampire and a lot of vampire books, and she said, ‘Don't say that vampire books are dead.' She said something like she's made three lots of fortunes out of vampire books because they keep coming round even when people say are no one's buying vampire books anymore. They actually are and they will come into fashion again. I think when Twilight hit and Rice once again made more money because people were back into vampires. And so as these things happen, so if you're someone who likes to write a certain thing in your books, like I like cursed books and they feature in quite a lot of my stories. That's fine. You're allowed to do that. And in fact, I wonder if religious horror is kind of coming back because of things like Midnight Mass, which is quite interesting to me. So yeah, things circle back, don't they? Especially these tropes, which echo so much, as we said, into mythology into religious history, they keep coming back because they're such a basic part of humanity. Jennifer: Absolutely. The other interesting thing I was thinking about vampires is we had Twilight. And we have all the rights. And then again, it was like, oh, what could never be done with vampires. Then Charlene Harris hits the scene with Sookie Stackhouse. It's like, oh, you can have vampire detective novels in that way or vampire thrillers. And that was a whole resurgence of vampires in a different way than we thought. The idea of vampire Bill, the average nerdy guy who happens to be this awfully sexy vampire. She did a great job of again, taking a trope and twisting, and I still will reread her books and just be like, Ah, so good. She's got so much in there. It's done in such a way that you feel like you're enveloped in that world, as opposed to like, Oh, here's a trope. Here's a trope. Here's a trope, here's a trope. So I think she did a great job of using it organically to build the stories. That's really what we want to do. And if anybody hasn't, you can watch the series, but her books are also really good. You get into more of the character's mindset. So I was just going to put a plug in for everybody to check those out seeing it's Halloween. Joanna: I did want to ask before we're out of time, how can we use tropes in our marketing, to tap into an underlying desire in our readers? So maybe in covers and descriptions or social media images? How can we use tropes in book marketing? Jennifer: It's really interesting calling out the trope in your blurb can be hugely helpful with being seen because of the whole keyword issue. So I would say don't bury it unless it's like a crucial part of your story that you have to read the whole book to find out at the end a character is a certain thing. Be very straightforward. You're calling those out in your blurbs in your marketing, because audiences know what they love. So if you got a vampire book, don't hide that it's a vampire book in your marketing, because you're going to find people who want that. And if people aren't into vampires, they're not going to pick up your book anyway. We don't need to be ashamed or hiding that we're using tropes, because as long as they're well developed, audiences are going to love it, but it just helps them to find us. So I think that's really important. Joanna: So you mean include the words but also the images and the tone almost in, for example, horror books are not usually white, they don't normally have a light pastel colored look about them. Horror books normally have a darkness about them in some way. Jennifer: Exactly. It's also important that you follow what's going on in your genre. So you want to stick with what you think you would think like, oh, I should be new and creative. So people will will see this. But the reality is, we like what we know and what's familiar. So you really want your book cover to work with the other covers in that genre. Because it signals to the reader visually when they're scrolling through a million things online, and there's so many things competing for your interest. This is in the same category or grouped or looks similar to that. So we're kind of working with an audience bias, I think, by using tropes that way. I think people shouldn't be afraid to use them. Because you've put the work in for the story, you might as well call it out visually and in your blurbs. And any way you can with the keywords to let readers know that the things that they like are in there. Joanna: Obviously, we can't do this as authors but Netflix, and to some extent, Amazon Prime is starting to do it, Amazon TV, but Netflix, especially I can see it when I log in versus when my husband logs in. But it can be the same series. They're using different images for when I'm logged in to when he's logged in, which I find in one way it's slightly disturbing. And in another way, it's genius. For example, Jonathan likes military stuff, and his feed will be full of military stuff. I'm not so into that. But we could be watching something that's like The Old Guard, which is a great movie on Netflix with Charlize Theron, the main female character, it's really her movie, but he gets a more of a group of guys looking action-adventury, not saying that's a horror. That it's more of a thriller-type me movie. It's so interesting to me how different images call to different people, even though it can be the same book. So part of me wants that for the future of books like in some way we can tweak things. But maybe that's Facebook ads, you can do different things for different groups. We can't really do that with book covers, can we? Jennifer: It's possible to recover. There's a lot of authors that will recover their books on a semi-regular basis, to get more eyes on things. I especially have seen that with romance. But also you noticed with cozies; I've seen cosy authors do that too. I think that's fine. It's a great use of technology that we're able to do that where it's not like the old days where you got a cover and you're married to that cover for like 10 or 20 years. So it is interesting/disturbing the information that they have about us and they're able to tweak things in order to get our interests. So we're seeing that as authors, we know how important it is to get eyes on our material. Joanna: For sure. Well, The Horror Trope Thesaurus is fantastic. The Original Trope Thesaurus is great. What are you writing next? Where are you going with that series? Jennifer: Right now I'm finishing edits on The Romance Trope Thesaurus, which is a really deep dive into the genre of romance and then 10 sub-genres. So I'm wrapping that up. And then the thing that I'm really excited to be working on new is basically a book that talks about tropes and conventions, and themes and how we put these all together to create scenes. We talked a little bit about, for example, enemies to lovers or in horror, I think of it as like, the opposite way, lovers to enemies, where it turns out that that person is actually like the monster and working against you. But to get from to get through that change trope you need to have a whole bunch of scenes in there to do that. So I'm playing around with how we use tropes to get those scenes and what are necessary to develop them more in a plot. Joanna: Brilliant. Where can people find you and all your books and everything you do online? Jennifer: jenniferhilt.com So just check me out and all my books are available wide. Pretty easy to find and feel free to drop me an email and talk about tropes. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Jen. That was great. Jennifer: Thanks for having me and happy Halloween.The post Using Tropes To Strengthen Your Fiction With Jennifer Hilt first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What do you need in the beginning of your novel so your reader buys your book? Shane Millar shares tips for writing brilliant beginnings, regardless of your genre. In the intro, trends in what publishers want at Frankfurt Book Fair [Publishing Perspectives] Adobe incorporating AI-generation alongside a Content Authenticity Initiative [Adobe blog]; Bertelsmann-owned venture capital firm BDMI invests in NFT book company, Book.io [Yahoo Finance]; NFTs for books overview [The Future of Publishing]; NFTs and copyright with Kathryn Goldman; NFTs for authors; Plus, Writing Career Toolkit Storybundle (limited time); A pilgrim in the path of history [Books and Travel]; Sign up to be notified of my Pilgrimage book; and Your Author Business Plan workshop live sessions. Today's show is sponsored by IngramSpark, which I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 40,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries, and more. It's your content—do more with it through IngramSpark.com. Use promo code PENN at checkout for 1 free book upload, print, ebook, or both, if uploaded at the same time—until December 31, 2022. Shane Millar is the author of urban fantasy thrillers and craft guides for writers, as well as a story coach and editor. 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 Shane started his indie career with rapid release in 2022 across multiple genresWhy the beginning of a novel it matters so muchExamples of different types of beginnings for different types of novelsThe importance of reading for pleasureHow to signal genre to readers so they know the book is for themHow much of a character should be revealed early in a book?Different writing processes for fiction and non-fictionHow the basics of marketing don’t change and what is working for Shane since he started earlier in 2022, 15 years after Joanna. You can find Shane Millar at swmillar.com Shareable image generated by Joanna Penn with DALL-E 2. Transcript of Interview with Shane Millar Joanna: Shane Millar is the author of urban fantasy thrillers and craft guides for writers, as well as a story coach and editor. Today we're talking about How To Write Brilliant Beginnings: Crafting Your Novel's Opening Chapters Made Easy. Welcome, Shane. Shane: Thanks for having me on the show, Joanna. Joanna: It's good to have you here. Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and the indie author world. Shane: So way back in 2010, I read the first novel in Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden series. And in my youthful naivety, I kind of thought I can do that, that'll be fine. So I wrote the most terrible vampire urban fantasy novel you will ever read. I did what 99.9% of writers do, I stuck it in a drawer, I let it gather dust while I fell into a “sensible” corporate job. I found that manuscript in late 2018, skimmed it through and promptly realized just how awful it was. And as sobering as that experience was, it made me want to write again, but do it a lot better this time. With that in mind, I did what any self-respecting nerd would do: I studied a lot. After a ton of trial and error, I published the first four novels in my myth and magic urban fantasy series this year, as well as the first five guides for writers in my Write Better Fiction series, I also qualified as a Fictionary Certified story coach too and that's pretty much me. That's how I got into it. Joanna: So a few questions out of that, then before we get into writing beginnings. What is your sensible corporate job? Shane: In my day job, I work for an insurance company. So it is very sensible, very corporate and very dull. It is not creative at all. And it's one of those kind of soul-destroying cubicle slavery type jobs, that I'm hopefully using writing as a way to transition out of. Joanna: But it absolutely pays the bills. Looking back on my own corporate job as well, which I did for five years, while building up my writing business, there are people who email me and they say they are a freelance writer, writing for hire, and they have nothing left for their creative work. Whereas with insurance and what I was doing with IT, I had a creative side that I wasn't using at work. I want to encourage people listening, if you have a similar corporate job, it does actually leave you some creative space for writing. Shane: Yes it does and writing is definitely the one good thing I would say. If anyone out there is struggling with their day job, whatever that might be, is that you do have that creative outlet in writing. It does provide somewhat of an escape from the day job, even though you're still there. So just keep going. And you will make a success of this and get out if you want to. Joanna: Then you said you launched the first four in your myth and magic series, and five guides for writers, right? Are you following the rapid-release model? And how's that gone? Shane: I did this year. My word for this year was ‘production'. And I managed my schedule to allow me to do that. I will say it's very tiring, especially when you have a full-time job. And it's not something that I will sustain going forward. I think there are a lot of loud voices in the indie space that extolled the virtues of rapid release. And I think it's great for building an audience quickly and finding readers fast and all of those things. The question of whether it's sustainable or not, is another one. For me, personally, I don't think it is. I think it can lead to burnout if you push too hard, and we all know how dangerous that is. Joanna: I'm clearly not one of those loud voices about it! Shane: You're definitely not. Joanna: Obviously, having read your Brilliant Beginnings I can see the work you've put into trying to figure out aspects of the craft. And I can see how much work you've done on that. And obviously, being in insurance you like you said, being a geek, I'm also similar, we like to research but let's get into that book. How are you defining beginning? Because there might be people listening who write short stories, novels trilogies. What is a ‘beginning' to you? Shane: Specifically, I was thinking of novels when I wrote this book, because that's what I have experience in. I define the first 10% of the novel as the beginning. Particularly in the digital reading age, because I think, well, you and I both know, the way that people buy books, or at least search for books has changed. You can go onto pretty much any one of the online stores now and download the first 10% of a book as a free sample. And readers can download as many samples as they like, so there's no barrier to entry, really. Then readers don't want to waste their time on stories that don't engage them fast. You've said many times on the podcast that you give, I think you give a book three or four clicks on your Kindle before you decide whether or not to read on. Joanna: That's why I wanted to ask about what you consider a beginning, because you said 10%. In a 70,000-word novel, that's 7000 words. There is no way as a digital fiction reader — and I only read fiction digitally in ebook format — there is no way I give a book 7000 words. That's quite a lot. I give it as you say, three or four clicks, which is probably less than 1000 words, which is why it's so important. Shane: I defined the beginning as 10%. As much as that's the entire sample, obviously, the very beginning of your novel is that first few pages, and it is vital. Because of readers such as yourself, and I do it too. I probably get about four or five clicks before I decide whether to purchase, getting those initial opening pages. Really packing a punch with those is vital, because if that first sentence even doesn't grab your reader, then they may not even read on. So I think that's why I wanted to tackle this book first. One of the things I realized when I read that awful novel that I wrote back in 2010, was that the beginning was non-existent. It started far too early. There was a lot of ‘I got up, I brushed my teeth,' all that stuff that we do when we're beginning writers, because readers aren't hanging around. Now, if your book's opening falls flat, they'll just move on to the next one, because they've got so many to choose from. I think that's how I defined beginning for the book, and how I defined beginning for the reader in terms of that first few pages. Joanna: And we should say it's not just the sampling on an ebook reader. If you read in a bookstore, you pick up a book, you read the back, then you might open it and read a few pages from the beginning or on an audio book, you might listen to the sample, which is usually from the beginning. So it's true, whatever the format, right? Shane: Yes, absolutely. And even if readers search for paperback, and they're not in a physical bookshop, they can still view the sample of the paperback online. It's the same difference, really. Who hasn't gone into a bookshop wandered round, picked up a few books looked at the first few pages? So it is vital, whatever medium you're focusing on, certainly. Joanna: Absolutely. So you mentioned that obviously, engaging readers quickly. So give us some tips and not just for genre stories. What about more literary stories? Some people say start with a bang, and I have definitely started books with an explosion. But I write action adventure. Give us some thoughts on different types of beginnings that engage different types of readers. Shane: I do have some thoughts on this. I've got three quick tips that you can use to hook readers quickly. And this will work whether you're writing literary or genre fiction. The first thing is something that I call the invisible question, which is where you can craft your novel's opening line into a statement that essentially makes the reader ask themselves a question that they can only answer by reading on. Now, you mentioned literary fiction, and The Kite Runner is a great example of this. That novel opens with the line, “I became what I am today at the age of 12.” Now, immediately, as a reader, I would be asking, Well, what are you today? And what happened when you were 12? They can only get that answer by reading on. You mentioned thrillers, obviously, in genre fiction, the Da Vinci Code again, fantastic example of an invisible question opening line with a museum curator staggering through a vaulted archway, and the reader wants to know why he staggering. Is he drunk? Is he injured? Is it something else? By creating that question in the reader's mind, it sets up a cognitive dissonance that makes them want to read on. So that's a really quick tip you can use for your opening line. My second tip is to introduce a relatable point of view character on the first page. And when I say relatable, I don't necessarily mean nice or likeable. There are plenty of characters like Katniss Everdeen, in The Hunger Games, for example, who is not particularly likable. What I do mean is flawed. Readers identify with flawed characters, because we're all flawed. And on a subconscious level, readers know that if your novel opens with a flawed character, they're going on an internal journey with them to fix that flaw because they've been consuming story for so long. They're used to that type of journey. My final tip is to open with some kind of tension or conflict. And this does still apply to literary fiction novels, too. So if you're writing something literary or a low action genre, like romance, for example, you could open with some kind of argument or disagreement. If you're writing so called high action genres, like thrillers or fantasy you could open with rather aptly your protagonist trying to defuse an unexploded bomb. You mentioned opening with an explosion earlier, so that would be the kind of thing you can use. So, my three tips are: the invisible question, opening with a relatable, not necessarily likable character; and opening with some kind of conflicts to hook the reader in. Joanna: Those are some good tips. But you can't do everything, right? Shane: No, of course not. That's impossible. You can't do everything, you have to be selective. So think of a few ways that you can hook your reader in. But they wouldn't be my sort of go to ways that would work, regardless of what genre. Joanna: Yes, I think those are good. And it's also about tapping into the kind of reader you're after, but also the kind of writer you are. So for example, sense of place is very important to me. You mentioned the Da Vinci Code, and that curator is staggering through the Louvre. And whatever Dan Brown's faults, he has some pretty epic settings and setting is so important. I did want to give an example. I just read a book called The Paper Palace. It's all over the charts at the moment in the US and it is, I guess you'd say, a literary/romance. But the opening is just a description of a table. Like it's a really deep setting description. I don't normally read this type of book. And yet when I sampled it, I was like, This is amazing. And it kept me reading and it was a very deep setting description of a cabin. So I think for me, as a reader, I'm hooked in by sense of place. So what about you, as a reader? What do you as a reader think about in terms of what hooks you? Shane: It's hard now, because I've done so much work into the writing craft, I think it ruins how I read. But I think for me, the main thing that would hook me and I very much read in the urban fantasy, thriller genre myself. So for me, it would be getting into the story quickly or in media res, if you want to be fancy-pants. Start in the middle of a scene, make sure that something happens relatively quickly. And also, I think, for me, story is character. So as long as there's an engaging character on the page, I will read whatever genre although I have my go to ones, I will read whatever genre as long as the character is engrossing, and I can identify them with them in some way, or at least relate to them in some way. Joanna: I'm going to pick up on something you said that you said. “It ruins how I read.” I want to challenge you on that and anyone else listening because it is a danger. I think from seeing your picture, you're at least a decade younger than me. In actual years, and probably in writing years. And I feel like this, this is very, very important. People listening as well, we have to be able to switch off that brain. If we lose the love of reading, then why bother? Seriously, this is so important. I would really encourage you to try and come at the page with a different mindset. And like I said, picking up this Paper Palace was really interesting, because I will never write a book like that. So it was very interesting to read it. I read a lot of thrillers, but it is more difficult for me to disengage, so I do find reading outside my primary genre really helps. Short stories are great. Anything to get back to that joy of reading, I think is so important. Are there ways you think you could let all this go and read for pleasure? Again, go back to Jim Butcher? Shane: I think so. It seems to only affect the way I read when I'm writing nonfiction because I think I'm looking at for examples all the time because I write that craft that I can use, and I'm kind of deconstructing the book as I go. If I'm writing fiction, I tend to find I can sink back into novels much more more easily. But it is definitely a mindset thing, for sure. Joanna: Again, another thought on being a few books ahead of you is that you will run out of things you want to write about. So I would say that perhaps once you've written the craft books that you feel called to write, you'll be like, Okay, I'm done. I'm now going to get into doing other things. I totally relate to the type of person you are in terms of researching and wanting the sorts of input and output. It's very similar to how I work as well. But I feel there does come a point when you're like, Okay, I've done my book on that. You don't need to write another book on openings, right? So you can relax into it. Coming back to your book, let's talk about signaling genre. So for example, so you talked about questions, you talked about character and conflict, but that's not necessarily signaling genre. Fantasy is kind of obvious, because put some magic in it. What are some of the other ways we can clearly signal genre so readers understand the promise of the book? Shane: I think one of the best ways to signal genre clearly, especially at the beginning of the novel, is to focus on the tone that you're trying to create. You'll find if you read lots of different genres the tone is always different. And most genres have a tone that they evoke. Specifically for that type of genre reader. This applies to literary fiction as well. I think it comes down to four main things. And that is the point of view and tense that the novel is written in. For example, most YA dystopian novels are usually written in first person present tense, whereas epic fantasy novels, again, usually written in first person, past tense. So that's one difference. You could see when you read a genre that would signal to you maybe what you're reading on a higher level. Character voice is another. If you look at the genre I write in, urban fantasy, the tone is snarky, it's playful. Whereas if you looked at a cozy mystery set in the 1950s, then that tone definitely wouldn't work for that type of book. Something like whether time of day or season that you start your novel in. It's no coincidence that thrillers tend to start on cold rainy nights and feel good beach reads start on cloudless sunny days. Chapter length is another thing to look at. So again, thrillers. An author, like James Patterson, he has very short, very punchy chapters. And in general thriller chapters, or at least the scenes that the chapters are made up of are shorter. And then again, with epic fantasy, they run a lot longer. And then one of the main things I think we can use, apart from, as you said, sticking magic in a fantasy novel to signal what genre the reader is in for is character archetype. A romance novel will open with a single bachelor or bachelorette protagonist looking for love. And something like the reluctant hero is really common in fantasy. Somebody who needs to go on a quest, but doesn't actually want to go on the quest. I think those are the main things we should look at when trying to signal genre. In terms of tone. Joanna: I would definitely suggest reading the award-winning books in your genre. So for example, I read off the Bram Stoker list for horror. And I write horror, I use aspects of horror, and I also read off the International Thriller Writers award lists. If it's literary, you could do the Booker Prize, or whatever it is. Essentially, what I find is that the prize winners are a great example of that genre. Often they're standalone books as well. They're not necessarily series. It's hard to win a prize with a book in a series. But I find that I learn a lot from that. So for example, Ararat by Christopher Golden: when I read that I was like, This is it. This is an archetypal horror novel that has everything I want, and everything that wins a prize. It did, it won the Bram Stoker. Looking at examples, the very, very clear examples of genre I think, can definitely help. I did want to bring up prologues because I actually think in your book, you don't like prologues, right? Shane: It's a tricky one. My opinion has changed since I wrote the book. So I'm happy to go into it. Joanna: I like prologues and I often shop for books with a prologue. Shane: I'm not someone who's going to say you should never ever do a prologue. When I wrote this book, I was writing for newer writers. And obviously, the easiest thing to do in terms of engaging the reader is to just start with your protagonist, usually in the present moment to really bond your reader and your character together. Since I wrote that book, I've read some really fantastic prologues that have made me shift my perspective a bit. So an example of a fantastic prologue comes from Helen Schuerer's Curse of the Cyren Queen series. At the start of each book, the main character features as a child in the prologue, so it set about 10 years before the main action of the novel, I think, and they act as a sort of subplot to the main plot. There are clues and red herrings weaved into the prologue that make their way into the main plot. So you can do something like that. And I think you should consider what type of genre you're writing in as well, and whether prologues are common. In thrillers for example, it's common practice to have a prologue that hints at the object or MacGuffin that the main character is going to chase or it could be a scene from the antagonist's point of view, to show what they're doing at the start of the novel, their evil plan that they're going to hatch. I think readers expect that in certain genres so there's much less risk of throwing them out of the story when you use the prologue. Whereas there are genres like romance that usually open in the present with the one of the love interests, usually the lead protagonist again. I think because I was so conscious that I didn't want to over complicate matters as I was writing this but for newer writers, is that prologues are really difficult to write well, and particularly when I'm editing work for newer writers. They often use them as an excuse to info dump or well build through sheer exposition. It doesn't actually add anything to the