The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

Write and publish what you want, get paid every day for your books, and control your customer data and relationships. It's possible if you sell direct, as Pierre Jeanty talks about in this interview. In the intro, the author income survey [ALLi]; publishing clauses to avoid [Writer Unboxed; Writer Beware]; copyright registration for AI-assisted comic Zarya of the Dawn [Process Mechanics]; tips for writing with AI [Self Publishing Show]; my Sudowrite tutorial. 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 Pierre Jeanty is a poet and inspirational author, publisher and entrepreneur. He specializes in selling through Shopify and teaches authors his methods through 7figurebookbusiness.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.  Show Notes How Pierre started selling direct early, and how sales on other stores like Amazon happen even when he focuses on selling to Shopify first The importance of changing your mindset Flipping the business model to selling direct first Changes in the indie zeitgeist with more authors wanting more independence Best ways to market your Shopify store Separating your store by brand and genre You can find Pierre Jeanty at PierreJeanty.com or 7figurebookbusiness.com Transcript of Interview with Pierre Jeanty Pierre: Pierre Jeanty is a poet and inspirational author, publisher and entrepreneur. He specializes in selling through Shopify, and teaches authors his methods through 7figurebookbusiness.com, which I can highly recommend, and I'm personally going through at the moment. So welcome, Pierre. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Joanna. Joanna: Oh, I'm so excited to talk to you. But first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. Pierre: That is an interesting story. So as an immigrant in the US, I came here in 2000. And after entering the States, I worked my way into going into college. In college, one of the things that I seemed to be more interested in was the language itself, but also into writing poetry. And diving into social media during that time, it was Myspace. So since then, I've had a hunger to actually play with words and use poetry. Around 2011, 2010, around that time, I was building out Twitter and becoming a Twitter influencer, and I started writing more inspirational content that I felt would help people. From there on, that's where I started with a book. And the rest is history. Joanna: The rest is history that people don't know! So you're going to have to take us on a bit. From 2011, that's more than a decade ago, so you put out your first poetry book. And look, I mean, people in the community even now would say, you write a poetry book and nothing's going to happen, right? I mean, maybe you could be an insta-poet or whatever. How did you take that forward from one poetry book over a decade ago to where you are now? Like, just give us some of the highlights. Pierre: Okay, so one thing, just to be clear, my first book did not get published until 2014. So 2011, I was thinking about the poetry book, but I had almost no direction. So it was no guidance whatsoever. So what I did instead was continue to build my influence, to where in 2011, I founded a brand name Gentlemanhood, in which the whole focus was to write content for men to help them express themselves and be better in relationships, because men tend to be not as vocal. Well, now we have that ability it seems, but that was the issue then. So in 2014, after having a successful blog, it was gentlemanhood.com. And it was mostly me writing about men and relationships, but different writers would join me. My audience actually started requesting that I put a book out. My first book, it was more pretty much structured however I wanted it to be. So it was me just having poems on one side, and on the other side, expressing detail in the kind of like the situation. What happened throughout that time, what sparked the poem, and so forth. And I wrote it in a way that I felt like my audience would receive it.  So December 10, 2014, I published my first book, Unspoken Feelings of a Gentleman, and with the audience receiving it well. That was my first introduction to direct sale, to be honest, because I did not understand CreateSpace, Amazon KDP did not necessarily exist for print. So I created a WooCommerce shop, which was our old website, gentlemanhood.com. That's what I used to publish my first book where we had presales through email, and we had direct relationship, let's say, with the readers and the buyers. From there on, it was 2014, then mid-2015, I decided to—after going on tour, I have to mention that. But after going on my first tour, a lot of this book was for men, but a lot of women were reading it. So they requested that I do something for women. And I said I've never been a woman, but I can express the things that I've learned. And I wrote a poetry book titled To the Women I Once Loved, published it in 2015 September, around that time. And right after that, I pretty much took a pause.  What really got me into becoming known in the poetry world and so forth, it was 2016. I spent the entire year trying to write Unspoken Feelings II, and I finished it in December, but right after that, I felt the urge to write a smaller book. First, it would be more receptive on Facebook because then Facebook had been a marketer first, Facebook had this issue with the textual. So my poems, I decided to condense them, make them a bit smaller. And a lot of the new audience I was creating, growing, wanted that. And there, I launched my first successful poetry book, which is Her. And since then, I've been almost nonstop, not as much as nonstop like fiction authors who tend to write countless words and publish a bunch of books consistently, but more than enough in a six month period. I stayed with the concept of publishing at least two books a year. Joanna: Hmm. Well, there are many things I love about what you've done. It's like you go against so many of, I want to call them ‘the myths of indie.' You know, back in the day, or there still are myths of traditional publishing. And the myths of indie have now grown up that you can't be successful as a poet. You can't be successful unless you write a book a month. You can't be successful if you don't focus on Amazon. So you've kind of gone against all these different things. And yet, I also love that you—I mean, I've looked at your poetry—and I love that you're both a poet and a marketer. So how do you feel like, for people listening, who are like, “I'm a poet,” or, “I'm a literary fiction author,” or “I'm someone who's not into marketing,” which let's face it, is a lot of authors. Did you have to learn how to be a marketer, as well as the creative side? How can people change their mindset around marketing and business, as well as focus on creativity? Pierre: I think one of the main things is to really, I guess the best way is to look at the purpose of your product. And being that I'm a marketer, and I'm doing direct sales, I always kind of refer to products, and by products, I mean books. So what makes it so much easier for me to market my books is that I know my ideal reader very well. I know what they're looking for. So when it comes to marketing, my idea of it is, I wrote this for you, and I'm going to do whatever it takes to get it over to you. So then marketing is no longer a task that is annoying, or a task that I would outsource to someone else. It became, to me, a challenge to find out how am I going to reach my reader because I'm really passionate about getting it over to my reader. Now, I have to say this, is that I've always been a marketer first, because even though my book, Her, is the most successful book that I've had. But my first book, Unspoken Feelings of a Gentleman, it climbed to the top thousands on Amazon, it's done well, a lot of celebrities actually had a few copies. What I leveraged off of during that time was using influencer marketing. So I've always been fascinated with social media and getting extremely early, which allowed me to understand the behavior for marketing. And to a point where, when I created my own product, I said, my goal was to learn what is the best way to utilize every skill set that I've picked up, up until that time, and get in front of the readers. So if you're having trouble, I mean trouble when it comes to bridging the two together, I always ask this question: What good—not what good, some people may be offended by that—but think about the effort that you've put behind creating an amazing book. And you know who you want to read it. You know how you want it to make them feel, how you want them to react and so forth. That's where now you have to take the extra step and say, “Well, I'm going to find those people because they exist, and I wrote it for them.” Joanna: I love that. Yes, you're very reader focused. Let's get into the direct sales, because you mentioned WooCommerce that you got into earlier, but now you focus on selling direct on Shopify. Why did you make that decision to go direct? Why Shopify? And what are the benefits for authors? Pierre: So why I went direct is a unique story to tell. So starting in 2017 when I released Her, it been successful, and it's still successful. With that, came me building a bunch of, not partnerships, but dealing with different people, to where I started being one of Ingram's top-selling authors, I started getting requests in different bookstores in different countries. So me having to build this as if I'm a traditional publisher, but building multiple relationships.  One of the relationships or transactions I set up to happen for me in 2018, was that Target directly messaged me or inquired about putting our titles into their stores. And during that time, I have no way of making it happen, but I was doing extremely well with Ingram. And they were able to get it in the middle and help the deal take place. But with that came a few issues, to where Target had to return 15,000 books out of the 40,000. So for me, and this was a part I haven't shared as much, but I want to make sure I get it across to those who are interested, is that pretty much I was making okay money on Amazon, but it was taking too long. They had, I think, switched to being a 60-day payment cycle. And I had all of these partnerships with Ingram and different resellers that were also taken a while to get income to us. So what essentially happened is that I had 15,000 books, I needed a place to put them, and I could not figure it out. So that's when I started to dive into Shopify, because I had a marketer friend of mine who was selling via SamCart, and I was as well throughout that time. He started to say how well the ads were converting over to Shopify. That piqued my interest to me testing with my WooCommerce and seeing how much more robust, and just the tech was just so much better with Shopify that I moved over to running my house there.  From there, I had Ingram ship all of my books. I started from having it at our office, which was a smaller office throughout that time, to creating a room. I have the video in 20Books of creating a room in our office with all the supplies and everything else. So when the remaining, the first time it was the first round, was we receive about 3,000 to 4000 books of the return. But when the remaining came we needed to find a storage. So that led to me figuring out how am I going to sell my books and picking Shopify. And also the motivation behind that had a lot to do with the fact that up until that time, I sold a lot of books, I was a best seller, I had achieved everything, I would say, which were great accolades when it comes to being an author. And I was still dealing with the fact that I did not have enough cash flow or income sitting because all of it had been reinvested in us. You know, it's taking forever, what it seems like, to receive money. Not only that, the year before, I had a book tour, and I although I was having over 1.2 million followers, I think, throughout that time on Facebook, and about 500,000 on Instagram, I could not get anyone to show up to my book tour. So we came to this realization that not only were we stuck with a bunch of books, but we did not have any customer data. Out of the small group of people who showed up to my book signings, they were still saying that, “Hey, some of us, we didn't see this until the day before. We did not know this was happening.” And I was posting on social media. So that led to where we are now, to where I decided to take control of my business. I decided to have a system that will pay me on a daily basis, and I decided to build with the idea of longevity. Also, I guess when it comes to the customer data, having a relationship with my reader, so when something is happening in my business, let's say a book signing, we can have access to them. Joanna: I love that. So just to recap, you said faster money, access to customer data, the control of the system, and that your ads convert really well with Shopify. And we're going to come back to some of these. I mean, these are all obvious things. Now, I feel like I've sold direct since day one. So since 2008, I've used all the old things that we all used to do in that time, but I've always had it as the last thing on my list. I've been like, ‘I'll try and sell on all these other places first,' and then yes, I have a direct store, but it was always the last thing. What you've done, and I guess Steve Pieper, Morgana Best, and there are some other people who've been talking about this, which is turning it upside down and selling direct first, and then for sure, put some stuff elsewhere, but focus on your direct store first. Now because I follow you, I did get one of your ads on Facebook, which says, “Unpopular opinion: self-publishing books on Amazon is a waste of time and money.” So I wondered— Could you comment on flipping the business model to direct first? But also, should we still publish on Amazon? Do you do that? And how can we change the order of our energy? Pierre: Oh, I love that. I wrote it, and I also had a copywriter who helped us write some of our ads. And one of the things of when I wrote this was that I wanted to really provoke people or get people to actually think outside the box right from the start. What is happening with this ad is that the exact response we were expecting is exactly what's happened. And some people who are really loyal to Amazon, they are upset, and they're like, “Oh, my god, this is lying. This is a scam.” That's what you're going to hear, period. Then there's the other group of people, where they're like, “Oh, there is a different way? There is something else outside of Amazon? Or is this something that can be done?” There are those making a bold statement like that that are those people who are going to be interested in looking deeper. And once you go down the path of research, this is where I've had more than enough people come to me and ask for help. Do we still use Amazon? Absolutely. One of the things that I'm big on is you prioritize your store, but you never take everything else out. So even for me, when we are going to publish a book, we publish it on my website first, and we send it to my email list first, but after that, after we make sure none of our direct audience is going to Amazon, what we do is then later, it becomes secondary, we add the books on Amazon. Now, after doing this for about four years or so, or past four years, something around there, but we realize that no matter what we do based on the marketing and everything, is mostly about 50% to 60% of our sales come directly to the shop, to Shopify. The rest are still people who are loyal to Amazon, who are used to shopping on Amazon, to people still going to the other retailers, and shopping there. What's beautiful about this system is that you do not have to prioritize Amazon or any of these other channels to get sales there, which is the concept I'm trying to get across. Forget Amazon, focus on your shop, and if you market effectively it'll spill into everything else. In May 2020, I became a USA Today best seller. I had no clue that that was happening. What I looked at was my Shopify dashboards, which that month it said that we sold 40,000 books, but the leftover from Amazon got me into the USA Today bestseller. We made a lot of money on Amazon and all the other areas. I think authors are so loyal to Amazon, and they don't realize that every time a transaction is made, Amazon gains a customer, Amazon gains data, Amazon just have a better relationship with them, the branding is strengthened depending on the experience, obviously. Versus if you say, I want to be in that position, and although I'm not going to get everyone, but if my focus is that, okay, I'm not competing against Amazon, but if I'm driving all my traffic to Amazon, I'm hurting myself because long term, you really don't have anything. And that's where I was at, to where after building for, you know, since 2014 up until 2018, I realized I had nothing. And I wouldn't say the time was necessarily wasted, but my energy and my investment, I did not get the best returns for it. Joanna: And again, I find this so interesting because when I came into indie sort of 2007 — and we're not Amazon bashing for people who are feeling angry — Amazon has been amazing for authors. What's happening in the zeitgeist is — back in 2007, it was traditional publishing was the only way to go, and then here's this other way. This other way was to reach readers directly by using the stores like Amazon and blah, blah, blah. So we were like, yeah, this is amazing. And you can start an email list, so you can reach some people if they sign up for your list. I almost feel like what you're talking about with selling direct is the next wave of what we do as an indie culture. It is about more independence, which is we're actually going to sell direct, we're actually going to get the customer data. And like you said, we can still have our books elsewhere. So it almost feels like a new wave.  I wanted to ask you, are you feeling like things have changed? Like, is there a Zeitgeist thing going on? Because I really feel there is an energy that is moving towards this, in the same way that there was a sort of pro-indie energy back in the sort of 2010s. Are you feeling that more and more people are coming to you? Pierre: Yes, yes, that is the thing that I'm more excited about. And that is why I'm even teaching and pushing into this because I'm looking at it. When I started in 2018, I forced two of the author friends that I've had throughout that time to say, hey, trust me, we can build this. And they both reached seven figures that next year. And they both had the success that I've had. And what I took from that was, hey, if I could teach one or two authors, and I've seen how it helped them, maybe I can teach you more.  Throughout that time, it seemed like almost no one wanted to listen. But I watched from mid 2021, and I think I spoke at 20BooksVegas towards the end of that year, to last year, seeing how many people are in my groups, how many people are talking about it in different groups, and to seeing how many sessions it had in like 20Books conference, which was the only author conference that I've been in. And it's amazing because a lot of people are realizing like, hey, I need to have control of my business, I need to have a business that is going to have longevity if I'm looking at this full-time author kind of angle, and just growth and scale. So now they're accepting the fact that they need to have their data. They can get more return when it comes to money, when it comes to royalty, you don't necessarily have to share 55% with Amazon. I feel like it is that we're starting to take our power back. And I love that I'm talking to new people on a consistent basis. And actually, Steve Pieper, which I recognized in 2018 when I was only selling on SamCart and testing Shopify. And now to see him back now getting into the space and teaching, and Morgana Best teaching, what's been great about it is that I don't want to be the only teacher. I know I've done it at scale to where we've done seven or close to $8 million, but my goal is like to tell authors, look— Once we rely on one system, we do not have as much control. It puts us in a position where one bad thing can really hurt us. And funny enough, interesting enough, not funny enough, is that Amazon, there have been numerous authors now who are finding issues with the title being pulled or getting suspended. And lastly, to even add this, is that authors now have a better opportunity to run better ads. And what I mean by that is that I think they're starting to be new ways for you to run Facebook, and Pinterest, Instagram ads, where you do send them to Amazon, and you kind of track them on the back end of Amazon. I'm not too much involved in Amazon to say I know exactly what the new tech is, but what was important for me to switch into this system is that every time I spent $100, I could see what it did. I could track better and make better decisions with that and so forth. This was extremely important to me, and should be extremely important to authors because now I could systemize everything that I'm doing and find a way to scale. I guess the short answer after the long explanation is that, yes, a lot of people are moving towards it. I'm seeing so many conversations. I am excited because I think authors, we should look at this like a business. And if we get over the hump of that it's a business, we could put ourselves in a better position. I love interacting with my supporters. I love creating for them. I love knowing my audience base a bit better. So, yes. Joanna: I'm glad you're excited. I am too. It's interesting because Morgana and you and Steve, you're all really different people. Super, super different people in really different niches. And I've talked to all of you now, which is great. That's why I really wanted to talk to you. And yeah, I mean, everyone's got some eBooks and some courses and they're all brilliant, like I'm doing all of them. And it's so interesting to me. Now, we're not going to get into technicalities of Shopify because that's just pointless on a podcast, but you have mentioned ads. And I think this is interesting, I mean you talk there, essentially you can optimize for conversions because you know what people are buying, rather than just optimize for clicks. But this is the question that people always send to me, which is: okay, so I set up my Shopify store, but how do I market to that store? So is it just a case of, well, pretty much everything except Amazon ads you can just direct to your store? What are the best ways to market your store? Pierre: Facebook ads. So what's interesting, not interesting, I keep saying that. But the thing that you mentioned about Steve and us being different, we are different, but I think we're bringing different pieces to the author world, per se, or the indie culture. I had a conversation with Morgana not too long ago, and I mentioned to her anytime I have someone that is on a basic level, a fiction author who wants to do something like Book Vault or POD and so forth, I point them to her. When it comes to me, I'm looking more at if you're looking to have fulfillment totally differently, or you're looking to scale. And my main focus is Facebook ads because I've spent over  $4 – 5 million on the platform myself, and I've ran a marketing agency. I still have one, but now we help authors. And Morgana, you know, kind of our conversation was that, okay, now I have resources when it comes to ads. So I've never spoken to Steve, but my goal is not to come here in the industry and be competitive. You know, the one thing I've said to people is that I sell enough books, the high that I'm getting and the fun of it is seeing how it works in someone else's business, the different curves. So I'm teaching a bunch of fiction authors now, and it's totally different because I'm used to self-help and poetry. And with helping those, it's like now it's a new challenge, and I think it helps in the culture. When it comes to the best way to market, I'm always going to say Facebook ads, despite that there are ups and downs. I've been running ads since late 2014. So I've seen the platform change from Power Editor, I've seen how much smarter it has gotten. And seeing how well it works, I'm always going to recommend it because even now, we're using an Instagram shop, and the way after Facebook taking a hit with iOS 14, the way that it integrates so well and it feeds so well within each other is so seamless, that it's the best thing I've seen. I tried Pinterest, I've run thousands of dollars on ads on Pinterest. I've tried Amazon ads, and we're seeing that my Facebook ads are feeding Amazon when it comes to the traffic that I'm getting. Most of our Amazon traffic is actually coming from our Facebook ad. So the only thing we do is just set up retargeting ads, per se. And so when I look at ads as a whole, once you understand the system, it's beautiful. But it has to be where you optimize your store properly to see the success and why it's the best tool out there. But Facebook, hands down. It's the thing that I'm passionate about because part of me even teaching about direct sales, because I love teaching about Facebook ads, but I need to tell people, hey, you need to fix your shop first and everything else. So now we can talk about Facebook ads. Joanna: Yeah, well, basically I've got a whole list of improvements to make. Like because last year, I did my minimum viable store because I have a big backlist and I have a lot of formats. And it took me ages to set my store up because I had so many books. And then I was like, oh my goodness, and I look at your store and Steve's and Morgana's, and I'm like, every single one of those products needs more on there. Like you have all this social proof and even just a hand holding a physical book, like even just that type of thing. So what you said there, “optimize your store before you run ads,” I mean, that's the same on any platform, right? It feels like the obsession with marketing comes before sorting out the book. It's just common kind of everywhere. I did actually have a couple of questions for my own purposes. And I think this will help other people. So basically, I have different author names. I have Joanna Penn, my self-help for authors brand, and J.F. Penn is my fiction. I didn't want to set up more than one store because I thought, well, I want to send everyone to one store. So I set up CreativePennBooks.com, but now in listening to your stuff and everyone else's, I wonder if I made the right choice. What's your advice to authors around stores per author brand or genre? Pierre: For you, I would recommend that you separate the two, simply because they are two different audiences. Your readers are coming there to read, they are interested in the stories that you're telling, etc. Putting something like self-help for authors, yes, you may get authors that are readers, but putting something for indie authors there can kind of serve as a distraction or just laying the website with extra. What I'm big on is staying on brand, and not only that it's good for the shop, but it also helps your advertisers, especially with Facebook ads, Pixel, and now the shop and everything else, Facebook is leaning a lot on AI. And really the AI is kind of honing down to what is consistent in your ad account, what is consistent on your Shopify, and collecting all that data and finding the best way to find new readers. Now, if you are an author who writes in different fiction genres, you could easily categorize some of those because the reader can cross over when it comes to being, let's say, in the same type of reading, not necessarily genre. What I mean by that is that someone who's reading, let's say, romance fiction, you may think they're not interested in thrillers, but they're readers. They like novels, so they can switch over. So kind of one of the big things that I teach about is that you have to find out on the back end, using emails and utilizing your customer data, how to make the crossover, so you're sharp. If you have multiple genres, as long as they stay on the umbrella of fiction, it's perfectly fine. It's when you cross from nonfiction to fiction, or let's say you have nonfiction for divorce, and nonfiction for helping elderly, those are opposite ends. But when it comes to people reading stories, they tend to be on the same page. Something to add, even after saying that, is that part of what I'm seeing myself entering the landscape of this indie culture of teaching— I'm big on trying to teach people how to optimize your store and run better ads. Here's why store optimization is important. If you've gotten my book, and you realize, I don't know if you did, but there is a free course that comes with that. In the free course, I teach about competing on economics. The purpose of competing on economics is that when you start running ads through your shop, it can look like it's difficult to be profitable unless you do all of the things that you need on your shop and doing everything that you need on the back end, like your email, utilizing that data, it becomes hard to be profitable. So now, if you don't give your ads the best chance to optimize and very niche because as I was collecting data, I realized like, hey, you're big on selling romance items, then you're actually hurting yourself. Joanna: Yes, I think I wanted to build the store, and I talked to Morgana, and she had also said something similar, but I just decided what I was going to do was this. I do have your eBook, the free course and also the other course. And people listening will probably be thinking, ‘oh, my goodness, this is so much work.' It is a lot of work to get it set up and to understand it all. But equally, when I started online, I had to learn how to do certain things. And I feel very optimistic about learning all of this because I can see, like you mentioned longevity, I can see that this has a future potential where I won't have to work as hard. If I can figure it out, then it's more than just cash flow money. It's more like an investment in building my future business rather than just always running, running, running, content, content, content. So can you comment on too much work versus hope? Pierre: Yes, so it's kind of the job. So I did not even realize, and this is to tell you, once you invest and you build it, then it could run itself. I did not even realize that Shopify was actually something that people will run into problems with. Because when I first started creating this, I wrote the book and started teaching like the mindset, because it is going to be a mindset shift for authors to understand. Now, I'm building a book business and with business, I have product, I need cash flows, I have to market, I have to look at it differently than throwing it on Amazon, and then hoping something happens from running my Amazon ads, but not really seen all of the backends or the constant flow of things. The other part when it comes to that was that once you start—well, just the why I got into creating Shopify. It wasn't until I'm teaching a group and everyone's getting the ads and everyone's received the book, they're like, but we're stuck on Shopify. And then I'm like, well, no, you just upload the product and you do this or do that. I realized it's because my shop was built and set up in mid-2019. And since then, I haven't touched it. It wasn't until I started trying to teach Shopify in my Shopify Course that I'm like, oh my god, I have to go back and walk step by step. So what I'm currently working on right now is making sure where I nail down to a theme. So what is needed? What are the structures? And creating checklists. So it's trying to make it easier for authors. Now, to those who are going to feel overwhelmed, and going to see it's a lot of work, it can be a lot of work for an author who has a huge backlist. Part of all you need is that you need your main titles there, you need your shop to be as convenient as possible when it comes to the transaction, and once you have that, your store can be a work in progress.  