The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

How can you sell books direct to your readers for all formats without dealing with the pain of shipping print books? How can you automate sales with email? How can you earn 80-90% of the sales price and have it go into your bank account in days or even hours, instead of months? Katie Cross talks about the benefits of selling direct and practical tips if you want to use Shopify. In the intro, Spotify acquires AI voice company, Sonantic [Spotify]; and Return on Investment for Authors [The Indy Author]. 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 Katie Cross is the author of over 30 books across fantasy, chick lit, and contemporary romance. 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 sell direct? More money, more quickly. Connection with readers and access to customer dataHow to sell ebooks, audiobooks and print books directShopify apps, including integration with Lulu for print-on-demand, and Bookfunnel for delivery and customer serviceInternational shippingEmail automation and customer dataWhat about the tax?The long game, control over your business, and a mindset shift You can find Katie Cross at KatieCrossBooks.com and on Twitter @kcrosswriting Thanks also to MorganaBest.com for her help with my Shopify store. Transcript of Interview with Katie Cross Joanna: Katie Cross is the author of over 30 books across fantasy, chick lit, and contemporary romance. Today we're talking about selling books on Shopify. Welcome, Katie. Katie: Thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited about this conversation. Joanna: Oh, me too. I will have explained in the introduction that this is something I'm focusing on, but let's start with a high-level question. Why did you decide to start focusing on selling direct as a priority rather than an afterthought? Katie: I think at first the desire for a little more control over my career is what drove me into the arms of direct sales. I got really frustrated with looking at Amazon and trying to do everything I could. I had over 20 books, and I was only making a couple thousand a month. I wanted to approach my business as more of an entrepreneur than just a creative. I didn't know how to do that until I could actually control more of the variables behind the scenes, like the distribution, my own website layout, the product pages, that kind of stuff. I wanted to get away from an Amazon product page that not only featured my product, but like a bajillion others and I wanted people to land on a really clean product page that I could test and make better. That desire for control, and the ability to help my readers have a better experience is what initially led me to throwing out my own website and doing the direct sales approach. Joanna: And I guess, for me, because I've been selling direct since like 2008, but I've only done e-books, audio courses, all the digital stuff, but you also do print. So, I wondered also on this, because I've always felt like, ‘Oh, my goodness, print's just way too complicated, and I don't want to do that.' How did you get over that? Katie: Oh, you know what, print is so easy. I think when I get questions, it's almost always about paperbacks. And it's so easy, it's not even funny. Shopify has third-party apps that you can download and link to, and then use on your Shopify store. And Lulu xPress has a Print-on-Demand app. So, I just upload my books to Lulu xPress the same sort of way I would to KDP or IngramSpark. hen anyone that orders the book, then that order goes to Lulu xPress, and it just prints and ships from Lulu xPress the same way. I knew I wanted to do all versions of all my books on my website. So, I was immediately like, ‘Well, I need to get paperback going.' And just did some research and talked to other people that were doing this with me, and heard about Lulu and I just set it up, and it was just minutes to getting my first paperback on the website. It's way simpler than it looks. I think there's a little bit of my mindset work in that. I think we are overwhelmed by things, especially new things, and we start telling ourselves these ideas like, ‘Oh, that's going to be too hard.' Or, ‘I have to do it this way.' Direct sales has taught me that there's probably a third-party app for everything that I want to do, and I can just search for it, and plug it in, and it makes it super simple. Joanna: Yeah. Well, let's just stay on print for a minute, because this is…I think when I was listening to you on ‘Six-Figure Author

How can you manage a successful Kickstarter campaign without burning out? How can you expand into multiple streams of income? Bryan Cohen talks about crowdfunding, changes in his business model, and more. In the intro, 10th year of double-digit audiobook growth [Publishing Perspectives]; Spotify's plans for audiobook expansion [Spotify]; Free webinars for audiobook month [FindawayVoices]; Val Kilmer's AI voice in Top Gun Maverick [Fortune]; Transitions, Endings, and New Beginnings [Ask ALLi]; The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. 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.  Bryan Cohen is the author of non-fiction and superhero fiction, and the co-host of the ‘Sell More Books Show.' He's also the founder of Best Page Forward, which writes book descriptions for authors, and he teaches authors how to use Amazon ads more effectively. 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 Advantages of Kickstarter — for fans and your bank accountChallenges and lessons learned from Bryan's first Kickstarter — and what he'll do differently next timeIdeas for backer rewards and extrasTiming issues for fulfillment and managing backer expectationsWhy indies are moving toward selling direct, before publishing to storesHow Bryan went from books into multiple streams of incomeScaling a business and tips for hiring freelancersHow podcasting plays a part in his business You can find links to everything Bryan does at BryanCohen.com and his next Kickstarter campaign at KickYourEmail.com and on Twitter @bryancohenbooks Transcript of Interview with Bryan Cohen Joanna: Bryan Cohen is the author of non-fiction and superhero fiction, and the co-host of the ‘Sell More Books Show.' He's also the founder of Best Page Forward, which writes book descriptions for authors, and he teaches authors how to use Amazon ads more effectively. Welcome back to the show, Bryan. Bryan: Thank you for having me, Jo. I was looking. It's been five years, and I'm happy to be back. Joanna: Time flies, doesn't it? Bryan: It does. Joanna: Today we're going to focus on your multiple streams of income, because I definitely think you are an author-entrepreneur, and I want to talk about a lot of that. Let's start with the Kickstarter. I hit you up with an email and was like, ‘I need to know about your Kickstarter.' So, we're going to talk about that first. You did this Kickstarter. It was on self-publishing with Amazon ads, which funded at over $20,000, amazing, and over 600 backers. Tell us about the project, and why did you go with Kickstarter? Bryan: I've always really liked Kickstarter as a backer. I've funded multiple projects, multiple books, entertainment projects, and I've just really liked this idea that you can throw in perks, because I think that, as authors, we really get focused on this $2.99, $3.99 book, and yes, we can sell enough copies of that to live on, but we need to sell a lot of copies. This opportunity to reward your readers by giving them these extras is a really fun opportunity, first and foremost, but it also allows you, hey, to maybe pocket a little extra cash than you would have when you are just launching a low-priced book. From a money-in-money-out perspective, it's really nice to, within the end of the funding of a Kickstarter, a week or two, you actually have some money, rather than waiting 60 days and change for Amazon and the other retailers to pay you. Joanna: Right. So, that's one, the money side, and, two, you can give something extra. You can come up with extras. How did the project go? What were your lessons learned? Bryan: There is a lot that goes into a Kickstarter, and I know you've spoken with Monica Leonelle (episode 614), I think, and Russell Nohelty about the Kickstarters, and there's just a lot of planning. There's a lot of marketing that goes into this. And even though I knew it would be a lot, even though I knew there would be hours and hours of time that I needed to pour into this, I did not really budget for it. And I think you and I have that in common sometimes, of just, we leap before we look, and then, oh, my goodness. One of the biggest issues was just a lot of time had to go into making it the right kind of campaign at the beginning, and then at the end, and we're still kind of in the end, is actually fulfilling all of those things that you promised to the backers. There's a lot of work on the front end, a lot of work on the back end, and then, of course, in the middle, you have to get people to actually back the project. Joanna: Let's talk about two specific things then. First of all, these extras that you use in the campaign as the different reward level

How can you make your self-published books available to libraries in every format? How can you pitch librarians so they are interested in ordering your books? Eric Otis Simmons explains how he successfully pitches and sells to libraries throughout the USA. In the intro, Books2Read is useful for sharing wide links; Lindsay Buroker gives long term career advice [Twitter thread]; Pics from Rhodes, Instagram @jfpennauthor; Into The Briny Deep, short stories set in the sea with all kinds of monsters, includes my short story, The Dark Queen; Abba Voyage with the augmented reality Abba-tars; Thoughts on visiting the USA again post-pandemic [Books and Travel] Today's show is sponsored by IngramSpark, who I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 39,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries and more. It's your content—do more with it through IngramSpark.com. Eric Otis Simmons is the author of the memoir, Not Far From The Tree, and books for authors, including Getting Your Book Into Libraries. He's the CEO of ESE, Inc., which builds custom websites, and he's also a speaker on diversity, equity, and inclusion. 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 authors should consider having their books in librariesWhat services can you use to reach libraries with ebook, print, and audio?How do libraries find books to buy?How to pitch your book to librariesResources available to assist getting your book into libraries You can find Eric Simmons at www.eseinc1.com/library-marketing-services and on Twitter @eseinc1 Transcript of Interview with Eric Simmons Joanna Penn: Eric Otis Simmons is the author of the memoir, Not Far From The Tree, and books for authors, including Getting Your Book Into Libraries. He's the CEO of ESE, Inc., which builds custom websites, and he's also a speaker on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Welcome to the show, Eric. Eric Simmons: Joanna, thank you so much for having me today. Joanna Penn: I'm excited to talk to you about this. Before we get into libraries, tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. Eric Simmons: It's an interesting story, Joanna. I grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Montgomery, Alabama, which I view as two of the leading civil rights hotbeds here in America. So most of my schooling, I was a year or two away from schools being integrated. In addition to that, when I joined corporate America, where I spent 30 years in sales and sales management for some of the most admired companies in the world, such as IBM, AT&T, GE, and others, I generally was the first black male to work in the positions that I was in. At NCI, I also sold internationally where I closed in Brussels a $1 million sale, in Paris, a $500,000 sale, and in Hong Kong, a $25 million sale. So, when I would share snippets of information with co-workers, and family, and friends about my life, I would constantly get feedback that, ‘Hey, you've gotta write a book.' So after 12 years of procrastination, I finally sat down and wrote my memoir, Not Far From The Tree, and I self-published it. So it was the encouragement of others that led me to get into writing. Joanna Penn: When did you self-publish that? Eric Simmons: I released my memoir in May of 2017. So this is its fifth year anniversary. Joanna Penn: That's brilliant. Do you mind me asking what age bracket you are just so people get that? Eric Simmons: Oh, that's fine. I'm in my early 60s. Joanna Penn: I think just to get the timeframe because you mentioned there being involved in civil rights and obviously, still critically important area, but equally, like you said so many years in corporate America. I said to you before we started recording, you're so organized. One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is because you've been super organized about marketing to libraries and getting your book into libraries and helping authors with that. So, let's get into libraries. First of all, why should authors even consider thinking about getting their books into libraries? Why is it important? Eric Simmons: There are a number of factors, Joanna, that go beyond just the prestige of getting one's book into a library. For me as a self-publisher, getting my book into library serves as validation that I've written a quality piece of work. But in addition to that, because of my corporate background, I'm into numbers, I'm into data that can confirm things for me. When I look at the library market, there are over 2.6 million libraries worldwide, and they spend about $31 billion annually. In addition to that, of that $31 billion, about $1.4 billion is spent on books. So, that represents a significant market for all of us as self-publishing houses and self-publishers. Another area that's important I believe that our listeners should consider is libraries are excellent references for ot

Why do you need an email list when you can just reach readers with social media? How can you use reader magnets to build your email list? Tammi Labrecque gives beginner and advanced tips for book marketing. In the intro, The state of the Creator Economy report from ConvertKit; and I use and recommend ConvertKit for my email service provider. Also, check out my Instagram @jfpennauthor for Greece pics. 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. Tammi Labrecque writes urban fantasy, thrillers, and LitRPG under pen names. She's also the author of Newsletter Ninja: How to Become an Author Mailing List Expert, which we discussed a few years ago, back in episode 414. Her latest book is Newsletter Ninja 2: If You Give the Reader a Cookie: Supercharge Your Author Mailing List With the Perfect Reader Magnet, which we are 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 Why do authors need an email list? What is a reader magnet and why do authors need one? On what works well as a reader magnet for non-fiction and fiction Key elements for a ‘convertible cookie’ Tips for building an email list and finding new readers Why finding readers in your specific niche or sub-niche matters Ideas for what to talk to your newsletter subscribers about Why it’s okay if people unsubscribe from your list You can find Tammi Labrecque at NewsletterNinja.net and on Twitter @tammi_ninja Transcript of Interview with Tammi Labrecque Joanna: Tammi Labrecque writes urban fantasy, thrillers, and LitRPG under pen names. She's also the author of Newsletter Ninja: How to Become an Author Mailing List Expert, which we discussed a few years ago, back in episode 414. Her latest book is Newsletter Ninja 2: If You Give the Reader a Cookie: Supercharge Your Author Mailing List With the Perfect Reader Magnet, which we are talking about today. Welcome back to the show, Tammi. Tammi: Hi, it's so good to be back again. Joanna: I'm glad to talk about this new topic. But before we get into ‘Reader Magnet,' I just wanted to play devil's advocate and do some email basics because these days we have social media, we have TikTok, we have Amazon ads. We have loads of ways to reach readers. Why bother with an email list in the first place? Can't we just use social media? Tammi: Well, does every devil need an advocate, Joanna, really? Seriously, though, there's actually two ways to approach this. We repeat a lot of the same reasons over and over. Those of us in the community who like to talk about this stuff, which is a small, probably very boring segment of the author community, but we talk about the same reasons all the time. And they're usually because if you don't have an email list, this terrible thing might happen. For example, we say, don't build your business on someone else's land, digital sharecropping, as I've heard it called, as I've called it myself. And that is true. When you build on someone else's land, it can be taken away from you. And whether that's something relatively minor like Facebook or Instagram being down for a day, which happened not too long ago, you'll recall, or something really major like Facebook taking away your ad account or your entire Facebook account. If your social media situation goes south, you don't have access to any of those friends or followers unless they're on your email list, and that's scary stuff. And there are a few of us who talk about those tried and true reasons a lot. Everybody's heard this by now from me, from you, from David Gaughran, from Mark Dawson. But if we step back just a moment from that, I think a lot of those reasons, while I absolutely believe in them, I think that they come from a place of fear. Maybe it's not as effective to scare people into setting up their email list when there are actually really positive and optimistic reasons to do so. If you'll forgive me using numbers at this hour of the morning, well, it's not morning in England, but I'll tell you what it is here. Rather than grudgingly start your email list in case Facebook bans you, what if I told you that You should nurture your email list because 92% of online adults use email [OptInMonster Email Marketing Stats 2022] And of that 92% of adults who use email, 99% of them check their email every day, Joanna. And that's not me just pulling five-year-old stats out of my butt. That's from a January 7th article from OptinMonster, January 7th of this year. Joanna: Do you mean once a day or you mean once an hour?! Tammi: They actually did have a statistic and it was nuts. It was like sometimes 60 times a day or whatever, and I wa

How do we decide on the hero for our story? How can we write distinctive — but still believable — characters? Matt Bird talks about aspects of writing character. In the intro, a guide to UBLs, Universal Book Links [Draft2Digital]; Your author brand [Ask ALLi with me and Orna Ross]; The Creator Economy in Bath. 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 Matt Bird is an author, screenwriter, podcaster, and blogger. His latest book is The Secrets of Character: Writing a Hero Anyone Will Love. 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 Matt's journey from indie filmmaking and screenwriting to non-fiction, blogging, and podcastingHow do we decide on the hero of the story — and how readers sometimes choose someone else anywayDeep point of view (POV)Writing distinctive — but still believable — characters Mining real life for character detailsDoes a character have to be likable? You can find Matt Bird at TheSecretsofStory.com. Transcript of Interview with Matt Bird Joanna: Matt Bird is an author, screenwriter, podcaster, and blogger. His latest book is The Secrets of Character: Writing a Hero Anyone Will Love. Welcome, Matt. Matt: Thanks so much for having me on. Joanna: I'm so excited to talk to you. Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. Matt: Oh, I wrote a lot. I was an English major. I always liked writing. I always liked creative writing. I decided to become a filmmaker. I wrote and directed many, I would call them indie films, but what is below indie film, DIY, no money changing hands in any way, shape, or form movies. Then I decided to go ahead and go to film school. I went to Columbia Film School in New York and decided to focus. Very quickly, I realized that I was more of a screenwriter than a director. I focused on screenwriting, got frustrated with the program in various ways. I talk about in my first book, how it was basically a fantasy camp, and you weren't allowed to criticize anybody for anything they had done, well, not even criticize people that sounds bad, but, if were to ever go, you may have to reconceive this then they were like, nobody should ever reconceive anything, you should achieve your vision. Joanna: Very artiste. Matt: I spent a fortune at Columbia, and then it looked like I was going to make a big. When I got out, I got a big-time manager and got a lot of Hollywood meetings, and sold some screenplays, which they never paid me for. I was very frustrated with Hollywood. Then I got cancer and lost a year of my life to that. And then, when I found that all of my career heat was totally gone by the time I came back from chemo, I was frustrated, and I started to blog. At first, it was an underrated movies blog where I watched a movie every day, this was in the heat of blogging back in 2010, I guess. And I watched a movie every day and wrote about it. And then eventually that just became exhausting. I'm like, ‘I gotta come up with another way to blog every day.' And I'm like, ‘I can start doing writing advice to make it easier on myself.' So I started giving writing advice, and that took off. And people really liked my writing advice, and so they said, ‘You should collect this in a book.' I wrote a book called Secrets of Story: Innovative Tools for Perfecting Your Fiction and Captivating Readers. I did not come up with the very wordy subtitle of that book, ‘Writer's Digest' did. That book has been very successful, and I've been very gratified by that success. And then ‘Writer's Digest' was owned up by Penguin Random House, and Penguin Random House asked me to do a new one. So, I've written a brand new book, The Secrets of Character: Writing a Hero Anyone Will Love. Meanwhile, I have a new big writing gig that I can't really talk about very much. But it involves a lot of the things that Joanna talks about on this show. It involves AI. I also have a podcast called ‘The Secret of Story Podcast' with James Kennedy. And I've got a second podcast, which is just for fun, which is called ‘Marvel Reread Club' with my brother, Steve. And that's me. That's what I'm doing. Joanna: Wow. That is great. And, of course, you've gone through all the ups and downs there. Talk about a hero's journey, which I'm sure we'll come back to. You've had the excitement, the highs, potentially, of Hollywood, the downs of, obviously, the difficulties and cancer; that's a big one. So interesting to hear where you are now, which is obviously, blending, writing, technology, podcasting, bl

I've been talking about AI narration for several years now, but it's just starting to go mainstream and I've been getting emails every day recently asking the same questions, so this is a round-up article with the most important information. For context, I am an audiobook narrator. I narrate my own non-fiction and short stories. I absolutely value human narrators, and I have spent tens of thousands of dollars hiring professional narrators for my novels and non-fiction over the last decade. I am also a futurist and I embrace AI tools as part of my creative and business practice. This episode covers: Why are AI-narrated audiobooks an important development? “AI voices are robotic and don't have the right intonation. No one wants to listen to that.” Will AI-narrated audiobooks put real human narrators out of a job? What services can you use to create AI-narrated audiobooks? How much does it cost? Can anyone create an AI-narrated audiobook? What intellectual property rights do you need to hold? Where can you sell AI-narrated audiobooks? Can you just upload them everywhere? What price should an AI narrated audiobook be? How can you make sure that listeners know this is AI-narrated? Why is labeling important? How do you market AI-narrated audiobooks? Where is AI narration heading in the next few years? This episode is sponsored by my patrons at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn. Thank you for enabling me to continue exploring the future of creativity and the author business model. I'd love to know what you think. Please leave a comment here or tweet me @thecreativepenn or email me if it's more personal. Why are AI-narrated audiobooks an important development? Most content in written words is not available in audio format, primarily because it is expensive to produce, and many countries and languages don't have an established audiobook production ecosystem. It's important to have written word content in audio for accessibility reasons, but also because many people choose to consume in audio. It's easier to listen than read with your eyes because you can do other things at the same time, driving, exercising, chores, etc. There is room for all formats and our job is to make sure our books are available in whatever format the customer chooses. Personally, I listen to a lot of non-fiction audiobooks while exercising, cooking, cleaning, and doing chores, as well as when traveling to rest my eyes. My husband listens to epic fantasy audiobooks every evening for relaxation. Audio content also needs to be more diverse. Why do I always have to listen to business books read by a US male voice? Why can't I choose the voice of the narrator? People identify with people who speak like them. Why can't someone choose the accent they prefer as well as the language and gender in the same way we choose the voice of our Google Assistant, Siri, or Alexa? It would be prohibitively expensive to create multiple versions of audiobooks with different voices, but it could be achieved with AI narration. You can listen to Your Author Business Plan narrated by me (British English female). You can also listen to the same audiobook read by Mia from Google Play, an American female voice. “AI voices are robotic and don't have the right intonation or emotion. No one wants to listen to that.” AI narration will never supplant high-quality audiobooks performed by actors and voice artists at the pinnacle of their craft. They will never replace the ‘art' end of the audiobook market. They are not intended to. In fact, the rise of AI narration might even push human narration into even more beautiful forms of audio art, because the ‘mass market content' side can be produced with AI, and narrators can focus on the books they care about. Remember, you are not your audience, and you don't speak for the entire world of potential listeners. Even if you never want to listen to an AI-narrated book, why stop others from listening? Many people would rather have the content in audio in any voice than not at all, especially if their language is under-served in terms of audiobooks. AI voices are also improving all the time. I've included samples here so you can listen to some of mine. I have two versions of A Thousand Fiendish Angels, a short story trilogy. Here's me reading as a British English female with an accent from the South West of England. The following version is digitally narrated with the voice of William Birch, a British male also with a southern English accent, produced by DeepZen Limited. I like the narration, and it's more interesting because it's a male voice. Two of the three stories have male protagonists and I love how different the stories sound from mine. You can buy A Thousand Fiendish Angels here direct from me and listen on the Bookfunnel app. It will also be available on multiple retailers in coming months as it's distributed through DeepZen. Human narration is also variable, as is listener preference. I'm also an audio consum