story, which I think is a surefire way to turn readers off. So if you held a gun to my head, I'd probably say it's best way you can to jump in and feature the protagonist right away because it's less risky in terms of throwing the reader out. I remember reading, I think it was A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark. They have a scene as a prologue, which was a great scene. And it connected you to a character who then got murdered at the end of the prologue, which then threw me out of the story completely, because I couldn't connect to the protagonist in the next chapter. So if you don't introduce your protagonist fast enough, readers may not identify them, which could lead to them putting your book down. So I'd say again, a bit like you said earlier about looking at examples in your genre. If you know that your genre utilizes prologues a lot, or you just want to try one, get some best selling books or books you like, have a look at the prologues and see if you think they were. So I have shifted my stance ever so slightly. Joanna: My Tomb of Relics, it opens in the tomb of relics, and it's 1000 years ago, and then what they find in the tomb, then we move into the present day, and we see the result of what they found. So it's difficult, because I also think so I'm really happy with that, within my ARKANE series, I often do have them, because the writers who I emulate in some way, writers like James Rollins, Steve Berry, that's something that they do. I have thought many times about rewriting my book Desecration because I do have what is essentially a prologue in the voice of the villain, the antagonist, and then it goes into a crime thriller. The second book and the third book don't have that. I think that it may put some people off. The people who do read those books, they get my highest ratings, but not enough people read those books. So I feel it's interesting, thinking about what a genre reader prefers. And when we get it right, and when we get it wrong, and being honest about that, but a lot of these things you can only look back at when you have written and read a lot of books. So if you're listening, and you're like, ‘I love prologues,' then go ahead. And if you don't, then don't worry about it. Let's come back on character. There's a difficulty with revealing too much about the character, and wanting to use a relatable character, but then also retaining enough mystery. Tell us more about that. Shane: I think you're right, knowing what to reveal about characters, when a novel opens is really tough, because we know so much about them. We've done all the character questionnaires and filled out their traits and stuff, and we want to share that with the reader. But we also have a tendency to overshare, which was the readers and like you said, it doesn't leave any element of mystery. So I think the best way to reveal enough about characters, and particularly our protagonist, at least in the beginning of the book, is to introduce their flaws in a really clear way early on. You don't really have to introduce much more than that, I would say, about your character at that stage. Our main aim is to obviously get readers to connect with characters quickly. As I've said before, revealing the flaw works so well, because readers are all flawed, and it helps them to relate. Again, you also asked about leaving questions open for a later reveal. By opening with a character's flaw, you're subconsciously alerting the reader that they'll go on a journey of change with the character. And the mystery surrounding that, or the question this will raise in the readers mind, is what obstacles is the character going to face that forced them to change? And how exactly will they change? This is going to sound odd considering I also have a book on plotting, in my Write Better Fiction series, that readers come into story, I really believe for character transformation to a greater or lesser extent, and not drama, of course, and not plot. So revealing that character flaw really early on, I think is the best way to reveal enough without revealing too much about it. Joanna: I'm a thriller reader. We love plot! I think what's interesting about the traditional story structure is that it genuinely starts with this protagonist's current world set up. And if you've read the screenwriting books, there's a certain percentage of the book where it's like this is the protagonist's current world, then the inciting incident comes along and disrupts that world and we get into it. So even if you want to start with the action, you still need some elements of the protagonist's current world. I wonder, given how short our attention spans are, are we shrinking this aspect of portraying the character's current world? Shane: I think the tried and tested three act structure still works in as much as the inciting incident and can occur somewhere between the 10 and 15% mark, because it's so ingrained in the subconscious thanks to Hollywood blockbuster movies. But you're right, reader's attention spans are shorter. Because don't forget, we're not just competing for reader's attention with other books now, or even movies. It's Netflix, it's gaming, it's pretty much any other form of entertainment you can think of, and it's so easily accessible. So obviously, a book is much longer than your readers favorite Netflix show, or at least an episode or your readers favorite Netflix show. There is an argument to be made for staging an early inciting incident. Readers do want something to happen fast, because they're so used now to things happening fast on their TV screens. And again, I think it is genre-dependent. Epic fantasy readers still enjoy discovering the world. And you've probably got longer to engage them than you would a thriller reader say you want some kind of disruption to the norm within the first few scenes. So depending on the genre you're writing, and if you are writing in a really high action genre, I'd say there is an argument to be made. Some authors even kick off with the inciting incident and leave the world building until a bit later, or at least setting the stage for the normal world a bit later. So yeah, genre dependent, I would say on that one, which probably isn't very helpful. Yes, it is a tricky one, because there's so much competing for reader's attention these days. Joanna: Absolutely. I think it's curiosity; you have to arouse the reader's curiosity. Again, I'm just going to keep coming back to The Paper Palace because it is not a thriller. It's a love story. And it's literary. And within the first 1% is a line which I won't read because it has a rude word in it! But it is a line that made me read on. I started reading for this beautiful description of a setting. And then I read on because this one line made me go Oh, right, what is going on? And so it's almost the hook for the reader has to be curiosity to know more, regardless of genre, regardless of what whatever that may be. It might be character, it might be mystery, it might be MacGuffin, it might be love, whatever it is. But that hook is has to be curiosity. And that to me, is what you have to do within the first couple of clicks. Otherwise, you've lost them. Shane: I completely agree. And that's why I rely on the invisible question so heavily. You do need something to pique readers curiosity, because without that, they are just going to put your book down, unfortunately, and go and binge Netflix, because it's easier than trying to get into your book if that curiosity has not been aroused. Joanna: Absolutely. Coming around to your process: you write fiction and nonfiction. What are the differences in your writing practices for fiction and non-fiction? Shane: Really, really different. I found I wasn't expecting there to be such a difference, but there definitely is. In terms of my writing process, I'm usually a hardcore plotter when it comes to fiction. I plot out my characters, my locations, my beats, and my scenes well ahead of time. And the process of getting words is slower, relatively speaking, in terms because I have to do all that plotting beforehand. And you mentioned research; I'm so prone to falling down research rabbit holes, especially anything to do with mythology, which is basically what my novels are based around, so I have to keep a really close eye on that. Otherwise, I'll never start the book. When it comes to nonfiction, I'm much less of a plotter, which is where they tend to have a pretty clear idea of what the problem is that I'm trying to solve and the steps I need to include. So it's all in my head, when I start writing. I discovery write my nonfiction essentially, and then order it later, or go back and reverse engineer some kind of outline. And I'm far more focused, which is odd. When it comes to research for nonfiction, I've identified the exact books I need to use and the resources I want to pull quotes from. I'm fairly good at staying on track, which makes the process of writing nonfiction for me much faster, as well. Joanna: Obviously, it's the first time we've talked to just see so much of my own process. Have you done the Clifton Strengths thing? Shane: Of course. I know Sacha Black so she bullied me into it. Joanna: Yes, she bullied me too, in a good way! Sacha, if you're listening, and I'm very grateful. I learned a lot. What were your top five Strengths? Shane: My top five are futuristic. I have deliberative at number two. I have learner at number three, communication at number four and competition. Joanna: Oh, okay. So I was going to say you must have Learner in there. Shane: Learner is six. Joanna: Exactly. If you do your Clifton Strengths and you have Learner and Input, you do need to watch out for how much research you do. My pilgrimage book that I'm writing at the moment, which is nonfiction/memoir, I've got notes on around 35 books around pilgrimage and walking. I'm reading all my notes going I cannot possibly include all this stuff. Shane: Oh, yeah, that happens so much. I'm chronically over-writing with my nonfiction, and I really have to pare it back to get a decent simple message across. There's no way to include it all. Joanna: No, exactly. As we record this, I just finished a survey. And one of the thing that people did say is that they do want to hear from people who've started at different times. I started self-publishing way, way back now in 2007, 2008. And you said you put those books out this year, right? You started self-publishing in 2022. So as someone who started self-publishing and book marketing this year in 2022, what are you doing? What have you learned in that process? And what's working for you? Shane: In terms of marketing, again, it couldn't be more different between the fiction/nonfiction split. As much as it really pains me to say it, one of the only ways I found to get real traction with fiction is paid advertising, whether that be paid newsletter, promos, like Bargain Booksy, or Freebooksy, that kind of stuff, or things like AMS ads, Facebook ads. I made a very conscious decision, because I published fiction first, to launch my urban fantasy series into KDP Select, because urban fantasy, at least in the indie space is quite heavily dominated by KU authors. That's what readers are used to. So it made sense. I'm not saying I'll stay exclusive to KU forever. But at least to build a reader base that seemed like the smart thing to do. In terms of nonfiction, it's 10 times easier to market. A lot of the principles that you teach Joanna, in your books around content marketing, they very much still apply, in my opinion for for nonfiction. You can choose stronger keyword phrases in terms of SEO and discoverability. And that goes for titles, subtitles, the seven keywords Amazon allows and the keywords that you use for manual targeting, and any paid ads you do decide to run. And like I said, content marketing for nonfiction is much easier. So it's interviews, for example, it's much easier for me to gain traction from a podcast like this, or any podcast interviews that I do, generally speaking, than it is for a fiction author trying to do the same thing. I'm not saying it's impossible, but they're key crucial differences. I've found that it's much easier to craft a marketing message that you can use for evergreen content marketing, than it is for fiction, in my limited experience. Joanna: To be honest, I feel like the nonfiction side probably hasn't changed in well, since the beginning of the internet. I mean, literally, if you have the right keywords. And just as a comment on you pitching me, you did a great pitch because one, your book title, How to Write Brilliant Beginnings, as a podcaster it's like, well, here you go. Here is a title for the podcast episode. And it's much easier for me as the podcaster to get a book that encapsulates a specific topic, it makes it easy for me to prepare, it makes it useful for the audience who know they want an episode on that topic. It's easier to sell, whereas fiction obviously is much more difficult. [Here are more tips on how to be a great podcast guest.] Let's talk about email. Are you building one email list or two? Shane: I use ConvertKit. And I segment the list between fiction readers and nonfiction readers. And I keep them fairly separate, because they're very, very different messages. But I do find again, with I think the email list is if I was going to say what is the most important marketing tactic you can use in 2022, the email list is definitely one of them. I know people always say, ‘oh, email's dead, the age of email is done. Just go on TikTok or whatever.' But I don't agree. I think email marketing at the end of the day, you've got access to your customers then in a way that you won't have on TikTok or Facebook or Instagram or any of those things. And provided that you can craft engaging emails to either your fiction or nonfiction readers, I think you're much, much more likely to convert them to superfans, as David Gaughran would say, because you have that space in their inbox that you know you're not going to have on their Facebook feed. You can do a lot of things with your mailing lists. You can find out what their likes and dislikes are. You can hold polls, you can ask them questions, it's something that you wouldn't have access to otherwise. I definitely think if you're starting now, to start your mailing list at least three months before you need to. I wish I'd started mine slightly earlier than I did. Joanna: Now I love to hear this because email marketing has been a staple for again, like 25 years, and that hasn't changed. I get so many emails as people say, ‘Oh, everything's changed in marketing,' but actually it has not in terms of the principle of owning your online real estate. You said there don't build it entirely on Facebook or TikTok or whatever. I would also say, Don't build your entire business on KU. Now I know why you've done that with your initial book. But the same thing can happen. The algorithms change, you lose access, as many authors have, something switches. And if you build an audience on email as well, you can always reach people if you have to shift your business model, which many of us have done over the over the years. So I want everyone to reflect that what you've said is actually nothing different. Shane: No, it won't change. I think the basics of marketing will never change. In regards to the KU thing, actually, you raised an interesting point, I, again, I consciously didn't go KU for my nonfiction, because it didn't make sense for that business model. So it doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing thing. I think a lot of writers, and you think, Oh, I have to be all exclusive, or all wide. But that's not necessarily the case. You can make decisions based on different series or different projects if you make standalone books, too. Joanna: Absolutely. And in fact, I'm experimenting, as we record this, it might be different when anyone's listening. But Desecration, for example, is in KU. Right now, that crime trilogy is in KU, because I'm experimenting with it. But that's been wide for like almost a decade, I guess, which is crazy. And you can do these experiments over time. You can use email marketing, to direct people to wherever your books are, including like my Shopify store. So I love that you're doing that. Before we run out of time, what is your plan? In terms of your career, you must have quite an aggressive business plan to have put out, what nine books this year and really going for it as well as working. What do you hope to achieve, let's say in the next three years, or when do you want to leave your job? Shane: In the next three years, I hope to be doing this full-time. And that's why I am being so aggressive with my business plan. I get a lot of people on Instagram, asking me why I'm being so aggressive. If you don't want to do this full-time, that's absolutely fine. But that is one of the things that is a definition of success for me because I am unhappy in my day job. In order to get out of that, and I do, have we've touched on strengths, I do have number five Competition, and the person that I compete most with is myself. So I want to achieve my goals as quickly as possible. For me, that's getting out of the day job. In terms of the plan going forward, it will be to upscale the nonfiction in terms of providing higher priced items like online courses, etc. I will be scaling the editing side of my business to support that income because although it's active income, it's nice easy income that I can use to leverage a bit more money and pay it back into the business. And then with my fiction, I think the rapid release for fiction isn't for me. So it will be a much slower release pattern and building an audience over time rather than trying to ram my fiction down people's throats straight away. Joanna: Interesting. Okay, so in 2025, pitch me again. If I'm still podcasting, which you never know, I'm still going. Shane: I hope so because it's a great show. Joanna: Thank you. I think what's nice, talking to someone like you, I can see aspects of the way I work and the way I've built my business. And what will be interesting to see if your trajectory is similar to mine, even though I started 15 years ago, because as we said things, some things change, but a lot doesn't change. [Click here for my author timeline.] Shane: No, that's quite right. And again, it comes down to loud voices. So a lot of people say, Oh, this has changed, that's changed. But when you strip it back, it's really the same basic principles. You just have to tweak your tactics a bit to account for maybe a shift in how much advertising costs or whatever, but the basic principles I think, will always be the same. Joanna: Absolutely. Right. Where can people find you and your books and everything you do online? Shane: You can find everything about me and my books at swmillar.com. If you want to find me on social media, I am on Instagram and Tiktok at SW Miller Author. And if you want to listen to my brand new podcast with my amazing co host, you can head over to storytellersfaceoff.com Joanna: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Shane, that was great. Shane: Thank you for having me. I had a lot of fun.The post Writing Beginnings with Shane Millar first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How does curiosity fuel creativity? How can we balance consumption and creation in an ever-busier digital life? How can you break out of the myth of the ‘starving artist'? Maria Brito talks about How Creativity Rules the World. In the intro, insights into Colleen Hoover's popularity [NY Times]; Amazon bugs [Kindlepreneur]; Ingram invests in Book.io for NFT ebooks and audio [PR News Wire]; The Matter of Everything by Dr Suzie Sheehy; Solid with Tim Berners-Lee [Inrupt]; Microsoft including DALL-E 2 into Designer products [TechCrunch]; Microsoft partnering with Meta for enterprise [Oculus]. 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.  Maria Brito is an award-winning New York-based contemporary art advisor, entrepreneur, author, and curator. Her latest book is How Creativity Rules the World: The Art and Business of Turning Your Ideas into Gold. 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 Finding the courage to start a creative business when you have a steady, well-paid jobHow curiosity drives creativity, and how to tap into itBalancing consumption and creationWhy creativity is important for you — and the worldThe complex relationship between money and artEmbracing technological change in the creative arts — and sharing yourself as the artist in order to connect You can find Maria Brito at MariaBrito.com and on Twitter @MariaBrito_NY Header and shareable image generated by Joanna Penn on Midjourney. Transcript of Interview with Maria Brito Joanna: Maria Brito is an award-winning New York-based contemporary art advisor, entrepreneur, author, and curator. Her latest book is How Creativity Rules the World: The Art and Business of Turning Your Ideas into Gold. Welcome, Maria. Maria: Hi, Joanna, and everybody who's listening. I hope you are well, anywhere you are in the world. Thank you for being here. Joanna: . And we do have listeners all over the world. Now, I wanted to take a step back. You started out as a corporate attorney at a big law firm. And there are lots of people listening who are in day jobs in the corporate world. How did you break out of such a high-paying job to start a creative business? How did you find that courage to pivot? Maria: I think that once you feel the pain of being in a place like that, you can't really think about anything else. But how do I get out of here? And how do I reclaim my life because, literally, I feel that for all the many years that I was doing things that I just did not want to do, it's like I was losing my life. I was losing my energy and my joy. And when I had my first child, which I was still working at the law firm, I thought to myself that life was short or long, but that I really had a different perspective once I had this child. I have to teach him, by example, how to live a life of joy, and purpose, and meaning. I had been very, very interested in contemporary art and art history, in general, since I was a child, to be honest with you. And I had taken many courses in high school and in college as well. When I moved to New York City after graduating from law school, collecting informally, things that were young and emerging and fun, and that was always on the back of my mind, how to make people live with art. When I quit my job and opened my business, that was 2009. The art market and the art world were mysterious and seemed snobbish and impenetrable. I thought to myself, ‘I have been pondering this question for a number of years now, how do people actually get into collecting and living with art and having the excitement of understanding artists through their ideas and their aesthetics without people getting so intimidated, or people feeling that they are being looked down when they stepped into a gallery? Or how do people demystify the thought that to be a collector, you have to be one of those people who go to Sotheby's and spend $10 million in a painting because the art market and the art world is a whole lot bigger than that?' So all these preoccupations along with the baby gave me the impetus to say, ‘I don't want to do something that is actually killing me alive.' Basically, because if we talk about mental health today…back then we didn't really have those conversations, but I had them with my husband, and I had them with my friends. And I said, ‘This job is basically is killing me, is annihilating everything.' Nothing really happens overnight. Because once you have arrived at a place where you say, ‘I do need to quit this job to start something new,' it's because you have been accumulating a lot of painful memories, moments, situations. It's not just like one day you wake up and you have a big epiphany. It's not like that. It's a long process. And for people who are listening, if you find yourself hating your day job, know that you're not alone, and know that it takes courage, and it takes time to plan for the big exit. So if you can do it, because you have been waiting for too long, I can tell you that there is never the right time to do it because you're always going to find whatever reasons. Our brains are very wired for preservation of safety, and it's difficult for us to actually accept a change of circumstances that is so radical. But again, for me, it was just too painful to stay there. Joanna: I really resonate with that. I started writing in 2006. Same as you, I was in so much pain, I was crying at work every day. I just hated it. I hated, hated my job. I know some people listening don't feel that way. They might love their job, or at least tolerate their job, but I have heard from people listening that sometimes their job saps any form of creativity. I certainly felt like this when I used to implement accounts payable systems. And I thought, ‘I am not creative. There is nothing creative about me.' And it seems weird now to say that, but I wonder if you could also, you have in the book, there's lots of ideas. How can people start to tap into their buried creativity? And if they feel they're not creative enough, or they're struggling with their creativity. What are some of the ways they can find it again? Maria: Creativity is something from within. I think that I made the point very clear in the book and in my life in general that it really doesn't matter what you do. Let's say the example or the type of frame you just gave, some people are really happy with what they do, but they don't feel that they are creative. But the truth is every job and every occupation can benefit from people who can have creative ideas and they can actually materialize them. So, for me, creativity is your unique ability to come up with ideas of value that are relevant. And that actually can happen. Because a lot of ideas, maybe you don't have the resources, or maybe you don't have the team or the world is not ready yet. How many years Elon Musk has been working on Mars, and he has the resources, and he has everything, and still not happening? So the point is that creativity is not arts and crafts, and it's not cutouts. It could be, but what it really is, is that ability that you have to come up with amazing ideas. There's no single human being in the world who's not capable of this, bearing some disabilities, of course, but it's the place where people have gotten complacent about moving forward and presenting their ideas. There is such a high level of stimulus, right around us, that are drowning our senses. We are consistently consuming social media, and text, and tweets, and WhatsApp, and noise. And people are crossing the streets looking at their phones, and at the same time, they're listening to a podcast. All these things have taken our ability to think on our feet and to actually be able to pay attention to the things around us that could make great moments to find this idea. So one of the consensus among the people who are researchers and who are psychologists in the field of creativity is that the number one thing that everyone who is really creative has is curiosity. You don't need to pay anybody to be curious, and you don't need to be a painter in front of an easel or a writer writing fiction, you don't need to be Stephen King to be curious. It's people who develop passions outside of their job and inside of their jobs with curiosity are usually creative people, people who are just not happy to get whatever the media says, but they are digging deeply and saying, ‘Is there a contrary opinion to this?' Or people who have a desire to go with deep research about a topic. And the topic could be anything. Those are usually the type of people who are best with coming up with ideas. If you feel that you're not creative at work, just find one or two or three things that you feel interested about and learn everything that you can about them. Or you could even just go and enroll yourself in one of those online courses that you can go at your own pace, and it's a completely different thing that you've never done before. That's the other thing. Creative people usually are the ones who can absorb information from different disciplines and fields. That doesn't mean they have to be experts. I love the idea of when we look back in history to a guy like da Vinci, for example, who was just like one of the most curious men that we know about, that was written about. He was ‘I am into writing, and math, and parachutes, and painting, and developing new pigments, and I'm curious about the size of Milan and the perimeter that surrounds Rome. And what can we do to get to France faster?' So this was really a genius. It's funny because, Leonardo has been dead like 600 years, and we talk about him. And when my kids come and tell me, ‘Mom, do you think that in 200 years, people will be talking about Beyonce or Elon Musk?' And I said, ‘No, but we are going to be talking about Leonardo da