The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

Another year ends, and once more, it's time to reflect on our creative goals. I hope you will take the time to review your goals and you're welcome to leave a comment below about how the year went. Did you achieve everything you wanted to? Let me know in the comments. In the intro, 2023 was the year that Twitter died — and became X. What that means for me, plus The Verge does an overview. Thoughts on lighthouses and what yours might be, from The Comfort Book by Matt Haig quoting Anne Lamott; “We’re in an artist’s age now,” reflections on the changing author business model from Johnny B. Truant; The Future by Naomi Alderman. This episode is supported by my Patreon community, who fund my future-focused thinking time. If you join the community, you get an extra solo Q&A show monthly, as well as behind-the-scenes videos on planning for the year ahead, AI and creative business, plus discounts, early access, and more. Join the community for the price of a coffee a month at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-nominated, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author as J.F. Penn. She’s also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes You can read my 2023 goals here and I reflect on what I achieved below. J.F. Penn — Pilgrimage, Catacomb, and short stories Up-skilling into direct sales with Kickstarter and Shopify, and building a fiction-first store Joanna Penn — Writing the Shadow The Creative Penn Podcast and Patreon move to monthly Community Experiment with futurist technologies and share what I learn along the way  Financial goals Travel, speaking, health, and other things Let me know in the comments below how your 2023 creative goals went. J.F. Penn — Pilgrimage, Catacomb, and short stories  Although I wrote and edited Pilgrimage in 2022, the publishing, launch, and marketing all happened in the first quarter of 2023. The Kickstarter for Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways absolutely exceeded my expectations. It had 692 backers and funded at £25,771. After the initial Kickstarter, I published the book on my Shopify store for a couple of months and then released it wide. You can find it here on my store, here on all the other retailers, or you can order it through your local bookstore or library.   I wrote and published a stand-alone novella, Catacomb, and two short stories, With a Demon’s Eye, and Beneath the Zoo.  I narrated the audiobooks for Pilgrimage, With a Demon’s Eye, A Midwinter Sacrifice, and I need to do Beneath the Zoo and Catacomb in early 2024. I'm committing to narrating as much of my fiction as possible (as human me!) as well as my non-fiction in order to ‘double down on being human.‘ I didn’t write action-adventure thriller ARKANE 13 as intended, but it’s first on my list for 2024. My creative process involves travel to specific locations to find stories, and I didn't make it to Vienna this year, but I have a trip planned for the end of January 2024. Up-skilling into direct sales — Kickstarter and Shopify I’ve significantly upskilled this year in direct sales. I've done two successfully funded Kickstarter projects, learned a lot of lessons, and improved my book marketing for launches. I built a new fiction-first Shopify store, www.jfpennbooks.com and I did a Shopify accelerator with Pierre Jeanty. I’ve added lots of bundles and box sets for both fiction and non-fiction for digital and print products, which makes a huge difference in terms of being able to offer options to readers, and also make advertising worth it. Click here for fiction bundles and box sets by J.F. Penn Click here for bundles and boxsets for authors by Joanna Penn I’ve worked with Matt Holmes on AI-powered Meta advertising direct to my fiction store, and I only use Amazon auto-ads now on a few of my non-fiction books.  Joanna Penn — Writing the Shadow  After more than a decade of working on this book on and off, I finally wrote and published Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words.  The Kickstarter had 1,059 backers and made £36,454 on launch. I am really proud of the limited edition, gold foil hardback with black ribbon, and I’m encouraged that people want these premium products. I also did a normal paperback, large print, ebook, workbook, and narrated the audiobook. All the usual formats are now out on all the usual stores (but the limited edition was only for the Kickstarter).   It was my biggest book signing ever, with over 430 books signed at the Bookvault factory in Peterborough, UK.  As part of the Pilgrimage Kickstarter, I wrote and recorded a course on Writing Settings and Sense of Place. The Creative Penn Pod

In this episode, I reflect on 15 years of TheCreative Penn, and outline how I will reposition myself for the next 15 years of being an author entrepreneur. In the intro, We used to do that [Seth Godin]; Penguin Random House has acquired Hay House [Publishing Perspectives]; Business for Authors; Your Author Business Plan; OpenAI has announced a partnership with Axel Springer, the first publishing house globally to partner with them to integrate journalism with AI technologies. This episode is supported by my Patreon community, who fund my future-focused thinking time. If you join the community, you get an extra solo Q&A show monthly, as well as behind-the-scenes videos on AI and creative business, plus, discounts, early access, and more. Join us for the price of a coffee a month at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-nominated, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author as J.F. Penn. She’s also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes From Joanna Penn to J.F. Penn  From creating alone to the AI-Assisted Artisan Author From digital-focused to creating beautiful physical books From high-volume, low cost to premium products with higher Average Order Value  From retailer-centric to direct first From distance to presence  Pivoting a business is always a risk Will I still be here in another 15 years? Let me know what you think. Are you pivoting your author business? What changes are you making to stay nimble in a fast-moving industry? Do you have any questions? You can leave a comment below, or email me here. Introduction On 8 December 2008, I published my first blog post on www.TheCreativePenn.com. I had already self-published a book earlier that year and wanted to share my lessons learned. The Creative Penn home page in 2008 This is my third website. The first was based on my first book, How to Enjoy Your Job or Find a New One (later rewritten and re-published as Career Change), and the second was on learning about money and investments. I abandoned both when I ran out of things to write about. But 15 years later, I still haven’t run out of things to write about here!  I left my job to become a full-time author entrepreneur in 2011 and I’ve changed my business model several times over the years as technology, new service providers, and a growing market have expanded our options as indie authors.  I still love what I do. I measure my life by what I create. I love holding my books in my hands and saying ‘I made this’. But the pace of change is accelerating and I need to pivot and reinvent myself in order to keep creating and writing, as well as remain useful to my community and the wider indie author industry. I also need to keep myself engaged. I’m certainly not the same person I was when I started out, and the last few years in particular have been a period of personal change (as discussed in Pilgrimage and Writing the Shadow). So I found this quote useful from Barbara Bradley Hagerty in Life Reimagined: The Science, Art, and Opportunity of Midlife, “Pivoting on your strengths beats starting from scratch. Redefine success according to your values, not those of the rest of the world.” I’m not going to burn it all down and start anew. I am pivoting! From Joanna Penn to J.F. Penn For the last 15 years, I’ve put my Joanna Penn brand first, writing useful books for authors as I’ve learned, and sharing my journey in order to help other authors along the way Long-time listeners to the podcast and email subscribers will know that I’ve been talking about the Shadow book for almost the entire time, and in 2023, I finally wrote and published it. Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words is the fulfillment of a long-term creative promise, and alongside How to Write a Novel, and How to Write Non-Fiction, it represents everything I have to share on craft — at least at the moment. When I started out as an indie author, there were very few voices sharing the way ahead, and all the existing writing industry books were for traditionally published authors, so my books were needed. But things have changed and there are many wonderful authors sharing tips and strategies and ‘how to’ information these days. I also think the market for ‘how to’ nonfiction is shifting, which I discussed at length in last week’s episode on the impact of Generative AI Search, so have a listen or a read if you want to learn more. All this means that I don’t plan to write any new ‘how to’ books for authors. I do intend to make my existing backlist more evergreen, so there will be future editions of some existing books, and I want to re-record some earlier audiobooks as (human) me, so expect those at some point.   Many of

How will changes to the way people search impact book discoverability? What can authors and publishers do to ensure their books are still found in the new form of generative AI search? While it's still early days for this technology, I share my thoughts in this article, with the hope that we can surf the wave of change, rather than drown in it. In the intro, Launching a series [Wish I'd Known Then]; Selling direct on TikTok Shop [Rebel Author]; Bookbub Best Ads; The State of Indie Authorship [Written Word Media]; Authors can now distribute Google Play Books’ auto-narrated audiobooks with Findaway Voices by Spotify; How to use Google Play Books auto-narration, episode 642; Amazon KDP AI audio narration beta. Plus, History Quill online conference; Beneath the Zoo [JFPennBooks; Other stores]; A Midwinter Sacrifice [JFPennBooks; Other stores]; This episode is supported by my Patreon community, who fund my future-focused thinking time. If you join the community, you get an extra solo Q&A show monthly, as well as behind-the-scenes videos on AI and creative business, plus, discounts, early access, and more. Join us for the price of a coffee a month at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-nominated, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author as J.F. Penn. She’s also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes How does search work now? How does generative search work with Google Bard and Microsoft Bing Chat? Generative search in ChatGPT — and will Amazon search change in 2024? Part 1: How generative search might change book discovery (1) The text of the book will be used in analysis and discovery (2) Readers will be able to discover cross-genre and niche books more easily (3) Non-fiction that answers questions may be replaced by generative search (4) ‘Generate to market' apps may produce books based on search terms (5) Advertising will become more granular and managed at scale by AI Part 2: What can authors and publishers do to maximise potential book discovery? (1) Make sure your books are discoverable (2) Consider how LLMs get their data and make sure it's up to date (3) Connect with readers on a more personal level You can find more of my episodes, articles and resources on AI here. This is an emerging area, so I certainly don’t have all the answers. I'd love to know what you think in the comments. Thanks to Orna Ross for reading in advance, and also J. Thorn who commented on the draft article to make sure I wasn't off track. J. reports on weekly AI news for creatives at Creative AI Digest, a free weekly email. Introduction Book discovery is going to change over the next decade, and in this article, I share my thoughts on how it might shape out so we can prepare and make sure our books can be found in an ever-growing sea of content.  I’ve been using Google Bard and Microsoft Bing, both generative search engines, in the last few months to see how things might play out. I also increasingly use ChatGPT as a search and discovery tool, both through text and voice, and I used all three services as part of preparing this article. In terms of my personal experience, I’ve been interested in AI for creatives since AlphaGo beat Lee Sodol at the ancient Chinese game of Go in 2016, and I’ve been sharing interviews and resources here ever since. I’ve been experimenting with ChatGPT since it launched in November 2022 as well as using Midjourney, DALL-E, Claude, Sudowrite, and other tools, and I set out my position in The AI-Assisted Artisan Author. As I’ve used the various tools, my search behaviour has changed and I’ve also monitored news and opinion pieces on this topic from others. We are the early adopters for sure, and most people are not even aware of how these AI tools can be used. But it’s clear from the speed of development that the platforms themselves are going to drive the change, and once the most powerful search engines incorporate generative AI, adoption will happen more quickly. We need to be ready for this change. [Note. This article will not cover aspects of copyright, or legal or ethical concerns around generative AI. I’ve covered these in other interviews and articles and in my book on AI – add links] How does search work now? For the last two decades, we have used various search engines to type in a couple of words or a question and then hit enter. This search process works the same way whether you search on Google, YouTube, Amazon, Instagram, Spotify, or any other search engine, and over the years, we’ve learned the best way to phrase our searches to get the best results. The search engine lists pages of links related to the query, and we usually go into the first couple to see if they have what we want. I

Do you want to publish an image-heavy book like a cookbook? How can you navigate the challenges of photography, book design, and publishing choices to make the best product possible? Jane Dixon-Smith shares her lessons learned from her first cookbook. In the intro, Brandon Sanderson's predictions about publishing [Daniel Greene]; Craig Mod talks about walking and beautiful books [Long Form, Things Become Other Things]; Writing the Shadow [CreativePennBooks; Other stores]. 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 Jane Dixon-Smith is a historical fiction author, an award-winning book cover designer, graphic designer, and adventurer. Her latest book is The Great Adventure Baker. 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 adventure can keep your creative side alive Making a cookbook personal and unique Editing and testing the recipes Tips for producing the best photos without professional equipment Choosing the images for a photo-dominant book Choices in design and publishing Working with designers to incorporate AI into your designs You can find Jane at JDSmith-design.co.uk. Transcript of Interview with Jane Dixon-Smith Joanna: Jane Dixon-Smith is a historical fiction author, an award-winning book cover designer, graphic designer, and adventurer. Her latest book is The Great Adventure Baker. Jane also designs my book covers and print interiors, so I am a huge fan of her work. So welcome back to the show, Jane. Jane: Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Joanna: It's gonna be exciting to talk about this because so many people want to do cookbooks, but there are many challenges. Before we get into that— Tell us a bit more about your adventuring side of your life and why you decided to do a baking book at this point in your creative career. Jane: Well, I got into adventuring properly, probably about five years ago. I needed a bit of time away from my desk because I just sit here all the time designing and all of that kind of thing. And living in the lakes, we have just tons of stuff right on the doorstep. I joined some groups on Facebook and started walking with different people and taking tray bakes along with me, which everyone seemed to really love. I'd get asked for the recipes, and I'd quite happily give my recipes out. I wasn't particularly protective of them, like some people I've come across in the past have been. So I'd just quite happily send the recipes to people and they can make them themselves. Taking the bakes on adventure days meant that I didn't get fat! You burn the calories off so you get to eat the cake. So it was kind of guilt-free baking for me. Then last year, my mum passed away at the beginning of the year. I think that was the spur really for me to actually do a book on baking. I had thought about it in the past, but I didn't have a real reason to do it. I thought there's so many baking books out there, and why would I do one? But when I combined it with the fact that it was aimed at people going into the outdoors, and I could include some of my mum's recipes as well and dedicate it to her, that's what really sort of got me going with it. And obviously, it's quite an easy thing for me to do, in terms of already being a book designer, to actually put it all together. Joanna: I think you're right. There are family reasons, a lot of people hand down recipes. I know some of your mum's recipes are in there as well as your own. I just wanted to come back on the adventuring. So you mentioned the lakes, so for people listening, that's the Lake District in the UK. Can you also maybe comment on how— How has getting away from your desk and doing the adventuring helped your creative side? And how does being active play this really important part in your life now? Because it does seem like this is so important to you. Jane: Yes, I think it's just getting that balance right of spending time sedentary at your desk, and also spending time doing something really active, and especially getting outdoors when I sit inside all the time. My kids got a little bit bigger and went to secondary school, and I had a lot more time on my hands. Because I work for myself, I can manage my time and go out in the week when all of the busy places and the popular mountains are really quiet. So that was a really nice aspect of it. I've got up to Scotland, I do a lot in Wales, even went out to the Alps last year as well. So it's sort of really taken on a life of its own. I've got to meet loads and loads of lovely people as well. So it's been really nice. Joanna: I think that's really encouraging. Just so people know, you've got what, three kids? Jane: Yes. Joanna: So you're a busy working m

How might subscriptions help expand your author business ecosystem? What are some tips on encouraging readers to buy direct? Why is the future looking positive for authors in the creator economy? Michael Evans gives his thoughts. In the intro, marketing for multi-genre authors [Self Publishing Advice]; Same as Ever: Timeless lessons on risk, opportunity, and living a good life by Morgan Housel; Year of the Locust by Terry Hayes, and what we can learn from both of these books. Plus, join me and Joseph Michael for a free webinar on Using AI as an author, 5 Dec 2023. Click here to find out more. Today's show is sponsored by Ingram Spark, which I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 40,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries, and more. It's your content—do more with it through IngramSpark.com. Michael Evans is the author of science fiction thrillers, as well as Subscriptions for Authors and Creator Economy for Authors. He's also the co-founder of Ream, a subscription platform that helps authors create a thriving paid membership for their readers. 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 try something new What subscriptions are and how authors can use them Who does well on Ream and other subscription-based platforms Creating incentives for readers to join subscription-based models Monetizing the idea of exclusivity and scarcity The importance of building trust with your audience Michael's optimism for the future of publishing You can find Michael at ReamStories.com and SubscriptionsForAuthors.com Transcript of Interview with Michael Evans Joanna: Michael Evans is the author of science fiction thrillers, as well as Subscriptions for Authors and Creator Economy for Authors. He's also the co-founder of Ream, a subscription platform that helps authors create a thriving paid membership for their readers. So welcome to the show, Michael. Michael: Thank you for having me. It's so wild, but really cool, to be on this end of the mic. I've been listening to you since the beginning. Joanna: Thank you so much for coming on. So first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Writing's been an instinct for me since the youngest age, where I've just loved storytelling, mainly through fanfiction. I didn't realize I was writing fanfiction at the time because I was writing it in journals. I was a little insecure about my writing — it was my journal.  I didn't start to think of myself as an author, didn't start to actually start to write my own worlds and stories, until I got into middle school. My parents had gotten divorced, and for me, just coping with what was a very disruptive time my life was writing. It was my escape. I had simultaneously become super passionate about technology in the future, but also disillusioned with it, and kind of felt like the answer to creating a better world wasn't just creating new technologies, but was instead like trying to figure out what is actually best for people. That's where stories came in. So I started writing, and I wrote for two years, between 13 and 15, very seriously religiously, and had kind of written two books by the end of that. I didn't like even think of it like in terms of publishing. That wasn't even a thought of mine. It was just for fun. But when I got to the end of the second book, I was like, maybe I could get this out in the world. My mom, she was like, let's see what's even possible. She looked up like self-publishing, and basically, your name came up. So she actually bought your book and gave it to me, and I read it. Then we discovered the Sterling & Stone guys, and they were great. That kind of got me into the world of like, oh, okay, I can do this. Then basically, in high school, I was like, okay, I'm gonna work a part time job during school, I'm gonna save up all my money. My mom, normally I would have had to spend money on getting a car and things like that, but my mom was like, I'll drive you to work. She was the most supportive person ever, like I love my mom. So she's like, okay, I'll drive you to work, you can have this job, so you can save up all of your money. And I was like, okay. So I did that, I worked as a pool attendant at a resort. I just put all of it into editing, cover design, we all know the expenses that come with being an author. I published my first book going into my sophomore year of high school. I guess I caught the bug, I fell in love, not only with obviously writing itself, but also the business of writing. I got the idea that maybe I could be a full time author. That actual adventure, I cannot even dive into full detail right now, but over the next few years I ended up publishing 12 books, I ended up getting super deep into KU, Facebook ads, Amazon ads, learning

How can you transition into being an author after a long-term career elsewhere? How can you adopt an attitude of service in order to build your network in an authentic manner? Patrick O'Donnell shares his tips. In the intro, Spotify subscribers in the US now have 15 hours of free audiobook listening [The Verge] — you can find most of my books there if you want to give them a try! Plus an update from 20BooksVegas, which will now be Author Nation; and signing my gold foil hardbacks of Writing the Shadow. In AI news, ChatGPT is now multi-modal, and can also be fine-tuned as GPTs and made into agents. You can try out Creative Writing with The Creative Penn, or Write Thrillers like J.F. Penn, trained on my books. Plus, join me and Joseph Michael for a free webinar on Using AI as an author, 5 Dec 2023. Click here to find out more. 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.  Patrick O'Donnell is a retired police sergeant with 25 years’ experience. He's now the author of nine books, including police procedurals and the Cops and Writers reference guides, as well as a podcaster, screenwriting technical consultant, and organizer of the Cop Camp Conference. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Becoming a writer after a significant first career Dos and don'ts of finding a mentor Being of service and volunteering with purpose Knowing when an author relationship clicks Writing entertainment vs. writing for therapy Cop Camp — What it is and why host it? Managing different energies in an author conference You can find Patrick and CopsandWriters.com. Transcript of Interview with Patrick O'Donnell Joanna: Patrick O'Donnell is a retired police sergeant with 25 years’ experience. He's now the author of nine books, including police procedurals and the Cops and Writers reference guides, as well as a podcaster, screenwriting technical consultant, and organizer of the Cop Camp Conference. So welcome back to the show, Patrick. Patrick: Well, thank you so much, Joanna. It's an honor and privilege to be on your show. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you again. Now, you were last on the show in 2021, where we talked about your background in the police and also tips on writing authentic crime fiction. So we are not talking about that today. Patrick: Okay, good. Joanna: Exactly. We've done that already. People can come over to your Cops and Writers for that. Your second career is really taking off, and I wanted to start with this because, obviously, you were a police sergeant for 25 years. Then you decided not to retire, you decided to really go for it in your second career. So I wonder— What are your tips for people who want to be writers after they've had such a significant first career in a different industry? Patrick: Well, I'm a big fan of the saying, “Dig the well before you're thirsty.” I had the luxury of knowing when I was going to retire from law enforcement. My first day in the police academy was January 16, 1995, and I knew January 16 of 2000 that I was eligible to retire, and I did. I knew that I was going to do that pretty fairly early on because I didn't get into the police academy and become a cop until I was 30, which is a little bit on the older side. So you don't want to be too old doing police work. That's a young person's job. It's not an old guy like me job. So I knew that. I absolutely loved law enforcement, I loved what I did, I loved where I worked, but I knew the time was coming. So it was looming on the horizon. So a few years before I knew I was going to leave, I was thinking about what I wanted to do, or more importantly, what I didn't want to do. Law enforcement is very regimented. Lots of rules, lots of SOPs, and all that kind of good stuff, and I wanted freedom. I wanted freedom of work and freedom of when and where I work. With writing, there's still deadlines, and there's things you have to do, but there's a lot more flexibility and that had a huge appeal to me. So that was the precipice of that. I really enjoyed that idea. So as far as learning, that's ongoing. I believe if you're a writer, you should be a reader, and reading with purpose. So if you want to write sci-fi or post-apocalyptic, start reading some good books in that genre. You'll start to pick out tropes and how the author is doing what they're doing. You can buy courses, books, listen to podcasts, and get some mentors. A lot of it's on-the-job training. Hopefully, the more books you write, the better you get. Joanna: I think one of the difficult things for people who are later on in life is this feeling of, I've just climbed this ladder, and now you're telling me I've got to g