Why is writing so important? How can we pursue true independence as authors? How can we stay open to technological change while still focusing on the fundamentals of craft? Derek Sivers talks about these things and more. In the intro, How to know if you are putting too much pressure on yourself [Holly Worton]; Breaking down language barriers with augmented reality [Google]. 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. Derek Sivers is the author of four non-fiction books, as well as a musician, entrepreneur, and book publisher. His latest book is How to Live: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion. 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 focus on writing? Decentralization and why selling direct is so important for authors who value independence Tips for selling direct — for digital and print Taking the long-term view Thoughts of blockchain, GPT-3, and AI translation Giving everything to one book — and starting again for the next one You can find Derek Sivers at sive.rs and on Twitter @sivers Transcript of Interview with Derek Sivers [Note: Derek provided his notes which have been added to the transcript, so we hope you find them useful!] Joanna: Derek Sivers is the author of four non-fiction books, as well as a musician, entrepreneur, and book publisher. His latest book is How to Live: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion. Welcome to the show, Derek. Derek: Thanks, Joanna. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you today. So, my first question is, you are a multi-passionate creator and your bio says, ‘I'm ambitiously focused on creating.' What part does writing play in your creative life and your business these days? Derek: First, listeners should know I'm not doing any of this for the money.  My cost of living is paid for by past investments, and I give all my profits to charity. So filter my answers accordingly. If you're listening to this wondering how to get rich or something, I will not be giving a formula for how to get rich because I'm doing this for other reasons. So, what part does it play in my life? I'm trying to better understand the world.I want to figure out life.I want to be smarter.I want to learn.I want insights into life.How to work and live more effectively. When I learn or invent an insight that feels USEFUL TO OTHERS, not just me, I feel I SHOULD SHARE IT with the world. It's GENEROSITY.It would be easier to write it in my journal and keep it to myself.But making it public can help other people.So it's for the greater good. It helps RETENTION.Writing and editing for public consumption makes you hone and clarify every idea.Whatever makes an idea easy to spread, also makes it easier to remember.The easier it is to remember, the more likely you are to internalize it, and let it guide your daily actions out in the world. So, I write for my own retention. And I post things publicly because I find that people's feedback can improve my thinking. Like, when I post an idea…and I say idea because I actually…I try to post things in little itty-bitty bite sizes so that we can shine a spotlight on each idea. I'd be happy to talk more about that later, but that's a tangent. Their FEEDBACK can IMPROVE my thinking.When I post an idea, people often reply with improvements.They disagree, and show me where I'm wrong.They point out an angle I hadn't considered. It's an EGO BOOST.We say ego boost like it's a bad thing, but it's fuel!That motivation helps push you through the harder times.You write better if you think many people are going to read it seriously. We say ego boost like it's a bad thing. But guess what? It's fuel. That motivation, helps push you through the harder times. I don't mean hard times, like, laying in a gutter drunk. I just mean harder times, just struggling to squeeze out an idea that's half-formed. It takes work. But the ego boost of doing it, when it's done people going, ‘Oh, my god. You're amazing.' You write better if you think that many people are going to read this. So, posting publicly helps you push through some of the harder aspects of thinking things through, whether that's creatively or even diligent thinking through a life situation. For all of these reasons, I decided to take writing more seriously.Which really means I decided to give it more time.I put aside a few hours each day for nothing but writing for the public. I try to post one idea at a time. When I post an idea, people often reply with improvements. They sometimes will disagree and show me where I'm wrong, or they agree but point out an angle that I hadn't considered. So that improves my own thinking of my own idea. Sometimes I feel like a

If you want to create, sell, buy, or trade NFTs, you need to understand the financial and tax implications. In this interview, Joe David explains the important aspects of blockchain assets and cryptocurrency. [Disclaimer: This is not financial or legal advice. This is just a conversation based on our interest and experience. Please consult a professional about your situation.] In the intro, I mention the bear market and recommend Unshakeable. Your Financial Freedom Playbook. Creating Peace of Mind in a World of Volatility by Tony Robbins, as well as my list of other money books, plus my NFTs on OpenSea; Future Freedom community; and podcasts I listen to at the moment: Crypto Business; Azeem Azar's Exponential View; Exponential Wisdom. If you're just getting started, listen or read episode 610 on NFTs for Authors, which covers the basics and different types of NFTs. You can also watch the presentation as a video 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. Joe David is the founder and managing director of UK-based Nephos Group, which helps businesses with tax, technology, and business planning. Nephos includes Myna Accountants, which is the UK's leading dedicated cryptocurrency accountancy. 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 an accountant interested in crypto?Is cryptocurrency ‘real' money?Why blockchain transactions are transparent and trackable and how exchanges require KYC (know your customer) setupGlobal vs local rules for cryptocurrencyAre NFT books assets or products and how do we account for them?The types of tax you need to think about: income tax, and capital gains (and loss)Taxable events include ‘disposal' of assets, which can be transferring one currency into another (e.g. ETH to BTC) or from crypto to fiat (e.g. ETH to USD)Where are we in the crypto adoption cycle?What is the future of NFTs? You can find Joe David at MynaAccountants.co and on Twitter @crypjo091 Transcript of Interview with The Crypto Accountant Joanna: Joe David is the founder and managing director of UK-based Nephos Group, which helps businesses with tax, technology, and business planning. Nephos includes Myna Accountants, which is the UK's leading dedicated cryptocurrency accountancy. Welcome to the show, Joe. Joe: Hey, Jo. Thanks for having me. Joanna: I'm really excited to talk to you about this topic. Before we get started, I guess you'd better give a bit of a disclaimer. Joe: Indeed. Basically, everything we discuss in this podcast will be based on either factual information that's been provided to me via the resources available, or my opinion on certain things. None of it is financial advice. None of it is tax advice. If you do want specific tax advice, then please contact me separately. But this is a generic overview for your education only. Joanna: Yes. Brilliant. Absolutely. So, let's get into it. I want to start with a more personal question, because you're an accountant, and yet you are super interested in cryptocurrency. Why are you so interested, especially when the media, and probably a lot of accountants, can be super negative about crypto? Joe: It is a good place to start, because I do get asked that question quite a lot. I think, for me, it comes down to two things. First of all, looking into cryptocurrency over the years, working in the area with a few clients here and there, I just really liked the concept. As soon as I started reading more about it and watching more videos about it, and really understanding the underlying fundamental principles of crypto and blockchain, it really resonates with me how we can have a financial system that isn't reliant on any one person or any third party. There's no single source of failure. You control your own money. All of those bits and pieces fit really nicely, I think, with where we should go with the digital technology we've got these days. The other point is, and it kind of touches on your point of where the media say certain things and other accountants might say certain things is, I've always been very opinionated and very…I call it anti-establishment, but that doesn't mean I hate everything that is said. It means that I like to do things differently, and I like to mix things up, and I like to change things for the better. I think that crypto will create a better financial system for our future generations, and therefore that's my opinion, and that's why I'm so passionate about it. Joanna: I do want to circle back. You said you liked the concept, so you started reading more until you could understand the fundamentals. This is what I feel right now. I feel like I have now spent maybe 60 to 80 hours on

In this inspirational interview, crime writer Angela Marsons talks about how she overcame years of rejection and broke out of societal expectations to reach writing and publishing success. She also talks about tips for writing a long-running crime series, and how she weaves her home of the Black Country into her stories. In the intro, pics from Arizona, Dear Writer, Are You Intuitive? by Becca Syme and Susan Bischoff and 5 Key Tips for Profitable Book Marketing webinar, 18 May, 2022. Today's show is sponsored by IngramSpark, who I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 39,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries and more. It's your content – do more with it through IngramSpark.com. Angela Marsons is the Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of crime thrillers with over 5 million books sold and translations into 29 different languages. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes The long journey to publication — with plenty of rejection and difficulties along the wayOvercoming the mindset of ‘writing isn't for people like me'Tips on writing a long-running book series with characters that readers want to return toDiscovery writing by following your curiosityWriting darker themesWorking with a digital-first publisher You can find Angela Marsons at AngelaMarsons-books.com and on Twitter @WriteAngie Transcript of Interview with Angela Marsons Joanna: Angela Marsons is the ‘Wall Street Journal' and ‘USA Today' bestselling author of crime thrillers with over 5 million books sold and translations into 29 different languages. Welcome to the show, Angela. Angela: Thank you very much. I'm so pleased to be here. I've listened to the podcast many times, it's fabulous. So, I'm absolutely thrilled to get the chance to have a chat. Joanna: Oh, brilliant. First up, tell us a bit about you and how you got into writing. Angela: I always loved writing at school. I used to love the feel of a pencil on paper and just getting the ideas down, and exploring my feelings, and that kind of thing. I wasn't really good a lot at school. Then my English teacher, and when I was about 12, 13, asked if she could bring in a couple of books that were above my reading age, and they were Andrea Newman books. I read them and they got me totally hooked on exploring emotions, and frailties, and just people, in general. That was when I realized that, as well as loving reading, I wanted to be the person telling some stories as well. I wanted to be writing these things. And from that point on, and I just used to write down everything. I used to explore different situations. I would pretend that my dad had left us, and then I would explore how I felt about it. I'd write all these feelings down, and I'd been in absolute bits by the end of it. And he'd only gone to the pub. But at the time, I made it feel real so I could explore how I felt about it. Then I started writing short stories, and I would submit them to magazines. Never actually got one accepted, but then I moved on to novels and started submitting those as well. And that was a very, very long process until Bookouture gave ‘Silent Scream' a chance in 2014, I think it was that they signed me. So, it was a long journey, but I wouldn't change anything about it. Joanna: What else did you do for your day jobs along the way? Have day jobs featured in your books in any way? Angela: Oh, they certainly have. I started out in admin because when I was at school, the best thing you could do was learn to type because it was assumed that you would be in an office job when you left school. You weren't really taught to aspire to anything like writing. That was not for people like me. And so I did all the things I was supposed to do, the typing, the office practice. I spent quite a few years, just generally going from office job to office job. And then I somehow ended up in security and security management. I spent 19 years at a shopping center managing a team of 72, which has given me a great deal of fodder for the books. Shopping centers are featured, security officers are featured. I like to think that everything is ammunition, it's all inspiration for people and situations. So, it was mainly security management that I spent my working life doing. Joanna: You said that “writing books was not for people like you,” maybe explain what you mean by that because, obviously, we've got listeners from all over the place, but I feel like we do have quite a class system in the UK. Why did you feel like writing wasn't for ‘people like you'? And how did you change that to be something else? Angela: I think it was just our environment, very working class. And it was considered that you'd done well, if you did manage to end up in an office, it was just the way it was. I don't think

How can you make more money without growing the size of your business? What systems and mindset do you need to focus on in order to leverage your limited time? Elaine Pofeldt talks about Tiny Business, Big Money in this interview. In the intro, Google Play Books opens up their AI narration for audiobooks; thoughts on Twitter and Elon Musk [PR Newswire], and Imaginable: How to see the future coming and be ready for anything, by Jane McGonigal. Plus, limited time: Writing Craft and Business ebook and course bundle [Storybundle.com/writing]; and Self Publishing 101 by Mark Dawson course (affiliate link). 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 www.draft2digital.com/penn Elaine Pofeldt is an independent journalist specializing in small business and entrepreneurship, as well as an author, editor, and ghostwriter. Elaine was previously on the show in 2020 talking about her previous book The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business. Today we're talking about her latest book Tiny Business, Big Money, Strategies for Creating a High-Revenue Microbusiness. 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 definition of a microbusiness, and how that applies to solopreneursHow successful microbusinesses survived the pandemic by diversifyingWhy we need to separate the ‘writer' from the ‘business owner' and work out what's really importantTools and strategies of successful microbusinessesThe importance of long-term thinking and building relationshipsBreaking through the ‘low price' barrier to sell higher value productsWhat works for marketing non-fiction books? You can find Elaine Pofeldt at TinyBusinessBigMoney.com and on Twitter @ElainePofeldt Transcript of Interview with Elaine Pofeldt Jo: Elaine Pofeldt is an independent journalist specializing in small business and entrepreneurship, as well as an author, editor, and ghostwriter. Elaine was previously on the show in 2020 talking about her previous book The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business. Today we're talking about her latest book Tiny Business, Big Money, Strategies for Creating a High-Revenue Microbusiness. Welcome back to the show, Elaine. Elaine: Thank you so much, Joanna, it's great to be here. Jo: I'm excited to talk about this. So, let's start with your definition. What is your definition of a tiny business or a micro business? Elaine: For the purposes of this book, I looked at businesses that were 20 employees or less, but, generally speaking, they were 5 employees or less. And some of them didn't have employees, they just had a recurring team of contractors. What was different from the first book is that, if they did use contractors, it wasn't the random contractor here and there, this was a team. And the owner of the business had to act as a leader of a team, which is a big transition for a lot of solopreneurs. Jo: I think this is why I wanted to talk to you because this is exactly what most authors listening have. My business is a tiny business, I'm the only employee, but I have a team of freelancers and I manage it all. What was it that made you want to write this book after the last one? What is it about micro businesses that made you go, ‘Yes, I need to write another book on this'? Elaine: What got me interested in micro businesses was, as a business journalist, I noticed that almost all of the coverage on small businesses was about startups that were hoping to scale into the next unicorn. There was very little about the type of business that most people actually aspire to run, which is the solo business. A lot of people are looking for a lifestyle business that allows them to replace their income from a corporate job but not have the stress. They don't necessarily want to scale, they like to keep their business small. What I found was, after I did the first business, a number of the businesses said, ‘Elaine, we're really sorry but we hired someone,' and I would say, ‘that's awesome. You don't have to apologize to me for hiring somebody. I'm not against growing a business.' What I think the challenge was for a lot of them was the leadership part of it. When you start transitioning from being a writer to being a writer with a team, you need to communicate more. And even though communication may be your forte, it's a different type of communication as to what is expected of people on the team, when are the deliverables due, what does good look like, and that sort of thing. You can lose the little bit of freedom if you don't get it right because you're then always having to put out fires. So, I thought, ‘What can I find out from entrepreneurs who are a step or two ahead of these entrepreneurs in terms of growing their business past the one-pers

How can you hook readers into your story by using universal human desires and motivations? How can you write what you love, run your author business your way, and still maintain the ambition for a 7-figure author business? Theodora Taylor gives her thoughts in this interview. In the intro, self-publishing predictions for the 2020s [ALLi]; The Unexpected Road to an Unconventional Life [Books and Travel]; Craft and business of writing limited-time bundle available now! [Storybundle.com/writing] 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 Theodora Taylor is the best-selling author of over 50 books across contemporary, sci-fi, shifter, and interracial romance. She's also the author of 7 Figure Fiction: How to Use Universal Fantasy to Sell Your Books to Anyone, under T. Taylor. 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 traditional publishing to indie — and discovering the joy of being a one-person independent business as an authorWhy romance authors are always ahead of the curveWhat are universal fantasies and how are they different from tropes?Your market may be bigger than you thinkConsistency and time as the pillars of a successful author careerEmbracing our author ambitionCreating assets that bring in multiple streams of income for the long term You can find Theodora Taylor at 7FigureFiction.com and on Twitter @Theodorawrites Transcript of Interview with Theodora Taylor Joanna: Theodora Taylor is the best-selling author of over 50 books across contemporary, sci-fi, shifter, and interracial romance. She's also the author of 7 Figure Fiction: How to Use Universal Fantasy to Sell Your Books to Anyone, under T. Taylor. Welcome Theodora. Theodora: Thank you for having me, Joanna. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you about this. I bought the book, I think it was last year. And I was like, ‘This is amazing. I want everyone to read this.' Tell us a bit more about you and your writing journey, and also how you transitioned from traditional to indie publishing. Theodora: The short version is that I was a writer. I spent two years pouring my heart and soul into a book, a women's fiction novel. And it sold in a somewhat splashy deal to a traditional publisher. And the movie rights sold before it was published, and it was really kind of set up to do great things, and then it just flopped. The movie deal went away. Everything went away. I had a contract to write a second book. I spent another two years writing that, and promoting the first book, doing things like signings and readings, and all that kind of stuff they used to have before indie really kind of changed what releasing a book was. I wrote a second book. I sent it to my editor. She sent me back this scathing letter, with all the things that were wrong with the book. It was really crushing. I called my best friend, and I said, ‘Oh, she hated everything except for the sex scenes. I might as well become a romance writer.' But then that became, ‘Wait a minute. Maybe I should become a romance writer.' So I did my first of what I could now consider many, many experiments throughout my writing career. My agent said, ‘Okay, we're going to send this around to other publishers.' I did have a contract for a non-fiction book at that point, but it wasn't due till February, so of course, you can't start it ahead of time. You got to push that to the last minute. I decided that I'd write a book, a romance novel, while she was shopping the novel, the second book, under my real name. And by the time she sold it and I got paid from the publisher who had picked up the second book, I had written four indie books, and paid way more money than the advance that I was getting. It was, oh, this is where I belong. It was really one of those wonderful things, because, at that point in my writing career, I thought I had hit rock bottom, that I was a complete failure, that basically, my career was over. Theodora Taylor kind of introduced me to this new side of writing. I liked being Theodora Taylor, one-person business, way more than I liked working with a traditional publisher. So I went with Theodora Taylor. I did do two books for Harlequin, but that taught me that I really prefer to be a indie publisher. Joanna: It's so great to hear that you enjoy being a one-person business. And we're going to come back to that. You said, ‘I might as well be a romance writer,' which is just one of those comments that people say when they don't understand what the romance genre is like, and how in

Why are digital scarcity and ownership so important to the business model of creators in web 3? How can an author use a wider fictional world for creative and business goals? Rae and Stephen talk about why creators need web 3 and their fantasy universe, SitkaWorld. In the intro, I mention the Creatokia podcast with Elf from the Forgotten Runes Wizard’s Cult, a world of story, built upon characters licensed through NFTs. I'm also creating 1 of 1 generative art NFTs from my fiction words on Opensea.io/jfpenn. 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. Rae Wojcik is a speculative fiction author, freelance editor and journalist. Stephen Poynter is an online entrepreneur, film professional and NFT enthusiast. Rae and Steven are the creators of Sitka World, a community-driven, community rewarded literature movement based around a fantasy world. 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 importance of community ownershipThe difference between web 2 and web 3 tools — and attitudesWhy digital scarcity and the ownership and resale of assets could transform the business model for creators who value their intellectual property over the long term. Rae also has a great article on Why content creators need Web3Different types of NFTs for different levelsHow the NFT model benefits readersUsing existing digital publishing options alongside blockchain and web 3 optionsHow long will adoption take? You can find Sitka World at SitkaWorld.com and on Twitter @SitkaWorldNFT. You can also check out their Discord here. Transcript of Interview with Rae Wojcik and Stephen Poynter Joanna: Rae Wojcik is a speculative fiction author, freelance editor and journalist. And Stephen Poynter is an online entrepreneur, film professional and NFT enthusiast. Rae and Steven are the creators of Sitka World, a community-driven, community rewarded literature movement based around a fantasy world. Welcome to the show, Rae and Stephen. Rae: Thank you. Stephen: Thank you. Glad to be here. Joanna: I'm very excited to talk to you about this. So let's start with, we've established that you're authors, creators. Why are you so interested in Web3? And what does Web3 even mean to you? Rae: I've been writing for most of my life, actually. And for so long, I was attracted to the idea of traditional publishing, as many of us are when we get started in this space. But over the last few years, I feel like I've gone on a different journey of thinking of what are some different ways that I can really make writing work. I was attracted more to this idea of being a creative entrepreneur, and loved reading your book, How to Make a Living with Your Writing, and starting to think of that more creatively. More recently, I've become attracted to this idea of community-driven publishing. And what I mean by that is almost taking this idea of the thousand true fans idea and thinking, how can I, instead of just sending a book out into the world to be read by people that I might never meet, trying to get it into as many hands as possible? How can I really start to build a community and a community of those people who really care about writing, care about fantasy worlds and care about my book? That's what drove me to the idea of Web3. Stephen: I think that as far as why Web3 in the first place, why would we even go that route in terms of publishing, and then sometimes it's easy for people to be in the mindset of, well, if it works already, why change it? If we can get a book on Amazon Kindle, then isn't that good enough? Beyond the community is the fundamental idea of ownership in Web3. I think that a lot of people don't really grasp all the ramifications that come with that. Because, with Web2, you never really own anything, you're just renting or licensing the right to be able to view content within a certain big tech platform. And those platforms pretty much have all of the control over the distribution, over what's on their platform, over how the finances work for that. And they end up often taking a large percentage of those finances, and you're just at the mercy of whatever distribution platform is the main one for your genre normally. With Web3, it gives more creative ownership and control for the artists, in this case, Rae, the author to be able to have more control over what she writes and how she connects with her audience, and how she sells to them and all that. Joanna: Fantastic. Let's get more specific around ‘Sitka World.' Tell us about SitkaWorld and what it is and what you hope to create around it. Rae: With ‘Sitka World,' our mission is really to bring the magic of storytelling to Web3. It started out just as a way t

How can you turn one idea into a short story or expand it into a novel? How can you find a writing process that brings you joy for the long term? Jessie Kwak talks about writing craft tips in this interview. In the intro, I comment on Andy Jassy's letter to shareholders and the importance of long-term thinking. 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. Her latest book is From Big Idea to Book: Create a Writing Practice That Brings You Joy. 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 Planning, plotting, and discovery writingFinding ideas, and turning them into short stories, or expanding them into novels Tips for dealing with critical voiceDeveloping themeThe pros and cons of working with small pressUsing Kickstarter as a pre-orderHow to put the joy back into writingJessie was also on the show previously, talking about From Chaos to Creativity: Productivity for Writers. You can find Jessie Kwak at JessieKwak.com and on Twitter @jkwak 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. Her latest book is From Big Idea to Book: Create a Writing Practice That Brings You Joy. Welcome back to the show, Jessie. Jessie: Thank you for having me. This is super fun. Joanna: Always good to talk to you. You've been on the show before. We talked a bit about your journey and how you manage everything. So we're just going to get straight into the topic today. Now, I should say upfront, this is a really great book, there's so much in it and I found it very hard to choose the questions. I want to start with the plotting versus discovery writing because there's this tension for both fiction and nonfiction. You say in the book that “every author plans, but the extent to which they plan differs.” Talk about planning, and how we can find the best way for our writing style. Jessie: I think there tends to be a lot of emphasis on what's the right way to write, should I outline, am I supposed to be doing this or that or the other thing. My very first piece of advice, as we get into talking about writing advice, is, don't really worry about what's right. Start with what your strengths are. Start with what you enjoy about the process, and start experimenting from there. Definitely don't throw out the things that you enjoy just because you're like, ‘Oh, I read in a book that I'm supposed to do it a different way.' When I talk about planning, I really came to writing as a pantser. And I didn't do a lot of outlining. I would try it and then I would just immediately go in a weird direction as soon as I started writing. I'm very much a discovery writer. Unless I am literally typing or putting pencil to paper and writing out a scene, I don't know what is going to come out of that scene. Doesn't matter how much I outline. But I have tried to incorporate a lot more planning into my discovery process. For example, you don't have to plot out the whole book, but maybe you could plot out this act that you're working on, or the first half of a book. My mind was blown at a conference a few years back when another author was like, ‘I only ever plot out the first half of any book, because my outline always goes off the rails.' It's like, ‘Oh, you can do that?' Or you can try planning at the scene level. That's something that I find really helps me. Taking five minutes to jot out, this is what I want to do with the scene, some sensory details, basic scene blocking of who goes where and does what. If you are a heavy planner, maybe experiment with giving yourself a little bit more flexibility. Experiment with how you are coming up with that outline. Are you going into a spreadsheet and plotting out every detail? Or try being maybe a little bit more freeform and see if that helps at all. And if it doesn't, that's fine, you don't have to, you can be the spreadsheet outline, or you can be the complete pantser. But playing with what other people do, I think can really help. Joanna: And it's interesting because you've been on the show talking about productivity, and I know how much work you get done. Knowing that you're incredibly organized in your nonfiction side. I feel like we've got a lot in common in our nonfiction. But I feel like, with my fiction, I am a discovery writer, but I am so different with my fiction than I am with my nonfiction. So I wondered if that's the same with you? Are you a