Vinci.' Because that is the legacy of someone who was truly immensely creative. Fortunately, he left us all, almost all of his diaries in his notes are still alive. So that is the beauty of creativity, is that it's all from within. It's motivation. That's the other thing; no amount of money can make anybody creative. But the motivation that you have from within to claim creativity for yourself and to put yourself in positions where you open up your mind to receive new concepts, to learn new things, to act on different things that you haven't tried before, that is the most magical space ever. That's why sometimes people are, for example, reading a book, or watching a movie, or watching a documentary and say, ‘Well, though, this does not apply to me, because I am not in the art world, or I'm not a scientist who's looking at the marine soil at the middle of the oceans,' and things like that. And I said, ‘You're wrong.' Because the place that is most ripe with interesting ideas that you can adapt for you and your career, or your business, or your side gig, or your writing, or whatever, is outside of what you are already an expert. We are very good at gathering information about our own businesses in our own industries about what's happening, and there's nothing wrong about being a fantastic expert in your field. But what that does also is that progressively, you start developing blind spots because you're so freaking good at what but then everything else that's happening in the world, you're sort of oblivious to. And that is where you find the most incredible ideas. Joanna: I really enjoyed your book because of that. I like visual art. Most of the rest of the people in my family are visual artists. So I know a lot about visual art and the artists you talk about in the book. I've found it really interesting that way. You talk more about curiosity and about delving into areas that are not necessarily our area of expertise, but also about noise and too much consumption. And this is a really hard balance. You only have to look at Twitter or pick up the news, and you feel like we're in the midst of this sort of chaotic time. Especially in America. When I come to America, I'm ‘I cannot watch your news. It's just so over the top, and it's all crisis, crisis.' And also in the book, you talk about your own difficult personal times. It's a balance, isn't it, between consumption and creation? How do we balance this curiosity and needing to consume in the world and learn and be curious, with taking the space to create our own thing? Maria: I absolutely subscribe to the idea that we need a lot of silence in our lives. And so I have created my life around a lot of routines. Routines are very, very good for creativity, even if people would say, ‘No, I just want to have crazy experiences each day.' Sure, you can have that but, make sure that you have a foundation, preferably in the morning, where you start, or maybe you can't necessarily start your day with, meditation and whatnot. But I think that is very important, if you carve out time to just be. Some people are very concerned about this, meditation and if they have to be sitting down in lotus position with candles and incense and things like that, because usually, our minds tend to go to far extremes in what we need to do or the things that we are avoiding the most are usually the things that we need to do the most. So while I understand that the speed of life is not necessarily the type of life for everybody who would say, ‘Let me just take 45 minutes every day, 20 in the morning, 20 at night, and 5 in the middle to meditate.' I think that it pays back with interest because it is that moment of calming the mind and allowing yourself to take the focus from everything that is happening around you. I know a lot of people work in open spaces, are co-working buildings, and things like that. And they are very, very distracting places. I definitely respect because that might be the only option, but I think that anybody has some minutes of the day to practice a form of silence and meditation, perhaps the meditation thing, as I said before, could be a lot of work for certain people, just sitting down with your ideas and contemplation without listening to much or without having to browse through the phone helps because there is a cumulative effect. If you do it one day and 10 minutes, the next day, 5 minutes, 7 minutes, or whatever, by the end of the week, maybe you have done 45 minutes in silence for the whole week. Some people practice like a Sunday where, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., they are not going to check the phone, they are not going to turn on the TV, they are just going to try to, perhaps, read a couple of books, or they are just trying to take walks and be present to their families, or if they live alone, then just be doing other things that do not involve all this incredible amount of information. In some cases, it's really pollution. Like you said, news can be deceiving, over the top, super politicized. If you really need to know something about the news, then you will. Joanna: Someone will tell you. Maria: Definitely. I enjoy an excellent written article, long form. Could be ‘New Yorker, or it could be ‘New York Times,' but I don't really enjoy partisan journalism. I know when somebody has an agenda. I'm old enough to know when I'm reading something and there is an entire political agenda behind it. Listen, I am worried about everything, I'm worried about Ukraine, Iran, China, all the things, but I just can't take them all on me. I sometimes feel that certain people utilize all the things that are happening around them as a distraction, not to do what they are meant to do. I just have to protect my own energy and space by saying, ‘There is only so much I can do about this thing.' It's not that I don't care, I very much care, but I also have a family to support and myself and protect my peace of mind and my mental health. I can't partake of every cause. I can't take on every crusade. This is also an individual responsibility that we have; how much are we going to affect everything that's happening in the world, or can we actually take on a position that is also a creativity space for us that creates the good that we need for ourselves, and that allows us to encore our thoughts and our actions, and the things that we want, rather than all the things that we can't really change? Joanna: I think what you're saying, just sort of recap there, you talked about meditation. I walk. So I don't sit and meditate, but I walk in nature. And that's where I get my silence. So whatever people do, but you said that protect your space. You have to protect your physical time to create your mental space from that pollution in order to do the thing you're meant to do. I completely agree with you, that we can use all of this as distraction. If we're going to create as a lifestyle, as a business even, then we have to make that space. And the other thing, I guess, what I loved about your book is that it's almost an acknowledgement that creativity and art is important. And I feel like this is something that happened with COVID. COVID is still around, obviously, a lot of writers I know said, ‘It's pointless to write. There's so many problems in the world. Why am I writing a novel? Why am I writing a story? Why am I writing a book about creativity, or whatever? It's just not important. I should become a doctor and solve these crises.' How can we center our creativity as important and the thing that we are meant to do with our lives? Maria: Humans, we are a very strange species. We get this protection from change in our brains. We have physical responses that trigger hormones in our bodies when we are afraid or when we are happy. I think that the unfortunate thing about the western world is art is intertwined with religion in a way that honestly reads the whole story in, a manipulative way, but it's all about guilt. There is this sense of ‘I can't really be painting or writing, because look at the world,' and this and that. But actually, the true nature of humans is to progress and to thrive, and to prosper. Without creativity, in every sense, including the arts, we would not have become the civilization that we've made of ourselves. People would still be in caves, and people would not even have developed language. We have to understand how important language is, the conveyance of ideas, whether that is in a form of a novel, or if it's a non-fiction book, these are the things that keep the world going forward, these are the things that actually, you are always passing the torch on to someone else even if you don't immediately know it. I feel that there is also a misconception. It's ‘Well, if I am not saving people in Africa with Doctors Without Borders, or if I am not developing vaccines or whatever, then I'm not worth it.' That's an insecurity also that, unfortunately, has been growing more and more in this day of digital and social media where people tend to compare themselves to others because if they wouldn't have the doctors and they wouldn't have the idea that there was somebody else doing more important job, better things that what they were doing, then they wouldn't have, those thoughts, if that makes sense. In the era of the Renaissance, these guys didn't have Twitter and people were dying of plagues. No, seriously, it was children would live like to five with luck. And this was the most beautiful and fruitful time in history where the Italian Renaissance in Florence. We still talk about these guys. We talk about Michelangelo, we talk about Leonardo, we talk about Botticelli. We talk about Dante. These are incredible people. And they were not saying, ‘Because the plague, we're all crying, and let's just hide ourselves in our houses, and cry.' That was not what they were saying or doing. On the contrary, a lot of them had very strong religious convictions. I believe in God, but a lot of people don't. Michelangelo was ‘I'm serving God with my work.' And he ended up a very rich man, and what he did was, anybody who has seen his work, in person or in pictures, but better in person, has to think that this guy had a power that was just way beyond what a man can do. Creativity is important because beauty is important, because ideas are important. Because expression of human beings, whatever means it is, and again, it could be someone who's trading stock, it could be someone who is writing books, it could be someone who's making film, all those things have a purpose. It doesn't matter if you don't win the Oscar, it doesn't matter if the Pulitzer is not going to be given to you, there is a whole other level of impact with the work that creative people do. And it also is fulfilling for themselves. I'm sure that you love your podcast because it gives you an expression. And besides all the writing that you've done, this gives you another level of expression that is different, and it's fun, and at the same time, is of service to others. So all these things have multiple complex layers that are just way deeper than just saying, ‘My job is not important because I'm not saving lives.' Because then if everybody would save lives, then we wouldn't have anybody else to serve us food at restaurants, we wouldn't have farmers. So imagine, let's say everybody in the world tomorrow saves lives. And so what would happen to all the other occupations? We wouldn't have buildings because people are just saving lives, and we don't have architects, and we don't have people who, construction workers, and things like that. So I get the guilt, but it's not justified. Joanna: I love that. As you said — it's about fulfillment, it's about human flourishing and creativity for its own sake, which absolutely is wonderful. Now, I do want to ask you about money because you work with many financially successful artists. You reference many, both living and dead in the book. I always use Picasso and van Gogh. Picasso died a multimillionaire, his morals were questionable. But many authors, whether they're writers, or visual artists, or whatever, struggle with this art versus money idea. How do you see the relationship between art and money and/or business? Maria: I think that the whole myth of the starving artists is romanticized for the wrong reasons. I believe that it's not serving anybody. Because, as you said, we do have van Gogh who was a bipolar person who killed himself. It's not even the fact that he didn't sell anything, it's the fact that he was crazy. Because, we can utilize that same example today and say, ‘Well, this guy was a genius, but he jumped out of the window before he was able to sell his novel because he was not writing his mind.' So we always say, ‘Poor van Gogh, he never sold anything.' But then we don't talk about his mental illness. Why is that? Because people like to romanticize and stay in the pain and say, ‘The art is pure, and the struggle is beautiful.‘ I think those are also mechanisms of defense for people to not do what they have to do, which is do all the work that just goes beyond just making the art. I have said many times, not everybody is an artist, in the sense of not everybody has the talent to write a novel. Not everybody has the talent to compose a nice painting. Not everybody has the talent to create a wonderful film. This is not to say you're not creative. This is to say that sometimes the idea to do something that you're not 100% equipped is also an excuse for you to say, ‘I'm not making money, that must be because I have to struggle because I chose this particular area.' Because look, I know doctors who are terrible, and they graduated barely, and they don't make money. I know dentists who are broke. I know architects who live paycheck by paycheck. So the struggle and the starving idea is not exclusive of artists. It has to do a whole lot more with, ‘Do I have a business mentality, and am I good at what I do?‘ Because I also do know of artists whose work is not necessarily outstanding, but they are such incredible business people. And their greatest asset is their capacity to come up with ideas and to have a team who helps them execute them. The paradox is that, well, they may not be great artists, but they are great businesspeople. And I think, wholeheartedly believe, that everybody has a very special unique gift and that that gift can be well received in the world. Because, look, honestly, money is loaded as a concept. But money itself is neutral. It's not good or bad, it's not evil or beautiful. It is just that it's a tool. It's a tool for people to pay their rents, or their mortgages, and feed themselves and their kids and pay for clothes. that's the other thing. If we would have stayed in the system of trade, and barter, and I'll give you peanuts and you give me potatoes, we would not have civilization either. We needed to have a form that actually backed up trade. So a lot of people are very, very confused about what money means, that, if your art should be just pure and never tainted by money, I don't think any of the guys of the Renaissance was also worried about that. They just saw it as, ‘This is an incredible privilege that I have.' And they had patrons and the Medici paid and they had no problem going there. That doesn't mean that they were sellouts. No, that means they actually took the help so that they could actually benefit the world with what they did. And some of them were not rich. But regardless of that, they didn't have the handcuffs that we have developed in our culture with money. And that is something that people have to really work. I know it's not easy. I know, it takes a whole lot of time. There are tons of different tools out there to help you see things differently, to help you see that there are ways. And that if something is commercially successful, that doesn't mean that it is a sellout or that it is bad. That's a whole different story. Picasso, like you said, was incredibly successfully commercial because people loved his work. But I think the most interesting thing about Picasso is that he worked so consistently throughout his life until the day he died. This man was really… Joanna: He was prolific. Maria: But he was invested in that. I can tell you one thing I know for sure, you can never get better if you don't do it over, and over, and over, and over again. You can't really get better at what you do, your craft, the discipline that you put into your writing, or your art. It's a day-in, day-out thing. That is one thing I know. There are no born geniuses. Well, maybe yes, maybe are people with incredible talent who can, paint, and write music when they are four, or five, or whatever. We've got great examples, and contemporary hits. Justin Bieber was playing that little piano when he was four, and, whatever. So that's fine, but that's only one person. Most people actually put an enormous amount of work in refining what they do. When you actually put that amount of work and refining what you do with guidance and help, obviously, and feedback, I don't see any negative coming out of that. I see that there's got to be a point where actually is going to pay back. This conversation could be for days, because there are so many different factors to take into account, but I believe that people's desires, and like what I said before, motivations is what actually gets them forward. Picasso wanted to paint one and two canvases a day because it made him happy. And he had it within him, he was doing what he wanted to do, and it gave him an enormous amount of satisfaction. It was a very driven-from-within passion. That is the thing that people should strive always to have, is ‘I feel that I want to do this, and I want to do it more and more because it gives me so much happiness, and I'm good at it, and I'm going to get better because I'm going to do it more.' Joanna: For sure. Now, one final question because we're almost out of time. In the book, you talk about questioning the status quo, taking risks, and also that the only constant is change. We're recording this towards the end of 2022, there's this real emergence of AI-assisted art tools like DALL-E, and Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion, and a lot of discussion about how that's going to impact the art world as well as the writing tools in the writing world. How can creatives embrace change and technological progress and still improve their craft? Maria: Listen, the other day, somebody asked me a very similar question, a friend of mine, and we were having an informal conversation. I told him, ‘Look, a lot of different artists have been using technological tools that are very similar to what DALL-E does and all that for a long time to create renderings, to have inspiration to see what happens when they recompose a figure and an image.' When people in our history and our contemporary times invest whatever amount in buying a piece of art from an artist, whether that is… And I'm talking about a real piece of art, not an NFT, but I'm talking about something that you hang or you play somewhere. People are not buying the art alone, they're buying the artist. They're buying the history, the trials, the tribulations, their backgrounds, where they went to school, how many shows they've had, the things that they talk about, everything, because nothing is hidden anymore. There was a time where nobody knew who these guys were. They lived in their studios, and there was a wall and there was a shield, and now everything is online, the guys, their resume. So that part, I don't get too worried about because people buy the artists. Now, with writing, I also take issue with that, because although the writer sometimes can be a little bit more separated off the process…not out of the process, but off the selling part, if that makes sense. You're a great artist, or you're a great writer, the writers are not necessarily having exhibitions every two months. And they are not necessarily in every art fair hanging, and things like that. So it's a different thing. But the way I see it with writing tools is that there is no computer that can have the experiences that you have had. There is no computer that can actually go through your childhood, your spiritual awakenings, if you had any. The pains of giving birth, the things that you saw the morning that you found your soulmate. I see it a little bit of a lack of self-esteem for anybody to think that a writing machine is going to be better than them, is going to be better than a creature from the universe who's here, is breathing, is alive is full of soul. I'm very always invested in this idea that there is spirit, that we are moved because we are alive and there is a soul and there is something inside of us that gives us intuition, inspiration, guides us. So I hope that people who are listening are open to these ideas because that really is what makes us human and who we are, and our feelings and emotions, which no computer can ever replicate. Joanna: I also think what you said about the visual artists and putting themselves out there, what you're doing, you have a book How Creativity Rules the World and you're here on this podcast, you're being Maria. And I do that with this show. And I have another podcast. I think by sharing our voices, showing our work and our process, we can put that human artist into the work. So I think, as with writing, as with visual art, I think writers also are selling the artists and the author behind the creative work as well. So, I love that. Thank you so much. So we're out of time. Tell people, where can they find you and your book online. Maria: My website is mariabrito.com. And my book is called How Creativity Rules the World. It is available on Amazon, Book Depository if you'd like to have it delivered anywhere in the world that Amazon does not serve. If you're in the United States, and you want to benefit the independent bookstores, it's on Bookshop. It's also Barnes & Noble. So there is an incredible host of places where you can find the book. It is in three formats. It's hardcover. It's ebook and audio. Joanna: Did you read the audio, did you read it? Maria: I did. Joanna: Oh, great. Maria: I did read the audio. But I would always encourage you to get a written version. Because at the end of each chapter, there are exercises that I encourage people to take, ways to digest what they've learned in the chapter, but also, is to get their creative juices going in different directions. I call them alchemy labs because I think that's where the magic happens, that's where you turn your ideas into gold. Very little happens if we don't take some action. So the fact that you're picking up a notebook and up hand and writing things down is one of the ways to create a material record of something that you just learned and you're digesting. That's why writing is so powerful. I have a whole chapter in the book about writing and about why it is so much better to do this type of exercises with a pen and a paper rather than typing because it really stimulates so much of your neural networks and also your connections between your hand, and your thinking, and paying attention at a specific time, making you very aware of the here and now. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Maria. That was great. Maria: Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Joanna. I really loved this time with you. I appreciate the invitation. Thank you.The post How Creativity Rules the World With Maria Brito first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Generative art tools like DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion are taking AI art into the mainstream. What are the opportunities for authors? What are the problems and controversies to be aware of? I talk about these issues and more with Derek Murphy. In the intro, I mention my J.F. Penn NFTs with AI-generated art based on words from my novels; Microsoft will incorporate DALL-E into design products [TechCrunch]; Meta's Make-A-Video and Google's Imagen Video [TechMonitor]. You can also find more podcast episodes and tools at TheCreativePenn.com/future. Derek Murphy writes urban fantasy, YA, and romance fiction as D.S. Murphy, as well as books for authors on writing and marketing. He has a Ph.D. in literature and is also a visual artist, designer, and course creator. 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 AI art is such a fascinating emerging area — and how it can help existing artists improve and iterate their creative ideas faster The tools available — DALL-E 2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion How prompting works and determines the quality of your output, and why iterations and curation are so important as a creative director with a vision How AI art generation tools might replace stock photography sites The problems with AI-generated art, including the use of living artists as models, copyright, and more Using AI images for ads and emotion-driven content that might help sell more books How book cover designers and other artists can use AI tools in an effective way You can find Derek at www.Creativindie.com and on Twitter @creativindie. You can go through Derek's Midjourney tutorial here. Transcript of the interview (lightly edited) Joanna PennDerek Murphy writes urban fantasy, YA and romance fiction, as well as books for authors on writing and marketing. He has a PhD in literature and is also a visual artist, designer and course creator. So welcome back to the show, Derek. Derek MurphyHi, thanks for having me on. It's been a long time since we've talked. Joanna PennIt has indeed. And I mean, you and I go way back. Now you designed some of my early book covers — Derek MurphyI want to say it was like 15 years ago or something, I think I found one of your books in Portland, a long, long time ago. And I was really excited. Because I wanted to be a writer. So that kind of got me on to the path. Derek designed this beautiful cover for Desecration, when it was just a standalone novel Joanna PennYeah, I mean, it's kind of crazy how long we've known each other online. But you were on the show in 2014 talking about book cover design. I can't believe how time passes. But give us a bit of an update. What does your author business and your author life look like right now? Derek MurphySure. I started with fine art. I was a painter. I did my PhD in literature. And then I was doing editing and painting. And then I transitioned towards book cover design. So I did that for quite a long time. But book cover design has changed a lot in the last 10 years because of all the new technologies. But in the last few years, I switched more to passive income with some courses, so that I can focus on my fiction. And in last, basically, five years, I think I've written like 20-something novels, but I haven't finished a whole series yet. And this month, I'm finally finishing a full series, which is kind of a big deal. So I've been doing just enough work to get by. But now that I have a finished series, I think I can focus more on my fiction as income revenue, which hasn't been the case so far. Joanna PennWhat's your fiction name? So people know. Derek MurphyI use DS Murphy. And then I also use Drake Mason as a pen name. And it's mostly like Twilight with mermaids and vampires and things like that. So young adult, plot-heavy fantasy, I guess. Joanna PennThat's cool. And we might come back to the mermaids because you've got some cool stuff on that too. I wanted to talk to you because I know you're a multi-passionate creative, you're very visual, also with words, obviously. But today, we're talking about AI for art, which is pretty contentious in the world as we record this in October 2022. But let's start with the attitude to AI. Why are you interested in AI as someone who's done some pretty traditional work in the creative sphere? Derek MurphyRight. So as an artist, I understand the frustration, because it's weird. Like, I was never the greatest artist. I had really big ideas, and I just couldn't execute them with oil painting. Now I could recreate the same idea much better in a minute. And it just looks awesome. So I'm not exactly torn, because I like the art that I'm making, I think the AI art is, is really, really good looking. It's really fast, I don't have to pay a lot of money for designer and wait for designs. So for me, it's new enough that when I share images, it's going to make a really big difference in marketing. I'm not totally sure if I'll use them for coverage yet, because we'll discuss later, you know why or why not? But it looks so good that when you put it up online, people are like, wow, how did you make that? Where did that come from? Are you the artist? So real artists are getting really upset because they don't feel like AI art is ‘real' art. They think that art requires skill and hard work, or passion, like the struggle to create something is where the art comes from. And if it was just made quickly, no matter how beautiful it is, it doesn't count, because there was no struggle. I don't really believe that. I think that's kind