Advertising, I don't advise that you advertise to your shop. I don't advertise to Pierre Jeanty. I focus on advertising one title, my main title, and out of that we have a structure to sell everything else. So my most successful book is Her, but I have 13 books. Or probably more than 13, I'm not even counting anymore. So what I do is I run ads to Her because it's the most convenient, cheapest, and most consistent. And once you go to Her, obviously I get upsells, cross sales, then post-purchase upsells, which are selling the other books and other items. Then emails, we have flow setup, automated flows, we're selling the other products. So once you have one book, and you have everything set up for that book, now it's a process of taking your time to say, hey, what is the next series I want to put in there? And by then, you simplify the process to where, okay, I upload the book covers this way. The description, I transform over this way, etc. Where a lot of people fail is when they try to have everything done all at once, or everything done before ads. My biggest answer to that is always— Ads are the best way to find out what you need to fix on your shop. Because once you do have the first book, the main book, and you start running ads, and people are like, I can't find no review, or this is taking too long, etc., that's when you start to see, okay, what do I need to do? Or you're not profitable, you're like, okay, I need to sell more than one book, I need to bundle them up better. So, yes. Now in terms of the hope aspect, I can tell you, me having a simple shop in 2019 and just being able to market the way I want and was able to scale to where 2020 was my biggest year where we did 4 million in sales. I did not have everything fixed. The people that I'm teaching are light years ahead of me in terms of their starting point because I didn't know how to make sure my average order value, or you know, people spent way more money than just the $14 I've sold the books for. So it can be fixed, and you can sell and make a lot of money while you're fixing it. Joanna: That's so good. And to be honest, I feel hopeful, too, because I just feel like I can see what I've always wanted with the indie space, like what I wanted as an independent author when I left my job like more than a decade ago. I don't think the technology was ready, but it feels like we've got everything we need now. We can do fulfillment in all kinds of ways. So that's why I'm excited. So people listening, there's so much here that's exciting. I do have another question before we're almost out of time. So we talked about my two brands, which I will separate, but I also have this other random book. Now, because you do emotional books, so I have a memoir, it's called Pilgrimage. I just did a Kickstarter for it. So I finished the Kickstarter, and it's like a midlife memoir. It is about pilgrimages. I'm not a Christian, which makes it kind of difficult, but it's got religious elements. It is emotional. It's personal. It doesn't fit either of my brands. So when I was going through your stuff, I saw that in some cases, you were testing almost like a one-page landing page store. So I'm wondering like— I could just build my own store for Pilgrimage on its own, right? Pierre: Yes. So I have a student, who's also a client, and she has a book where it's about sobriety. And she's like, “This is not what I'm about, but it was a book that I wrote. What is the best way to do it?” And she's now focused on having it as a standalone where it has its own store, and the whole concept is about sobriety. When she sells it, she's not trying to mix it with her other author business and publishing business, but she just has it as a stand-alone. When it comes to you marketing anything that falls that you think your readers can cross over. So something like a memoir, some of the fiction readers that you have will read that because it's written by you. What I want authors to be clear, is that now you're not thinking about author brand niche down as much, it's more of thinking of author brand as how do I identify who I am, what type of writing that I do from the umbrella of nonfiction or fiction. Do I solve problems or tell stories? Once you have it under the umbrella, then you now get a chance to build real loyal fans because you're dealing with them direct, and you could sell anything else. So it's more of a separation between nonfiction and fiction. The other thing, what you mentioned that we do is that we try to have all sorts of traffic go to our Shopify because it helps our ad, but we don't sell directly to product pages in all cases. So I use an app named Zipify, where sometimes we create landing pages. The landing pages is dedicated to one book, is dedicated to the upsell. That's what I'm doing for one of the poetry book that is more around heartbreak and seems to be attracting divorce, an audience of women that are divorced. The reason I can do that, although is slightly different from Her, is that by the time they make the purchase and they fall into my email, they're segmented. So I know this is like a heavier heartbreak audience that this is the type of work they're looking for, versus Her, it's more empowerment and inspirational. Right now marketing a book named, Heal. Grow. Love, it's more inspiration, has nothing to do with relationships. And that's the control you can have when it comes to the back end. I have landing pages where I've used blog posts to sell products. I've used all of those different ways on my Shopify site. So now everything is still happening on Shopify. Joanna: That's great. I think for those people listening who are like me and have sort of a bigger backlist, multiple brands, multiple types of books, you probably just have to stop and think for longer and think of a strategy and think how you want to do it before you jump in. Like I feel like I probably should have done more strategic thinking. Also now, I know all of you and I'm going through the courses, I feel like I'm learning so much. So we're out of time, but— Tell us about The 7 Figure Book Business eBook and the course. Who is it suitable for? And where can people find it? Pierre: The 7 Figure Book, you could get it at 7figurebookbusiness.com/book. And even if you just go to 7figurebookbusiness.com, you will find it there. You'll be able to access the book there. And really, the people that I created it for is for those who are looking to get into direct, but not for the purpose of just going direct because of something that's happening. It's for those who are really serious about building something outside of Amazon and really building what I say, a book business. I say that in the book, where it's those trying to come out of the entrepreneur mindset to having a book business. Where again, it has longevity and way more to offer, in my eyes. Kind of the breakdown for those who are interested, let's say, or would be interested, is that the book itself will show you my success, but it breaks down the mindset and it simplifies how all of this happens. It's more of like, this is an ecommerce funnel, email funnel, and this is a traffic funnel, which has ads and how all of it work with each other. And it's for anyone really, truly who is interested in going direct but wants to take it seriously.  The book also should encourage you, which is why it comes with a free course, to encourage you to map out these things because I lay out all the details. The course is almost where if you read the book, you could eventually launch yourself. The course is to walk you through and save you time, but it lays out the blueprint for you, so now you can go and strategize and see what is the best way to approach this. Joanna: And as I said, I highly recommend it. You're a great teacher. I love your positivity, that makes such a difference. So thank you so much for your time, Pierre. That was just fantastic. Pierre: Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor and a pleasure, and I'm excited to see how yours roll out and how all of this plays out for you.The post How To Build A Seven Figure Book Business Selling Direct To Readers With Pierre Jeanty first appeared on The Creative Penn.

After many years of people saying, “AI can never be creative, AI could never write fiction (i.e. make things up), it's now evident that the generative AI tools make a lot up — and we need to be aware of the potential ramifications. How can we use the tools to achieve our creative purpose in an ethical manner, and understand that we need to curate, edit, and take responsibility for any usage? How can we educate ourselves and others on the way these AI models work? Tim Boucher and I have a challenging, wide-ranging discussion in this interview. In the intro, I comment on ‘A concerning trend of AI-generated submissions' to short story market, Clarkesworld, and the ‘tsunami of crap' all over again [JA Konrath], and how we can use AI tools in a responsible manner. Today's show is sponsored by my wonderful patrons who fund my brain so I have time to think about and discuss these futurist topics impacting authors. If you support the show, you also get the extra monthly patron-only Q&A audio. You can support the show at www.patreon.com/thecreativepenn Tim Boucher is a hyperrealist AI artist and writer specializing in questionable alternative realities. He's worked professionally in content moderation policy, and counter-disinformation efforts on behalf of a major web platform, a blockchain protocol. And he has advised nonprofits and governments on related issues 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 Tim started writing and publishing, and why he decided to experiment with AI tools for images and words Misinformation by humans and AI hallucinations, how we need to fact check , edit, curate, and manage outputs — and how these can be used in fiction Tim's AI-collaborative creative process and the tools he uses for words and images Labeling and ethical use of AI [see the Alliance of Independent Authors guidelines here] Why Tim uses Gumroad to sell direct and doesn't publish on Amazon How authors need to engage with the technology, experiment, and learn to stand out in an ever-increasingly crowded market You can find Tim at TimBoucher.ca and his books at LostBooks.gumroad.com Header image created by Joanna Penn on Midjourney. Introduction: Addressing the flood of AI-generated content/books In this introductory section, I want to talk about some of the news items that have arisen this week, and that fit into this episode very well. From the headlines this week, “Sci-fi publisher Clarkesworld halts pitches amid deluge of AI-generated stories.” [The Guardian] and “Hundreds of AI-written books flood Amazon.” [The Independent].  I’m not sure why people are surprised about this, and of course, this will only increase. But as ever, the headlines are clickbait and we need to have a more nuanced approach.  Yes, there will be scammers, spammers, pirates, get-rich-quick schemes and plagiarisers using these tools to mass produce crap and publish it quickly.  But that is nothing new.  People who do this kind of thing have always done this kind of thing.  Everything I have ever written, recorded, or produced in every format has been plagiarised, pirated, stolen, and republished elsewhere. I used to try and stop it, and I still do make an effort when someone literally steals everything— but it takes up too much time to try and stop it all, so I focus on creating value for my true audience — all of you. This happens to me, and I am a (mostly) unknown author in a tiny corner of the internet. The most famous books, blogs, films, music, etc, get pirated the moment they emerge, or even before release if leaked.   Humans are the problem, but of course, AI technology enables this to be done at scale — which makes it more of a problem. But again, this is nothing new. Have you checked your email spam folder lately? Are you aware of how much content farm crap the Google algorithm filters out when you search? Do you know how much content moderation there already is on the internet? Are you aware of all the scams that go on even just in our little author corner of the internet?  Check Writer Beware for years of them, most of them prior to generative AI. Do you know how many times Amazon has been ‘flooded’ with spam books?  Have a look at David Gaughran’s blog for a glimpse [Scammers break the Kindle store from 2017, Kindle Unlimited: A Cheater Magnet from 2021, and a whole load more.]  On The Guardian UK in 2018, Fake books sold on Amazon could be used for money laundering; and in 2019, Plagiarism, book-stuffing, click farms … the rotten side of self-publishing. Because yes, we’ve heard this all before.  “The tsunami of crap” all over again Back in 2011, JA Konrath, one of the early and most successful indie authors, wrote a blog post entitled, ‘The tsunami of crap.’ “Some people believe the ease of self-publishing means that millions of wannabe writers will flood the market with their crummy ebooks, and the good authors will get lost in the morass, and then family values will go unprotected and the economy will collapse and the world will crash into the sun and puppies and kittens by the truckload will die horrible, screaming deaths. Or something like that.” I remember that time well. I spent way too much time and effort trying to prove that an author could be serious about the writing craft and the business — and that professionally self-publishing, being an independent author, was a valid creative choice, and for many, a sensible business choice. Yes, there was — and still is — a tsunami of crap, but don’t lump us all together. It is more nuanced than that.  Eventually, we stopped talking about it and just got on with writing books and reaching readers. The success of the indie author movement attracted more authors, and now, over a decade later, the ‘stigma’ of self-publishing is — almost — gone.  In fact, we are collectively a huge chunk of the book market. As Michael Tamblyn, CEO of Kobo said at Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2022, “One in four books that we sell in English is a self-published title, which means that effectively for us self-publishing is like having a whole other Penguin Random House sitting out in the market that no one sees. It’s like the dark matter of publishing.”  So the stigma may be gone for indie authors, but now it seems we might have to go through the same situation all over again with AI tools. Because the situation is similar.  There ARE a load of crap self-published books, as there are a load of crap traditionally published books, and as per Sturgeon’s Law, 90% of everything is crap.  Have you changed your mind about self-publishing in the last decade? Are there other technologies you’ve changed your mind about?  So yes, there will be a ton of crap AI-generated books. But readers aren’t stupid As JA Konrath said in his original article, “Readers don't care if some moron uploads his ten-years-in-the-making opus “Me and My Boogers: A Love Story.” They’ll be able to avoid it just by looking at the crummy cover art, the poor description, and the handful of one star reviews.” The same is true of the masses of AI books generated in one second or less which are flooding the store. As with every other flood of crap content, Amazon/Google/Meta, etc will crack down and those books will be culled, the ‘authors’ penalized, etc.  Inevitably, some ‘real’ authors will get crushed by the hammer, but they will appeal and be reinstated.  There will also be regulation, safety guidelines, legal shifts, and guardrails added to the technology in the coming months and years as things develop. For example, we had Microsoft Bing’s Sidney for just a few weird days, and now they have added guard-rails to stop it getting too creative. [The Verge] Like fire, electricity, and the internet in general, ‘AI’ is both a tool and a weapon. It is our job to engage and help shape it for the better — because it is not going away and the usage and applications of AI will only increase and accelerate. Compare the internet of 2003 with the internet of 2023. The impact of AI will be much greater than this. Read AI 2041: Ten Visions For Our Future – Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan for a glimpse of the possibilities. So what about Clarkesworld and other smaller companies (agents/publishers/journals etc)? Every company and publication will need to apply filters of some kind. I am a one-person business, and I already use a premium paid spam filter and a premium paid Contact form on my blog, because I get hit by hundreds of spam comments and messages per day. These types of filter products will emerge for spam AI content and that will help somewhat.  There may also need to be a submission fee, even just 1c/1p, to submit to a magazine, or an award, to join an organization, or even to publish on Amazon. Some say that would prevent marginalized writers submitting, but there could also be a fund set up that people could apply for so that isn’t an issue.  Some say that’s against the spirit of these free submissions but times have changed, technology has changed, and business practices need to change, too. Back to JA Konrath’s blog post, he ends with, “If you're really worried about readers being subjected to crap, here's what you can do: DON'T WRITE CRAP.” So now we come to the authors who love to write and create and who want to reach readers — and who want to use technology to help them do that. Use AI tools responsibly to create great art and run a better creative business There are ‘real’ human authors right now using AI tools to create better books and to run a better business. I am one of them, which is not a surprise to regular listeners as I have been talking about AI since 2016, and I wrote a book about the potential impact in 2020. Usage of AI tools is a continuum and we all sit at different places along the spectrum. We are already a diverse group and each person is using the tools in a different way. Some only use AI tools for generating sales descriptions or ad copy. Others are using it to generate finished words and images, then editing and shaping those according to their creative direction, as Tim Boucher does in the following interview.  I have been writing for publication since 2005. I first self-published in 2008, and every year since, I have learned about and used new tools that help me improve my craft, write better books and run a better creative business. I embraced blogging and selling ‘ebooks’ (PDFs back then) before the international Kindle and the iPhone made mobile and e-reading popular. I started podcasting in 2009, way before it went mainstream. I jumped on YouTube and Twitter, and used print on demand for print books, and later used paid ads, and then tools like Vellum and ProWritingAid as they emerged — and many more.  The tools I use now in 2023 are almost completely different to the ones I used in 2005 when I started out — and many of the tools I use now are AI-assisted.  If you use Grammarly or ProWritingAid, or you use Amazon, Meta (Facebook), TikTok, Twitter, or Google for social media, search, publishing or shopping, you are AI-assisted. In the next few months, if you use Microsoft Word, you will be AI-assisted [The Verge]. So please, let’s distinguish between humans who will spam and scam and plagiarize and want to get rick quick, and those of us who are genuine writers who use AI tools as a collaborator/brainstorming partner/marketing assistant etc to help us create what we want to, in our voice, with our creative direction, and to reach readers with our books. I remember being attacked for my publishing choices back in the ‘tsunami of crap’ days, and this feels like that time all over again.  The fear, vitriol and personal attacks make me just as upset, and make me want to stop talking about this stuff in public because I am just another human, wanting to make my art, wanting to reach readers, and wanting to make a creative living. But back then, I felt so excited and energized and empowered by my choice to self-publish that I wanted to share my lessons learned with others.  And I feel the same way now.  In fact, I am more excited about the years ahead. I am having so much fun using the tools, and I am filling my journals with ideas sparked by these emerging technologies. I love this stuff! I’ve been saying for years that this is the most exciting time to be an author, and once again, I stand behind that. What a brilliant time to be a creator!  I hope it doesn’t take a decade for this to shake out, but in the meantime — as I did 15 years ago — I will keep writing the best books I can for my readers, and continue to make a living as a full-time author entrepreneur, and I will use tools to help me do that. We are in the very early days of “AI in everything,” and as such, it is a chaotic time. But these tools are not going away, so you have to decide how much you want to engage.  Personally, I try to come at everything with an attitude of curiosity and playfulness. I spend a lot of time laughing and giggling with ChatGPT in particular, it’s like my inner 2-year-old come to life which is a lot of fun! You must find your own way. Here are more resources to explore further:  Ethical guidelines for AI usage from the Alliance of Independent Authors  My backlist episodes on AI and the future of publishing Book: Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, and Virtual Worlds: The Impact of Converging Technologies on Authors and the Publishing Industry The AI-Assisted Author course (includes aspects of ethics, copyright, bias etc)  I haven’t covered the copyright side here, as I covered some of the current legal cases in the intro to episode 670, my last AI show on AI-generated art with Oliver Altair, and I have an intellectual property lawyer coming on the show soon to talk more specifically about that.  Thanks again to my patrons who support episodes like this, and if you have questions to ask me about this or anything else, please join me at patreon.com/thecreativepenn or if you found this useful, you can Buy Me A Coffee. Right, let’s get into the interview with Tim and continue the challenging conversation!  Transcript of the interview with Tim Boucher Joanna PennTim Boucher is a hyperrealist AI artist and writer specializing in questionable alternative realities. He's worked professionally in content moderation policy, and counter-disinformation efforts on behalf of a major web platform, a blockchain protocol. And he has advised nonprofits and governments on related issues. Welcome to the show, Tim. Tim BoucherThank you. Thanks for having me. Joanna PennOh, I'm excited to talk to you. but first up, Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Tim BoucherSure, well, I'd like to say that I'm living the American dream of becoming a Canadian. So I was born in the United States, but I've been up here now since 2011. And now I'm a dual citizen. I've always been interested in writing, I think the more recent place that I started to really do it again, a lot was in 2020, just before the pandemic, I started working on a novel called The Lost Direction. And that got me really excited again, about this idea that I could just be a writer. I could try to do that and try to make that work. It's not yet my full-time thing, of course, and that's the genesis of a lot of this other work that has come out after. Joanna Penn Tell us more about the lost Books project, What is it? And why did you create it? Tim BoucherWell, it's really just kind of my personal imprint that I use for some print books and a bunch of ebooks. but I've looked around a lot at publishing and professionally in self-publishing, and I like to kind of do things the way that I want to do them and not have to compromise about the direction of the work. So making my own kind of imprint or press made more sense to me and then trying to pursue publishing through another avenue. Lost Books, it's primarily right now, my current project is doing AI Assisted writing. but that's not the only kind of writing that I've done. As I said, the original book that I started with was all just normal manual writing, I don't know what we call that now, just regular writing, but Joanna PennI like that ‘manual writing,' but that sounds like handwriting, so you would just be just a normal writer with no AI assistance. Tim BoucherRight, because in 2020, or whatever, this was in its infancy, and arguably it still is. but it was kind of only over the last six months or seven months that I got really into the AI side of things. The tools started to improve, they started to be more available. And there started to be image generation tools that were really exciting, like DALL-E and Stable Diffusion. And I've always been an artist as well as a writer, so having the opportunity to mix images and texts, I think, finally gave me the ability to produce a lot of things quickly that I've had, that I'd had stored up for a long time. Because, like writing, to draw things by hand or to paint or even do things digitally, it's really time-consuming. So this has been a way for me to express all of these things that have been locked up for a long time. Joanna PennWhat is the genre of Lost Books and also is The Last Direction different to these other books you've produced? Tim BoucherThe Last Direction is pretty much just like a straight-up epic fantasy. And then there were some follow-ons to that one of which was called The Quatria Conspiracy. So that's sort of a, a very tongue-in-cheek take on the world of the original book, The Last Direction, proposing that it's not just a fictional story, proposing that there was a hypothetical ancient civilization called Quatria, that the whole thing is based on and that it's been covered up. So from that I kind of had this idea of pursuing the presentation of my fantasy world, within the context of conspiracy fiction, it's a kind of switching it a bit to a pulp science fiction world where it's heavy on the world building. It's heavy on alternate realities, sort of the uncanny valley between AI and humans. And this word hyperreality has come up a lot for me, where it's this sort of postmodern idea that fact and fiction get blended together. And I really took that idea and run with it. And AI tools have been really helpful in that regard. Yeah, Joanna PennSo when you first pitched me, I went to your store, and I was like, ‘whoa, this guy is creating AI generated books that are full of conspiracy theories.' And it made me worried because one of the problems that we're now seeing with these AI tools is they are not facts, that they make stuff up and for us as fiction writers, this is brilliant, but also, you've worked in misinformation. Of course, someone's conspiracy theory is someone else's truth. Right? So how do you feel about this line between misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theory? Tim BoucherYeah, I mean, it's one of the things that I want to talk about with my writing, one of the conversations that I want to generate. And I've had a little bit of success with this. One of the first AI books that I put out was called Mysterious Antarctica, and it again, it follows this theory that there was this lost civilization and that they were in Antarctica, and that I used DALL-E to create images that were supposedly like people discovering artifacts, buildings and stuff in Antarctica in the 1950s. From that, I got contacted for a couple of somewhat big fact checkers, because other people took my content out of its original context, and repurposed it on Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, all over the place, posting it as though it's a real historical thing. And I got fact check requests from Reuters, and from France 24. There was another one. So it showed me that the way that these things travel, you might start with one intent, but then other people sort of grab on to it, and they kind of twist it, and it changes. But this is the nature of stories and storytelling in general. And something I saw working in disinformation is these alternative models of how stories are told, and stories are transmitted from person to person. And they get distorted and changed over time. This, to me, seems like a very kind of modern take on folklore and mythology. And there are good things and bad things about that. There are risks when you take a chance like that as an artist and create something and present it in a certain way that people won't take it in the way that you meant it that they might distort it and look at it in another way, but I tried to mitigate that somewhat by I tried to only focus on sort of, I want to say fun conspiracies, things that are low harm potential. I don't want to do anything that's against people or against groups, or that's too controversial or creepy. I tried to keep things that are more on the light side, like it would be fun if there was a lost civilization discovered in Antarctica. What I've seen is that people are excited about this kind of way of looking at the world that it's like, what's maybe possible, you know, what's maybe true in opening up that kind of speculation, and then also being able to talk freely about like. The problems around these technologies, like you said, they hallucinate facts, and they just say things that are wrong, or that are offensive, and that there needs to be that human layer on top of it, too. And that's one of the things that I'm happy about having these organizations ask me for a fact check. I want to be able to say What I'm doing and why and start these conversations. Joanna PennJust to explain to the listeners, I said no to you, I don't want to talk about misinformation. And then you replied and kind of re-educated me on this. And actually, and now I agree with you. And we're having this conversation because actually, we want to tell people, that there there is this myth of misinformation and what I mean, what's crazy, is it's not just the machine, it's also the humans. Humans are spreading misinformation. Humans seem to love these stories. I mean, when you talked about Antarctica, I mean, I've read HP Lovecraft At the Mountains of Madness, and ancient