How can you write a book that children will love? How can you reach schools and libraries with your books? What might you be leaving on the table in terms of revenue in your author business? Daniel Miller shares his tips, and we also discuss the potential opportunities in his business model. In the intro, I talk about London Book Fair 2022, petition against Amazon's ebook return policy [Change.org], Public Speaking for Authors, Creatives, and Other Introverts. Plus, want to win 14 crime/thriller/mystery novels? Enter the Easter giveaway (8-18 April 2022) Today's show is sponsored by IngramSpark, who I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 39,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries and more. It's your content – do more with it through IngramSpark.com. Daniel Jude Miller is the author and illustrator of seven children's books. 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 illustration to writingTips for authors who want to work with an illustratorWhy publishing independently is worth the ‘necessary evil' of the business side in order to retain creative controlPrint runs vs print-on-demand for illustrated books — and are you leaving money on the table?Selling children’s books direct through classroom visits, and on an author website You can find Daniel Miller at djudemiller.com and on Twitter @djudemiller Transcript of Interview with Daniel Miller Joanna: Daniel Jude Miller is the author and illustrator of seven children's books. Welcome to the show, Daniel. Daniel: Hello, and thank you for having me. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you today. Tell us a little bit more about you, and how you got into writing books for children. Daniel: Well, that's an interesting story because I did not want to write books for children. In fact, I didn't want to write books for anyone. I actually started out as an illustrator. I was the kid that was drawing in school, I was the one who went to a special art high school, I went to art college, and I only wanted to be an illustrator. I had no plans on writing. I never actually even tried. Growing up, when I was in school, it wasn't really a thing that they focused on, so I never even attempted it. When I was about 25, I got an idea for a story, and I had a problem because I had two choices, either I was going to let somebody else write it and just do the illustrations for my own idea, or I'd have to actually learn how to write. So, I only decided to write and only started writing when I was 25 years old, and I had already spent almost 20 years being an artist. Joanna: Wait. Sorry. That doesn't make sense. You were 25 when you decided to be a… Daniel: To start writing. Yeah. That was literally the first time I ever sat down to write, but I had been drawing since I was literally five years old. Joanna: Oh, okay. I thought you meant you had a 20-year career in illustration. Daniel: No. I was the person who was obsessed with art, and that was my only goal. Kids asked me all the time, if I wasn't an artist, what would I be? I have no idea, because I don't know how to fix a car, I don't know how to swing a hammer, I can't cook to save my life. I had one goal and one goal only, and that was to be an artist, and it worked. The writing part was not part of the plan. That came accidentally. And surprisingly, it's actually now the part I slightly enjoy more. Joanna: That's interesting. So, you had this first idea for a story, and clearly, you decided to learn to write, but how did you go about that? How did you go about developing a new craft? Did you do degree courses, or did you just write, or how did you do it? Daniel: I wish I would've taken some courses. That probably would've been a better idea. I decided to just do it, and it took almost 15 years to finish the first actual book, because I also decided, maybe foolishly, but it was more like a challenge, to write my first book in rhyme. It was a very long book. It wasn't like cat and hat-type rhymes. It was going to be very complicated. That's probably not the best thing to train yourself on, but ultimately, it worked. It just took a really, really long time. From that moment when I had the idea for my first book to when that book was actually physically in my hands, was 15 years. And that was a lot of reading other books. That was a lot of just going over it. There must have been easily 100 drafts, because normally, there's a lot of drafts, but when you're learning how to write, there's even more. And so, it was just a long, long process. Joanna: What were you doing as a job while you were doing all that? Daniel: I was an illustrator. I had a day job that I really didn't like, because it was a job at an advertising agency, and that was not the type of art that I wanted to do, because it was a whole lot of insurance, and med

How can you create distance from your manuscript in order to see it as a reader does and edit effectively? What are some of the biggest issues with editing a manuscript? How can you edit on a budget? Tiffany Yates Martin talks all about editing in this interview. In the intro, 10 years of the Alliance of Independent Authors [ALLi]; Re-calibrating [Seth Godin]; NFTs for Authors, episode 610. Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just typos and grammar checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing, and integration with Scrivener MS Word, Chrome and more, 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 Tiffany Yates Martin is an editor, speaker, and teacher with almost 30 years in the publishing industry. She writes contemporary women's fiction as Phoebe Fox, and her latest non-fiction book is Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your 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 The three ‘brains’ we need: writer, reader, editorTips for creating distance from your manuscript so that you can see it the way a reader doesThe importance of writing characters that readers care about — and making their stakes clearMomentum vs. paceFinding your author voiceEditing support on a budget You can find Tiffany Yates Martin at FoxPrintEditorial.com and on Twitter @FoxPrintEd Transcript of Interview with Tiffany Yates Martin Joanna: Tiffany Yates Martin is an editor, speaker, and teacher with almost 30 years in the publishing industry. She writes contemporary women's fiction as Phoebe Fox, and her latest non-fiction book is Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing. Welcome, Tiffany. Tiffany: Thank you, Joanna. Thanks for inviting me onto the show. Joanna: Ah, it's good to talk about this topic. Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and editing. Tiffany: The writing I'd always done. Like most of us, I started from the time I was very young. My mom recently gave me back a copy of a book I must have written in elementary school, called, embarrassingly enough, My Autobiography About Me: I Wrote It Myself. Joanna: Brilliant. Tiffany: It's full of gems, like ‘my brother is annoying,' that kind of thing. But it was funny because I bound it and I put my author note in there at the back, and I had back cover copy, so I think that was ingrained. I actually went into acting as a career, which is how I side hustled into editing. I was working as an actor, and thus working as a waiter in New York, like many of us, and one day I saw in ‘The New York Times' something that said, ‘Get paid for reading books. Send us $25 and we'll tell you how.' I wanted to find something with a little more longevity than waiting tables, that would allow me flexibility for my acting career. I had been an English major, and always good at it, always loved it, so I thought, well, give this a try, it's probably a scam. It wasn't actually a scam. It was full of really great suggestions for how to approach copy editing and proofreading, which is how I started, how to approach the managing editors and the copy chiefs at big publishing houses. Probably that was in the early '90s, and for probably the first 15 years of my career, I was working as a freelance copy editor for most of the big six, back when I started. And then about 12 years ago, I decided to move into developmental editing, and I've been doing that ever since. I work with authors directly, both indie and traditionally published, and I also work with several publishers. Joanna: You also write contemporary women's fiction, which I always find interesting, because obviously we all self-edit as writers, but the editor's brain, it can be so different. When did you think, ‘Oh, I know. I'll write fiction too,' and how do you manage those two different brains? Tiffany: Interestingly, I didn't try to set out to become an editor, but I realized, right around the time I think I shifted into developmental editing, it's my first love. I do love writing, and I always have, but I think I'm an editor first. As you correctly point out, the hardest thing about being a writer, if you're also an editor, is that your brain is working as editorial mindset, and that can shut you down. I think it's what we do sometimes as writers. I always advocate try to draft the story as freely as you can, because if you are sitting there editing it or observing it as you're going, you're getting in your own way and you're shutting yourself down. You're shutting off the very part of yourself that can achieve what you're trying to achieve. It's the equivalent of having

Would you like to successfully crowdfund your book on Kickstarter? Monica Leonelle shares practical and mindset tips for creating the right kind of project, as well as mistakes to avoid, and how to satisfy fans — and make money with your books. Monica and I recorded this before Brandon Sanderson's epic Kickstarter which has raised over $32m, which is why we didn't mention it. But clearly, it's a fascinating business model! In the intro, Booker Prize-winning author Ben Okri re-edits, re-titles a book to deepen the theme [The Guardian]; and bookbinding fun (pic). 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. Monica Leonelle is the author of ‘The Productive Novelist' and ‘Book Sales Supercharged' series of non-fiction books, as well as a USA Today bestselling author of fantasy and paranormal romance, under the pen name Solo Storm. Her latest book for authors is Get Your Book Selling on Kickstarter, co-written with Russell Nohelty, which I supported as a Kickstarter project. 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 crowdfunding and how does it work for authors?Different kinds of reward tiers and how to make them financially successful as well as rewarding to fansCommon Kickstarter mistakes to avoidDirect sales and revenue per customerFactors to consider when fulfilling your ordersTackling fears around a Kickstarter campaignMarketing tips and what not to do You can find Monica Leonelle at TheWorldNeedsYourBook.com and at KickStartYourNovel.com and on Twitter @monicaleonelle Transcript of Interview with Monica Leonelle Joanna Penn: Monica Leonelle is the author of ‘The Productive Novelist' and ‘Book Sales Supercharged' series of non-fiction books, as well as a ‘USA Today' bestselling author of fantasy and paranormal romance, under the pen name Solo Storm. Her latest book for authors is Get Your Book Selling on Kickstarter, co-written with Russell Nohelty, which I supported as a Kickstarter project. Welcome back to the show, Monica. Monica Leonelle: Hi. Thank you so much for having me on again. Joanna Penn: This is such an interesting topic. Last time you were on, a few years ago, we talked about your history and dictating a book, so we're just going to get straight into it today. So, let's start with the basics. Crowdfunding and Kickstarter have been around for years, but I actually spoke to an author recently who hadn't heard of either. What is crowdfunding, and what is Kickstarter? Monica Leonelle: Crowdfunding is basically asking people to fund something before it's done, at least the way that Kickstarter does it. For Kickstarter, it's probably the biggest crowdfunding platform in the world, as a creator, and Kickstarter really only has creator projects on there. I'll explain what that means in a minute. Basically, as a creator, what you're doing is essentially putting up a preorder for your cool idea, your cool project, and you're saying I'm going to do this, this is how much money I need for it, back it now, give me the money in advance, and then I will deliver the project afterward. So that's basically how Kickstarter works. That's how crowdfunding works. I do want to contrast it though with one platform that we see people thinking it's similar to, which is GoFundMe. GoFundMe is a great platform, nothing against that type of crowdfunding platform, but it's not creator-focused, necessarily. So, you could do a creator project on there, but you also see, ‘I have medical bills to pay.' ‘I'm about to lose my house.' So you see a lot of that. Sometimes authors feel like Kickstarter is a begging-for-money type of platform when it's not. It's really just setting up a pre-order for a project that you are confident you're going to deliver on, of course, we don't want projects that you can't deliver on, but setting up a pre-order, and getting people to support you in advance. Joanna Penn: Fantastic. But, of course, playing devil's advocate, we already have an ecosystem for selling books. We can already do pre-orders for eBooks and print books. We can't necessarily do them for audiobooks, but we have this. Why would an indie author or a creator bother with the hassle of Kickstarter, especially since the sales won't help Amazon rankings or bestseller lists or anything like that? Monica Leonelle: It's a great question, and one that we hear all the time. I think there are a couple of things. One is that Kickstarter is really a direct sales platform. So you don't have to pay the 30% royalties. You do have to pay other fees. Kickstarter has a 5% fee that they take, an

How can you future-proof your author career by being careful with the publishing clauses you sign? Why are NFTs so interesting for intellectual property? How might DAOs help authors with estate planning? Copyright and trademark attorney Kathryn Goldman talks about these things and more. In the intro, I talk about my art NFTs [JFPenn & OpenSea] and using generative AI through Conjure.art. 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 Why are NFTs so exciting for intellectual property?Clauses in publishing contracts that might stop you creating or controlling NFTs in the future — and what language to watch out forSpecial editions, smart contracts, and other possibilities for contractsWhat does the end of the term of copyright mean for NFTs?How DAOs could be used by authors and the publishing industry — estate management, author organizations and collectivesAcceleration of blockchain regulations due to President Biden's Executive Order (signed March 2022) You can find Kathryn Goldman at CreativeLawCenter.com and on Twitter @KathrynGoldman 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. Kathryn's been on the show before, talking about estate planning and protecting your intellectual property. Today, we're talking about web3, NFTs, and DAOs. Welcome back to the show, Kathryn. Kathryn: Oh, thank you for having me. Joanna: I'm so excited to talk to you about this. Let's start with more of an attitude question. Why are you so interested in this intersection between web3 and intellectual property? Because I've seen so many people shying away from it and saying it's just not happening. But you embrace the change. So, why is that? Kathryn: I embrace watching the change. It is happening. You cannot turn your back on it right now, but mostly what's intriguing me is that people's imaginations have caught fire in a way we really haven't seen for a couple of decades, or maybe a decade. People are taking this technology and doing things with it that are just limited only by their imaginations, and that is what is fun to watch. It's the creation, from imagination, that is the basis of intellectual property. That's why I am just loving what's going on these days. Joanna: I love that you say that, that imaginations are catching fire, because I feel like the talk in the space has been so focused on finance and cryptocurrency and the financial industry that the creativity side is often under the carpet, in a way. It's not being talked about that much. I love that — ‘creation from imagination is the basis of intellectual property.' I hope people listening are excited about that. Let's get into the publishing industry, specifically, because you have a fantastic blog, and people who sign up for your email list get notified of your new posts, and I'm a subscriber. From a recent article [read it here], you said, “Authors who have signed publishing contracts may have already given up their right to control their work in the metaverse.” Let's say metaverse/web3/whatever we're going to call it in the future. What do you mean around that? What do you mean by given up their rights? Kathryn: Publishing contracts are license agreements between an author and a publisher, and in that license agreement, the author grants to the publisher a group, a bundle of, or part of their copyrights in their creative work. And publishing contracts are dense with language. In those grants of rights, there are these broad provisions that encompass future technologies. And so, if there is a publishing contract that was drafted and signed 10 years ago, that includes language that encompasses future technologies unknown at the time, then the author may have already agreed, with that language, to allow a publisher to mint an NFT of her work without even knowing what an NFT was at the time. So it's possible that there's language embedded in the contract already, covering future technologies, that would give the publisher control over the creative's NFTs. This analysis, this concept, is not without precedent. The same thing happen

How do we tell the deeper story that matters in a way that engages readers? How can we tackle the inner critic, self-censorship and fear of judgment? And does social media actually sell books? Nikesh Shukla talks about why Your Story Matters and gives his writing tips. In the intro, Amazon opens up Ads to traditionally published authors; How to Make a Living with your Writing; Ultimate Guide to Multiple Streams of Income [ALLi]; Cemeteries and Graveyards [Books and Travel]; Death's Garden Revisited Kickstarter. Plus, From $0 to $1K in book sales, free book marketing webinar with Nick Stephenson. Today's show is sponsored by IngramSpark, who I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 39,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries and more. It's your content – do more with it through IngramSpark.com. Nikesh Shukla is a best-selling novelist as well as a screenwriter, editor, podcaster and essayist. He has been named one of Time magazine's cultural leaders, Foreign Policy magazine's 100 global thinkers, and he's a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His latest nonfiction book is Your Story Matters: Find Your Voice, Sharpen Your Skills, Tell Your Story. 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 Learning a hard publishing lesson early onFinding our author voiceHow to deal with fear of judgment and self-censorshipPlanning a novel and shaping a storyThe two different types of writer procrastinationSearching for the emotional truth of a storyDoes social media sell books? You can find Nikesh Shukla at Nikesh-Shukla.com, Nikesh.substack.com and on Twitter @nikeshshukla Transcript of Interview with Nikesh Shukla Joanna: Nikesh Shukla is a best-selling novelist as well as a screenwriter, editor, podcaster and essayist. He has been named one of Time magazine's cultural leaders, Foreign Policy magazine's 100 global thinkers, and he's a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His latest nonfiction book is Your Story Matters: Find Your Voice, Sharpen Your Skills, Tell Your Story. Welcome Nikesh. Nikesh: Hello. Joanna: Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. Nikesh: I was quite a shy and awkward teenager, and I didn't really like going out and doing all the sort of miscreant deeds that teenagers do. I just sat in my room and listened to a lot of rap, I read a lot of comics, and I would transcribe all of the rap lyrics and I would read the comics again and again and again. After a while, I started writing my own rap lyrics and writing out my own arcs for Spider-Man and for Batman. I guess some sort of fan fictiony type route is what brought me into writing. And then from that I graduated to what most teenagers do, which is write appalling poetry. Joanna: Woohoo! Nikesh: I think that's probably where it all started for me is just being a shy teenager who had a lot to say about the world and the world was against me, but I could write down how I felt about the world. Joanna: Obviously, you're not a teenager anymore. So how did it go from terrible teenage poetry into Fellow of the Royal Society. Obviously, we're both British, and I don't know if Americans will realize this, this is a really big deal. How did you cross that gap? Nikesh: Who knows? A series of unfortunate events, probably. I don't know. Here's a thing that happened to me when I was a teenager, sort of my origin story. I write about this in Your Story Matters. But at some point, during my teenage years, I saw an advert for an international poetry competition. I think I was 15 or 16. And you have to submit a poem, and you could win a lot of money and go into an anthology. And I thought…I'm a sick poet. So I sent off a poem that was your very standard teenage fare. Teenager goes for a walk, spots nature and nature reminds him that we're all going to die someday. Really bad stuff. It was really bad. And I sent that poem, it was called Train of Thought, or Trail of Thought. Get it? Because he was on a walk, a trail and he was having thoughts and the thoughts were wandering. At some point, I got a letter back from the International Poetry Foundation, or whoever it was saying, ‘You haven't won the International Poetry competition, but we love your poem, and we're going to include it in our anthology, Awaken To A Dream.' And I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I'm going to be published. This is amazing. Yes, this is happening. I'm on my journey now!' Then it said, if you wish to be included in the anthology, then you have to buy a copy of the anthology which costs 50 pounds, but we will give you a discount of five pounds, so you just have to pay 45 pounds, and then you can be in the anthology, and we'll send you a copy.' I didn't realize what the listeners are probably realizing right now, I was a teenager and I was desperate to be published. I was a pro

What if the traditional publishing model is not the best way to publish a book in a digital age? What if publishing it as an ebook on Amazon is not the best way, either? Elle Griffin questions the established ways of publishing a book and explains how she is using SubStack and NFTs for her words. Elle Griffin is an author, editor, freelance journalist, and creative entrepreneur, using new methods of publishing to reach readers and make multiple streams of income with her work. 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 the economics of publishing most books don't add upTips for authors who want to use SubStackHow SubStack differs from PatreonIdeas for authors who want to get into blockchain and NFTs with their wordsEmbracing change and technology as a creator You can find Elle Griffin at ellegriffin.substack.com and on Twitter @novelleist Transcript of Interview with Elle Griffin Joanna: Elle Griffin is an author, editor, freelance journalist, and creative entrepreneur, using new methods of publishing to reach readers and make multiple streams of income with her work. Welcome, Elle. Elle: Thanks, thank you so much for having me. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you today. Before we get into more of the technology, tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. Elle: I've been a writer for a really long time. I actually started my career in the content marketing side of things, and then moved my way over toward editorial. Now I've been an editorial journalist for a number of years. While I was working on that, on the side, I wanted to write a novel. So I wrote a gothic novel called Obscurity and when I finished it, I did all the normal things first. I sent it out to agents and I was thinking maybe that would be a good idea. But as I was doing that I was researching publishing as my own, like a journalist would, researching the industry, trying to figure out how my book could best be successful. That's when I decided that my book was not a mass-appealed kind of book, it was not going to have 100,000 followers, or buys, purchases. So I decided that it would be better off for a couple of thousand people that would really love it. And if that was the case, I was interested in doing that as part of the Creator Economy, which is a newer idea where the idea is that the author or writer gets paid monthly. People subscribe to that author monthly, as opposed to, ‘Let's pay this author $10 every time, every five years when they have a book come out.' The idea is you subscribe to an author ongoing, and they provide behind-the-scenes access and things as you're going there, similar to your strategy because I know you have a blog and a podcast on the side of writing fiction. So that's what I've been doing. I did a newsletter on SubStack, about a year ago, which has explored all of this and has been a very interesting experiment. Joanna: I want to start with the SubStack experience because one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is I've had so many authors ask me about SubStack. Now, of course, when I started doing this, I started writing in 2006, it wasn't around, but I grew an email list as one does. I've always kind of felt SubStack is just an email list that someone else manages for you. So I've been like, ‘Okay, I've got to ask someone why it's so good.' So let's start with the fiction and we'll get back into the nonfiction. You serialized Obscurity on SubStack. What are your tips for authors who want to use SubStack for fiction in particular? Elle: When I first started serializing fiction on SubStack, I pitched the idea to my readers, I said, ‘Look, okay, publishing doesn't work. Here's all the reasons why. What if we bring serialized fiction back in the form of a SubStack newsletter, I'll send out a new chapter of my novel every single week, you can subscribe to it for $10 a month or $50 a year and get the whole book. For an added tier, you can pay $200 and get access to the hardcover very first edition of the book when it comes out.' That article just went insanely viral. At the time I wrote that article, I had done a lot of research on SubStack and, basically, everyone was doing nonfiction there. You're not wrong, SubStack is pretty new and it only really started reaching mass appeal in the last two years, when they got funding and started investing in it a lot. So it's fairly new, but it's picked up steam really quickly. And that article saw 60,000 views in one day. One of the co-founders of SubStack reached out to me and was like, ‘We want SubStack to be a place for fiction. We love your idea.‘ All of these fiction writers started following me at that time, and were like, ‘Whoa, like, this is such a great idea. My books have been published on Amazon, and nothing's been happening to them at all. So this is such a cool idea. I'm going