of a leftover of the starving artist mentality where, like the same discussion you hear with people who write books quickly. And they write lots of books, because they know what they're doing. People who are still struggling with their first book, say, ‘Well, my book was hard work, I suffered from my art.' So my book is art, even if nobody likes it, whereas those people who just pump out books, it's not hard, even if they sell a lot of copies, and the readers love the books. I think that's a weird argument to make. But it's the mindset a lot of creative people are kind of stuck on. Joanna PennNo, I agree. And I was actually going to use that example, too. What is ‘real' art? If the viewer likes and has an emotional connection with what they're looking at, in the same way that a reader can read a book that was written quickly and love it, and they can read a book that took 20 years to write and they didn't love it. We have an opinion as a creator, but the opinion of the person on the other end, the consumer can be completely different. Right? Midjourney art made by Derek Murphy Derek MurphyAnd I figured that out a long time ago when I started my blog, Creativindie. I was a starving artist. And I just wanted to do my thing and believe in my art. But at some point, you have to figure out that real art has value to other people, it impacts other people in an emotional way. And you can't control that. It doesn't matter how much time or effort or intention you put into it, it comes down to — does the market respond? Does the audience respond? So some creative people think that that's selling out if you make something that other people like, but I think that's kind of just the definition of good art. It either works or doesn't. So I'm pretty functional, in that I could make tons of things. But I want to make things that people like and hopefully enough that they like enough to pay for so that I can keep making more of the art that I want to make. Joanna PennAbsolutely. Okay, so the reason I emailed you, obviously, I know you online, but I had no idea you were into this AI stuff. You did this great article about creating with Midjourney. And then you put up another one of Black mermaids which I thought was brilliant to riff off the controversy around that. And you've produced some beautiful images. But tell us what you've been doing. Black mermaid art by Derek Murphy with Midjourney What tools have you been you're using, and how does your prompting work? Derek MurphySure, I've been using Midjourney more than the other tools. There are three or four main big tools, and they're all a little bit different. So Midjourney is the first one that came to the public. It's the fastest growing one. And when I started this, I think it came out to the public like three or four months ago. And my first ones weren't that great. But already every week, they're getting much, much better. The art that I'm putting out now is already way better than the stuff from just a month or two ago. And with Midjourney, they are all text-to-image prompts. So I type in dark-skinned mermaid under the sea. And then I can just type in famous artists or famous styles, I can change the ratio or the resolution, I can add detail, but does make quite a bit of difference how you organize your prompts and your text. Sometimes you'll get something amazing just by describing what you want. I've even seen some really cool stuff with like, take a quote from your book, or take a review from your book, or a scene from your book and just put the text in, or like a Bible quote, I've seen some really cool things. But you can also just describe, you know, I want a girl standing in a meadow with a vampire skull and a dagger or whatever. And it'll try to figure it out, it'll probably get it wrong for a while. But once you get something that's pretty cool, you can just re-spin it. And the really interesting thing happens when you keep re-spinning. So I'll go through something for a couple of hours until I find something that's really neat. And then it might take me another day or two and 1000s of images where I'm just really spinning the same thing. And it's giving me slight variations with more detail, until I get some things that are just off the walls crazy. Midjourney images from prompt, “cute robot holding a paintbrush, photorealism” by Joanna Penn Because you can get something very nice, which is comparable to stock photography, and high-level creative concept art like character design. But you can also get something that's just mind blowing, basically. And that's what you kind of want, because you have a unique opportunity right now to make art that hasn't been seen before that people haven't seen before. That's not a stock photo, that just cool enough to share. But that's what I'm really excited about. Also just the variety. So if I had made one, like mermaid picture, it's not really a big deal. But if I make 100 of them, I can basically own the internet. I can get all the search traffic, just for that post, anybody who is searching for images of black mermaids, there's not going to be a lot out there, or they're going to be really spread out and I can kind of host them all in one place. So like you mentioned, I can cash in on the controversy a little bit by claiming that search traffic. And then I also write mermaid books. So once they're on my side, I can try to detour them towards something else. Joanna PennThe first thing I want to come back on is the process. So I've got a course on the AI-Assisted author. And I think it's really difficult for people to imagine until they try this. Essentially it's a prompt, followed by iteration, and then curation of the output. Because as you said, it is not hard to generate an image. What's difficult is getting the right prompt that takes you in the creative direction you want. And then iterating through the process, finding things that match or a heading towards what you want. And then a curation of the final output, right? And it's almost like people think there's an easy button, but you mentioned there a couple of hours and then a day or so to kind of put all this together. So as someone who also creates your own art from scratch, how has this changed the way you think about generating images or even text or music or whatever? How does the human artist work with the AI tool and drive it in the creative direction they want? Derek MurphyI think most people, they would make art because they need it for something. Most authors, especially. I bought all sorts of digital assets, I bought music or videos, because I want to use them in a video or an advertisement. And I buy stock photography, if I want to use them in a book cover design. But this means I don't have to buy those things. So the really interesting thing is gonna be right now, there are huge marketplaces where you can buy digital assets. And there are people who make those assets and everybody else who just needs something. And so they paid to download it, this was going to bypass a lot of marketplaces, and new marketplaces are already emerging. There's already a stock image site where you can type in a prompt, and instead of finding existing images, it'll just generate new images for you. I think that's going to be a big model going forward. So it's going to really threaten stock photo sites, and the photographers are the artists who sell their work that way, because this is just a new way of creating the content that people need. For book covers, specifically, like when I started, I had to just use stock photos. So if I wanted to do a sci fi or fantasy cover, that was really hard, because I couldn't find a detailed glamorous armor, girl in a dress in the forest or whatever, I'd have to Photoshop all that together with a bunch of random pictures. And I could do it, it would take a long time, but I could do a pretty good job of it. And then in the last five years or so people started using 3D renders instead. They can create like a mock up model and render that 3D character and then add a background and add text. Iteration on ‘robot holding a paintbrush,' made by Joanna Penn on Midjourney So the covers got much better in the last five years. But they all sort of look the same, which is not a problem at all. For me, I think covers should look the same, I think you shouldn't be trying to make a cover that looks like the other covers in your genre, so that you fit in. And I've always kind of told people, I don't really recommend custom illustrated art, because that's not really what selling in most genres, it's too hard to produce, it doesn't really look as good. So I would like photo manipulation for book covers. And I still basically believe that, but the art that I'm already making with AI, right now, the problem is that it's much better than the book covers that I've already designed. So I'm excited to use it, because I can get a lot of visibility for it, because it's something that stands out just by looking really cool. But I have to also make sure that my book covers match the art I don't want, like if I'm using Facebook ads, and my art is amazing. And then I clicked over to my Amazon page, I can use the same images for my A plus content. But if my cover doesn't match the vibe, or the mood of my really cool, I may have to redo all my covers as well to kind of make sure that they mesh. I think it's an exciting time because we're still at the edge of it. So like I'm excited to finish my series right now, because I can use all this stuff. Right now, in another year. I think most authors will be using this in some capacity. Joanna PennI know what you mean. It's interesting. You mentioned for stock photography. And as we record this again, at the beginning of October 2022. It's very important to timestamp it because things changed quickly. Some of the stock sites have banned purely AI content, but equally said they will support artists who use generative art as part of their process. And I was talking to my brother yesterday who is a fashion designer. And he said that a lot of people are using Midjourney to come up with concepts that they then tweak to turn into 3d designs for new fashion. And I've seen this I've seen some amazing of people go on social media. If you go on, say Instagram and use #midjourney, and Twitter, you can find amazing art with fabrics. It's just beautiful. You can do an AI picture. And then you can put it in Photoshop, and you can change it. So where's the line? And I find this so interesting. Where's the line between 100% AI to 100% human? Do you think we will move that slider up and down every time? Derek MurphyI'm going to discuss some of the other tools. Midjourney is great with details. So does amazing, like beautiful dresses. It does really good illustrated art like traditional fantasy, like a 1980s sci-fi poster, or something like that. But it also has really good photo-realistic stuff. So I can get like a photo image of a character instead of using a stock photo, a face that is going to be on a bunch of other covers, and get something that's really unique. That looks like a photograph, but it's too pretty to be real. Like I couldn't have made it even with photography, but it's now aren't quite there yet on all of the details. So if I want to make a complex scene where the character is standing with a dragon behind them, and a castle on a mountain somewhere, I can't dictate where all of the pieces are going to show up, and it gets tricky with like hands and fingers and faces, because it can't do everything all at once. But sometimes it sort of guessing in one direction, it's a little bit closer, and then you go in that direction. Right now, most of my art, I could like for some of my book covers, if I want to use them for book covers, it's not quite there yet with Midjourney. And I'd have to put them all in Photoshop and choose different elements and then maybe replace the face or fix the hands and fingers. I think in another month or two, I don't think I'll have to do any of that. I'm not really in a rush, because I think soon, it's just gonna be perfect. And then there's not really any sense in going back to Photoshop. Character portrait made by Derek Murphy on Midjourney And the nice thing about Midjourney is that it does really good with emotional scenes. The problem with Photoshop is, if you're not very good at Photoshop, you can put all the elements together, you can put the character in the background and the text, but it just won't look very good. And it won't look very emotional, the best you can hope for is that it communicates the genre really well, which is what you want. But it would be great if you can also hook them with a really strong emotion, like this is just beautiful artwork. And Midjourney does that really well. The other one, that's I don't think fully public yet is DALL-E 2, but it will be fully public in another month or so. I think DALL-E 2 is smarter, but it's not pretty. So some of the tests I did, for example, I want this artwork where the Grim Reaper is kind of, he's got his arms wrapped around this girl in a white dress. So that positioning between two characters is really tricky. I can't get Midjourney to do anything quite like it. So I'd have to Photoshop Elements together to make what I want. But in DALL-E 2, I can already put in some other artwork, that is the idea that I want the concept that I want. And it will understand the scene well enough to recreate the scene, you know, like basically a grim reaper with his arms around the girl flying away. It's ugly in DALL-E 2, but it understands the concept. And it gets much closer to what's the idea of this piece. I think Midjourney is more beautiful and probably always won't be more beautiful. But DALL-E 2 is probably smarter. And then the other big one is Stable Diffusion. The way I understand it, Stable Diffusion basically can upgrade your art. So you could sketch something yourself, you could hand draw some idea that you want to do, and then pick a style or whatever. And it will basically get the idea and then recreate it into art. I think that's amazing, especially for a lot of artists, like I wish I could have all of my old oil paintings, which are good ideas, but maybe not executed very well, I could just put it in Stable Diffusion, and it could just fix everything and make it beautiful. That's a really cool tool that I never had access to when I was doing fine art. Joanna PennI mean that those are your original paintings. And so probably you feel fine about using those as almost like a prompt. So just to explain to people. So I played around with a tool that was built on the original DALL-E earlier this year. My first NFTs were essentially Special Edition books with an image that I built using AI generation from my text. And that was back in like March I was doing that. And what's interesting is exactly what you say. So I used just a basic pair of wings. Like here's some wings as a image prompt plus text from my book A Thousand Fiendish Angels. And then I asked it to do it in the style of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks. Fiendish angel wings, Image by J.F. Penn and AI generation based on text from my book, A Thousand Fiendish Angels And I got some beautiful images of these anatomical drawings of demonic wings, which I then minted as part of my NFT process. But why I'm mentioning that is because I used Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks as a part of the prompt so that the AI knew what style and you've talked there about using different styles. And this is part of the problem, right? Let's get into some of the controversies. Leonardo da Vinci doesn't care. He's long dead and also out of copyright. But many people are using living artists' work as a style prompt. What are some of the problems with that? Derek MurphySure. So that's the easiest way to get started. But also, of course, it has big differences, big controversies and difficulties because what everybody else is saying is that all AI are stole content from other artists. So you can't trust any of it because we don't really understand how it works or where it's pulling its sources from so because it ‘stole' all these pictures from all over the internet, so we have to be very sensitive about using it. So that's on the back end of how the art was made, how the model was trained. It looked at millions and millions of pictures. A lot of those pictures were from stock photo sites to take one example. So it looked over, maybe I stock or deposit photos have looked at all those pictures. And legally, the way it works is that it's not illegal, because everybody can get inspiration from looking at a picture. I'm allowed to look at a bunch of stock photo pictures to get an idea and then create new art, I don't have to buy every picture that I looked at, if I'm not actually using I'm using it as inspiration. But I'm not like copy and pasting a little piece of this picture. People are trying to argue that it shouldn't be legal for AI to do this without permission, especially when they're going through Deviant Art. And they're looking at a bunch of artists portfolios. And that's where they're getting the inspiration. It gets really tricky for like sci fi, and fantasy, because there aren't a lot of stock photos of things that don't exist for obvious reasons. So the only way that they can know what this looks like, is by all of the fan art that's been made, like Lord of the Rings, fan art, or Star Wars fan art, and there are millions of pictures, but they required a real artist to create in the first place. Now AI can create something similar very easily, but only because of all the humans that went before. So that's why people are upset. But it's not illegal, because they're not really using the image itself, they're just looking at it for inspiration to create something different with the prompts. If you're using a specific prompt of a specific living artist, right now, that's an easy way to get some good results, I think probably, there's a strong legal case for those artists to sue to get their names blocked. And that's already sort of happening in Midjourney where certain terms are banned. So you just can't use those terms. I don't know how they're going to deal with it, because I think every artist would have to bring their own law case. And most artists just aren't going to bother doing that. But I think we will see that they might just, you know, a blanket statement, you can't use the names of any living artists. But that means like, somebody's got to go through those millions of names, and figure it all out. I don't know if that's ever gonna happen either. Joanna PennJust to be clear for people listening, as far as I can see, and from what I've read that it is not plagiarism. So plagiarism can only be on the output. If I download one of your books, and I upload it under my name, or I take your piece of art, and I publish it under my name, that is plagiarism. But the art that the AI is generating, it's not plagiarism, it's learned and it's modeling. But each output is completely different. Which is it's almost it feels kind of miraculous when you play with it write it, you can generate 100 different versions of the same prompt. And it's not plagiarizing anyone, even though it might be in the style of Leonardo da Vinci. So I think this is it's so difficult. And yet, as you say, I think it's, it's almost too late. But also I want to come down to what I think is where we're gonna have to go with all of this as artists is, look, we're already in an age of digital abundance, right? You go on KU, and there's a billion books or you want to do some art, there's a billion images, and loads and loads of images every single day coming out of these machines. So if we're in an age of abundance, the artist themself has to build a personal brand. But if you are an artist whose work is popular enough to for people to use you as a model, maybe there're ways you could actually riff off that as ‘Look, I am a leader in this field, I am someone that people want to emulate,' I almost feel you have to turn it on its head, you know what I mean? Derek MurphyI would definitely do that if people using my name. And it's almost something like I could try to shoot for like if I created, you know, a million awesome pictures of a certain style, and then use my name or hashtag or something so that I could you know, when people search for best prompts for Midjourney, which is something people Google and I should just have a blog post about that. There's two things because on the one hand, I get a lot of traffic by teaching people how to do things. And on the other hand, I'm finally at the point like with my own writing, where I can just use it for myself. So I'm excited I made the series that I finished is a vampire book. So I made 100 Really sexy male vampires, but they're all different. They're all unique. So instead of just like with an ad, instead of putting one vampire, I can put a Facebook post with 100 Vampires and my blurb and my book. And the advantage is that people don't really click or share an ad. But if it's just cool art, if I target people who like vampires, and they just see this huge gallery of 100, vampires, they're going to spend a lot more time clicking through and looking at all the different pictures. I'm going to get more engagement, that's something I couldn't have done even if I hired one artist and make me a couple of really good pieces of art. It's the quantity that I think has the most value, because I can suddenly make not just tons of different stuff, but a whole bunch of very similar stuff that has its own kind of value, just because there's so many the diversity of the different images that I'm sharing. So instead of getting someone's attention for two or three seconds, I can get their attention for five minutes, because I have to look through all of my images. And that's pretty valuable, because it tells Facebook or Google, that people are spending time on my site. And that'll be good for me. Also, I can immediately get them in the mood, like with my blurb with my vampire blurb, even if, though it's pretty good. I can with one image of a vampire, I can make them feel all those feelings that when they were reading Twilight, or their favorite vampire media or whatever. I can just show them pictures and get them to feel like they want more of that kind of content, because it's already in them, they already have that affinity with vampire art. And they've never seen any vampire art as good as the ones that I'm making with AI or Midjourney. So I'm excited to like to share those because when I do it, it'll be the first time people have ever seen something like that. I think my ads will get a lot more traction and cost a lot less, which should mean that I can sell more books. Joanna PennI love that example around social media and images. And also, I think you're right about being early in some sense. But I think this is the future. It's engaging. I saw an image on Instagram that made me stop. It was a heart made out of all different things like cogs and wheels, like a steampunky heart. Then all these other different materials that they were using to create human hearts out of that, all AI generated. Horology heart by Lust_Byte on Instagram Midjourney art And it makes me keep going back because I'm like, Oh, wow, that's really cool. I wonder what they're going to come up with as a different material next time. And so you're completely right. Let's talk about you mentioned before, the difficulties with using it in book covers versus things like social media. Let's talk about copyright. I've been part of talking about this. And I've done submissions with the Alliance of Independent Authors to the World Intellectual Property Organization, and the UK Government about what's happening, but essentially, the legalities are way behind. What are your thoughts on copyright and AI art? Derek MurphySure, so the reason that most book cover designers are so against it completely, which they kind of have to be because it's their business. But it's that you can't really copyright the images that you create with these tools that might change in the future. Right now, most of them are trying to be a little careful with letting people use the tools. That's why they're kind of in beta or test mode, Midjourney went out of the gate really early by letting people use the tool without a lot of clarity, legal clarity. So they basically say on the website that you have the copyright, you have the commercial right to do whatever you want with these pictures. So it's not illegal to use them on book covers, I can do that with the license. So whatever I make my journey I can use however I want. But I also cannot claim copyright on it. I can't say this is my image, I'm using it on my book cover, nobody else can use it. So if somebody else did use it, then I can't come after them legally. Because I made it in Midjourney, which is sort of open source because it bases on other people's art, I think that's probably to protect themselves. And there have been some cases already where someone tried to copyright like a book made from AI content. So in my understanding, if you made a bunch of images, but you put it together in a coloring book, for example, you should be able to copyright the coloring book because it's a new product that you put together. So the value is not just the images themselves. Anyway, so it's messy. And I think it'll continue to be messy for a while. But with the sites, like there's the artist sites that cater to artists, they, their clientele, their business is the artist. So it makes sense for them to say we don't accept the AR Because artists don't like it. And they have to protect that. For the stock photo sites, they also have to be sort of careful because if I someone uploads AI art to deposit photos and I buy it and use it for my book cover, if it was close enough to someone else that someone could sue over it. I would have protection from deposit photos because I bought it from them and then they would be in trouble. That can't really happen. Midjourney because they don't really steal images that make something new. But that's why stock photo sites are being really careful. But that's only right now at the same time, both Google and Facebook are already developing complete video AI systems, which is pretty similar, but I'll be able to say like for book trailers or something, I'll be able to say, a vampire running in the moonlight to his castle, or a young woman running through the woods at night, chased by demons. And it can make not just a picture, but a whole moving video that I can use, which would be amazing for advertising or promotion. And those are in the works. So the main thing is that like, those are owned by the biggest companies in the world, and they'll want to profit or monetize, or they'll just use it for their own things. I wouldn't be surprised if like, they create their own stock, video or stock photography sites, fully AI to compete with deposit photos or stock photos who have been around for a while. But I think AI is going to be so much better, it's going to have so many better looking things that you can buy that most regular consumers, they don't really care how it's made, they just want the best stuff, like if they're gonna buy videos, or art or music, they're gonna buy whatever's best, whatever's cheapest, whatever is easiest. That's not really a moral discussion. That's just what the majority of consumers who pay for things, that's what buyers are going to look for. So there's the Midjourney or like Stable Diffusion, some of them are trying to be more open source, where they're not gonna get messy with the business. And then some of them are made by big businesses who are gonna get really clear with the legality of it, because they're gonna make a lot of money from it. Joanna Penn I think the future for creators and for translators, narrators, and writers is using the tools as part of the process. Because as you said, even if it, even if you make a piece of art in AI, and download it and your book cover designer, then you still need to do the text, you still need to be the person who prompts it. And to me, the future for the visual arts side is helping people get to the design and where you want it to go. I mean, there's a book cover design, either processes going backwards and forwards and tweaking and all of that, and that is so much quicker with AI generation, it's like, here's a whole load of stuff, which one do you prefer. And so I feel like in the same way that I know a lot of translators who use Deepl.com as part of a first draft process, and then they do the tweaking and making it all the right the right words, but the bulk of it can be generated. I feel like that's what artists, that's what a lot of writers are going to do. We use the tools as part of our process, but the artistic vision, the prompting, the curation, the personal brand, all of those things are still individual to the person and in an age of abundance, that is still the