How can you shift your mindset from catalog sales to selling direct? How can you reframe the direct author business model to take advantage of creative possibilities for different kinds of products and long-term marketing? Russell Nohelty gives his tips in this interview. In the intro, Top 10 tips for indie authors [Clare Lydon]; 10 years lessons learned [SJ Pajonas], My timeline of being an author; Using AI tools for fact-checking [The Blue Garret]; 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 Russell Nohelty is the USA Today bestselling author of fiction, graphic novels and comics, nonfiction, and books for authors, including This is NOT a Book: Musings on living a writerly life. His latest book is Direct Sales Mastery for Authors, co-written with Monica Leonelle, launching as this goes out on Kickstarter. 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 mindset shift of selling direct Catalog sales vs direct sales The benefits of a direct relationship to customers and reframing the more personal touch experience Creativity in campaigns and print possibilities with direct sales Direct book marketing Keeping a long-term perspective and the flywheel concept of an author business You can find Russell at RussellNohelty.com and his Kickstarter at WriterMBA.com/DSA Transcript of Interview with Russell Nohelty Joanna: Russell Nohelty is the USA Today bestselling author of fiction, graphic novels and comics, nonfiction, and books for authors, including This is NOT a Book: Musings on living a writerly life. His latest book is Direct Sales Mastery for Authors, co-written with Monica Leonelle, launching as this goes out on Kickstarter. So welcome to the show, Russell. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a career-long dream to be on this show because I've been listening to it for so long. So I'm very excited. Joanna: Oh, I'm super excited to talk to you. You're kind of one of my gurus at the moment. You and Monica are doing such a great job of educating people on this. But first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Russell: Sure. So I started my first creative business in 2004. I went out on my own as a freelance camera operator after graduating from college, and that didn't really work very well. It turns out, there's a lot of technical stuff you have to know about cameras and editing and all sorts of things. I was very good at visually seeing an image, but like doing all of the actual recording of video and such, it wasn't really what I truly loved. Then I moved to doing directing, and then I realized no one hired directors, they all wanted to direct their own stuff that they wrote. So I was like, well, I've read a bunch of the scripts that I've been on camera with, and they're all not very good. So I could probably do at least this good. That's kind of been the thing of my entire career. It was not saying I could do this really well, it's like, well, I can do at least this well. I had a bunch of publishing contracts, and they all went very badly. I found out that they were just putting my books on Ingram Spark and stuff, and I was like, I could do that. I don't know if I can release this book any better than these publishers, but I know for sure I can release them just as bad. So that's how it sort of was a career of going from photography, to directing, to writing movies and TV. Then I got into comics when the movies and TV thing didn't really work out. Then comics are really expensive, and they take forever, so I started writing books in the interim between comic projects. Then I fell in love with books, and then books turn into conventions, and conventions turned into me writing nonfiction books, and nonfiction books led to courses. It just kind of was an organic snowball effect that I come back and say, wow, I don't think I would ever tell any other human to do it that way, for sure. Joanna: I love that though. I mean, I did do a plan back in the day, but a lot of this career is just taking the next opportunity and sort of deciding to take the next step. So it's interesting, you mentioned you started off in visual creativity with camera operator and script writing and that kind of visual sense. Is that why you favored graphic novels and why you still do a lot of very visual projects? Do you think you're much more of a visual person than a lot of the text-based writers? Russell: I think that it just makes sense to me how visuals work. So yes, like my manager at the time told me I should do comics, and I was unconvinced until he handed me a whole stack of like new indie comics that were coming out at the time. I fell in love with them, and like it just immediate

How can using Pinterest more like a search engine help you sell more books? What are some of the ways to use Pinterest most effectively for book marketing? Trona Freeman gives her tips. In the intro, KDP announce an Invite-Only KDP Beta for Audiobooks; How to Double Down on Being Human: 5 Ways to Stand Out in an Age of AI; Creative Planning with Orna Ross; Pathfinders edited by JL Collins; Kickstarter fulfillment for Writing the Shadow; In-Person Conference Tips for Introverts and Highly Sensitive People. Today's show is sponsored by Ingram Spark, which I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books wide to 40,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries, and more. It's your content—do more with it through IngramSpark.com. Trona Freeman specializes in Pinterest services and marketing for small business. She has a Master's in History of Art and lives in Scotland. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes What is Pinterest and how can authors use it for book marketing Utilizing keywords and SEO for your books Integration between Pinterest and Shopify Recommended tools for scheduling on Pinterest How engaging should you be? Do you have to reply to comments? How AI will be incorporated into the future of Pinterest You can find Trona at services.ayelined.com Transcript of Interview with Trona Freeman Joanna: Trona Freeman specializes in Pinterest services and marketing for small business. She has a Master's in History of Art and lives in Scotland. So welcome to the show, Trona. Trona: Hello, thank you so much for having me. Joanna: Oh, I'm excited to talk about this. Before we get into it— Tell us a bit more about you and why you focus particularly on Pinterest. Trona: So I did my master's in history of art about 10 years ago now. Then I was going to do a PhD, but I fell pregnant with my son who's now nine. So I thought, I'm going to take something up that isn't too overwhelming, but will still keep my mind taken over, so I started blogging.  From that, I really fell in love with Pinterest and SEO, and I started learning more about it and helping other people use it. I started a newsletter, which then turned into my business, which I've had now for five years. I think it's just an incredible way to connect with people online. So these people are actually looking for you. You're not disrupting them on their social media or anywhere else, they're actively looking for you. So that's why I love it. Joanna: So it's really interesting, you know, Pinterest has been around for a long time, but social media has changed so much in the last decade. Like you mentioned your son is nine, I think social media has changed as much as your son has since he was born. What is Pinterest like now? And how can authors think about it as part of their marketing ecosystem? Trona: I think the best way to think about Pinterest is that it's actually more like a search engine than social media. Pinterest, themselves, describe it as a visual search and discovery engine. So people go there to search for visual imagery, but it's also connected to keywords, which are really important to help you get found on there. So it's like, if Google and Instagram had a baby, you kind of get Pinterest. So I think a lot of people still see it as social media, and there are still elements to it. So you can comment on pins, you can like pins, and so on, but in the end, it's actually a really powerful search engine. Joanna: So I guess the other thing there is you said people are looking for things. So I think about it as how it comes up in terms of, oh, if you're doing interior design, you can find really nice bathrooms on Pinterest. It's like we don't hear about it much in terms of book marketing anymore. So can you maybe go into some more detail in the different ways that authors could think about and use Pinterest? Trona: So I think even as a means to storyboard your work, like on a personal level you can use it. I recently read that Stranger Things writers used it to storyboard the whole series from the looks, the inspiration. That's how a lot of other people use it as well. But for you to attract people to you, you have to think about how people are searching for whatever you write. So if you're a nonfiction writer, people will search things like, “how to start writing,” “writing tips,” “writing prompts,” and so on. There's actually lots and lots on there.  Journaling is really huge on Pinterest as well, which I know a lot of authors use as a means to keep up their ideas. So that's a really good way to share how your story develops, but also to attract people to your website, which then can get email signups, sales, and just more eyes on your work in general. Joanna: Okay, so that's a nonfiction example. So let's talk a bit abo

How can you reinvigorate your writing process, breathe life into your backlist, and prepare your author business for the rollercoaster that is publishing? Tracy Cooper-Posey gives her tips. In the intro, Authors Guild results [The Hotsheet]; more Promo Stacks with Written Word Media; Amazon's robot [BBC]; Amazon's generative image AI for products [Venture Beat]; Shutterstock's new AI image option; Writing the Shadow Kickstarter finishes (thank you!), and on pre-order. Plus, join my Patreon Community / TheCreativePenn and get AI tutorials plus other benefits. 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.  Tracy Cooper-Posey is the multi-award-winning author of over 200 romance novels. Today, we're talking about her first non-fiction book for authors, The Productive Indie Fiction Writer: Strategies for Writing More, Earning More, and Living Well. 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 Changing as a writer and reinvigorating writing habits with a new genre Deciding what to focus on when there seems to be limitless options How a backlist underpins an indie author business Deciding when to update books or retire books Stash the cash, stash the books, stash the email list Tips for dealing with discouragement Utilizing BookFunnel promotions as a discovery tool You can find Tracy at StoriesRulePress.com Transcript of Interview with Tracy Cooper-Posey Joanna: Tracy Cooper-Posey is the multi-award-winning author of over 200 romance novels. Today, we're talking about her first non-fiction book for authors, The Productive Indie Fiction Writer: Strategies for Writing More, Earning More, and Living Well. So welcome to the show, Tracy. Tracy: Thanks, Joanna. It's absolutely fabulous to be here. Joanna: Oh, it is. And of course, you and I met years ago now in Oregon. I don't even know what year it was. Tracy: I have forgotten too. I think 2017, or something like that. Joanna: Something like that, so we've known each other a while. But first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Tracy: Well, honestly, the first thing I wrote was the unofficial sequel to Star Wars when I was in high school in the late 1970s. My English teacher read it, she found it, told me to write something original, so I did. I kept on scribbling after that, but I hid it from everyone because, well, I came from a working-class Australian family who thought a reliable job after high school should be the sum total of my ambitions. I was basically in my mid-30s and a single mum before I took writing seriously and started aiming for publication. I sold my first two books in one week in 1999. After that, because traditional publishing was the only option back then, I had 35 books traditionally published. It's such a soul-destroying industry, I ended up angry and frustrated most of the time. I switched to indie publishing in 2011. It was like thank god, there is an alternative. Now I have more than 200 titles under three different pen names, spanning romance, science fiction, fantasy, historical suspense, and a lot of stuff in between. And now, of course, non-fiction, The Productive Indie Fiction Writer book, and most recently, I've done a memoir. Joanna: Oh, wait, I didn't know about the memoir. I just have to ask about that, then we'll come back to the other stuff, because you've had some health issues the last year or so. Tracy: Yes. Joanna: And obviously, sometimes this is when we do write this kind of work. What is that memoir about? Tracy: Well, obviously, yes, it's a cancer memoir because I've been dealing with cancer. It's called Cancer Curated, and it literally came about because I have readers that were looking for my next book when I was dealing with the cancer. We ended up updating people in public on Facebook and stuff like that, letting readers know about what my health status was all the way through the cancer treatments and stuff like that. There was a lot of stuff that didn't hit the public announcements, the public updates. So basically, the book is everything that happened up to the first of the public updates, and everything that happened in between. So it's really a story of my journey through the cancer and exactly what I thought about it, exactly what I thought about the consequences of the cancer, which in some ways are very unexpected. Especially, like getting older, you sort of age overnight with cancer, which for some people, including me, because of my huge vanity, is a bit of an issue. So yes, it was the book that I sort of wanted to write because it filled in all the gaps. I was getting a lot of feedback from people with the public updates say

How do you keep up with everything you need to do as your author business grows? How do you decide what to focus on as the industry changes — and you change, too? Patricia McLinn discusses her challenges with a big backlist of books and a mature indie author business. In the intro, Self-publishing's ongoing evolution [Publishers Weekly]; Audiobooks on Spotify and how my listening behavior is changing [FindawayVoices]; Author ecosystems, and an overview on the Kickstart your book sales podcast. Plus, How to double down on being human: 5 ways to stand out in an age of AI; Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words; Let your dark horse run; Halloween Horror Bundle including Catacomb; The Wrong Planet autism book by Holger Nils Pohl; Join the community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 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 Patricia McLinn is the award-winning and multi-USA Today bestselling author of over 60 books across mystery, contemporary and historical romance, women's fiction, and nonfiction. 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 Dealing with difficulties of changing business technology How to re-sane in a long-term author career Streamlining, outsourcing, and letting go The change in social media platforms over the past decade AI and its effect on discoverability What retirement may look like for an author You can find Patricia at PatriciaMcLinn.com Transcript of Interview with Patricia McLinn Joanna: Patricia McLinn is the award-winning and multi-USA Today bestselling author of over 60 books across mystery, contemporary and historical romance, women's fiction, and nonfiction. Today we're talking about the challenges of a long-term career and how to re-sane yourself. So welcome back to the show, Pat. Patricia: It's wonderful to be here with you, Jo. Thank you. Joanna: Oh, I'm excited to talk about this. You were last on the show in May 2021, talking about discovery writing and sustaining a long-term writing career. So we're going to jump straight into the topic today, and I'll link to that interview in the show notes. Basically, you emailed me, and I am quoting from your email, you said you've had, “Cascading failures and issues in business technology and infrastructure.” “It has not been fun. It has cost a lot.” And we want to talk about the difficulties today. So first up, tell us about those difficulties. Patricia: Well, some of them are things that everybody has experienced. Like a little over a year ago, I had just finished redoing the Amazon categories for all of my books, and you know, there are 65 different titles, but there's paperback and there's large print. There are a lot of, as people say, products, more than the titles of the book, so about 200. I had just finished that when the word came out that Amazon had changed the categories. Now, as we know now from a year looking back, that was the first of about three changes. So I had all that work that was wasted, which was very frustrating. I have not done anything else with those categories since then because I've been occupied with other things. I was working on AI audio, so I was doing some AI audio on Google Play with romances that were not otherwise ever going to be in audio. So that was occupying a lot of my time last fall. Then I also had ActiveCampaign as my newsletter server, and I had been with them for six years. I was frustrated and felt that I was never getting from it what it could do. I could see all this functionality, but boy, it just did not mesh with me. So I decided, okay, I am not going to be defeated, I will not give up. So I went out and found somebody who was an expert and spoke author, and he spent the month of January straightening out my ActiveCampaign, getting it where it should be, doing the things that I had sort of piecemeal done—piecemeal is going to be a theme, I think, in this conversation—that I had done. It cost a couple thousand dollars, and a lot of time and effort, mine as well as his, but we had that set. Then in mid-March, ActiveCampaign, which is already expensive, sent me an email and said, “We're gonna raise your rate by more than 33%.” And I said, oh, no, you're not. It was what had finally pushed me over the edge. And, yes, there were some costs in what I had had him do and some time, but what I should have done, and this is also going to be a theme, is I should have listened to my gut. Six years of trying to get ActiveCampaign to work for me the way I felt it sho

What is soul of place or genius loci and how can you write it in a more immersive way in your books? How can you discover it closer to home, as well as write real settings more authentically, and invent it for your fiction? Linda Lappin gives some tips in this interview. In the intro, 140 Book Marketing Ideas from BookBub; JA Konrath on AI and The Authors Guild. Plus, Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words, and I'm on lots of podcasts: The Rebel Author Podcast, Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing; How Do You Write?; The Secret Library; Self-Publishing Show; Hybrid Author Podcast; Self-Publishing Advice Podcast; Novel Marketing Podcast. For a great ebook deal, check out the Halloween Storybundle 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 Linda Lappin is the award-winning author of historical fiction and mystery, as well as The Soul of Place: A Creative Writing Workbook: Ideas and Exercises for Conjuring the Genius Loci. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes What is soul of place or genius loci? How to know when you feel the soul of place Using soul of place across genres Noticing your local environment in a different light The importance of sensory detail Experiencing sacred places Writing characters' homes to create more personal stories Writing as an outsider You can find Linda at LindaLappin.net. Transcript of Interview with Linda Lappin Joanna: Linda Lappin is the award-winning author of historical fiction and mystery, as well as The Soul of Place: A Creative Writing Workbook: Ideas and Exercises for Conjuring the Genius Loci, which we're talking about today. So welcome to the show, Linda. Linda: Thank you. Joanna: Oh, I'm excited to talk to you about this topic. But first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Linda: I'm an American author based in Italy, and I've always written ever since I was a small child. I did a creative writing minor with an English major at university. Then I went on to the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop to do a graduate degree MFA in fiction, poetry, and also, literary translation. Thanks to the literary translation, I was able to get a Fulbright grant to Italy to participate in a translation workshop, and I managed to stay on here. It was sort of an interesting thing because when I was in university, I was writing primarily poetry, but after I moved abroad to Italy, I kind of gave up writing for five years because I was really focusing on learning the language and translating. When I started writing again, it was prose and short stories, which then got longer and longer and became novels. I've also been teaching. I taught 39 years in Italian universities as a teacher of English Language and Literature. Joanna: So you said there, 39 years. So how long have you been in Italy? Linda: 40 years. Joanna: Oh, wow. That's crazy. Do you consider yourself Italian now? Because you must have lived in Italy longer than the US. Linda: No. I have lived here longer than I lived in the US because I was only about 25 when I left, but your roots sort of stay with you, which is also part of the soul of place. They do stay with you. So I'm perfectly bilingual, my husband is Italian, we speak in a combination of English and Italian, but I still feel very American. Joanna: That is interesting. I'm just fascinated with place, and I know people listening are too. Where in the U.S. do you come from? And where are you living in Italy? Linda: Well, I originally come from Kingsport, Tennessee. My parents were from the Chicago area. I was living in Iowa City before I moved to Italy. Now, I'm in Rome. Actually, I have a second home in a small village near Rome, and so we go back and forth. Especially during the pandemic, we've been in our second home a lot. So back and forth, Rome and a small village called Vitorchiano. Joanna: Wow. Okay, so this actually gives me much more of an insight into why you wrote this book in the first place. Tennessee, Rome, Chicago, Iowa — I've been to Chicago—I've been to Rome many times, but these places all have a very specific sense of place, which is kind of what we're talking about. Why don't we get into the book, and you pronounce this differently, but— What do you mean by genius loci or soul of place? Linda: Well, most people think of soul of place as being a synonym for sense of place, meaning the atmosphere of a place or a locale, but the term genius loci, or as I pronounce it with the Italian, genius loci, refers to something much more specific and harkens back to ancient Rome. The ancient Romans, as well as Greeks, and also various other populations around the world in different er

How can you let your creative dark horse run? What is the Shadow — and why explore your Shadow side? This episode features excerpted chapters from the audiobook of Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words, written and narrated by Joanna Penn, available on Kickstarter until 25 October 2023: www.TheCreativePenn.com/shadowbook (link will redirect if you're reading/listening in the future.) 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. Let your dark horse run Introduction: What is the Shadow? Why explore your Shadow side? Let your dark horse run Although much has changed over the last two thousand years, human nature remains the same. Around 370 BC, the Greek philosopher Plato composed The Phaedrus, which includes an allegory of a chariot that has helped me frame the Shadow. Perhaps it will help you, too. Imagine a Roman chariot drawn by two horses — a white horse and a dark horse. I am the Charioteer, and I am in the race of my life. The white horse represents my rational self, the one society sees. My good behaviour, my industry, my hard work, my productivity, my scrubbed-clean, well-mannered good girl self.  She helps others. She’s a peacemaker. She doesn’t like conflict. She says the right things, reads the right books. She needs to be liked. My white horse trots delicately along paved roads, aware of the fences and boundaries, never needing to cross them, remaining within the lines drawn by others. My dark horse is a wild animal, wreathed in smoke and ash and flame.  She gallops across wide open spaces, leaps obstacles, smashes through fences, and avoids the paved and cornered world.  She runs free and will destroy herself, rather than be caged. If both horses run together in the same direction, I can fly along, whooping in delight at the speed and power. But if they become unbalanced, the chariot begins to wobble.  When my dark horse stumbles, my white horse drives us hard along the highway, never stopping for rest.  But if she dominates for too long, my dark horse rears up and runs out of control, driving us towards the cliff edge. My white horse has often been stronger.  I’ve always worked hard, got good grades, behaved well, earned enough money to support myself, paid my taxes early.  But the more I let my white horse dominate, the more my dark one rears up unexpectedly and takes over until she exhausts herself with all the things that nice girls shouldn’t do.  When I became a writer, these two horses drove me once more.  My white horse writes non-fiction, helps others, wants to be useful, and responsibly manages a professional business. I’m grateful to have her! My dark horse writes stories that tap into untamed darkness.  I’ve tried to muzzle her, strap her down, regulate her chaos.  But she rears her head, shakes her mane, stamps her hooves, paws the dirt.  Let me run. Questions: What are the key aspects of your white horse?  What are the key aspects of your dark horse? What happens when one or the other becomes dominant? How could you let your dark horse run creatively? How does it make you feel to consider that prospect? Introduction: What is the Shadow? “How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also if I am to be whole.” —C.G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul We all have a Shadow side and it is the work of a lifetime to recognise what lies within and spin that base material into gold.  Think of it as a seedling in a little pot that you’re given when you’re young. It’s a bit misshapen and weird, not something you would display in your living room, so you place it in a dark corner of the basement.  You don’t look at it for years. You almost forget about it.  Then one day you notice tendrils of something wild poking up through the floorboards. They’re ugly and don’t fit with your Scandi-minimalist interior design. You chop the tendrils away and pour weedkiller on what’s left, trying to hide the fact that they were ever there.  But the creeping stems keep coming.  At some point, you know you have to go down there and face the wild thing your seedling has become.  When you eventually pluck up enough courage to go down into the basement, you discover that the plant has wound its roots deep into the foundations of your home. Its vines weave in and out of the cracks in the walls, and it has beautiful flowers and strange fruit.  It holds your world together.  Perhaps you don’t need to destroy the wild tendrils. Perhaps you can let them wind up into the light and allow their rich beauty to weave through your home. It will change the look you have so carefully cultivated, but maybe that’s just what the place needs. The Shadow in psychology Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychologist and the founder of analytical psychology. He described the Shad

How can you establish a creative routine that enables you to write the books you want to write without burning out? How can you balance a sustainable work ethic as an author as well as spending time away from the desk. LA Witt talks about her strategies. In the intro, Spotify introduces 15 hours of audiobooks for premium subscribers in limited countries [FindawayVoices]; Spotify auto-translates podcasts into other languages in the host's voice [Spotify]; Amazon invested in Anthropic, which includes generative text model, Claude [The Verge]; ChatGPT goes multi-modal [OpenAI]; DALL-E 3 launching which includes text with images [OpenAI] Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words is now live! I'm also discussing the book, selling direct and other things on the Everyday Spirituality Podcast; Two Indie Authors; Becoming an international bestselling author; Plus, check out the Halloween Storybundle and Becca Syme's Energy Pennies Kickstarter. This podcast is sponsored by Written Word Media, which makes book marketing a breeze by offering quick, easy and effective ways for authors to promote their books. You can also subscribe to the Written Word Media email newsletter for book marketing tips. L.A. Witt is the author of nearly 200 romance novels and novellas, and today we're talking about her book for authors, Writing Faster for the Win. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Writing in multiple subgenres Tips for utilizing your space and time for writing effectively Discovering your sustainable word count Using brackets and placeholders to write faster Trusting your story intuition The toll burnout takes on your health and tips to avoid it Managing a massive backlist and multiple streams of income Switching from KU to wide and how to ramp up sales You can find L.A. at GallagherWitt.com or on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. Transcript of Interview with L.A. Witt Joanna: L.A. Witt is the author of nearly 200 romance novels and novellas, and today we're talking about her book for authors, Writing Faster for the Win. So welcome to the show, Lori. LA: Thanks for having me. Joanna: It's great to have you on the show. So first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. LA: I mean, I'm kind of the cliche writer who's been writing since I could hold a pen up right. I always wanted to write stories when I was a kid and was learning for years and years. Then I kind of fell backwards into writing romance and into publishing because my husband was in the military, we got sent to Japan, and there are no jobs there. I couldn't work. I said, what am I going to do? And he said, well, when we got married, you said you always wanted to take some time off and try writing full time—like six months, twelve months to see if I could pull it off—and he said, now you have three years. Joanna: No pressure! LA: But that was the deal. He said, I have three years, don't worry about getting a job, don't worry about finding some kind of other hustle. He said, just focus on writing. We agreed that if I could get a part-time income going that I didn't have to get a full-time job when we went back to the US. I mean, I had just gotten out of nine years of customer service, so that was some serious motivation.  It happened that NaNoWriMo was like right around that time. I think we moved in October, so NaNoWriMo was the next month. I just said, okay, well, I'm going to do NaNoWriMo to get into the groove. And I thought, well, if I'm going to plot something in two weeks, a romance is probably—I don't want to say simpler, as in like, oh, they're just simple, ridiculous—but they are simpler than epic fantasy, which is what I was writing at the time. So I threw one together and wrote it, and it was like, this is actually a lot of fun, I'm going to do it again. That was 2008, and it just never stopped. Joanna: Wow. Okay, so that's interesting. You're right about epic fantasy. Obviously, they're much longer books, but also multiple characters.  Do you now write epic fantasy? Or have you stuck with romance? LA: I've stuck with romance and also romantic suspense, but I do still write fantasy. I have one that I'm working on on the side, it's just not where I want it to be yet. But I really enjoyed writing romance. Like when I got into it, I was like, this is actually a lot of fun. Then I, again, stumbled into writing gay romance, and that turned out to be even more fun. So I just said, well, I'm gonna keep doing this. 15 years and 200 books later… Joanna: Wow. How many subgenres in romance do you write in? So you mentioned there the gay romance, but what else do you have? LA: I've written suspense, science fiction, steampunk. I did a modern retelling of The Little Mermaid. I've kind of gone all over the place. I, again, sort of accidentally started writing