I've spent the last 15 years building an author business on Web 2 — digital publishing, blogging and podcasting, social media, and more. But as Web 3 begins to emerge through blockchain, NFTs, AI, and the metaverse, I want to make sure I still have a thriving business over the next 15 years. NFTs are an important part of the future business model in the Creator Economy and in this presentation, I explain why they're important and how authors can consider using them. In the intro, I give an update on my first couple of NFTs, minted on OpenSea, the potential impact of President Biden's blockchain and crypto Executive Order [The Verge]; In the main section, I go through: Who am I, and why am I talking about NFTs? My technical background and how I've embraced technology early in my author career so farWhat is an NFT?Different blockchains — and energy requirementsWhy do we need NFTs? Ownership and resale; flexing in the metaverse, and erosion of royalties + paid ads + inflation = we need more income streams from our IPSix different types of NFTs that authors can consider, and how they are being used in other industriesWhy digital scarcity enables more creativity and collaborationHow smart contracts enable easier collaboration and a simplified payment systemHow blockchain and smart contracts (and DAOs) could change royalty payments, estate management, and moreWhat we need in an NFT solution for publishingHow do NFTs fit into the current business model? What is a potential future state once the technology goes mainstream?What action should you take right now? You can find more resources at thecreativepenn.com/future For a broader look at web 3 and emerging technologies, check out my book, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, and Virtual Worlds: The Impact of Converging Technologies on Authors and the Publishing Industry.  If you have any comments, tweet me @thecreativepenn or leave a comment under the video or on the post. Thanks again to my patrons who sponsor these futurist episodes, and if you find them useful, you can support the show at patreon.com/thecreativepenn and get the monthly Q&A coming soon for March.  Or if you don’t want to commit for a monthly payment. you can also buy me a coffee or two at BuyMeACoffee.com/thecreativepenn  Transcript of the introduction I put the main section out as a video on YouTube and on the blog, but I know many of you prefer audio only — I do too! So I wanted to put it out on the audio feed as well, but I also have an extra section upfront, an update — as I mentioned on Monday’s show, I minted my first NFT on Opensea, and it sold immediately, so I minted another one, which also sold immediately! I wanted to talk briefly about this before playing the presentation as things move on apace. First of all, the book-specific NFT platforms aren’t ready quite yet, although many are almost there, so I decided to mint some of my AI generative art, which I’ve been playing with for a while.  This is not out of the blue for me. My family are primarily visual artists. My dad’s a printmaker, one brother is a photographer, my other brother is a 3D fashion designer, and one of my sisters designs textiles and interiors for superyachts. We are indeed The Creative Penns!  I already dabble in visual art. I take thousands of photos during my research trips (some of which I share on Instagram @jfpennauthor ). My fiction is very visual and sense of place is important to me, as you can also discover through my Books and Travel Podcast. For my AI generative art, I’m using my own photos of places combined with words from the books about that place, and then remixing those images and curating until I find one that resonates with me.  Of course, art is subjective, but since I’m the writer and the photographer, I can curate the output based on many iterations of AI images. I love love love playing with generative art. It is so much fun! On 11 March 2022, I made my first NFT, Rain soaked the ashes of the dead, by combining one of my pictures from the burning ghats of Varanasi, India, which inspired the first scene of my first novel, Pentecost (later republished as Stone of Fire) with a prompt of the first line. “Rain soaked the ashes of the dead into the winding Varanasi streets as rivers of mud ran down to the holy river Ganges.” The image is the NFT, and the special edition of the ebook of Stone of Fire is ‘unlockable content.' There is a smart contract attached to it that says I get 5% on any resale.  I used OpenSea as it's known as ‘the Amazon of NFTs,’ and it has an Art category. I chose the Polygon blockchain, which is less energy-intensive than Ethereum, but OpenSea still prices in ETH. I couldn’t use an auction for this setup so I just priced at 0.1ETH (around US$250 at the time of minting). The first NFT was bought quickly, so I made another one, Inscribed in an ancient hand, from a picture

How can we improve our creativity and release our self-censorship to write more freely? Dan Holloway talks about aspects of creativity as well as physical challenges, neurodiversity, and how technology might augment us in this interview. In the intro, thoughts on Brandon Sanderson's Kickstarter [Kris Rusch]; Guide to Multiple Streams of Income [Self Publishing Advice]; Thoughts on President Biden's Executive Order on crypto and blockchain [The Verge]; My first NFT — Rain Soaked The Ashes of the Dead; Crypto Business Podcast; The AI-Assisted Author and generative art (50% off with coupon MARCH22) 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. Dan Holloway is the author of 9 books across dark fiction, poetry and non-fiction, a performance poet, professional speaker, podcaster, and creativity consultant.  He’s won the Creative Thinking World Championships three times as well as the World Intelligence Championship. He’s also the founder of Rogue Interrobang, dedicated to helping individuals and companies expand their 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 From performance poetry to using storytelling and communication as a way to engage audiences with non-fictionWhat is creativity and how can we develop more of it?How Dan's creativity game, Mycelium, can helpHow physical health underpins creativityDan's physical transformation and how he stays consistent over timeNeurodiversity and how writing ‘rules' don't applyHow we are augmented already — and thoughts on VR, AR, and AI You can find Dan Holloway at Rogueinterrobang.com and on Twitter @agnieszkasshoes Dan has chapters in The Healthy Writer on writing with depression, and also in Public Speaking for Authors, Creatives, and Other Introverts on performing your work. Transcript of Interview with Dan Holloway Joanna: Welcome back to the show, Dan. Dan: Hi, it's fabulous to be back after many, many years. Joanna: Many years. We were just saying before I hit record, it was 2013 since you last came on the show, and I'm going to assume that most people possibly haven't heard that episode. So let's start with the basics. Tell us a bit more about you and your author journey and how it's progressed. Dan: Right. I was one of the very early self-publishers back in the days. On Smashwords, in the olden days, you used to get a forward slash and then the number of the book according to which in order you were, and my books were all in three figures. I was amongst the first few 100 books published on Smashwords. So that's how I judge myself as a sort of an early indie author. Back in those days, in 2006, 2007, 2008, I was writing all sorts, thrillers, literary fiction, and after that, I got into poetry, performance poetry. I spent quite a long time on the slam scene. And obviously, that has been harder of late, the last two years. There hasn't been much in-person slam poetry. Most recently, I've gone back to my absolute roots in writing nonfiction. When I say my absolute roots, when I was a kid I grew up as most people – I don't want to say our age, but my age – my hero was Carl Sagan. So that was what I always wanted to do. I was given a copy of Cosmos, I think it was my eighth birthday when the hardback came out, and I read that and I decided that was the kind of thing I wanted to do. I wanted to be the Carl Sagan figure, this public intellectual, for want of a better word. So it feels like writing nonfiction now has gone back to those roots. Joanna: That's really interesting. Obviously, the performance poetry scene, as you say, because of the pandemic has dropped off in person. Obviously, we've known each other through various incarnations of ourselves. In my mind, you're always a performance poet. That's how I think of you in my mind. I see you performing. But it's funny because you say the public intellectual, and you've won these creative thinking championships, and you do have a sort of almost polymath ability to explore things. The poetry side and the performance side; is that going to come back into your life or do you think that was part of it? Dan: Absolutely. And performance is very much still there with nonfiction, and that goes with the public intellectual thing, I think. I love the engagement speakers. I don't know if you know the sci-com community, for example, science communications. People who speak passionately and present incredibly well their nonfiction work, I think that there's a real performative element to that that I love to bring those sides of what I do in. I'm very lucky being still in Oxford. We have quite a lot of people who are exploring this space and quite a lot of fundi

How can we overcome self-doubt to write the books we really want to? How can we move past writer's block? How can we reshape our definition of success and return to the joy of writing? Dharma Kelleher talks about the author mindset and more. In the intro, Brandon Sanderson's Kickstarter, Bookstore consolidation [The Guardian]; Amazon closes bookstores and a thought experiment about what else they might do [Digital Trends]; Pen-names [6 Figure Authors]; Wise for business multicurrency income [Wise affiliate link]; Plus, it's my birthday month! Get 50% off my courses, ebooks, and audiobooks. Use coupon: MARCH22 at TheCreativePenn.com/learn (courses) and Payhip.com/thecreativepenn (ebooks & audiobooks). Valid until 31 March 2022. 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 www.draft2digital.com/penn Dharma Kelleher is the author of crime and action-adventure thrillers featuring queer women across three different series. She's also the author of Breakthrough, Overcoming Creative Self-Doubt, Writer's Block, and Imposter Syndrome. 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 traditional publishing to indieAddressing low self-esteem and imposter syndrome as writersWriting with beginner's mindGetting past writer’s blockLearning to accept our imperfectionsFinding the joy in writing againBalancing self-care with getting things doneWriting in an era of ‘cancel culture’How to write about characters outside your lived experienceIs success a delusion? You can find Dharma Kelleher at DharmaKelleher.com and on Twitter @zenpunkdharma Transcript of Interview with Dharma Kelleher Joanna: Dharma Kelleher is the author of crime and action-adventure thrillers featuring queer women across three different series. She's also the author of Breakthrough, Overcoming Creative Self-Doubt, Writer's Block, and Imposter Syndrome. Welcome, Dharma. Dharma: Thank you so much for having me. I've been a fan of the show almost since the beginning, so, it's such an honor to be here. Joanna: Oh, thank you. I'm excited to talk to you. First up, tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and the indie world. Dharma: I started writing fiction back in the late '70s. I was a teenager at the time, writing on a manual typewriter. I kid you not, it was a manual typewriter. I just played around with it for several years through high school, college. And then life issues got in the way and I came out as transgender. And so, I spent a few decades, basically, dealing with that and the fallout from that and just trying to rebuild my life. Then, in 2007, someone mentioned to me something about National Novel Writing Month. And I'm like, ‘What is this?' And, so, I got excited, I was like, ‘Hey, I could start writing again.' Because at the time I had quit my day job to take care of my in-laws, they were elderly and they needed some help. So, I had some extra time on my hands, so I started doing that. My first two books were published by Random House in 2016. And when they didn't renew the two-book deal…I've been a fan of your show for a few years by that time, and I'm like, ‘Well, maybe Joanna's on to something here.' So, I said, ‘Okay, I'm going to do this myself.' Eight books later, 10 books later…I've lost count at this point, so… Joanna: That's fantastic. Tell us a bit more about your indie experience then. Because, obviously, you were traditional with those first books and then you had to learn all this new stuff and a lot of people coming out of traditional publishing at the moment really and trying to see what it's like. Any thoughts on the transition from traditional to indie publishing? Dharma: My goal was to put out books that were every bit as professional as the ones that Random House published. It's important to get a professional editor and to get a professional book cover designed. But there are so many wonderful tools out there. I use Scrivener; I use Vellum; I use just all these really great tools. And actually, I've gotten to the point where I'm doing my own covers now just because I have some graphic-design background so I understand the principles and I understand the tropes of my genre, as far as covers go. Joanna: And then the other thing that I feel people coming from traditional publishing don't quite understand is how the money works. Because, of course, with trad, you (usually) get paid upfront. Or maybe if you don't get paid upfront, you get royalties eventually. Whereas indie, you have to pay some money upfront and you might get some every month, but it might be really small. How did you adjust to the way the money worked? Dharma: Well, I wasn't getting a lot of money upfront, anyway. So, at le

The creative journey is often a winding path to success, but our experiences along the way can enrich our writing and help us develop a unique author voice. Johnny B Truant talks about his journey from scientist to non-fiction/self-help, to over 100 books and a TV show based on his novels. In the intro, What Sells Books in 2022: at Kobo Writing Life [ALLi]; How to Survive Book Marketing Burnout [Kindlepreneur]; Introvert Writers Summit; Self-Publishing Show Live, London in June; Chirp Audiobook special on Map of Shadows; plus book recommendations: Life Force by Tony Robbins and Peter Diamandis, and The Genesis Machine by Amy Webb and Andrew Hessel. Today's show is sponsored by IngramSpark, which I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 40,000+ retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries, and more. It's your content—do more with it through IngramSpark.com. Johnny B. Truant is the author and co-author of over 100 books across multiple genres, and the co-founder of Sterling & Stone, a multimedia story studio, along with Sean Platt and David Wright. One of Johnny's books, Fat Vampire, sold to NBC Universal for production in 2021 as a SYFY original. 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 No experience is ever wasted — and may end up inspiring your writingFrom copywriting and courses to writing fictionA very slow first novel — to writing fastCollaboration and writing partnershipsLetting go of what might be working in order to do more of what we loveKnowing when a business relationship needs to endOn planning and following an inner compass You can find Johnny B. Truant at SterlingAndStone.net. Transcript of Interview with Johnny B. Truant Joanna: Johnny B. Truant is the author and co-author of over 100 books across multiple genres, and the co-founder of Sterling & Stone, a multimedia story studio, along with Sean Platt and David Wright. One of Johnny's books, Fat Vampire, sold to NBC Universal for production in 2021 as a sci-fi original, and some of you might even remember when he came up the idea live on the ‘Better Off Undead Podcast' years ago. Welcome back to the show, Johnny. Johnny: Hey, Joanna, it's so great to be back here. You and I go back just about as long as I've been doing internet stuff. So it's so cool. Joanna: We do. We're going to come to that in a minute. Because I was your fan way before you were a fiction writer. But I want to take us all the way back. We're focusing on creative pivots. When I first heard about your journey, you talked about doing a Ph.D., I think it was in genetics. So talk about that. Why did you stop doing your PhD in genetics? And how has that knowledge still ended up in your fiction? Johnny: This is actually really appropriate timing. First of all, I've recently revisited one of our smaller books, nonfiction books called The Story Solution, which is like how life is like a story. And so I revisited a lot of this. Also, I did my daughter's Career Day where I talked about, they asked for, like educational requirements for your job. And I was like, ‘Well, none, but I have these credentials. And guess what? They filter into my work. So very appropriate.' I was always a good student. And I created that as my identity. I was valedictorian of my high school class, and I got a lot of validation from just kind of being good scholastically. And so it was natural for me when I went to college, aim high, and high, by my definition, was the ‘most prestigious degree.' So this was basically an ego move, if you're getting this. Plus, I did like science a whole lot. And so it just seemed logical to me, in the absence of any other viable considerations, including writing, because who in the early aughts was able to make a living as a writer? That was absurd at the time. So a nice respectable job to me meant, I don't know, following my trajectory and getting a Ph.D. And it was genetics, it was molecular genetics. It was about, I would say, six months into it before I started to realize, ‘Oh, this is a really, really bad fit for me.' I wasn't like the people who were doing the work. I didn't enjoy the work itself, I didn't enjoy the environment. The schedule did not fit with all my other interests, I didn't have time for other things, because it was a lot of time, and it was far away. I realized that I had made a misstep when I made the calculation of how many fruit flies I had looked at under a microscope. So we used to do these cultures, these stinking yeast-smelling cultures of fruit flies. And there was a gene that would express with red eye color. I would know that they took up the gene if they had the red eye color. And so we used to knock them out with gas and use a little paintbrush to move them across the stage of a compound microscope and look for flies with re

In January 2022, I re-edited my first novel, Stone of Fire, which I started during NaNoWriMo in 2009 and published in April 2011. In this episode, I explain why and how I re-edited the book, as well as some lessons learned from revisiting my writer self of over a decade ago. This episode includes: Why I decided to rewrite when so much advice says ‘never go back’How Stone of Fire developed from 2011 to 2022 My re-writing process Practicalities of publishing a new editionCraft notes from rewriting, including character, pacing, grammar and sentence structure, author voice, dialogue, and moreWas it worth it?! Why I decided to rewrite when so much advice says ‘never go back’ There’s nothing really wrong with the book. As I write this, Stone of Fire has 1374 reviews on Amazon US with a 4.1 star average (and many more reviews on other stores and platforms) so clearly, readers enjoy it. But I know I can improve it.  Stone of Fire was my first novel — but it’s also the first in my 12-book ARKANE action-adventure thriller series. It’s my permafree first in series ebook, the one I repeatedly put ads on to bring readers into my writing. It’s pretty important for my fiction marketing efforts! Morgan Sierra, the main character of my ARKANE series, is also my alter-ego. Sure, she’s an ex-Israeli military psychologist, Oxford University professor, and Krav Maga expert — but her thoughts are often my own, or at least represent some facet of my personality. Like me, Morgan is fascinated with religion and travels the world, but of course, I just visit exciting locations, whereas she investigates supernatural mysteries in each one alongside Jake Timber and the rest of the ARKANE team.  The advice from many writing coaches and experts is to leave your old series behind, and write a new one. In this way, you can improve your work without rewriting old books.  But I can’t leave Morgan behind. And neither can my hardcore readers who love the ARKANE series and demand a new one as soon as I deliver the next story! In Jerusalem for book research! (Is that Morgan or Jo?!) I’ve written other series — my Mapwalker fantasy trilogy, my Brooke & Daniel crime thrillers, and various stand-alone stories. But in terms of action-adventure books, I’m invested in Morgan and the ARKANE team.  The ARKANE series appeals to fans of James Rollins’ Sigma series, Steve Berry’s Cotton Malone books, Lincoln & Child’s Pendergast, and thrillers by Greig Beck, Matthew Reilly, Ernest Dempsey, J Robert Kennedy, and R.D. Brady. They are action-adventure/conspiracy thriller with aspects of the supernatural.  I wrote them because I love these kinds of long-running thriller series and always set out to write something for the ‘old me’ who used to read thrillers on the commuter train every weekday to a job I hated.  My writing has improved after almost 13 years and writing over 35 books, as well as taking all kinds of writing classes, reading many thousands more thrillers, and learning my craft. Plus, I’ve worked with professional editors and proofreaders, and now augment my craft with ProWritingAid. Since I won’t “just start another series,” I decided to rewrite the first three books to bring them up to my current standard.  Importantly, I have not changed the story at all. The plot and characters are the same and if you’ve read the book, you don’t need to re-read it. But as I outline below in the craft section, I have made a lot of changes for pacing, reader flow, character depth, and author voice. Being an indie author simplifies the technical side of re-editing and re-releasing. I don’t need to ask anyone’s permission for a new edition. I just rewrite, republish, and carry on.  My plan is to rewrite the first three (Stone of Fire, Crypt of Bone, Ark of Blood) because they are linked by the antagonists, and also readers who get to book 4 tend to continue the series, anyway. The read-through is much stronger after they are hooked on Morgan and Jake’s adventures! I also need to get on with the next book and don’t want to spend any more time on older work, but never say never. Maybe by 2035, I’ll want to rewrite some more! How Stone of Fire developed from 2009 to 2022 I started the story during NaNoWriMo 2009 and joined The Year of the Novel at Queensland Library in Brisbane, Australia, where I lived at the time. After finishing the draft in 2010, I worked with several professional editors. I self-published Pentecost (as it was originally called) in April 2011. You can find my experience detailed here with some amusingly old videos! I wrote two more ARKANE novels, Prophecy, and Exodus, all under Joanna Penn.  The original cover for Prophecy by Joanna Penn, which eventually became Crypt of Bone by J.F. Penn! But my early reviews proved a couple of things.  Readers enjoyed the books — they have always had good reviews. But the branding and book titles looked like Christian Fiction, and although the stor

It's never too late to start writing and there are many pro writers ahead of you on the path lead the way. Craig Martelle shares tips on writing, self-publishing, and book marketing, as well as how he believes in the rising tide that lifts all boats, and how helping each other is the best way for indies to prosper. In the intro, the Findaway Voices Marketplace for audiobook narrators is now live; and I recommend Skip The Line by James Altucher. Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just typos and grammar checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing, and integration with Scrivener MS Word, Chrome and more, 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 Craig Martelle is the author of over 70 books alone and co-author of over 50 more, spanning science fiction, thrillers, and fantasy, as well as nonfiction for indie authors. He also co-hosts and runs the 20BooksTo50K Facebook group and live events. 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 Transitioning from the Marines, to law, to consulting, to writing From struggling with the first book to finding a process that works Quality control as an indie author Collaboration and building a team Tips for success in self-publishing Feeding your readership without having to write a book a month What happens at 20BooksVegas and can an introvert survive? Check out the free replays of 20Books Live events on YouTube here You can find Craig Martelle at craigmartelle.com  Transcript of Interview with Craig Martelle Joanna: Craig Martelle is the author of over 70 books alone and co-author of over 50 more, spanning science fiction, thrillers, and fantasy, as well as nonfiction for indie authors. He also co-hosts and runs the 20BooksTo50K Facebook group and live events. Welcome, Craig. Craig: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Joanna: I'm really interested to talk to you. So before we get into now, let's take a step back because you have some really interesting former careers in the Marine Corps, the Military Intelligence, law school, and business consulting. Why, with all of these different things, did you get into writing and publishing? Craig: I've always loved stories. I've read thousands of science fiction books. I always had a book with me wherever I was, no matter what I was doing. And I wrote my first book when I was 13 or 14, and that book languished. Then I joined the Marine Corps and went off. And last year, my sister who had the book because my parents made her type it up, and I didn't know that and she found it, she found my whole first manuscript that I hand wrote, and like a quarter of it is typed. And so, I got that. So, I wrote, but whatever I'm doing at the time, I commit myself to it. I didn't write again until after I retired from the second career, being a lawyer. And then just started writing, and I wrote full time because I already had my retirement income, and I was okay, and I needed to take some downtime. Now, of course, I have a freak level of workload, as an author, and with the conferences and with 20BooksTo50K. Joanna: So, reading was always part of your life. Why did you think when you retired, ‘Oh, I know, I'll become an author?' Craig: Oh, well, that was very pragmatic and fairly pedestrian, in that I retired from being a business consultant, as a lawyer. So, I got into the corporate offices. And I was deployed all the time. I was up on the North Slope and inside the Arctic Circle in the oil fields. And so, I retired from that. I came back down to my house here, outside Fairbanks, Alaska. And the yard needed cleaned up. I needed to do some of this outside work. So I went out there and I'm doing stuff, I built this big brush pile, and I tried to light it. And I lit myself on fire. So, the pragmatic nature is me sitting here inside, vowing to not do outdoor work again because the manly stuff was beyond me. And with bandages on the second degree burns on my leg and said, ‘Hey, I think I'll write that book that I always wanted to write.' So, it was pragmatic. I didn't set myself on fire a second time. Joanna: What's funny, though, is you say manly stuff. You were in the Marine Corps and Military Intelligence. Many people consider this quite manly, even though I'm sure there's lots of women as well. I think you do write military sci-fi amongst other things, don't you? How is that previous career coming to your writing now? Craig: In the Marine Corps in a lot of extremely tense situations, that is when you hear some of the funniest things ever. I've worked all of those into my books since. I've gotten fodder from a 20-year career in the Marine Corps to include in all of my boo