strength. It's that creative direction. Derek MurphyI mean, you have to have the time to do it. I've spent, I don't know, hundreds of hours, probably the last couple months, I think I spent like with Midjourney, you can pay 30 bucks a month, and then it's unlimited, but it's a little bit slow. And then you pay an extra 50 bucks to get fast hours. So I spent like three or 400 bucks this week on just downloading images faster, because I'm impatient. Not everyone's going to have the time to sit around and make pictures, I do it like when I'm watching Netflix or whatever. Cute robot holding a paintbrush, photorealistic, made by DALL-E 2 and Joanna Penn And I've made like 1000 variations of one thing trying to get the one picture that I might actually use. So a lot of it feels a little bit wasteful, but I wouldn't be able to get anything near like the quality of the stuff that I'm making. I don't think I could even put together in Photoshop, it would just take too long, especially like the ornate decorations have the gold embellishment and the armor, the hairpin or whatever, really detailed stuff that I couldn't find stock photos to buy those elements in, but I can generate them really quickly. So for making covers faster. I'm pretty excited about it. I know a lot of authors are skeptical, especially with the copyright thing, because I think copyrights really important person that doesn't bother me, like you mentioned text is a huge deal. So I'm going to brand my series with the typography anyway. And a lot of authors even if they can get cheap art, that's great. They can't put the nice text on. And it's going to look unprofessional. So being able to just know, the picture shows the setting and the mood a little bit, but the genre is really type dependent. Good designers will know which fonts to use to make sure you're communicating the right genre for your book cover. And that's a really important piece of book cover design. So you can't just kind of make everything by yourself, but you could get the art and then you could use a template or you could just Google Best fonts for fantasy, stuff like that and find a font that you like and hire someone to put the text on. I think you can, I think the main thing is previously, some authors got more famous and more successful because they could afford really high quality cover art, it's really good cover art costs 500 bucks, 2000 bucks. And if you don't have that kind of a budget, and you're trying to make it yourself, there's an advantage to being successful and being able to afford the best cover designers. I think this is going to open it up for a lot of other people who have good books, but don't have good cover art, to suddenly step up their game in a significant way, and suddenly be those people who they were getting ahead because they can afford good cover designers. Maybe they won't have as much of an edge anymore. Joanna PennThe other thing I want to emphasize is the fun and the delight aspect. Yeah, because I played with the text generation, Sudowrite, but also art generation. It's fun. I smile a lot. I'm like, Wow, that's beautiful. Or that's funny, or that's unexpected. And when I first started getting into this AI stuff, I just wanted to clone myself and generate stuff that was out of similar to my work so I could do more of my work. And now I've changed my mind. And in fact, I did train a model in terms of the writing, I trained the model on my writing, and then what output was too similar to me, and I didn't want it. I wanted a different mind. Do you feel that as an visual artist as well? Do you feel that sense of delight and fun as well? Derek MurphyYeah, it's completely addicting. And I've got an addictive personality. So like, I won't go to bed, I'll just be in bed clicking one more time, every new image, you have to re-spin. Because it's like scrolling through social media, where you're just looking for anything interesting that will catch your attention and give you that re-spin-dopamine boost. So everything else aside, I can see this becoming hugely popular, just because it's fun to use. Joanna PennMe too. And so if people listening are like, Yeah, I want to try that. I mean, when I was doing this a few months back, it was a little more technical. But it looks like things are getting easier and easier to use now, right? You don't have to be a programmer to use AI art tools. Derek MurphyThere's a bunch of new apps are coming out. I think even Midjourney has an app right now. But I don't think it's great. Midjourney is kind of weird, because they make you use Discord, which is like a chat server. And then you put in your prompt. So when you first sign up with Midjourney and discord mid journey has its own website where you have your account, and it'll show all your images. And then discord has different chat areas, and a lot of them are public. So when you start off, there'll be like 20 public areas, and you can see everybody else's art and see what they're working on. But you can also create your own private channel in discord, I just created my own channel, and then you can import the whole Midjourney app. So now I'm just making all my images privately. So another reason I don't worry about the copyright is that no one else can see these images until I decide to share them. So if I just put them on my covers, like I'm not worried someone else is going to use the same thing. It feels like it's, it feels like it's hard to start using because of the whole discord thing. But it takes a few hours to kind of get into it. And the results are just so impressive with so little effort that I think once people try it, they'll get hooked pretty fast. Joanna PennAnd as you say things are changing. I mean, I've really noticed, and we're doing this because people have asked me in a way like even four months ago, people were saying to me, I don't want to hear about AI, stop talking about it. And now people are like, ‘Oh, tell me about this AI art.' It's almost like in the last three months, even as we talk this has gone mainstream, and it's really hooked people because it's so easy to see visually, rather than read stuff. There are some prompts and examples with typography. I only saw this today actually on Twitter website generrated.com with two R's. It has images and prompts to use with DALL-E 2, presumably, you can also do that. https://twitter.com/ToolTrackers/status/1573481410236653585?s=20&t=kNOuC1lWQeLKzu6cWSDpgQ And they have generated movie posters, which people have started to talk about on Twitter as using for book cover design because it includes typography. So and that's the first time I've seen it. I mean, this tweet only came out a couple of weeks ago as we as we record this, but it's like, where do you think we're going to be within a year's time or three years time. Derek MurphyI think that is very likely and kind of crazy. I haven't played around with the typography yet, but I have seen some of that stuff. So I could say the title of my book ‘book cover design,' this is what I want. And it'll just make the whole finished thing that I could use. I think will be there within a year, which is insane because then nobody will need cover designers anymore. They can just make their own art. I'm always on the side of making it easier for people to do creative things better. So all authors are more suited towards writing. Writing is probably the main skill that they want to get good at. So it doesn't make a lot of sense to invest a ton of time getting good at Photoshop or something. But artwork is very, very valuable. So I've seen people using it already for character concept, I have one friend who opened up a private discord for her own readership, so that they could come in and make character concepts for her books. I've seen people make character concepts and post them on Kickstarter, because on Kickstarter, you really need images to communicate the feeling of the book if you've only got a rough draft. And then I've seen people using like chapter design headers, I see people sell like the full page, illustrations or the chapter header, just like cute, cool little motif on the top of the book for book formatting, they can do those really well. So you can get much better quality stuff that you just couldn't even get before, even if you could afford it, designers weren't capable of making stuff this cool. Now you can get it, it's not just like an alternative or a replacement. It's just something that didn't exist before. So for authors, I think it's really exciting, because it'll make publishing so much easier. And the cover is so important to getting their books read and sold. So this is just like one lower barrier, so that people can focus on their writing and still have better results. But I do think it's going to displace a whole lot of really big established business institutions. Things are going to change in a big way in a couple of years. Not just in writing and digital artwork, but all the stock photo sites, all the stock music or video sites, a whole bunch of stuff. So we're at the very beginning of a really large shift. The controversy was because self publishing is a really small community. And we like to support cover designers, there's only 10, or 20 really good cover designers that a lot of people use because they're sort of the best in the industry. And all of the cover designers are very, very against the idea of AI art, because it makes it more difficult for them to sell their services, because now there's an alternative. So it's right to be questioning the sources. And it makes authors feel a little bit bad. I've had a lot of people tell me, you know, they love AI art and love the images, but they can't support it because they want to support their cover designers. And that's a nice feeling. It's a nice idea. But I think authors have sort of been trained, that we have to support each other. Like we're all the underdogs, and cover designers and Self Publishers, we're all fighting against the big traditional industry. So we have to support each other. Creative blue robots in front of a bookshelf, created by Joanna Penn with DALL-E 2 But I always feel for creative people, you have to be providing value. If you're not providing value that people want at a price they can afford, that's kind of on you. As a cover designer, I wouldn't want someone to hire me out of pity or to support me, I want them to get the best work however they can get it. Joanna Penn Kevin Kelly says ‘don't race against the robots, the future is going to be basically working with the robots,' and belongs to those people who can learn to use the tools. And I read a lot of books about this stuff. What they talk about is that people who don't learn the new tools will be displaced by those who learned to use them and learn to drive them. So I think you're more likely to be hired as a book cover designer, because most people will not spend hours learning how to prompt things. And I don't believe that ever will be an easy button. There might be a button that says generate book cover. But as you say, it's not just about that you have to do the iterations, you have to have a design principle in your head. And I feel like that is something that most people won't do. So I could format my own print books, but I don't, I choose a book formatter/designer, because I don't want to spend my time doing that. There are lots of people who are going to say look, I want to hire a book cover designer, and if they generate images with Midjourney or whatever, I'm fine with that. So I would say to people look, even if there is an easy button, people won't use it. We're moving into this ever more abundant phase of art and music and words. And so we have to come back to the curation, the personal branding, the artistic direction, and almost build our products and everything around that. Because otherwise in a world of abundance, it's very hard to find anything, so curation becomes more and more important right? Derek MurphyNow, I totally agree. And you're right that most people aren't going to do it. I always feel like you know, this is awesome. Everybody should do it. But the majority of writers, they haven't heard of AI, they're not interested. They're going to probably hire a cover designer, regardless because they just don't want to do it themselves. I think that's always going to be the case for the majority of authors, which means the authors who do self publish and do use AI are, if they're able to put up something that looks amazing and looks different. All of my book cover so far have been pretty, pretty on genre. They do what they're supposed to do, but they're not over the top amazing. I might experiment with doing some that are a little more creative, just because I sent out more, which is not something you can do on the low end, but you can do on the high end. Joanna PennAbsolutely. Exciting times ahead. So you're sharing your experiments on your blog. Is that something you're going to keep doing? Midjourney art by Derek Murphy Derek MurphyYeah, I haven't decided I almost want to make just like a dump file, because I have 1000s of pictures now. I started posting fantasy pictures. It's also good for SEO. So I can put pictures of mermaids or pictures of vampires, and show up in Google search results or get a lot of traffic for people looking for images. But I really just have to finish my books, which are the main thing that I want to be doing. Joanna PennAbsolutely. So tell us a bit more about what you have in terms of books and courses. Where people can find you and everything you do online? Derek MurphySo my main website is Creativindie.com, I've got a free book on Amazon, Book marketing is dead, and several more about publishing and book marketing. More recently, I've been focused on writing so I have books about the craft of writing and some pretty long video series about writing. I'm on YouTube, I think I have 3 million views on YouTube as well. So I have tons of free content that'll last a long time. And then I also have a limited number of spots for coaching or editing book cover design, that kind of stuff. Joanna PennBrilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time. Derek. That was great. Thanks. The post Using AI For Art, Images, And Book Covers With Derek Murphy first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can we accept imperfection as writers while still striving for excellence? How can we make space for going deeper into our writing while managing a busy life? Beth Kempton talks about The Way of the Fearless Writer in this wide-ranging interview on the creative mindset. In the intro, when life throws a curveball and writing in the midst of chaos, Useful tutorials for writers including Scrivener, Rule of the Robots by Martin Ford, Moonshots and Mindsets; and AI narrated audio on KWL. 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 Beth Kempton is a Japanologist and the author of multiple non-fiction books including Freedom Seeker, Wabi Sabi, and her latest book, The Way of the Fearless Writer. She also runs multiple creative businesses, and is a podcaster, speaker, course creator, and also co-hosts retreats. 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 Beth's disillusionment with the corporate world led to her business, starting with courses, and the books emerged from thatIntegrating a passion for all things Japanese with creativity and businessHow the concept of wabi-sabi can help writers with an acceptance and appreciation of the impermanent, imperfect, and incomplete nature of everythingEmbracing the imperfection of being human, not a machine — and how we can apply that to our writing and our booksWriting fearlessly, tapping into flow, and keep a part of your writing practice sacredBalancing time between books, business, creativity, and family — and how Beth utilizes planning and seasonalityThe importance of saying ‘no' You can find Beth at BethKempton.com, on Instagram @BethKempton, and her courses at DoWhatYouLoveForLife.com. Transcript of the interview Joanna: Beth Kempton is a Japanologist, and the author of multiple nonfiction books, including ‘Freedom Seeker,' ‘Wabi Sabi,' and her latest book, ‘The Way of the Fearless Writer.' She also runs multiple creative businesses and is a podcaster, speaker, course creator, and also co-hosts retreats. So welcome, Beth. Beth: Thank you so much. What a joy to be here, Joanna. Thanks for having me. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you today. So, first off, Tell us a bit more about how you became a writer and a creative entrepreneur, and also how your experiences in Japan impact your books and business now. Beth: It's so funny hearing you do the intro. I feel quite exhausted listening to all those things I do. And I think it's really important to say I don't do them all at the same time. I've had my own business for 12 years now, and I do a retreat every couple of years, whatever, you know, over that time. I've not done that many, and I spread things out. I've done five books in five years, and that has taken a huge amount of time and attention, as you know. And I think I feel quite fortunate that we started our business 12 years ago with online courses, really, before many people were doing online courses. Especially in the kind of self-help and personal development arena, there was hardly anything around, especially on this side of the pond. And so it's been amazing to have that foundation already built. And then the books have kind of come out of that, rather than writing a book and having to then do all the stuff after that. But I just wanted to say that I think it can be quite intimidating to hear that stuff. And, you know, I've got two children at home and do run three businesses, but it's the day-to-day is slow progress, even when you look back on it, and it feels like quite a lot. So, I'm grateful, absolutely, for… Joanna: I completely get that. Beth: …for doing it this way. Joanna: This podcast has been going since 2009. Beth: It's amazing. And I think for people who are just coming into the arena can feel like there's so much catching up to do. And there isn't at all, because, actually, I was probably the same for you when you started your podcast. The technology was so different, and so, like, clunky, and difficult, and expensive. And so even if you don't have that particular foundation, it's a lot quicker to start doing new things, I think. So, I'll answer your question now. Joanna: That was a great way to start, as well. Because you're right, starting now. If you were starting now, you might start on TikTok, for example. And personally, I'm not going anywhere near TikTok. So, it depends when you start. But yes, tell us more about Japan. Beth: Yes, sure. So, I did Japanese at university, not because I was a linguist. I was the opposite of a linguist. But because I had a massive ‘aha' moment when I was 17, it made me ditch all my convictions that I should be an accountant, and in the space of a few weeks had to figure out something else to do that would allow me to go on an adventure. And I decided that learning a language would be a good idea and…except the universities in the UK at the time wouldn't let you study a language at university if you had not done it at A-Level. So, I ended up looking at the ones I could do, which kind of got narrowed down to Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, and Russian. I did eeny, meeny, miny, mo. And it's so weird to think of that now. Because Japan always…even though it's so different to the England or the UK that I grew up in, it always felt completely familiar in a way I can't really explain. And so I can't imagine the eeny, meeny, miny, mo would ever have worked out anyway, apart from landing on Japanese because it's always just felt like such a natural fit for me. After university, I went and lived and worked in Japan and then came back into a Master's in Japanese. And then, actually, my career took me into the corporate world with some connections to Japan, but much more on the corporate side, and it's actually in the world of international sport. I got disillusioned with the corporate world, as many people do, and that's what led to me setting up my company: Do What You Love. I really wanted to have much more direct contact with people to help them figure out ways to make the most of their precious life and to do what they love. And, actually, in the first few years, it was really difficult to find a way to weave my Japanese experience, and knowledge, and everything into my work. It felt like it was being forced. The first online course we did was called Do What You Love, and it shows that you can make an online course out of anything. My friends always said to me, ‘You seem so jammy. I've had some incredible adventures, and most of them, I haven't paid for. And I don't mean that people have just given me free holidays, but as in just serendipity has happened, and I've ended up trading my time for amazing experiences or being somewhere when something crazy has happened because I just said yes to something. And my friends kept telling me, like, that's not normal. You know, everyone who's coming out of university going straight into these fast-track management programs. That's not how they're living their life, and it's really interesting. And you should probably tell people about it. That very much became the beginning of the company. And I built all these courses to help people just make the most of this precious life, which has been a thread through all of my work, including all my books. I wrote my first book six years into the business, after basically having a bit of a meltdown myself. Ironically, the business was doing so well that I was…and I had business partners, and I just ended up following the money, I guess. It was working really well, so we said ‘Let's do more of the things that are working,' without stopping to think, hang on a minute, Am I doing what I love? And I had one toddler and a baby. No, not a baby. I was pregnant. And one day, it just got too much for me, and I just like collapsed on my bedroom floor, and I just had these visions of this person I used to be, which wasn't anywhere near the person I was at that moment. And so it became a really big question about feeling free. And I thought, maybe this is a big enough question to be a book, and that led to me writing ‘Freedom Seeker.' Which wasn't easy, but I think taught me how to write a book. And then my second book became the opportunity to bring my Japanese experience into these ideas about how do we live well. And all that influence I'd…some of it by osmosis, and some of it by very, very hard to study. Joanna: I love what you've told us so far about your sort of career trajectory. So it's not a trajectory. It's kind of these sort of weaving shapes, and you've had ups and downs, obviously, and you talked about a meltdown there. But also, you mentioned the word jammy, which people don't know English. So British English, sort of lucky. You're someone who's a bit lucky, a bit jammy, ‘oh, you jammy thing.' But yeah, it's really interesting how you leaned into your passion, but also took opportunities as they arose. Before we get into ‘The Fearless Writer,' I wanted to ask about the ‘Wabi Sabi' book because I love this idea. What is wabi-sabi, and how can that attitude help writers and online entrepreneurs, creative entrepreneurs? Beth: Well, wabi-sabi is a beautiful phrase in the Japanese language that isn't in the Japanese dictionary, even though every Japanese person I've ever spoken to intuitively knows what it is. I can't think of a word in English that is the same: that we all know it, and it's really important in our life, but it's not in the dictionary. It's not slang. And so that made me very curious, and also incredibly wary about writing a book about this, essentially defining a term in someone else's language that doesn't have its own definition in that language. And so I hesitate to give one specific definition, but I would say that the definition that we've been using in the West, which is really as an adjective to describe a particular look of objects. Wabi-sabi was named a global design trend for things that are kind of natural, organic, warm-looking. But the fact that it was named this global design trend shows how little the people using it understood what it meant, and that, actually, it has a very deep meaning and lessons for us all. And so after all of my many, many conversations and explorations into it, I came to see it as meaning three things, really. It is an intuitive response to beauty, the kind of beauty that reminds us of the true nature of things, which is why people, I think, have made this connection and use it as an adjective, even though Japanese people don't use it as an adjective. A worn, old farmhouse table that people have had conversations over for 40 years, and that elbows have rubbed it and all that stuff, that's really telling us about how things change in time, that that kind of beauty is in it. It's not perfect and shiny, but there's a real beauty in that piece. So that's really the kind of beauty that it refers to. It's also an acceptance and appreciation of the impermanent, imperfect, and incomplete nature of everything. And when we properly think about that, and take it on board, it's just such a relief. Because the word perfect means something is finished. Right? But nothing is ever finished. Impermanence is a fundamental kind of rule of nature. Everything is transient, everything is changing all the time. And so nothing can be perfect, because nothing is ever completely finished, and that includes us. We're works in progress. So it's crazy that we should aim for perfection and let this complete obsession with perfection get in the way of us putting our creative work out in the world because it's never finished. That acceptance of imperfection is a huge part of any writer's journey, I think. And just to finish off answering the question, that the third kind of definition is that it's a reminder of the gifts of a simple, slow, and natural way of living, which I think is actually a really lovely approach to creativity, as well. You know, we make it really complicated sometimes when we think we have to have all these apps, and things, and perfectly organized rooms. And I don't know what, but we make it complicated when it's really just breathe, write, repeat. Joanna: Well, that's interesting. I think why this resonated with me. As we record this, I've come back from a pilgrimage, stepping away from the business. And I've had quite a lot of emails from people almost asking for permission to do the same thing in the same way that I have asked ‘permission' from other creatives, permission in inverted commas, you know. We feel like we have to just keep on going. But you mentioned there, that worn old table in a farmhouse, and then imperfection. And I also am very interested in AI technology, and robotics, and all this stuff. But we're not the Terminator. You can't go on every day, every day. And every day you must write, you must meditate, you must look after your children, you must do your exercise. That isn't us. We have to embrace the imperfection of being a human, not a machine. And like you said, you lay down on the floor that day, having a meltdown. But in a way, that's just your response to doing too much. And I feel like this idea of wabi-sabi in that imperfection being beautiful is something that's so important, but how do you balance that, as someone who puts out a finished product of a book? Beth: Oh, I have a story to tell you about that. But this idea of us as ever-changing creative creatures, ourselves, as well, I think it's really important to allow ourselves to be different versions in a day, in a year. I mean, my work is incredibly seasonal in terms of when I write and things. My emotions are different when it's a dark, wet winter, versus when it's bright, shiny, sunshine outside, and all of that. And also, as we age, what is important to us when we're 20 might be different to what's important or interesting to us as a writer when we're 50 or 80. And I think that's really interesting to pay attention to and not fixate on, I'm this kind of creative person, and I write these kinds of things. And that, again, flies in the face of, you have to be known for something, you have to do, you have to be consistent and deliver what people expect, and I think that's a load of rubbish myself. Joanna: I think if you do that, you burn out in your genre, and also the reader knows. Beth: Yes, and you stop being interested in it, you know, which is… Joanna: It becomes just another job. Beth: Exactly, exactly. But to come back to the perfection in the books, I'm incredibly lucky that my publisher do such a beautiful job with them. I mean, this recent one, ‘The Way of the Fearless Writer,' it's got sun on it with a reflection on water, and it's just utterly gorgeous. And they're incredibly professional. It goes through a lot of people checking different things. Ultimately, I 100% take responsibility