As much as we try to plan for things, sometimes life happens and we have to adapt to a new situation. Jessie Kwak talks about adapting to life as a freelance writer and author after being injured, and her tips for managing work and energy. In the intro, I mention Accessibility for All, the interview I did with Jeff Adams about how we can make our content more accessible to people with injuries and disabilities. You can also check out KWL Podcast episode on Accessibility for Authors. Plus, Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words is launching soon on Kickstarter, register your interest in the launch here. 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.  Jessie Kwak is the author of gangster sci-fi supernatural thrillers and nonfiction for creatives. She's also a ghostwriter and freelance marketing copywriter, and her books include From Big Idea to Book and From Chaos to Creativity. 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 Adapting to changing circumstances When medical situations affect your author business How changing appearances affects us at a deeper level The importance of accessibility tools for authors Prioritizing your use of energy when you only have a finite amount Ways to future-proof your business Healthcare costs for freelancers The Author Alchemy Summit hosted by Jessie Kwak You can find Jessie at JessieKwak.com and her upcoming summit at AuthorAlchemySummit.com. Transcript of Interview with Jessie Kwak Joanna: Jessie Kwak is the author of gangster sci-fi supernatural thrillers and nonfiction for creatives. She's also a ghostwriter and freelance marketing copywriter, and her books include From Big Idea to Book and From Chaos to Creativity. So welcome back to the show, Jessie. Jessie: Thank you for having me. Joanna: It's good to talk to you again. Now, you were last on the show in 2022, and this is just over a year later. So we're gonna jump straight into the topic today, which is adapting to change even when it's outside of your control. Tell us what happened to you back in July? Jessie: It's been kind of a wild few months. Back in July, I was selling books at a street fair with my friend Mark, and as we were leaving the fair, the car in front of us open fired into the street, and a bullet ricocheted through the windshield and into my eye. So fortunately, we were super close to the hospital, so Mark was able to get me there really quick. For a writer, he was an amazing getaway driver. Since then, I have had a couple of surgeries to reconstruct the eye and remove the bullet fragment, and it's been a lot of healing since then. I'm on a really good trajectory. My energy is mostly back and my right eye I can see perfectly well out of now, that was a little touch and go for a minute. But yeah, it brought everything to a screeching halt. We'll just say that. Joanna: I'm on your Facebook page, and your husband put a thing up, and it was so shocking. I know, obviously, you're used to telling the story now. But there are people listening who are like, what you got shot? And being in England, this is not very usual. I mean, we hear the news about America, and there always seems to be a lot of shooting, but this is a really big deal over here. It's like holy crap, that is just crazy. I mean, so it's a couple of months now, and there's healing and everything, but the immediate shock and injury and trauma of this. Did everything stop in your life? Jessie: Yeah, of course. I am always a go-go-go person, so it took me a minute to internalize that I wasn't going to be able to go, go, go. I do a monthly writers' social at my house, and that was coming up on that Tuesday, this was a Saturday, and I remember being like, “Oh, this is going to be a crazy story to tell everyone on Tuesday.” Then my husband's like, “You're not hosting a social in a few days, what are you thinking? We have to cancel that.” And I was like, oh, you're right, I'm going to have to cancel a lot of things. So it just took a while for that to sink in. Joanna: And then of course, you're a freelance writer and an author, and your sight is a necessary part of this. I think this really freaked me out big time because I do have some risk factors for macular degeneration. So I thought a lot about what would happen if I lose my sight suddenly because that's kind of how it how it happens. How did you deal with the immediate effect of thinking, ‘how is this going to affect my business?' Jessie: Yeah, well, so I have actually been dictating for quite a few years. So that's a big part of my writing process now. I was like, okay, I can keep dictating things. Edit

How can you create a high-quality photo book and publish it on Kickstarter? How do you market a beautiful, high-value book? Jeremy Bassetti talks about his photo book project, Hill of the Skull. In the intro, Slow release book strategies [ALLi]; Seth Godin on how he is using ChatGPT; Consultants using AI worked faster and produced higher quality results [Ethan Mollick]; DALL-E includes text and consistent characters [OpenAI, Examples on X]; More authors suing OpenAI [The Verge]. Plus, Writing the Shadow Kickstarter; Gold cover video; Wing of an Angel Kickstarter; Pics of Norway on Instagram @jfpennauthor Today's show is sponsored by Ingram Spark, which I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 40,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries, and more. It's your content—do more with it through IngramSpark.com. Jeremy Bassetti is a travel writer, editor, teacher, and author of historical fiction, as well as the host of the Travel Writing World Podcast. His latest project is The Hill of the Skull: A Photobook Memoir, launching on Kickstarter. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Tips for capturing travel experiences for later reference Legal and ethical concerns in publishing photos of people The multilayered editing process of a photo book Sourcing a printer for high-quality books Adding different levels and products to a Kickstarter campaign Why Kickstarter vs. other publishing methods The importance of marketing You can find Jeremy at JeremyBassetti.com, his podcast at TravelWritingWorld.com, and his Kickstarter here. Transcript of Interview with Jeremy Bassetti Joanna: Jeremy Bassetti is a travel writer, editor, teacher, and author of historical fiction, as well as the host of the Travel Writing World Podcast. His latest project is The Hill of the Skull: A Photobook Memoir, launching on Kickstarter. So welcome back to the show, Jeremy. Jeremy: Thanks for having me. It's good to hear your voice again. Joanna: Absolutely. Now, you were on the show talking about the wider aspects of travel writing in September 2021. So we're gonna just jump straight into your new project today. The tagline for The Hill of the Skull is — “A professor visits a sacred mountain in Bolivia and gets pulled into a world of ritual” — which sounds super cool. Tell us about the trip that inspired the book. Jeremy: So in, I guess, the fall of 2022, I went on sabbatical from my work, I'm a professor by day. Part of the mission for me during my sabbatical was to do research on mountain cultures, and you know, how people around the world think about mountains. Leading up to that trip, I read from Victoria Preston, somebody who I know you've spoken to before about pilgrimages. I read in her book many years before that something about a community and a pilgrimage in the Bolivian Andes, in some kind of remote region in a town that many people haven't heard of. So I made it kind of my mission to go to this town during this pilgrimage to see what was going on there and to do research. The name of the town is called Quillacollo, and it's not a small town, but it's a town that many people haven't heard of.  There's this kind of incredible festival there every August. On the surface, it's to celebrate the ascension of the Virgin Mary, but when you see what's going on, in terms of the rituals and the ceremonies around this kind of sacred hill, you can see that there's this incredible fusion of native Andean ideas and traditions and rituals blended and fused with Catholic. So you have this kind of fusion of pagan and Catholic practices happening during this pilgrimage. It's quite incredible. So that was the motivation for me to go to this corner of the world. Joanna: I mean, it sounds very cool. But Bolivia, what's your attraction to South America? Have you traveled there before? Because, obviously, there are pagan and Catholic rituals all over the world. Why Bolivia? Jeremy: Well, frankly, I had never been to South America. I'd studied about colonial Latin America and Bolivia in grad school, especially around silver, and Bolivia is the place when you're talking about silver during the colonial era. So it's always kind of been on my radar. This place in particular was just so fascinating to me because, well, frankly, I'd never heard of it. There's this big celebration, there's a lot going on, there was just something that was kind of magical that pulled me in that direction. I wanted to go far field. It was my sabbatical, so I wanted to go someplace that would be challenging for me to visit and something that would kind of tie into my larger research interests, which involves looking at the ideas of mountains around the world. So, Bolivia, of course, is like a mountainous region, right? The city that I visited, Quillacollo, by no

In this solo episode, I talk about my lessons learned from 12 years as a full-time author entrepreneur. You can read/listen to previous updates at TheCreativePenn.com/timeline. In the intro, Finding readers [ALLi blog]; Writing the Shadow Kickstarter. 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 Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-nominated, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author as J.F. Penn. She’s also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Memoir is one of the hardest and most rewarding genres Disruption is inevitable. If you don't disrupt yourself, you will be disrupted. Disrupting my creative process with generative AI tools Disrupting my publishing and marketing process with Kickstarter and Shopify How much do I rely on Amazon for book sales and total business income? You can support the podcast on Patreon.com/thecreativepenn and get a lot more behind-the-scenes business and AI insights. You can sign up for my Author Blueprint here. You can buy my books for authors at www.CreativePennBooks.com and my fiction and memoir at www.JFPennBooks.com. Sign up for my next Kickstarter here: Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words. Lessons Learned from 12 Years as an Author Entrepreneur Twelve years ago, in Sept 2011, I left my day job to become a full-time author-entrepreneur. Every year since I have reflected on the journey and what I learn along the way. My challenges change and grow along with the business and you will likely be at a different stage, but I hope that you find my lessons learned useful along your own author path. You can read all my lessons learned from previous years on my timeline so far – and remember, just like everyone else, I started out by writing my first book with no audience! But with time and continued effort, everything is possible. Lesson 1: Memoir is one of the hardest and most rewarding genres I've been flirting with the idea of writing memoir for years. I've done many interviews on it (linked here), and I have reams of more personal writing in my journals and also in various draft Scrivener projects. I have shared personal anecdotes in all my non-fiction books, but the closest I've come before to memoir-ish writing is The Successful Author Mindset, which is a very personal book in many ways. But Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways is my first true memoir, combined with some practical lessons for solo walking, and tips for tackling multi-day pilgrimage walks. That book was years in the making, and the draft was around 100K, so I cut over 50% of it in the end (as I discussed more with Marion Roach Smith in a recent interview). I was so scared of publishing it and when I was about to hit Launch on the Kickstarter back in February, my heart was hammering. I was scared of judgment, I was scared of being ‘seen,' and also scared that no one would buy it, as it didn't fit with either of my brands and existing body of work. But I am so glad I gave Pilgrimage the time it needed — the years of preparation, the years of writing, and also launching it in a way that honored the book, as well as the chance to make the physical product so beautiful. It's been transformational to write and marks a new focus for my writing. It released me so I could finally write my ‘shadow' book which I've been talking about for years. Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words is with my editor and will launch on Kickstarter on 9 October — you can sign up for the pre-launch here. It also made far more money than I expected. The Pilgrimage Kickstarter made £25,771 (around US$32K) and I've sold 1350 copies across all the stores so far (Mar -August 2023). It's an evergreen book so that's just the beginning. The special hardback with color photos is selling well direct from my store, and given the title, you either know you want it, or it's not for you. This makes advertising it that much easier and cheaper, especially as it's not a ‘popular' genre crowded with advertisers. Writing this memoir has been rewarding creatively, emotionally, and also financially. If you have a book of your heart, a book you know only you can write, whatever the genre — please make the time to write it. You never know how it will turn out. Lesson 2: Disruption is inevitable. If you don't disrupt yourself, you wil

What's the difference between an audio book and an audio drama? What are the steps to write a script and produce it? Joanne Phillips gives her tips. In the intro, Amazon KDP's new AI content guidelines; AI at the heart of what Amazon does [The Verge]; Writing the Shadow Kickstarter; 1000 Libraries Kickstarter; 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 Joanne Phillips is the author of 14 books, including romantic comedy, literary fiction, mysteries, and self-help books. She's also the scriptwriter, showrunner, and executive producer for GravyTree Media, specializing in audio drama, with Everyone's Happy out now. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes What an audio drama is compared to an audiobook or podcast The process of writing and adapting an audio drama How to cast voice actors Details on creating the raw audio, editing, and adding sound effects Time and cost commitment of creating an audio drama Incorporating AI tools into the audio production Marketing tips for fiction audio You can find Joanne at GravyTreeMedia.com Transcript of Interview with Joanne Phillips Joanna: Joanne Phillips is the author of 14 books, including romantic comedy, literary fiction, mysteries, and self-help books. She's also the scriptwriter, showrunner, and executive producer for GravyTree Media, specializing in audio drama, with Everyone's Happy out now. So welcome to the show, Jo. Joanne: Hi, Jo. It's great to be here. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you about this topic because it's so interesting. But first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Joanne: So I've always written and made up stories, like most writers, really. I can't remember a time when I wasn't writing and creating narratives. I think it's how I make sense of the world. It's how I escaped, that sounds terrible?! Joanna: No, not at all. Joanne: It's how I kept myself company, I think, as a child. So, then my first novel took about six years to finish. I got a bit quicker as time went on. Then I began publishing chapters of it on a blog back in, I think, about 2011. Then some people seemed to like it, which was nice. Early in 2012, after I got my first Kindle and read about self-publishing in the writers magazines that I used to buy, I decided to take the plunge. That first book was called Can't Live Without, that was a rom com. It did quite well back then because that was when you could get a massive boost after going free for just a few days. Remember those days? So I just carried on self-publishing, and that's how I got into it. Joanna: You talk there about the writing side and a bit about self-publishing, but you must have been interested in audio as well. So how did that come about? And did you do that for a job or something? Joanne: No, no, I just really, really had an interest in it. I love audio drama. I always listened to it, but I never considered that I could write it. I think I did, back in my 30s, I did have a stab at writing a script for a competition. It didn't get anywhere, and it wasn't very good. So it wasn't really on my radar at the time, it was only very recently that I considered that I might be able to have a go at that. I just thought of myself more as a writer of books for a long, long time. Joanna: Well, that's encouraging. Let's just be clear about some definitions. What is audio drama versus an audiobook or a podcast? Joanne: It's interesting, isn't it? To me, an audiobook is when a book is just read out loud by an actor or a voiceover artist or the author, and that's it. Sometimes there are effects or music added, but you can tell it's a book. So say—and I've been thinking about this, about how to describe it, because it is a distinction that's quite difficult to make—so say it might sound like this, “Jane walked off the elevator and saw Martin's dead body on the floor.” I mean, it would sound better than that if somebody professional was actually doing it, but you can tell that it's a book.  In an audio drama or fiction podcast—because they're the same thing, it's just different terms for the same thing—is where there are actors. I mean, sometimes only one actor, to be fair, or two, or sometimes, like in mine, I think I ended up with nine and some more walk on parts, which was far too many to start off with, but we'll come to that. And there's a script, and you can hear the action unfolding with dialogue and sound effects. So for example, in my example I just made there with Jane and Martin, you'd hear the elevator stop, and the doors opening, and Jane's footsteps. You might hear her cry out and maybe say something like, “Oh, no, Martin's been shot!” I m

How can you expand the possibilities of book cover images with AI? What are some of the controversies and how can authors and designers work together with AI tools to create original design? Book cover designer Damon Freeman discusses his views. There are lots of links in the show notes below to specific resources, but of course, the AI space moves fast, so always check the Terms and Conditions of any site you want to investigate further. I also mention the free webinar on AI Ads for Authors with Mark Dawson and James Blatch. Today's show is sponsored by my wonderful patrons who fund my brain so I have time to think about and discuss these futurist topics impacting authors. If you support the show, you also get the extra monthly patron-only Q&A audio — and my tutorial on how I use Midjourney. You can support the show at www.patreon.com/thecreativepenn Damon Freeman is the founder and creative director of Damonza.com, creating custom book cover design and interior formatting for authors. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Using AI tools as part of the creative process How Midjourney works Discussion on copyright How AI tools are enabling the creation of unique cover images that have been almost impossible before If AI will be able to do everything, how will creatives make a living? Tips for working with your cover designer and incorporating AI Damon has some great articles on AI images in book covers here, and he also mentions James at GoOnWrite who has an article for self-published authors around AI and images here. You can find Damon at Damonza.com. Transcript of Interview with Damon Freeman Joanna: Damon Freeman is the founder and creative director of Damonza.com, creating custom book cover design and interior formatting for authors. So welcome to the show, Damon. Damon: Thank you, Joanna. Thanks for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to chat. I'm really looking forward to it. Joanna: Oh, me too. So we're going to talk specifically about AI images as part of the design process today. But first up— Tell us a bit more about you, your design background, and how you've been working with authors for over a decade. Damon: I trained as a graphic designer, and I was working in normal graphic design businesses. I started my own company as a general kind of graphic designer many, many years ago. Over time—you know, it was going pretty well—but in around 2007, with the global financial crisis and all of those kinds of things, kind of everything just started falling apart, and it wasn't going well. Out of desperation, I started looking at other potential opportunities. I found a website, which maybe you've heard of or some of the authors, have called 99designs.com. I started pitching different kinds of design work on there to try and earn a bit of extra income. One of the kinds of work projects I was pitching on was obviously book covers, and I started getting quite a good rate on the covers. So as you may know, they only pay the designers that they select they work for. So you might be doing graphic design work, and you put in all the effort, and then your cover doesn't get picked, and that's it. So I found I was getting quite a good win rate for book covers, so I just started doing a few more of them. Eventually, it just sort of took over. I stopped my normal day job, and I just started focusing exclusively on book covers. That was in about 2010 or so. So in 2011, I started the website,  Damonza.com. It was just me doing book covers, and I was fortunate in that because of the way I'd done things before, I had quite an extensive portfolio of book covers. So I put them up on a website, and for a while the website existed, but nothing happened. Just slowly, slowly, I started picking up work and picking up authors and picking up clients. Eventually it grew quite a lot that I had to start looking at how I could service all of these clients. So I brought in somebody that used to work for me before as a graphic designer, and she started helping with the book covers, and it slowly grew from there. Now I oversee a team of designers, and we've got project managers, and the designers we work with are all over the world, but have been working with me, many of them, for seven or eight years now. We're a happy team, work well together. I still oversee all the work that goes out. Occasionally I'll do some of the designs myself. If it's a tricky one, then I might choose to do it myself. But generally, the designers that I've got working for me are amazing, often producing work that is much better than what I could do. Joanna: That's brilliant. Do you have any idea how many book covers would you have done since you started Damonza? Damon: Well over 10,000. Joanna: Right. That's what I thought because I know you've been in the space for a long time, we've been connected for a long time, a

How might thinking differently help you create clarity in our noisy world? How can you produce a high-quality print book — and successfully fund it on Kickstarter? Holger Nils Pohl discusses these things and more. In the intro, Copyright in an age of AI [Self Publishing Advice, Monica Leonelle, Ars Technica, The Verge, The Atlantic; Insider; Kathryn Goldman; US Government Copyright Office AI Submission]; Writing the Shadow Kickstarter; Lesbians Who Write; Pretty Links; Today's show is sponsored by Ingram Spark, which I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 40,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries, and more. It's your content—do more with it through IngramSpark.com. Holger Nils Pohl is a visual strategist, professional speaker, trainer, and coach. He's also the author of multiple books, from business to children's books, as well as the co-creator of an award-winning business board game. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Breaking out of the traditional publishing mindset The creative process — distilling ideas into visual images versus words Neurodiversity as a creative Living authentically and breaking out of ‘masking' Challenges of creating a high-quality book Return on investment for nonfiction authors on Kickstarter Six tips for a successful Kickstarter How creatives can create clarity and choose the right direction You can find Holger at HolgerNilsPohl.com. You can also go to HolgerNilsPohl.com/penn, and you will find examples of the visuals we discussed, as well as the process of how you can find clarity to cut through the noise in the author world, as much as the rest of your life. Sign up for the Autism children's book here. Transcript of Interview with Holger Nils Pohl Joanna: Holger Nils Pohl is a visual strategist, professional speaker, trainer, and coach. He's also the author of multiple books, from business to children's books, as well as the co-creator of an award-winning business board game. So welcome to the show, Holger. Holger: Thank you for having me, Jo. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you. Before we get into it— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Holger: So while we're talking here in 2023, I'm 43 years old. I was a late reader of books, I would say. So until the age of 14, I'd only read comics and magazines, but nothing that was kind of like a book. I didn't like German or English in school, and I'm coming from Germany, by the way, you might already know from my accent.  I found my passion for reading crime and science fiction, as well as fantasy, a bit later. At the age of 14/15, I started to read, and then I never stopped. I'm kind of a whale reader, I read very fast and very much. I always have trouble to find more new books that I can read because somehow I read faster than the market can provide me with books sometimes.  I love the pen and pen roleplay and, as well, developed new worlds and systems with my friends to play that, but I never had the urge to write anything but always to create. I love to create.  I got distracted from all of this by university because I had to find something that is worthwhile spending your working life. Everybody told me you need to be an engineer or do something proper, and not be just creative. By now we know that this was stupid advice, but back then I didn't know. I tried architecture, I broke up from university after one and a half years, I became a carpenter then, I did an apprenticeship as a carpenter, and afterwards became a designer. And luckily enough, that was a good fit for me. In 2009, I started my self-employment right after the university.  I work with visuals. I teach, as well, people to draw. But at some point, people were begging me to write about my knowledge about business, as well as how we can communicate better with visual tools, and everything I have done in the past. People asked me for so long, basically for three or four years, that I started writing, and then I never get out of that again. I started writing, and I couldn't stop, and somehow the nonfiction opened up an avenue for my fiction writing. So I wanted to write fiction, and now I'm all over the place with writing, while still being a consultant and coach full time. Joanna: Well, can I also ask you about the self-publishing side? Because you and I have been connected now for many years, and I feel like, I don't even know, do you know how many years? Holger: I mean, I've been following you for, I guess, seven years now. So yeah, quite a while. Joanna: So seven years, so maybe 2016-ish. And it's interesting because, of course, Germany I feel is even more traditional around literature, and proper books, and proper publishing. How did you break out of that mindset that traditional publishing is the o