Smashwords was the original distribution service for indie authors and Mark Coker has been an advocate for wide publishing for over 14 years. Draft2Digital has been a fantastic service for indies over the last decade, moving into new markets, providing great tools, and helping authors sell more books. On Feb 8, 2022, Draft2Digital announced they were acquiring Smashwords. Mark Coker and his team would be joining Draft2Digital and the combined company would consolidate systems and processes, improving services for authors. In this discussion, I ask Mark Coker and Kevin Tumlinson about the acquisition and how it will impact indie authors who publish with either service, as well as discuss the opportunities ahead. Mark Coker is the founder and CEO of Smashwords, the original ebook publishing platform for Indies, established in 2008. Kevin Tumlinson is Director of Marketing and Public Relations at Draft2Digital, established in 2012. Both Mark and Kevin are also authors and they understand the author perspective when it comes to publishing.  You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes What the acquisition of Smashwords means for authors who publish on Smashwords — and what it means for those who publish on Draft2Digital Some of the concerns and how they will be addressed The implications of a company serving over 250,000 authors and how it shifts the power imbalance in publishing Why Mark was excited about the possibilities for authors when we met in 2010 (video here) and why things are even more exciting now Opportunities ahead for the bigger Draft2Digital You can contact Draft2Digital with any questions at [email protected] Transcript of the discussion Joanna: Mark Coker is the founder and CEO of Smashwords, the original ebook publishing platform for indies, established in 2008. Kevin Tumlinson is director of marketing and public relations at Draft2Digital, established in 2012. Both Mark and Kevin are also authors, and they understand the author perspective when it comes to publishing, and we've got some exciting things to talk about today. Welcome, Mark and Kevin. Mark: Hi, Joanna. Kevin: Hey, there. Joanna: Hey. It's good to have you both on the show. So, let's start with the news. Kevin, what has just happened or is happening? Kevin: You may or may not have heard by this point, but Draft2Digital is acquiring Smashwords as of March 1st, 2022. So, very big, very exciting news. We have been keeping our lips sealed for the past couple of months, but we are very excited to have that out there in the wild now. Mark: I'm really excited about this. I think that our two companies coming together that sprouted from the same seed. Both of our companies were founded by authors, for authors. We are an author-first company. We share common business models. Both of us chose the most difficult business model to pursue, and that's only making money when the authors make money. And both of our companies have managed to build profitable companies with this difficult business model, and we really fit well together. We both have the same attitude. We both believe that authors should be the center of the universe, that authors should have total control over their pricing, promotions, distribution. By joining together, we can do more together. We want the same thing for authors. And if you look at the last decade that Draft2Digital has been in business, we've created duplicative systems, systems that do the same thing, systems that can easily be merged together, well, maybe not easily, but they will be merged together, and that frees up engineering and development resources for us to develop new next-generation tools. So this is all about doing more for authors. Kevin: I have come to think of this: we're the peanut butter and jelly of the self-publishing world now. Which of us is peanut butter? I think Smashwords is the peanut butter, actually, because they're the foundation. They started it, delicious all on its own, and along came Draft2Digital just to sweeten the deal. So that's the way I perceive the whole thing. It's just all around going to be something really spectacular for the indie author community, self-publishing community, just because each company on its own had its strengths, had their weaknesses too. We're puzzle pieces, and we fit each other very well. I know everyone always thought of us as rivals, and in some sense we were, but we were sort of that friendly competition thing, where we were always just making each other better anyway. So, really, when you look back on it, it's sort of an inevitable journey to see this all come together. Joanna Yes. So inevitable, in fact, that when I found out, I wasn't surprised at all. And in fact, anyone I've talked to, everyone's like, ‘Yeah. Well, of course. That's kind of obvious.' I don't think anyone's been surprised. I do want to

The self-publishing movement is just getting started in Jamaica and the Caribbean islands, and authors are discovering they can tell their stories in their own way. C. Ruth Taylor talks about how she became an authorpreneur and why she believes in an indie-first, empowering ecosystem. In the intro, Draft2Digital acquires Smashwords [D2D; Mark Coker]; Impact of streaming on audiobook revenue and AI narration [Ask ALLi]; Stone of Fire and thoughts on your ‘writing age.' This podcast episode is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo ecosystem. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.  C. Ruth Taylor is the author of over 20 nonfiction books and a leading Jamaican authorpreneur. She's also a publishing consultant, podcaster, course creator, and founder of Extra Mile Innovators. 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 writing to heal a broken heart to authorpreneur The rich literary tradition of Jamaica and the Caribbean diaspora The reading and publishing ecosystem in Jamaica Turning your books into multiple streams of income Creative marketing when you can't afford paid ads The importance of telling your story and valuing your experience You can find C. Ruth Taylor at extramileja.com and on Twitter @cameka12 Transcript of Interview with C. Ruth Taylor Joanna: C. Ruth Taylor is the author of over 20 nonfiction books and a leading Jamaican authorpreneur. She's also a publishing consultant, podcaster, course creator, and founder of Extra Mile Innovators. Welcome, Ruth. Ruth: Thank you, Joanna. It's good being here. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you. First up, tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Ruth: Oh, that's a good question. I'm going to give you the short version. I am from the island that has produced the fastest man and woman in the world. That's Usain Bolt and our own Elaine Thompson-Herah, and the island that has given birth to reggae music, Bob Marley. And guess what? The island that gave birth to James Bond. This is where Ian Fleming wrote James Bond, and that's the beautiful island of Jamaica. How I got into writing and publishing. Well, I've been a bookworm all my life. I'm an introvert, so I found it difficult to make friends, as a child, and teenager. And so books are my best friends, I would read two, three books per week, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Mills & Boon. And then I used to write poems. At a particular point in time, I would turn those into postcards and sell them. But in terms of writing and becoming an author, I did not see myself as an author. When I was finishing my first degree, the president of the seminary, Jamaica Theological Seminary, told me to do a particular graduate degree. And he said, ‘I want you to do this because I believe you can write.' And then a friend from Trinidad wrote in the year prospectus because I was applying to go to Yale, she said, ‘I look forward to seeing your books in the future,' but I didn't believe. Fast forward 10 years later, on the heels of a broken engagement in 2014, one of my mentors says writing is therapeutic. And then I remembered a quote from a note from a theologian from the UK, William Barclay. He said, ‘Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory.' I knew how I would turn my traumatic experience into glory. It would be through writing. And so within 11 days, I wrote almost 68,000 words and nine months later, the book was published. So that is how I got into writing and publishing. Joanna: Okay, so you started with poetry? So you have a degree in theology, do you? Ruth: Yes, I have two degrees in theology, just like you. Joanna: Well, I've only got one. So you've already beaten me there. But no, that's fascinating. The traumatic experience into therapy; was that a memoir? Ruth: It was a memoir, but I wasn't just writing about the trauma. I wanted to help others to be healed from broken relationships. I wanted to share some of the tips that I learned because I was still standing, I did not go crazy or something like that. Joanna: And then, a couple of things that you said, you turned your poems into postcards. So you were already thinking about business, even with poetry, which I think is quite rare. And now you help others through your businesses. When did you decide to be an authorpreneur? Ruth: Like most authors, I fell into the trap of thinking that my first book would make me a millionaire. Joanna: It didn't?! Ruth: It didn't. Because in my first experience, similar to you, I did a bulk run. I thought I could print 5,000 books and sell them in no time, but I didn't have the funds. And so I printed 1,200, and it took about a year to sell those books. I

John Kremer's 1001 Ways to Market Your Book was the first book I ever bought on marketing way back when I started self-publishing in 2008. He has revised it several times since and is still a prolific content creator around book marketing. I'm thrilled to discuss long-term book marketing for authors in this interview. In the intro, Best Book Promotion Sites for 2022 [David Gaughran]; Dean Koontz talks craft and publishing [Writers Ink]; Indie Authors and the Creator Economy [ALLi]; What to give up [SJ Pajonas]. 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 www.draft2digital.com/penn John Kremer is the author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books, as well as other nonfiction titles, and founder of the Billion Book Initiative. Over the past 37 years, he has helped thousands of authors, including me, to sell more books. 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 time in the market is so important Building relationships as the key to long-term book marketing Pitching vs attraction marketing How to decide what to focus on with marketing — because you can't do everything!  Why we both love audio and podcasting for marketing How do you know when to give up on a particular way of marketing? Ideas for Substack email Streams of income from your book Take one marketing action a day — and keep going You can find John Kremer at BookMarketingBestsellers.com and on Twitter @JohnKremer Transcript of Interview with John Kremer Joanna: John Kremer is the author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books, as well as other nonfiction titles, and founder of the Billion Book Initiative. Over the past 37 years, he has helped thousands of authors, including me, to sell more books. Welcome, John. John: Thanks a lot, Joanna. Joanna: I'm so excited to talk to you. And you were one of the first people I learned about marketing from, back in 2008, when I self-published my first book. In case people don't know you, tell us a bit more about your writing and publishing background. John: I can't believe it took you 20 years to find me, since I've been publishing since 1984 or 1986, I forget which now. I think it was 1984 when I first started publishing, and writing about publishing and marketing books. So it's been a while. People find me when they are ready to do something. And that's what you hope will happen with your book, whichever kind of book you're publishing, you hope that when people are ready to find an entertaining read, they find your novel, or they're finding a book for their kids and they find your children's book. Your goal is to stay out there long enough that the people that need you or want you or hope to find you actually do find you. Joanna: Absolutely. We'll circle back to that, but just on your own writing journey, way back in 1984. Why did you get into publishing in the first place? What is it about the book industry that you love? John: I was writing books, and I wanted to get them out somehow. And so, at first, I was just pitching to different publishers, but you know how that goes with a lot of authors. It's like, if you're not well-known, the publisher doesn't pay attention to you. So I decide to self-publish, and then I found, well, gosh, there's nothing out there about how to get your books printed. Back when I started out, we didn't have print-on-demand. We didn't have Amazon. What we had is book printers that called themselves short-run book printers, which meant, ‘We'll print 10,000 copies for you,' when, as a poor starving artist, you don't want to print more than 500 or 1,000. So I created a directory of book printers. That was one of my first books, because I needed it. That's how a lot of us end up writing a book, is because we actually need the information. Joanna: That's amazing. So, you wrote that nonfiction book, and self-publishing back then, obviously, was just the print copies. 1001 Ways to Market Your Books is on its sixth edition, I think? John: Actually, it's on the seventh edition, the ‘Real World Edition.' Joanna: The ‘Real World Edition.' Oh, okay. Why did you call it the ‘Real World Edition?' John: Because, for the most part, I took out the information about marketing online, because the book would've been too big with all of that information. So I wrote a book about how to market in the real world. How to work with bookstores, how to get distribution, how to do publicity, how to get on TV or radio, get into magazines, things like that. I spent a lot of time actually writing about marketing in the real world. I was planning to do a follow-up book on marketing online, but the world has chased me around like a little rabbit or something, and I haven't gotten to it yet. I've done little pieces of it. B

J. Thorn and I are both authors and passionate about helping writers find new ways to create, collaborate, reach fans, and make more money in the Creator Economy. We're also both excited about the creative and financial possibilities of emerging blockchain technology, including NFTs. J. Thorn and Joanna (J.F.) Penn in New Orleans, 2017 In this discussion, we cover: Explaining NFTs for non-technical people. Some metaphors that might help. Why are we so excited about NFTs? What are the benefits to authors and other Creators? Why resale of unique digital assets using smart contracts on a blockchain is such a radically new prospect for authors and the publishing industry — and why it could be so exciting for long-term creators who own and control their intellectual propertyWhat are some of the different kinds of NFTs that authors could use — both for fiction and non-fiction? How might AI-generative art and music play a part in that?Fractionalization of royalty rights and how this is emerging in the music industry through new platform, Royal, where the co-founder is an independent musician, 3LAU and knows what creators wantHow we envisage unique digital originals (NFTs) sitting alongside unique physical products like hand-bound books, or vinyl music, and other ideas for how this could introduce so many opportunities for authors to create more in their worldsSome of the companies emerging in the NFT for book space and our thoughts on what we want to see before we commit to a platform — since smart contracts can represent a long-term commitment.Open questions about the financial and tax implications of NFTs that we're still investigatingOur recommendations if you're interested in NFTs for books and blockchain [Please note: We are not financial or legal professionals, and this is not financial or legal advice. Just a discussion among enthusiastic authors learning along the way!] This podcast episode is supported by my wonderful Patrons at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn and by tips at BuyMeACoffee.com/thecreativepenn. You can find more futurist episodes, including more on NFTs and blockchain at www.TheCreativePenn.com/future. J. Thorn is a best-selling horror and dark fantasy writer, and he also writes non-fiction for authors. He's a podcaster at Writers, Ink, and The Author Success Mastermind, as well as an editor. J and I have co-written several books together, including Risen Gods, Co-Writing A Book, and American Demon Hunters: Sacrifice, the inaugural Authors On A Train event with Zach Bohannon and Lindsay Buroker. 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. Transcription of discussion Now, today, we're talking about NFTs, and in particular, what we want to see in a platform for NFT books that will help authors sell more books, make more money, provide value to readers, and build community. So welcome back to the show, J. J: Thanks, Joanna. I'm excited to be back. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you. So you and I talk about this topic offline away from the mic. J: Yes, quite a bit. Joanna: I mean, amazingly, we actually have conversations away from a microphone. People might not believe it but we do. So let's start with the basics. How do you explain NFTs to a non-technical audience? J: Not well! But I just read something today that I think really crystallized it for me. An NFT is proof of ownership. That's all it is. It's a receipt. And I think when you frame it that way, things start to make a lot more sense. So it's not necessarily a physical object. It's not necessarily even a digital object. It's proof of ownership. Joanna: I think that's one good way of explaining it. I talk about it as like a box. A box that you can put stuff in, and we'll be talking about some of the examples of the stuff you can put in the box. But the NFT is essentially like the receipt showing you have access to the box, and then there are all the different kinds of things we can put in a box. I guess we should also say it is programmable in some way. So when you say a receipt, I might think in my mind, just a one-liner, which says, ‘I paid J some money and he edited my book,' or whatever. And that's like a one-liner. Whereas NFTs can contain, let's just use the word, smart contract which makes it more programmable, right? J: Yes. It's an immutable digital ledger that is spread across many different computers. We'll leave out the highly technical stuff. But the idea is with an NFT, from the time it's created or minted for its entire lifespan, you can track who's owned it and when by the address of the wallet of the owner. So yes, it's much more detailed than a single-line receipt, and it does contain the history of that particular NFT. Joanna: And then I guess we have to use the term blockchain. But, again, as we always say, you don't nee

Welcome to episode 600! I’m doing a solo show today, answering some questions from my recent podcast survey that cover the different aspects of the author life. From episode 1 in March 2009 to episode 600 (Jan 2022) How do you balance the artist/writer/creative side with the pragmatic business and marketing side of being an author? How do you improve your writing craft, both as a beginner and also as a later stage writer? What services and tools do you use right now for writing and publishing? What are you doing for marketing fiction and non-fiction now and how has that changed over time? It feels like an impossible job to stand out in such a crowded marketplace with millions of other books, as well as TV and film, games, music and other entertainment options. How do you deal with the mindset of feeling like it’s all pointless sometimes? What are the different streams of income that you have right now from your author business — and how would you like that to change over the next few years?  Questions for you as we head toward episode 700 From episode 1 to episode 600 I recorded episode 1 in March 2009 when I lived in Ipswich, just outside Brisbane, Australia. I phoned up a bestselling author on a landline, put it on speakerphone, and held an MP3 recorder next to the phone. With some of my early books in 2009 (no longer available in those editions!) At the time, I worked as an IT consultant specializing in accounts payable within an SAP implementation for an international mining company. I had a couple of non-fiction books out and a few people on my email list. The international Kindle hadn’t yet launched, print-on-demand was only just emerging as a viable option, there were no digital audiobooks — and there was certainly no empowered indie author movement as we have it today.  Back then, self-publishing was mainly done by professional speakers and business-people who had their own distribution channels. Otherwise, it was considered ‘vanity press,’ and certainly not a viable business option for an author. 2009 really was before the dawn of the Creator Economy — which just shows you how things change over time! In 2009, I had no author friends, and I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I saw podcasting as a way to connect with writers and somehow market my books. I had a one-page business plan on my wall for The Creative Penn with all the different ways I could make money based around my writing. I absolutely intended to leave my job and run a profitable business as an author, but I had no idea what lay ahead. I was just enthusiastic to get started!  I created this business plan in March 2009 I started making some money and left my job a few years later in 2011 to focus on the business. I started making six figures in 2015, and then quickly surpassed my old salary with a multi-six-figure annual income, which I’ve sustained since then. You can read and listen to more of my historical lessons learned at TheCreativePenn.com/timeline  Almost 13 years after that original episode, The Creative Penn Podcast has now been downloaded over 6.4 million times across 227 countries, with the top countries being US, UK, Australia, Canada, and Germany. Most episodes get between 9000 – 16,000 downloads per episode, varying by the popularity of the topic, rather than the author, which I think is really key. You don’t have to be a “big name” author to be a great guest on a podcast. You just have to offer valuable content to the audience of the show.  The podcast has many functions in my creative business. I still love talking to people and having conversations about interesting things, which you have seen develop in my future of creativity series of interviews over the last few years. It also connects me with the authors in the community, and many of my friends in real life are people I met on Twitter, invited on my podcast, and then eventually met in person. I met Orna Ross on Twitter years before we met in real life and became friends — and she started the Alliance of Independent Authors. The podcast is also important for my business income. I have consistent corporate sponsors of the podcast including Kobo Writing Life, Draft2Digital, Ingram Spark, FindawayVoices, and ProWritingAid; as well as occasional sponsors like PublisherRocket and ScribeCount — all of which I use personally as part of my author business. I also have 727 wonderful Patrons on Patreon who support the show every month financially and emotionally, and many others have bought me a coffee. [www.buymeacoffee.com/thecreativepenn]. I also talk about my ongoing writing process and promote my own books, both fiction and non-fiction, and I direct you to useful things with my affiliate links, which many of you visit. Thank you for using my links! And of course, if you want to know more about how a podcast works from the technical, craft, and business angles, check out my book, Audio for Authors: Audiobooks, Podcasting, and Voice

How can you take back your rights when publishing conditions change? How can you make sure you sign contracts that make it easier for rights reversion in the future? Katlyn Duncan talks about these things and more. In the intro, the splits in indie publishing [Kris Writes]; Burnout and Writer's Block [6 Figure Authors]; Publisher Rocket now has audio data; Blood, Sweat, and Flame, my glassblowing short story; Atomic Habits and the threat of boredom. 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. Katlyn Duncan is the author of women's fiction, YA, thrillers, and nonfiction under several pen names as well as a ghostwriter of over 40 novels. Today, we're talking about Take Back Your Book: An Author's Guide to Rights Reversion and Publishing on Your Own Terms. 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 rights reversion and why is it so important to consider — even before you sign a contract (or upload a book as an indie)?Clauses to watch out for in publishing contracts — and how to make sure you can get your rights backHow to approach a publisher for rights reversionWhat you actually get back when rights are reverted (i.e. it's not your cover or layout)What to do once your rights are reverted — and why you should stop and think about the long term before re-publishingWhat if you're embarrassed or ashamed that it didn't work out with a publisher? You can find Katlyn Duncan at KatlynDuncan.com and on Twitter @katlyn_duncan Transcript of Interview with Katlyn Duncan Joanna: Katlyn Duncan is the author of women's fiction, YA, thrillers, and nonfiction under several pen names as well as a ghostwriter of over 40 novels. Today, we're talking about Take Back Your Book: An Author's Guide to Rights Reversion and Publishing on Your Own Terms. Welcome, Katlyn. Katlyn: Thank you so much for having me, Joanna. Joanna: I'm excited to talk about this topic. It is a fantastic book, so much in it. Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Katlyn: Absolutely. So I am one of those authors who had that storyteller bug from day one. As a child, I tended to focus a lot more on movies and television. I was very much into acting and screenwriting. And as much as my family has always supported my hobbies, I was encouraged to get a ‘real job.' I was really good at math and science. So I went to school for forensic science. I didn't really do a lot of reading or writing when I hit my college years. After I graduated, there was that big YA boom with Twilight and all these fantasy books and I started following these authors on Twitter. And I realized that a lot of them had full-time jobs. See, I was always of the mindset that writing had to be a full-time job, so I never thought I could really do it for myself while I had a job. So after that I had the bug hit me again and I was so excited and this time I went to novels because I was really inspired by all of these authors who were working and also writing. YA wasn't a thing when I was a child at that age. I started writing my own YA books and I wrote in the mornings and the evenings, and I participated in NaNoWriMo for many years, and then in 2012, I submitted my first book to Karina UK. It was a new digital-first imprint with Harlequin and they were taking unagented submission. So I am an author who's never had an agent. I submitted and I actually got a deal for a trilogy and then the rest is history at that point. Joanna: Well, it's interesting too that you said you had a day job. What was your day job? Katlyn: I actually worked in a fertility laboratory for many years. Joanna: Oh, wow. And you have a background in forensic science. Have you used that science background in your writing at all? Katlyn: I think I use more of the mindset of fertility, but as I'm going into thrillers and everything, I find that absolute love for solving cases and solving mysteries is definitely starting to come back. So I definitely use that in my writing. Joanna: And then also being a ghostwriter with so many novels, how did you get into that as well? Katlyn: When I had my child, I was home for a bit. I was very lucky to be able to stay home. And after about three months, I really wanted to start writing again. I was in between contracts at that moment and a friend of mine was talking about how she was a ghostwriter and I was like, ‘Oh, what's that?' And I got into it. Then I mostly worked on upwork.com. It's a freelance website. I started off with very poor-paying jobs, but they were very generous with five-star reviews. And so I was able to build myself up to that point and then I had for about a couple of years, I had two consistent c