for what is on the inside of the book. Obviously, I'm consulted on the cover, but the outside of the book is really the publisher's responsibility. But with this particular book, just a week ago, Oh my goodness. I realized that one of the Japanese characters in the book is wrong. There's two sentences back to back where the character in the first sentence has been repeated in the second sentence instead of the correct character being given. And I had that awful knot in my stomach when I realized it. It's like, oh, my goodness, this is just awful. I'm not teaching people Japanese at all, and this book is about helping people to write. But I want to give people correct information. And then, obviously, if they are interested in a particular area of what I'm talking about, they can dive deeper into that area. But I don't wanna give people wrong information. Right? And it's only one word out of 50,000 words. But that's when I practiced the teachings from wabi-sabi. And I absolutely did that then, and I do it all the time. And it's acceptance, it's alignment with the truth of the present moment. Right? So what is true about this moment? Okay, there is an error in this printed book. Who knows how many thousands of copies of this book are already printed? Because it's coming out in a few days' time from when I discovered the error in the distribution system. That's a fact. Okay. What can I do about it? So, obviously, I let my editor know. Joanna: Well, you know, this is a special edition! It's like, if you get one, you're lucky, Beth: Yeah, you better rush out and get one. Because I'll tell you what, that print run is going to be done soon, and then the next one's not going to be wrong. Exactly. But it's so interesting because it was like, wait, what do I need to do? I need to let my editor know and apologize. And I read that finished manuscript, I don't know, 20 times. I paid three individual experts to read it, two of which are Japanese, and one is a Japanese professional translator. They did a brilliant job, and I don't know how it slipped through all of our nets. So, I think it's important for us to take responsibility, but also, I'm like, it just happened. And I actually have a page on my website of errors in my books, because there's a typo in nearly all of them. It's almost like this is a reminder of imperfection. It's fine, you did your absolute best, and stuff happens. Nobody died. Do better next time if you can, or perhaps you won't. Because one typo in every book is really…For someone who wrote a book on wabi-sabi is actually a lovely reminder, if you can get over the pain of it and crack on. Joanna: And I can't believe there's just one. All of us have at least one. Joanna: Let's get into ‘The Way of the Fearless Writer', because I think it's a really daunting title, and I feel like fear is such a part of the writing life. What fears have you had to face around writing? And what does fearless mean in this creative context? Beth: Fearless writing, or writing fearlessly, is having the willingness and ability to choose your writing path and write as your authentic self. So there's a whole load of fears connected to speaking your truth in the world, for sure. But I think what happens is… in many, many cases, is that we tend to bring all of our fears to the writing desk. And I don't have a recollection of a single time that I've been writing and thinking about how my writing is going to be received in the world, or what I want to happen to it in terms of sales, whatever, have ever helped me. Not once. So, for me, a big part of this process of becoming a fearless writer is learning to separate which kinds of writing are just for you. And it doesn't mean they'll never get shared. But the point of writing, well, it's not for anyone else's eyes. And what kind of writing is eventually intended for somebody else's eyes? And that immediately shuts a huge amount of fears outside the door. There's no place for them, because this is just for me. I'm just writing. I'm either writing the junk that's in my head onto the piece of paper, or I'm in a space of deep writing, where I feel like I'm kind of being written, and that's all just spilling onto the page. You can feel incredibly vulnerable because what you write can be very raw, it can be incredibly beautiful, and you don't understand where it came from. It can be very wise. And if you've never written like that before, it's a very strange experience. But that's where all the gold is. But the thing is, flow in the writing isn't the same as flow in the reading. There's a whole load of work to be done afterwards to get it ready for the outside world. If you're editing between brain and page when you're trying to get the juice that's deep inside you onto the page, nothing's coming out. You're not going to have any problem with anyone criticizing your work because it's not going to get out in the world. So I think, first of all, really understanding what your fears are and where they arise, and being able to separate them out and keep them at a distance from your sacred writing space is a huge thing to do. And I can genuinely say that I have almost no fear in terms of writing words onto the page, just the writing of words on the page. Any fear that I have, and I think I will have for the rest of my life because it's part of what it is to put your creative work out in the world as human being, is to do with when it's shared with other people. And there are definitely strategies to help you with that, and I've put lots of them in the book, but that's where all of my fear lies. I write nonfiction, so I don't know how well this would work for fiction. Maybe I'll try it one day and come back and tell you. But certainly, for nonfiction, I actually write my manuscript in tiny pieces, and it's almost put together more like a jigsaw at the end. So I don't have a draft, what somebody would call a first draft until incredibly late in the process, way after maybe a month, six weeks before it gets submitted to the publisher. And I've actually done quite a lot of work shaping smaller pieces before, and then I put them all together, and then fiddle with that. And so until that point, I'm not really thinking much about what's gonna happen to it when it's out in the world. But I don't want to give the impression that commercial success doesn't make any difference to a writer. If you want to make it your full-time job, then it might make a difference. But even so, as a professional writer, as in somebody who gets paid…obviously, an author, someone who gets paid to write books, it's been absolutely essential to be able to learn how to do that. And I didn't with ‘Freedom Seeker,' and it was so hard. But it makes a huge difference when you can do that. Joanna: It's interesting. It sounds like you're a discovery writer, which I am, too, which is, I don't necessarily know what I'm going to write before I sit down and write. Beth: Absolutely. And I know lots of people say they do know. But I would encourage those people to try not knowing because I don't think that we can…I think to assume that we know the best version of what we could write is almost…I don't want to say arrogant, but I know that what comes out when I try not to control it is way better than if I sat here and tried to make my sentence into the thing in my head. Joanna: I think there are very different types of books, and different types of processes, and different personalities. But I'm interested in how you talk about flow there. You also mentioned your words being written as if they were kind of going through you. What's your creative process? Are there things that you do to get into a state where you can enter that creativity? Beth: Absolutely. And I do go into this in a lot of detail in ‘The Way of the Fearless Writer,' the kind of deeper state of writing, which I call ‘liquid state writing.' That's the only kind of writing where it feels like I'm being written, I'm really not in control of it in terms of, as soon as I'm aware that I'm doing it, I'm not doing it anymore. It's quite like meditation, to be honest. You enter that kind of writing. And I believe anyone can do this. I don't think it has anything to do with personality or anything like that. I think it's about creating a mindset that you can have a sacred writing space. And that doesn't mean a physical space, necessarily, but a quiet place where you metaphorically will actually shut the door on the outside world and all the noise, and you enter this space. And how you enter that space will depend on what you like. But, for example, you can use some simple breathing. I mean, literally just in, out slowly, deeply. I don't mean a complicated breathing technique, just breathing slowly and deeply to center yourself and bring yourself into that writing experience. You might like to light a candle. Because the lovely thing about a candle is that you open the experience with the candle. And then when you blow out that candle, you're rounding off the ritual at the end., so it feels like a lovely circular thing. And then I often use a spark, like, a kind of catalyst for the writing, which gives you a very, very loose direction. But essentially, it's not to control what you're writing, it's to take you away from getting stuck in what's in your head. So if you only do journaling, and you only spill what you can see in your head, like all the things you're worried about, or the things that you're ruminating about, if you only journal and put those on the page, you can get stuck in a cycle of only ever talking about that. But if you have a beautiful ritual like this, and then your spark is something like a poem written by somebody else, or a question, or a beautiful paragraph from a nature book, or anything at all, and then you just read it to yourself out loud all just on the page, and then you start to write. And it's incredible what comes out. Sometimes you don't even have to have a spark. You could just write. I often do this. I very often get up at 5:00. Well, I'm at my desk at 5:00 in the morning because I have two little children. And it's such a gorgeous time of day. I make a really big effort to not have strong sensory stimulus between getting out of bed and getting to my desk. I go downstairs in the dark, and have very low lighting, make my tea, have a stretch, and then go to my writing desk without absolutely not checking email or my phone or even putting on music, to be honest, and just trying to keep myself as close as possible to that special state of kind of just waking up. And then if you have a ritual at that time, it…I mean, it doesn't mean that you have to do it at five o'clock in the morning, you can do whenever you like. But I think part of that for me is because I've been doing it for such a long time. But in that period of quiet and darkness, I think can really help, as well. It's amazing what comes out. So, I would really encourage people to try it, but also to round off that ritual, to blow out the candle, or repeat the breathing that you did at the beginning, whatever, and then open the door and go back into your life, knowing that you've had this time for your writing, whether it's 10 minutes, or two hours, or whatever it is, and just develop it as a practice without feeling all the time like, I've got to write a book, or I haven't published a blog post in ages, or I need to do XYZ. I mean, just enjoy it, and I promise that over time, there will be gems in what you come up with. And you'll fall in love with it, if you've fallen out of love with it. Joanna: I think it's so important. And it reminds me actually of Steven Pressfield in ‘The War of Art' where he talks about his prayer to the muse. I have a painting on my wall. It's very small, and it is my muse that I have here next to me. Even if people…if you don't have a specific part of your house, you can go somewhere else, or just anything to make that writing time more special. You're honoring a creative part of yourself in a special way that separates it from the job of being a writer. And you have the businesses and everything, but I like that you've created almost, like, just a separation between the creativity and then the job. Beth: It's so true. I don't light a candle before I send an email to my editor. Joanna: Well, I didn't like a candle before talking to you. Sorry, Beth! Beth: I did light a candle before talking to you. But yeah, it's totally…it's so true. And I think one of the things to talk about in the book is the idea of desirelessness and not having a fixed idea or attachment to a particular result, and that both meet that. Both what a piece of writing will become. And I really struggled with that with my first book. I wanted it to be a massive bestseller, and I wanted it to be the perfect book and all of this. And it turned out to be, I think, a much better book than the one I had in my head, but I had to surrender any of those notions before I actually managed to write anything. But also having any fixed idea of what success is gonna look like specifically. And that doesn't mean it's not valuable to visualize seeing your book in a bookshop, because that can help it feel more real. But what I'm talking about is saying, if it's not a ‘Sunday Times' top 10 bestseller, it's a failure, and it is that specific kind of… That's the only metric that's going to make me think it's worth something. Letting go of that for the writing part of the job absolutely does not mean not being strategic and savvy in the business part of the job. So, I absolutely have a plan, and I absolutely build my network and my community and do everything I can to get the word out without being attached to a particular way that that is going to unfold, or what success for that book is going to look like. For me, the success of that book has already happened. I got to spend four months of my life exploring a really interesting question, walking up and down the river, having coffee, talking to interesting people, learning more about the things I love. So it's already successful to me. And I got paid to write it, which is a bonus, you know. But in my business, I'm incredibly strategic. That's my job. And so you can be both things, but I think what's really important to do is to not connect the writing, the sacred writing process, with the outcomes in the material world. It makes a huge difference. Joanna: Absolutely. And there's so much in your books. And as I told you, I got a review copy, but I've also ordered several in hardback because I find them really valuable for reminding me about what I already know. So much of this stuff is reminding ourselves of what we already know and coming back to things. So that really helped me. But before we run out of time, I do want to ask you about the business side. You mentioned you have three businesses, obviously, you've got do what you love, and you've got other things. You produce all this content, you have a family, and you sound like a multi-passionate creative, which I am, too. You know, can't just do one thing. How do you balance your time, and also almost switch heads between your creative and business work? Like, to me, that sacred creative space is a different head. The person who's talking to you now, this is like a different head to my J.F. Penn fiction writer head, for example. So, how do you balance your time and switch between all these different facets? Beth: Well, I think the most important thing is, I talk a lot to my family about it. And so we very much kind of approach it like a team, like we're all building something together, including our children. And so they're being quiet, or doing a drawing while I'm doing an interview or something. They understand that's connected to what we're trying to make. And my husband's actually my partner in the business. So, that helps, as well, for sure. But I think communication is a huge thing. And then in terms of the actual time, on an annual basis, it's very seasonal for me. I've got into a lovely rhythm of winter, so January to April, so kind of winter to very early spring is when I write my books. I tend to have about six months to write a book. And I usually get a pitch in autumn, and then I get the deal in kind of late November, December. And then January to April, it's written. And then, like, my next deadline is May the First. And during that time, the two businesses that are not my main business. They have teams, it's like staffed fully. Those teams are brilliant, and they know I only email on Wednesdays. So if they need something from me, it needs to be in my inbox by Wednesday morning. And if it's not clear, they can't come back to me on Thursday, or they have to wait until the next Wednesday, or figure it out themselves. And it's actually been amazing for the teams. Everyone's completely stepped up, and it's only worked because I really stuck to it. Like, if I started emailing on Friday, then it's just confusing for everyone. And so for that time, it works. And both my business partners have written books, as well. So that helps because they understand. And I couldn't do that all year round and run my businesses, for sure. But I think it's because it's such a concentrated period of time, it's easy to explain. And then spring and summer, it's a very different energy, and I'm very connected with my community. And I teach a lot, and I'm very involved in the business. And we do all our annual planning for the businesses in the summer. So we plan January to December the following year in the summer, and we have our biggest sales of the year for all the businesses in November. So we need to know everything we're going to be selling the following year in order to have it in the sale in November. So that means the teams can then use from summer up to November to get ready for the big sales, that kind of thing. So, spring and summer, I'm doing all that and planning the promotion for my books, which then tend to come out in October. And then I tend to do podcasting from October to December, and then close the door, get my cup of tea, and go back to the writing desk. So that's the kind of year. And then on a like day-to-day basis, between May and December, when I am doing both, I'm actually more likely to have the five o'clock in the morning start. Because January or April, I might be writing eight hours in a row. So not necessarily doing the super early start sometimes, but it's dark, you know. Very dark, and, cold and wet. So, I could do the same at 6:30, and it still look the same. During the week, I do definitely block out chunks of time. I'm quite good at not flitting from one thing to another. Anytime I feel overwhelmed, it's because I've stopped doing one thing at a time. My husband literally put on a post-it on my computer the other day, like, one thing at a time. And I plan ahead a lot. So, the launch for this book was October launch. You know, I was making content for that in June. So, it's all very…So it doesn't feel like a big rush. And that's come from hard experience, for sure. We always try and encourage all of our staff to not overwork, and to stick to their job description, and not do more than they need to. And if something's not working, then to tell us about it rather than just do loads of work. Because, obviously, it didn't work out well for me when I ignored that. And so I think we have a good balance. I say no to an awful lot of things. So from January to April, I do almost no media interviews, because my personality is that that takes up a huge amount of psychic space. I'd much rather someone sent me an email and gave me three days to reply to them, and I could just write it, you know. Like a live big interview or something, or a big event speaking on a stage, I can do it, but it just takes me a lot of headspace to prepare for it because I want to do a good job. And that's the control freak in me who I've been working very hard to shift to the side. So I think being aware of that is really important. For some people, there's nothing they love more than talking to someone, and wouldn't bat an eyelid to just jump straight on a podcast, and so that's not a consideration for them. But I think I understand myself quite well in terms of how I work and try and play to that, rather than force something. As a writer, I think it's really important, as well, to talk about that. As a writer, there is so many ways to get your words out in the world. If there's a particular kind of media that makes you so terrified, you can't get out from under your desk, and you lose like three weeks to anxiety, then just don't do it. Like, nobody says you have to do a podcast interview or whatever. You are right if you want…If all you ever want to do is write about your words and never speak about them, that is possible. And I think it comes back to that permission thing, doesn't it? It's good to push yourself because they're all great opportunities. But if it's damaging to you, it's also okay to not do it. Joanna: Fantastic. And in fact, the gate of formlessness, this part of the book is this aspect of water and creativity, which you talked a bit about liquid writing. But I guess with water, it finds its own level. And you can try and box it in, but you're going to get leaks. And I say that because we've got a leak in our bathroom right now! Beth: Water on the brain. Joanna: Yeah, but I respect that you have found ways to say no and that you've learned what works for you. Again, I feel like these are things I know about myself, but I keep having to remind myself. Like speaking, as well, like you said, I really struggle to be in crowds, basically. So big events. And I recently decided not to go to an event in Las Vegas, because I just can't deal with it. It's just exhausting, and then I get sick. So we have to learn to say no. And like it sounds like you've been able to do that really well. Did you always have that, or did you learn that over the time you've been running your own business? Beth: Oh, no, I definitely didn't know it. Definitely. I've learned from going all sorts of wrong. And also, I think because I was a lot more confident when I was young in terms of talking on stage and things like that, I…just didn't bother me. And then the older I've got, the more I have to…I don't know, I just overthink it, maybe. But I think it's so interesting to hear you say that. Because when I think of you, I think of someone who does an awful lot of events. And one thing that we often don't do, I think in the same way that a freelancer might have an hourly rate for something that they produce but don't take into consideration the, you know, prep time, or the whatever time, or somebody who goes to work in office doesn't take into account the value of the time it takes them to get there, whatever, we often undercut our own value, just thinking about the time on the job. And I think when it comes to doing things like speaking if it's not completely natural and utter joy for you, and it doesn't give you energy, which, obviously, certain personality types. If it drains your energy, then that recovery time needs to be built into how many days you're giving to this job. And is it worth it? Like, what is the opportunity cost of that? If it takes you two weeks to recover, and you could have been writing in that time. Maybe it is because it is a one-off unbelievable event, but maybe it's not. And I think the older I get, the more I realized that we get to choose. Surely, if you're running your own business, one of the reasons is probably because you want to be able to choose, and there isn't somebody who's sat around the corner waiting for you to come around, and they're going to go, ‘Oh, you don't have to do that.' You have to give that permission to yourself. Joanna: Absolutely. Now, I feel like we could talk about this forever, but we are out of time. Where can people find your books and everything you do online? Beth: Thanks, Joanna. ‘The Way of the Fearless Writer' is my new book, and I'm just about to launch ‘The Fearless Writer' podcast, which will run weekly until Christmas with a writing exercise in it. So, please do come and listen to that. It will be on iTunes and Spotify from October the 11th, maybe after this is already out. It might already be out there, you can go and listen. I'm on Instagram @BethKempton, and all my courses are at DoWhatYouLoveForLife.com Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Beth. That was great Beth: Thank you. And thank you for your generosity, Joanna. You're a shining light. I know you've helped so many people. What a pleasure to be here. Thank you. Joanna: Thank you.The post The Way Of The Fearless Writer With Beth Kempton first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Traditional publishing is not a monolithic thing. There are different kinds of publishers, and authors want different things out of a publishing deal and relationship. Georgina Cross talks about her experience with two different traditional publishers and the pros and cons of each. In the intro, new e-reading devices, Kobo Clara 2E and Kindle Scribe; Findaway Voices now allows you to do audiobook promotional pricing for Spotify (as well as Chirp, Apple, B&N Audio); YouTube Learning; Change in Google Search [Search Engine Journal]; Writing Career Toolkit ebook Bundle (limited time); Stepping back to step forward with me and Orna Ross [Ask ALLi Podcast]. Plus all the pictures from my Camino de Santiago Portuguese Coastal pilgrimage, and last chance to do my survey before 7 Oct, 2022 — TheCreativePenn.com/survey22 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 Georgina Cross is the best-selling author of five suspense thriller novels with Bantam, Penguin Random House and Bookouture, Hachette Publishing. 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 Making the decision to pursue traditional publishing — and the patience needed along the way The need for validation The pros and cons of an agile, fast-moving publisher vs a bigger imprint at a larger publishing How much marketing does a traditional publisher do for you? Tips for getting a traditional publishing deal How the money works with a traditional deal What do you want — and what are you willing to give up for that? Aspects of control. You can find Georgina Cross at Georgina-Cross-Author.com and on Twitter @GCrossAuthor Transcript of Interview with Georgina Cross Joanna: Georgina Cross is the best-selling author of five suspense thriller novels with Bantam, Penguin Random House and Bookouture, Hachette Publishing. Welcome to the show, Georgina. Georgina: Thank you so much for having me. Joanna: It's going to be interesting to talk to you today. Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. Georgina: Like a lot of authors that you've interviewed, I always wanted to be a writer as a child, and I was that kid with the desk in her bedroom, who would sit there and write books, even if it was just on notebook paper. My very first book was ‘Me and My Alien Friend.' It was a masterpiece. I was the illustrator as well. All through high school, and I've heard other people we've interviewed say the same thing. It was a career path that wasn't guaranteed. I didn't know if I could even publish a book, whether I could even make a career or a living off of that. And so, going to college, I thought, okay, I'll at least get the degree, broadcast journalism is writing, sort of. It's really not. It's shorter sentences, fragments, four-second promos, 30-second other bits and pieces. To me, it just wasn't satisfying. But a few years back, I thought, okay, it's time to double down. The kids are a little bit older now, and I can at least try to make a go of this. The goal was, before aged 40, I wanted to get published. And I missed my goal. It took me until age 41. But that's okay. I didn't want to give up. And so, here I am, several books, several years later. Joanna: If your goal was to get published by 40, when did you start writing seriously for publication? Georgina: About four years before that. When I rolled out of TV news, like a lot of us do, we go into marketing communications. In Huntsville, Alabama, which is where I live, we have a lot of aerospace and defense. NASA's here, Redstone Arsenal, lots of military. My husband is former army. And so, a lot of us will land in marketing comms, but it wasn't as creative for me as I wanted it to be. On the weekends, I would write, and I was basically working seven days a week. Still am working seven… I'm like you. I'm a workaholic, just like you. Because we love it, right? We enjoy it. I just thought I've got just to make a go of this. We could talk about this, but it took about four years before my agent was able to finally sell my books. Joanna: Interesting. Okay. Well, you said to me before we started recording that you've been listening to this show for years, and that you listen to my show with Orna Ross on the ‘Ask ALLi Podcast.' You are clearly educated about the indie author business model and all of that side of things. So, why did you decide to go the traditional route? Especially, like you said, it took four years. I don't have any patience. I would have just given up by then. Why did you decide to go into traditional publishing? Georgina: I've always had the entrepreneur mindset. At the age of 21, I started my own non-profit. I have a separate non-profit now called Susie's Wish. I've just admired, especially women in business in particular, I've always admired it. In my jobs, it was something that I cultivated for myself, I've always wanted to learn. And so, I felt as if the more I could learn about the background, the more I could follow people like you, people like Orna Ross, Mark Dawson. I've listened to his podcast for a long time, too. But I went the traditional route because when I first started off, I thought, okay all the books, the blogs you read, it'll suggest getting an agent. And I went that path thinking at least the agent will guide me, to tell me if my books are even good enough, if, what path I could possibly take. Once I connected with my agent, and that was at a conference in Chicago, we did a face-to-face pitchfest. That was it. She said, ‘We will get you published. It'll happen.' It took four years. And you're right. A lot of people could have backed off and just said, ‘I'll self-publish.' I did consider it. Truth be told, I listened to so many of your shows. I've taken notes. I considered it for quite a while. But my agent really thought, ‘We can sell this. We can finally sell this.' I had been writing, like I said, on the weekends, and it was tiring. But what happened was I ended up with two full manuscripts. And that's what she turned around. As soon as those were finished, she was able to turn around and sell those. The first book did not sell, the one that she started pitching it in the beginning. We shelved that, and I think, like you said, why did I wait four years? Working full-time, there's almost a point where you can have the patience a little bit, because that had to be my career. That was at least a guaranteed paycheck. That was what I was using to raise my two sons with, and the writing at that time was bonus. If it happens, it happens. I was able to have patience. Although I will admit that last year, I was approaching 40. So I was missing the goal line. But yeah, it finally did happen. And we went traditional. But that doesn't mean to say I'm not considering one day being hybrid. I admire so many of you that are solely indie. I just want to have all the information that I can have. Joanna: It's interesting. So, you said, before, that you went to look for an agent, to see if my books are good enough. This gets to the heart of why people, I think, a lot of the time do go traditional. It's this need for validation. And this is so core, and it's very difficult. I've had many conversations with indies in the community. What is the equivalent, as an indie? It's book reviews, it's money in the bank. But it almost never is anyone in the commercial world telling you that your books are good enough. So, I think it's really interesting that that's what you said. Do you feel that that's true now, given that you have five books published? Georgina: I think by now, the confidence for me has definitely been bolstered. That first book she didn't sell, if the others hadn't sold, either, there would be a part of me deep down, that's ‘Okay, I'll just stick with the marketing day job. I'll continue to work at aerospace and defense.' I ended up working at the Chamber of Commerce too. And the writing will just be a fun hobby. For a lot of authors who self-pub, the validation, it is, let me get it out there. I want to be my own boss, and I absolutely admire all of that. I think the validation comes with the sales, like you said, with reviews, with people following, people buying the books, and then you keep on going. For me, I was so new to the game. I really didn't know any authors. There aren't many of us here in Huntsville. In fact, actually, then I find out one of the biggest legal thriller authors is my neighbor. He's just down the street. But I had no idea. I needed that confidence boost. I admit to that, very much so, that I needed that outside validation. But I think, knowing now, like you said, with the five books, I do feel as if I could maybe one day publish, especially some of the manuscripts that are lingering on a hard drive somewhere, that maybe I could do this on my own, and see where that takes me. Joanna: Which I love, because you're implying that that's the harder route, going indie and running it all yourself is a harder route. But many people obviously struggle to get into traditional publishing. So I love your attitude there. I think it's brilliant. Let's get into the publishers, because we're going to talk about how different publishers are different. And this is so important, because people will hear, ‘Oh, so and so got this book deal.' They might know a broad thing about it. But generally, you don't necessarily know the imprint. You don't necessarily even know what publisher it is, so people just think all deals are the same type of deals, all publishers are the same. So, tell us about how Bookouture and Bantam are different. First of all, let's start with the acquisition process and speed of publishing. How was it different in that way? Georgina: Something that I would love more people to know, and I think the word is getting out there with Bookouture, you do not need an agent to submit to them. You can submit online. It's quite an easy process. I do have an agent, like we talked about. And Bookouture, as we discussed right before the show, they wanted to start branching out to other countries. This is several years ago. They made a real big push to sign on more U.S. authors. And that's what got my agent's attention. They're an eBook publisher. They're very focused on digital. With them, they want to sign you for a two to three-book deal, which is amazing. I don't know if they ever have signed anybody for a one-book deal. And because they do that, it's the fast turnaround, with them being a digital publisher. When you submit that manuscript, it is six months later that everything is done, published, digital ARCs are sent out. And it's a churn. Then, within the next six months, the other book is published. And if you've got a three-book deal for the year, these authors are constantly writing. So they're fast. They're very quick, very agile, smaller group, based in England. A lot of them are working remote, obviously, with COVID, too. But then with Penguin Random House, they're Penguin Random House. They're enormous. They have a name. But they're slower. That's what happens with any large publishing house. I think traditional, in particular, as a whole, they tend to be slower. They're going to sign you for one-book deal, maybe a two-book deal. But when they announce your publication date, it is a year later, because they have lined up all of their other authors, and their entire marketing plans, and you just have to get in the back of the line. That can be good, in one way, because you do have time to really reflect and dig deep, and write better prose, months and months of structural edits, like three or four versions of it. But Bookouture, they are fast, and they get your book out there, which is really cool for a lot of authors, if that's the kind of pace that you enjoy. Joanna: It's interesting though, because Bookouture was a startup, they were a small company, and then they got bought. Or sold. Sold to Hachette. And Hachette is one of the big five, or what is now the big four or three. [The Bookseller, 2017] You mentioned, though, interesting that PRH is slower, and they have these much longer things. But I would say that's more about the imprint. Because Bookouture is, of course, now an imprint of Hachette. Is it more that Bantam out of PRH is a longer-established traditional brand of imprint? Georgina: Yes, and with Bookouture being sold to Hachette, yes, they are with one of the big publishers now, but they, to me, and to a lot of the authors in the group, they feel still very independent. It still feels like this boutique group. They have their own timelines, and they operate on their own. It's very small senior management. I don't live in England, and most of them are in England, but I feel as if I know most of them. It's very easy to reach out to them. With Penguin Random House I was able to visit the office in New York several weeks ago, I met with my editor, there are so many imprints there. And they're all in these huge offices. And there's Bantam and Ballantine, and Dutton. And you go on and on and on. And so they're all working these different books schedules. I think that's why it takes so much longer. Like I said, we are basically put into a schedule behind everyone else that they have signed maybe one to two years prior. And so you just have to have more of the patience. Bookouture is just agile. They're really agile. And it's been interesting. It's been really interesting to be between two publishers. I don't recommend it for everyone. I don't know a lot of people that would want this pace. Joanna: Why wouldn't you recommend having two publishers at the same time? Georgina: You have two editors. So you have two bosses. You have two different timelines. With Bookouture, I'm signed with them for two-book deals. And I signed again with them for another two-book deal. So, those schedules will overlap on top of my deals with Penguin Random House. It is a wonderful situation for me to be in, particularly after four years of the first book not selling, grinding with the other manuscripts, finally selling the other books. It's a dream come true. But it can be, for some people, I think, an overload. For example, this week, I'm finishing edits for a book for Penguin Random House while also having to proofread the next book with Bookouture. And you do a lot of projects simultaneously, too, but I know that you do a lot of time blocking. These weeks, your non-fiction, these weeks, it's another project. But to get my mind into one story, and then pull it out into a completely different story… And we had to update the contracts, I think it was last year, where basically, Penguin Random House said, very kindly, but the marketing efforts we want to put behind you, we don't want it to compete with the marketing efforts that Bookouture is doing. And that makes sense. So we updated the contracts that, from now on, my Bookouture books cannot be published unless it's four months before Penguin, or four months after. And that gives room for them to do the marketing, for both publishers to push me, and see the results, and not it be intertwined or mixed. Joanna: I wonder how on Earth they can control that. Bantam doesn't control Bookouture. They can do whatever the hell they like, at the end of the day. I guess you'll be in breach of contract, but Bookouture wouldn't be. Georgina: Right. And hence the reason why agents, and I love my agent, she really had to go to bat for me for this, because, understandably so. And like you just said, Bookouture wasn't very pleased. Joanna: I imagine. Georgina: Especially because they want at least two books a year from me. And their other authors, some of them they're signing five-book deals, and these authors are doing really, really well. But I want to stick with the two publishers for now, just until the money's a little more steady. My career is getting to a very nice spot. I'm happy but I don't know when I'll feel completely settled. But for now, I'll stick with the two publishers, and just continue with the working grind, seven days a week. With Bookouture, it was, okay, they said, they suggested, ‘How about with us, you focus on domestic suspense? That's how we've branded you.' And I know you've talked about this before. In fact, the person you interviewed, it came out yesterday, was saying, how yes, publishers will tend to corner us. Joanna: Tess Gerritsen. Yes. Georgina: Yes. So when I heard her say that, I was like, ‘Absolutely. That's what they do.' So, with Bookouture, I'll be domestic suspense focused. They want small neighborhood family drama. Shorter, 75,000, 85,000, 90,000 words. And something that's fun is we agreed to make all of my settings be in the South. That will differentiate my books from other Bookouture authors, especially. A lot of the neighbors and areas around here are really having fun with it, because it's drama and crime, in small Southern towns. But with Penguin Random House, the agreement was, okay, the four-month parameter on either side, longer manuscripts, much bigger settings, and I can go full creepy. I can really push the envelope with them. And I'm allowed to have curse words with them. Joanna: It's so interesting, because both of these things are very prescriptive. Georgina: Yeah. Joanna: We have a lot of discussion in the indie community about writing to market. And that means studying what readers like, and studying the charts and things like that. What you're talking about is essentially writing to the market that the publisher is telling you to write. Georgina: Yes and no. In the beginning, the books that were sold to Bookouture, they were very domestic suspense. When you start off, you don't really understand what you're writing. You just write what you love. And I know that you have so many different ideas. You're always writing what you love. So to me, the idea that it was domestic suspense, I didn't even consider it until yes, they said, ‘By the way, your stuff is domestic suspense. Could you keep going that way? We love it. It's been doing really well.' In the background, I had been writing this other manuscript called ‘Nanny Needed.' Big New York City setting, much creepier, very dark and different from my other stuff. As soon as my agent saw that manuscript, the idea was, we need to pitch this to someone else. In fact, Bookouture turned it down because it didn't fit the domestic suspense that I had been writing. Up until that point, I was writing just what I love and enjoy. And I still feel that I do that way. But because of the parameters set in the contract, you're right, I'm a little bit more prescriptive in my approach, because it's been asked of me, but it also has, if I'm going to continue to be with the two publishers, it has also given me some guidelines, right. In my head, it allows me to write separately, with my editors in mind. Joanna: I guess you've mentioned that Bookouture is, of course, UK-based, but they've moved into the U.S. How has it been for you as a U.S. author to have a team in the UK? And have you felt that your books have reached a U.S. audience as well? Georgina: They're very international. The way I see Bookouture is, the sales that I experience with them tend to be very international, but they've been around for a while, and especially now being under Hachette. Getting European, Asian readership, sales in those areas has been super cool, where with traditional pubs, they will sell out my rights to another country. My books were, especially ‘Nanny Needed,' that was very much focused in the U.S. I could feel that immediately from the get-go. Lots of Facebook advertising, all kinds of Instagram advertising, but it still felt very U.S.-based. That made sense, because then they sold my UK Commonwealth rights to Avon. And so that was very interesting for me, because we'd already launched ‘Nanny Needed.' And then I'm jumping on calls with a publicity team in the UK, with Avon, and they want to do completely different stuff. They'll have a completely different cover. I've been learning this as I go. Once that book came out six months later, it was like launching that book all over again, in a completely different market. But we've sold rights in other countries too. There hasn't been as much of a publicity push. It's just been the word of mouth of bloggers on Instagram. Like, who knew, Poland. I need to visit Poland because… Joanna: Huge market, Poland. Absolutely massive. Georgina: Oh, my goodness. I had no idea. They are just reader lovers. It's been really amazing to see. With Bookouture, they wanted to get more U.S. authors. They've got quite a few of us in the stable now. There are times where I feel we are separate. They had their yearly summer party, and it's in England. And it makes sense. Most of their authors are in England, UK area, along with their staff. So a lot of us in the U.S., unless we can afford it, and then COVID shut down a bunch of things, we're not going to be able to go. So that kind of hurts. But, Bookouture has this lovely authors' lounge on Facebook. And it's been amazing. I've talked to so many authors, and they don't have that with their other publishers. And it's, again, that smaller feeling. Even though there's hundreds of us in there, where we're able to ask questions, and no one from the senior edit team can be a part of that group except for the two publicists. They're pretty good. They'll come in and correct us every once in a while, or let us vent, or ask questions. And they might point us to the right person. But it's been a really cool community. So I feel like even though we're all over the world, we've been able to connect that way. Joanna: Let's talk about marketing then, because one of the reasons many people want to go traditional is that they feel like they don't have to do the marketing that indie authors have to do. What's the marketing been like with each of the publishers? Georgina: It's been a big difference. Penguin Random House has a much larger marketing team. The calls, there are two publicists, the lead, the editor's on there, very much create a marketing plan that's catered specifically to each book, to each author. So you don't see a cookie-cutter approach. We were able to do really fun promo ideas, because with ‘Nanny Needed,' with it being a ‘Nanny Needed' want ad, they were able to have a lot of fun with ads, and pulling it out of the book, and listing the street address. And then there were promos because one of the characters, Chanel No 5 is mentioned a lot. There's a lot of sensory things. There's some ghostly feelings to the book. And they were able to have fun with that. And we ran a bunch of promos. They also hooked up with retailers that I would have never have. I'm sitting in the background, just plunking away at my next manuscript. And they'll tell me, ‘We signed a deal with Brooklinen,' which, you probably don't know in the UK, but they're here in Brooklyn, New York. And they launched a package because my book came out in the fall. It was October timeframe. And it was just a really fun promo package. Their latest bedsheets, a candle, a satin eye mask, and a book to read at night. And it was my book. It's that really fun, creative marketing that I would have never thought to do, or would have been able to afford to do. That's been really exciting to see. Now, with Bookouture, they will organize the blog tour for each author. The promos, we all tend to have the same style of promo. So, it's not catered to each book. We're all very much the same. And it's nice in a way, because I think there could be, well, this person was able to have this opposed to this other person, there would be discrepancy. We're all very much promoted the same way. But the graphics tend to look very similar. It's highly recognizable. If a reader sees it, they know, absolutely, it's a Bookouture book. And they have this insanely loyal group. I didn't realize this, but with their email list, there are people who will only read Bookouture books. Especially because of the price point. That's where Bookouture really hit the mark. We talked briefly before the show, but the gentleman who founded it, he was with a large publisher. He pulled out. He saw the writing on the wall several years ago about eBooks, which is a lot of what you've talked about for years, and the accessibility of the e-readership. But he wanted there to also be the print-on-demand option. And we're seeing that more and more with paperback, that people really do love their eBooks, and that they also will want to have paperback. But he was able to do the math, come up with a really low price point, so when our books come out with Bookouture, these readers will just gobble them up, because they're so much more affordable. And they're reading, also, two or three books a week. Joanna: So, everything you've said so far has been they are doing the marketing. Have you done any marketing? Georgina: I have. But I will admit to you, I probably don't do as much marketing as I should, because I'm writing the next book, and then killing myself to write the next book. The benefit that I've had, being in a smaller town of Alabama, our local outreach is fun in that way, especially because the Bookouture books are based in the South. So we've had a lot of local support, which has been neat. A lot of word-of-mouth book clubs. But no, I have not paid a single dime for an ad. I've considered it. I've thought about it. I haven't done it. I just sat back and watched. But it's been a lot of Instagram lives, and interviews, and those I'll schedule myself. Every once in a while, yeah, the publicists will reach out, which has been helpful. They'll reach out and say, ‘Zibby Owens has a spot. Would you like to be on her show?' It's been pretty cool. Compared to some other author friends of mine, the most I've spent is shipping. I'll run a contest and sign book, and I'll send a book out. Or I'll do a separate blog tour. Here's the other difference, too. Bookouture, they're getting better. But I noticed with my first two books, a lot of the bloggers are, understandably, UK-based, or European-based. Poland, like we just discussed. I've connected with someone here in the U.S. But I shared that list with the publicist, with Bookouture, just because I wanted to be helpful and say, ‘Here are so many bloggers here in the U.S., too.' And so tap into them for future American authors. Joanna: Of course, marketing is not just money. It's time. So, all the time you spent, most traditionally published authors, even Tess Gerritsen, who we mentioned before, talked about how much she has to do, even as a really super famous author. And it's all time-based. It's not money-based. Georgina: Yes. And there's the conundrum, right? She made the comment to you about, I wish that authors could do what they used to do, which was just write. Joanna: That's why I was surprised when you said you weren't really doing anything. Georgina: I met with Clare Mackintosh. You had her on your show a few weeks ago. I love Clare. She and I got to meet at ThrillerFest in New York. I know you've been to the conference before, so that would be super neat if we met face-to-face at a future show. But Clare and I sat down and we talked about it. She is a marketing machine. Joanna: Oh, yeah. Georgina: I've seen other authors that are just constantly whipping out newsletters and contests. But it takes time away from the writing. And I personally haven't been able to do that. Now, when I slow down… I'm hoping to slow down next year. Joanna: Oh, so you're slowing down? Georgina: I need to. My husband's like, ‘I thought you were at least going to take Sundays off?' I haven't. The kids are sleeping, so I might as well get up on Sunday and also write. I would like to start slowing down. Because I think all of us understand that marketing is this necessary part of our work to get the books out there and to let people know to buy them, to read them, to follow us. But unless you have that hook, unless you can create that book that just gets the attention of so many, and sets off on wildfire, a lot of us don't feel satisfied. It'll be interesting, when, if I can slow down and I can start focusing on marketing, we'll see. But next year, I've already told myself, I'm going to take longer to write this next book idea that I have. And that's the one that's going to be with Bantam, Penguin Random House, because I really, I want the time to hit it out of the park. I would like to go back to when authors spent a year or more toiling, because whipping out books like this, it's been great money-wise, but I don't think that my writing is to the bar that it could be. Does that make sense? Joanna: Absolutely. If people were considering going this route, any other positives you might have missed, and what are the biggest negatives, or things to watch out for? Georgina: I don't want to sit here and say everything's always wonderful and perfect. And we already talked about, it is interesting to pick which publisher you want to be with, make sure it's the right fit for you. There have been some negatives along the way. And it's been something that I've had to learn, and author friends of mine who've asked about Bookouture, I've been very straight up and honest. I've got a bullet point list, so, here are all the amazing pros, here are all the amazing cons. Same with Penguin Random House. They could probably supply me with their own pros and cons of being indie, their own pros and cons of being with another publisher, somebody small. But with Bookouture, as much marketing as they do, they don't request blurbs. In fact, they don't do author blurbs. It's very much you on your own, finding authors. In the beginning, I knew no one. I couldn't have sat down with Clare Mackintosh a few weeks ago. I couldn't have done that in the very beginning, four years ago. There's no way. So, that's been tough. And they don't do paperback ARCs, because, again, digital publisher. So it's been NetGalley widgets, which, a lot of readers and authors, they're fine with that. I think they get so many books anyway, they don't mind. But it is nice to have that paperback that we can hand to another author, especially if they're able to post a picture of them holding your book, and saying that they're going to write a blurb. Whereas Penguin Random House is very much, who are the authors that you're wanting? Here's a list of authors we think are comparable. Here are the big authors we're going to hope to get to write a blurb for your book, and they'll take care of all of that. They've also been really, really good about what kind of cover do I want? Because we have such a long timeframe, we can edit and tweak. Bookouture, again, they're super fast. That six-month turnaround, it is bam, bam, bam, and it has to. You gotta hit those milestones. Because not only is it my schedule, it's their editor's schedule, and the line editor, the copy editor, each person, their schedule. There is no wiggle room with the cover. There is no wiggle room with the title. They tell you what the title's going to be. You can tell them you don't like it. And they're like, ‘Look, this is what we think will work, and there is no time to fiddle with it.' And so, that's the cover you get, and you go on with it. That's been a little tough, especially for anybody wanting to be indie. Titles and covers are so special and important. It's taken me a lot to just, I guess, accept when I see the cover, and go, ‘Well…' Even if I had a question, I can't say anything. Luckily, my first two covers, I loved. The third cover, there were little things I would have wanted to change, but they basically say, ‘Trust us. We know this. We've done enough studies. We know what it looks like in the thumbnail.' But it's that control aspect that right now, I think because I'm so inundated with schedules, I am letting some of that stuff go. But as I get more established, it would be super cool, and that's why I listen to you, I listen to Orna, I get Mark Dawson's emails. I would like to, A, I'm interested in what all of you do. I think it's fascinating. I think the more information I can get, the better. But who knows, maybe one day down the line, it would be really interesting to look at my contract and see what I can publish on my own. Maybe get some of my own work out there. Because most people pick up a book or they open up an eBook, they don't know who the publisher is, and they really don't care. They really don't. And if they know Joanna Penn, JF Penn, they're going to buy your book. If they know my name, Georgina Cross, hopefully they'll also pick up my book. Joanna: Absolutely. For any indie authors, or just authors in general, who want to get a traditional publishing deal with whatever publishing house, what are your tips for making it? Georgina: I really do believe that my agent was helpful. And in the beginning, like I've talked about, I really didn't know any better. But my agent having the connections that she had, that was really the entree into some of these bigger publishing houses, where she could personally pick up the phone or email them. And that's how we were able to get with Penguin Random House. I've heard so many authors who do the cold email submission. I applaud that. I did that for a few months in the beginning, too. But it wasn't until I met her face-to-face. I tell that to so many authors. If you do want to get an agent, because of those licensing rights that he or she may be able to obtain for you, it is really helpful, if you can afford it, and get the time away, to go to these conferences and pitch face-to-face. A lot