How can you stop self-censoring your writing and share the deepest aspects of yourself with your readers? How can you break poetry out of the restraints that many try to put upon it? Stephanie Wytovich talks about these things and more. In the intro, 5 trends that are shifting the future of publishing with Monica Leonelle & Russell Nohelty; Direct Sales Strategies We Love from 36 Authors from BookBub; JFPennBooks Reading Order; AI Training Permission from Hugh Howey; Eleven Labs for AI voices and VoiceSwitcher with Storytel; Plus, Kickstarter for Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words; Chuck Palahniuk on James Altucher talking about unmasking shadows; Carl Jung's Red Book, which features in Stone of Fire. This podcast is sponsored by Written Word Media, which makes book marketing a breeze by offering quick, easy and effective ways for authors to promote their books. You can also subscribe to the Written Word Media email newsletter for book marketing tips. Stephanie M. Wytovich is a Bram Stoker award-winning poet, as well as a horror novelist and essayist. She's also the poetry editor for Raw Dog Screaming Press and the editor of Writing Poetry in the Dark. 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 Allowing poetry to break out from fitting in a box How to put together a poetry collection Balancing writing for therapy and writing for the reader Ways to stop ourselves from self-censoring Where the darker sides of ourselves come from The horror genre and what it encompasses Differences between mainstream books and award winners Benefits of being involved with a community of writers You can find Stephanie at StephanieMWytovich.com and on social media at @SWytovich and @TheHauntedBookshelf Transcript of Interview with Stephanie M. Wytovich Joanna: Stephanie M. Wytovich is a Bram Stoker award-winning poet, as well as a horror novelist and essayist. She's also the poetry editor for Raw Dog Screaming Press and the editor of Writing Poetry in the Dark, which is fantastic. So welcome, Stephanie. Stephanie: Hi. Thank you so much for having me today. Joanna: I'm really looking forward to our conversation. But first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. Stephanie: So I wear a lot of hats in my day-to-day life. So I teach literature and creative writing, I work in a couple of undergrad and grad programs, and then, of course, I'm writing, and I had my first child back in 2022. Writing has kind of been this constant catharsis and quiet time to collect my thoughts during all of the madness of my day-to-day. I've been writing for as long as I can remember. I always loved to make up stories as a child, and the only thing that really changed was that they got darker and darker as I grew on. Then they just continued to get more morose and terrifying as I moved further into adulthood. But writing, and especially writing poetry has always been what I identify as in everything, you know, first and foremost. Poetry has really changed my life in so many ways, which is why I was so honored to have the opportunity to put out this book with Raw Dog Screaming Press, Writing Poetry in the Dark, because I want to bring some of that joy that poetry has given me and share it to make it more accessible with other people. Joanna: There's a lot there, but you said that you really identify with poetry. I want to get into that first, and then we'll come back to some of the other darker stuff. From your editor's note in Writing Poetry in the Dark, you said, “I stopped trying to fit poetry in a box of what I thought it was, and instead opened my eyes to what poetry could be.” I love that because I was taught poetry at school, and it was like, ‘this is literature, it needs to be this particular thing.' So tell us how we can do this. How do we allow poetry to break out of the box? Or how have you done this? Stephanie: Yeah, I mean, I had a very, very similar experience. I think as children, we're given poetry all the time. We're reading nursery rhymes and fairy tales, and we're getting all of these different versions of poetry that are fun, and creative, and whimsical, and dark, and weird, and all of the above, and we attach to it. Then something happens around middle school, we're usually introduced to Edgar Allan Poe, and we see how it can be dark. We get Emily Dickinson and we're like, oh my gosh, there's this whole other world, like this is so cool. Then we get to high school, and like you said, it's very much like, read 17 Shakespearean sonnets and write me a poem in iambic pentameter or you fail AP English. Like all of the joy is just kind of squashed because it becomes this very serious, terrifying thing. That's not saying that formal poetry isn't wonderful and expressive, because it is, but I think there's this shift where it becomes fun and imag

How can you build an author business for the long term, and not just for the launch of one book? How do you ensure secure cash flow and profits, instead of focusing on short-term spike sales? Joe Solari discusses key aspects of your author business. In the intro, Kobo Plus expands to audiobooks in Australia & New Zealand; Thoughts on the changing publishing environment based on Thrillerfest Audios (well worth buying!), and you can book for Thrillerfest 2024 here; Letter to the FTC from The Authors Guild, American Booksellers Association and the Open Markets Institute on Amazon dominance in the industry. Plus, my next book for authors Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words will be out on Kickstarter in October, sign up for the pre-launch here; Great examples of creative extras in Sara Rosett's campaign Murder in the Alps; and I'm on the Travelling Through Podcast on a walk and talk along the canal. 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 Joe Solari helps authors build great businesses through books, courses, podcasting, as well as strategy and operations consulting. He is the author of Advantage: Harnessing Cumulative Advantage in the Winner Takes All Publishing Market and May I Have a Moment of Your Attention: How to Be Heard in a Noisy Market. 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 Can every author learn to be a business person? Budgeting as an author and solving cashflow issues Business models for fiction vs nonfiction authors Managing the problem of scale as your audience grows Thinking longer term with asset creation Using reader data to make more direct sales The future of 50Booksto50k You can find Joe at JoeSolari.com and more about his future conferences at AuthorVenturesLLC.com Transcript of Interview with Joe Solari Joanna: Joe Solari helps authors build great businesses through books, courses, podcasting, as well as strategy and operations consulting. He is the author of Advantage: Harnessing Cumulative Advantage in the Winner Takes All Publishing Market and May I Have a Moment of Your Attention: How to Be Heard in a Noisy Market. So welcome to the show, Joe. Joe: Thanks for having me on, Joanna. This is great. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you. As I mentioned before we started recording, we've kind of circled around each other online for years, and I'm so glad to finally talk to you. Joe: Yeah, there's been some near misses. Like, oh, we may be at the same event, and then COVID comes or who knows. Joanna: Absolutely. For those people who might not have heard of you— Tell us a bit more about how you got into writing and business for authors. Joe: Sure, sure. The funny thing is, there's nothing you could have ever done to prepare yourself for what I do today, like this didn't exist 10 years ago. So it's funny to kind of look back and understand the process. My background, I've got an undergrad in art from the Art Institute of Chicago. So I've got a creative background. I've got a master's in business administration from University of Chicago. So I have this strange mix of creative and analytical, and I've been entrepreneurial my whole life. So I've owned and operated multiple businesses.  What specifically got me into publishing, was my wife decided to write some books, some nonfiction books about styling. At the time, I was really busy with a startup business in the oil and gas industry, so I was like completely not even thinking about books, and she was having issues. This was like 2013/2014, so you remember how fun it was to try and get a book uploaded or do anything on these platforms. She had some technical issues, I came in to help, and when I looked in her KDP account, there was $4,000. I was like, oh, this is interesting for a book about t-shirt and jeans to make $4,000 in a month. I need to know more about this.  I started listening to your podcast and I started listening to Mark's. It's interesting thinking back then, there wasn't a lot of stuff that I could find, most of the good stuff was actually coming out of the UK, people that were really kind of the leaders in the self-publishing piece. So that was where I was learning.  Then when I sold that business, I decided to write a book, because if my wife could, why couldn't I? It was a book about business for creatives. And like most nonfiction books, it didn't sell a whole lot. Of the copies I did sell, it seemed like most of them were to this group called 20Booksto50k, and I had authors reaching out to

How can you create a book series that children love — and that you can expand into multiple streams of income? How can you offer a fantastic experience to schools — and get paid well for your time? Tonya Duncan Ellis gives her tips. In the intro, investment firm KKR will buy Simon & Schuster [Publishing Perspectives]; Subscriber Surge Giveaways [Written Word Media]; Key Book Publishing Paths [Jane Friedman]. Plus, lots happening with Amazon. I would rather see my books get pirated than this (Or why Goodreads and Amazon are becoming dumpster fires) by Jane Friedman; Blockchain for provenance and copyright with Roanie Levy; “Every single one” of Amazon’s businesses has “multiple generative AI initiatives going right now.” [The Verge]; Amazon AI tool coming for writing product descriptions [The Information]; FTC antitrust lawsuit [Politico]; Amazon is “eliminating dozens of its private label brands” which may help “placate antitrust regulators” [Wall St Journal]; “Amazon will be disrupted,” says Jeff Bezos (in 2013) [Insider]. This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.  Tonya Duncan Ellis is the award-winning author of the Sophie Washington chapter book series and activity books, as well as a professional speaker. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Beginning your career as a self-published author Tips for working with an illustrator Deciding what to write about throughout a chapter book series Creating additional products from your intellectual property Earning an income from professional school visits How to market and prepare for school visits Networking and co-promoting with other authors You can find Tonya at TonyaDuncanEllis.com, on Instagram @TonyaEllisBooks, and on Twitter @TonyaDEllis Transcript of Interview with Tonya Duncan Ellis Joanna: Tonya Duncan Ellis is the award-winning author of the Sophie Washington chapter book series and activity books, as well as a professional speaker. So welcome, Tonya. Tonya: Thank you, Joanna, for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Joanna: We're talking about books for children, which is a really popular topic. But first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Tonya: Well, I'm a Houston Texas-based children's author. I started writing from a very young age. When I was 10 years old, I won a writing competition at my school, and my teachers encouraged me to continue with writing. Back then I had never met an author or thought that that was within the realm of possibility for me to become an actual author. I did pursue journalism. I learned about writing for newspapers because I thought that would be a great way to make an income and get a job in writing. So after college, I worked as a journalist for a while. Then I worked in corporate America in business for a while in marketing departments. When I got married, I had three children and I was home with them, but I was able to do freelance writing for some magazines in my community, which I did for about 10 years. During that time, I would read a lot with my children, and I had always wanted to write a book. It was kind of like a bucket list item I wanted to do. And I said, you know, I could write a children's book that might be interesting for my kids because living here in Houston, we have alligators in our neighborhood, you'll see wild boar running around, there's all kinds of interesting things going on. I said that this would be a fun story that I could write just for my children, kind of a fun thing to do.  So I wrote the first book in my series, Sophie Washington: Queen of the Bee, and I shared it with the librarian at my children's school. And she told me, you know, you really have something here because it has an African American family going through just normal life experiences, not traumatic experiences, which are things you typically see when you have an African American protagonist in a lot of the children's books that are out. So she said, this kind of fills a niche. She supported me and promoted me with having my first school visit. Then I started doing some community events with the book, and writing other books, and they've just grown. Now I have 13 books in the series, and I've sold over 150,000 books. Joanna: That is amazing. We're going to come back on a lot of those different things. But I want to ask, first of all, about the series because you said you wrote the first book, and the librarian was encouraging, and now you've got 13. I feel like this is something that is important for success, is that one book is just not enough. But when you wrote that first book, did you decide you

How can AI tools help authors who struggle with energy and time because of disability, chronic pain, health conditions, post-viral fatigue, or other unavoidable life issues? Steph Pajonas explains why AI is important for accessibility and more. Today's show is sponsored by my wonderful patrons who fund my brain so I have time to think about and discuss these futurist topics impacting authors. If you support the show, you also get the extra monthly patron-only Q&A audio. You can support the show at www.patreon.com/thecreativepenn S.J. Pajonas is the USA Today Best Selling author of science fiction, romance and cozy mystery, with over 30 books under two pen names. She also started the Facebook group AI Writing for Authors, and is one of the founders of the Future Fiction Academy, teaching authors how to harness the power of AI to revolutionize the world of fiction writing. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Using AI tools to overcome brain fog and help brainstorm AI tools to help writers with disabilities How to stand out in a saturated market Generative search for creating a more nuanced search Using AI as a co-writer and having fun What is the Future Fiction Academy and how does it help others? You can find Steph at SPajonas.com, FutureFictionAcademy.com, or at the AI Writing for Authors Facebook Group. Transcript of Interview with Steph Pajonas Joanna: S.J. Pajonas is the USA Today Best Selling author of science fiction, romance and cozy mystery, with over 30 books under two pen names. She also started the Facebook group AI Writing for Authors, and is one of the founders of the Future Fiction Academy, teaching authors how to harness the power of AI to revolutionize the world of fiction writing. So welcome, Steph. Steph: Thank you so much for having me, Joanna. I'm so excited to be here. You have no idea. Joanna: Well, it's funny because you and I have been connected for probably a decade. We've been on social media and like comments and all of this, but this is the first time you're on the show. So first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Steph: I think that my story about writing is pretty similar to most people. I started writing at a young age. I really enjoyed writing fanfiction and screenplays when I was in high school. I did some co-writing with a friend of mine, and we really enjoyed coming up and using other people's worlds to tell stories. So that was a lot of fun for me.  Then when I went to university, I went to Michigan State University, I studied a field that is not really in use anymore, telecommunications. It's been usurped by the internet and everything like that. So I studied telecommunications with a minor in film. And when I was doing film studies, I did a lot of screenplays. I really wanted to be a screenwriter. I really wanted to write screenplays.  When I got to my final year of college, and I looked at how much money I owed for my student loans, I thought, oh, no, I really probably should get a job to pay all of these loans off. Then it was my senior year, I decided to take a basic HTML coding class. Back then it was like 1996/1997, and so I was doing basic HTML in Netscape, I think it was Netscape 2.0, and building websites in class, and I thought it was pretty fun. I was like, this is fun, this could be the future. I kept thinking that the internet was going to really boom. I had been part of the generation that had AOL, you know, and I was in chat rooms when I was younger. So I decided, right then and there, that I would learn how to make websites as a career and do that in order to pay off my bills. So I graduated from college in 1998. I went to work in a small internet design firm in Detroit, or just north of Detroit at that point. Then they got bought by a bigger New York company. So I thought, hey, you know, I just broke up with a boyfriend, I could really expand my horizons by moving to New York. I have family in the New York, New Jersey area, so I would be close to family, so let's move to New York. So I transferred to New York, and then that company did well for a while. Then it was the dot-com boom, and then it was the dot-com bust. I got laid off, and I went to work at HBO at that point. So I started working for HBO on hbo.com, and it was the heyday of HBO. It was The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, all the great shows back then. I was working with the team that helped build all of those websites. So I was back in the entertainment business. I was like, oh, this is great, I love working for entertainment companies. I was having so much fun, and I did that until 2007 when I had my first child. So when I had my first baby, we were living in Brooklyn, and everything was super expensive, couldn't really afford daycare, so my husband said, well, maybe you could stay home with he

How can you shift your mindset in order to reach more readers with your books? How can you leverage the tools available for authors to sell more copies? Ricci Wolman from Written Word Media gives her tips. In the intro, The Hotsheet useful newsletter; Book publishing is broken; In the US, the Federal Trade Commission is about to launch the antitrust lawsuit against Amazon [Politico] and a thought experiment; The Authors Guild trains authors on AI tools, and so does the IPG, and so does Publishers Weekly. Google rolls AI writing into Docs and Gmail. JFPennBooks.com is live — use discount coupon LAUNCH for 15% off all books in all formats until the end of August 2023. Catacomb is available on my store and also everywhere else. Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, where you can get free ebook formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Get your free Author Marketing Guide at draft2digital.com/penn Ricci Wolman is the founder and CEO of Written Word Media, a marketing platform that empowers authors to market and sell their books. Ricci has been in the self-publishing space for nearly a decade. She holds an MBA from Harvard, and is passionate about using her marketing powers for good. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Creating a positive attitude towards marketing Separating ourselves from our art to become business-minded What Written Word Media offers authors and readers Ad stacking — what it is and why it's so successful Price differences when marketing different genres The many aspects that make up the marketing ecosystem The future of selling direct while utilizing promo services You can find Ricci at WrittenWordMedia.com and you can use my affiliate link here if you fancy checking out the Membership while supporting the show. Transcript of Interview with Ricci Wolman Joanna: Ricci Wolman is the founder and CEO of Written Word Media, a marketing platform that empowers authors to market and sell their books. Ricci has been in the self-publishing space for nearly a decade. She holds an MBA from Harvard, and is passionate about using her marketing powers for good. So welcome back to the show, Ricci. Ricci: Thanks, Joanna. So nice to be here. Joanna: Oh, yes. So I wanted to take you back a little bit. You started out in banking and then moved into corporate marketing. Tell us a bit more about why you wanted to start your own company, and why in the author space? Because frankly, there are more profitable businesses. Why do you care about books and marketing? Ricci: Yeah, absolutely. So I would say the entrepreneurial thing came first. I always knew I wanted to start and run my own company, it was just a matter of when and how. So that had always been in the back of my mind, even as I was going through my different corporate jobs. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to do that within the books and book marketing space, due to really just luck in a personal story, which is that my mom was self-publishing a book. This is all the way back in 2009/10 ish, when self-publishing was fairly new. And being the tech-savvy daughter in the family, I was helping her get her files uploaded and learn how the KDP platform worked.  My background was in marketing, as you alluded to, and so through the process of helping her publish her book, it became very clear to me that there was a lack of resources for authors when it came to marketing their books. That's how Freebooksy was born, which was our very first promo site. It really just started, honestly, as a Facebook group. And that has now grown to the Written Word Media platform. So it's been a wonderful journey. I myself am an avid reader. I'm a big believer in books. So it's a confluence of events and a lot of luck that brought me to an entrepreneurial trajectory within the books and self-publishing space. Joanna: And certainly, I jumped on board with Freebooksy really early on, and over the years, we've become friends. I was just listening to you there, and I've known you for so long that I'm used to your accent, but just— Tell people a bit about your background and what your accent is, in case they don't realize. Yes, absolutely. Well, right now, at this point in my life, it's very blended. But it started out as a full-blown native South African accent. That is where I was born and raised, from Johannesburg. I lived there all the way through my initial schooling. I came to the States when I was 17 for college, and this is home now. It's quite a crazy thing, and now I've spent more of my life and time in the States than I had in South Africa. Some of that time was in New York and Boston, now I actually live down south in North Carolina. So it's a blended South African/American with a little touch of southern in it, if people are trying to place it. Joanna: I love your accent

How can you write fast but also make your creative process sustainable for the long term? How can you collaborate effectively with other authors in your genre? Dan Willcocks talks about his creative and business approach. In the intro, Draft2Digital acquires SelfPubBookCovers; Different types of creative energy [Self Publishing Advice]; Twitter becomes X [The Verge]; TikTok text posts [The Verge]; What AI can help you do in 30 mins [Ethan Mollick]; Discovery Writing with ChatGPT by J. Thorn; Claude 100K model on Poe.com; Facebook AI Writing for Authors. Please join my shadow survey for my next book: www.jfpenn.com/shadowsurvey. Plus Catacomb is available now! Walker Kane didn't believe in monsters … Until they came for his daughter. Buy now on my new store, www.JFPennBooks.com – use discount coupon LAUNCH for 15% off. Today's show is sponsored by Ingram Spark, which I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 40,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries, and more. It's your content—do more with it through IngramSpark.com. Daniel Willcocks is the international bestselling author of over 60 books, including horror, sci-fi, and nonfiction. He's also an award-winning podcaster, author coach and speaker, and runs the Activated Author community. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Tips for being a prolific writer Reasons why authors write darker books Scheduling separate times for writing different genres Creating a successful co-writing relationship What is a series of standalone? How to manage your time when you juggle multiple projects Optimizing your strengths to best run an author business Ambition and working to reach long-term goals You can find Dan at DanielWillcocks.com, join his author community at ActivatedAuthors.com, and listen to his horror podcast at TheOtherStories.net Transcript of Interview with Daniel Willcocks Joanna: Daniel Willcocks is the international bestselling author of over 60 books, including horror, sci-fi and nonfiction. He's also an award-winning podcaster, author coach and speaker, and runs the Activated Author community. So welcome to the show, Dan. Dan: Thank you so much for having me. I am incredibly excited to be here. Before we start, I will say that this is a big moment for me because I've been listening to you since I started my author journey in 2014. So I'm glad we finally got here. Joanna: Ah, 2014. It seems so long ago now. But fantastic, so you're almost a decade and you've done a lot. It's very exciting. But first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Dan: I've always been interested in reading. Writing was never something that I kind of foresaw as a career because I never thought it was achievable to become a writer. It just wasn't a thing that was on my radar, but I've always studied English, I did some writing and things throughout university. It wasn't until the Christmas of 2013/2014 that I was gifted from a Secret Santa, a book of Stephen King short stories. And I was reading through these, and at the time I was a nonfiction proofreader and copy editor, sorting out other people's work, and I was reading these stories just going like these are—like I didn't understand the medium of short stories very well, and obviously, if you're going to start anywhere, start with Stephen King. This collection, each story was so individual, and unique, and in depth for such a short amount of time. I kind of just started putting fingers to keyboard, and around early 2014, I then discovered KDP. I had an old stage play that I'd written for university that got nominated to go to the Edinburgh Fringe. I thought, oh, let's experiment and see if I can turn this into a book. I had no expectations of what that would look like. A couple of weeks later, I ended up with this book in my lap. Then I started thinking, well, if I can do this, well, maybe I can write a short story. And I ended up writing a novella called Sins of Smoke, that I ended up publishing in October of 2015. That went to number one in the horror charts. That whole experience of just putting stuff out there, I was like, this is fun. I just want a book that's on the shelf for me. It kind of ignited a bit of a flame, and it was very quickly after that that I started collaborating with people, founded Hawk & Cleaver. It just kind of accelerated from there. Joanna: Give us a little bit of an update in terms of where you are now because it's a long way to go from a stage play that turned into a novella, and 60 books across multiple sub genres. So tell us— How did you transition into writing so many books, and podcasting, and everything you do now? Because it doesn't just go from, oh, I wrote a novella and it hit number one in the charts, and now I'm full time and everything's