civilizations, these stories, like you mentioned, myths, these are kind of part of our human mythos, and so they spread. To me, the biggest thing that we should be doing is educating people about how to discover what is really true. And we have to behave in a different way. We can't just assume that what we search for, or what we create, or what we use with these tools is correct. And so it's almost like we need to educate people to go deeper than we're used to. And even with, like with Google. Google's going to implement its Lambda model. But perhaps we shouldn't be trusting Google anyway. I mean, I think we've realized that over the years, so I totally agree with you about this education of everyone about what we can trust and what we can't — and that includes humans, right? Tim BoucherPeople criticize AI technologies, because they can be “confidently wrong,” but that's exactly what humans can do, too. So the same problems that humans create are the same ones we're seeing in artificial intelligence, but they're amplified because the technologies can scale and that's where risk starts to set in when something can be rapidly created and distributed and millions of people can see it in a short time. Joanna PennSo what did Reuters say when you replied, look, this is fiction? Tim BoucherI mean, they just published my comments for the most part, and there wasn't a lot back and forth on that particular point. It's interesting, I think there's an issue with the fact checks that if you're somebody that you've gone really deep into some of this alternative conspiracy stuff, sometimes a fact check has the opposite of its intended effect. And it's something I saw just in the world of moderation. And the world of working with nonprofits and stuff is that even a well-intentioned fact check can sometimes backfire. And then some people can take that as proof of a cover-up. So it's hard to communicate that thing. What you have to communicate instead is the tools for people to find the answer and be able to trust that they're going to try to apply them. And that's kind of what I'm hoping to do is to be able to provoke that reaction, like, I see when people take my images and copy them and other places. And then people will come in and say, ‘Oh, that's fake. And here's why.' I liked that people are coming in, and they're just applying their critical thinking on the spot, sharing it with other people, and starting those conversations, because maybe those people wouldn't be reached by a conventional fact check. but having this provocation helps to inoculate a bit against, I hope, some of the worst elements of that stuff. Joanna PennThere's lots to unpack there. I did want to come back to one of your blog posts where you were talking about creating these books, you say we invert, basically, you're “embracing the flaws of AI, writing the poor coherence, the inability to track narrative arcs, the tendency to invent facts, we want to recognize these artifacts as a feature, not a bug,” [Tim's blog]. I really, I really love that. And I say that to people about AI audio. We're not trying to make it human. Once it is so like humans, we can't distinguish, that's probably more of a worry. Talk more about the flaws of AI. Do you think they will disappear? Tim BoucherI mean, I think they're going to disappear. What we're seeing now is like the 1980s or 1990s of computing that, like we'd have these like primitive graphics, and that it would take a super long time to download over your connection, your modem. And I think coming generations of technology, it's going to just go faster and faster. but to me, like, one of the things that is sort of the ideal purpose of an artist is to interrogate the technologies that they use to create and what I mean by that is that you don't just passively use them, you actively use them, you question them, you try to push them to the edges and to the limits. And you document that process of here's what I found when I went out exploring with this technology, and some of its good and some of its bad. And here are the questions that it makes me want to ask it to find the answers to. And I think it's really important for artists to get involved in these kinds of new technologies, because there's a real risk of having a preponderance of only the engineering mindset. Joanna PennTech bros! Tim BoucherRight, you know, I'm someone that I've worked a lot in technology and platforms and everything. but when I look at job listings, it's always for engineers. And it's like, I get it, that's the bread and butter of these technologies. but it can lead to lopsided ways of thinking about the human impacts of technology. So I really encourage like artists and writers, anybody creative to get into these tools and become experts in them, like, take them apart, bit by bit and make your own tools make your own variations. Because when you become an expert, you can have a seat at the table in the conversation and the development of the technologies and you can help to steer it in a good direction. When you become an expert. And you have this firsthand experience, it's much more powerful than just sort of having a theoretical knowledge of it. Joanna PennIt's funny. I mean, obviously, I've been talking about this for years now. And I'm not I mean, I'm reasonably au-fait with technical things, but I'm not a programmer, and I'm not an engineer, for sure, but my feeling on this now is that let's assume that AI is going to get better and better — barring some big disasters, things will get better and better. First of all, I agree with you, we should engage with these things, but equally, the AI tools ingest human artistic work so it will learn. Someone emailed me yesterday, and they're like, Oh, I asked ChatGPT to roleplay as Joanna Penn and asked it to give me a pep talk about my writing. Author tip: Ask Chat GPT to give you an encouraging pep talk channeling @thecreativepenn – So warm and upbeat and practical. I feel better already!! #ChatGPT #authorlife #amwriting #WritingCommunity— Enni Amanda (@EnniAuthor) February 20, 2023 And I said, ‘that's fantastic, send me the screenshots' and it was like ChatGPT was me. I love that. I have no issue with that at all. But it was funny, because I kind of think, well, it's ingested all of me and I'm pretty positive. I mean, some of my fiction stories can be quite dark, but I have to believe that the machine will ingest all the happy things as well as all the sad things and all the beautiful art as well as all the terrible art and that it hopefully will come up on the side of beauty and goodness and all those things. Although, I mean, there's always a dark side right, but part of me thinks that again, we're in such early days that it is only the technical people who are trying it, and a very few artists and writers and whatever, but that very soon this will be in everything, and people will be engaging with it, I guess in a more natural way, rather than trying to talk to the technical people. Tim BoucherI still come across these barriers sometimes that I'm not an engineer, but I've gotten fairly technically savvy about certain things. but there's kind of like levels of involvement in some of these things like that I still haven't crossed, like, when people link to like a Google collab notebook, I close out the tab, like, I don't want to get to the point of having to become a programmer to do the next level of stuff, but I think there are people that that's their skill set. And that's their interest who might not be programmers, but they might be able to make a real impact on that. So I think it's worth it for them. There's a story that I like about the actor and director Buster Keaton when he first was presented with a movie camera. He took it home, or he took it to the hotel or whatever. And he took it apart piece by piece and figured out how everything worked, and then reassembled it and then kind of went from there. So I think that's a really great way to approach tools and just like openly trying to discover them and experiment. And there's room for reluctance, because I understand that there are issues that need to be resolved. but don't let reluctance stop you from learning, from becoming educated, and gaining experience. Joanna PennI totally agree. I get a lot of comments, obviously, and emails and things, and I'm absolutely fine if someone has a reasonably educated view that is different from mine. What I object to is someone who has not even looked at any of these tools, like someone who's not even gone to ChatGPT and tried anything, and then is just saying how awful everything is. So just coming back to you being very open, and you have a blog where you share a lot of your process as well around this. And I kind of dug into that. And I'm the same. I just had a blog post about my AI-assisted process for With A Demon's Eye, and I just list everything I used in terms of AI from images to text. I was part of the ethical AI guidelines with the Alliance of Independent Authors. And one of the things that we're recommending is labeling. So I label, my AI-narrated audiobooks have a little badge on them. I have this statement of AI usage in my books. I've been doing that. And what's so interesting is I've been criticized for using AI, and then I've been criticized for telling people that I'm using AI. Tim BoucherRight? So it's hard to win. Joanna PennYeah, it is hard to win. One cannot win. But personally, I'm staying on the side of labeling even just to be aware of myself, like in 10 years' time, will I look back and say, well, it's interesting that I was labeling things, because clearly at the time, it was hard to know what was the right thing to do. What are your thoughts on labeling and ethical and responsible usage of AI? Tim BoucherI think labeling is a really good and positive thing because it gives people an idea of what to expect. If you're writing in a genre, you want to also label what your genre is, because people might not like that genre. So I think of it as a sort of a subcategory of whatever your genre is already. But it's tricky because when people ask for labeling of content, they don't always know what it is that their objective is. If you find out that something is AI-assisted or AI-generated, what does that tell you? It says different things to different people. And it's not necessarily clear what we should expect from that. And it's tricky, too, because a lot of AI writing right now is hybrid-human and AI collaboration more than just purely AI-generated. At a micro level, it becomes really difficult to say like, well, this part of it was written by AI, this part was written by me like how do we do that? Technically, as writers or within products that help us as writers that use AI? So there are a lot of unanswered questions there that I'm interested in because I like tech products, and I like to try to figure them out. One thing I've thought about a lot is could we have sort of a simple markup or markdown way to within a text label, which parts are the AI-generated parts? One of the things I've landed on is there's a historical mark of punctuation or the editor mark, I guess more called the obelus I'm not even sure how you pronounce it, but it's shaped in different forms. It's shaped like a division sign. Sometimes it's shaped more like a percent sign. And I think what it was originally used for was in analysis of Homeric texts that people would mark on the side of the manuscript or whatever using this symbol, whether or not if they thought a part of the text was maybe invented that it wasn't actually true to Homer's original tale. So there is a historical precedent for taking texts and marking them up to say this part is questionable, this part, we're not sure of the origin of it. So I think there's something there that can be explored of, of how can we do that and apply that at a really micro level within texts at an in line. So I think that things like that, writers who have their own perspective and who have historical knowledge of analysis of texts, they're going to have a lot to contribute that an engineer might not know about. So that's another reason for people to get involved. I think some of the other ethical issues I tend to think of, partly because of my professional background is in risk and analyzing risk, and then figuring out what do we need to do to reduce or to eliminate risks? So I tend to think of things like internet technologies in terms of harms. Is there a harm to specific a specific person or to a specific group of people? Can you identify who they would be? And what would be the harm? How harmful might it be? What is the likelihood? And things like that? And then that gives me a more concrete framework from which to decide about? Who is impacted? And how much and why and is it really something that I want to engage in or not? So I think something I'm seeing from artists and from writers who are hesitant to get into AI stuff is that I think people are waiting for ethical issues to be worked out over time. And I think that's a legitimate position. but I also think that if you're waiting for things to become perfect, and for all the possible problems to go away, you're gonna be waiting a really long time, and you're gonna miss out on being part of the conversation to develop it in a good and ethical direction. Joanna PennFor sure. I mean, on that, the ethical things, I mean, we even right now, as we record this, there's been all these articles about Roald Dahl, the children's author, I don't know if you've seen these about how his children's books are being rewritten to remove or anything considered offensive by a modern sensitivity reader. [The Guardian.] And I grew up reading Roald Dahl. I'm in my late 40s now, and I still remember them very well. And they were brilliantly offensive, and I loved that as a kid, you know? And so there's a lot of hand-wringing over this. Every generation has its own different decision on what is ethical and what is right. So as you said, it will never stop. but I want to come back to that mark up in the text. That's definitely not what I meant by labeling, because personally, you mentioned hybrid writing earlier — that's how I'm using AI. It's in a very hybrid way. There is no way at the moment with my writing process, I would label like, oh, this particular word is from AI.” Tim Boucher: Oh, no, that would be too much. Joanna Penn: Some people use it a lot more but what I also think is we will edit, so it is much easier to label an AI editor, an AI narrated audiobook, because that is it's final output. Like my book cover for With A Demon's Eye, that image is generated by Midjourney. So that's easy, but I think text is hard. Then coming back on harm. What is the harm? So let's come back to someone using ChatGPT to generate texts in the ‘voice' of Joanna Penn. Some people would not find that acceptable. Some people would say you should not be using my name in a prompt. I'm delighted, but for some people that will indicate harm. You can go on to ChatGPT, you can say “write a blog post in the style of Joanna Penn about seven tips for first-time authors.” Like literally go and do that now, and you could publish it under your name. Now, does that harm me? Where is the harm there? What do you think? Tim BoucherI mean, I think that has to be on an individual basis for creators because it's going to be a different limit for each person. I think there are risks there around the right of publicity of using someone's name or their likeness. Or some people argue that style should be covered under that if it isn't already. I'm not sure exactly the technicalities, and then there's also the risk of impersonation, I guess that someone could use your name and then post something and then make it look like you posted something that it wasn't you I think it's just got to be figured out for each person. Joanna PennBut copyright law is not per person. Copyright law is copyright law. So basically, the biggest question that is outstanding at the moment is are these bots trained on copyright data? And clearly, in some cases they are. Copyright protects the expression of the idea, not the idea itself, so style is not covered. Right? People already every day, take my blog posts and repost them on their own websites, even though that's a breach of copyright. So this is difficult. I mean, coming back on ethics: One of my ethical rules is: do not use someone else's name in a prompt whether that's art or text or whatever. Tim BoucherMe too. I totally agree on that. I don't want to create work in the style of someone else. I want to create work in my own style or find a new style. I don't want to just go into Stable Diffusion, or DALL-E or Midjourney, or whatever, and say, make something like this person. What's the next level? I always want to know, like, where it's going, what's gonna happen next. One thing I've seen, that's, I think, a bit problematic in some of the products that are, like third-party user interfaces. For some of these tools, if you apply a filter and some of those products, it will automatically use an artist's name, and it might not be super apparent that's being added to the prompt, but it is. And I think that's kind of like a fishy area that I don't really like. I would rather just be more in control of the prompt itself and not try to imitate someone else and try to take it in a new direction. So I definitely agree with you. Joanna PennSo even though I said I'm not bothered about it, in general, it is not something that I think we should be doing. Because as soon as you use someone's name in a prompt, you know that machine is calling up whatever it has around that person, whether it as you said, whether it's visual art, whether it's music, whether it's written work. If the work is in the public domain, then I don't have a problem. So for example, I have said to ChatGPT, rewrite this in the style of HP Lovecraft. But then taking someone like Lovecraft, well known as racist and misogynist, all these awful things, but his writing was amazing, well, then obviously, I'm going to edit that and if anything comes up that is offensive in our generation, then I'm going to edit it. So yeah, we're agreeing on this, right? Tim Boucher: Yeah, absolutely. Joanna Penn: Okay, so let's talk about some of the other things. So let's come back to your actual generation process. What AI tools are you using for your books and covers? Tim BoucherI use a variety of tools. And for this reason, that also we were talking about, like the ability to track which parts were made by AI, it gets really difficult because I mix tools so much, that it's just hard to between like jumping between different tabs and stuff, as I go through a text that it's hard to figure out which part was written by which tool or which part was written by me. So I agree that there's a need to label it at a higher level. But the tools that I use, in general. There's a website called TextSynth.com, that let you use a bunch of different open-source models like GPT J, and there's another one GPT Neo X and fair sec, I'm not sure how you pronounce that, but all of those are open-source text generation models, and they're accessible through that site. And the way that that one works is you enter a bunch of sentences or, or however much text you have, and the AI tries to complete it. And then you can raise the temperature setting on this, which I like to do when I want to get like a curveball. And it starts to become much more weird and much more like AI feeling the text. So I'll use that sometimes. I've been using verb.ai a lot, I think you use Sudowrite. Joanna PennYes, I have tried verb.ai. And as you're talking I mean, people are like, Oh, my goodness, I haven't heard of that one. There are literally hundreds of these. Tim BoucherThere's a lot, yeah. But verb.AI I've liked because it's kind of straightforward. You just have your text area where you're writing and editing. And then they use forward slash commands, like you might have seen in Slack, or I guess probably Discord uses those too. You can use like a describe command, and then you can say ahat you want to describe or continue command, and then there's like a reword option and you can tell it like reword, but change it to be more whatever. So I've used that one a lot. And I like it because according to the CEO who I spoke with, they use not only GPT 3, or maybe even 3.5, but they also combine it with some other sources, which I think are ai 21 and some proprietary texts that they use as corpus. So that one's nice because it's just like a simple editing environment. And it's relatively quick and it's I find that the text has a kind of unique and different flavor than what I've seen in some other tools. I've also used a lot, character.ai, I really like them, you can go and within just like a few seconds you generate a character, describe what it is, and then you can converse with them. You can have it be a character in your book or your story, and then you could also have it be a historical figure or some secondary figure. I've used that that site a lot to work on, like press releases, or to work on like more of the short expository writing that goes on around promoting a book, which I feel that I'm less good at or less confident in. And that does a really good job because like I can have a dialogue with this tool that I say what I want, and then like reconfigure it to ask me some questions. And it's not recreating everything from scratch. It's not coming up with the most creative things ever, but this act of like the dialogue, it lets you to get somewhere that you wouldn't have gotten if you hadn't engaged in that. So it's really good for that. ChatGPT is similar in that way. It has kind of a different focus, though. It's almost to me not as much meant to be a chatbot. I don't go and ask ChatGPT what it thinks about things, you know? Joanna PennIt's helped me rewrite sales descriptions to make them more like a best-selling thriller. Tim BoucherAnd I think it does a great job at that kind of stuff. but I found that using ChatGPT for like, more of the creative writing side of stuff. It's a little bit flat sometimes. Joanna PennThough again, we're speaking on the 20th of February 2023, and just before we got on the phone and article, I just saw an article [Silicon Republic] saying that they're going to in their advanced paid service for ChatGPT, they're going to allow you to configure what you want the service to do and change the guard rails. I got on ChatGPT the very day they launched it, like that the morning I was on it. And what I was able to do around darker fiction stuff, like even guns, right? I write thrillers, there are guns, whatever people's ethics are, that is in the thriller genre. And so I was like, wow, this is great. And then within a couple of days, you are not allowed to talk about guns, right? The service has got more and more restricted. Because they're having to shut down this and shut down that but then people are like, well, what if I have conservative politics? Or what if I am someone who wants to write about guns? Or what if I am someone who wants to write about Marxism? What they're saying is, you'll be able to configure the guardrails (presumably within reason) in the future. So I'm hopeful that it will mean I can get back to what it was at the beginning. We shall see of course. Tim BoucherNo, I agree about a lot of that. And I think the thing for me that I found the most annoying as a fiction writer is like, I'll be like, Okay, write a science fiction thing about this. And then it will be like, Oh, as a large language model, I'm not able to do that, blah, blah, blah. Joanna PennYou have to say, “Pretend you are an author, or we're role-playing where you're an author.” You have to like trick it. Tim BoucherAnd I totally understand OpenAI's perspective in that they've got now I think, like 100 million users or something. And it's really hard to satisfy the needs of that many people through a single tool with a sort of a single configuration. And I think we've seen how that plays out. Everybody wants something different from it. So I think that's going to be a good direction, we'll see how it gets deployed. Going back to the tools. I use DALL-E a lot for images, I think that their images have like a kind of a luminous quality. To me, there's something about just like the colors on the light that I like, when you get into certain aspects of it. I've used Stable Diffusion quite a lot to use, specifically playgroundai.com because they let you generate a bunch of images for free or there are paid tiers. And most of the time I start with my text first, I start with the title. I have sort of like a few different formats of titles that I use. I haven't mentioned this earlier in the podcast, but I am up to like 67 titles now that are AI-assisted. Joanna PennHow long have you been creating? Tim BoucherI started on August 4, 2022, so it's a rate of about 10 a month, a little bit less. I should stipulate that like, those are not full-length books, generally they're between 2000 and 5000 words and they include between 40 and 100 images. Joanna PennAre you doing this all day, every day or have you also created some kind of program that is just doing it for you? Tim BoucherNo, I'm just like a voluminous writer. I'm very productive. And I'm pretty efficient. And I've really nailed down a workflow that just lets me operate fast. And to some degree, it's a formula. but a lot of genre writing becomes a formula. When you have a formula, there comes a lot of freedom, because you know what you need to hit in the overall structure in your writing, and then you're free to explore all this other stuff around that. So having sort of a structure, a workflow, a formula that I can rely on and fall back on, has helped me to build exponentially what I would do just manually before. What does your AI-assisted workflow look like? But my workflow in general, I start with the title, and I generate maybe a sentence or two about what this volume is going to be about. And then I'll just go and start writing it in verb.ai or another tool, and then I'll pop in between different tools and have things get expanded or changed and add another element. And then once I've kind of reached all the stuff that I wanted to reach in that volume, I will go and I'll do my image generations. And then I save those locally. And I put them into Adobe Lightroom, which is a really great product that I think few people know about fairly for this use for managing large sets of images and being able to kind of quickly go through and pare down out of all the image generations that I did into the golden set that's going to fit best with this title on this topic and the vibe, the mood and everything. And then from there, I go into Vellum, which is my favorite ebook writing and publishing application by far. Really simple, really fast, very beautiful results, almost no problems ever with it. So I really love them. And I'll put everything into short chapters, and then I mix the images into the text and I try to have sometimes the images are reflecting the contents of the text, and sometimes they're like really clashing about it like, it will have sort of a different visual story or like a complimentary visual story that sort of like highlights and expands on what's being presented in the text. I should also probably note that structurally, ahat I'm doing as a writer is, it's really a lot of world-building and lore. I have like very few deep characterizations, you know, like, sometimes books, like there's just not even a character, it's more like an encyclopedia entry about this fictional thing. And this is something that a rich precedent of that I think especially in like, mid-century sci-fi, of having like Dune, or the Foundation books that a chapter will start with like an excerpt from a fictional encyclopedia. So that's a structure that I play on a lot. And it lets me incorporate, like I said before, these like flawed factual statements, or these like inconsistencies, and just present them as they are, and not try to dress them up. I think if you're doing other kinds of writing, and you're using AI, you might end up being more frustrated than then my use, because it does have a hard time keeping track of characters and in keeping track of narrative arcs like tools like verb.ai and, to some extent, some other ones are, they're trying to solve that, but none of them have quite landed on how to do that. Joanna PennThey're getting there, though, like Sudowrite now is basically you keep a little side note with things, and then that gets incorporated into the next chapter. But coming back on the speed. I can hear people who are listening, they're still on “67 books since August.” !!!! Let's just be really brutal. People will say AI-assisted books are a ‘tsunami of crap.' This used to be thrown at self-published authors back in the day. We were told that self-publishing is a tsunami of crap that will drown out real books, real authors. [JA Konrath, 2011.] Now, I think this is like 2007 all over again, this is a tsunami of crap, the quality is bad. There'll be no real books, no real artists anymore, it will just be awful, and it will kill off real authors, etc, etc. So what do you say about that? I mean, inevitably, you've talked about making 67 books. They could be the very top end of literature, but still the ability to make them that fast means we are going to have an explosion of content like we've never had before. So what are your thoughts on this issue of quality and tsunami of crap? What can authors do to make good art and also to stand out in a very, very crowded market? Tim BoucherYeah. I mean, I tend to follow this prediction by a journalist named Nina Schick. She has a generative AI newsletter on substack that's worth following too. She predicts that within a couple of years, 90% of content on the internet will be aI generated. Honestly, I think it might be higher than that. Just because of the sheer fact that AI can do it much faster than people and even myself, like, I'm not using some program automated to automate the whole workflow. I'm just like using tools and then piecing things together. And I think eventually people are going to automate the whole workflow. And it's going to be more of a single button press. And I think that's, in some ways, that's bad, but in some ways, like if the content that's generated is good, what's the major issue? But of course, not all the content that's generated like that is going to be good. Joanna PennWell, the major issue is that we all find it hard enough to make a living selling books now when there are already something like 21 million books on the Kindle Store. How will it work when there are 21 billion? Or how are people going to find my Shopify store? So marketing and making money with your books is the problem. But let's leave aside the quality discussion because that is in the eye of the beholder. And I totally agree with you, I think within a very short time, you will be able to press a button and output a thriller, or a romance according to whatever rules you like, but how are you thinking about this? How are you building an audience? How are