of times you sell yourself along with the book idea. I've joked with Rachel; she wanted to make sure that I was not crazy, just as much as I wanted to make sure that she was someone I could work with. You've heard of these pitch sessions. They're only a few minutes long, but it's long enough for you to get a feel. They need to know, is this someone that can take a lot of criticism? Is this someone who can take a lot of edits? It was super helpful to do that. I was lucky with Rachel. She's at an agency now that, they're fairly big. They're in New York City, they have a film agent in-house. So, last February is when we got the call that, hey, we've got some interested agents for different production companies. We've got actual production companies also calling. We'll keep you in the loop. They took care of all of it. Again, I was so busy writing the next manuscript that I just said, ‘Let me know if it happens. I'm not going to put any hope on it. Just let me know.' My husband took five minutes to research some of these production companies. And we didn't know their names from Adam. We didn't know if they were good or not. We didn't know if anything was going to get signed. Then a month later, we got an email that Netflix had called, and we said, ‘Well, we know Netflix. We recognize that name.' And so they went ahead. They bought the rights to my first book, ‘The Stepdaughter,' and they bought the licensing rights for ‘Nanny Needed.' That was my third book. So, one with Bookouture, and the other book with Penguin Random House. That has been just crazy. It's been amazing. Again, I wouldn't have gotten that on my own. I would have had to find someone. But this came along with my agency, so it was helpful. Joanna: It sounds like you're very happy with your publishing decisions, which is always nice to hear. Georgina: Yeah, I am. I am. But, I would like to one day venture out and to make more money, potentially, with my books. The one thing I consider all the time is, and I'm sure this comes from my aerospace days, lots of spreadsheets, where, if I make 100% of the royalties self-publishing, I do want to factor in my time, and the costs for having an editor and a cover designer, and then see what I net. Right now, with Bookouture, it's a much bigger royalty percentage. It's 45%, which is great. But there's still that cut that goes to them for their overhead, for all the publicity they do. Then there's that other cut for my agent. And then I get the rest. By that point, it's, could I have made more money if I were to write a new book on my own, or pull out the other ones from my drawer, could I publish those and basically keep all of that? Have learned everything I have learned from you guys, and take a stab at it myself? I would like to do that. With Bookouture, another positive is they pay quarterly. I know with indie authors, the money comes so much faster. Joanna: It's funny you say that. I just did a thing this morning, and the money is already in my bank account. It's like, within half a day. Georgina: Right. Exactly. For me, going 20-plus years working in corporate America, where it was a paycheck every two weeks, to all of a sudden not getting paid for months, it's been a huge adjustment. A lot of people warned me about that in terms of planning. It's been tough. It's been just waiting and waiting for the money to come in. But with Bookouture, thankfully, at least it's quarterly. That's still a long time to wait. But the money has to go to my agent first. And then I have to wait another week before the rest comes to me. Penguin Random House, with the advance that they pay, it's split up into four payments within two years. Some folks that are only writing with a traditional publisher, you'd better have some savings, or you'd better hold on to that day job. Because I don't know how a lot of people can afford to write full-time and get paid… Unless it's a monster advance. But those are quite rare. But to be paid four times over two years, I just don't know how you can live off of that. Joanna: And it's not even when you know it's going to come either, right? It's, like, four times, and not even on a specific date, necessarily. It's not under your control, I guess that's the point. Georgina: Yes and no. They'll say the first payment is upon contract signing. I've heard some horror stories where it's taken months and months, six months maybe, to finally sign, even after they've agreed to buy the book. So you're just twiddling your thumbs waiting for that first payment. Mine luckily came within two months, so I was good. The second payment is when the line edits are accepted. This is when you're like, yes, we…right. So, that is an arbitrary date, because that could be eight months from now, three months from now. You just don't know. It's until the editor's like, ‘Okay, this is good enough to where I think we will actually publish it after all.' Third payment comes when the book finally publishes. Joanna: Which, again, is not in your control. Georgina: Right. So, to have worked 20-plus years, having that, and having the 401(k), having all of that set up for me, and to all of a sudden now be a solo entrepreneur, I am doing my own accounting, to the best I can. I'm trying to keep up with what I'm doing. The pay is not something that feels steady enough for me. And that's why indie continues to be enticing… I hear all these great stories, and to be able to get paid within a day? Holy cow. That would be amazing. Joanna: It is. You have mentioned that basically, the lack of control is the biggest reason that people go indie. And you've mentioned the lack of control over the cover, the title, the timing, the money. It's so interesting when you weigh everything up. But what you've done, and obviously, you've learned loads, you're doing really well, and you have the choice. I said the same thing to Clare, even Tess Gerritsen, she said, ‘Oh, if I had something that was a bit different, I might go indie,' I think that you have the option now, right? You can do that. You can write more books, so you can make the choice with every book. Georgina: That's what I'm hoping for. I think a lot of authors, because so many of you have paved the path, you're making a living this way. Absolutely everything is under your control. You're steering your own ship, so to speak. I think because a lot of us are watching this, and really interested in this, and so many authors are starting to turn that direction… You've talked about this, too. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more and more authors who are already, if not about to start publishing separately, whether it's a romance book under a pen name, whether it's a paranormal book… I know another author, friend, she has a pen name for her paranormal stuff. Or, I keep my name, I check my contract, and make sure, okay, these are the projects I can self-pub, and maybe still continue to do one book every two years with a publisher. We'll see. I like to capitalize on the marketing that they are able to provide for me, but I'm absolutely taking notes. I've got all the notes of what they do, and the people that they contact, and I could absolutely do it myself. Joanna: We will see what happens next with you, but we're out of time. Where can people find you and your books online? Georgina: I am Georgina-Cross-Author pretty much everywhere. My website, Facebook, Instagram. I don't do a lot of Twitter. I'm really bad about that. I should try more. My books are sold pretty much everywhere. So, thank you so much for having me. Joanna: Oh, no, thanks so much for your time. That was great.The post Different Traditional Publishing Experiences With Georgina Cross first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Every fiction author will (eventually) find their own method for writing but all fall somewhere on the spectrum between outlining/plotting and discovery writing/pantsing/writing into the dark. In this excerpt from How To Write a Novel, I share two chapters on the topic from the audiobook, narrated by me (Joanna Penn). You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show notes: The benefits and difficulties of outlining How to outline and examples from authors who use this method The benefits and difficulties of discovery writing (and why I hate the term pantsing!) Examples of authors who discovery write My writing process: Discovery writing with a hint of plotting Links to books and resources that might help you This is an excerpt from my audiobook of How to Write a Novel, narrated by me. If you'd like more on How To Write a Novel: From Idea to Book, you can buy in multiple formats directly from me here, and you can find it on your favorite online store, order from your local independent bookstore, or borrow from your library (just ask your librarian to order it). Outlining (or plotting) “Outlining is the most efficient way to structure a novel to achieve the greatest emotional impact… Outlining lets you create a framework that compels your audience to keep reading from the first page to the last.” — Jeffery Deaver, Wall St Journal Writers who outline or plot spend more time upfront considering aspects of the novel and know how the story will progress before they start writing the manuscript. It’s a spectrum, with some outlines consisting of a page or so and others stretching to thousands of words of preparation. The benefits of outlining While discovery writers jump into writing and spend more time later cleaning up their drafts, outliners or plotters spend time beforehand so they can write faster in the first draft. When it’s time to write, outliners focus on writing words on the page to fulfil their vision rather than figuring out what’s going on. Outlining can result in more intricate plots and twists, deeper characters, less time rewriting, and faster production time. If you co-write, outlining is the only way to ensure your process works smoothly. As a discovery writer, I have found it particularly challenging to co-write fiction, which is why I rarely do it! If you have an agent or a publisher, or you want an agent or a publisher, you might have to write an outline anyway, so learning how to do it well can help. If you’re a discovery writer, you can always outline after the book is finished, if you need to. “When you plan a story the right way, you guarantee a tight, compelling structure that keeps readers turning pages and delivers a satisfying reading experience from start to finish. And really, a satisfied reader is all you need for a ‘good’ book.” —Libbie Hawker, Take Off Your Pants! Outline Your Books for Faster, Better Writing The difficulties of outlining Outlining and plotting suit some writers very well. But not all. Some authors get lost in outlining and plotting and world-building and character bios and theme exploration and symbolism… and never actually write full sentences and may never finish a book. Such writers may go astray through a combination of procrastination through preparation, a delight in the learning process without a desire to do the work to turn it into a story, or perhaps fear of what might happen if they do write. Some authors outline a book and then decide it’s too boring to write it and never finish. Some authors become so obsessed with the technicalities of outlining that they decide writing is too hard, so they give up. Other writers try outlining only to find it is no fun at all. If you can do it, brilliant! If you can’t, don’t worry. See the next chapter on discovery writing. How to outline “Every hour spent outlining prior to starting a novel saves you many hours in the actual writing process. It also helps you to write a better novel, as you will ‘tighten’ down the story in your outline before you write, rather than having to do it in rewrite.” —Bob Mayer, The Novel Writer’s Toolkit There is no single way to outline, but options include a text document, a spreadsheet, mind maps, and/or Scrivener or other software. Outlines can also vary in length and complexity. Shawn Coyne describes the Foolscap Method in The Story Grid, where an entire book can be outlined on one A4 page with just a few lines describing the beginning, middle, and end of the story. [Interview with Shawn on The Story Grid here.] You could expand this brief outline into a document of a few pages by describing the main action points and characters of each scene in a couple of lines or a paragraph. This is often what agents and publishers mean by an outline. At the more extreme end of the plotting spectrum, thriller author Jeffery Deaver creates a lengthy outline for his thrillers. As he said in a Wall Street Journal interview in 2012, “The finished outline runs about 150 pages, single spaced, though with very wide right margins, so I can jot references to the research material relevant to the plot.” James Patterson outlines his books and uses the process to complicate his plots and come up with twists that surprise readers. Patterson is a prolific story machine and works with co-writers to expand his story worlds. Whatever you think of his books, he is the highest-earning and bestselling author in the world. I highly recommend his MasterClass online course, in which he goes into detail about his process. In the MasterClass, Patterson says, “I’m a fanatic about outlining. It’s going to make whatever you’re writing better. You’ll have fewer false starts and you’ll take a shorter amount of time. I write them over and over again. You read my outline and it’s like reading a book. You really get the story even though it’s condensed. Each chapter will have about a paragraph devoted to it, but you’re going to get the scene and you’re going to get the sense of what makes the scene work… The ending almost always changes in the writing, though, it’s because I learned to listen to the characters.” Some writers use paper index cards for plotting scenes and characters. Lauren Beukes used a wall of index cards to physically plot the details for her award-winning thriller The Shining Girls, later adapted for TV. It is a time travel thriller, so the plot lines and characters needed to be interwoven in multiple ways. If you don’t want to use paper, you can use plotting software like Scrivener, Plottr, Granthika, or other tools to create electronic versions of index cards that you can drag and drop into a different order as you need to. J.K. Rowling outlined the Harry Potter series with hand-drawn matrices tracking the characters against the plot and timeline. Prolific thriller author Russell Blake uses a spreadsheet with chapter numbers down the left, character names across the top, and a few sentences in each cell. “I will typically capture the whys of the chapter, meaning the motivation for writing it. To make it into my final outline, it will need to either reveal something about the characters or the plot, or move the story forward. If I can’t articulate to myself the purpose of the chapter in that manner, I cut it.” You can include whatever you like in your outline and it can be as long as you want it to be. Outliners often change things as they write, so don’t feel that the outline is a constraint on your creativity. It’s just a tool to help you write your book in whatever way works for you. “A good outline should be a spur for creativity, not a stumbling block. The author is the master of the outline, not its slave.” —K.M. Weiland, Outlining Your Novel Outlining a series If you have a series in mind, particularly if there is a clear character arc and a final ending, then it can be a good idea to outline more than one book at the same time so you know where the series is going, even if it’s just a few lines. However, remember to write the book at some point. Don’t spend forever outlining! Questions: What are the benefits of outlining? What are the potential difficulties? Are you excited about the prospect of outlining? Or is it something you feel like you ‘should’ do? Which methods of outlining might work best for you? How much time do you want to spend outlining before you move on to writing? Discovery writing (or pantsing) “If you surrender to the wind, you can ride it.” —Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon The word ‘pantsing’ comes from the term ‘fly by the seat of your pants,’ and essentially means that you write what comes into your head and work out the story along the way. For some people, this means literally starting from the first sentence of the first page and writing until the story is done. For others, it involves writing out of order and stitching the story together later, which is my approach. Let’s first address the term ‘pantsing,’ which is frankly terrible! It’s based on the American word ‘pants,’ meaning trousers, but I’m British, and pants are underwear. I much prefer the term ‘discovery writing,’ so that’s what I’ll use and perhaps together we can get rid of the term ‘pantsing’ altogether. The benefits of discovery writing It’s so much fun! Many discovery writers feel as if knowing what happens or planning it all in advance makes the writing process boring, but if you don’t know what will happen next in your story, the writing process has the intensity and excitement of discovery. This can make the finished product just as interesting for the reader as it was for you in the writing process. I also find these extraordinary moments of synchronicity happen when I discovery write and research as I go. They happen during the writing of every book, although I can’t force them to happen. There’s a moment where the story clicks, it all suddenly makes sense, and things that I invented cross over into the real world in unexpected ways. That feeling makes the creative potential of the discovery process almost addictive. You need to have a certain amount of trust in your innate story sense, but that is also part of the enjoyment. We have all read so many books and watched so many movies and TV shows that we have a deep understanding of story as human beings. There’s a sense of ‘knowing’ how a story works, and in discovery writing, it’s about leaning into this feeling. Trust that your subconscious story brain will give you what you need along the way. “Writing with intentional plot structure is not necessary for the story to be compelling.” —Becca Syme & Susan Bischoff, Dear Writer, Are You Intuitive? The difficulties of discovery writing If you don’t know how the story will work, you can end up writing yourself into a corner. Many discovery writers discard words, scenes, characters, and plot points later. Some may have to redraft altogether to make a story work. Some consider that a ‘waste,’ but it’s just part of the discovery process. You will also face the blank page regularly in your writing sessions, as you might not always know what to write next. Dean Wesley Smith addresses this in Writing into The Dark:  “Getting stuck is part of writing into the dark. It is… a natural part of the process of a creative voice building a story. Embrace the uncertainty of being stuck, trust your creative voice, give it a few moments’ rest, and then come back and write the next sentence.” Reframe the blank page as the promise of unlimited possibility, rather than the fear of the unknown. How to discovery write “Story emerges from human minds as naturally as breath emerges from between human lips. You don’t have to be a genius to master it. You’re already doing it.” —Will Storr, The Science of Storytelling Write a sentence. Then another one. Then another one. Repeat until done for the writing session. You don’t have to tell the story in a linear fashion. You can jump around and write what the Muse wants to write and piece it all together later. That’s how it works for me. I never write in order. When you sit down to discovery write, you need to trust that something will emerge from you somehow, even if it feels like you have nothing when you face the blank page. Of course, you must learn the craft. There must be an element of understanding the principles of story. But there is also something ineffable, something unexplainable, something magic that happens when you trust the discovery process. You may not even realize what is in your mind until it spills out onto the page. As poet Ben Okri said, we are “magnificent and mysterious beings capable of creating civilisations out of the wild lands of the earth and the dark places in our consciousness.” As Walt Whitman said, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” You can do this. Trust emergence. Authors who are discovery writers Lee Child used to start writing his next Jack Reacher thriller on 1 September each year and continue writing until the book was done (before he handed the franchise over to his brother in 2020).  In an interview with Marie Claire magazine, he said, “I just start somewhere, somewhere that feels good, and then literally think ‘Alright now what happens?’ So a million times in the process it’s a question of ‘Alright now what happens?’ and so the story tells itself.” I’m a Jack Reacher fan and the storylines are linear and work well for this kind of writing style. Reacher arrives in a town, something bad happens, he must find and punish the bad guys, and there’s some fighting and (occasionally) some loving along the way. There is a clear protagonist, and the story unfolds in real time as Reacher experiences it. But not everyone writes such a linear story and you certainly don’t have to. Stephen King is a discovery writer and his books are usually sprawling stories with many characters, multiple points of view, and often a complicated plot.  In On Writing, he talks about starting with a character in a situation and writing from there. “Stories are found things, like fossils in the ground,” which must be uncovered through the writing process. King does multiple drafts and revisions to deepen the story, but his first draft is all discovery. He says, “I believe plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren’t compatible.” Tess Gerritsen talks about her discovery process in an article on her blog:  “Since I don’t outline ahead of time, I don’t always know the solution to the mystery. So I’ll wander in the wilderness along with my characters until I get about two-thirds of the way through and I’ll be forced to find answers. And then I can finally write to the end… I don’t stop to revise during the first draft. Because it’s all going to be changed anyway, when I finally figure out what the book is about.” Nora Roberts says in a blog post about her method:  “The first draft, the discovery draft, the POS (guess what that stands for) draft is the hardest for me. Figuring it all out, creating people I’m going to care about enough to sit here with for hours every day in order to tell their story. Finding out information about the setting, the careers involved, and so much more. I don’t outline. I have a kind of loose mental outline, then I sit down, get started and hope it all works one more time.” Dean Wesley Smith has written several hundred novels and shares his process in Writing into the Dark: How to Write a Novel Without an Outline. He talks about ‘cycling,’ where he writes a scene and then cycles back to read through it and make changes as necessary every time he sits down to write. He might deepen the character or add to the plot, or make other changes. Sometimes he might find a plot issue and have to cycle back further, but when he finishes the first full draft, the book is done. He has a proofreader check it and then publishes. My process: Discovery writing with a touch of plotting I have tried so many times to become an outliner. I’ve read all the books on structure and plotting and done lots of courses, but my Muse just won’t comply. It frankly makes me miserable to try and outline in any detail. My creative brain just doesn’t work that way. It sucks the joy out of the writing process — and what’s the point in that?! I have written and published many novels (as J.F. Penn) at this point, so clearly my process works, even if it doesn’t fit neatly into the way many others say we ‘should’ write. This is how I discovery write. I have various ideas mulling around in my head for a long time before I start a book. They might be ideas about a character, a setting, a story question, a theme I want to explore, or a MacGuffin — an object of a quest (all of which I’ll cover later, in Part 3). I have a folder on my computer in my J.F. Penn drive with sub-folders labelled with broad-brush working titles. Most of the folders are empty, but they are placeholders for the Muse.  As I write this, I have sixteen folders in my To Write list, but they are pretty nebulous. For example, Volcano Botanist Adventure, and French Gothic Stonemason. I have vague ideas about what these stories might be some day, but they take years to emerge. I move the folders up and down depending on how I’m feeling about what I might write next. At some point, I settle on the story I need to write. That decision is driven by an urging from the Muse, or something external that triggers the choice, like a research trip where a story piece clicks into place. I don’t write to a production schedule for my fiction and I have spectacularly failed to plan when my books might come out. I am incredibly organized in my nonfiction side as Joanna Penn and in my business, but my fiction self — my J.F. Penn side — cannot be constrained. This is why I don’t do long pre-orders on my fiction. I only ever put a pre-order up when the book is with my editor, as then I know the timeline for publication. I’ll spend some time researching and, at the point of committing to a book, I usually have at least a character idea and sometimes a name, a setting for the opening scene, and ideas for what the plot might be about. But most of the time, I haven’t written any of it down. Sometimes, I draw a simple mind map in my journal. Sometimes I have the equivalent of an A4 piece of paper with thoughts, but it’s all pretty free-flowing. I open a new Scrivener project and add some placeholders for scenes. These are just one liners. For example, in Destroyer of Worlds, my first place-holder line was: ‘Trafalgar Square bomb, something stolen from the ARKANE vault.’ I didn’t know what was stolen, but that emerged once I sat down to write. [You can watch my tutorial on how I use Scrivener here.] I schedule first-draft blocks of time in my calendar. I turn up at my desk or the writing café or wherever I’m working and I write. I don’t write in order. I write whatever scene comes to mind that day, or whatever is suggested as the next scene based on what I have already written. I might follow one character for a few scenes and then go back and write another timeline later. I add more placeholder one-liners as the plot emerges. I research before I begin, but I also research as I write. For example, when writing a scene set in Cologne Cathedral for Tomb of Relics, I had the cathedral interactive site open so I could write as if I was actually there. I also check aspects of plot as I type. Yes, sometimes I end up down a rabbit hole during the draft, but that’s okay too, because there’s gold in the research process for a discovery writer! I don’t do character profiles. My characters emerge from the discovery writing process. I’ll often write a scene to expand on character motivations and back story later in the process, but then insert it earlier in the story. This is why I love writing in Scrivener. I can drag and drop and reorder my scenes as I go. When I get to around 20,000 words of a full-length novel, I often lose track of what’s going on with the different threads of the story. I usually stop and reread what I have so far, noting down open questions, character issues, plot holes, and anything else.  This process helps me figure out what else needs to happen, and I can usually write to the end after this reread. I can also use dictation at this point in the process as I know more about what’s going on, but it doesn’t usually work for me earlier in the discovery process, as I only know what I will write as I type. My first self-edit is when I structure scenes into chapters and find what I need to cut and add — often that leads to a major reorganization of the material. It’s all part of the discovery process. * * * There are as many different ways of writing as there are writers, but we all end up with a finished book regardless of how we get there. You have to find the process that works for you. Questions: What are the benefits of discovery writing? What are the potential difficulties? Are you excited about the prospect of discovery writing? Does the empty page scare you or represent unlimited possibility? How do you think discovery writing might fit into your process? If you'd like more on How To Write a Novel: From Idea to Book, you can buy in multiple formats directly from me here, and you can find it on your favorite online store, order from your local independent bookstore, or borrow from your library (just ask your librarian to order it). The post Writing Tips: Outlining/Plotting Vs Discovery Writing/Pantsing first appeared on The Creative Penn.