How do you turn an idea into a poem? What are the publishing options for poets, and how does marketing work? Rishi Dastidar talks about his life in poetry and provides tips for taking your creative work further. In the intro, What Readers Want in 2022 [ALLi]; Ads for Authors (affiliate link); Submission on AI and copyright [ALLi]; How will Creatokia publish NFT books? [Creatokia Podcast]; AI for Voice series [VO Boss Podcast]; This episode is sponsored by ScribeCount.com, which provides automated sales aggregation from multiple publishing platforms, all combined into user-friendly charts and features, accessible in seconds. Whether you publish wide or exclusive, ScribeCount allows authors to customize reports to fit their individual needs. Check it out at ScribeCount.com. Rishi Dastidar is a poet, journalist, copywriter, and brand strategist, as well as the editor of The Craft: A Guide to Making Poetry Happen in the 21st Century, and co-editor of Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different: Poems from Malika's Poetry Kitchen. 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 sound, images and word phrases affect Rishi’s poetryTips and tools for capturing ideasCan we trust our subconscious to provide us with ideas?How to deal with dry creative periodsThe traditional publishing process for poetryThe performance side of being a poetPivoting to performing online during the pandemicThe benefits of writers’ collectives You can find Rishi Dastidar's books at online bookstores and on Twitter @betarish Transcript of Interview with Rishi Dastidar Joanna: Rishi Dastidar is a poet, journalist, copywriter, and brand strategist, as well as the editor of ‘The Craft: A Guide to Making Poetry Happen in the 21st Century,' and co-editor of ‘Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different: Poems from Malika's Poetry Kitchen.' We also both went to Mansfield College, at the University of Oxford back in the '90s. So it's been a while. Welcome to the show, Rishi. Rishi: Hi. Good to see you. And, yes, it hasn't been a while. We're not going to dwell on how many years precisely, I hope. Joanna: I know, it seems crazy. And it's funny because I always ask, my first question is tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. I still want to know that, but it's funny because I feel like I know you from a snapshot in time. And of course, things have moved on for both of us. Tell us about you and how you got into poetry. Rishi: I arrived at college with the intention that I was going to do some form of writing once I'd left, and I just had no real idea of what that might be. I ran around and did a lot of student journalism. I edited the student newspaper, edited the Student Handbook. And then after graduating, did a bit of journalism here and there. And that was fine. Then I found my way into copywriting for brands and making ads. That's the thing that really got me interested. That was all pottering along. And then, one day in about 2007, I had a proper Damascene moment in a bookshop in London, just off Oxford Street, where I picked up a book called Ashes for Breakfast by a German poet called Durs Grünbein. I started flicking through it, and I'd never seen language doing what it was doing on the page. It sounds really naïve and strange to say that now, but I'd never read any contemporary poetry until that point. I didn't know that you could do that with words on a page. I didn't know that you could not go to the right margin, I didn't know that you could leave lots of white spaces everywhere. I bought the book there and then. I was just completely entranced and completely hooked. I knew right at that moment that that was the thing that I really wanted to write. By the end of that week, I'd signed up for a course at City Lit, a college in London, the introductory to poetry course. That's where the journey really started for me. I've been pursuing it and trying to get better as a poet ever since. Joanna: Wow, I love that. I love how you said a Damascene moment, the pulling the book out, and your whole world was transformed. I love that. Because we know books can do that. You said about the words on the page, and you didn't know language could do that on a page. Of course, the layout on a page is only one aspect of poetry. So how does that shape the way you write? Are you thinking visually? Or are you thinking sounds? How do you think about poetry? Rishi: I'm going to give an annoying poet answer, which is, it depends on what you might be doing and what the language is doing at any given moment. Different poets will take a different view on this. For me, it generally always starts with a combination of a phrase that is doing something unexpected to me, new to me, and the poem will emerge out of that. The phrase will start to suggest itself, you maybe free write into it, you maybe start to put oth

How can we recognize self-doubt and create alongside it as part of the author journey? How can we write with confidence and double down on what we love the most? William Kenower talks about these aspects and more. In the intro, planning for 2022 [Ask ALLi]; Your publishing options [6 Figure Authors]; Need an audiobook narrator? Use the Findaway Marketplace; The Successful Author Mindset. 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. William Kenower is the author of nonfiction books on writing, the editor-in-chief of ‘Author Magazine' and the host of the Author2Author podcast. His latest book is Everyone Has What it Takes: A Writer's Guide to the End of Self-Doubt. 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 A winding route to writing and publishing Validation — and the need to find it within ourselves The different ways that writers experience self-doubt Learning to recognize self-doubt and create, anyway When is self-doubt justified, and what can you do about it? Does everyone have what it takes to be a writer? Commonalities among successful writers You can find William Kenower at WilliamKenower.com and on Twitter @wdbk Transcript of Interview with William Kenower Joanna: William Kenower is the author of nonfiction books on writing, the editor-in-chief of ‘Author Magazine' and the host of the ‘Author2Author' podcast. His latest book is Everyone Has What it Takes: A Writer's Guide to the End of Self-Doubt. Welcome to the show, Bill. William: Thank you, Joanna. It's good to be here. Joanna: It's great to have you on the show. Tell us a little bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. William: Writing, I got into very young. I knew the arts were really the only path I was interested in. And though I dabbled in theater pretty seriously in my early to mid-20s and I went to Hollywood briefly with the idea of being a screenwriter. Prose was really where I was most comfortable and writing and prose was where I was most comfortable. And so that was really always the plan for me. I knew people did want to be things besides artists, but it was hard for me to understand why. It just seemed like the best possible way to earn a living if you could do that. I was singularly set on that. As far as publishing though, when I thought about being a writer, publishing was simply what other people did; it was like a giant oven run by agents and editors, into which I inserted a manuscript and out popped mysteriously, a fully baked book. I didn't see myself as getting into publishing. Although interestingly, Joanna… Actually, I was thinking about this beforehand in a way because I know this podcast, a lot of your listeners are indie published. The theater I did when I was in my early 20s, my brother and I put on a sketch comedy show and it came about because I was doing poetry readings that were very theatrical, and my brother and I said, ‘Let's do a show.' And part of the reason we did it was I was writing stories and poems and sending them off to magazines and was not enjoying. Of course, I just didn't like the rejection, but also, I was frustrated with the gatekeeper set up, what I thought of as the gatekeeper. I thought, ‘Well, why does this one person determine who gets to read my stuff?‘ It seemed weird. When I found myself standing on a stage because it was sort of like I was going to just art spaces and areas where anybody could just get up and do stuff, sort of like open mic type situations. I thought, ‘Well, why not just find some place where I put the thing up and anybody who wants come can come and they can decide if they like it or not.' So it was essentially self-publishing theater. I wrote it, my brother and I directed it. We found the venue, we put up the posters and people started coming. So it was independent. It made sense to me at the time. Joanna: I would also argue you're a podcaster and this is publication. We create a product with our voices. We hit publish and no one else gets in the way, right? How long have you been podcasting now? William: I've been podcasting for 10 years. And even before that, this is what I was going to say, is I was writing and submitting. And remember when I started writing fiction, this was in the early '90s. Self-publishing was such a hard sell because it didn't have the digital world, right? Joanna: And there was a big stigma back then. William: And it was a stigma around it. I just had zero interest in it. So I was wanting to publish traditionally and not having much luck. When I started ‘Author Magazine,' I

If the pandemic has affected your sleep, you are not alone! If you want to sort out your sleep issues and improve your creativity — and your life — as we head into a new year, this episode with Dr. Anne D. Bartolucci will help. In the intro, publishing industry trends for 2022 [Written Word Media; Stark Reflections; Mark Coker Smashwords]; my Sell Direct Tutorial; Mark Dawson's Ads for Authors, which now includes Booktok; GPT-4 [Towards Data Science]; AI-Assisted Author course. 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 MS Word, Chrome and more, 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 Dr. Anne Bartolucci is a licensed psychologist and a certified behavioral sleep medicine specialist. She's the author of two non-fiction books, including Better Sleep for the Overachiever, and she's also a best-selling steampunk and urban fantasy author under Cecilia Dominic. 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 sleep matters, especially for creativesHow the pandemic has affected sleeping habitsThe different sleeping issues we can encounter at different times of lifeBusting sleep mythsDifferent kinds of insomniaHow to improve your falling asleep timeWhy the ‘rules’ are less important than what works for us individuallyDo mindfulness and meditation help with sleep?How Anne manages her day job and her author life — and lessons learned You can find Dr. Anne Bartolucci at OverachieverBook.com and on Twitter @CeciliaDominic Transcript of Interview with Anne D. Bartolucci Joanna Penn: Dr. Anne Bartolucci is a licensed psychologist and a certified behavioral sleep medicine specialist. She's the author of two non-fiction books, including Better Sleep for the Overachiever, and she's also a best-selling steampunk and urban fantasy author under Cecilia Dominic. Welcome, Anne. Anne Bartolucci: Thank you so much, Joanna. I'm really excited to be here. Joanna Penn: Well, this is super important, but before we get into the topic… Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing, as well as how you split your creative self between the two different careers. Anne Bartolucci: That last part of the question is definitely the challenging bit. So I apparently have been writing since I was very little. My mom claims that I wrote my first story when I was two. And I'm sure she has it somewhere. Apparently, what it lacked in plot and character development, it more than made up for in enthusiasm. I've written all through school and, of course, creative writing was always a pleasure thing, really more than a career path for me. I got the message that many people get, ‘That's a fun hobby, but you can't really do it for a career.' So I let it lapse a bit when I was in high school and definitely in college. And then when I got to graduate school, I had a little bit of a setback that I do talk about in the book. I went to the bookstore to console myself as we writer types do. And I stumbled across an issue of ‘Writer's Digest Magazine.' And it just blew my mind because I was like, ‘Holy crap, people get paid for this.' So I picked up my creative writing again and did it through grad school as a self-sanity thing. And then started working on my novel, which, of course, that first novel took me like four or five years. And then I pitched that for a long time, and wrote some other novels. Finally, that one sold to Samhain Publishing in 2013. So I started out traditionally published, and they were a mid-sized genre outfit out of Cincinnati, Ohio, mostly doing romance and associated genres. I had 7 books with them when they closed in 2017 when I got my rights back. I have been indie pubbed since then until just recently, when I signed a three-book contract with Flagstaff Publishing for a time-travel action-adventure series, and those should start coming out next year. So I guess at this point, I can call myself hybrid. And for splitting my creative self between the two, I used to try to keep the two very, very separate, hence the pen name. I started my online writing with a wine blog. And, of course, I live in a part of the United States where some people have some very interesting attitudes towards alcohol. Like in my state, Georgia, we weren't even allowed buy alcohol on Sundays until about 10 years ago. Now we still have to wait until 11:30 on Sundays. Joanna Penn: After church, but, of course, I guess if you have communion, you do get your wine! Anne Bartolucci: Yes. Especially for those of us in churches where they do have real wine for communion, although not since the pan

“We make plans, God laughs.” The old Yiddish proverb will no doubt stand true for another year, but I just can’t help myself!  I need to make plans to have something to aim for, but given how 2021 didn’t turn out as expected, for 2022 I will hold my plans and goals loosely and won’t be surprised if they change. If I start off with lower expectations, perhaps it will turn out to be a spectacular year for us all (fingers crossed!). Here’s what I’m planning, and I’d love to hear about your goals, so please leave a comment here if you’d like to share and we can keep each other accountable. Embrace multi-passionate creativity — and optimize for curiosityBooks for authors — Joanna PennFiction as J.F. Penn — thrillers, dark fantasy, crime, horror, short storiesThe Creative Penn website and podcastThe Creative Future — putting new technologies into practiceBooks and TravelMore tech, less tech. Health, travel, and connectionFinancial Goals  Remember, I am a full-time author-entrepreneur so I have a lot going on — if your goals are simpler — like finishing your book, or publishing for the first time, or selling 1000 copies, then fantastic! You don’t have to have such extensive goals as me! Embrace multi-passionate creativity — and optimize for curiosity Every year, I think that I “might be more successful” if I can focus on a limited number of things, but as Walt Whitman said, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” As much as I try to say ‘no’ more, life proliferates and I find so many things interesting along the way that I want to do it all, or at least investigate things further.  As Lisa Cron pointed out in episode 592, “Emotion telegraphs meaning.” If I am excited about a project or a topic, then I need to give it some time, even if the practical application (and the revenue) might not be obvious. I’m an author (across multiple genres). I’m a podcaster. I’m an audiobook narrator. I’m a course creator. I’m a speaker. I’m a futurist. These days, I optimize more for curiosity than for maintenance of the status quo.  Following my curiosity, J.F. Penn book research trip, Lisbon 2019 — featured in Tree of Life Yes, there needs to be a balance, but I’ve been a full-time author entrepreneur since 2011 and so it cannot just be the same old, same old. It can't just be ‘write, publish, repeat.' I cannot write to market, and I cannot write because I have to. I refuse to grind it out. I have so many things I want to create in 2022, and so many more things I want to learn about and share with you. I know I can’t do it all, so I will embrace my multi-passionate creativity, follow the paths my curiosity takes me down — and see where the year takes me. Here are my creative and business goals — some of them will happen, some won't, and I am far more accepting of that these days!  Books for authors under Joanna Penn I have three current works in progress, all with significant words in draft form:  How to Write a Novel — 95KThe Shadow Book (working title) — 30KThe AI-Assisted Author — 50K Although I’d love to say I’ll write and publish them all, each is a significant piece of work, and I have a lot of other things I want to do, so there will be at least one non-fiction book for authors— but I don’t know which as yet. There might also be a surprise book since that sometimes happens. I won’t second guess my Muse this early in the year. Some of my many journals I also have a LOT of words in draft — so I might also need to revisit Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield and consider what my Resistance is to finishing these projects. In terms of marketing for non-fiction, my main focus continues to be a weekly show on The Creative Penn Podcast, my Blueprint and email list, and Twitter @thecreativepenn (to a much lesser extent). I’ve been paying an excellent freelancer through Reedsy for managing my Amazon Ads for non-fiction, so I will continue to do that in 2022.  Books under J.F. Penn: Thrillers, dark fantasy, horror, crime — and travel! I have quite a few books I want to write:  Travelogue / travel memoirs — The Pilgrim’s Way (currently at 30K draft) and also The St Cuthbert’s Way (20K draft). It makes sense from a marketing point of view to put these out together, so hopefully, I will have both done this year. I’m also considering a Kickstarter for a special print run as I’d love to have some beautiful paper editions, and it’s something I am talking to White Fox about as they help with bespoke publishing projects (as we discussed in episode 566).Short stories — I have so many ideas, so I need to get some of these out of my head. I’d like to do one short story a month. I’ll also record the audio versions myself, and I might even have enough for a collection by the end of 2022.ARKANE thriller #13 — the story opens in Vienna, which I hope to visit in person depending on Covid restrictionsI have 13 more fiction projects sitting in Scrivener files — including several standalones that are half-formed id

As we all look back at the past year, it feels like it’s flown by — but also that time has warped in a way and it feels like we’ve been stuck in this pandemic for much longer than we expected. So here’s my 2021 year in review and an update on whether I managed to meet my goals. I hope this helps you with your own annual review, and feel free to share your achievements and lessons learned in the comments so we can all celebrate (and/or commiserate) together. A year of physical and mental health issues — for all of us. You are not alone!Joanna Penn — books for authorsThe Creative Penn website and podcast The Creative FutureJ.F. Penn — thrillers, dark fantasy, crime, horrorBooks and TravelHealth, travel, walkingFinancial goals I hope that you can look back and celebrate whatever you have achieved — even if that is just making it through alive! Writing remains for all of us a haven for our thoughts, not just words for publication — so I hope you have some time to step back, think and write about the year that is almost over.  If you’d like to share your thoughts, please do leave a comment, or blog about it and tweet me the link. I’ll be back soon with my plans and goals for 2021. Ever the optimist, I wrote on 1 Jan, 2021: “I’m expecting it to be at least a full pandemic year — from March 2020 to March 2021, but I am really hoping to be back in the world in the second half of this year.”  I also intended 2021 “to be a year of expansion — creatively in terms of what I write, mentally in terms of the things I learn about, and physically, in terms of my health and where I travel (once we're out of the woods with the virus, of course.)” Well, this year did not turn out as we all hoped, did it?! Part of me doesn’t want to do this round-up because I don’t really want to relive most of the year. But I’ve always found it incredibly useful to be accountable to you as my audience, and by looking back, we can be thankful to have made it through — and if you’re reading/listening to this, you have made it through — and hopefully, gain some perspective on what might be possible in the year ahead.  I will talk about some of the creative goals I achieved — and missed — but I want to start with something far more important. If you’re utterly exhausted and struggling with physical and mental health issues, you’re not alone.  I’ve talked about my various issues on the podcast over the year but essentially, it’s been one of my worst years ever in terms of mental and physical health. I share these things not for sympathy, but in the hope that it helps you if you have felt or are still feeling the same way, because we are certainly not alone. The UK winter lockdown (6 Jan – mid-March 2021) was brutal. I always have some form of SAD (seasonal affective disorder) but it was compounded by sleep issues, resulting from a combination of age-related hormonal changes and pandemic anxiety.  Sleep issues have been reported across the world during the pandemic (APA, The Lancet), but that doesn’t make it easier for any of us experiencing lack of it. That hasn’t resolved, but my anxiety about not sleeping has lessened, and in fact, I have a sleep psychologist on the show in early January since I have a feeling many of you are struggling with it, too. Another common pandemic issue is feeling constantly tired, on the edge of fatigue, and almost burned-out from the bad news, uncertainty, and anxiety. I didn’t really have this in 2020. Yes, the fear was real, but I was able to rally all my energy and go hard in making sure my business would survive. In 2020, I wrote a lot of books, did a lot of marketing, worked super hard — and all that probably contributed to feeling even more tired in 2021! That kind of energy is unsustainable and as the pandemic grinds on, it grinds us all down. We might feel a flurry of hope at some good news, and then it sinks away again as the next wave hits and we can’t help but doomscroll, looking for just that tiny bit of news that might change things.  Then, I contracted the Delta variant in mid-July 2021 along with a ton of other people in the UK. (Yes, I was double-vaxxed. No health or political comments, please!) I didn’t experience breathing issues and didn’t need hospitalization, so I am grateful for the vaccine — but it was still a very difficult few weeks of sickness (the sickest I have ever been) followed by around two and a half months of recovery. I still don’t have my sense of smell back entirely, and I have more difficulty getting my breath on hills that used to be easy. But given that my cousin was in a coma on a ventilator in the first wave, again, I am very grateful for the vaccine. The physical symptoms of Covid also came with a surprising amount of mental health issues — depression, anxiety, fear of ever getting better, inability to concentrate, weeping — and I’m not sure that has entirely receded. I read Kris Rusch’s book, Writing with Chronic Illness, while I

Our publishing, marketing and author business tasks are important — but at the end of the day, it all comes down to writing. We are authors. We are writers. So as we head toward a new year, how can you find the time to write? How can you make the most of your writing time? In the intro, The Big Split [Kris Rusch]; thoughts on long-term creation and serendipity in marketing [Tim Ferriss, 4000 Weeks, Johnny Truant]; Web 3 opportunities [Yaro Starak]; A Midwinter Sacrifice; Risen Gods. Plus, 30% off my ebooks and audiobooks at Payhip.com/thecreativepenn with coupon: 2021 — and 30% off my courses for authors on Teachable with coupon: 2021 (valid until end of 2021.) This podcast episode is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo ecosystem. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors. Today's show features two chapters from Productivity for Authors, written and narrated by Joanna Penn. 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 to find the time to write — schedule your writing timeTrack how you spend your timeHow much do you really want this?Where can you carve out time?No one said this would be easyMake the most of your writing time — find the right locationGet into the right mindset — quicklyTurn off distractionsUse timed writingStop procrastinatingMeasure your progressQuestions to help you You can find Productivity for Authors: Find Time to Write, Organize Your Author Life, and Decide What Really Matters in ebook, print, workbook, and audiobook editions on your favorite store. Click here for all the links. How to find the time to write Finding time to write is the most important step in writing more, but how do you find the time? In the previous chapters, we started on the process of culling your To Do list, and now we’re going to take it a step further. Because after over a decade of writing and more than 30 books published, I’ve found there is only one answer. Schedule your writing time Seriously, this could be a transformational step if you’ve not done this before. It’s not complicated. Get out your calendar or your smartphone app or however you schedule your time, and put in slots for writing. Then show up for that time to write just as you would show up for a business meeting or a gym class or anything else that is time-sensitive. Stop making your writing slot optional or showing up late as if it doesn’t matter. As Stephen King says in On Writing, “Don't wait for the muse. Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you're going to be every day, from 9:00 till noon, or 7:00 till 3:00. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he'll start showing up.” You can understand the muse as a metaphor or as more literal if you prefer. Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art, invokes the muse before he writes in the classical sense of asking the divine to help inspire his work. Whatever works for you. I know that if I show up to the page, eventually something's going to happen. When I’m working on a first draft, I sit down for my scheduled writing session from 7:00 am until around 9:30-10 am. I take a break, then maybe do another session later on in the day. If I’m sitting at my specific table in my local café, my creative brain knows I’m there to write or edit. I don't have any other tasks booked in for that time. If I turn up for my scheduled writing slot, I’m far more likely to write something than if I wait until I have a spare moment. Because let’s face it, no one ever has a spare moment! If you don't already use a planning calendar, then it's time to start You must, must, must schedule your writing time. Presumably, you schedule other things in your life, like going to the day job or your kid's school events, or your dentist appointment, or going to the gym regularly, or whatever. That's how you need to schedule your writing. But what if you try to schedule your writing time and can’t find a slot?  Track how you spend your time now This can be challenging and can also be a shock. I did this back when I wanted to write my first non-fiction book in 2006-2007. I looked at my time and realized that I went to the gym in the morning, then I went to work, then I would come home exhausted, make dinner, and sometimes we’d watch three hours of TV before bed. That was every night, or at least most nights in a week.  When I discovered the amount of time I was watching TV, consuming rather than producing, I decided to cut back. TV is a lot better these days, but if you're watching three hours a night,

Why is story so important — no matter what genre we write? How can we use emotion to hook readers — and also tap into what matters in our own lives? Lisa Cron talks about these questions and more in this discussion about Story or Die. In the intro, Ultimate Guide to Copyright [ALLi]; How do you see your book — is it a baby, is it art, or is it a product? [Jane Friedman's blog]; The History Quill convention online; The Creative Penn Podcast Survey (by 21 Dec); 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. 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. Lisa Cron is a story coach for writers and a story consultant for film and TV, as well as a professional speaker. She’s also the author of Wired for Story, Story Genius, and her latest book, Story Or Die: How to Use Brain Science to Engage, Persuade, and Change Minds in Business and in Life. Show Notes Why story is so important for humans — and why it's present in every area of life What stories are really aboutThe brain chemicals that a good story will activate — and how to write so they are triggeredStory principles in non-fictionEmotion telegraphs meaningThe three biggest lies that are taught about writing You can find Lisa Cron at WiredForStory.com and on Twitter @LisaCron Transcript of Interview with Lisa Cron Joanna: Welcome back to the show, Lisa. Lisa: Thank you. It is an utter pleasure to be here. Joanna: I'm excited to talk about this again. So, quoting from the book, you say, “Story far predates written language, and evolved as an essential survival tool, long before it was mis-classified as fiction,” which I love. Why does story matter in every book we write, no matter the genre? Lisa: Well, because first of all, story is story, regardless of genre, regardless of the format, whether you're talking about a two-word tweet or War and Peace, it is always the same. And it predates, really, everything. It really goes back to, if you want to think about it, our brains' last, as we've all heard, big growth spurt, which was about 100,000 years ago. What we were taught, what evolutionary biologists thought for a long time, was that the reason for that growth spurt was because that was when we got the ability to think analytically. That analytic thought became possible at that time. And that's true, it did. But what they know now is that that wasn't the reason for it. The reason for it was because by that time, and we were, at that time, in the middle of the food chain. And by that time, if we were going to leap to the front of the food chain, which we did, we needed to learn to do that thing that we've been told to do since kindergarten, since primary school, which is, we needed to learn to work well with others. At that time, the need to belong to a group became as hardwired as is our need for food, air, and water. You often get people who go, ‘I'm a lone wolf. I don't need anybody else. I've done everything on my own. I'm totally self-made.' And I always want to go, ‘Well, you do know the wolves travel in packs.' In the wolf community, a lone wolf is a wolf that has done something that was so egregious to the pack that they're ostracized and left to die. The point is, is that we really are wired to need to work with other people and to band together in order to figure out literally how to survive. That's where story comes in, because story is the thing that lets us step out of the present, so we can envision the future and think about what would we need to do in order to survive the next wolf pack attack or saber-toothed tiger attack, or how to bring food together. And that's really what stories are about. At that time, it really became wired that stories aren't just about how to solve something logistically, like how to survive a wolf attack. Stories are really about how to survive in the social world. When I say in the social world, I don't just mean the world of dating. I mean literally the world of other people. Because that's what we come to story for. Now, for the past 100,000 years, and in every story, what we're wired to come for is asking that question, ‘How is this going to help me make it through the night?' How is it going to help me achieve my agenda, given what I want? Is it going to help me? Or is it going to hurt me? And stories are, again, about the internal workings, literally of the mind. Why is somebody doing what they're doing? Story is never about what someone does, because what someone does on the surface, and the reasons we attribute to it, are almost always wrong. Stories are about why they're doing it, and how they're making sense o