you marketing? How do you think we can stand out? Tim BoucherI mean, I think, like, writing manually in this mode, as we said, like, I don't think that's going go away. People want to do that, and people want to read that. So I think there's room for everything in the future that I imagined my ideal vision that's like that, if people want that they can get that if they want things that are more AI-generated, or that are like custom-tailored to their specific interests or whatever, like, they'll be able to get that too. And I think there are going to be issues about like, how do you position yourself within that market? And I think that's where becoming an expert in how the tools work is going to be to your advantage. There's also an Alan Moore quote that I remember, I think he was talking about V for Vendetta, like his comic book, the original vision versus like, how it was transformed into a movie. And he said, look, the comic books still exists, it's always going to exist in that form. And the movie is this other thing. And people can take it in, in the way that they take it. but he didn't see that conflict between the movie replacing the comic book, because it's still there. It's still available. But I agree that marketing books is one of the hardest things that I've ever done. Joanna PennBecause also, you don't sell on Amazon, do you? Tim BoucherNo, I sell only on gumroad.com, which is probably weird to people. But just briefly, Amazon has such a controlling influence sometimes in my life. I'm always buying things on Amazon, that I feel creatively, I don't want them to control my creative output. There's something creepy about that. For me, if I'm wearing like Amazon sweatpants, and watching Amazon shows, and they own all my books, that feels kind of dystopian to me. There are so few corporations that that control so much of publishing, I think that's a really negative thing. So I think that being more DIY, even than Amazon, and carving out these alternative ways to sell it, it can be one way to differentiate yourself too, because you can't go on Amazon to get my books, you have to go through Gumroad. And when you do, I know exactly how much Gumroad is going to take, they're going to take 10%. And I also know that if you buy a book, I'll get your email address, like I'm not. So far I'm not using those and I'm not doing a newsletter or anything like that to promote. but I can see like, if someone bought a book, I can see like how many books they bought, like I have a lot of people who they come back after buying one book, and they'll buy like six more, they'll buy 10 more, I have one person who's bought like over 30 titles out of 67. Joanna PennWas that Mr Tinfoil hat?! Tim BoucherWell, you know, their interpretation is, I'm sure it's going to be different than mine, but I don't want to also enforce a single interpretation of the work either. But I think there's there's a benefit to having greater control over not just the tools of production, but also the distribution. Joanna PennI mean, I obviously talked about selling direct all the time, but still, the question remains, how do you get people to find your Gumroad store? Tim BoucherRight? So because my work is like a blend of fact and fiction that rides on this edge of science fiction and conspiracy, like, I will post things to want to Reddit or my Medium accounts. Those are really the only two social media sites that I use anymore. And from there, people go and they read the pitch page, and if they're interested, they buy it. I'm doing pretty well compared to how I was doing when I was just trying to promote an epic fantasy novel. Promoting an epic fantasy novel is really hard. And if I had known that before, maybe I would have been more disillusioned before going in but it's part of why I've modulated my approach. It's part of why I got into this idea of the hyperreal storytelling devices and just framing things in different ways and letting people make their own decisions about what's real and what's not. One of the things that's ironic is that my original fantasy book, The Last Direction, it's sold far fewer than any of the other follow-ups about like the conspiracy framing of it of the Quatria conspiracy, or the Mysterious Antarctica book like that has sold so many more. Joanna PennBut Mysterious Antarctica, or Mysterious Egypt or Mysterious whatever, that's the kind of thing I buy for my research, It's fun, even though it's fake, and I read books for ideas. We could talk forever, but I feel like we're almost out of time. Before you go, we've talked about a lot of things that are difficult, a lot of things that are challenging for people, but where do you think things are going? Because I really do think we're in the super, super early days of all this. It feels like 2007, this kind of iPhone moment when we were like, What do we do with that? Who needs a phone like that? And this is like now. So what's it going to be like in the next 15 years? What are you excited about? Obviously, not 15 years away, but what are you excited about? What do you think's going to be happening? Tim BoucherI mean, one of the things that I'm most excited about is like, Okay, I want to reach 100 volumes, and I'm like, feverishly trying to work towards 100. I calculated that it's going to be like maybe another three and a half months if I'm lucky and I can keep up the speed. What I'm excited about is, is eventually having another AI layer that can come in, it can ingest all my books and it can make like a map of all of my universe, or multiverse, or whatever. And it can say these are all the relations between all the entities and the characters and the places. And here's a timeline of events, and then it can reference the different sources. And then you could even like highlight, like, okay, there's a conflict between how this is described here and how this is described there. And I think like, once I can reach that level where I can put the work in there and then get these like next-level interpretations and representations, there's going to be like a whole new layer of storytelling, that's going to be really exciting. And it just seems like an inevitability that that will happen. And I've already seen, there's a tool called file chat, that you can upload your documents to it. And then you can sort of like conversationally query the contents of the documents. So I think that's not going to be a super long way away, kind of what I'm describing. Joanna PennI agree. And I mean, we talked about the problems of discoverability, but actually an AI over layer that can go actually find something for me, that can actually find me fiction that I would love regardless of where that might be, I think that'd be brilliant. Because it feels like at this point in time, the Amazon algorithm is broken, or is gamed by ads or whatever. And I feel as a reader what's so crazy as a reader for the last couple of years, really, I've found books in new ways. I've gone back to bestseller lists, or I've gone back to physical bookstores, because I feel like the ad model has changed things and that the recommendations I get are not good enough. So I want a better AI to recommend me books. Tim BoucherI have the same problem with music on Spotify that like, because I listened to something a few times. Now Spotify is convinced forever that this is my favorite thing. And I only want to listen to that from now on, and it gets very distorted the recommendations. And it makes me feel that like, now I don't even like the things that I like before because like Spotify is just forcing me on it. And I contrast that to a decade or two decades ago when I was younger. And like when my main source of new music and movies and books and stuff was from my friends, like people who I hung out with in real life, that would be like, Oh, you're gonna love this, check this out. And to me, that human element is never gonna go away, but I think like you said that over time as the AI is approved, we'll get better recommendations and better ability to find the things that we're going to love and that are going to change your life. And I think one solution for writers is to be super, extremely niche. Because like, as those recommendations improve, it's going to be easier for people who follow that very super specific niche to find you. Joanna PennYes, so a combination of exciting times and difficult times. I said to Jonathan, my husband the other day, I just love being alive right now. It's so exciting. Using the surfing the wave analogy. We're kind of wobbling on these boards. We don't know what's under the water, but it's really exciting at the same time. You feel excited and terrified, but yeah, this is amazing. Let's go! Tim BoucherYeah, yeah, let's go! Joanna Penn So where can people find you and your books online? Tim BoucherYeah, so the books themselves are at Lostbooks.gumroad.com or you can go to LostBooks.ca. Also, I run a personal blog, and I've rediscovered my love for just being able to be true to my vision of something and not having to worry about how it appears on a platform. I just get to write it myself. So if you want to see that stuff, you can go to TimBoucher.ca. And I talk about process and the technologies of AI and how artists need to have a strong role. So if you're interested in that stuff, go there. Joanna PennFantastic. well, thanks so much for your time, Tim. That was great.The post The Tsunami Of Crap, Misinformation, And Responsible Use Of AI With Tim Boucher first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you create a universe big enough for multiple series? How can you co-write successfully? How can you pivot your business model to achieve your creative, financial, and lifestyle goals? Martha Carr talks about these things and more. In the intro, Simon & Schuster is back up for sale [Reuters, Episode 662 with Jane Friedman]; The New Gatekeepers report [Ben Evans]; Marvellous Maps. Today's show is sponsored by Ingram Spark, which I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 40,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries, and more. It's your content—do more with it through IngramSpark.com. Martha Carr is the best-selling author of over 200 urban fantasy novels. Her newest series, Queen of the Flightless Dragons, will be coming out on Kickstarter in May 2023 with Book One, Eamon. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.  Show Notes The mindset shift when switching from traditional to indie publishing How to take notes, and then turn those notes into books How to know when an idea is big enough for a universe Rules to follow when creating different series arcs within a universe Pros and cons of co-writing Establishing contracts and protecting intellectual property when co-writing How the business model is continually changing for indie authors Kickstarter and why it is valuable to growing your audience You can find Martha Carr at MarthaCarr.com Header image created by Joanna Penn on Midjourney. Transcript of Interview with Martha Carr Joanna: Martha Carr is the best-selling author of over 200 urban fantasy novels. Her newest series, Queen of the Flightless Dragons, will be coming out on Kickstarter in May 2023 with Book One, Eamon. So welcome to the show, Martha. Martha: Thank you. I'm so glad to be here. Thanks for asking me. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you. So first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and self-publishing. Martha: So I started writing actually, shoot, about 35 years ago, and I was published traditionally, and I was a journalist, and I had a national column. And then of course, the world changed, and indie publishing became a thing, and it just got more and more enticing. And then I ran into Michael Anderle, and then the rest is history. Joanna: Now, some people listening might not know Michael Anderle, surprising as it is. But you said the word enticing, as well. What enticed you into this indie world? And how did your work with Michael start? Martha: So in traditional world, you have to have all your ducks in a row leading up to publication because you can't change much once the book is out there. So if you get the cover wrong or the blurb wrong, you have to live with it. And all the marketing you do is front-end loaded, and they give you about three months to prove that you can sell books. Then everything gets harder if you don't sell what they consider enough. In indie land, if you find the blurb is not working, you can change it that hour. And you can always redo all the covers. I mean, there's like a million chances to get to know your audience. And it just seems more organic and makes more sense.  A lot of the marketing you do comes after the book is out. A lot of times I don't do the biggest push until Book Three is coming out. I do it on Book One when Book Three is coming out. So that's a lot more appealing. Plus, the cut you get as a traditional author is a lot smaller. Joanna: Absolutely. And we'll come back to co-writing in a bit. But you mentioned there that you were a journalist and also were traditionally published. So even though you found this world enticing, how did you break out of that traditional mindset? And I'm sure you have friends in your previous career who might have judged your choices, so how have you dealt with that mindset shift? Martha: So I have found that, inevitably, I have to answer to myself. And if I make decisions based on everyone else's gut, I'll make a million different decisions, and it will add up to nothing because I'll keep changing my mind. There was a lot of pushback when I initially went indie. And somebody wrote me a really long email about how I was embarrassing myself, and I just deleted it. They weren't even an author. Joanna: That's crazy. Martha: Yeah. And in the end, I just have to believe in myself and ask myself all the right questions, and it was more about what do I want to do. Plus, I was having a lot more fun as an indie author, and it just seemed more rewarding. With traditional publishing, there's a lot of wait time. You have to get on a schedule. You're not going to put out many books at all every year, maybe one or two at most. And that, by the way, that's Lois Lane in the background, who is my very sweet deaf dog, who I would have to chase down to stop her from doing that. But generally, the people I've been hanging with, I think a lot of the authors I knew were curious. It's something odd when you are more interested in a few gatekeepers liking you than a million fans. I'd rather go with the fans. My ultimate goal is for people to read the book, it's not to get editors to like me. Joanna: I think this is a difficult attitude to adopt, and a strong one. Like you're clearly very strong on that. I get a lot of emails from people wondering if they should make this jump. You mentioned a few things there, like the speed of publishing, and that maybe you could have only done one a year with traditional. You've written and co-written over 200 books now. Tell us a bit about your prolific creative process. Martha: So clearly, that would have never happened in traditional land. People ask me all the time, how do you keep coming up with stories? And I think that's like my superpower. I just think I walk around looking at the world differently, and weird stuff occurs to me, and I keep notes, I take little notes, and it just keeps popping up. I think as a kid, I always wanted to believe magic was real, and so I just have these ideas that keep popping up. That never could have happened in traditional land. And the nice thing, too, is my grown son seems to have taken after me in that way. So when I'm stuck, I can call him and the strangest things come out of his mouth. Once I needed something for a magical museum, and instantly without even hesitating, he said, leather armor for a whale. And that was perfect, and so strange. The other thing about traditional land is you really are at the mercy of a very small handful of people. And we're all human beings, so we are very subjective and opinionated. And one person may hate your book, but 10,000 fans might have liked it, and you're never going to know that. Joanna: So coming back to your creative process, you mentioned you have all these ideas, and you write notes. So first of all, how do you take notes? Like I take them on my phone on the “Things” app, that's what I use. How do you take your notes? Martha: You're doing a much better job than I am. I carry around a little notebook, and I usually put the notes there. Or if I'm without it, I just text myself. But your idea is much better. Joanna: How do you take those notes and ideas and actually write the books? Because a lot of people have a lot of ideas, and most people do not have several hundred books. Martha: So standing out to me the most, because I kind of know when I'm going to need another idea, and something is standing out to me, and I'll just pick that one. And then if I'm working with Michael, I'll mention it to him. And his brain is like mine, he's off and running as soon as I give him the start of something, and we just kind of form. So you have to start with: how does this affect the universe? If that's what we're talking about. What's the backstory? And from the backstory, it gets easier. Once you have that, like, who is this person? What motivates them? Characters matter to me more than anything, it's why someone's going to go from Book One to Book Two to Book Three. The characters will matter more. They're dropping in to see how their friends are doing. And of course, clearly, plot matters a lot, but if you don't have the character relationships, it's going to be hard to drag people along for an entire series. Joanna: Hmm, true, and we'll come back to the series side. In terms of your actual writing process, do you dictate? Do you type? Do you get on the phone with Michael and kind of brainstorm? How do you actually get those words done? Martha: So when you're talking about creating the book, I brainstorm with Michael. If it's one of my books, I'm usually talking to Charley Case, another author, or my son, Louie Carr, who is a music manager. And I write an outline, a very complete outline, and I will write a lot of things that will never make it into the story. It keeps the character true and gives me a better idea of who they would be if they actually existed. All the side characters are written out. So before I start writing the first word, it's really fleshed out so that I can just go. And I don't use dictation, by the way. I've tried it, and I found I just can't do it. There's something about typing that brings up another side of me. I wish I could do it. TR Cameron, who writes in the Oriceran Universe, uses dictation. And I envy that, but so far, that's not me. Joanna: Yes, I must say, I keep trying it as well. I've had a lot more success with my nonfiction, but fiction, I'm like you. I almost don't know what I'm going to write, I don't even outline, I'm a discovery writer. And I sit down, and that's when it comes out is when I type things. I also work in a cafe a lot, and you can't dictate in a cafe. Martha: Right? I wonder if anybody tries. I bet there are people who try. Joanna: Oh, I'm sure there are, but not the type of books I write, anyway. So coming back, so you mentioned there — universe. And I find this really interesting, so many of us writing series, but you write in these universes. So tell us about this. How do we know when an idea is big enough for a universe? Martha: So I always say, take what you like and leave the rest. But how I do it, is I look for some kind of mythology that actually exists that I can twist to make it bigger. I need an overriding story that's so big, that it contains what happens next. Like in Oriceran, the mythology is these two worlds come together every, I think 70,000 years, that they're so close that it opens a gate and lets magic flow from one planet to the next. And the gates are either always in the process of very slowly closing or opening, so that there's a minimum of magic available, but it grows stronger over time. And that the last time the gates were open, a very long time ago, some humans chose to stay on Oriceran, some magicals chose to stay on Earth. And there's an ability to portal between them even now, but it's tricky and dangerous. So with that, you have a setup for why magic exists here, and you have the history of another planet that I can make up, as well as the history of Earth. And it makes some of the stories, like about the pyramids, or whatever myth you want to bring up, more plausible that the Oriceran had something to do with it. You just kind of go from there. Joanna: So you mentioned there a detailed outline for a book. But with this universe idea, so is it that way back you kind of came up with the idea, and then you did flesh out, I don't know, 30 books, or however many books? Like do you know I'm going to create this much in this universe? Martha: So Michael actually came up with the original story about the two worlds. But you do need to come up with that idea first. We start with the macro and work our way down to the very small. And when we started the universe, Michael still claims to this day he was talking series, I claim he said universe, but you know, here we are five years later.  I don't know that we ever thought that it would be this big when we started, and maybe that's best. We were just having fun going from series to series. Nobody was thinking, well, we need to get here and we need to get there. We were very much in the moment, just having a good time. Joanna: So how many books are in that universe right now? Martha: That's where the majority of books are. And there's also been six to eight authors who've written in the universe, which is also fun. TR Cameron was found because we did an anthology, Fans Write for Fans. And so it was fanfiction in an anthology based in Oriceran, and we happened to notice how good TR Cameron was at writing it. Joanna: I find this so fascinating, because as I said, I'm a discovery writer. And like Map of Shadows in A Mapwalker series, I thought it was a standalone, then I thought it was a bigger series, then it was a trilogy, but it's actually a world or it could be a universe, so it could have a lot more. How do you distinguish what is a series arc within a universe? Are they just completely different characters? Or like how do you plan out each of those things within the universe? Martha: So if I'm doing a series, which I often am, within the Oriceran universe, then it's much like knowing what the laws of Earth are. I have to include the laws of Oriceran, and what kind of magicals exist, and what the timeline is. We've been doing it long enough now, that there are actually two timelines we operate off of. One is where the human beings don't know magic exists. And one is a little further into the future where they do know it exists, and it's a little trickier and more violent. Those tend to be the more action adventure books. And so now I balance that as well.  It's really, once you know the rules and the laws, it's pretty easy. It's like, I know that the sun should rise every day on Earth, that human beings need to breathe in and out. You've got to keep those basic rules, or at least explain why you're bending them. Once you've incorporated the rules of the universe that's riding alongside it, you kind of just know what the rules are, and that you've got to work within them. Another writer that is writing in the universe will ask, can I do this? And then I just have to ask myself, is it plausible? Do I want to deal with it later? Because it affects everybody. When someone comes up with a new rule, you just have to kind of think about it as best I can for what unforeseen thing it will affect. Joanna: With each of the series within the universe, are there different characters, or are there characters that cross series that keep readers coming back? Martha: We've done both. And we did it famously with Brownstone, and it was really tough. And so I doubt we'll ever do it so intensely again, where it's different characters who've been established before are now in other series. But we have guest appearances, I guess you'd say, all the time. And we do spin offs, if there's a character in one series that really was very popular, we will take that character and build a new series just based on them. Because a lot of it too is, I mean, I'm still an author, and sometimes I just want to do something brand new, and I'll come back to that later. You know, you still want it to be fun for me, too. Joanna: So how do you balance that then? How do you know like, this idea is a Martha Carr and this one is going to the Oriceran Universe? Martha: So if it's an idea that fits in the Oriceran Universe, that's Michael and I. But if it's an idea I came up with on my own that just really lights me up and I'm willing to take the extra time, because I'm still doing Oriceran and doing a series on my own, if I really find myself daydreaming about where that plot could go next, or I noticed something out in the real world, and I think, oh, yeah, that's perfect for that, then I know this is something I really want to do. And I just kind of follow the trail. Joanna: You do multiple books at the same time, do you? Martha: I do. And it's not necessarily easy. I try to more focus on one, and then there's one that's coming in, just to kind of keep it straight. It's not easy, but yeah, I do it. Joanna: I think it's amazing. Now I have co-written some fiction and some nonfiction, and I found it very, very hard. So you co-write with Michael Anderle, as you mentioned, and I think other people. What are the pros and cons of co-writing, and any tips for people considering it? Martha: So if you're considering doing it, then you're going to need to be very open and willing and flexible and know when to just let things go. If someone overthinks things, I just don't think it's going to be a very good experience. And if you're working with other authors, they're a creative person as well. So sometimes somebody will have an idea, and my initial interior thought is, “oh, no.” But they're so excited that I'm willing to give it a day or two and think about it, and often they're right. It just wasn't what I had in mind, but that doesn't mean I'm right. So flexibility is key, the willingness to listen, and also, you're going to have to be a very, very, very good manager. Keeping dates in mind, checking in with people. Where are you? Can you send me the chapters you have? It takes a lot of management skill, and to be kind and courteous, but still have expectation that you'll get things on time. And it's not always going to work too, by the way. You can do everything right, and somebody disappears on you, or they just don't get it done. But you just keep going and try the next one. You can do everything right, and it can all not go well. And that's okay, too. You just keep going. Joanna: Yes, I mean, I think this is difficult. And I've been very lucky as my co-writers, like I remember working with Mark Leslie Lefebvre on The Relaxed Author, and bless him, Mark's wonderful, he's probably listening. And I'm much more of a control freak, and I'm like super organized around dates and things like that, and Mark is much more relaxed. Luckily, he was fine that I took the lead. So is that another tip — someone has to take the lead on a co-writing project? Martha: Yes, I would say someone has to take the lead. So, often I'm taking the lead on the individual project. But at the same time, I kind of have a good instinct for when I need to run something by Michael, partially because I don't want him to feel like he's being left out. So I'll just leave him a quick note: are you cool with this? And he's off writing, he's got his own books as well, besides me. Much like me, but he's on an even bigger scale than me. So he doesn't need to hear about every detail, and I'm not sure you'd be thrilled by that. So far at least, I have a pretty good instinct for when to check in and say, “Are you okay with this?” Also, by the way, if you're going to co-write in indie land, you really need to talk about budget upfront as well. Because you may have two people who are operating on different personal budgets, and it's better to iron all of that out upfront when there's no work that's been put in and no expectation, or at least they're lower, so that you can get a good feel for what each side can afford to do. Joanna: And when you say “afford to do”, you mean time budget and money budget? Martha: Correct. Exactly. Both. Like how often can you put a book out? Or on the other side, how much do you expect to spend on covers, editing and ads? And do all of that upfront. People are much easier going about negotiating and being honest upfront, and it's easier to say, “Now, is this reasonable?” And by the way, when writers are writing in the universe, I mean, that's a question I am asking all the time, “Now, is this reasonable?” If you get sick or if you want to go on vacation, have you put enough time in there where it won't cause a strain? So yeah, do it all upfront as best you can. And then just remember that the universe you created will not fall apart if something doesn't go quite as you hoped. Joanna: I mean, doing a contract upfront is really important too because you're co-creating intellectual property. So it actually goes on after your death, it's longer than a marriage. Martha: Right, right. Yeah. Joanna: So one question I was going to ask you—so I completely understand about like a universe that has its own characters and everything, but I had someone request that I write one of my characters into their universe. And I said no, because— I didn't want to mingle the intellectual property. So is that something you think about too, between your work as Martha and your work co-writing? Martha: I wouldn't do it. Like intellectual property, but also, like I was saying before, whatever that character is doing in your universe affects every other series out there. And the fans know it, and they'll point it out to you. “Why can this character do this here, when you said over there that no one can?” And it'll affect future decisions. So one thing sometimes a writer will want to do, is they'll want to do something, and they'll say that it was a worldwide thing. And I'm always cutting that back to, no, it was a Seattle thing. Because it affects too many books to do these global kind of pronunciations. It just needs to be smaller so that you can stay in your own little world. It's one thing to have somebody make a guest appearance within the universe, it makes no sense for them to step out of that universe into something else. No, I wouldn't do it. Joanna: It's funny, isn't it, these kinds of things we have to think about. And it goes from the story side to the business side. So I wanted to talk to you because I watched your High Powered Authors panel at 20Books Vegas in 2022, which is on YouTube, and I'll link to this in the show notes, and you were there with a wonderful panel. What do you see as the most important things for an author who wants to be as successful, in terms of the number of books and income and all that? Martha: I would say that, for me, it's an ongoing process of asking myself what I want and being courageous and willing enough to take steps toward it, and to ask for help. So for a good example, is I'm doing my first Kickstarter that'll be out in May. And when I started looking into it last year, I knew nothing about Kickstarter. I had been a customer or contributor on the site, but I've never seen the other side. So I started by asking questions, you have to have a willingness to know nothing again, and just keep asking questions, and sorting through till you get to where you start to get an idea of how you want to approach something. And, you know, you want to keep it fresh, and just keep going. Joanna: It's interesting, because I mean, like so we mentioned Michael Anderle, he's been on the show, and Craig Martelle, talking about 20Booksto50K, some people will be aware of that. But the model of high-powered indies, like yourself, a few years ago was realistically: rapid release, write a lot of books, rapid release into KU, plus ads. That was kind of where it started. And now it seems that this has morphed quite a lot. Why are you getting into Kickstarter? How is the model changing for indies from rapid release and KU? Martha: The model will always change for all authors, whether they're traditional or indie, but particularly for indies, because we have to think the business side of things more. And back when we were doing rapid release, there were fewer of us. So readers had a desire for more books and putting them out rapidly gave people who read a book a day exactly what they wanted. And it was a way to stake your place in the author world to fans in a very quick way. You stood out. It was also taking advantage of the Amazon algorithms because it would keep throwing your books to the front of the line, so quickly, that they all stood out together. And it pointed out to these whale readers, look, there's at least three of them. And you had a better chance of appearing on a bestseller list, even if it was for the new bestseller list, which is kind of separate. So that was a lot of the reason to do that. But the world is changing. There are a lot more of us who are writing. And also, that rapid release is tough. It's a lot of writing, you may have to store up the books, it's just different decisions. With Kickstarter, it's a whole different ballgame. And it's kind of fun. And you can bundle things, and you can offer different ways to do it, you can add art more easily without adding so much cost. The amount you keep is higher.  