How can you use what you're scared of to write better stories that resonate with readers? How can you acknowledge your shadow side and bring aspects of it into the light in a healthy way that serves you and your customers? Michaelbrent Collings talks about his experiences — and you can do my Shadow Survey here (before 31 Aug 2023). In the intro, The Inner Work of Age by Connie Zweig; different kinds of direct sales [Wish I'd Known Then]; QuitCast on productivity and burnout with Becca Syme; 7 success factors for neurodivergent and cognitively impaired self-published authors [Self-Publishing Advice]; Outcomes of an AI Future [Moonshots and Mindsets] This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.  Michaelbrent Collings is the multi-award-nominated internationally bestselling author of over 50 books across horror, thriller, fantasy, sci-fi and more, as well as a produced screenwriter and speaker. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Writing from the shadow side of the self Bringing your fears and guilts into your writing How to bring your shadows to the surface in a helpful way Differences in what we find appropriate based on culture and upbringing The underlying hope when reading and writing horror Hiding our shame in our shadows Tips for overcoming self-censorship You can find Michaelbrent at WrittenInsomnia.com and his Bestseller Life course at BestsellerLife.com Transcript of Interview with Michaelbrent Collings Joanna: Michaelbrent Collings is the multi-award-nominated internationally bestselling author of over 50 books across horror, thriller, fantasy, sci fi and more, as well as a produced screenwriter and speaker. So welcome back to the show, Michaelbrent. Michaelbrent: Hello, Joanna. It's always so fun to hang out with you. Joanna: It is. Sixth time on the show, it is a record! Michaelbrent: I'm looking forward to a coat, a Letterman's jacket of some kind. Just something, you know, with my name on it and The Creative Penn across the back, so I feel like a legit rockstar. Joanna: You really are. And over the years, we've talked about writing hooks, and book descriptions, how to reboot a flagging author career. We've also talked about writing with depression, which is a very popular episode. Also, how to write fast and how to write horror. So we've covered a lot, and today's discussion kind of covers elements of some of these things. We're just going to jump straight in because at the moment, I'm working on this book about writing from the shadow side of the self, and you came to top of mind for someone who does this. Michaelbrent: Because I'm best viewed in the shadows, so that's my life. Joanna: Not at all, but you've been so open about some of this darker stuff. So I wanted to start with— What do you think is part of the shadow side for you? Michaelbrent: Well, for me, there's a lot of stuff. And I tell people that they look at me, and every time I'm on a show—not with you, but with other people that I don't know—and I get through and they're like, “Oh, you were so nice.” Like they were expecting me to be doing voodoo during the show, or chanting in the background, or like I was going to reach through their screen and make a wallet out of their face skin or something horrific.  So much of it is just upbringing. Like my dad was an expert on Stephen King, he was literally the world expert on Stephen King for 20 years. So I tell people I grew up with screaming and typing in the next room. That's what I went to bed with, and that changes a person, you know. So part of its that, and part of it was I just had a tough time of it when I was young. Some of that was self-inflicted, I was kind of a snotty kid. I'm this little, tiny kid, and I'm a genius. Literally, my mom was taking me to college in sixth grade so I could have math class there. And I let people know it. So I'm sitting there as like the worst kind of nerd that you've ever experienced, and people reacted to that. So because of that, I didn't have a lot of friends, and it took a long time to figure out how to kind of overcome that part of myself that was so low self-esteem that I needed to tell everyone how great I was. But really, it was a function in self-inflicted wounds that caused me to kind of cave in.  We also had mental health problems in my family that made things difficult. There was a lot of stress in the air. Despite there being a lot of love, there was also a lot of challenges. So being kind of small, feeling helpless, despite the fact that I was pretty smart, and it just compressed into this one little package that was like, I'm going to write some stuff to make

What are the pros and cons of traditional publishing vs self-publishing? How can you combine multiple options for a more creatively satisfying — and profitable — author career? Rachael Herron gives her tips. In the intro, Power Thesaurus and editing tips for audio; How Writers Fail — Kris Rusch; Finishing energy; Sidekick for Shopify; Shadow Survey (please complete before 31 Aug 2023). Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with Scrivener, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 25% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna Rachael Herron is the internationally bestselling author of more than two dozen books, including thrillers, romance, memoir, and nonfiction about writing. She has taught writing at both UC Berkeley and Stanford, and now teaches authors online with courses and coaching, as well as through her podcast, How Do You Write. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Combining traditional and indie publishing Deciding which route to go with each project The locus of control with indie publishing Publishing a series — indie or trad? Pitching an agent as an already independently published author Differences in money between indie and trad publishing Tips for developing author friendships You can find Rachael at RachaelHerron.com where you can find her latest course and Magic Query Letter. Transcript of Interview with Rachael Herron Joanna: Rachael Herron is the internationally bestselling author of more than two dozen books, including thrillers, romance, memoir, and nonfiction about writing. She has taught writing at both UC Berkeley and Stanford, and now teaches authors online with courses and coaching, as well as through her podcast, How Do You Write. So welcome back to the show, Rachael. Rachael: What a treat to talk to you, Jo. It's just a delight, as always. Joanna: You were last on the show in 2018, talking about Fast-Draft Your Memoir. Now obviously, lots has happened since then, which is kind of crazy. So give us a bit of an update on what your author life and your business look like now. Rachael: Okay, so first of all, five years, oh my god. And second of all, when Fast-Draft Your Memoir came out, I have not listened to that episode since we recorded it, but I remember you saying, I'm going to write a memoir, and I'm not ready to do it yet, I'm not ready. Look at you now. Joanna: Yes, well, for people who don't know, my memoir, Pilgrimage, came out earlier this year in 2023. Rachael: It's lovely. Joanna: Thank you. Rachael: It's lovely. So yeah, so that had just come out the last time we chatted. Since then, I was thinking about this because five years is a long time, especially in the last five years. So since then, I have published two thrillers, one was called Stolen Things, and one was called Hush Little Baby. Both of those were from Penguin. I got the rights back to, I think I counted, I think it was a total of eight books. So seven novels and my first memoir, A Life in Stitches, I got the rights to all of those back. Those have been subsequently self-published, indie published by me. I just sold a new book, which I was talking to you about recently, so that is actually going to be my new genre of paranormal women's fiction. So that's out there. And my wife and I have moved to New Zealand, so it's been a busy five years. Joanna: It has. It has, absolutely. We're going to come back on the New Zealand thing. But I mean, obviously there you've got traditional publishing, you've got rights back, you indie publish, you do all these different things. I wanted to talk to you because you've got this new course out, How to Publish Your Book in Today's Market, which I think is super useful because it seems like there are more choices than ever, and also a lot of people like yourself, you're mixing and matching all these things. So talk a bit more about how you combine traditional and indie publishing, both practically and also the mindset. How do you know what to do with each project? Rachael: Oh, it's such a good question. So I wrote the book that just sold, it's not coming up till 2025, thank you traditional publishing, but that is the paranormal women's fiction, and I wrote it with the entire intention, 100% intention to self-publish this as the beginning of a series. I had the idea, I was in love with this idea, I was in love with the idea for a series. It was really one of the most joyful projects I've ever written. I had no intention of offering it to my agent. Then when I got done writing it, I thought, well, this is really great. I love this book, and I don't want to do a series. I was just

How can you exploit the unique in your stories, as well as amp up the conflict? John Gaspard gives writing and creative business tips based on movies and TV. In the intro, Meta launches Threads, the new Twitter-like app — you can follow me @jfpennauthor; Possible Podcast episode with Ethan Mollick; Moonshots and Mindsets podcast about De-extinction; Copyright and AI with Kathryn Goldman; plus, adapting Catacomb to a screenplay, and I'm speaking in Paris in Oct. Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, where you can get free ebook formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Get your free Author Marketing Guide at draft2digital.com/penn John Gaspard is the author of mysteries and nonfiction film books, a podcast host, and film director. His latest book is The Popcorn Principles: A Novelist's Guide to Learning from Movies. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes How to “exploit the unique” to help our books stand out Ways to add more conflict, regardless of genre Creating a satisfying ending for your readers — and when cliffhangers are a good option Contracts and the importance of reading the fine print Thoughts on the best way to get your book onto the screen You can find John and his books at AlbertsBridgeBooks.com and listen to his podcast Behind the Page: The Eli Marks Podcast Transcript of Interview with John Gaspard Joanna: John Gaspard is the author of mysteries and nonfiction film books, a podcast host, and film director. His latest book is The Popcorn Principles: A Novelist's Guide to Learning from Movies. So welcome to the show, John. John: It is so great to be here. I'm such a fan. I'm going to try not to fanboy out on you. Joanna: Oh, thank you so much. John: The podcast has been so helpful for me as I've gone along this journey. You do a great job. Joanna: I appreciate it. So first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and filmmaking. John: Sure, I was given what was called a regular eight camera, which was a windup camera, when I was a teenager. I started making movies, and those grew into feature-length movies. Even as a teenager, I was making things were 90 minutes long, with dialogue and sound and all that. And I quickly learned that if you're going to make movies, you have to write movies. You have to know what it is you're going to shoot.  So I started learning how to screen write, I was very lucky right out of high school to be able to take some screenwriting courses from a guy named Frantisek Daniel, who was one of the founders of the American Film Institute and a really good screenwriting teacher. I just started making low-budget or no-budget feature films where I would write, I would shoot, I would edit, I'd direct. As it turns out, if you're going to be a novelist, that's a really good way to learn how to write a scene and how to structure something, how to put pace into what you're doing, and only write the things you need. Because when you're writing a screenplay, if you write a scene you don't need, that means getting up at 5 am and casting it and shooting it. It's a real pain when you get into editing and find out you didn't need it. It's a little bit easier as a novelist because you can just hit delete and you're done. So I did low-budget movies in my spare time and worked for about 30 years in the corporate world producing videos and meetings and events. I did some writing for a TV series called Lucky Luke, which was very big in Europe. I took all that I had learned about making low budget movies and then interviewed about 60 filmmakers and put out two filmmaking books. Over the years, I've actually spoken to probably 100 or so filmmakers. Then I segued into writing novels because it was a little bit easier. Making low budget movies, there's a lot of lifting involved, and a lot of early mornings and late nights. So I'd always planned when I got close to and into my retirement years that novels might be the way to go. As I was learning how to do that— I realized there are just a lot of crossovers between creating a low-budget movie and self-publishing. More so today than ever before, the path we go down to do each of them are quite similar. I found that there were a number of things that I was doing as a novelist that were based on things I'd either learned from making a movie or I'd learned from interviewing filmmakers about their movies. One of the things that I'd learned in my corporate life, listening to business speakers, there was a guy named Joe Callaway. And Joe Callaway would talk to different companies about how to improve what they were doing. He would use examples from other industries, and he would always end it by saying, “What's your version of that?” And that's what I'd been doing with the things I'd learned in filmmaking. I'd look at

Four years ago, in July 2019, I put out a podcast episode that went through the 9 disruptions I saw coming for authors and publishing in the next decade. It turns out that most are happening faster than even I expected. In this episode, Nick Thacker and I discuss some of the main points. In the intro, I go through other aspects of the nine ways (notes and links below), the USA Today Bestseller list is back; TikTok moves into eCommerce [The Verge]; and Orna Ross and I discuss generative AI for authors on the Self Publishing Advice Podcast. This podcast is sponsored by Written Word Media, which makes book marketing a breeze by offering quick, easy and effective ways for authors to promote their books. You can also subscribe to the Written Word Media email newsletter for book marketing tips. Nick Thacker is the USA Today bestselling author of over 40 books, including thrillers, action-adventure, and nonfiction. He also helps indie authors through his courses, coaching, and also by working with Draft2Digital. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Enthusiasm for AI tools as part of the creative process Collaborating with AI as an author Using AI for tasks outside of your “zone of genius” How Draft2Digital may handle the explosion of content The future of generative search for book discoverability Creating audiobooks with voice clones Copyright issues around AI-generated content How to stay positive and what to focus on You can find Nick at NickThacker.com Overview of the 9 disruptions Here’s the overview. These are in no particular order. Click here to read or listen to the original episode. You can also find more podcast episodes, articles etc here on my Future page. Non-fiction books, blog posts, and news articles will be written by AI [discussed with Nick below] Copyright law will be challenged as books are used to train AIs which then produce work in the voice of established authors [discussed with Nick below] Voice synth technology will replace human narrators for mass-market audiobook narration [discussed with Nick below] Voice search will disrupt text-based SEO and if you don’t have voice content, you will be invisible. [In the intro, I mention that I think generative search will likely be more disruptive.] Translation will be performed by AI — for books as well as other content. [In the intro, I mention my own process with Deepl.com, as well as Google's Translation Hub, and Meta's new translation model.] Content will explode exponentially, and AI discoverability and marketing tools will help navigate the tsunami [discussed with Nick below] AI-augmented creativity will develop and more people will want to be writers. I mentioned ‘centaur publishing,' and suggest you check out AI Writing for Authors to find thousands of authors already experimenting with new ways of co-creating with AI. Print publishing will shift into a green, sustainable model with AI-assisted micro-print-on-demand. London Book Fair 2023 focused on sustainability, and even talked about carbon emission labeling for books; plus The Society of Authors Tree to Me Expansion of mobile reading + micropayments enabled by 5G mobile and blockchain technology + four billion new people online = explosion of reading. Subscriptions have certainly cannibalized sales of ebooks and audiobooks, leading to the rise and rise of selling direct. On blockchain, while the crypto crash of 2022 has stopped the speculation, the work of building blockchain solutions continues. The EU IP Office launched a blockchain for registration, and the WIPO is looking at it. As discussed with Roanie Levy on blockchain for copyright registration. Transcript of Interview with Nick Thacker Joanna: Nick Thacker is the USA Today bestselling author of over 40 books, including thrillers, action-adventure, and nonfiction. He also helps indie authors through his courses, coaching, and also by working with Draft2Digital. So welcome back to the show, Nick. Nick: Thank you for having me again. It's a pleasure. Joanna: Yes, indeed. Now you were on the show three years ago talking about writing action-adventure. But tell us a bit more about what you're up to now and— Give us an update on your author business because you do lots of things. Nick: Thank you. I do. Yeah, I still write action-adventure. I'm still definitely pushing books out as fast as humanly possible. You’ve got to feed the beast. But over the years, including three years ago, and before, when I first got started writing, I think you know this, I was a marketing guy. I came out of a marketing background. So I never had a very organized or formal way of putting my nonfiction, let's call it knowledge, together until about maybe six months ago. So I've started putting all that together on a website called Book Career

How can fiction authors use Sudowrite to assist with writing tasks they need help with? What functionality does Sudowrite have that will be useful to different types of writers? Amit Gupta gives his tips in this interview. I use and recommend Sudowrite as part of my creative process. You can try Sudowrite through my affiliate link: www.TheCreativePenn.com/sudowrite Amit Gupta is a science fiction writer, entrepreneur, and founder of Sudowrite, an AI-powered creative writing tool. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes What is Sudowrite and how can it help authors Using Story Engine to write faster How to train AI tools to write in your voice and style Dealing with criticism of using AI as a writer Possible legal issues when using AI tools as a collaborative approach Should authors discuss their AI usage? The changing view of AI tools as they become mainstream You can find Amit and more about Sudowrite at Sudowrite.com Transcript of Interview with Amit Gupta Joanna: Amit Gupta is a science fiction writer, entrepreneur, and founder of Sudowrite, an AI-powered creative writing tool. So welcome back to the show, Amit. Amit: Thanks, Joanna. Happy to be here. Joanna: So you were last on the show two years ago in June 2021, when we talked more about your origin story. So we're just going to get straight into the topic today. So if people don't know— What is Sudowrite? And how can it help authors? Amit: Sure. Sudowrite is an AI writing partner for authors. It's the first AI tool built specifically for writing fiction. My co-founder, James and I, we're both writers ourselves, we began experimenting with writing with AI back in 2020. Initially, we built it to help us with some of the problems that we encountered ourselves, like getting unblocked or, for me, suggesting rich, evocative description, or automatically rewriting passages to improve pacing or conflict or tension, that kind of thing. Over time, it's grown a lot as people have suggested new ideas. We have thousands of authors who are always kind of suggesting what we should be doing with it. So now, it also helps with a bunch of other things, like creating or fixing outlines, or writing dialogue, or even taking writers step by step from idea all the way to first draft with AI assistants. So the way we think about it, musicians, photographers, filmmakers, other artists all have had powerful tools like Photoshop, or Final Cut Pro, and so on, to execute on their creative vision for decades now. And our ultimate goal here with Sudowrite, is to create something just as powerful as those tools, but for authors. Joanna: It's so crazy, because two years ago when we last spoke, ChatGPT had not launched. So AI for writing wasn't so well known, although I've been covering on the show for many years.  How have things changed in the last six months or so, since AI for writing has pretty much gone mainstream? Amit: Well, as you know, two years in the AI world is like 20 years in the real world. There hasn't been a moment in the last couple of years of AI development that hasn't been exciting. The release of ChatGPT was definitely a big one because it opened up so many people's eyes to what a powerful tool AI could be. It also had a big effect on our business. Initially, I think we had some fear, because ChatGPT was out there. It's pretty good. It's not as good as Sudowrite, but maybe it'll be good enough for people who don't know the difference. So we were really kind of interested to see what was going to happen. What we found was that as authors tried ChatGPT, some of the people who are initially skeptical began to see how it could help with their workflows, too. Many of those people went on looking for something purpose-built for fiction. So that's when they would invariably find their way to us. It literally doubled our growth rate overnight. Now there are five times as many authors using Sudowrite, today, as were six months ago.  The other thing that's changed with the release of ChatGPT, and so much of what's been going on in the last six months, is the level of energy and attention around AI and writing. And you alluded to this, it's really gone mainstream. There are a lot of fears when ChatGPT came out, whether it would take people's jobs, would it replace people, would students use it instead of thinking for themselves? And those fears are still out there, of course, but I think we've come to see that some of them at least were a bit hyperbolic of the doom and gloom variety.  AI is absolutely changing the world, but we're also adapting to it. In the best cases, I think we're taking advantage of it to do more. So Sudowrite, in particular, and I think ChatGPT too, are both are being incorporated into writing curriculums at the high school and college level now, which I think is really exciting. And large language models, like

How can you stand out in a crowded market of non-fiction books? How can you build a business around your central topic? How can you deal with failure to move on to success? Stephanie Chandler shares her experience and tips. In the intro, HarperCollins and KKR make bids for Simon & Schuster [The Hotsheet]; more details from the Indie Author Earnings report [ALLi]; Thoughts from SPS Live; Photo of my boxed set (in a box); Amazon launch their Generative AI Innovation Centre. My books related to this interview: Career Change, How to Write Non-Fiction, Your Author Business Plan, Public Speaking for Authors, Creatives, and Other Introverts. Today's show is sponsored by Ingram Spark, which I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 40,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries, and more. It's your content—do more with it through IngramSpark.com. Stephanie Chandler is the author of multiple nonfiction books, a professional speaker, and CEO of the Nonfiction Authors Association and Writers Conference. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Changes in publishing and marketing for nonfiction authors over time and what still works How to stand out and build your community Content marketing and long-term marketing strategies Deciding what nonfiction book to write—should you stay in your lane? Letting go, quitting, and moving on Dealing with failure and using it to find the right direction for your writing — and your life How nonfiction authors can leverage their book to generate multiple streams of income The Nonfiction Authors Association and how it is useful to authors You can find Stephanie at NonfictionAuthorsAssociation.com Transcript of Interview with Stephanie Chandler Joanna: Stephanie Chandler is the author of multiple nonfiction books, a professional speaker, and CEO of the Nonfiction Authors Association and Writers Conference. So welcome back to the show, Stephanie. Stephanie: Joanna, it's so fun to chat with you. Thanks for having me. Joanna: Just an introduction to the audience, back in 2007 I read your book, From Entrepreneur to Infopreneur, which helped me decide to start my own author business. You've been teaching nonfiction authors about marketing since then, but it has been a decade since we talked last in 2013 about book marketing. So for those who don't know you— Tell us a bit more about you and your background in books and marketing. Stephanie: Yes, thank you for referencing. I love that we have that connection through that book. I am a Silicon Valley refugee, I left in 2003 and I opened a brick-and-mortar bookstore here in Sacramento, California, and thought I was going to write novels in the back office. It turned out I was a terrible fiction writer, I just did not have the imagination. It was devastating because when you spend your whole life wanting to write, it was just really disappointing. I didn't know what to do next, but I kind of took a U-turn and discovered how much I loved nonfiction and the fact that it blends that ability to teach, which I've always wanted to do. And I hated running the bookstore, by the way. It's not nearly as romantic as it sounds. So I wrote my first book, it was a business startup guide. I had an agent call and tell me, I like what you're doing but nobody knows who you are, you need to build an audience. And I started a website called Business Info Guide, and this is back before blogging was a thing. So I was creating new articles, which is very tedious back then, and every time I created new articles, I was attracting more website traffic and I was building this email list. So a year after the self-published business startup guide came out, I had the idea for From Entrepreneur to Infopreneur. I sent proposals to three publishers, and Wiley gave me a book deal. So I was beyond thrilled. I was walking the talk, I was selling digital products off the website, and building an email list, and creating workbooks and eBooks. I mean, before eBooks were a thing, right? Ebooks back then were PDFs.  It just kind of evolved from there. I ended up signing with an agent, I sold a couple more books, and then — I got really turned off by traditional publishing and the lack of control. I had titles change, I had book covers I didn't like. One publisher called and said, we want you to remove a chapter, we don't care which one, we're trying to cut costs. And I thought, oh my gosh, I'm never letting that happen again. Meanwhile, I'm speaking at writers' conferences, and I am wondering why isn't anybody talking to those of us who write nonfiction. I was at a conference with 350 people, and from what I could tell I was the only business book writer there. So in 2008, I started my own publishing business. I took back control of my publishing rights, and started working with nonfiction