Readers buy or borrow your book based on your cover and book description, so how can we make sure the description is the best it can be? How can we make readers want to click Buy Now and start reading immediately? Michaelbrent Collings provides useful tips — and tough love! — for authors who struggle with book descriptions (which includes me!) In the intro, I talk about being back in Auckland and reflect on the passing of time. This episode is sponsored by Publisher Rocket, which will help you get your book in front of more Amazon readers so you can spend less time marketing and more time writing. I use Publisher Rocket for researching book titles, categories, and keywords — for new books and for updating my backlist. Check it out at www.PublisherRocket.com Michaelbrent Collings is an internationally best-selling novelist, and the only author to be a finalist for a Dragon Award, Bram Stoker Award, and RONE Award. A Ranker survey recently named Michaelbrent one of the top 100 Greatest All-Time Horror Writers, but he's written bestsellers in a dozen different genres. His latest book, Malignant, debuted on Amazon's bestseller lists all over the world.  Michaelbrent is also a screenwriter — and helps authors with their book descriptions over on Fiverr Pro/mbcollings.  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 is an effective book description so important? What authors get wrong with book descriptions Thinking about your book like a movie — what are the high points of the trailer? Tips for writing a great hook How a good book description can help with advertising You can find Michaelbrent Collings at WrittenInsomnia.com and on Twitter @mbcollings. You can hire Michaelbrent on Fiverr Pro here. Transcript of Interview with Michaelbrent Collings Joanna: Welcome back to the show, Michaelbrent. Michaelbrent: Hello, I'm so happy to be here. Joanna: It's great to have you back on the show. And you have been on the show a number of times. Michaelbrent: Yes. Joanna: So we're not going to go into your backstory, we're going to get straight into the topic today, which is all about book descriptions. And this is a very interesting topic. You have a ton of books, I have quite a lot of books, and I still feel this is an issue. Why is an effective book description so important, and why are they so difficult? Michaelbrent: Oh, my gosh, okay. Well, I think, first of all, the reason they're super important. There's the obvious; it's one of the first things people see. So like, your cover, as much as authors hate to admit it, because we're like, ‘My book should sell this book.' People are shallow. If I go on to an Amazon book page, and the cover looks like it was done by like a five-year-old using Windows Paint on a Commodore 64, or some godawful combination like that, people are just going to be turned off, because they know you're not operating at a level of professionality. I compare book purchases to dating. But it's almost worse because with a date, you're committing to a couple of hours with a person and it goes badly, and you never have to see or think of them again. With a book, you're committing to potentially a lifetime with that thing because if it's good, it's going to live in you forever. And if it's bad enough, you will always remember. I can tell you exactly the one book I hurled across the room because I was so upset. And that happened when I was 16, so, these things stay with you. And so the cover is a big deal. Then the next big deal, assuming you've gotten them to your book page because most people buy books electronically, we just have to face that, is the book description. The difference there is you're like, now I'm starting my job because most authors, the book cover is going to be outsourced, which is a wise thing to do. For most authors, you get to that book description, and it's like, here's me, I'm appearing for the first time. And so it's super important because if you're reading a book description, and it's terrible, well, you already know the author is not a wordsmith. Because they have failed to accomplish their primary objectives in this first couple of paragraphs. Or even the first couple sentences. I have a couple of book descriptions that are five or six sentences short. And if you can't do that, why am I going to let you into my brain for 100,000 words? Joanna: It just seems so unfair. It's unfair that we have to sell ourselves, our book, not ourselves, we don't attach ourselves to the book, obviously. Michaelbrent: It's not that kind of book. Joanna: It's so unfair that we have to write a whole thing. And then we have to come up with a pithy, whatever, book description that is the thing that represents us. It feels so hard to me because I have written a book and it's all this massive thing in my head, and it's full of cool characters and

How can you cultivate patience for your long-term author career? How can you figure out your personal, creative and financial goals and make choices toward them? MK Williams talks about these questions, as well as podcast marketing and turning a blog or transcript into a book. In the intro, my reflections on the UK FutureBook conference, and Tomb of Relics is out this week. This episode is sponsored by ScribeCount.com, which provides automated sales aggregation from 7+ publishing platforms, all combined into user-friendly charts and features, accessible in seconds. Whether you publish wide or exclusive, ScribeCount allows authors to customize reports to fit their individual needs. Check it out at ScribeCount.com. MK Williams is the author of eight books across multiple genres, including dystopian sci-fi, literary suspense, and non-fiction for authors, as well as a coach and creative entrepreneur. 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 importance of peer support and community for authorsStop waiting for permissionCultivating patienceFinancial independence on your own terms — and figuring out what you really want. You can find my list of books on money here.Tips for pitching podcasts and giving great valueHow to turn blog posts or interview transcripts into a book You can find MK Williams at AuthorYourAmbition.com and on Twitter @1mkwilliams Transcript of interview with MK Williams Joanna: MK Williams is the author of eight books across multiple genres, including dystopian sci-fi, literary suspense, and non-fiction for authors, as well as a coach and creative entrepreneur. Welcome, MK. MK: Hi, Joanna. Thank you so much for having me on the show today. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you. So let's get started. Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. MK: Well, it was a snowy day in Indiana when I was born! … but I've loved reading my entire life. I was an only child, so books were a great source of entertainment. I love to write. I had my angsty teenage poetry phase, which… Joanna: Oh, me too. MK: Yes. So many of us do. And I got to college, and I picked the safe major that was supposed to guarantee me a great job. But I was still able to take some creative writing seminars. I was very fortunate in my writing killer fiction, which was the title of the course, to have a professor who really encouraged me to keep writing. And so when I graduated into a lousy economy with no job prospects, my hobby just became writing. I really enjoyed starting to do longer-form fiction and felt with that professor's encouragement that I could write a novel, and I kept going for that. And that novel was finished, and I did what I had to do and go start pitching agents, right? That's what you're supposed to do. Every rejection and every bit of silence was, okay, well, that's just one more no, until I finally get my yes. Then I wrote another book and did the same thing. And surprise, surprise, I never heard anything. I finally went to an in-person event with a local author here in Florida. I was just thinking this is it, somebody else who's an author, we're going to become best friends, we're going to do writing together, we're just going to commiserate. This is it. I'm finally going to have an author friend and the opposite of that happened. She looked at me and she said, ‘You're what? 23? What could you possibly have to say?' Joanna: Oh. MK: Yes. To my face, she said this. I was 24 at the time. So I was flattered for maybe a minute that she said I looked like I was 23, but then the rest of it was pretty horrible. I just was very defeated from that. Traditional publishing wasn't responding to me that I wasn't getting any agent responses, it was more that lack of author community that really shut me down. My husband at that time noticed I suddenly wasn't writing, I wasn't spending every free second trying to get things into my Word document. He asked ‘What's going on? And traditional is not working, why don't you try self-publishing?' It was 2013 and so I told him, ‘No. You don't understand. I can't self-publish because then all these reasons.' He said, ‘Okay. Well, prove me wrong.' So I went online and tend to prove him wrong. And I found information on KDP and Smashwords, and this entire sea of information about self-publishing, and I said, ‘You know what, I think he might be onto something.' That's where my journey as an author really kicked off. Instead of asking for permission to be an author, I just said, ‘I'm going to learn this and become an author.' So, that's how we got here. Joanna: I love that. I did a blog post about really early on in my career; stop asking for permission. We've known each other for a while, I think maybe you're a bit like me. We're good girls, right? We want to do the right thing. And traditi

Is digital narration with AI voices good enough for non-fiction or fiction audiobooks? Can human narrators benefit through voice licensing? What are the options for sales and distribution? Taylan Kamis from Deep Zen explains digital narration for audiobooks, and I share some samples from my digitally narrated books through Deep Zen. Taylan Kamis is the CEO and co-founder of Deep Zen Limited. 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 Deep Zen?How good is the quality of AI narration for non-fiction — and for fiction, where emotional resonance is so important?How AI narration may benefit human narrators with voice licensing, and Deep Zen's Ethical StatementWhere can you distribute and sell AI narrated audiobooks — and when will this expand for indie authors?Cost and revenue related to AI narrationWhen will AI narration become mainstream? You can find Taylan Kamis at deepzen.io and on Twitter @DeepZen4 I also included samples of my fiction and non-fiction books that Deep Zen has digitally narrated. You can listen on the links below: Co-Writing a Book: Benefits of Co-Writing. Digitally narrated by Alice (British female)Sins of Violence, a short story. Digitally narrated by William (British male) If you'd like to listen to the entire books, you can purchase the digitally narrated audiobooks for 30% off using discount coupon: 2021 (until the end of Dec 2021) directly from me at Payhip.com/thecreativepenn. [Here's how to apply the coupon.] The audiobooks are delivered by Bookfunnel and you can listen on their free app. Transcript of Interview with Taylan Kamis Joanna: Taylan Kamis is the CEO and co-founder of Deep Zen Limited. Welcome to the show, Taylan. Taylan: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Joanna: It's so interesting to talk to you. What is Deep Zen and why are you so passionate about AI for voice? Taylan: Deep Zen is a synthetic voice company focusing on creating human-like speech and emotion using AI. As a background, I was always interested in human-machine interaction. So the starting idea was to build a system that can read any text as a human would do, and it will be indistinguishable. Then we start looking into the technical side; what are the obstacles, whether the technology is there. And in the last three, four years, the deep learning, the AI has come so far that we achieved what we were aiming for three, four years ago, sooner than we were expecting. I think it is about productivity, making it easier to create audiobooks. So if you think about the content production on six, seven hours of recording, editing for one hour of finished content. Historically, I think it's hampered growth on the availability of audio content, especially non-English languages. I would like to remove the barriers around audio content creation and make the content available to a wider audience with a better and wider selection. So it is about I think, the high level, it's about having a choice and availability. And it's also, I think when you introduce a new technology, it also opens up new ways of looking at different businesses. So publishing is one of our verticals. We also work as a platform company supporting online education businesses, synthetic video companies. But even in publishing, for example, there are some use cases that some publishers are actually experimenting with having an early audio version of the books that are going to be released next year, for example, next season as an advanced copy and send them to the buyer. If you're a buyer who needs to go through 12 books a week, it is also about convenience. I think making those content available to the wider publishing community in different use cases is also about improving productivity, making life easier for people. Joanna: I love that idea of the digital ARC. I've heard that a couple of times now and we all think about selling them later on, but you're right. There are these other use cases. Let's talk about what some people call the ‘quality,' because you said that what you envisioned three or four years ago has now come to pass. And certainly, I'll be sharing my examples from Deep Zen on this show. Where do you think we are? People seem to think that nonfiction is better than fiction. Is that about the technology or is that about expectations of listeners around actors and that kind of thing? Where's the quality right now with AI narrated audio? Taylan: Currently we get great results with nonfiction with little editing. We have human inputs in our processes, so you get the first natural language processing and the speech system giving you the first version. Although we are a voice company, we also build a system that can analyze the context, looking into the characters, identifying the genre. So all that information is also passed to the system. Then we have the human inputs in terms of the editing, but more and mo

How do you know when an idea is a short story, a novella, or a full-length novel? How can you turn one story into multiple streams of income? Alan Baxter talks about a long-term craft-centered approach to the author career and how his short stories have won him multiple awards. In the intro, State of Indie Authorship 2021 [Written Word Media]; Sessions from 20Books Vegas conference [YouTube]; $0 to $1K a month in book sales webinar [Nick Stephenson]; This episode is sponsored by my Black Friday Promotion. You can get 30% off my ebooks, audiobooks, and courses when you buy direct. Use coupon: 2021 at Payhip.com/thecreativepenn for ebooks and audiobooks (here's how to apply it), and TheCreativePenn.com/learn for my courses. Valid until end 31 Dec 2021. Alan Baxter is the multi-award-winning author of horror, supernatural thrillers, and dark fantasy across more than 20 books as well as many more short stories. He's also a martial arts instructor and his latest book for writers is The Martial Art of 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 Multiple streams of income from short stories, and tracking your intellectual propertyWhen is an idea a short story vs a novella or a novel? Does short fiction help to sell longer work?Award submissions and a long-term approachHow writing is like martial arts You can find AlanBaxter at AlanBaxterOnline.com and on Twitter @AlanBaxter Transcript of Interview with Alan Baxter Joanna: Alan Baxter is the multi-award-winning author of horror, supernatural thrillers, and dark fantasy across more than 20 books as well as many more short stories. He's also a martial arts instructor and his latest book for writers is The Martial Art of Writing. Welcome back to the show, Alan. Alan: Thanks for having me again. It's good to chat with you. Joanna: We've been doing this once every couple of years for a decade now. Alan: I know, such a long time. Joanna: It is. And of course, you were one of the first people I met on Twitter and we've talked over the years, but we've never met in person, which is kind of crazy. Alan: I know. Joanna: Give us a bit of an overview of your writing career because you've really combined traditional publishing, indie, co-writing your own book, short stories, novellas. Give us a potted history of how your author career has unfolded. Alan: This is sort of difficult to put into a snapshot, but the short version is I started indie back in the day. Well, I started trying to get a traditional deal on my first novel. And I got an agent, did all that stuff. Twice it went to acquisitions and twice it didn't quite make it. This was right in the early days of Lulu for self-publishing and right in the early days of e-books. My first book is on Smashwords and the end of the Smashwords' URL for e-books is the number of the book it is and they're up into the multimillions now. My first book is number 378. So I was kind of there in the early days of that. That went okay. Subsequently, I've been working with small press. I've got a trilogy with HarperCollins here in Australia. I've got novellas and short stories collected and published by various small press and indie publishers. And I still keep a hand in a little bit dabbling with some self-publishing bits and pieces here and there as well. I'm a big believer in hybrid and having many threads to the bow. I co-write with David Wood as well. We write cult thrillers and monster thrillers, he and I together. And the 3rd Eli Carver book is coming out in December and I think that's my 25th book. Joanna: And people always say, ‘Why don't you know exactly how many books you've written?' And I'm like, ‘Well, you know, it gets difficult with reprints and new editions and things.' Alan: Yeah, that's it. And then what do you count? There's a novella that was published in the U.K. that was a book that was published that was in the book count, but it was a limited edition hardcover that's now in a sort of a collected edition that sold out. Still available as an e-book, but do I count that or do I not count that? At some point, that'll go into a future collection as well probably. It gets a bit muddy, but I like the way you put it, more than 20 books. That's usually an easy way to put it. Joanna: You're also a really prolific short story writer. And that is a totally different kind of kettle of fish, I think, in terms of management of how many stories. Do you know how many short stories you've written? Alan: It's more than 80 that are published now. There's a variety. And again, some were published in magazines or in online journals that are no longer available that might have subsequently been republished. I've got two short story collections out. ‘Crow Shine' and ‘Served Cold' are both collecting across the more than a decade that I've been writing short stories. And so I think ov

The relentless news about climate change can leave us despondent — but what if we can use fiction to help people with positive ideas of what the future could look like and the actions we can take to change things? Denise Baden talks about the power of eco-fiction and explains the Green Stories Novel Prize, sponsored by Orna Ross. Denise Baden is Professor of sustainable business at the University of Southampton in the UK. She's also a screenwriter and novelist and founded the series of Green Stories Writing Competitions. 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 stories can change mindsHow to smuggle green ideas into stories rather than preachingWhat is eco-fiction?The Green Stories Novel and Short Story CompetitionsEnvironmental issues in publishing Click here to check out the Green Stories Novel Award and remember, there are short story awards and more, so even if the novel one isn't for you, maybe enter something else! You can find Denise Baden at DABaden.com and on Twitter @DABadenauthor Transcript of Interview with Denise Baden Joanna: Denise Baden is a professor of sustainable business at the University of Southampton in the UK. She's also a screenwriter and novelist and founded the series of Green Stories Writing Competitions. Welcome, Denise. Denise: Hello, nice to be here. Joanna: Oh, great to talk to you about this topic. Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and also sustainability and environmental issues. Denise: I've had a bit of a butterfly background. I actually worked as a sales rep for publishers many years ago. But I couldn't do that once I became a mum, so I went back to university and I did a bit of psychology. I was harassing them on their green policies and not having a recycling bin. So when the person teaching business ethics, which is one of the things we're also doing, left, I got put in charge of that, and then I ended up doing stuff on sustainability. So that's my academic career, and also I've done articles on that. I think I was inspired to be a greeny by a fictional book myself, which is why I'm quite interested in writing fiction. So I read Stark. It must have been back in the early '90s by Ben Elton. Joanna: Oh, me too. I remember that one. Denise: I'm not sure if it still stands the test of time, but I thought it was brilliant at the time. It was really fun. And right in the middle of this love story epic adventure, he says something like, ‘Dave was a water birth, but he died soon after being born.' It turns out that Dave is a dolphin that got caught up in a tuna net. And I thought, ‘Hang on a minute. I can buy dolphin-friendly tuna.' I never would have chosen to read a green-themed book. I read for fun. But that really made me think and I think it awakened my green conscience. I realized what we're doing without really realizing it. It had loads of examples like that. And it gave me the idea that perhaps I might like to write fiction and perhaps smuggle green issues in myself. Joanna: I love that. And I think it's so important what you said. We read for fun. And if people haven't read Ben Elton, his books are funny. Well, most of them. His more recent ones are less funny, but his early ones are really funny. And you're right. Reading for fun. We read for escape. And the news is, let's face it, full of pretty dire stuff and people feel anxiety around the environment and just feel like it's too big. So obviously, you did psychology as well, which is great. Why are stories a good way to, like you said, smuggle these ideas in? Denise: Everyone turns to science as a way to address the climate crisis, but I think it's stories that engage our imaginations. It's stories that enable us to see things from other points of view, especially things like sci-fi and ones set in the future. They also say how things could be. I think it's a real shame that actually a lot of stories set in the future are dystopian, because we think, ‘I don't want to go there.' And I thought, wouldn't it be nice if we had some stories set in the future that were utopian, that gave us a positive vision we could aspire to perhaps. I love stories, and I also think, because I teach in the area of sustainability, you're always talking to the same people. So you're teaching those who have chosen to take that course and people who are putting the word out about climate crisis and so on. They're only reaching those who are choosing to watch that. We're preaching to the converted all the time. I quite like the idea of using fiction to engage a wider audience, and also, perhaps focus a little bit more on what we can do rather than just on what's wrong. If you know what I mean. Joanna: I'm still reading, because it's got many levels, The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. Have you read that one? Denise: I have. Yes. It's an epic book. J

With so many technological advances in recent years, can publishing keep up? Michael Bhaskar and I discuss AI tools for writing, blockchain and NFTs, digital narration, and impacts on intellectual property rights licensing in this wide-ranging interview. In the intro, Spotify acquires Findaway and my thoughts on what it means for authors, narrators, and rights-holders [Spotify; Findaway; TechCrunch]; Storytel buys Audiobooks.com [Reuters]; 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 Michael Bhaskar is a writer, researcher, and co-founder of publishing company, Canelo. His latest book is Human Frontiers: The Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking. 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 much does publishing embrace technology?Why a long-term view is important for both indie and traditional publishing worldsImplications of Natural Language Generation tools like GPT-3The need for both creative play in terms of attitude to AI creation but also ethical guidelines around statements of use. [See the Alliance of Independent Ethical Guidelines.]Thoughts on AI narration for audiobooksBlockchain and NFTsIntellectual property rights and new technological possibilities You can find Michael Bhaskar at MichaelBhaskar.com and on Twitter @michaelbhaskar. Want more futurist episodes? Check out my resources at www.TheCreativePenn.com/future Transcript of Interview with Michael Bhaskar Jo: Michael Bhaskar is a writer, researcher, and a co-founder of a publishing company Canelo. His latest book is Human Frontiers, the Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking. Welcome, Michael. Michael: Thank you very much for having me. Great to be here. Jo: I'm excited to talk to you. First off, I wanted to ask, how have you managed to combine your interests in technology and publishing. Tell us a bit more about you. Michael: Well, with some difficulty, it has to be said. I often feel like I'm slightly leading two lives and endlessly trying to find little bridges between them, not always successfully. It is a bit of a struggle. I've always loved books and reading and storytelling, but I have always also been really interested in technology and how people invent new things and then what technology does to change the world. And those have just always been things that I've been fascinated about. At various times, one or the other seems to nudge ahead. And I always thought there would be a bit of a divide and one would have to choose. I guess the thing that brought them together for me was when I'd had left university and I was doing a few jobs and then that was just before the digital publishing wave hit in kind of the middle of the last decade…or, well, two decades ago now, 2005-2006. That created a few openings to work on ebooks, to work on digital publishing, to work on interesting digital experiments. That was the first way really that I felt like these two things could work together. I've always tried to maintain writing about both, writing about publishing but also writing about technology, working on publishing but always trying to use technology in interesting ways. So, it is an odd struggle and often they feel like very different worlds. When I'm doing my writing, it feels very far away actually from being a practicing publisher. So, I try and find these bridges between the worlds. But it doesn't always quite cohere even for me, to be honest. Jo: As I was saying before we started recording, I'm so glad to talk to you because I feel this too. I feel like I lead these two lives between being the artist and then being the business person who loves technology. It's hard to find people to talk to you because a lot of the bookish people seem to have some kind of disdain for technology. And yet, what we basically do now, as publishers, is so bound up in technology. I feel like finally publishing might be embracing this stuff. What do you think? Michael: To some extent. When I first started to work in digital publishing, 16 plus years ago, it astounded me how hostile the entire publishing industry was to technology. I found this a very unusual attitude because actually the publishing industry, and one of the first things I noticed about it is obsessed with newness and new things. It's always, ‘What are the new books? What are next year's books, next year's writer, next year's hot ideas?' And, so, on the one hand, I just thought, ‘Wow, there can't be many industries that are just as constantly open to a sea of new products and new