I'm a curious person and I like to try new things, and Kickstarter is a whole different way to do it. A lot of the people are doing box games. I'm told Kickstarter is the biggest seller of box games that there is. So you can try so many more things. Patreon was very big a couple years ago, and a lot of people are still doing it, but it's not the hot thing anymore. And so now Kickstarter is, And I'm sure two or three years down the road, there'll be something else we're all looking at. Some of it, I'll ignore, I never did Patreon, and some of it I'll pick up. My goal is to start to build a separate audience because I don't know how many of the people who are fans in Kindle Unlimited will actually walk over to Kickstarter. It might be a whole new group, and I'm kind of starting from scratch, which I think could be kind of fun to build an entirely new audience. Joanna: I love that you say kind of fun, and that you're up for learning new things. And you're exactly right. I mean, when I started self-publishing, there was no KDP. You know, there was none of this. My first self-publishing experience was printing a load of books and keeping them in my garage. There was no print on demand. I mean, this is what's so crazy, people coming in now think that this is it, this is the thing, but it changes. As you say, every couple of years, things change. What I love about Kickstarter is that you can do higher-priced, beautiful products as well. And I feel like it's valuing our IP in a different way, as well, to do these different products. Martha: And like you said it, you can do a higher quality. And I really think that the advantage, too, is— Unlike every other way we sell, Kickstarter gives you the emails. So you can create your own access to your fans, where you don't need to talk to anybody else, at some point you could sell directly to them. And there's nothing more powerful. So Brandon Sanderson, who we all love to talk about because of what happened last year when he did a Kickstarter and it garnered 44 million. Well, imagine the email list he has. That is the most valuable thing I feel that he got out of it. So, like for my first Kickstarter, if I hit goal, but don't go much above that, frankly, to me, that's a sign that I've hit a new vein of fans. And that's good news. And so if it takes two or three years to build up a really strong fan base, so be it. I mean, I'll still be having fun. That's the goal for me is, clearly you want to pay the bills, but you can have fun while you're doing it. You just have to figure out how do I accomplish both? Joanna: Absolutely. And if it's not fun, then go do something else. Martha: Right? Because this career is a lot of fun and it's a lot of work. And if you're really not having fun at it, it's going to feel really tough most of the time. So on the days when I am struggling with a character or a scene, and I've even talked to a couple authors and I'm still thinking, “This is not working,” I'm still glad I'm here, I'm still thrilled I'm doing it, and I'll go do something else to kind of redirect my brain. And I still have confidence that at some point, I'll figure it out. I’m not thinking, “Dear Lord, if only I could finish this, so I could sell it, so I could have the money.” That's not where I'm going. And I'm really still focused on the book, thinking somehow this is going to work. Joanna: I totally agree with you. And that's why doing these different projects and trying different tools is fun. But burnout is a real problem in the indie community, or indie land, as you call it, especially around that rapid release. What are your tips for being a sustainable creative and staying balanced with yourself and the business and everything? Martha: That's a great question. And yeah, if rapid release is not for you, if doing a book every other month is not for you, if three books a year is really your thing, or one big book a year, whatever it is, then head for that. You're just going to ask different questions. Your questions are going to be about, how do I sustain curiosity with my audience so that when they see my second book, they'll want to come and try it? So here's a better way to put it. When we started, Michael, in his author notes and on Facebook is naturally very funny. And people just love it. I am not funny in that way. I'm more that I'm going to connect with you on how do you feel what do you want to be doing. And so I had to make a decision early on that I was going to have to be me. And that's my pit bull, by the way, behind me. Joanna: This is the dog show! Martha: I know, that's Bluebell and Lois Lane who were hanging out with me. And they're both deaf. One was born deaf and one has gone deaf, so nobody's paying attention to me. Joanna: But I mean, that's interesting that you have two dogs. You must be healthy and out walking them, and there are ways that you're sustaining your life as well as your business. Martha: Absolutely. And that's a good point too. With some of the money that I've made, that I've been fortunate enough to make, I put in a vast garden in the back that Michael refers to as the forest. And it covers the sides of the house and almost the entire backyard. And it's your typical suburban size, so it's not huge, but it's amazing. I had a delivery person dropping off a chair for back there, and I love that he stood still for like a minute and took a deep breath, and you could feel his shoulders dropping. And so I did that for myself, where I can always go sit in the backyard and take a breath. So I've found I have to eat right. I've noticed that if I'm off like eating junk food, it's harder to write. The margin of error when you're putting out a lot of books gets thinner. But I'm also 63, and the margin of error got thinner anyway. Joanna: Thanks for mentioning your age, because also on your website, you say you're a late bloomer. And it's like, you've got over 200 books. And I mean, you might have another, let's say, 30 years. Martha: Fingers crossed. Joanna: Fingers crossed! What would you say to any writer who feels like it's ‘too late' to get started, either because of their age or because they think indie's already happened? Martha: Oh, indie has never already happened. It's like what you and I were just saying, the thing everybody was playing with might be played out, but there's something right around the corner that we can all go play with that's new. And this is one of the few creative professions, I guess painting would be the same, where it's really not going to matter how old you are. It's do you have a good idea? Do you have curiosity? And are you willing to put in the work? And also, to a degree, do you like at least online mingling with people? I just watched a lot of writers who say to me, I don't like social media. And I keep thinking, you don't have to like it, you just have to be on it. You can have somebody who has a great book, but they're not online, and somebody who has a book that's decent, it's not the best thing, but it's a good story, and they're online with their fans, and they go to that guy because they want to support him. It's kind of like Kickstarter, in a way. Everything in this world is about community and relationships, so you go online and mingle with people. But in terms of being too late, it's never too late. Frankly, there was a book that came out in traditional land last year called Lessons in Chemistry. It's such a good standalone book and the author, it's her first book, and she's 65. Joanna: I didn't know that. I heard of the book, but I didn't know the author. Because often now, it's like in traditional, they don't want older authors because, you know— Martha: She's a one-off. But her book is so good. I'm sure an editor read it and thought, “We're doing this one anyway.” But in indie land, it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, if you believe in it, go for it. And the nice thing too is, I've seen enough people do books that I personally find strange and thousands of people adore. And I love that. And so it's like you go be you, an audience will find you.  By the way, the authors who really have a strong opinion, “nope, this is me,” are more likely to find that niche audience because none of us are one-offs as humans. And so if I exist, then thousands of others like me exist. And if I can be true to myself, they're going to find me. It's when I'm trying to be something I'm not, and I'm trying to please too many people, it gets harder and harder to tell who I am. And it's going to come out in the style of writing. Therefore it gets harder for people to kind of glom on to me. So Shayne Silvers does great business. He's in urban fantasy, too, just like me. We're both killing it, our audiences don't cross much. His is a much darker style of urban fantasy, and mine is much more to the light. And I think that's wonderful. There's so much room for all of us. It also makes it possible to cheer on somebody else. It doesn't take anything away from me at all to help somebody else. It doesn't take anything at all. It's not a contest. It's never a contest. So yeah, if you're old, if you have certain physical limitations but you want to do this, just go for it. I mean, I'll be doing this in some form. One of the reasons I'm doing the Kickstarter and coming up with a new way of selling, is because at some point, I want to do my version of retiring. So if I can do fewer books in a year, and in a different way, then that would be my idea of retirement. That's why I'm doing it. It's never too late. Joanna: Well, that's brilliant. Where can people find you and your books online? Martha: So the best way is to go to MarthaCarr.com, and sign up for the newsletter and you'll keep abreast of contests and what new books are coming out from both Oriceran and whatever books I'm doing and the Kickstarter. That's the best way to stay in touch or to get in touch with me. I do answer everyone who writes to me. I always feel like if somebody took the time to really tell me how they feel about it, I can take a few minutes to answer. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Martha. That was great.The post Co-Writing In A Shared Universe And Changing Indie Business Models With Martha Carr first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you embrace book marketing as a creative part of your author business? How can you effectively market your backlist over time? How can you tap into ambition and drive your author business onward and upward? Honoree Corder talks about all this and more. In the intro, Draft2Digital add a new library marketplace [D2D]; Running a publishing house is not as much fun as it used to be [Mike Shatzkin]; Microsoft launches the new Bing with ChatGPT-style co-pilot, and soon to be rolled out in other products like MS Word, Teams, etc [The Verge]; My future of publishing talk, 22 Feb [register here]; Thanks for joining the Pilgrimage Kickstarter, and pre-order on other stores; Superstars writing conference. Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, where you can get free ebook formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Get your free Author Marketing Guide at draft2digital.com/penn Honoree Corder is the author of over 50 books, with more than 4.5 million sold worldwide. She's also a strategic book coach, professional speaker, and host of the Empire Builders Mastermind. Her latest book is, You Must Market Your Book: Increase Your Impact, Sell More Books, and Make More Money. 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 book marketing mindset and why it is important Scheduling creative time vs. business time How to find the book marketing options that work for your personality Email marketing and how it has stayed consistent over the years Marketing your backlist books effectively How personal development can help your author business You can find Honoree at HonoreeCorder.com Transcript of Interview with Honoree Corder Joanna: Honoree Corder is the author of over 50 books, with more than 4.5 million sold worldwide. She's also a strategic book coach, professional speaker, and host of the Empire Builders Mastermind. Her latest book is, You Must Market Your Book: Increase Your Impact, Sell More Books, and Make More Money. So welcome back to the show, Honoree. Honoree: Hi, I'm so happy to be here. Joanna: I'm so excited to talk to you again. Now, you were last on the show in 2015, which is kind of crazy. Tell us a bit about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Honoree: I was a business coach, and an executive coach and corporate trainer, motivational speaker. And of course, everyone would always say, “You must write a book. Where's your book? I want to buy your book.” And I met Mark Victor Hansen, who everyone would probably know is the co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. And he said, “Hi, I'm Mark,” and I introduced myself and he's like, “What do you do?” And I said, “Oh, I'm a coach and a speaker,” and he could not have been less impressed. He was like, “Yeah, okay, everybody's a coach and a speaker. You must write a book.” And I thought, okay, and I just started asking him questions because he seemed friendly. And I didn't realize in that moment, I was probably asking him the same 52 questions everyone asks him, that we get asked all the time. But he was very kind and gracious and answered my questions.  I immediately went home from that conference and sat in a chair for three days and wrote the first horrible, ugly draft of my very first book. And that's really how I got started, I made every mistake that we caution against in our books for writers. But I got the fever, I was like, oh, this is great, I love this. I loved having a book, I loved being able to make a difference and connect with people in ways that I hadn't been able to do without a book. And then I started learning the lessons of how to professionally publish a book, and to publish a book well, and market a book well, and sell books and market with my book. And that was really the beginning of my journey, and that was over 18 years ago, now. Joanna: There are a few things I want to come back on there. First of all, he said, okay, you need a book, right? You need a book to be a speaker. Now, are we living in different times in that everyone does now have a book? And if that's true, if more speakers now have books, or it's much, much easier to publish now, obviously, than it was back then— If everyone can have a book, or does have one, how do we stand out? Obviously, we're going to talk about how to market your book, but is that true anymore for speakers and coaches, I guess? Honoree: I do think it's true for speakers, and coaches ,and entrepreneurs and anyone who wants to differentiate themselves in whatever their discipline or work is, definitely. I think the next question you are probably going to ask is: then how do we differentiate our book from other people? Joanna: Especially for nonfiction, like you mentioned being a business coach, let's say, how to communicate better with people or something, a lot of people do keynotes around communication. How does someone in that kind of niche differentiate themselves? Honoree: Well, I'm going to just take a little segue and say it has to be professionally published. You've got to do an excellent job. Whether you indie publish it, you have it hybrid published, or you try to go the traditional route, you have to make sure that your book game is tight, that your book checks all the boxes of a professionally published book. In addition to that, the contents of one's book, in my opinion, must be a window into how they work and their methodology and their processes. The book is meant to start a relationship between the reader and the author. And so the message of the book, I think, must be what it is that you do differently as a business coach, as an executive coach, as a speaker, as an entrepreneur. What is your special secret? What is your secret sauce? And putting that in the book, and include anything that would give someone a clue as to how you work, why you work, where you work, who you work with, whether you have a sense of humor or not. All of the ways that people can develop a relationship with you, in your words. So that when they get to the end of the book, the next question they have is, who is this Joanna person and where is she so I can give her more of my money? How can I connect with her in a more meaningful, deeper way? Joanna: Yes, as you say, if you want people to do business with you, your book has to reflect who you are with the business. But the other question I have for you as a professional speaker before we get into the new book, is it feels like the highest-paid professional speakers are traditionally published. Now, that just may be a coincidence, but it feels like perhaps the speaker circuit does reward that kind of thing more. And what do you think, do speaking venues and conferences and things, do they care really how a book is published? Do you think that's true that people do get paid more when they're traditionally published? What are your thoughts on getting paid as a speaker with an indie book? Honoree: Well, I have a decent-sized keynote, and I am indie published. I don't think that they care, as long as your book is well done. You send them a book that is clearly hastily self-published, they're probably going to overlook you. I think there is probably a decent amount of other consideration. Have you built and sold a company? Or have you held a position at a company that we would know? Were you an executive at Apple, or Amazon, or Microsoft or another company that's easily recognizable? Also, I think some of those folks become speakers and then get an agent and go the traditional route. I have spoken to some of them, and many of them are not pleased with the results of the book royalties. They like the fact that their speaking fee is high, however, they would have liked to have had a line of sight to the quality of the book, the production schedule, the contents of the book, and their ability to do what I talk about when publishing, which is the optimization piece and the monetization piece. And just very quickly, optimization is beginning the author-reader relationship, the front matter. And then monetization is the back matter, the opportunity for the author-reader relationship to deepen, to say, well, how else can I hire you? And so when you are traditionally published, generally speaking, the front matter and the back matter is geared toward creating the publisher-reader relationship, not the author-reader relationship. And the back matter doesn't allow the author to say, here is what else I do, i.e., I'm a keynote speaker, here's how you hire me. I know some very well-compensated, self-published authors who make 25,000, 35,000, 50,000 per keynote, and they are 100% indie. Joanna: I think the point is that you can choose your route, and it doesn't matter, you can make it work in whatever way you want. So let's get into your latest book, which is, You Must Market a Book. Now, hopefully, anyone listening to this show already knows that you have to do that. But you talk about the importance of the book marketing mindset, which I feel is sometimes missed out as people jump straight into strategies and tactics. What is the book marketing mindset? And why is it so important? Honoree: I believe that the marketing mindset is understanding that for a book to be successful, and that is in whatever way the author defines success in order to hit their vision, is they have to understand that they are going to have to share about their book. They're going to have to market their book, they're going to have to talk about it, they're going to have to share about it, they're going to have to email about it, they're going to have to talk one on one, they're going to have to talk one to many, in order for the book to hit critical mass. And without the expectation that, yes, I'm going to have to market my book, and this is sometimes the difference between the indie-published author and the traditionally published author. In that some authors think, well, the publisher is going to handle all of that for me, my work is done, woo, thank goodness that's over. And then they don't realize that the day their book is published is really the day that the work begins. Joanna: Like you say that it's mostly traditionally published authors, but I still think a lot of indies think, “Oh, well, marketing is just publishing the book on Amazon because that does marketing, right?” We have to disconnect publishing — as in making the book available — with marketing. Honoree: Right. We have to disconnect the day that the book is published. I believe that marketing begins when you start to craft your book, when you put together the elements of the book, the cover, the contents of the book, the book bonuses. How are you connecting with the reader? How are you getting them extra value for reading your book in exchange for their email address so that you can create that conversation? I think marketing is baked into the publishing piece, but it is not the end. The book launch day does not then complete, the publish now button on Amazon does not now complete the marketing portion of our program. That is when you really have to come down shift into fourth gear and punch it. You have to have a clear marketing action plan, and you have to plan on doing something every day or almost every day to get the word out about your book.  The folks in my Mastermind get a kick out of my saying, which is, “A book is not an avocado. It doesn't go bad.” You don't have a finite amount of time to sell your book, especially if it has evergreen material in it. If it's going to be good today, it can sell better 10 years from today, as long as you continually market it. Joanna: And I feel like part of this mindset shift is, you know, when I'm writing my book, I'm the person on this side of the equation. But when I'm marketing my book, I have to think about the people on the other side and what they will get out of it. And I feel like a lot of nonfiction writers do this better than fiction, for sure. For example, I get pitches for this podcast all the time which just say, “I've just published this book. Can I come on your show?” And I imagine that newspaper reporters get this type of thing, too, which is, “I've just published a book. Put me in your newspaper,” that kind of marketing. But that doesn't show any understanding of the person on the other side. So, what would you say to that? Honoree: I would say that when I sent you an email and said, “I've written the book, You Must Market Your Book. I know you have a lot of authors who listen to your podcast who would probably be interested in my perspective on how to effectively market and sell their books. And if that's interesting, I would love to talk more about that.” I did exactly what I think you're getting at, which is I am thinking about the person who's listening to our conversation. Not about me or my book, or about even you or your podcast, it's who's the end user? Who's the end listener? And how will it benefit them? Because by taking care of that one thing, by making sure that the listener will benefit, then it takes care of everything else. It takes care of you and your podcast, it takes care of me and my book. Does that make sense? Joanna: Yes, and I think that's really important. And we have to think about the reader. I mean, it sounds obvious when we say it out loud, but you have to think about the reader. It is hard to switch your head from the creator to the marketer. How do you do this? Because you're a creator, as well. You write, you create lots of things, and you also do the marketing side and the business side. Do you schedule your time differently for Honoree, the writer, and Honoree, the businesswoman? Honoree: Oh, sure. Yes, I have my creative time when I have on my stretchy pants, and I have my work marketing time when I am treating my business like a business. Even though I am in a room in my home, it's creative headquarters at oh-dark-thirty, and its business headquarters from morning until late afternoon.  