How can Bookfunnel help authors reach more readers, sell more books, and sell direct? Damon Courtney outlines features of Bookfunnel that you might not know about. In the intro, Hello Books and Written Word Media have joined forces for promo stacking; Call to Action (CTA) tips [ALLi]; my free Author Blueprint; Bundle for writers [Storybundle]. Plus, Paul McCartney is using AI to create a new and final Beatles song [The Guardian]; Boosting creativity, AI, and book cover design [Damonza]; Storytel has invested in ElevenLabs and the possibility of voice switching [Publishing Perspectives]; The Ethical Writers Guide to Harnessing the Power of AI: Using AI with Integrity – HJ Philips; my live AI webinars. Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with Scrivener amongst other software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 25% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna Damon Courtney is a fantasy author, entrepreneur, and founder of BookFunnel.com, which I consider one of my must-use tools as part of my author business. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show notes Damon's journey to creating BookFunnel The struggles of sharing Reader Magnets and ‘side-loading' before BookFunnel How to use BookFunnel for list building More BookFunnel features — Gift a Book, ARC delivery and Print Codes Author Swaps vs Group Promotions Tips for using BookFunnel for direct sales The benefits of going wide with audiobooks You can find Damon at BookFunnel.com Transcript of Interview with Damon Courtney Joanna:: Damon Courtney is a fantasy author, entrepreneur, and founder of BookFunnel.com, which I consider one of my must-use tools as part of my author business. So welcome back to the show, Damon. Damon: It's so good to be back. I can't believe it's been as long as it has. When was last time we did this thing? Joanna: It's like almost a decade or something ridiculous. Damon: It is a decade in indie publishing, right? It's probably two decades in indie publishing since we last talked like this. Of course, we see each other frequently. We just saw each other back in February in Colorado, but me being on the show and chatting like this in an official capacity. Joanna: Yes. And I mean, like you said, you are at a lot of author conferences. I wanted to make sure people know a bit about your origin story as well, because unlike a lot of the service companies that work for and with authors, you're an author yourself. That's how I originally met you all those years ago. Tell people a bit more about you and your background in writing and tech, and why you're also a book geek as well as a tech geek. Damon: Well, we'll go all the way back to the tech thing first because that really came first, which was I actually started programming and writing computer code when I was seven years old. My dad brought home this really old ancient computer, especially ancient by today's standards. It was called a TRS-80, but we call them a Trash-80 in the tech world. It plugged into your television, and it had no hard drive and had no disk drive, it had no nothing. You just wrote code into it. It came with this giant floppy book that you could learn to code with in a language called BASIC. Everybody else kind of toyed with it, even my dad, and then just kind of left it sitting there on the living room floor. I was the only one that was like, what is this thing? So I've been doing tech for my really my entire life. I became a reader, probably around the age of 12. I had a fantastic librarian when I was in sixth grade, who introduced me to The Hobbit, and The Black Cauldron, and all these amazing fantasy books, which were always my thing. While the other boys my age were playing Cowboys and Indians, I was playing Knights and Dragons. But I didn't have any books to read, I couldn't find them. I remember going to the card catalog—that was a thing, for you younger kids—there was a card catalog in the library. I remember literally going to the card catalog and opening up ‘D' and looking for the word dragon and then going to ‘W' and looking up wizard, because that was all I knew how to do to find the things that I wanted to read. So the tech thing really came first, and then the reading, and then becoming a lifelong reader. I mean, just absolutely. I still read every single night. That's my wind down when I get into bed. I put the kids to bed, I get in bed, and I sit and I read every single night. Now eBooks, I don't read paper anymore, everything I do is on eBooks. But that started all of that. The writing thing really came about because of indie publishin

What are some of the most effective ways to market your book? What strategies have remained the same despite the rise of new tactics? What are the best ways to reach a Christian audience? Thomas Umstattd Jr. gives plenty of tips in this interview. In the intro, Freedom, fame, or fortune — what do you want as an author?; Built to Move: The Ten Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully by Kelly and Juliet Starrett; and my AI for authors webinars, plus Audio for Authors: Audiobooks, Podcasting, and Voice Technologies, and money books. This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.  Thomas Umstattd Jr. is the CEO of AuthorMedia.com, an award-winning professional speaker, nonfiction author, and host of the Novel Marketing Podcast and the Christian Publishing Show. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes The fundamentals of marketing fiction Content marketing for fiction Utilizing the nonfiction themes beneath your fiction for marketing The hallmarks and history of Christian publishing Why readers choose certain genres Tips for pitching a podcast You can find Thomas at AuthorMedia.com and listen to his podcasts at NovelMarketing.com and ChristianPublishingShow.com Transcript of Interview with Thomas Umstattd Jr. Joanna: Thomas Umstattd Jr. is the CEO of authormedia.com, an award-winning professional speaker, nonfiction author, and host of the Novel Marketing Podcast and the Christian Publishing Show. So welcome to the show, Thomas. Thomas: Thanks, Joanna. It's great to be here. Joanna: Oh, yes. It's exciting to talk to you. But first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and podcasting, and now running a business for writers. Thomas: So back when I was in college, I started writing a book, as many college students do. I went to a writers' conference to sell my book, and I was in the marketing session, and the lady speaking was like, “You've got to start a blog. You've got to have a website.” All of the authors were terrified, like, how do I do that? I've been building websites since I was a kid. I met a real author there at this conference, and I was like, ‘well, I'll build your website for free, no problem.' So I built her website and she told all of her friends, and I started charging them. And pretty soon I was going to conferences and selling websites because everybody was interested in my websites. None of the agents were particularly interested in my book at the time. So by the time I graduated from college, I had started a website business. At our peak, we had 12 people building websites for authors all over the world. We built the MyBookTable plugin to help make our websites better. We eventually allowed and sold that to people who weren't buying websites from us, anybody could use that plugin to add books to their website. So my way into the publishing space was actually from the technical side. I was the nerd at the conference who would give the tech talks, rather than on teaching on craft or something like that. Joanna: But you have got books, right? Tell us about those. Thomas: I do. So I wrote a blog post about dating and relationships that went viral. It got a million views in around a month. A lot of the people reading that article wanted me to write a book about it. I was like, I don't know if I want to write a book. I've been working with authors for years at this point, and I knew how much work it was. So I thought I got out of it by calling everyone's bluff, and I said, alright, if you raise $10,000 on Kickstarter, then I'll write the book. So I put the book on Kickstarter, and they raised $10,000. So I was like, well, I guess I have to become an author now. So I wrote the book, and it ended up having a big impact. I'm glad I did it, but yeah, writing a book is a lot of work. I have a lot of respect for authors who are willing to walk that journey. Joanna: Well, it's so interesting that you say that because you and I are also podcasters. You have two shows, I have had two shows, but I've cut back on my second show. But you've been podcasting on Novel Marketing since 2013, so a decade now. You said that it's a lot of work to write a book, but a decade of podcasting is a lot of work. So I guess— Why did you decide to get into podcasting? Thomas: It's interesting because the reason I got into it was to help sell websites, but it turned out, I really enjoyed podcasting. So I don't build websites anymore. I've spun off that business and sold the plugin business. Now podcasting is the business. I just do the podcast and courses. I always loved listening to talk radio as a kid and being able to talk

Memoir can be one of the most challenging forms to write, but it can also be the most rewarding. Marion Roach Smith talks about facing your fears, as well as giving practical tips on structuring and writing your memoir. In the intro, Amazon's category changes [KDP Help; Kindlepreneur; Publisher Rocket]; Book description generation with AI; Thoughts on New Zealand and how the river forks; AI is about to turn book publishing upside down [Publishers Weekly]; Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable – Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Plus, Japan and copyright for AI training; Microsoft rolls out Designer to Teams; Google Docs text generation with Bard [Ethan Mollick]; Photoshop and generative fill [NY Times]; Drug discovery with AI [BBC; Alpha Fold]; Amazon generative search job listing [Venture Beat]; ChatGPT official app; My webinars on using AI. Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, where you can get free ebook formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Get your free Author Marketing Guide at draft2digital.com/penn Marion Roach Smith is an author, memoir coach and teacher of memoir writing. She has online courses on writing memoir and hosts the Qwerty Podcast about memoir. Her books include The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Discovering what to shape your memoir around The writing process of memoir Deciding on the structure of your memoir The importance of the title to convey your book's message Fears faced when writing memoir and how to overcome them How to know when your memoir is finished Traditional vs. indie for publishing your memoir You can find Marion at MarionRoach.com Transcript of Interview with Marion Roach Joanna: Marion Roach Smith is an author, memoir coach and teacher of memoir writing. She has online courses on writing memoir and hosts the Qwerty Podcast about memoir. Her books include The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life. So welcome back to the show, Marion. Marion: It's a joy to be here, particularly to talk about your fabulous memoir. So I just want to get that in real fast. Joanna: Thank you so much. You were last on the show, and we were talking about memoir, in July 2020. A lot has changed since then. So for those who don't know you— Tell us a bit more about you and your writing background, and why you are so passionate about memoir as a genre. Marion: Well, I've learned that — Memoir is the single greatest portal to self-discovery — and I've learned that in my own career. I was a young New York Times employee when my mother got sick with a disease that no one understood, it's now understood to be Alzheimer's disease, and I wrote about it extensively.  After that, in the 40 years of my career since then, I've written a lot of pieces of memoir, all of which allow me to explore things that I didn't actually understand when I sat down to write about them. And I do understand them a bit better now. I genuinely now believe, having worked with people for almost 30 years on their memoir writing, that everybody benefits from it. So I, in COVID, have had the great opportunity to meet a lot more people because a lot more people decided to write books, op eds, essays, long-form essays, and even just blog posts in COVID, and do a lot of exploration. What I've witnessed has been really informative. So I think this introspection, this global introspection that we were plunged into, has resulted in a lot of good copy. Yes, it's been tragic. Absolutely. But your book is an example of the time taken after the plunge to see what we really think. I think that that is the best up-to-date I can give you, is that there's good memoir out there, and there's lots of it. I'm teaching a lot of it. I did record all of my classes during COVID so people could have them on demand. That's probably my news. But mostly my news is that I think that people have spent time thinking, and I'm deeply grateful for it. Joanna: Yes, I did want to ask you about the pandemic. I mean, I wrote Pilgrimage in the pandemic. It did feel like that chance to pause. And also, for me, it's always this idea of memento mori, remember you will die. Is that a common thing with memoir? Not just with the pandemic, but in general, is it sort of confronting our mortality is why we almost want to write these things? I mean, with you, you mentioned with your mum, I mean, that was a mortality moment facing Alzheimer’s. Is it fear of death or thoughts about death that makes a lot of people write? Marion: Well, as you know, there's nothing like a deadline, Joanna, and we all need them. I do best, literally, when the thing is due in two hours. I can whip it out better than if you give me two weeks. So what COVID brought very clear to all of us is t

What are the crucial linchpin moments in your novel and how can you keep a reader turning the pages? John Fox gives fiction writing tips in this interview. In the intro, writing and publishing across multiple genres [Ask ALLi]; Pilgrimage and solo walking [Women Who Walk]; My live webinars on using AI tools as an author; Cowriting with ChatGPT: AI-Powered Storytelling by J. Thorn. Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with Scrivener, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 25% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna John Matthew Fox is an award-winning short story writer, a developmental editor, writing teacher and blogger. His latest book is The Linchpin Writer: Crafting Your Novel's Key Moments. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Writing a book based on a blog — what needs to change? Linchpin moments and why they are important How to write emotionally moving stories The difference between scenes and chapters How to write wonder Writing better endings Using AI tools when writing fiction and editing You can find John at TheJohnFox.com or on TikTok @johnmatthewfox. John has courses for writers here. Transcript of Interview with John Matthew Fox Joanna: John Matthew Fox is an award-winning short story writer, a developmental editor, writing teacher and blogger. His latest book is The Linchpin Writer: Crafting Your Novel's Key Moments. So welcome back to the show, John. John: Thank you, so wonderful to be back. Joanna: Yes, indeed. Just in case people don't know you— Tell us a bit more about how you got into writing and publishing. John: I started my blog way back in the day, 2006, just to join the literary conversation. And over time, it evolved from a blog on literary news and commentary into more of a craft blog, just helping writers with their novels, short stories, children's books, any sort of fictional storyline.  Now, I've been editing for quite a while for authors, doing developmental edits. I offer courses, both on-demand courses and live courses. I'm starting up a publishing branch, which is self-publishing assistance, I like to call it. Not traditional publishing, not vanity publishing, but something in between. Joanna: There's certainly a call for all of that. Your courses are great. I think you've got some fantastic information on your site. Is this the first nonfiction book you've done? John: Yes, it is. I had the short story collection, and then the nonfiction book just came out in October, so it's relatively new. I've been getting lots of feedback from writers who have been enjoying it and using it to write their books and revise their books. Those are lovely emails to get. I guess I'd been helping writers in one way or another for a whole decade through emails, and articles, and developmental editing and whatnot. So I'm like, well, why don't I try to put down some of the things that are most helpful for writers. Why don't I try to put that down on the page? I have a good amount of stories about the writing life as well, so I thought I'd include those so it's not just cut and dry, boring, do this and do this craft information, one, two, three. I think it has been helpful for writers. It's been a joy to interact with them on another level.  I do think nonfiction, in general, is a lot easier for me to write than fiction is. There's so much imagination that has to go into fiction, and so much plotting and characterization. Nonfiction, man, I just sat down and wrote it. It just spilled out so easily, so it made me enjoy the process of writing quickly. Joanna: We'll get into the book in a minute. I know a lot of people listening, they might also have years’ worth of blog posts and articles, and you have a lot of really well-crafted articles on your site. How did you turn some of those into a book? Or did you start from scratch? You know, because a while back there was this sort of ‘from blog to book, just output your WordPress files into a book format.' And it's like, no, that's not how you do it. Did you use elements of your blog articles and rewrite them? Or did you start the book from scratch? What was that process? John: I definitely started from scratch because if you know anything about how to write for online media, it is just vastly different than writing a book. You definitely can't take that blog post and just throw it in a chapter and be like, alright, I'm good. It doesn't work like that at all. So what I did is I took topics that had been really important to my readers, certain topics that I'd written a post on, and then I just wrote on that topic, but completely from scratch

How can we write about places that inspire us in an authentic way even when they are not our own country? Tony Park gives his tips for writing setting, and also outlines how his publishing experience has changed over the last two decades. In the intro, KDP printing costs are changing from 20 June; plus, join me for AI for Writers online webinars. This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.  Tony Park is the author of 20 thriller novels set in Africa, as well as the co-writer of several biographies. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes How Tony's publishing experience has changed over two decades Splitting territories when licensing your rights and tips for rights reversion Tips for writing setting and how it incorporates into all aspects of your book Research and avoiding stereotypes Writing outside of your own country and personal experience Balancing writing a compelling story with advocating for a cause (without lecturing) You can find Tony at TonyPark.net Transcript of Interview with Tony Park Joanna: Tony Park is the author of 20 thriller novels set in Africa, as well as the co-writer of several biographies. So welcome, Tony. Tony: Oh, Joanna, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. I really appreciate it. I'm a huge fan. Joanna: Thank you so much. First off— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. Tony: Look, it might sound a bit cliche, but it's absolutely true, that the only thing I ever wanted to do in life, from the time I was a little boy growing up in Sydney, in Australia, was to write a book. My family weren't particularly well off, and my mum was working two jobs and used to leave us in the library after school. I just thought, wouldn't it be cool if this could be your job to write books. Of course, as we all know, listening to this podcast, it's not like you can wake up one day and say, okay, I'm going to write a book, and publish it, and away we go. I loved writing as a kid. I wasn't any good at English or maths at school, and so I pinned my hopes on writing. After I left school, I got a job working in local newspapers, and that cemented my love of writing. Then I just tried and tried and tried. I had a number of false starts over the years as my life progressed. I'd wake up early in the morning before work and try and start a novel. And I'd try after work, and I couldn't really focus. This went on for years and years. Too long, I think I waited too long to get serious about it. I got married, and got a mortgage, and real life intruded and everything. The two biggest challenges I faced were time, right, that everybody faces, you know. But a place was what eluded me, and I know we're going to talk about that a bit later on. All I knew is I wanted to write a novel. I hadn't even really thought long enough to think where I was going to set it or when I was going to set it. When I was about 32, 33, I went to my wife and I said, “I've got an idea. How about I leave work and you support us for six months, and I'll try and write a book?” Joanna: Nice one! Tony: And to my utter astonishment, she said, “Yes, go for it,” because I think she was sick of me, you know, going on about how much I wanted to write. And so I did. I left work, and I wrote a book. I bought a couple of books about how to write books. I wrote this book like textbook style, like I plotted it meticulously, I had character profiles, and a timeline, and chapter breakdown and everything. The place I picked for it was wrong because I made a fundamental error. I was writing a book that I think I wanted other people to read, rather than something I was passionate about. So I set it in the Australian Outback. And there was one tiny problem, I've never actually been to The Outback. Joanna: Even though you're Australian. Tony: Even though I'm Australian. I'm a city boy, you know, I was living in the suburbs.  I took six months, I wrote a book, and I failed spectacularly. I didn't enjoy the process of plotting. I didn't know that you could not plot, that you could just make it up as you went along because I had no formal training. And I found it very mechanical and very boring.  [More on discovery writing here!] Around about that time, my wife and I went on a holiday to Africa, which was supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime trip. Instead, we got hooked on Africa and went back the following year, and back the following year.  On my third trip to Africa, we had a long trip, about four months around Southern Africa, and I had another go at writing a book because I once more had time. I'd had to go back to work, but I once more

What are some of the common mental health issues that writers face? How can we use writing to help us process our problems, and turn our life into art through our books? Author and mental health therapist Toby Neal shares her thoughts and tips. It's Mental Health Awareness Week here in the UK with a special focus on anxiety, which so many of us experience in different ways. Get 20% off The Healthy Writer, The Relaxed Author and The Successful Author Mindset on my store using discount code: HEALTH. In the introduction, Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity by Dr Peter Attia; Menopausing by Davina McCall; Ultimate Guide to Selling Print Books Online [ALLi]; TikTok publishing? [TechCrunch]; Google rolling out generative AI, Duet for Workspace; Generative Search, Marketing Against the Grain podcast; Did we consent to our data training generative AI? [The Author Analyst]; Writing memoir & Pilgrimage. Today's podcast sponsor is Findaway Voices, which gives you access to the world's largest network of audiobook sellers and everything you need to create and sell professional audiobooks. Take back your freedom. Choose your price, choose how you sell, choose how you distribute audio. Check it out at FindawayVoices.com. Toby Neal is the award-winning USA Today best-selling author of mysteries, thrillers, and romance, with over 40 titles, as well as writing memoir and travel. She's also a mental health therapist, which is what we're talking about today. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Common mental health challenges for authors Tips for dealing with post-COVID anxiety Dealing with the overwhelm of social media Journaling as a tool to help process and make sense of our lives Writing as a way to turn life into art Tracking self-care How to find a community of like-minded people Working through fear of the future and how to weatherize your author business You can find Toby at TobyNeal.net Transcript of Interview with Toby Neal Joanna: Toby Neal is the award-winning USA Today best-selling author of mysteries, thrillers and romance, with over 40 titles, as well as writing memoir and travel. She's also a mental health therapist, which is what we're talking about today. So welcome back to the show, Toby. Toby: Thanks so much for having me again, Joanna. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you about this really important topic. And before we get into it, we should say, this is not medical or professional advice. Please see your medical professional for your situation. So you've been on the show several times before, so we're just going to jump straight into the topic. As an author yourself, and someone who helps authors with mental health challenges— What are some of the most common challenges that authors face in this area? Toby: Well, I see that most authors who are working in the field at full-time to semi full-time are struggling with isolation, a lot of times anxiety and overwhelm. Many authors have triggered episodes of depression based on the sales of a book, rejections, etc. There are a lot of sort of cyclical challenges that we face in this creative field. Joanna: So interesting. We're going to talk about some of those. Let's start with anxiety because I feel like it can manifest in different ways. I love that you say cyclical there. I mean, chronic self-doubt, fear of failure, perfectionism, imposter syndrome, and it can end up in panic attacks. Lots of anxiety, really. What are some of the things that you've seen or even experienced yourself? Any recommendations? Toby: I don't think we can tackle this topic without talking a little bit about how COVID and the isolation of the last few years have sort of exacerbated the challenges for not just authors, but everyone. And they've also exacerbated the dearth of professionals that are available to help. At least in my area of rural Oregon, you can't find a therapist, even if you are begging for one. A lot of people left the field, and there's just been a gigantic situation with isolation. And whatever your challenge was going into COVID, it might have gotten amplified. I feel that that is something we just have to mention. So circling back around to the issue of anxiety. Another one we see a lot now is fear of leaving your home, which is agoraphobia. And because we spent so much time in our home, getting out can become something you have to begin to overcome again. And what if you gained weight? And what if you don't like yourself right now because, you know, of that COVID 10 pounds or what have you? All of those things get to be, like I said, amplified by the last few years. And we're not entirely out of the woods with that. Joanna: I mean, it's interesting you mentioned fear of leaving home and agoraphobia. I feel like anxiety, and depression, and many of these words we use in mental health, people are like, “Oh, I

AI tools can generate words, but the human intention behind it, as well as the skill of the author, drives the machine. Stephen Marche talks about the creative process behind Death of an Author, 95% written by AI, out now from Pushkin Industries. Today's show is sponsored by my wonderful patrons who fund my brain so I have time to think about and discuss these futurist topics impacting authors. If you support the show, you also get the extra monthly patron-only Q&A audio. You can support the show at www.patreon.com/thecreativepenn Stephen Marche is a Canadian novelist and journalist. He's also the creator of Death of an Author by Aiden Marchine, a novella written 95% by AI tools out now from Pushkin Industries. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes How Stephen co-created Death of an Author with various AI tools: ChatGPT, Sudowrite, and Cohere The importance of specificity in prompts and why those who know what they want, and have experience with writing and different forms of literature have an advantage Why the intellectual process is more important than the mechanical process Why co-creating with AI tools is like being a hip-hop producer On copyright: “I am its author legally, but a machine wrote it based on my instructions.” How authors might approach co-creating with AI if they want to work with traditional publishers What remains the same despite advances in technology: “Creative AI is going to change everything. It's also going to change nothing.” Death of an Author is out now from Pushkin Industries in audiobook and ebook formats. The press release also has more details about the process, and there is an Afterword in the book where Stephen goes into more detail. You can find Stephen at StephenMarche.com Header image created on Midjourney by Joanna Penn. Transcript of the interview Joanna Penn: Stephen Marche is a Canadian novelist and journalist. He's also the creator of Death of an Author by Aiden Marchine, a novella written 95% by AI tools out now from Pushkin Industries. So welcome to the show, Stephen. Stephen Marche: Hi, how are you? Joanna Penn: I am good. So first up, tell us a bit more about you and your writing background and how you came to become interested in AI. Stephen Marche: Well, am I speaking to a robot at this moment? Joanna Penn: No. No! Stephen Marche: Okay. I just had a sudden sense that I was, I don't know why but like, I've become more skeptical of these things all the time. I've been writing my whole life and I've written novels and so on. But the beginning of AI writing for me was actually a piece I wrote in 2012 for LA Review of Books, which was Against Digital Humanities. And you know, as I was sort of critiquing digital humanities, Which I still, I mean, I don't think I changed that critique at all. I started to know about some really cool things that were happening, and I became very interested in them and very fascinated with them, particularly with, at that point it was programming around R, and it was analytics mainly, but then in 2017, I wrote an algorithmic story for Wired, like we used computer models to generate. We created our own program, Sci-Fi Q, me and a computer scientist to make that. Then with the birth of the transformer, of course, which changed everything in this field, I began to work on other aspects of it. I wrote a 17% computer-generated horror story for the LA Review of Books in, I think it was 2020. And then an auto-tune love story, where I used Cohere to build these bots, to create stylistic bots. Then I would each generate one sentence of a love story, and I published that in Lit Hub a couple of years ago now. But then when Jacob came to me with the Death of an Author idea, it was of course just a completely different scale of things, and I was fascinated with what it could do. And it was sort of a much broader project than any AI fiction I'd ever worked on before. Joanna Penn: Wow. So you've been involved in this for over a decade now, but of course, as you said, things have changed and it does also sound like you're quite technical, like our programming and things like that. So most people listening are authors and writers, but they're not very technical. So I wondered whether you could explain — How did you co-create Death of an Author with AI tools? Stephen Marche: Well, I mean, I would say that like I'm not technical like that. I mean, that would be a gross exaggeration of my abilities. I mean, I did learn to program in R briefly, like, I mean, to say that ‘I can program in R' is like saying if you can plunk out Mary had a little lamb on the piano, that you know how to play the piano. Like I knew I did it just enough to know what it involved. Right. And I would not say that I have a major technical facility in this stuff at all, but with Death of an Author, I did have access to three technologies really