Dave Chesson provides many useful tools and information for authors at Kindlepreneur and he has recently launched Atticus, writing and formatting software that will output both ebook and print formats, as well as providing collaboration and ARC management tools. Dave Chesson is the founder of Kindlepreneur and producer of Publisher Rocket and Atticus, amongst many other useful resources for authors. He's also an author and a military veteran who used to be a nuclear engineer. 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 self-publishing has changed in the last decade and why the ‘stigma' no longer existsTips for reviving a back-listIs A+ content woth implementing?Types of keywords for non-fiction books, and also for fiction. You can do more of your own research at PublisherRocket.Strategies for keywords across different book formatsKey benefits and features of Atticus including design and output of various ebook and print formats, as well as collaboration and ARC management You can find Dave Chesson at Kindlepreneur.com and on Twitter @DaveChesson. Transcript of interview with Dave Chesson Joanna: Dave Chesson is the founder of Kindlepreneur and producer of Publisher Rocket and Atticus amongst many other useful resources for authors. He's also an author and a military veteran who used to be a nuclear engineer. Welcome back to the show, Dave. Dave: Hey, thanks so much for having me, Joanna. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you today. More than a couple of years ago, 2018, you were on this show. We talked about your backstory so we're not going to go into that today. Before we get into some details, let's have a bit of a wide overview of the industry because you and I have been doing this for probably over a decade. What are some of the significant changes that you've seen? Because you've paid a lot of attention obviously to the whole industry, but Amazon in particular. What's changed in self-publishing and why is it still interesting? Dave: There's two big things to it. We'll start with Amazon and then we're going to talk about the industry. You remember back when the reporting from Amazon was just heinous? There was not even a chart. You had to look at instantaneous data. The fact that Amazon really stank at just telling me how much money I was making was just indicative of their lack of attention. And they were very slow to roll out or do anything whatsoever. I would say if we're taking a really 20,000-foot view here, I think that over the past couple of years Amazon has been ramping up a lot and changing and adding and doing a lot of things. This to me gives me a lot of hope in the future because if Amazon is really focused on this, hopefully, great things are going to come of it. The fact that they've introduced A+ content, whether I like it or not, Kindle Vella, whether I like it or not, at least they're doing something there. They're always adding to the Amazon Ad system. Clearly, they like that. And they did an overhaul on their analytics and their reporting. Plus, they're constantly doing things with their categories, and one of the things as the creator of Publisher Rocket, much to my chagrin, they're constantly testing things all over the site. One day you'll wake up and maybe a group of people in America or in one particular state might see that there's this new button, or a color, or they've gotten rid of the also by and they've moved it down, and then they're constantly seeing what is helping them to sell more. I like the fact that they're giving that attention. I love Barnes & Noble, don't get me wrong. And the people who run B&N Press are phenomenally super-smart, great people. I mean, really cool. And they've got amazing ideas. But I get the feeling that Barnes & Noble looks at B&N Press and does not give them the attention, does not give them the authority to make a lot of changes or the changes that they really want to do. So, from an organization side, at least Amazon is doing things that are affecting indie authors, whether they're awesome yet, at least we're seeing something. So that is one thing I'm very hopeful about for the future. The second thing though is to turn to the industry. Back when we started as indie authors, the publishing companies, the publishing agencies, the publishing side looked down at us. I'm just generalizing here. Joanna: The stigma of self-publishing. Dave: Exactly. Like, ‘Ah, couldn't hack it in our industry. They're just letting really bad books onto the market and just crowding.' But here's the thing though. And again, I'm just generalizing. They're starting to look at indie authors and saying, ‘Huh. You know what? Here's an author that clearly wrote a good enough book because there's a lot of reviews. Clearly, they know some marketing. Clearly, they have an email list and they have a presence. Why take a chance on some

What projects are worth pitching for film and TV? What do you need to include in your pitch? Why are there more opportunities for writers now? Chrissy Metge talks about these questions and more. In the intro, the US Justice Department sues to block the Penguin Random House acquisition of Simon & Schuster [The Guardian]; Kobo Plus launches in Australia and NZ [Kobo]; Audible launches unlimited subscription in India [The New Publishing Standard]; Check your print prices for Ingram [IBPA]; Is it time to raise ebook prices? [6 Figure Authors] This podcast episode is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo ecosystem. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors. Chrissy Metge has 20 years animation experience working on projects including The Hobbit, Superman Man of Steel, Fast and Furious 7, and Jungle Book. She's the co-founder of Fuzzy Duckling Media and Duckling Publishing, specializing in books and shows for children, and is also a creative brand consultant. 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 the film and TV industry in the last 20 yearsThe kinds of content that animation studios are interested inHow and when to pitch an idea to a studioTips for good pitching techniqueDo you need to write the scripts for the stories you’re pitching?The importance of figuring out your target audienceHow does the financial side work?What the future of entertainment may holdBalancing business and creativity You can find Chrissy Metge at ChrissyMetge.com and on Twitter @ChrissyNZ Transcript of Interview with Chrissy Metge Joanna: Chrissy Metge has 20 years animation experience working on projects incluing ‘The Hobbit,' ‘Superman Man of Steel,' ‘Fast and Furious 7,' and ‘Jungle Book.' She's the cofounder of Fuzzy Duckling Media and Duckling Publishing, specializing in books and shows for children, and is also a creative brand consultant. Welcome, Chrissy. Chrissy: Thank you. So excited to be here. Joanna: Oh, there's so much for us to talk about. First up, tell us a bit more about you and why you have moved into books alongside your animation work. Chrissy: I've been in the industry for almost 20 years now. I'm a Kiwi from New Zealand, living in London with my son and husband. And my son was born six weeks early. I was actually working on ‘Jungle Book' at the time at Weta in Wellington. And I was supposed to finish up the next day and have my leaving flowers and all of that. And my son decided to come with a crash and a roar and a bang, six weeks early it turned out, and they sent my leaving flowers to the hospital. But we're both fine, by the way, just in case you're wondering. I always wanted to write, I always did write, and around so many creators and writers and directors and producers, and I always had a few ideas at the back of my head. When my son was born, my brain hadn't had a chance to stop. He slept a lot as newborns do and I just was like, ‘What do I do with my time?' So, while he was sleeping, I decided to write some books, and it went on from there. Joanna: Wow, and I'm sure there're some parents listening going, ‘How on earth did you manage all that?' Your career does make me feel tired! Let's talk about right now. Because you're currently working on a show for Netflix. You've worked for Disney and other big studios. How has the film and TV industry changed over your nearly 20 years? Chrissy: It has changed so much, obviously, with all the streaming giants that have come in and the other big companies buying each other. I was at ILM when Disney came and bought them out for I think it was $4 billion for the ‘Star Wars' brand. And, they've changed a lot. I think with the streaming, you've got access to so much more choice. You're not going to the theater, spending $50 for 3 people to go see a film or anything like that. You can turn on your TV and your streaming channel and you've got so much access to that. And then because of that, so much more content is needed. We're all aware of what's going on around us. And we want to be involved with all of the content around us rather than going to see a great big ‘Transformers' blockbuster or something like that. We want to watch things that are part of everyday life. It's been a really interesting ride, that's for sure. Joanna: Do you think the changes have accelerated due to the pandemic? Chrissy: Oh, absolutely. I work in the animation film industry just to distinguish that. So we've never been busier because you couldn't film with the pandemic. So all of a sudden, all of the animation studios are absolutely swamped while our sisters and brothers in arms in the live action studios are struggling a lot. It was like a catch-22. Here I'm

Creatokia is one of the first book-specific NFT platforms and in this interview, co-founders Jens Klingelhöfer and John Ruhrmann explain what NFTs are and why they are an opportunity for authors and rights-holders. They are also the co-founders of Bookwire, which already provides digital publishing solutions for the publishing industry. After the interview, I reflect on key aspects of our conversation, and talk about why the recent YA NFT project Realms of Ruin didn't work, and why we need to ‘jump the S-curve' into a new business model. Jens Klingelhöfer and John Ruhrmann are the founders of Bookwire, which provides digital publishing solutions for the publishing industry. They have recently launched Creatokia, the world of digital originals, with an accompanying podcast (currently in German, but will soon be in English.)  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 are NFTs and what is Creatokia?How will royalties on resale of digital originals help authors and publishers to make more money?What can go into an NFT? (for example, a limited edition ePub, a virtual ticket, community access, and more)Will the language change around NFTs? Will it become a normal part of the publishing landscape as ebooks have?Addressing environmental concerns about NFTsIntellectual property rights and why you need to specify ‘digital' or ‘ebook' or ‘audiobook' rights in a world of digital originalsHow will Creatokia work, and when will it be available? You can find Jens and John at Creatokia.com and on Twitter @creatokia Transcript of Interview with Jens and John Joanna: Welcome to the show, Jens and John. John: Hello, Joanna. Jens: Hi. Joanna: I'm so excited to talk to you today. Let's start with a question that might be basic for us, but maybe not for the listeners. What are NFTs, and what is Creatokia? John: I think the interesting things about NFTs are it's the short version of nonfungible tokens. The thing is that NFTs are on a blockchain, and you can collect them, and you can own them, and you can trade them. It's a decentralized technology. It does mean maybe for the publishing industry that you don't need another organization than the technical idea of the blockchain to trade a book or to trade very rare stuff and to give it to someone who can say, ‘I really own a digital original.' And that's the idea of Creatokia. Creatokia is the possibility — in a time of limitless supply in a digital era — to bring the original back into our world and connect two worlds, a digital world and a real world. And it's something for fans and creators and for storytellers and out of the perspective of Bookwire, the company that Jens and I founded 10, 11 years ago, the next step of digital publishing. Jens: 12 years ago when e-books came into the business, I think we all thought about, ‘Wow, this is a technical revolution.' I thought it myself. And in some ways, it was. But in some ways, it wasn't. It was just like transforming a physical book into a digital book, but it's not really a technical revolution because we are still reading, we're still using the same distribution channels. So you can buy a book on Amazon, you can buy an e-book on Amazon. That's no big difference. You just need a device for it, but looking at it like the opportunity to create digital originals in a world like John said, where everything digital has become totally available for everybody. We are in an endless sea of music, pictures, books, so having something that means something to you in your life, a digital version of something that you would've collected maybe as a rare item physically, previously, I think that's a real revolution. Joanna: What I'm also interested in is the idea of smart contracts and resale, the resale market and the fact that you can put a percentage royalty into the resale. This is completely new, right? We haven't had this. Obviously, there's been resale of physical books, but we've never been able to figure out the supply chain for money for that kind of thing. How do you think that royalty potential for the life of copyright on a blockchain might work and might bring more money to rights-holders? John: It looks like the blockchain is more collaborative in a way. So when you are on the blockchain with your product, as you said, with a smart contract, you are able to participate in the resale of your product. So it means when I buy an NFT book and I resell it because maybe it's a limited edition from a fantastic author, even from an unknown author, but now a very well-known author, it's possible to resell that NFT, and you can implement in the smart contract that the originator, the author, gains again let's say a percentage of…if it only may be 5%, but if it's sold again and again and again, you have your own distribution system on the blockchain. And tha

How can we balance creative passion projects with work that brings in an income? What are the different types of poetry and how can we bring them alive through the spoken word? Mark McGuinness talks about how poetry is at the center of his universe, fueling his creativity as well as informing his coaching business. In the intro, Facebook rebrands as Meta [Facebook]; The metaverse for authors and publishing; Is the metaverse already here? [Unchained]; You Are a Writer, You Create and License Intellectual Property Assets; IP is the new frontlist [Kris Rusch]. Plus, Books2Read now has print links; How to Write for Markets That Sell webinar [K-lytics]; and the NaNoWriMo Storybundle for Writers. Mark McGuinness is an award-winning poet, non-fiction author, and creative coach. He's also the host of two podcasts, The 21st Century Creative, and his new poetry show, A Mouthful of Air. 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 poetry is the center of Mark's creative and business lifeBalancing art and commerceWhy launch a poetry podcast?Different approaches to poetryIntellectual property issues with poetryEgo and validationFunding a podcast You can find Mark McGuinness at AMouthfulOfAir.fm and on Twitter @amouthfulofair Transcript of Interview with Mark McGuinness Joanna: Mark McGuinness is an award-winning poet, non-fiction author, and creative coach. He's also the host of two podcasts, ‘The 21st Century Creative' and his new poetry show ‘A Mouthful of Air.' Welcome back to the show, Mark. Mark: Thank you, Jo. It's always nice to be here. Joanna: Indeed. You've been on the show a number of times, so we're not going to get into all of that. Today we're focusing on your poetry, which is exciting. I wanted to start by asking about the integration. You've been running a successful creative business for many years. What part does poetry play in your life in terms of creativity, and does it play any part in the business side? Mark: For me personally, poetry is the bedrock. It's the foundation of who I am in everything that I do. In terms of writing, it's the most fulfilling kind of writing that I read and also to write. There's nothing else that comes close really. All my writing about creativity, my work as a coach, they're really side effects of the poetry. And that's not to diminish them because I absolutely love doing them and I love the fact that I get to do lots of different things, a bit like you. But really, poetry is at the center of my universe. If there was no poetry, there wouldn't really be much point to the rest of it. So, they really go hand in hand in that way. Creatively though, I think of poetry as completely separate from everything else I do. I love the fact that it's a different world and I can do what the hell I like there. There are no commercial considerations, there's no money at stake. I don't think that's any great secret about the poetry world. So, I have a lot more freedom than a writer who has to keep an eye on the market, their business is maybe based on selling a certain volume or something like a movie studio where there's a committee making decisions in a very risk-averse basis. With poetry, I can basically do what I want. I think the only thing I would say about the poetry and the business, having a relationship, is that it does inform the kind of coach that I am. Because I'm a poet, I've got a very strong affinity with creatives of all kinds. And that's who I like to work with, that's my tribe. On the other hand, I hear from a lot of my clients who say, well, the fact that I'm a poet was attractive to them when they were looking for a coach. They knew they weren't going to get the usual corporate-style coaching or even necessarily mainstream life coaching. I've never thought of myself in those terms. They like the idea of working with a fellow creative because they know we'll have certain values in common. Joanna: It's so interesting. You said at the beginning there that, ‘Poetry is at the foundation of who I am,' which is pretty hardcore. I've read all your non-fiction. I knew you before you knew who I was back in the day, over a decade ago, because you were I think about five years ahead of me and I bought one of your courses early on. I've read pretty much all your stuff. You do share a lot of personal stuff in your non-fiction books, in your blog, in your podcast. And yet, you're basically saying that your poetry is the far more personal side, the more fulfilling side. So, to me, this is really difficult and I think about writing a memoir and something I'm kind of struggling with. Do you think that your poetry is your more vulnerable side? Are you more vulnerable to criticism? And you've written a book on criticism. How do we find the strength to tap into these more personal sides of writing and put ourselves out there in this ve

What are the different ways that authors can use NFTs to reach readers and earn money with blockchain technology? How can we address the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that is inevitable when faced with new technological options? Jessica Artemisia Mathieu explains some of the business models with NFTs. In the intro, and in a longer segment after the interview, I talk about some of the things I'm considering around what could be the ecosystem of the next iteration of online business. This episode is sponsored by my wonderful patrons, who give me the freedom to investigate the future of creativity and share it with you here. If you find the episode useful, please consider supporting me at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn or buy me a coffee (or two!) at BuyMeACoffee.com/thecreativepenn Jessica Artemisia Mathieu is a sci-fi fantasy author and digital marketing agency owner. She's also the creator of The Sovereigntii, which uses NFTs on blockchain as a new form of storytelling, community, and income. 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 Business models that authors can consider with NFTsThe language of NFTs and blockchainHow Jessica manages The Sovereigntii, and her collaborations with other creators in other worldsHow fear, uncertainty and doubt hold creatives back from what is already a thriving creator ecosystemCopyright and NFTs (Note, it will all depend on your contract, smart or not!)Addressing the ecological and environmental issues with blockchainIn the extended segment after the interview (at around 42 mins), I talk about what I learned and recap the business models, adding extra ideas around practicality, mindset, and licensingThe 3 things you need to do regardless of technological platform: Create IP, License it, Reach readers/Find an audience You can find Jessica Artemisia at TheSovereigntii.com and on Twitter @JessArtemisia Transcript of Interview with Jessica Artemisia Joanna: Jessica Artemisia Mathieu is a sci-fi fantasy author and digital marketing agency owner. She's also the creator of ‘The Sovereigntii,' which uses NFTs of blockchain as a new form of storytelling, community, and income. Welcome, Jessica. Jessica: Hi, thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be here. Joanna: Oh, I'm excited to talk about this. First up, tell us a bit more about you and your background in writing and publishing. Jessica: Writing I started as soon as I could read and write. I've been a fantasy nerd my entire life and I've always dreamed of being a fantasy author. But I didn't start really, really writing until about 10 years ago. I still didn't share because I never really felt that it made sense to try to pursue it professionally. Because the business models at the time … you could be a best-selling author and still need a day job. And for me, I didn't have enough energy, honestly, to be a best-selling author and have a day job, like a full-time job. It just wasn't realistic for me. I did end up starting to take writing seriously a couple of years ago anyway because it's a passion, it's kind of just in my soul and I had to try it. I started actually getting published. But the problem remained, so I decided to dive into marketing, digital marketing, to find an alternative business model. And that's how I ended up getting into NFTs. Joanna: You're talking about getting published and marketing. Is that traditional publishing and book marketing or other forms? Jessica: I did get traditionally published and I also had some interest from a really big agency in L.A. for a manuscript I was working on. But I still didn't feel that the publishing industry was right for me. I've been doing marketing since 2005, but it wasn't really focused on digital marketing. So, I started learning marketing in a general sense to understand the industry more deeply. And I did that for the purpose of finding a new business model for authors. Joanna: I think it's really interesting. And mentioning that publishing wasn't really a good fit and feeling like it's strange, I often feel that some independent authors, us included, have perhaps more in common with the tech industry than we do with the publishing industry. Even though product comes out of a book manuscript, I feel like there is quite a big difference between some of the people in the traditional industry and some authors — and then authors who are more comfortable with technology. Do you think that's the basis of why you were feeling that way, it's just your interest was much more developed, in a way? Jessica: The tech is okay for me. I feel very native in the digital environment and marketing. I just didn't think that it was a good business model. For me, a good business model means you do it and you make a lot of money. That's what it means. So, if I do it and I do it well and I'm successful and I still don't make a lot of money, to me, t

On July 4, 2020, Kory Shrum received two phone calls. One from her uncle, saying her mother was found dead in her bedroom from an overdose. A second from a homicide detective saying he believes it was murder—and her uncle is the suspect. In this interview, Kory talks about how she turned her trauma into a true-crime podcast and memoir and how writing helped her process the experience. In the intro, 6 ways that this is the best time in publishing [Publishing Perspectives]; Content Creators deserve a bigger slice of the pie [Kristin Nelson]. 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 www.draft2digital.com/penn Kory Shrum is a ‘USA Today' best-selling author of science fiction, fantasy, and thrillers. She's also a true-crime podcaster. Her latest book is a memoir, Who Killed My Mother? 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 Studying poetry as a way to develop skills for fictionMaking the choice to write a memoir about a very difficult subjectWhy sharing feelings is so important in memoirTips for healthy ways to experience emotions while writingSeeking the truth in memoir and how memory plays a partTelling one story in multiple formats; podcast, book and audiobook You can find Kory Shrum at WhoKilledMyMother.com and on Twitter @koryshrum Transcript of Interview with Kory Shrum Joanna: Kory Shrum is a ‘USA Today' best-selling author of science fiction, fantasy, and thrillers. She's also a true crime podcaster. And her latest book is a memoir, Who Killed My Mother? Welcome, Kory. Kory: Thank you. I'm so glad to be here. I have been a fan of yours for years. I've been stalking you on the internet for years. And then I tried to steal your assistant, Alexandra. So it might be getting a little creepy at this point! Joanna: I really appreciate your support. And also what we were saying before we started recording that, because of our connection, I've discovered your novels and our readers, but we share some readers in the fiction space. I think a lot of this stuff is about connecting with people and people who are like us in some way. We've never met in person, maybe we never will, but it's so great to connect across the world, isn't it? So let's start. Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. Kory: I had loved books and writing and everything about the world of literature all of my life, but I didn't really get serious about it until college. I changed majors so many times because I had so many interests. Like you, I'm a multi-passionate, creative, and there are just so many things that I love about the world. And I love learning. I think it was like the fifth time that I went to my advisor's office and was like, ‘I'm thinking about changing my major.' And she was like, ‘Kory, Kory, Kory, listen, I just want you to go down to this office and take this test, and it will tell you what major you should be.' Joanna: Cool. Kory: And so I was like, ‘Okay.' Yeah. So you take a test, and it matches your interest to a field. And so I went down there, and I took the test. I matched an English major with, like, 94%, or something ridiculous. It was really clear that I should be studying literature, books, and things. I already had a creative writing minor at that point that I had basically completed, but I didn't think of the English major, because I was like, ‘Are there English major jobs?' But it turns out there are, and so I completed that. And then I went on to get an MA. And then I had to make the decision if I wanted a PhD in creative writing, or an MFA in creative writing. And you don't really need to do this in the real world. But it's like what people will tell you, ‘Oh, if you want to be a writer, get an MFA.' And so I did that. I chose the MFA because the Ph.D. seemed more like literary theory, whereas I just wanted to learn how to write really well. And MFAs are studio degrees. They want you to be writing. But the issue is, is that I like a lot of genre fiction and genre tropes. And it's not as accepted in academia as literary fiction. They have the high-minded…you could see it in capital letters, literary fiction. And so I was like, ‘Well, what am I going to study?' Because I can't really do vampire novels. I've had a teacher in class say, ‘I will accept no vampire novels this semester.' So I chose poetry instead. Because I thought, well, if I could master poetry, that's a mastery of description, and language and flow. I think that that would really help my fiction writing as well. I don't think it would be a waste of my time to learn how to write poetry. I chose to study poetry for my MFA. And it was great, I had amazing teachers, it was a wonde