What I do in terms of thinking about the end reader is I ask four questions when I am crafting a book. The first question I ask, and this is what I'm asking authors too, is what's in it for you? Let's get that out of the way. What do you really want? Don't be humble or self-serving, like I want to change the world. It's like no, you want a bigger bank account, you want new shoes, you want to you know, you want to go to a book conference, right, whatever. And so just state that. Get really clear on what the outcome is for you. And then I asked three more questions. What do I want the reader to do? So for You Must Market Your Book, I want readers to market their books effectively. The next question is, what do I want them to not do? I want them to not market their books ineffectively or fail to market their books. And then ultimately, I want the end reader to feel empowered to market their books in ways that fit their personality, the role of the book, and their time availability and their budget. So I wrote it from all of those perspectives. And then I do a review of the content of each of my books, including this one, from each of those perspectives. Joanna: That's a really good tip, actually. I like that. And I mean, again, that's harder for fiction authors, but for fiction authors, it might be, I want the reader to go on an action-adventure thriller, and to have a really good emotional experience in a romance. It can be the emotional promise of a fiction book and the transformation of nonfiction, for example. Honoree: Yep, that's right. Joanna: I really like that. Now, it's interesting, you did mention that you want people who read this particular book to find the marketing that fits their personality. And there are so many marketing options, there are paid, there's free, there's content marketing, there's in person, there's online, there's so many variations on themes. But an overarching question is— How do you know what marketing might work for your personality and your book? And how do you not get overwhelmed? Honoree: Well, so I broke it down into the four things I mentioned just a second ago. And I did that on purpose because I wanted people to start to listen with their ears open, right? Like, oh, this could be different, this could be helpful to me. I'm an introvert, and I don't like walking into a room of people that I don't know. I can do it, I used to teach people how to do it, so I know how to do it. That doesn't mean that I love it, or that I want to do it on purpose. So I recognize that book marketing can include doing all sorts of things that are contrary to my personality, which means I will, like being on a diet, not eat carbs and exercise for exactly four hours. I'm miserable, it's the longest four hours of my life and I can't wait to have a sandwich. So I think when people look at book marketing, the first thing that they're doing is looking at what other people are doing, and they just think, well, I have to do that. In fact, I hear people say, “Well, Colleen Hoover.” I'm sure you know who Colleen Hoover is. Joanna: Everyone does now. Honoree: But the first thing they did was go, okay, she became famous because she used BookTok, so now I have to do BookTok. And I've had several people say, “Honoree, you have to do TikTok. You have to do BookTok.” And I say, “I don't.” It seems like a wonderful idea, I would love to spend hours mastering a dance and producing a video. Oh, wait, no, I wouldn't. That would be awful. I would have a good time because I can laugh at myself. I can't dance, it would be terrible. It'd be the worst video, I don't want to learn video editing. I mean, it has hashtag disaster written all over it. Joanna: By the way, I don't do TikTok either. But we should say that people are doing other things other than dancing with TikTok, but it's an example of, don't do what you don't want to do. Honoree: Yes. And that's what I was about to say, is that when you give yourself permission to say, here are the things that I really like to do, I love being a guest on a podcast, I love having a meaningful conversation with a host, that adds value to someone who gets to listen to it later. That's really fun for me. It's not hard. I like it, I could do it all the time. I have done books with authors who don't have a following, who don't want to do podcasts, so we look for strategies and tactics that work great for them and their personality. And also then the role of the book in their business. When you have a nonfiction book, the book has a role in your business. And it's important to understand what the role of the book is, so that you can get connected to the activities that will connect the book to the readers. And that can be broken down into all sorts of different things. One of them is geography. If you're selling services in one zip code, then you don't really care about Amazon, right? You don't care about an Amazon launch or being available in all countries, whether you're wide or local. You're going to print copies of the book, and you're going to give it out to market your business. So geography is one of the factors. So you start to stack, okay, my personality is I'm an extrovert, I love people, and I'm not limited in my geography, then I'm probably going to publish wide. I'm probably going to publish in all the different ways, audio, hardcover, paperback, eBook. And I'm going to publish it everywhere it can possibly be published. And then I'm going to do everything I can possibly do. When you're looking at paid versus free, I always look at not how much money I have to spend, but I always start with, how much money do I have to spend and how much money do I have to earn in order to have that money to spend? Because you and I both know, if you make $10, 50% of it's gone. So I don't make $10, I make $5. And so if I spend $5, then I have no dollars. If I spend $5, then I want a return on that investment. So some people will look at it and go, it's only 100 bucks, it's only 10,000 bucks, whatever it is. And they don't think about, well, if you spent $10,000, you really probably had to earn $16,000, $17,000, $20,000. They're not thinking about the after tax, after expenses, aspect of it. I think about it from the perspective of, what's the heavy lift that it does? Does it get me in front of people that I can benefit? And does it bring readers to the book that allows the book to fulfill its job? Joanna: I like that. I like that you mentioned geography, actually, because you made me think there because I have always focused on global sales. Like I don't even approach bookshops, even here locally in the UK. It's just not something I've ever thought about because all the marketing I do is global. And part of choosing podcasting, for example, was this is global. In 228 countries, people have downloaded this show, including Antarctica. And it's kind of crazy that we can reach all these countries around the world with some marketing, or we could do a local fair and reach a couple hundred people in our local area, but that's still valid, too. And that suits different people, different business plans, I guess different business ideas, in general. Honoree: Yes, yes. And if you were not working globally, if you were working locally and you had a book that when you gave it to someone or sold someone that it was a five figure or six figure income for your business, you wouldn't worry about geography, you would just want the book to get into the right hands. And what's the fastest path to making that happen? Joanna: So I also wanted to ask you, because you and I've been doing this a long time now, and you mentioned like 18 years there. I think it was 2006 that I started writing. So I mean, it's a similar kind of timeline for us both. Now, what has changed? What does not work anymore that you hear people saying, “Oh, you must do this,” and actually, it's not true? What still works and what remains evergreen? Honoree: Well, I think what's changed for the better is that we have more publishing options. So I think when you and I started in the 2000s, there weren't a lot of options. I think Amazon did the Kindle. And then I saw Smashwords a few years later, I think. Joanna: Other way round, originally, but similar time. The point being, like there was no digital publishing that early, there was no print on demand, there was no digital audio. Honoree: Oh, no, no, I had my first 15,000 books printed and shipped to me. It was not print on demand, I had to buy 5000 books at a time in order to get a favorable price. So it really is so favorable now. So we have more publishing options, we have more acceptance of independent publishing, and we have more opportunities based on that. I think what doesn't work is haste, being solely promotional, and not adding value to people. I think that doesn't work, and it's never worked. I don't know that there is a strategy that I can across the board say it doesn't work, Joanna, because there's going to be somebody that's going to raise their hand and go, “Well, that kind of worked for me,” or several someone's. So I don't ever want to say, “Well, that never works.” But I do know that if you are a transactional person versus a relational person, you're going to have to work harder. You're going to have to have more times at bat to get the same results as someone who's just a relationship person, and who cares about their readers and is trying to add value. Joanna: And on that— I think one of the things that has stayed the same is email marketing. Like that was a thing originally, and it still is, right? Honoree: Yes. And it is the only thing you own. I saw a content creator today, I got an email, and they said, “I'm no longer doing this. I'm going all in on this one platform.” And I was like, you don't own that platform. What are you doing? Like, unless you own the platform, going all in on something and giving up the one thing that you do own, or the things that you do own, your website, any platform that you pay for, like Slack or Circle or something like that where you have to pay, so they can't close the doors or decide to close their doors to you at any given time, and of course, email. I think email is the thing that has stayed standard, even as other similar tactics have been tried. You think of email as being, not only on your desktop, but also on your phone—well texting is on your phone. but I don't like to get a lot of marketing texts, whereas I don't mind marketing emails. Joanna: Yes, I know what you mean. And if you can stay in someone's inbox for years, and I know there's some listeners to this show who have been on my email list since like 2008, which is kind of crazy. Like, if you can stay in someone's inbox that long, you've got a relationship. So when you talked about relationships, you didn't necessarily mean—it doesn't have to be one to one— You can have a relationship with people through this podcast, for example. When I meet people, they're like, “Ohhh!” and they know all about me. You know, and email, you can do the same thing with email, right? And social media, to be honest. Honoree: Correct, yes, the relationship is different, obviously, different levels, right. You could say that you have the intimate relationships, the inner circle relationships, and then the everybody-else relationships where you're connected. Your people who read your books, who open your emails, who listen to your podcasts, who follow you on social media, who stay there a long time, they do care. I have people who reach out to me and ask me certain questions about my life because they're just paying attention. And I think that's lovely, as long as it's not a little weird. Joanna: Yeah, a little stalky. But again, that comes down to how much you do share. Like, I mean, people can find a picture of my husband online, but we have different names. And it's like, I do selfies because he doesn't want to be in my photos on Instagram or whatever. So he has his private life, and I mean, you put your lines in, don't you, and then you share within that. Honoree: That's correct. Yes, there is definitely the intimate circle. Those are the hide-the-body, folks. It's like if I had to hide a body, those are the people I'm calling. There's a different level of information than what I'm posting. Joanna: Absolutely. Honoree: I have found, and I discovered this when I wrote my second book, I was open kimono in that book, as in very personally shared very personal information. Like not super personal, but I was just divorced, it was The Successful Single Mom. So I wrote about that because I honestly thought, Joanna, no one's ever going to read this, no one cares. It was cathartic for me. You understand, right? When you write, it's as much for yourself as it is for anyone who would read it. It's transformational. And then it was actually a fairly successful book and became a series. So I thought, gosh, if I had known anybody was ever going to read it, I would have never written so authentically and so openly. But then, that was what connected people to me, is when you share a bit of yourself, they like it. If they're following you, if they discover you, and they like you, when people are reading your book, they're looking for clues about who the author is too. And I don't know about you, but I grew up in a time when authors were untouchable, unreachable. Joanna: Yes, strange creatures that we could never be them. Honoree: Yes, it's the Loch Ness Monster, right? Like it doesn't exist, and you could never talk to them, and then lo and behold, actually, you can. You can subscribe to their email list, and you can watch their Instagram stories, and read all of their books, and learn about them, read articles about them. I mean, Colleen Hoover, call me, we would be great friends. Like I read a New York Times article on her, I'm fascinated by her, and I've listened to some podcast interviews. And I love the fact that she is just unapologetically who she is, and she unapologetically writes what she wants to write. And I think that's so wonderful. It's such a great example for the rest of us. Joanna: We should say, Colleen Hoover, though she became super famous on TikTok, she was an indie. I mean, she's hybrid now, she does all kinds of publishing, but I remember when she was an original indie. And, you know, it can take years, too. She's not brand new. She's been going for years. So on that, you talk about staying true to your book and that like the avocado, the avocado goes off, but your book doesn't go off. How can we market backlist books more effectively? As our career goes on, how can we still market those books? Honoree: Well, they don't go bad. And so it's just the more books I write, the more I have to remember my backlist. One of the things that I do just to remember about a book, is I have it in my calendar. So when it's the book's birthday, it'll come up, and it'll say, “You published this book on November 11th, of 2014.” And so I'll go and post about it. I have a pretty interesting production calendar that reminds me to do a quarterly promotion, like do a free book promotion, or do whatever. There are so many different options. So each of my different books, in book categories, so I've single mom books and business books and books for writers, and so I have to stay on top of those, and I do that with my very unimpressive spreadsheet. Anyone who would run a spreadsheet would be unimpressed with my Excel skills because it's in Word. But I'm a writer, I'm not a math person, I'm not an Excel person, but I keep track of the dates.  So I have all the dates and I have reminders in my phone on my calendar that remind me, okay, the anniversary of this book is coming up, or it's been three months you need to market it. And so it's going off constantly with all the books I have. And I have to pick and choose which venues I'm choosing to promote the books on.  I think the most important, and most interesting, and most effective way to market a book is to release another book. Even as You Must Market Your Book is getting ready to be in the world officially, You Must Write a Book is picking up sales because people are seeing that this new book is coming and that there's a book before it, and so they're checking it out and by buying it. Joanna: Thank you for that idea because this is a total problem that starts to happen, the more books you have. Because when you start writing, you think, I'll never forget about that book. And then, like 20 books later, 40 books later, I just interviewed someone who's got 200 books, there is no way you're going to remember what the hell happened. Especially as decades go by too. I haven't done this, and you're completely right. You just have a book birthday for each of the books, and then a reminder, maybe two weeks before, which is: this is coming up, what can you do about it? So that's a great idea. I can't believe I haven't actually done that. Honoree: I'm so glad to give you an idea. That's fantastic. I also create, which I sent to you, I create a one sheet for every book, that is my name and how to say it, and my social media, and my website and my bio. And then I write ten questions that the host could ask me about the book if they don't have time to read it, so it seems like they've read the book, for the podcast host. Then I also do a cheat sheet and I answer the questions in writing after the book has come out and I've moved on, because I don't want to forget the answers to the book because I think nothing is more embarrassing than someone saying, “Well, what are the four cornerstones of a professionally published book?” or, “What does that stand for?” And I'm like, “I don't know, you tell me. You read it more recently than I have.” I have all these cheat sheets that I've saved for my books. So that if someone wants to interview me about a book that I wrote two years ago, or 10 years ago, I can pull out the one sheet and read the questions and the cheat sheet and read the answers. I don't have to read the whole book, but I can answer the questions intelligently. And of course, because I did write it, it will refresh my memory. Joanna: I love that too. And this is great. This behind the scenes info for people. I have the same thing where people will be like, oh, I want to interview you. And like my book, How to Market a Book, it's a few years old now, or my book on speaking, for example, and I'm like, please, can you send questions beforehand? And then what I'll do is I'll obviously I will prepare, and I'll answer these questions, but then also I prefer audio only because I can have my vellum document up and I can navigate the chapter. I think that you're so organized, you're brilliantly organized. I love that idea, certainly doing the questions for the podcast host. I have discovered over the years that I'm quite unusual, maybe it's because this is a book show, but I read everything, or at least I skim through everything. And I try to ask questions that, actually, the host might not have even answered before because I want to challenge people and get different answers. So I think there's a combination of both. As you say, many podcast hosts will not read the book, and certainly most media pitches, they're not going to read your book. Honoree: They don't have time. It is such an honor when someone says, “I have read your book,” because I always get more money, I cannot get any more time. When I spend a minute, it's gone, it's gone forever. And I recognize that if I want to be on someone's podcast, I'm going to take up 30 minutes of their time, at least, maybe an hour, plus production, plus preparation time. And if I can make that easier for them, and in so doing, easier for myself, then everybody wins. Joanna: Very good tips there. People listening, if you're going to pitch podcasts, these are very good tips. And I mean, even if you have a fiction book, you can still do these questions and things like that around themes, and what did you really mean and character development. And in fact, some people do this now in the back of their fiction books. They'll do you have sort of reading group list, things to discuss with your book group, for example. So yes, that's really good. I mean, it's too easy to think, oh, of course, they're going to read my book because my books amazing. Honoree: Right, your book is amazing, but it takes an hour to two hours to six hours to read. And who are they going to bill that time to? I mean, honestly, like, how are they going to get that time back? They can't get the time back. So then, that time then is worth something to them, how are they going to get that back? And I just think it's worth considering because some hosts do read the book, some hosts read the book and then ask you to be on their show, and that's fine. Still being prepared, still having a one sheet with a bio and a photo, making it very easy for someone to book themselves on your calendar or vice versa, that's just podcast preparation 101, in my opinion. But I've also done a lot of interviews and I figured out, I think, what makes it great for the host, makes their job easy. Joanna: So I really love your business mind and we've always connected over that. We've met in person and we've hung out at events, and I think your ambition is fantastic. You're very open and honest about your business ambition. You've got your mastermind. You've got a course on building a million dollar book business. I feel like many authors have ambition, like we want to make loads of money, and we want to get a book deal, or whatever, but a lot of people hide it and they feel almost ashamed of their ambition. How can we tap into that ambition in a really good way that helps us, but also not be disappointed when we don't get that TV deal? Honoree: Oh, I love that question. Thank you for asking that question. And thank you for your kind words, I very much appreciate them, especially coming from you who I admire very much. I think that there is some work that could be done. I don't like to “should” on people. I either say you must do something, or I say you could do something, but I don't should on them. I think there could be some work done on their personal development. My belief is that your professional development and your success will never exceed your level of personal development. And I'm not the person that said that. I want to say it Zig Ziglar or Jim Rohn. I have spent a lot of time working on myself and expanding my self-belief, my self-confidence, and my belief in what's possible. I think we rarely reach our potential I think we're capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit for. But I don't take myself too seriously. When I was talking about making a dance video for TikTok, I thought, boy, it would be hilarious. I would probably laugh until I hurt. I'd probably fall down and actually hurt myself. But I don't take myself too seriously. I don't let my success or lessons, right, because I think I win some and I learn some. I don't take myself or my success too seriously, and I don't let it define me, and I haven't let it change me and who I am. So I think my ambition is constant because I don't really think I've gotten anywhere. I can look back and go, oh, yeah, I've written some books, and I've done some things. And that's been cool, but I'm always facing forward, right, I'm always driving forward. And so I enjoy it. I'm having a book launch party because my friends are making me. They're like, you're going to have a book launch party. I'm like, okay, sure, we'll have cupcakes, we'll have tea, it'll be fine. I think the more you work on yourself, the more your success will come automatically. Because you're putting in the work, and you're just staying in it and you're loving the process. And I think that's another piece of it, is I absolutely 100% love what I do. And I wake up every morning, like, oh my gosh, I'm still doing this, I'm not a bricklayer. Joanna: I know the feeling. Honoree: I don't work hard for a living. I feel like I'm getting away with something, and at some point, someone's going to knock on my door and go, okay, now it's time to go to the office. Now you're going to have to go back to work. But so far, they haven't, maybe because I've moved. They're like, we don't have her current address.  I think it's it comes down to a combination of working on yourself, your personal development, not taking yourself too seriously, finding the thing that you love to do. Like you and I are talking a little bit about the fact that I'm writing fiction, and I don't have any designs on like, “I'm going to be the number one writer. I'm going to sell this many books,” or whatever. I've never really done that. I just find that I'm having one heck of a time. I'm having so much fun writing fiction. It's such a blast. And so even if no one ever reads it, or someone reads it, and they're like, this is terrible. I had a good time, I wrote a story I liked, it's great. Joanna: I love that. And I'm really interested to see what you do with that eventually because I feel like one of the issues—I know a lot of nonfiction authors who try to write fiction, and who do write fiction, but then are disappointed because it's like starting again. I mean, like you're an incredibly successful nonfiction author, speaker, etc. And you're at the top of the ladder. And when you start with fiction, it's like you're at the bottom of another ladder. Honoree: So at the bottom. Joanna: And that can be quite humbling I guess. Honoree: Yes. For sure. Well, but it's like, I don't know, I mean, at some point I just kind of throw up my hands and go, okay, well, what's the worst that could happen? And I'm in it, I'm in that I keep hearing, you can't edit a blank page. So I just keep writing and then going back and reading and I'm like, oh, the eye color is wrong. I need a legend or whatever, right, where you make a list of the characters. Because like in one chapter, I give them one name, and then the next chapter, I give them a different name. I don't know what's wrong, maybe it's because I'm not writing it all on the same day. I sleep and I eat and I forget. I'm just having a good time, and I think maybe I've been somewhat successful because I don't take it so seriously. I'm not holding on so tight to it. I think my advice to someone, whether they're writing or they're growing a business or they're just living life, is to take the criticism and the encouragement or the attaboys with the same energy. It's like, “you did great,” and, “you did terrible,” are the same. Because if you're not in my intimate list, right, if you're not going to help me hide a body, then I don't know that you can give me your opinion with the same weight. Joanna: No, that's good. I know a lot of people struggle with opinions from other people. I did want to ask you one more question before we finish, which is about longevity. Because like you've said, you've been doing this for what, 18 years, and I mean, there are people who come and go, and you and I have seen those people over the years, and there are people who keep putting books out. And like, I love that you're writing fiction for fun, and not taking it seriously because someone with your business, that seems like a fun thing for no reason. And it might not grow to a business, and hey, it doesn't matter. So is that one of your tips for longevity, which is you have to keep changing it up or you're going to be bored, and you'll go do something else. Honoree: Yes— So my number one thing is: I have to own it, it cannot own me. I own my empire, my empire does not own me. And so I have done a lot of things that I no longer do anymore because I lost interest in them. I used to do a lot of executive and business coaching with executives, and business owners and entrepreneurs. And there was a time when I thought, oh, gosh, I'm just going to do this forever. And then one day I woke up and I was like, you know what, I don't want to do that. I want to do something interesting to me, now, that's new. Because I like the new thing, I like learning the new thing and mastering the new thing and moving on.  I also like multiple income streams so that I'm never tied to something. If something goes away, I've got other things. And so I've kept it interesting for me. So you're right, as I've gotten bored with something, I let go of it. If I can't set it and forget it, I just forget it. Joanna: That's great. I love that. And I mean, that's the thing, we're talking now because I still find this show interesting enough. I can still talk to you talk to people that I find interesting enough. Like I have thought about giving up this show a number of times, and it's because I was getting bored. But once I kind of just shifted to, I'm going to interview people I'm interested in, books that I'm interested in, topics I'm interested in, and ask the questions that I think are interesting, then it was like oh, it's sustainable. It's sustainable for the long term. And that moment it gets boring then yeah, this show will disappear. But at the moment, I still love it. Honoree: Yes, yes. It has to be something that you are waking up for. I wake up before my alarm. My alarm goes off with a four in it everyday, and I wake up before my alarm. And I'm so excited. I'm like, oh my gosh, it's another day. I get to do these cool things that I have on my list today. Joanna: Fantastic. Where can people find you and your books and your courses and everything you do online? Honoree: I think my website is probably the best place for people to go, just HonoreeCorder.com. I'm on the socials. I'm not hard to find, I have a unique name. Joanna: You do, and all the links will be in the show notes. So thanks for your time, Honoree. That was great. Honoree: Oh, so great to talk to you, Joanna. Let's not let another eight years go by.The post Book Marketing Mindset, Ideas, And Ambition With Honoree Corder first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Who are the Choctaw people and how can authors write authentic Native Americans in their books? How can we research diverse characters and include a diverse cast without worrying about cancel culture? Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer talks about how her Choctaw heritage influences her books. In the intro, the Pilgrimage Kickstarter is done — thanks to all backers and I'll be in touch soon; With a Demon's Eye on my store and pre-order elsewhere; Opportunities in 2023 [Ask ALLi Podcast]. Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, where you can get free ebook formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Get your free Author Marketing Guide at draft2digital.com/penn Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer is a historical fiction author, speaker, course creator and Choctaw storyteller. The Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian honored her as a literary artist for her work in preserving Choctaw Trail of Tears stories, and she is the creator of the Fiction Writing: American Indians digital course. 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 Who are the Choctaw people? How to include representation without being stereotypical Researching cultural callbacks to include in your writing How to use oral history from tribes in your research Writing diverse characters outside of our personal experience Creating well-rounded characters when writing diversity You can find Sarah at ChoctawSpirit.com or her course at AmericanIndians.FictionCourses.com Image generated by Joanna Penn on Midjourney. Transcript of Interview with Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer Joanna: Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer is a historical fiction author, speaker, course creator and Choctaw storyteller. The Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian honored her as a literary artist for her work in preserving Choctaw Trail of Tears stories. And she is the creator of the Fiction Writing: American Indians digital course. So welcome to the show, Sarah. Sarah: Thank you, Joanna. Halito. Sv hohchifo yvt Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer. Chahta Sia Hoke. Hi, everyone. My name is Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer, and I am Choctaw. And it's just such a delight to be on your podcast, Joanna. Joanna: I love that. And of course, we have listeners from over 200 countries. Perhaps you can first explain, what is Choctaw, anyway? And how does that relate to your writing?  Also, please advise on the preferred terminology because we mentioned American Indian, which I thought was not allowed anymore. So tell us about that. Sarah: Oh, I will try to give you the short answer on that one, but let me first tell you about Choctaws and my Choctaw people. So we are an American Indian tribe, originally in the southeastern United States. Primarily Mississippi was our homelands, and that's where my ancestors came from before we were forced to basically sign a treaty, the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, which ceded the last of the Choctaw homelands for lands in Indian Territory, or what is now the state of Oklahoma.  