What are the implications of generative AI for the indie author community? How can we make choices for our own creative business while respecting the decisions of others? Dan Wood (Draft2Digital) and Michael Anderle (20BooksTo50K, LMBPN) and I discuss our recommendations for the way forward. In the intro, Ingram Spark offers free title setup and revisions (up to 60 days); Findaway Voices cuts Spotify distribution fee; Lessons learned from selling a million books; Go Wide or Run Away or Amazon Fail by Kris Rusch; Reputation Revolution Podcast; Pilgrimage is out on every store and in every format; Cover design split testing with Pickfu; A Note from the Author by Kevin Tumlinson. This podcast is sponsored by Written Word Media, which makes book marketing a breeze by offering quick, easy and effective ways for authors to promote their books. You can also subscribe to the Written Word Media email newsletter for book marketing tips. Michael Anderle (LMBPN), Joanna Penn (The Creative Penn), and Dan Wood (DRaft2Digital) at London Book Fair, April 2023 Dan Wood is the COO of Draft2Digital, which helps authors self-publish alongside excellent support. Michael Anderle is the award-nominated internationally bestselling author of more than 40 urban fantasy and science fiction novels. He's also the co-author of many more with other authors under his company LMBPN Publishing. Michael is also the founder of the 20 Books to 50 K Facebook group and community. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Why generative AI offers opportunities for authors Michael explains his audacious publishing goal and breaks down how it could be achieved across multiple formats and languages, along with the help of generative AI Tackling some of the fears and anxieties that authors have — flood of content, quality, marketing competition, copyright, and more Will books co-written with AI be flagged or banned from the distributors? Why you shouldn't use author or artist names in your prompts Uses for AI in marketing Making your own choices — and respecting others whose choices might be different from your own You can find Michael Anderle at LMBPN Publishing, and Dan Wood at Draft2Digital and on Twitter @danwoodok Transcript of the discussion Joanna Penn: Dan Wood is the COO of Draft2Digital, which helps authors self-publish alongside excellent support. Michael Anderle is the award-nominated internationally bestselling author of more than 40 urban fantasy and science fiction novels. He's also the co-author of many more with other authors under his company LMBPN Publishing. Michael is also the founder of the 20 Books to 50 K Facebook group and community. So welcome to the show guys. Hello. Both: Hello. Thanks for having us. Joanna Penn: I'm excited for this talk. So Dan, let's start with you. What are you most excited about in terms of generative AI for authors and the publishing industry, and what are you playing with personally? Dan Wood: I'm very excited by the opportunity to use some of the large, large language models to help authors when they are stuck. It's like having a writing partner that you can run ideas off of. And with ChatGPT and some of the others, you can just say, you know, I'm thinking this, give me like three or four scenarios of how this might play out. I think that's very cool. Like many other people, I've had just a ton of fun with products like MidJourney to make images and just making outrageous images and seeing how they turn out. I think when you think about what that could do for helping authors communicate with their cover designer and help them understand their vision and then the cover designer coming in with their knowledge of how the cover should look for that genre, and typography and all those good things. I think it just makes communicating between artists a lot easier. As far as what I'm playing with, for me, my job, I came from a very technical job originally and my role at Draft2Digital has largely been around people's skills and managing and all of that. And so I've had a ton of fun just playing around with the way in which you're gonna help you code. I was never a programmer by trade, but I did learn it in college and so it's enabled me to just kind of play around with little projects that I thought would be fun. I've used it for helping me write marketing copy because I hate writing, like doing marketing speak. So it's helped me with my job some. And then like I'm looking at how it might help some of our younger members of our team with things like Excel, because it's very powerful at helping people write things like macros for Excel. They used to take classes and classes to learn how to do all the different things Excel can do, and now you can basically tell ChatGPT what you want it to do and it will come up with a macro for you and that's just awesome. Joanna Penn:

What is the AI-Assisted Artisan Author? How can we use AI tools in our creative and business processes while still keeping our humanity at the core of our books? As generative AI development continues apace and new possibilities emerge every week, the focus of AI discussions in the author community has been centered around productivity gains and high-volume output; copyright, plagiarism and piracy; and the fear of losing the artistic human aspect of being an author. But there is much to be excited about if we can move past fear and doubt, and approach these tools with curiosity and a sense of wonder. We are only at the beginning of the opportunities of AI for wider society as well as for creativity and art, and it’s important that authors, writers, and other creatives be involved in order to shape the future as we want it to be. In this article, I’ll outline the concept of the AI-Assisted Artisan Author, which is how I intend to surf the wave of change ahead, rather than drown in the deluge. Today's show is sponsored by my wonderful patrons who fund my brain so I have time to think about and discuss these futurist topics impacting authors. If you support the show, you also get the extra monthly patron-only Q&A audio. You can support the show at www.patreon.com/thecreativepenn Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-nominated, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller and dark fantasy author as J.F. Penn. She has sold almost a million books across 169 countries and 5 languages. She’s also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker. Her latest book is Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Acknowledge the risks and understand the human response to change How generative AI has made me re-examine my self-definition Adopt an AI-curious attitude What is an AI-Assisted Artisan Author (or A4 for short)?   Create beautiful books and products Double down on being human Write the books only you can write and include personal elements that can only come from you Foster connection and community with other humans Sell direct so readers connect you, the human, with your books (and other products) How to move forward You can find more future-focused episodes here. Acknowledge the risks and understand the human response to change I have been talking and writing about the possibilities of AI since 2016, when AlphaGo beat Lee Sodol in what many consider as the first creative AI move. I have covered the topic as it relates to authors regularly since then and even written a short book on the impact of AI on authors and publishing. I am the technology advisor to the Alliance of Independent Authors and helped formulate a submission on AI and copyright to the UK government in January 2022. I am an optimist and AI-positive, but I also acknowledge the many questions and issues humanity must work through. There are risks and dangers associated with AI, in the same way that there are with other transformative tools that humanity has developed, and many smart people are working on how to figure out the way ahead. Former head of Google Brain and co-founder of Coursera Dr. Andrew Ng, describes AI as “the new electricity.” Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google Alphabet, said that AI “is the most profound technology humanity is working on. More profound than fire, electricity, or anything we have done in the past.” Fire, electricity, and indeed the internet have huge benefits — and can also destroy lives. But we have adapted and they are an essential part of modern life. Do you want to live without fire, electricity, or the internet? These are Tools and Weapons: The Promise and Peril of the Digital Age, as covered by Brad Smith in his book, written before the emergence of generative AI.  Yes, there are risks — but there are also incredible opportunities. I focus on creativity, specifically writing here, but if you research any sector right now, you will see incredible potential emerging with AI tools.  Let’s face it, things are not all rosy and wonderful right now. Humanity has some huge challenges and we could use the help to solve issues that are way too complex for us to figure out. For example, DeepMind’s Alpha Fold is revolutionizing biology, which in turn will accelerate solutions for healthcare issues; and there are many applications for AI in helping to mitigate or even solve climate change [BCG], as well as re-imagine education [UNESCO] and other industries. Pick an area you’re interested in and research how AI is being investigated for future developments. Of course, there are also legal ramifications around fair use, copyright, and plagiarism, which may take years to work through. I covered these in more detail recently in my interview

How can we build a creative life based on following our curiosity? What are some important attitudes to hold that will help us with a sustainable life and career? Kevin Kelly shares some Excellent Advice for Living. In the intro, author newsletter tips [BookBub]; Mark Dawson's 20+ year writing journey; Thoughts on 20Books Seville and London Book Fair with me and Orna Ross [Ask ALLi]; HarperCollins is testing AI-generated content, reported by Jane Friedman [The Hotsheet]. Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with Scrivener, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 25% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna Kevin Kelly is the New York Times bestselling author of multiple books, including The Inevitable, Cool Tools, and Vanishing Asia, as well as being a Technologist Senior Maverick at Wired Magazine and co-chair of the Long Now Foundation. His latest book Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Following your curiosity for an interesting, long-term, project-based career Experiencing different cultures and the creative process Creating art as “imperfect beings” Letting your author voice emerge instead of finding it Reasons for optimism for writers with generative AI Why 1000 true fans is still relevant You can find Kevin Kelly at KK.org or on socials @Kevin2Kelly Header image generated by Joanna Penn on Midjourney. Transcript of Interview with Kevin Kelly Joanna: Kevin Kelly is the New York Times bestselling author of multiple books, including The Inevitable, Cool Tools, and Vanishing Asia, as well as being a Technologist Senior Maverick at Wired Magazine and co-chair of the Long Now Foundation. His latest book Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier. So welcome to the show, Kevin. Kevin: Oh, I'm really delighted to be here. I really appreciate you inviting me. Thank you. Joanna: Oh, no, I'm excited. And there is indeed a lot of excellent advice in the book. So I've pulled out some particular quotes for writers to explore further. And the first is: “Draw to discover what you see. Write to discover what you think.” What part has visual art and writing played in your life? How do you balance creation with consumption? Kevin: That's a great question. I, for some reason, have been a maker, which is what we call it now, all my life. I didn't call it that when I was growing up, I was just a kid who liked to make things, and not just little things, but larger things. So I made a model train layout with plywood with, you know, a little city and lights and things when I was probably 10ish, maybe. Then I went on to make a nature museum when I was 12. I found a book at the library about how to make a nature museum. And I was doing collections and making exhibits, and I went on to make other things like that. I don't know, it was just something in me that wanted to make stuff.  I got into art as a kid, and I almost went to art school after high school, which I should have done, but I didn't. So it's always been a part of how I see things. I eventually kind of gravitated to photography because it was a combination of my other love, which was science. So it's kind of technical and art at the same time. And when I started, you had to do the chemistry, and go into the darkroom, and do the magic chemistry, and so it's very technical. And that was very much a part of me. I would go out to photograph to see. I mean, there was something about doing the art that enabled me to see things. Partly, it was an excuse to see it, and partly, it was that act of trying to look and see. Then when I was drawing, I realized that most of the effort was actually to see the thing. It wasn't the hand, it was your eye trying to see something, and then you could transfer it to your hand.  Later on, when I started to write, it was the same thing. I don't have an idea, and then I try to express it. It's quite the opposite. I don't even know what I'm thinking. I don't know what my idea is until I try and write something, and that act of writing it kind of puts the idea into my head. It's very weird. It's sort of like I try to think what I know, and I realize I don't know, and I try to get somewhere. And that act of trying to write actually creates the idea, so that's what I meant by that. Joanna: Well, we call that discovery writing. That's what we call it. Kevin: I'm a discovery writer. Okay, I didn't know that. Thank you. Joanna: Some people in the writing community call them ‘pantsers.' And that is a very American word, o

How can publicity form part of your book marketing strategy? How can you research the best media and craft a pitch or a press release that might get you and your book some attention? Why is publicity still useful in an age of pay-per-click direct advertising? Halima Khatun shares her valuable tips and experience. In the intro, Alliance of Independent Authors Indie Author Income Survey results; Experience of book to TV show [and previous episode, Johnny B Truant's creative pivots]; Michael Anderle expands on his AI-assisted goals [20Books To 50K Facebook]; Loop earplugs. Plus, Build for Tomorrow: An Action Plan for Embracing Change, Adapting Fast, and Future-Proofing your Career by Jason Feifer; The future of publishing is now on the Dialogue Doctor podcast; Content vs connection [Jay Acunzo on Twitter]; Why I'm focusing on being an AI-assisted artisan author; Death of an Author, from Pushkin Press. Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, where you can get free ebook formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Get your free Author Marketing Guide at draft2digital.com/penn Halima Khatun is the award-winning author of romantic comedy novels, including The Secret Diary of an Arranged Marriage. Today we're talking about her nonfiction book, Priceless Publicity: How to get money-can't-buy media coverage for your business. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Halima's writing and PR journey Finding the “story behind the story” Pitching your story from different angles Balancing PR and protecting personal stories/privacy Tailoring your press release How to prepare for an interview Is PR worth it? You can find Halima at HalimaKhatun.co.uk Transcript of Interview with Halima Khatun Joanna: Halima Khatun is the award-winning author of romantic comedy novels, including The Secret Diary of an Arranged Marriage. Today we're talking about her nonfiction book, Priceless Publicity: How to get money-can't-buy media coverage for your business. So welcome to the show, Halima. Halima: Thank you for having me, Joanna. Joanna: I'm excited to talk about this topic. But first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing, and also PR. Halima: I always wanted to write. There was never any other creative outlet or any other career option for me, even when I was growing up. So I sort of lived in libraries when I was younger. The funny story I always share is at the age of 12, I actually wrote a book, believe it or not. 60,000 words, a coming-of-age children's book, which I thought would be the next JK Rowling with a slash of Stand By Me for girls. It didn't do any of those things. I remember sending it to Penguin and the likes, thinking they're going to love it, they're going to bite my hand off. They didn't. And I was 12, and probably had a bit more work to do. As I grew up, I parked that idea because I always thought writing isn't really—being an author—isn't really a career, per se. You know, you get the people that make megabucks, and then there's everyone else. So I did what I thought was a sensible option. I still wanted to write, so I went into journalism. I did broadcast journalism for my post grad. And I did ITV and BBC, and that was great fun, but I quickly realized that it's less about the writing and more about getting stories short and snappy and to the point, and camera angles, etc. So I navigated to what they call is the dark side of PR, which basically is sitting on the other side of a journalist. So my job was then to bring stories to the media. So I'd be on the other side, and speaking to clients, trying to really find the story behind the story, if that makes sense. So I did a lot of healthcare PR. So for example, if I was speaking to a hospital consultant about a procedure, that might seem like quite a dry subject. So what I would do is I would find a case study, a patient who had the procedure, and talk about how their life had changed from how it was to how it is now. I'd go into the national media, the regional local broadcast media, and I really enjoyed it to the point that I still do some private consulting to this day. I then went freelance. So I set up as a limited company, and I had my own clients, with a view that—I laugh now—with a view that it'd be great when I think about having children, having a family, I could work around them. I had this notion that children nap, and then I had my babies. So I didn't quite do as much, but one of the beauties, and I think it came full circle, with my circumstances with not really working as much in PR purely because of time when I had my daughter, I revisited this idea of writing a book. The idea of The Secret Diary of an Arranged Marriage came to me because I found that nobody had really written about it. So there's already a fixed narrative in the me

What are the most important aspects of becoming a successful publisher? Jon Barton talks about his lessons learned and how to avoid the pitfalls. In the intro, Amazon AWS Bedrock for generative AI; Impromptu: Amplifying our Humanity Through AI by Reid Hoffman and co-written with GPT4; reflections on the fantastic 20BooksSpain Seville conference; Ideas and execution by Hugh Howey; The Creator Economy course; AI Cover Design for Authors; Today's podcast sponsor is Findaway Voices, which gives you access to the world's largest network of audiobook sellers and everything you need to create and sell professional audiobooks. Take back your freedom. Choose your price, choose how you sell, choose how you distribute audio. Check it out at FindawayVoices.com. Jon Barton is the founder and managing director of the award-winning independent publisher Vertebrate Publishing, as well as the author of several bestselling mountain biking guides. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Challenges in publishing other people's works The ecosystem of Vertebrate Publishing Pivoting business models Sticking to a niche and why it works Tips for pitching to a publisher RRP royalty rate vs. net royalty rate Understanding contracts and seeking outside advice You can find Jon and Vertebrate Publishing at AdventureBooks.com Transcript of Interview with Jon Barton Joanna: Jon Barton is the founder and managing director of the award-winning independent publisher Vertebrate Publishing, as well as the author of several bestselling mountain biking guides. So welcome to the show, Jon. Jon: Hi, Jo. How goes it? Joanna: Good. I'm excited to talk to you today. First up, tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Jon: Well, the one thing that's worth knowing about me is I've never had a CV and never been to a job interview, I'm older than I sound as well. I discovered rock climbing when I was probably 13 or 14, and that's pretty much all I did until I was about 30. In fact, when I met my wife and I was about 31, 32, and she just presumed I'd been working for a decade and had savings and houses and all the rest of it, like normal people had. Then she discovered later on in life that a hadn't, I'd just been going around the world climbing. So I was very much addicted to climbing. I was a professional climber, but that probably suggests I made money out of it, which I didn't. And then I used to do a few odd jobs, sort of construction type jobs, and we used to clean windows of skyscrapers and jobs like that before it became sort of more professional to earn money. And I used to find that fairly soul-destroying.  I think it was on some US trips, where people were very interested in the sort of cultural history of British climbing. And people were asking us about Lady Diana, and the Queen and all sorts of weird stuff in some of the climbing areas we were. But they were very interested in these sort of almost legendary stories of British climbers. I sort of inadvertently became the British correspondent in some American climbing publications, and just sending over news items. I realized I quite liked writing, and I quite liked recording things and documenting things in a roundabout way.  Then the other thing that happened is — I was doing a lot of mountain biking in the UK Peak District where I live, and the guidebooks that were available didn't reflect the kind of people you see out on the trails. So the guidebooks would be, you know, the traditional routes, it would be some pictures of men in out-of-date gear. And what I was seeing was young people, women out there cycling, latest gear, latest bikes, going into some fairly—I mean the Peak District is not remote—but some fairly challenging terrain and pushing themselves. So I decided to write a guidebook to what I saw, and it sold really well. And that's where the publishing business came from.  We have now 300-400 titles. And ironically, our Peak District Mountain Biking Guide, which was published 18 years ago, is still one of our bestselling books. I don't know how much. So yeah, that's really it. So it came from my climbing roots.  The other thing I used to do when I sort of hit my 30s and realized I needed to make money, I worked in a graphic design business, which is what this business eventually became. We used to make all of our money out of selling more stuff to people. So we design them a logo, but then we'd sell them stationery, and we'd sell them branded T-shirts and plastic pens, endless plastic pens with logos on.  I was always a bit uncomfortable with this idea that I was just putting more stuff in the world. And the more stuff I can persuade somebody to have, the more money we would make. I didn't really like it, it didn't sit very comfortably. When we published books, I felt I was adding so

You cannot see many of the problems with your own writing, as you are so close to the manuscript. ProWritingAid can help you self-edit your work before you take it on to a human editor, so they can focus on the bigger issues. In this episode, Chris Banks, the CEO of ProWritingAid talks about how developments in AI have added functionality to the software to help writers even more. If you'd like to support the podcast, you can use my affiliate link, www.TheCreativePenn.com/prowritingaid and check out my tutorial here. Or you can just go to ProWritingAid.com. Chris Banks is the CEO and founder of ProWritingAid, which has over 1.5 million users worldwide. 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 key benefits of ProWritingAid The evolution of grammar tools as technology accelerates Skepticism about using AI tools in your writing and how to overcome it AI tools as a creative companion Can using AI tools lead to plagiarism? Problems with tools that ‘detect' AI-generated writing Why this is such an exciting time for creatives You can find Chris at ProWritingAid.com Transcript of Interview with Chris Banks Chris: Chris Banks is the CEO and founder of ProWritingAid, which has over 1.5 million users worldwide, including myself. So welcome back to the show, Chris. Thanks, Joanna. It's a pleasure to be here. Joanna: Oh, yes. We were talking before about how we're so excited right now about all the things going on. But before we look forward— Let's just tell people a bit more about ProWritingAid. So if anyone doesn't know it, can you give us just a brief overview of some of the key benefits? Chris: Yes. Well, the tool basically is designed to make writing fun and easy. We try and do all of the heavy lifting and take away the difficult bits of writing. So all of the kind of boring bits that you might struggle with, all of the things that take a lot of time and don't bring you any joy, ProWritingAid is designed to help you get rid of those and to make your life a lot easier and fun. Joanna: And just some of the specifics. So I use it for editing, and it does things like pick up my terrible comma usage and some of my passive language, which I always use. Anything else that you think is commonly used by authors? Chris: Yes, I think I designed the tool to help myself and to criticize myself, to find all of the mistakes that I was making when I was writing. I think when you're doing a first draft, I always think of the first draft as a  quote by Shannon Hale, where “you're just piling up sand so that later you can build castles out of it.” So in the first draft, you're just trying to get everything down, all of your thoughts, all of your stories. It's about flow. Then when you move into the editing phase afterwards, that's about constructing things and building these beautiful castles. So what ProWritingAid does is it helps you with that construction process. It goes through your first draft and shows you all of the areas that you need to focus on in order to take that first draft to a publishable manuscript. So that's things like, have you overused passive voice? Have you used too many cliches? Have you used repetitive sentence structures? Grammar mistakes, common mistakes, things along the lines of have you shown rather than told, in terms of like emotions or other areas. The idea is to take all of the advice that you would read in books on writing, and actually apply that to your own writing and show you where you need to focus yourself to get the most out of your time. Joanna: And actually, what you just said there is one of the criticisms that I have had, because obviously, I love ProWritingAid, I use it. I have a video tutorial, and someone posted a comment which basically said something along the lines of, “You're lazy. You should learn all these rules yourself.” I mean, what do you think about that? Should we be reading all those books and learning all the rules and applying them? Are we losing something by using a tool to help us with writing? Chris: I think you probably have read all of those books, Joanna! Joanna: I have. Yes! Chris: I certainly read a lot of them, but I can't remember them. And I think what a lot of people struggle with is actually taking that advice that you get in books and actually applying it to your own writing. Because often it's quite abstract, we don't really see the connection. So that's what we're trying to do. I always think, going back to that metaphor of building castles, right? When you're constructing something, you have a bunch of tools that help you construct it. If you were going to build a house, you would have like a digger, and a crane, and a dumper truck that would make building your house an awful lot easier. Yes, you could do it without those things, but it will take you an awful lot longer, and it would be much

How can we bring a place alive in our writing? How can we tackle the challenges of writing different types of books at different times in our writing career? Merryn Glover talks about her experience in this episode. In the intro, Kobo launches Kobo Plus in the US and UK; Amazon is closing Book Depository; Amazon layoffs in devices and books; end of Kindle newsstand; Moonshots and Mindsets with Emad Mostaque; Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation by Kevin Roose. Plus, the tools and services I use in my author business; Get 15% off any of my books, digital or print, bundles or individual books — valid for one purchase per customer — use PODCAST15 at checkout on CreativePennBooks.com. 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.  Merryn Glover is the award-winning author of historical fiction and narrative nonfiction nature books, as well as writing plays and radio drama. Her latest book is The Hidden Fires: A Cairngorms Journey with Nan Shepherd. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes Writing a book based on someone else's work How Nan Shepherd's books started in obscurity and later became well-known Hallmarks of the nature writing genre Legality of using someone else's name and works in your novel, copyright, and permissions needed The process of writing a sense of place Radio drama and dramatic adaptations of written works How to deal with a failed publisher You can find Merryn at MerrynGlover.com or on Twitter @MerrynGlover Transcript of Interview with Merryn Glover Joanna: Merryn Glover is the award-winning author of historical fiction and narrative nonfiction nature books, as well as writing plays and radio drama. Her latest book is The Hidden Fires: A Cairngorms Journey with Nan Shepherd. So welcome to the show, Merryn. Merryn: Thank you, Joanna. It's just a real joy to be here to chat with you today. Joanna: This is a fascinating topic. But first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Merryn: Well, like probably most of your listeners, I have loved words since I was very little. I love books, reading. I grew up in South Asia, and Nepal, and India, and Pakistan. My parents were working in linguistics and literacy, so being surrounded by other languages all the time, I guess that really added to the sense of love of words and communication and language. I was always talking to myself as a child. And I think as I've grown up and become a writer, it's just the adult version of talking to yourself in lots of ways. I wanted more siblings, I'm the youngest of two, and my parents didn't comply. So I had to invent all of the other 10 children in my family to keep entertained. So, I just always loved stories, but I'm also really fascinated by inhabiting experiences beyond my own. So I think that is a big part of where my writing has come from. I went to university in Australia, and I did English drama and dance there. Part of the drama course there, we were always devising material, making up plays and shows and things like that. So in a sense, that kind of led to my first major piece of writing work, which was a stage play after I'd finished university. But that actually came out of doing a lot of reminiscence work with elderly people living with dementia and capturing a lot of their life stories. That became the ground of this first play, because it was about a woman with dementia and her sister who cares for her.  That was a stage play initially, but then it was adapted for BBC Radio Scotland. And so the plays that I went on to write after that were all radio plays. And so, that was kind of the first sort of major piece of writing that went out there.  Then I did one of those correspondence courses in writing that you can get, shows how old I am because it was in the days when you literally had to type out your work and send it off to the tutor and then they would send it back. I was back working in Kathmandu at the time, so it was Air Mail. That would take weeks to hear back from the tutor.  The early phases of that course were journalism. So then I had some little articles in The Guardian Weekly, Letter from Nepal and things like that, and a few other pieces of journalism that came out of doing that course. It was really valuable, but it also made me realize that what I loved writing was more imaginative material, was the stories, the stuff that I wanted to make up from my head.  So that led to my next kind of major project, which was a series of short stories set in Nepal. Most of them have been as individuals, published in anthologies, or competitions or broadcast on the radio.

As generative AI tools continue to expand the possibilities for creators, what does this mean for aspects of copyright? Intellectual property lawyer, Kathryn Goldman, talks about the possible ramifications. In the intro, Ben's Bites newsletter, Microsoft Co-Pilot for Office tools [The Verge]; Canva Create AI-powered design tools; Adobe Firefly for generative images; OpenAI ChatGPT Plugins including Shopify; Examples of people using ChatGPT in normal life [Hard Fork]; Sam Altman on Lex Fridman podcast. Plus, US AI copyright guidance; Human Artistry Campaign; New rules of publishing [Becca Syme]; Tsunami of crap + double down on being human; Generating fiction with GPT-4 [Medium]; Pause giant AI experiments letter; The age of AI has begun [Bill Gates]; This podcast is sponsored by Written Word Media, which makes book marketing a breeze by offering quick, easy and effective ways for authors to promote their books. You can also subscribe to the Written Word Media email newsletter for book marketing tips. Kathryn Goldman is a copyright and trademark attorney and has worked in intellectual property for over 30 years. She runs CreativeLawCenter.com, which offers resources, workshops, and advice for creative professionals, including authors, artists, designers, and more. 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 perils and promise of AI in creative works Some of the legal cases against aspects of generative AI [TechCrunch, Lawfare] What is fair use? What is transformative? The US Copyright Office's guide to AI usage Issues around making money from AI-generated work Could AI copyright laws be retroactively applied? Authors Guild model contract excluding AI training usage You can find Kathryn Goldman at CreativeLawCenter.com or on Twitter @KathrynGoldman Header image generated by Joanna Penn on Midjourney. Transcript of Interview with Kathryn Goldman Joanna: Kathryn Goldman is a copyright and trademark attorney and has worked in intellectual property for over 30 years. She runs CreativeLawCenter.com, which offers resources, workshops, and advice for creative professionals, including authors, artists, designers, and more. So welcome back to the show, Kathryn. Kathryn: Oh, thank you, Joanna. I am so happy to be here again. Joanna: This is going to be a very popular episode. We're just going to jump straight in. So you have been running workshops on AI and Your Creative Work: Perils and Promise. What sparked your interest in the impact of AI? And why is it important for authors to engage? Kathryn: Well, I've always been a bit of a technology nerd. I'm not an early adopter, like you. I'm more in the second wave of adoption. Back in the day, when computers first came out, I didn't ask my parents for a Commodore 64, I asked them for a Trash-80. So I'm definitely second-generation, but I've been in the game ever since.  I learned how to program very early on. And then I started building databases, and then websites, and you know, so whatever comes along, I kind of dip my toe in. And now of course, I represent a lot of creative professionals, artists, writers, photographers, and others. When Midjourney and Stability launched last year, I began receiving emails from my clients, and from members of the Creative Law Center, asking all kinds of questions like, “Can they do this? Is this legal? How can I protect my work?” And so I jumped in, I had to dig in. So AI has been around for a while, but with Midjourney, and Stability, and ChatGPT, some of my clients, or lots of them, felt that their livelihoods were at risk. So we needed to get to the bottom of this. It turns out that the job of lawyers is also in jeopardy. A lawsuit was just filed this week against a company called DoNotPay.com. And it uses AI to help people defend themselves in court from things like traffic tickets. You put these glasses on, and the glasses listen to what's going on in the courtroom, to the prosecutor and to the judge, and they feed you answers, how you're supposed to answer these questions. So yeah, lawyers are at risk, too. So I got involved in order to answer these questions about what's happening to our livelihoods. Joanna: Yes, I had heard of DoNotPay. And of course, you're absolutely worth every penny, but lawyers can be pricey. And so you can see, I've had a look at DoNotPay, and like you said, they can generate these letters and all of this kind of thing. I've seen GPT-4 do tax returns and build websites, and all of this is in the demo of the recent GPT-4. And so it's really interesting, isn't it? And of course, the other thing we should say, we're recording this on Friday 17th of March 2023. And GPT-4 came out this week, Google launched their Bard AI, Facebook just put out another one today. I mean, this is accelerating, and we're really at the beginning. So are you afraid? You said

My Kickstarter campaign for my travel memoir, Pilgrimage, funded within minutes and raised over £26,000 (over US$31,000) for a niche book in a new market. In this episode, I share my lessons learned and tips for a successful campaign. In the intro, I mention the 6 Figure Author Podcast, The Writers Well Podcast, and Reid Hoffman's new Possible podcast. 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 Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-nominated, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller and dark fantasy author as J.F. Penn. She’s also an award-winning podcaster, creative entrepreneur, and international professional speaker. Her latest book is Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show notes: Overview of the Pilgrimage campaign including rewards, add-ons, and the result Why Kickstarter for this project, and why now for me Tips for success: Learn about the platform beforehand. It is a new ecosystem for authors and different from those we are used to Prepare to face your fears The importance of getting your costs right in terms of production and international shipping Set aside more time than you need How did I market the campaign? Was it worth it? Will I do another Kickstarter campaign? What happens to Pilgrimage now? If you want to stay in touch, sign up for my free Author Blueprint here, subscribe to The Creative Penn podcast on your favorite app, or follow me on social media. Twitter Facebook Instagram LinkedIn YouTube Goodreads Patreon Pinterest An overview of the Pilgrimage Kickstarter campaign I launched my first Kickstarter campaign on 22 January 2023, for my travel memoir, Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways. The campaign finished after 14 days on 6 February 2023 with £25,771 (around US$31K) funded from 692 backers.  My initial target was £1000. I was afraid of failure and not even making that much, plus this book falls between my existing audiences. It is not a how-to book for authors like my other books as Joanna Penn, and it is not fiction — thriller, dark fantasy, or crime — as J.F. Penn. It was my first memoir, and also about solo walking pilgrimages, which is hardly a mainstream topic! However, the campaign funded within minutes and it made over £5000 within the first 24 hours. It ended up as 2577% funded at £25,771. THANK YOU to everyone who supported the campaign. You are amazing and I hope you love the book! Here’s a graph of the funding and how it went up day by day. Pilgrimage kickstarter funding progress over the campaign It went up more steeply at the beginning and then leveled off as expected. Kickstarter has a super useful dashboard view with reporting. Given how much work the campaign was, I am happy with the two-week period. I don’t think I could have sustained the marketing effort any longer. What were the different pledge levels and how popular were they? The different pledge levels were: No reward, just support for those who wanted to back me but didn't want the book Pilgrimage digital rewards — ebook, audiobook, pdf workbook, digital bundle Ebook — delivered by Bookfunnel, read on any device Audiobook — narrated by me, delivered by Bookfunnel, listen on any device Digital bundle — includes ebook, audiobook, and digital workbook Special edition paperback — this edition with the yellow banner and color interior photos is only available in the Kickstarter and also for sale on my store, CreativePennBooks.com. The paperback version for sale on Amazon and Ingram has a plain B&W interior. Large print paperback — this edition will be available on all the usual stores Special edition hardback, signed or unsigned. This edition has a fly leaf cover, silver foil, and interior color photos. Only available in the Kickstarter and also for sale on my store, CreativePennBooks.com. I will not be doing a hardback through Amazon & Ingram, as the quality is not as good as Bookvault. If you find it for sale elsewhere, then it is a secondhand copy. Color interior pages from Pilgrimage Hardback bundle — included signed hardback, spiral-bound workbook, ebook, audiobook, and PDF workbook Writing Setting Course bundle — included Writing Setting course, and everything in the hardback bundle Consulting bundle — 90 min zoom consulting call, plus everything in Writing Setting course bundle. Limited to 10. I also included Add-Ons so people could buy extra editions, or other high-value bundles for my non-f

If you want a long-term successful career as an author, you need to learn the craft and the business of writing. Joseph Nassise talks about his writing process, how he diversifies his business across different publishers, different products, and different technologies, as well as how he is embracing new options for his books. In the intro, Draft2Digital opens up Print for everyone; Future Today Institute Trends report; Microsoft introduces the AI-powered 365 Co-pilot; Google unveils generative AI tools; Ethical AI Publishing newsletter from Monica Leonelle. Plus, pictures from Wales on Instagram @jfpennauthor and Facebook @jfpennauthor; my new craft course on Writing Setting and Sense of Place; With a Demon's Eye on my store, and everywhere else. Today's show is sponsored by Ingram Spark, which I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 40,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries, and more. It's your content—do more with it through IngramSpark.com. Joseph Nassise is the award-nominated New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than 50 books across horror, urban fantasy, supernatural thrillers, as well as epic fantasy and Arthurian mythos under other pen names. 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 story of how Joseph's first book became a success Deciding between the traditional or indie route for individual projects Diversification and creating multiple streams of income from your intellectual property StoryCraft — Tips for learning how to write a commercial novel and publish/sell it Why create NFT editions of your book The future of NFTs and how they will become normalized Using generative AI as part of your creative process You can find Joseph at JosephNassise.com Transcript of Interview with Joseph Nassise Joanna: Joseph Nassise is the award-nominated New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than 50 books across horror, urban fantasy, supernatural thrillers, as well as epic fantasy and Arthurian mythos under other pen names. So welcome to the show, Joe. Joseph: Thank you so much. Pleasure to be here. Joanna: Oh, I'm excited to talk with you. So first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Joseph: Okay, well, you know how superheroes have origin stories, I have a very strange writer origin story. I wrote my first novel in college to win a case of beer. I had finished reading something, a thriller by a fairly popular thriller writer at the time, and absolutely hated it. Apparently, I wouldn't shut up about it because my roommate bet me a case of bass ale that I couldn't write a book, never mind write one that was of decent quality. So you know, hey, gauntlet thrown down, challenge accepted. I worked nights in college for the security crew, and I sat in this little booth on the side of campus from midnight to 8 am. So I used that time to write my first novel.  It went into a shoebox after I won my case of beer and sat in that shoebox for 11 years until after I'd gotten married. My wife found it when we moved into a new house, she asked to read it, thought it was pretty good, and convinced me to type it up because it had been written longhand on legal pads. And so we use this old brother word processor, and this was back in 2000, so ancient history these days, but I used this Brother word processor to print it up. We submitted it, a small press bought it, and then a few months later, Simon and Schuster came along and bought mass market rights and that kicked off my career. Interestingly, that book was the one that was nominated for my first time for the Bram Stoker award for first novel and for the International Horror Guild Award for first novel. So that really kicked things off for me. It was a great start from a really weird beginning. Joanna: Okay, that's crazy. Did you edit that book again to submit it to the publisher? I mean, it can't just have been the same draft that won the case of beer that got you Award nominations, a small press deal, and Simon and Schuster. Joseph: So I was very fortunate in having married a woman who is an exceptional editor. She went through it first and then we submitted it. And then by the time Pocket bought it, the paperback division of Simon and Schuster, I was fortunate to have as my editor, Amy Pierpont, who was the Executive Editor for the entire line. And she then again went through and edited it, and I learned a ton in that process. So I'm extremely fortunate to have both of those ladies in my life at the right time to o make this book a success. It certainly wasn't any skill on my part at that point. Joanna: That's just fascinating. Let's say to the listeners, don't expect that to happen with your beer novel! Joseph: Not common! Joanna: Not common, indeed. But tell us what happened from then

We all use tools to help us improve our skills, and in this episode, Leanne Leeds explains how she uses the generative AI tool, Sudowrite, to write better books and serve her readership more effectively. In the intro, OpenAI launches GPT4, and how it can be used for accessibility with Be My Eyes. Other tools include ProWritingAid's Rephrase, and upcoming GrammarlyGo, plus keep up with the news on AI with Ben's Bites and/or The Algorithmic Bridge. You can find Sudowrite through my affiliate link at www.TheCreativePenn.com/sudowrite, and I also have a tutorial on how I use Sudowrite here. This podcast is sponsored by Written Word Media, which makes book marketing a breeze by offering quick, easy and effective ways for authors to promote their books. You can also subscribe to the Written Word Media email newsletter for book marketing tips. Leanne Leeds is the author of 27 novels across contemporary paranormal, fantasy and midlife cozy mystery. She also uses AI tools as part of her creative process, which is what we're talking about today. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes What is Sudowrite? Incorporating Sudowrite into your creative process Using AI tools to help improve certain aspects of your writing AI tools for beginners, and how to use them better Common objections to using AI tools Potential legal issues (or non-issues) around AI How AI will change how we market our books You can find Leanne Leeds at LeanneLeeds.com and her articles on Sudowrite tips at https://blog.sudowrite.com/ You can find Sudowrite through my affiliate link at www.TheCreativePenn.com/sudowrite, and I also have a tutorial on how I use Sudowrite here. Transcript of Interview with Leanne Leeds Joanna: Leanne Leeds is the author of 27 novels across contemporary paranormal, fantasy and midlife cozy mystery. She also uses AI tools as part of her creative process, which is what we're talking about today. So welcome, Leanne. Leanne: Hi, thank you for having me. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you. But first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Leanne: So being a novel writer was something I always wanted to do. I think I stapled a story together when I was four. It was what I thought my life was going to be. When I went to college, I went to major in English with an option in writing. Unless you're going to be a teacher when you come out of college, there are very few ways to make money, so I found myself in IT. I started a web hosting company, sold it, then that company sold to another hosting company, until I was working for this corporate behemoth largest in the world. In which case, I became a director of a department, was told to fire everybody, and then got laid off myself. Joanna: So that's a real journey. Leanne: Right. In 2016, I kind of had this, I'm, you know, 45, I'm middle-aged, what do I do with my life now? I don't know where to go. And indie publishing came up on my radar, and I gave it a shot and was kind of okay at it. So that's how I wound up here. It's definitely my second act in life career. Joanna: Oh, that's great. So you found it in 2016 when you were laid off, basically. Leanne: Yes. Joanna: I think that's important because we're going to start talking about AI. Let's get into Sudowrite. You've been using Sudowrite since June 2021. So you had like five years of—and I was talking to someone else, like, what do we call this? Do we call this manual writing or human-only writing, but the time before AI? I don't know. How do you refer to it? Leanne: I refer to it all as writing. I don't feel like things changed a huge amount. So it's funny, I know that people definitely see it as different and I can understand why, but for me, it just feels like one long process.  Things just kind of naturally change, and you discover, you know, I went from Grammarly, and then I used ProWritingAid, and then I used Sudowrite. So just pre and post AI, I guess. Joanna: I think that's interesting. In fact, for those listening, Grammarly and ProWritingAid are also AI-powered, and many people use those. So just for anyone who doesn't know— What is Sudowrite? And why did you decide to experiment with it? Leanne: So Sudowrite is a piece of software built on GPT-3, or GPT-3.5 some of it, which is a generative language writing — I don't even know the term, honestly. Joanna: A large language model. Leanne: There we go. See, you're much more well-versed in the technical stuff. It just works. I put some writing in and it gives you more writing, and that's how it works for me. But essentially, it's geared towards fiction writing and assisting fiction writers if you get stuck, if you need a description, if you need 20 descriptions to kind of get your brain going. If you need to rewrite something and you want to see different ways, it will help you do that. Joanna

Writers and readers are a diverse bunch, and we all want to do our best to make sure our content is accessible to all. But how do we do that when it seems like a huge (and time-consuming) challenge for an individual creator? Jeff Adams gives some tips for getting started. In the intro, making as marketing [Ryan Holiday]; Enter awards but make sure they are worthwhile [ALLi; Reedsy; BookAwardPro]; The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin. 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.  Jeff Adams is the author of YA thrillers and gay romance, as well as the co-host of The Big Gay Fiction Podcast with his husband and business partner, Will. Jeff's latest book is Content for Everyone, A Practical Guide for Creative Entrepreneurs to Produce Accessible and Usable Web Content, co-written with Michele Lucchini. 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 Staying involved in the author community when you're not writing What is accessible content? Why is it important? How to address the associated cost of making content more accessible Using alternative text tags on images Improving link text to be more descriptive How screen readers process emojis and image text—and how to improve this Tips for improving accessibility of print books Publishing in multiple formats to improve accessibility You can find Jeff at JeffAdamsWrites.com, his podcast at BigGayFictionPodcast.com, and his latest book at ContentForEveryone.info Header image generated by Joanna Penn on Midjourney. Transcript of Interview with Jeff Adams Jeff: Jeff Adams is the author of YA thrillers and gay romance, as well as the co-host of The Big Gay Fiction Podcast with his husband and business partner, Will. Jeff's latest book is Content for Everyone, A Practical Guide for Creative Entrepreneurs to Produce Accessible and Usable Web Content, co-written with Michele Lucchini. So welcome back to the show, Jeff. Thank you, Joanna. It's so wonderful to be here. Joanna: Oh, yes. And of course, we met in person at Podcast Movement. And you were on the show with Will back in April 2020, which is a long time ago. Give us an update on what you've been up to since then, in terms of your books and the Big Gay Media Empire. Jeff: I aspire to it being an empire. Joanna: I love it. It sounds like a massive empire, like Big Gay Media. You know, it sounds like you should be doing TV shows and all kinds of things. Jeff: Definitely an aspirational thing there. The last couple of years since April 2020, I think like for so many creatives, and you hear it on the show all the time, it's like it's been a difficult span, with the pandemic and things just going on in the world. And the last novel I published was actually the same month I was on your show last. I've been doing some short stories, novellas that have been in anthologies, but the creative writing has really been kind of difficult. That said, we've kept going with the podcast, that's still going. We're in our eighth year now of Big Gay Fiction. Joanna: Oh, wow. Jeff: This nonfiction book, though, has seemed to spark my desire for fiction again. I feel those juices flowing. And it makes me think about what you talk about here sometimes, the way that you do fiction, and then you do a nonfiction. You kind of pivot back and forth, kind of have a palate-cleansing moment. I think I've maybe shooed away all the bad stuff, maybe, to let me refocus on fiction. Joanna: Although, that's interesting that you say that. I haven't written a full novel, either, since probably that year, or maybe 2021. I've mainly been making short stories, and I did a novella, as well. So how does that feel? Because I mean, you have a day job, and this book is partly to do with that. How has not producing much made you feel as a creator? Especially in the communities we're in where kind of rapid production, especially in romance, is kind of the thing. Jeff: I've been through a lot of feelings on that. Initially, it's like, why can't I continue to do what I've been doing for like the last 2,3,4 years before that? Because I'd gotten into a pace where I was doing 2,3,4 books in a calendar year, and then it kind of all fell apart what I was trying to do there. So there was a little bit of beating myself up, but then it was like, this is the best that I can do right now, and I have to take care of myself. Which I think I'm in a position to do, because I don't try to do this full time at the moment. I can't imagine the stress on somebody who was in the mindset that I was, but also has to pay the bills with their creative output at the same time. Joanna: I think that's so important. And I often try to bring it