So we had the Trail of Tears in the 1830s, where about 20,000 Choctaws were removed and came across the trail over 400 miles to the new homelands. And it is estimated that around 2000 died, and that's why it became known as a Trail of Tears and Death. Thankfully, our Choctaw people are very resilient, and we rebuilt the tribe and the nation to what is now the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. And we're the third largest federally recognized tribe in the United States. There are also still the Mississippi Choctaws, the Mississippi Band of Choctaws, who remained in Mississippi and were federally recognized in the 20th century. And we have some pockets of Choctaws really everywhere. I meet Choctaws everywhere that I go. There's a large contingent in California, during the Dust Bowl, the 1930s, many of them migrated out from Oklahoma. But there were over 500 nations here in America prior to European contact. So the Choctaws were among that, but each tribe were distinct. And how that relates to my writing, I have seven Choctaw, what I call my Choctaw Heritage books, where I feature our Choctaw history and culture. I do a lot of research and interviews, and we'll get into that a little bit later. I have seven of those books that I've based around my Choctaw history and culture. The terminology, boy, that's the big question. And you're going to get different answers depending on who you speak with. So I did decide to title my course, Fiction Writing: American Indians. That's still one of the really dominant terms in Indian country. We say, the National Museum of American Indian, and there are just tons of organizations that still go with American Indian. Native American is considered the politically correct term. A lot of natives do reject that term. And then you'll meet those that completely reject the term American Indian and are offended whenever I use that sometimes. So the term Indian itself alone has been so abused and used derogatorily, that you just have to be careful and really understand how and why you're using it. And so actually, my favorite terminology right now is First Americans. And we have the First American Museum in Oklahoma City that opened up recently, and I love that they went with that name. But depending on who you're asking, you'll get a different answer. Now, the most correct way, like for me, I don't necessarily say typically that I'm American Indian, or I'm Native American, I say I am Choctaw. And that's the most correct way to refer to someone is by their tribal affiliation, if you can. Joanna: And forgive me, I just don't know much about this. And I'm sure some people listening don't either. I mean, we have in our mind a sort of monolithic group of people, and I know of some tribes, but I'd never heard of Choctaw before you emailed me. And I was like, wow, okay. I think we hear about like Navajo, for example, as a sort of one. I think probably because I've been to the Grand Canyon and stuff like that. So I feel like for many people listening, this might be the first time. But it's the same in a lot of different countries, right? There might be an indigenous people, but they will be made up of lots of different people. Like for example, on my Books and Travel Podcast has an Australian Aboriginal lady and they also have hundreds of different groups and lots of different languages. So I love that you shared your language there as well. So you've told us a bit more about your Choctaw side, but — Tell us a bit more about how you got into writing and a bit more about your history. Sarah: Oh, absolutely. I'm one of those that I always knew I wanted to be a writer. I know some people discover that later in life. I'm just one of those that when I was five, I wrote my first story. And it was just little blocks of sentences, I wrote them on sticky notes, and my brother illustrated it, but I had a story about kindness. And I was so shy, I knew I would not be able to ever say it, never be able to speak it. And so I wrote it down as a story. I just continued writing through childhood and my teen years, and got away from it a bit. And then when I was 23, over a decade ago, I can say, God brought writing back into my life, and I joined an association that we did flash fiction every week. So I wrote over 60 of those, all different genres, really just exploring my voice and my style as a writer. And in 2013, I got into indie publishing and haven't looked back. Joanna: That's great. It's fantastic. Actually, I was going to say around the American Indian thing, is that it's almost this sort of search engine optimization because that's still the term that people might search for. In the same way — well, not in the same way — but similarly, self-publishing. A lot of us use the term self-publishing, even though we don't do it ourselves, because people actually search for it and that's what they ask about. Whereas you just said ‘indie publishing,' and that's what we say within the group, but outside the group, people say self-publishing. So I imagine it's kind of the same. It's like when you're in the group, you have different language to outside the group. So all of this is words and understanding. It's so interesting. We are talking about this idea of heritage today. And of course, there are lots of people of different races and groups who don't write about their heritage, or may write a sort of bigger American story or not about a specific group. Why is writing about your heritage so important to you? Sarah: That's an excellent question. I love that one. Because that is when I began my writing career in earnest, that's what I was drawn to. I wanted to write Trail of Tears stories. The biggest example I can give you, though, is Choctaws, like our history and culture is so familiar to us, but there are people who around the world like you that have never even heard of the Choctaw people.  For me, most of the stereotypes and the conceptions that people have about indigenous people, and especially Native Americans, American Indians, comes from media, it comes from entertainment. And that's how we influence culture. And so since people didn't know about my history and culture, very specifically the Choctaw Code Talkers of World War I. So a lot of people have heard of the Navajo, you mentioned the Navajos, and they are one of the largest tribes in the United States. And they had the Navajo Code Talkers in the Marines during World War II, but very few people know that code talking started in World War I and the Choctaws were among the first, and really the only ones, who developed an actual code during World War I, there in France.  I would ask people that and no one had heard of them, and I was like, I have to write this as a story, I have to get it out there in the mainstream to educate people to let them know about the Choctaw people and our heritage, and let them experience that through fiction. And that's what I've set out to do with many of my stories. Joanna: And I mean, I guess people can write, as you have, a specific story about the people in that way, but I guess other writers might include a character with that history. For example, I don't write specifically LGBTQ queer fiction, but I have characters where a woman loves a woman, for example, or I have characters who are different to my own situation. And I don't make a big deal about that side of them, that's just them. And I don't want to focus on that in the story, it's just they're a person so they have that as part of them. If people listening want to incorporate heritage, but not overstate it, what are your tips about that? I guess it's about representation. How can we put people from all different groups into books so they're represented as different types of normal jobs and all of that, so it's not questioned that a Choctaw person is whatever they are? Sarah: Exactly. There's so much to unpack with that because we've had a lot of discussions about that. And my friend and I, Molly reader, she's an excellent writer in her own right, and she does fantasy and science fiction. And so we had a discussion, a webinar with those writers of that genre, and that's something we were talking about is not putting in native characters for the sake of diversity, like make them real characters. So that's something that I think we need diverse characters and a diverse cast, I think that's awesome. Just make sure they're developed, like you said, as a character living their lives and going about their work, and they happen to also be Choctaw. It doesn't have to be specifically centered around that heritage. An example I have of that is my Doc Beck Westerns series. And Doc Beck is an Omaha Indian woman doctor. And she's loosely based, her background is based on the real Dr. Susan La Flesche who was an Omaha Indian woman doctor in the 1890s. And so I took that character, but I put her in a completely different situation. It's more about her being a female doctor in the old west in this more male dominated world. And so she has these adventures, it's more like an old TV Western. So her heritage is definitely a part of her, and it ties strongly into the last four books of the series, but the primary thing is that she's a doctor. And she's going about her work and relationships more as a woman in the old west, rather than specifically bringing out the Omaha Indian aspect of it. So I think writers should definitely have that diverse cast. If you want to focus on the heritage of a specific cultural group, just make them real people. And that's the biggest stereotype that we see with a lot of natives, like you have the wise guide. And so you have this native character, and they're always in this role of being the wise guide or in advising the character. And so I think just having them in normal character positions is really a way to avoid that stereotype because it doesn't have to be just about their heritage to have that diversity in your cast. Joanna: You mentioned sci fi there, I mean, the captain of the ship can be a female Choctaw. That's what makes it interesting. And also in science fiction is a message of hope, which is we're still alive in the future. And I guess part of your reason for writing your heritage is you want your nation to continue into the science fiction. You want there to be Choctaw space captains in the future. So I think this is what it's about, for me anyway, in terms of trying to put different people in different roles is that this is only one aspect of them, isn't it? If people wanted to put a Choctaw character in their book, are there any specific cultural callbacks that they might have that mark them out? Are there any things you would read in a book and go, yeah, that is a Choctaw character without them obviously saying, “I am Choctaw.” Sarah: I love that. That's actually a really good point that would be good to mark here. Like I said, there were 500 nations and we're all distinct people. So people right now may be thinking of Choctaws and teepees and buffaloes, and we didn't live in teepees. We lived in what we called chukkas, which were winter homes. We had summer homes which were log and chink structures. So we were agrarian. Primarily there is buffalo back there in our history and all, but we weren't like the Plains tribes that followed the Buffalo and went on the summer buffalo hunts. That wasn't primarily Choctaw. So we see that a lot, and I've had our history department tell me that people will send in books and stories to them, basically wanting an endorsement, per se. And they're like, we would have to rewrite this whole book to make it Choctaw because they're so heavily influenced by the mainstream stereotypes of what people think indigenous people or American Indians are. And so with Choctaws, for me, like if I saw someone in regalia, in traditional dress, I would know whether they were Choctaw or not based on what they were wearing. We have the distinct diamond pattern that you'll see on our shirts and our dresses, and that's to represent the diamondback rattlesnake. We have distinct dances and songs. So if someone were to put that in there that they were Choctaw, I wouldn't even mind if the character said their Choctaw, but you definitely want to show versus tell. And that just goes to doing your research and going to events. I tell that to people a lot. And what you said about, you know, that we're still here. That's a big thing is people think of American Indians in the past, and we're still here. So if you can go to a powwow, there's protocol and things to follow, but go to Choctaw events, go to native events, and learn about the individual cultures, rather than just the blanket indigenous people stereotypes that we tend to fall into. And I even fell into them whenever I was first writing, and thankfully, my mother's on it, and she pointed out some things to me that were stereotypical. And I was like, oh, right, duh. That's not very good representation as a Choctaw. So yeah, if someone wants to write specifically about Choctaws, get to know the Choctaw people. Joanna: And so you mentioned there's a diamond pattern and the rattlesnake. So, again, we're just going to use the science fiction captain of the spaceship, because then perhaps I could have some kind of diamond pattern on the uniform. Or he or she could wear like, I don't know, some piece of jewelry with the rattlesnake on, or something that was a callback. Or the colors, you mentioned the traditional dress, presumably there are certain dyes, certain colors that would have been used in the dress. Would that be correct? Sarah: And we also have a lot of beadwork artists today that they make these beautiful medallions. And that's what a lot of Choctaws wear with their regalia. We have beaded collars that go over the dresses. So there's tons of aspects like that, that you could absolutely incorporate into the spaceship captain's uniform. I have a science fiction story series tucked way back in the corner, Joanna, I don't know if it'll ever emerge, but it's tucked way, way back there. But yeah, it's fun things like that, a patch with the diamond design. So I could definitely see them incorporating their culture into their work that they're doing. Joanna: And I think that's what is important, too, is kind of using proper elements from a culture. And it's these little details that make it clear that we've done our research. So let's talk about research. How do you recommend authors research? And how do you research your own books to ensure accuracy? Sarah: Excellent. Accuracy is such a huge part of what I do because there is so much inaccuracy out there around American Indians and around Choctaw. So I spend a great deal of time on research. For the writers listening, if you hate research, that's basically where I started. I didn't hate research, I liked going and talking to people and going to events and that type of thing, but when it gets to the nitty gritty of how did they develop a photograph in a dark room in 1890, that just drives me nuts.  The bigger aspects of it, researching the culture, I love talking to elders, that's one of the things — and I say talking to them, I listen. Usually you can ask just one or two questions, and you'll get a whole ton of insight. And just hearing their voices and hearing the way they phrase things, those things just tuck in the back of my mind and end up in dialogue and that sort of thing. For my research on the Choctaw Code Talkers of World War I, Anumpa Warrior, my novel that came out in 2018, I actually got to travel to France which was marvelous. It was my first international trip, and I got to go to the battlefields where they fought. And what was really amazing about that trip is, even though I was researching mostly general World War I history, I got to experience the way that the Choctaw would have in a lot of instances. I even had someone who asked when we told him a little bit about the Code Talker story, they were like, “Oh, did they send smoke signals?” And I was like, “No, no, it was telephone.” But even that, having the experience of stereotypes going before them. And that's what they experienced when they went to France in 1918, is they had all these stereotypes that they were meeting with the French and the German and the British, who they had their perceptions of what American Indians and what Choctaws were. So research, with that one I had over 100 people in the acknowledgments. I went to the National Archives, the military records, and I worked with tons of historians and military experts. The main thing for writers who are looking into that, is try to connect with the tribes. So some have cultural departments or historic preservation departments or language departments. A caveat to that is it can be difficult to get in because so much has been taken from Native Americans, so much has been taken and stolen from our communities, that you'll find some native people, probably many, who are guarded and who want to know what you're using this for and are hesitant about giving information because so much has been taken and abused and misused. So that does take time, and I cover that in my course of some ways that you can do that. But that's really the best thing is to go to the source. Go to the tribe as best you can, and whatever they've preserved, try to base your work on that. Joanna: Yes, and I think there's a lot of recordings, oral history recordings, as well because now everyone lives a very modern life, but there are often oral histories you can find. Certainly here in the UK, there are probably recordings of Native Americans as well that you can get just from the British Library. I'm sure your Library of Congress or whatever has recordings and things. I'm glad you got to go in person. I've been to those World War I battlefields, super depressing, but good to research. Let's just talk about some of the stereotypes. So when you mentioned the wise guide, I was thinking of — Do you know the movie Legends of the Fall? Sarah: No, I'm not familiar with that. Joanna: Well, it's a classic kind of family living out on a ranch, and they have Native American people who live on and work on the farm. And the eldest man is exactly that, you know, he does the smoke and everything. It's an older film, it's probably the mid 80s or early 90s. And his character is very evocative, he's a good character, and you love this character. So you have a very positive view of him. But much media of Native Americans is the kind of whooping, horseback, Tomahawk, killing-all-the-white-people type of stereotype, which is what you see in a lot of Westerns, with the older Westerns, I guess. Do you have any movies or TV shows or media that people could watch where you feel that Native Americans of any tribe are represented in a way that is more correct or respectful? Sarah: Now, that's excellent. As you said, the westerns, and I grew up on westerns, and my papaw, who I get my Choctaw heritage through, he was a huge Western fanatic. He loved all of it, my dad did, and so that's what I grew up on. And that's why I created the Doc Beck western series, is I wanted to explore the western genre, but I wanted to have that non stereotypical respectful representation of an American Indian in the lead role. I really wanted that as well, and so it really worked out to do the Doc Beck with this female Omaha, Indian woman doctor. I think there's more negative representations than well done representations in movies and TV shows. I'm not real hip on a lot of the contemporary movies and stuff that are coming out, even in the historical genre. I know in a really popular TV show right now, there was even some controversy because they have a Lakota actor who is portraying one of the characters, and he did a sacred ceremony with one of the white characters on the TV show. And the Lakota Council, their Cultural Council, was actually upset about that. And people can go find the article on that. So even whenever you have actors who are representing and bringing that aspect of it, you still have to look at it as a whole. And you're going to have conflict of what can be shared and what can't be shared on that. I would recommend, right now I love what the Chickasaw Nation is doing, and this is something that is not mainstream and you have to dig for it, but I think your listeners would really enjoy looking at some of their films. They have a production company now and I love what they're doing. Their newest one is Montford: The Chickasaw Rancher, and so he's a Chickasaw rancher, and I love how they portray his character. It's based on a real person from the 1800s. I would recommend you to check out some films that have been made by Native people. And I know the Chickasaws, and I think the Cherokees and some others have done it and done it well, as well, the Chickasaw Nation has a publishing company called the Chickasaw Press. And I'm contracted with a book with them right now. So I love when the tribes are putting it out there, and not saying that it's going to be perfect or there won't be controversy around it, but you are really getting that Native perspective. And there's something different about that. And that's not to say non-natives can't write really well done non-stereotypical stories like that, but if you can find some that are done by tribes, that's really awesome. Joanna: Personally, I feel that's also research. Like if I, as a British white woman, want to include my Choctaw science fiction space captain, then for me to read books by Native American people will give me ideas that are better than potentially reading a Western by a British white man. It's important to talk about this even if you're worried about cancel culture. And the thing is, as we're talking about this, this discussion is difficult and we mentioned this before we came on the call, is that there is, at the moment, a cancel culture or the way that people feel like, ‘oh, I don't want to do that in case I get attacked, or in case I get taken down,' or in case someone takes offense at me. I might try the best I possibly can, and then someone will find an issue and say I'm racist, or they'll take something out of context. I've had this happen to me. My husband is Jewish, and I write about Jews and Israel. I am not Jewish, and I had someone accuse me of being a Nazi because they took a quote from one of my books completely out of context, put it on Twitter, and accused me of being like an ultra-right wing, Nazi, antisemitic, etc. And I'm like, seriously, if you'd actually read the rest of the book, you would understand that that was about as far away from me as you can get. Now that's just a personal example. And yet, I deliberately include people of lots of different cultures in my books because I think it's so important. So what are your thoughts on writing diverse characters outside of our personal experience? Sarah: That is the hot topic today, and there's so much controversy around it. And it was so much, that I had wanted to create the course that I did for many years, but it that was one of the hesitancies because it is so controversial. And there are many native authors who don't want non-natives writing our history and culture. And we have the Own Voices movement and those types of things, and I think that's wonderful. I mean, natives, we need to write our history and culture. I also wouldn't block, you know, from the other side, as a writer, I understand that we explore all different cultures, and histories, and experiences that are not our own. I write from the male perspective. I have Jewish characters, I have black characters, I have Indian characters, all in my Choctaw Tribune series. I have diverse characters, I have diverse friends. I live, you know, in that myself. And then as writers, if we can't write about these things, if we can only write about what we know and experience, that would be a very, very narrow world. Joanna: Very boring! Sarah: Yes, my world would be very boring. Joanna: Mine would too. Sarah: You know, if I can only write about women who are part Choctaw, part white, that's all I can have in my cast. That would be very strange. And so I hate that you had that experience, and I've known of writers almost being in tears because they want to write Native American characters, but they're afraid they'll get it wrong, they're afraid they'll be criticized. And honestly, they probably will face that no matter what you do. Just as you said, you research, your husband's a Jew, you've done all of these things, and your story's not even that, and you still receive criticism.  So you're going to have that sometimes, but ultimately, for me, I believe that writers should be judged based on the quality of their writing, and not on their race. So regardless of what their ethnicity is, regardless of what their background or religious beliefs, we should be able to explore all of those in writing, but do it in a respectful, well-researched way. And that's just my message for writers who want to write about Native Americans. As a Choctaw, I'm open to that. And I want to teach writers how to do that in the best way they can because I think most writers have a heart for doing it right. I don't think writers are setting out to be offensive or to be rude or to be hateful or racist. They're setting out to write a good story. And I want to help writers do that. Joanna: I agree. I think there is more of an awareness of this now. And when authors do it in a deliberate fashion, they are doing it because they're trying to do it respectfully. Unless they are not, obviously. There are some people who write things who are not being respectful, but we're not talking to them. So you've mentioned the wise guide. We've mentioned the tomahawk-wielding Indian on a horse. Are there any other stereotypes that you get really annoyed about and want to question? Sarah: Oh, there are so many. I actually have a free eBook, 5 Stereotypes to Avoid When Writing about Native Americans. And so I have five of them in there, I have 12 in my course. And I have people who have done a ton of research on American Indians, that are like, I didn't even know some of these things. And a lot of them people will be familiar with. And there's nothing wrong with having the wise guide, I could point that out. If that's a character in someone's story, just make sure it's not stereotypical and they're put in there specifically for that reason, and that's the only aspect of the American Indian character that we get to see. So the other stereotype that I could point out that is not talked about very often, and that's what I call the historical-only point of view. And that's where people write about, especially if they're writing historical fiction, or even fantasy, where they have this perception or this viewpoint that American Indians are in the past. That it's all about history, and what went on in the past. And so when they write from that perspective, there's almost this ending to the character, like their way of life and their people are going to end in the 19th century.  What my perspective is, whenever I'm writing historical fiction, is the people go on, why people go on, and our culture and our history lives on well into the future to my lifetime, and I think continuing on further into the future. So when writers have that historical-only point of view, there's just this almost closure of “we're writing about this people group that no longer exist,” and just having that awareness that native people are still here. Joanna: That's so important. And I mean, you mentioned on your father's side, so do you identify as mixed race? Sarah:  I am. So my papaw is on my mother's side, so through my mother is where I get my Choctaw ancestry, and my dad was a Kansas farm boy. And my mother, we have Irish ancestry and French, I mean we have it all mixed back in there. So we are, one of the terms that was used back in the 19th century and 20th century and today, is ‘mixed bloods.' And that's what we are, we're mixed race. And so I write about my Choctaw heritage. I think you were saying, what's one of the questions I get asked often, one of them is when I tell people I'm Choctaw, they're like, well, how much? Joanna: Is that an offensive question? Sarah: It's not offensive to me. Some people will take offense to it because no other race is based on blood quantum other than Indians and dogs, is what one professor says. We're the only ones that get the dipstick. But what I like to let people know is my fourth-generation grandfather buried his father on the Trail of Tears, and I'm 100% his descendant. That's how much Choctaw I am. Joanna: That's a really interesting question. Like, that's just not something someone would ask me, even though I have done one of those genetic tests, and I'm like a ridiculous number of different racial backgrounds. I mean, I have something like 12 different racial characteristics. It's really interesting, that question, there's so much in there. Sarah: Yes, there is. Joanna: Isn't there? And again, I'm just asking these questions because I want people to feel like it's okay. Do you look Native American because we're on audio only? And I feel like that might be something else. When people ask that question, is that because they look at you and think, well, you just look like, I don't know, the Kansas farm girl? Sarah: Right, I do. I do look more like the Kansas farm girl. I have the hazel eyes and white skin. You put me next to my brother, who we're full brother and sister, same mom and dad, and we look completely different. He looks so Choctaw, he's on the cover of two of my books. Joanna: That's brilliant. Sarah: He has the dark skin. He's been to Nicaragua, and Mexico, Jamaica, and wherever he's at people just start speaking to him in their language because I think he's just part of whatever they are. And he's like, I'm an American, right? So he has the dark skin, and my mother has the darker skin. And so people were always asking her when she was growing up, like what are you? They didn't even know. It was like, you're not Hispanic, you're not white, what are you? And so I don't get offended with that. And it's really not because of my skin color that people ask me that because they ask my mother that, they'll ask my brother that, they ask my nephew that, which tickled me because he has the hazel eyes, blonde hair and dark skin. So people are always asking him, “What are you?” And he's like, “I'm human.“ Joanna: I'm human. That is very good. It's so interesting, I feel like people always want to put people in boxes. And as writers, we are guilty of this because we put characters in boxes. And we say this needs to be this because of story reason. So I guess our overarching message is: don't assume anything, just make someone a well-rounded character in your writing. They might be part Choctaw, and maybe I imagine some of the people who are in your situation, so whatever that percentage is, don't identify in that way. Like plenty of people don't identify with their heritage. So don't assume things about your characters, but create them in a respectful way and do your research. That's probably the method. Sarah: That really is because that's what we need to do with all of our characters, right? We don't want them to be one dimensional and they're just there to serve a specific role in the story. You want them to be a fully fleshed out character. Joanna: For sure. Tell us a bit more about your course and where people can find you online. Sarah: Oh, wonderful. So my course is called Fiction Writing: American Indians. And you can find it at AmericanIndians.FictionCourses.com. And if you scroll to the bottom of that page is where you can download the free PDF, 5 Stereotypes to Avoid When Writing about Native Americans. For my books, visit ChoctawSpirit.com, that's my shared site with my mother who does Choctaw beadwork, but you'll find all of my books on there. And you can find them, of course, on all of the major online platforms. And for my course, Joanna, if it's alright, I created a coupon code called thecreativepenn for $30 off for anyone who uses that coupon code and enrolls in the course. Joanna: Brilliant, and is that Penn with a double N? Sarah: It is. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Sarah. That was great. Sarah: Oh, I appreciate it, Joanna. And we don't have a word for goodbye in Choctaw, we say, chi pisa la chike. I will see you again soon.The post Writing Choctaw Characters And Diversity In Fiction With Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What are the benefits of selling direct? Why might using your face to advertise your books be a good idea? What might be the future of selling direct? Steve Pieper talks about these things and more. In the intro, ACX lowering audiobook prices, Chokepoint Capitalism, Audiblegate, Copyright valuation [Dean Wesley Smith]; courses on copyright; Happy Money; Write to Riches; Failing to predict the future [James Altucher]; Pilgrimage Kickstarter (until 5 Feb, 2023), then find it here. 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 Steve Pieper is a USA Today best-selling thriller author under the name Lars Emmerich. He's also an entrepreneur and business consultant, specializing in digital marketing and selling direct. 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 Reasons to write under a pen name Selling wide to create multiple income streams Potential problems with exclusivity Benefits of selling direct and accessing customer data The empowerment of controlling your intellectual property and author business Humanizing yourself as an author to create a more relatable brand Author marketing mastery through optimization NFTs and how they tie into the future of direct sales You can find Steve Pieper at AMMOauthor.com or under his pen name at Lars.buzz Transcript of Interview with Steve Pieper Joanna: Steve Pieper is a USA Today best-selling thriller author under the name Lars Emmerich. He's also an entrepreneur and business consultant specializing in digital marketing and selling direct. So welcome to the show, Steve. Steve: Thank you very much. It's a privilege and a pleasure. Joanna: Oh, I'm excited to talk to you today. So first up — Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Steve: That's a great question. I started off as an F-16. Pilot, I was actually in pilot training the first time—I think maybe this was the first time—I read a Tom Clancy novel. And the way that he wove all of those different stories together was just fascinating to me. The idea that something is happening in plain sight, but there's a much deeper meaning behind it, that was also very fascinating to me. So I think that's probably the first time I hatched the idea that maybe I would like to write thrillers like that.  It wasn't until maybe 19-ish years later, when I found myself traveling all over the country to sit in boring meetings and needing something to do productively with my off time that I really got serious about writing books and came back to it. Joanna: So tell us a bit more about how your entrepreneurial background fits into writing and publishing. Did you choose the indie route from the beginning? Steve: From the get-go, I had zero interest in the traditional publishing route, just because I looked at the contracts. I realized this is not a terrific deal, really, at all. And of course, it's terrific if that's the only deal that you have available. But when I got serious about writing books, it was during the Joe Konrath Gold Rush era, you know, when there were more Kindles than books available on Kindle kind of a thing. So the opportunity space really seemed wide open at that point for independent publishing rather than trying to go the traditional route. Joanna: So I think that that was around 2009. I mean, some listeners won't even have heard of Joe Konrath, which is kind of crazy for those of us who've been around a while because he was an early adopter. But of course, I think he had around 100 books from traditional publishing or at least 50 books that he put into indie, and that's how he kind of started. But you were starting from zero, right, back in 2009. So tell us where you are now. How many thriller books do you have out there? Steve: Not enough, is always the answer. I'm allegedly working on my thirteenth. I say allegedly, because these other projects keep coming up. Like we were talking about earlier, I have a few too many interests, and I'm involved in a few too many businesses. So I'm doing what I feel is a relatively poor job of juggling all of the things. Most are in the same main series. All of them are either in the series or spin offs with some of my favorite characters from the series. Joanna: Tell us why you wrote under a pen name. Steve: Well, at the time, I had a day job and a security clearance, and some of my characters do some crazy things. I didn't want to be mistaken for my characters, and so I thought that I would try to keep the world separate. It was funny though, one time I walked into a classified meeting in a very dark room behind a vaulted door, and one of the bigwig participants said, “Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Lars Emmerich is here to join us today.” So I figured the cat was out of the bag. Joanna: That's great. I mean, I also find that I like writing fiction under a different name, J.F. Penn, to my nonfiction, and it's almost like there are two personas. Does it help you creatively? Steve: Absolutely. I've come to realize that Lars Emmerich is kind of a character himself. I speak of him in the third person. When I talk about the book business, shorthand around our house is just Lars. Like Lars earned X today, I'll tell my wife. Or my wife will say, “How's Lars doing today?” And so it kind of has taken on a persona of its own. It does give you a little more freedom. Joanna: It's a funny you should say that because my husband says —Morgan Sierra is one of my main characters—and he's like, “does Morgan want to go to Vienna next month?” She's like my alter ego. So yes, it's funny how we do that, but I do think it helps creatively. Now let's get into the business side because you're well-known now in the author community around selling direct. Why did you decide to focus on selling direct to readers? Steve: Well, I was doing what we were all doing. I guess this was maybe 2017-2018ish, I was using advertising—I have a long history in digital advertising—and I was using some of what Mark Dawson was teaching, and I was combining some of that with the things that I had learned before, and with some degree of success on Amazon. One day, I got an email from Amazon saying, “Hey, we've looked at your account. There's something suspicious. We're not going to pay you.” And I was quite alarmed because, to my knowledge, I had done nothing wrong at any point ever. And I wrote them, I took a minute to calm down, and then I wrote them a polite email saying, “Hey, can you help me understand what's happened? And what do I need to fix? And what's going on here?”  I clicked send, I got a new cup of coffee, I came back to my desk, and the reply had already arrived in my inbox. And the reply said that we have reviewed your case, and we have decided to uphold our decision, so we're not going to pay you. And also it admonished me to be very careful with your account, but it gave me no clue what they were mad about. And I never actually spoke to a human. So I sort of realized, this doesn't feel like a healthy business relationship. I really need to do more of controlling my own destiny. So let me see if I can't just sell these books directly to customers. And that worked. Joanna: It's so interesting, it feels like at the moment, and it might just be anecdotal or noise, but — a lot more people seem to be talking about problems with Amazon accounts. And you know, things have changed every year, obviously, since the KDP was launched. But it does feel like more and more authors are having problems. And of course, when your account is closed, or there's a problem, they don't pay royalties. And if you're paying for ads, that can be a real problem. Steve: For sure. And really, for me, it was just the lack of courtesy and the response. It's okay, I mean things happen. There are so many accounts, they have to check them algorithmically. They can't do it by hand for every single account, I understand. But somebody ought to be available to help clarify, and that wasn't the case. So I realized that either they're ill-intentioned, I don't think that's the case, or they're just grown too big to really be able to care all that much about individual authors. And so either way, though, for me, as an individual author, the result was the same, which is I didn't feel comfortable having every one of my eggs in that Amazon basket. Joanna: Of course, you still sell books on Amazon. Steve: Yes. Joanna: And I think that's the other thing, isn't it? I feel like when we talk about selling direct people think, oh, that means you're ditching everything else.  You're ultimately wide. Do you sell everywhere? Steve: I do. I am ultimately wide. And it's really interesting because the most reliable way I've discovered to improve my Amazon sales is to just advertise my direct sales. And we see a number of authors are doing this direct sales process, and we see it over and over and over again. So it's called cross-channel effects. It's kind of a nerdy marketing term, but it is a really effective way. It's kind of like bonus money. Your direct sales system makes money for you, and this big Amazon windfall comes in as well. So I was surprised, but pleasantly so. And so it's one of the things we advise folks to do. Don't fire Amazon completely, keep them in your arsenal, but just don't rely on them completely. Joanna: Exactly. And I mean, it's certainly been my goal over the last few years to reduce the percentage of my business income from that one company. And I mean, that's true whether you have a job or not. If everything is dependent on one company and something goes wrong, like many people, I was laid off in the global financial crisis back in 2008, and that shaped my own indie author journey. So I feel like that's the same way now. A lot of people get that wake-up call, essentially. Do you find that authors come to you because one of the services has broken in some way, or that people just really want their own independence? Steve: It's a little bit of both. What's been surprising, recently, is the number of very high Amazon earners who are now very serious about direct sales. And not speaking for anybody, my understanding for why that's happening is that they're seeing fluctuations in their own earnings, and they also are wanting less dependence on a single source of income.  There are account administration horror stories, people who are doing very well suddenly have their accounts shut off. So I think that that fuels the fears, also. I think it's mainly about diversification, spreading out your risk across a number of different third parties, instead of having all of your risk consolidated in one single service that you use. Joanna: What about empowerment and mindset shift? Because I feel like when we all got started, or some of us got started over a decade ago, we felt almost embarrassed about being our own publishers and there was this stigma. Now it almost feels like independent authors are more empowered. Has that been a shift? Steve: It certainly has. It's been a shift in my own thinking also. I've always been sort of iconoclastic, and I try to do my own thinking and go in the way that seems best to me, regardless of where everybody else is going. But that has always sort of come with a bit of self-consciousness, like, what if I'm wrong, and I'm way out here in the wilderness by myself, and nothing good happens. Fortunately, that wasn't the case.  Over the years, I think as more of us have seen more success, and the relative success per book sold is much greater because our margins are so much better as indies, I think it has made its own argument for people to really take control of their own destiny. What comes with that, is you're now not just a content producer, you're a business owner. And that's an important shift. Not everybody wants to make it. When you do make it, it is very empowering though. The buck stops with you, and if things aren't going terrific, guess what, you have the agency to make a change and to experiment with different avenues with different approaches. I think it's been really healthy. We've sort of been very dependent, and our dependencies shifted from traditional publishers to the retailers, mainly Amazon. What I think the current move toward direct sales is doing is it's really bringing home the agency, both the responsibility and the power, to propel your own career. So I think it's kind of combination of factors as our industry has matured, and it's done so really rapidly, particularly over the last five years, I would say. What do you think? Joanna: Yes, I think the last few years. And that seems to be speeding up that kind of desire. I mean, we've always been independent authors, and yet, a lot of people are pretty dependent on one company. But there are some more practical things. Maybe you could just comment on the financial reason, I guess the speed, and also the customer data side of selling direct, why those are a good idea. Steve: It's absolutely essential that we know who our customers are directly. And when we sell on Amazon, not only do they not want to share that customer information with us, they can't. That's not something that they have established as their terms of service and their rules. So what that means is, whenever you have a list of, call it 100,000 people, and you send those folks over to Amazon, some number of them will buy something from you, but you have no idea who they are.  So what happens is, when you don't know exactly who your buyers are, it's infinitely harder to go find more of them. And so owning your customer data, and the way that we own it is when they purchase directly from your webstore, not only is that money deposited in like two or three business days, instead of two or three months, that's really important as a business owner, that your returns come back quickly so that you're not having to float your credit card debt for weeks and months while you're waiting to get paid. The other thing is that you can connect directly any advertising effort to the customers that it brings in. So this allows you to learn what works and what doesn't in a much tighter feedback loop, and a much more refined feedback loop, so that you know what's working and what isn't, with a lot greater specificity. And that helps you grow, that helps you scale. And obviously, it helps you to get paid sooner. Joanna: Yes, and just to repeat that, you get paid in two to three days, sometimes like really immediately as well, depending on the payment method. Instead of two to three months, or traditionally published authors might not get paid for six months or more time. So I think that's super important. You did though say that if you have an email list of like 100,000 people, and I know everyone was like, well, we don't have that. Is selling direct only for massive authors with massive email lists? Steve: No, absolutely not. In fact, that's how we get those big email lists. And there are two ways that we approach it. The first way is sort of the traditional get people hooked by giving away your first and series in exchange for an email address, after which we give them an immediate opportunity to purchase. And that was sort of the foundational approach. And so that grew our email list quite quickly. What we discovered through testing, is that after COVID, people were much less leery of making online purchases. So we were able to profitably just advertise directly for the sale without having to give away a book in the interim in between there. And what that does for you, is that every new person who shows up in your email service provider is a buyer. They're not on your list now, if they're not buyers. And if you've had an email list for any length of time, I think you know instantly how valuable it is to have a list full of buyers instead of a list full of mainly freebie seekers and a couple of buyers, or a small percentage of buyers. So if you're just starting out and you don't have a big list, don't worry, that comes with time. And it's really a matter of just staying stuck in with the process and allowing things to grow. Because they do grow. They will grow if you feed it, if you continue to make adjustments, and you continue to optimize the way your sales platform works, that list size will come. And if you're advertising directly for sales, that list size will come. Every time somebody new is on your list, it means that you have a new paying customer who's about to enjoy one or more of your books. So it's a virtuous cycle that helps you grow. Joanna: Yes, and I've sold direct on various platforms for years. But up until seeing what you've been doing and seeing what others have been doing with Shopify, I didn't do one store because growing slowly, you do all these different services and stuff. [My store is at www.CreativePennBooks.com] A lot of people think this is digital only, but it's not digital only anymore, is it? Steve: No, not at all. And there's a large number of readers who will ever, only and always, read paperbacks or hard covers. And like you, I've used a bunch of different store services, you know, Shopify, Kajabi, SamCart others, there's a bunch of them that work for digital products. The reason that we recommend Shopify now is because it does the best job helping you manage physical inventory. It has the best integrations that allow you to hook up with print-on-demand services. So you can sell your eBooks and your audiobooks on your Shopify store, but also your paperbacks, your hardcovers, your large print paperbacks, large print hard covers, special editions, special box sets, all that kind of stuff. So it really does help you manage the physical copies. Joanna: And in fact, one of your Lars books is one of the first print books I've bought from a Shopify store. Steve: Oh, really, well I feel quite honored. Hopefully, you were able to slog through it. Joanna: It was great. And what I liked was that it came with a receipt that has, I think, either your face on it, or another book, or some kind of branded material that essentially made me feel it was from your store. Whereas when I get a book in the post from Amazon, the receipt is an Amazon receipt. So that's really interesting. Steve: It's a really powerful advantage that we have by selling direct is that we can be a face rather than a logo. And we're all nervous about how we look, none of us thinks that we're movie stars, but it's okay. You're a real person, and it deepens the connection that you have with your readers. I think it really is beneficial to include your face in your marketing because people know your work, and they enjoy your stories, but we have so much brain real estate devoted to recognizing faces. It really does help for recognition, for brand recognition, and to boost future sales. So if you can stand to put your face on your brand, it really is useful. I encourage everybody to do that, no matter how ugly we all think we are. We're not ugly, we're all just humans. Joanna: And everyone has something interesting about their face. Because as you said, people recognize and look at faces. And in fact, I think I saw on one of your various tutorials, that you do ads with your face holding a book, or the ads with our faces in them as authors can be surprisingly effective. Is that right, or am I making that up? Steve: No, you're not making it up. It is right. It was very surprising to me. So I have a bunch of different ad types. I've tested probably thousands of different ad variations at this point. Most of the ones that do really well, I don't predict that they would do really well. That's the importance of testing, we discover that we have biases that are not shared by our market. It's that old adage that you are not your market. One of the most surprising ones that worked the best was just my ugly mug on the advertisement. So that's the reason I recommend, hey, if you can get over yourself consciousness, just grit your teeth and put it out there, and do you use your face. Joanna: It's a tough one. And I know a lot of people listening will be going, no blooming way, I'm not doing that. Steve: And for those folks, I should say that don't worry, there is an ad configuration that will likely work for you. So don't feel like this is the only anything, but it's just something definitely worth testing. Joanna: So I mean, testing is one thing you definitely emphasize, but — What are some of the biggest mistakes you've seen authors make with direct sales? And how can we avoid them? Steve: Hmm, that's a good question. There are a bunch of technical mistakes that you can make that end up being quite debilitating, even just down to fussy web stuff. Like, somehow you have the wrong Facebook pixel on your landing page, or something fussy like that. So it's the kind of game where it really does pay to pay attention to detail. But I think authors are good at that. I think we think very closely and very hard about things. We're pretty picky about sentence structure and the way that we say what we say, and the sentences that we use to tell our story. So I don't think it's abnormal for authors to sort of dig in and cozy up to the details. Those are the main ones that I find that are holding folks back. The other part is that there's not a single one-stop shopping solution that allows you to construct a profitable funnel. You have to put some tools together. So that can feel intimidating. And I think it holds a lot of people back who otherwise would do very well, but they don't have much appetite. And I get it, they don't have much appetite for the technical. The technical lift. Joanna: I think that's true now of self-publishing and book marketing, in general. You can still do this stuff offline, you can still go to fairs and sell books at conventions and stuff. And some people do really well with that. So that's one option. The other option really is online. So I mean — Do you think it's possible to be a very successful indie author now without trying some of this technical stuff yourself? Or can you just outsource the whole thing? Steve: I should say that it's not economically feasible to outsource the whole thing in the beginning. Web marketing, it's a profession, and people who do it for a living expect to be paid as professionals, for good reason. It's a marriage of art. It's a marriage of data science. It's a marriage of web developer stuff. And there are some technical things that go into it. So it is a profession, and those folks, you're not going to find them on Fiverr. So if you want to make a go of it, I do think you need an effective and profitable online presence. We have folks in our community who do very well at conventions, but there's only so many conventions that you can go to. You can't go to one every day. And when you're at a convention, or even a great weekend, you know it'll be a significant amount of money for the weekend, but there just aren't enough opportunities over the course of a year that you can really make a living off of just selling in person physical copies. At least if there's somebody doing that, I haven't met them.  The folks who are selling boatloads of physical copies every single day, are doing that mainly digitally. They're mainly using the advertising marketing principles involved in direct sales and aiming them at physical copy sales. So if there's a test case for somebody who's doing that very successfully at scale with physical copies and only in person appearances, I haven't met them to pick their brain on how they've done it. Joanna: Yes, and it's funny because, to me, sitting at a convention all day is more terrifying than trying to build something online. So I mean, we all have the things we have to do to sell our books. And I mean, I have a degree in theology, and I learned how to do this. So I think that over time, you either learn the skills you need to learn, or you can outsource all this to a publisher and go the traditional publishing route. I mean, you basically pay the publisher up to 90% for them doing all this. We have to remember there are tradeoffs as authors, and you have to choose your trade-off. Like you can't just write your books, you have to do something else. You have to figure out what you are willing to do for this career. Steve: Yeah, I agree. It dawned on me at some point that there really is no career that is just an author, just a writer, right now. And there might have been in the past, for a small number of very talented, but also very lucky writers who did win the traditional publishing lottery. Not only did they get published, but really sold, but that's a small number of folks. That opportunity still exists in the same sort of probability spaces of like becoming a lottery winner, right? You know somebody's going to win the lottery every year, but that's probably not going to be you. So that's not a model that we can try to replicate. And then everybody else, well, we're in the position of needing to create really excellent books and also to create an excellent business that puts those books in the best light in front of the right readers.  So I think it's different sides of our brains. It's hard for me to switch back and forth. I have to devote entire days to one type of work: creative or administrative marketing detail work. It's a much different headspace for me than creating stories. And also, I create music as well. Same kind of deal, it's hard to flip back and forth. I don't know of any other way to do it successfully right now. And I think it's been that way for years. We've needed to have some business acumen and some skills that we wouldn't—like we wouldn't wake up dreaming, “Gosh, I really wish I understood my ads manager more deeply.” But we just sort of picked these things up along the way as necessary skills to move us forward. Joanna: And you have a course on this, you mentioned there your community and also test cases, and I've watched some of your videos, and you have some really interesting information that I think is different to some of the other courses out there because it does cover this direct sales process. So tell us a bit about that course. Steve: Well, thank you. Yeah, it's called AMMO – Author Marketing Mastery through Optimization. I came at it applying other principles and skills I learned from other online businesses. I aimed those processes and adapted them to book selling. So I knew I was on pretty solid footing, what I didn't know is if I could make the whole thing work with enough profit margin to be useful and to be profitable. It turns out that with some optimization, which just means testing to find out what works, that it is quite profitable. That process is not terribly obvious or intuitive, so it does help to have a bit of guidance. And over the years, I've seen thousands and thousands of tests, I've worked with hundreds of startups in all sorts of different industries, doing basically the same thing. There are a hundred true and accurate ways that you can describe your book, or your service or your product, but how do you know which of those ways resonates best with your audience. So that's just the process of testing to help discover what that is, put your books in the best light, in the most relevant light for your audience, and good things happen. So again, the course is called AMMO. It is open for enrollment at the moment. If you'd like to check out the first video in a series, it walks through the structure that we use, and it gives some examples of some successful advertisements that I've used over the years. You can sign up for that at AMMOauthor.com, Author Marketing Mastery through Optimization. Joanna: And I'll put the links in the show notes. But I think that's the video I watched that had the example of your ad in. So yeah, I think it's like an hour, isn't it? That video is really useful. Steve: It is, I think, about 55 minutes or so. And obviously, there's an opportunity to enroll in the course. But as I go through that sales process, and also sort of with a wink and a nod, I'm telling you what I'm doing from a sales process as I'm doing it to give you a sense for how you might apply that to your bookselling business. Joanna: Fantastic. So let's change tack a little bit because we share an interest in blockchain and NFTs. And you recently minted The Incident with book.io. Why are you interested in NFTs and how does it tie into selling direct? Steve: Oh, this is such a great thread. I know lots of people, their eyes are glazing over, and they're thinking about all sorts of online scams and craziness, and there is some of that, for sure. But the way that I came at blockchain was through Bitcoin. I was thinking very deeply about what is value, what is money? How do you store it? How do you keep it from disappearing while you're storing it? And I was doing this in the process of writing a trilogy that sort of explores the fragility of the financial system and what some kind of consequences might be.  What I learned is that the blockchain technology is actually a terrific way to make hard money, so money that's very difficult for governments to just print at their will causing a lot of inflation. And this gets into financial and global politics and whatnot, but it's important stuff that I think if we're not already paying attention to as the general public, we will be before too long. So I've been watching this technology advance, I've been participating in it. You know, my participation in Bitcoin over the years has certainly changed our lives. And then as the non-fungible token thing became a thing, at first, I didn't really understand that people were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a picture of a monkey or something crazy like that. But I knew something is happening here, I don't know what it is. NFTs allow digital property. You own a cryptographically, unique copy of the books that you buy through book.io on NFTs. You actually own it, you can sell it again. And if you sell it again, you will reap the profit when you sell it. And you can give it away, you can lend it, you can do whatever you want with it. This is different than the agreement that we have, say as an Amazon customer, or a Barnes and Noble customer, when we “buy a book”, we're really just buying the right to read it. We don't own any other rights. And in fact, when those companies exit markets, or when they delist books, they disappear from your reader automatically, so you don't actually own them. But NFTs are a way, and the only way that I know of, to avoid the copy and paste problem with digital property. It sounds a little bit esoteric, but you can think of it in terms of when you go to a bookstore and you purchase a hardcover, that's yours. You can sell it at a garage sale if you want, you can give it to your friends, you can do whatever you want with that copy. Well, you now have that ability digitally. And so it's quite revolutionary. Even though it sounds obvious and kind of simple, I really do think it's a game changer. So it's something to watch. Joanna: Yes, me too. I mean, listeners will know, I've been very interested in this space, and I've minted, and I think it's super interesting. I do wonder whether by the time the general public, even most authors, use NFTs, we won't use that word anymore or those letters anymore. It will be like nobody knows that they're reading an ePub file when they get a book on their Kindle or their Kobo or their phone or whatever. It's like the word is almost too technical, and perhaps it will just be “digital assets” or another word that will get rid of the scammy connotations that have happened because of the last year and the crypto crashes and all of that kind of thing. What do you reckon? What do you see coming in the next few years? Steve: I share that view that what we're seeing right now is sort of the hood of the car or the bonnet is open. And you can see the greasy engine in there spinning and it doesn't seem like anything that you want to be a part of. There will come a time when we have tools that make it far more transparent. And one of the tools book.io is developing right now, which is a reader for your handheld device. So it'll be a lot more like current eBook purchases and reading experience will be in the future. The major difference being that you own the property.  This is interesting because it puts books in the category of digital collectibles. So as an author gains notoriety, and as an author's work becomes more popular and valuable, the copies that are owned by individual people will also become more valuable. So it'll be sort of like investing in fine art, if you will, where it holds value over time, rather than the opposite. So that's an interesting and neat idea. Joanna: Yes, I mean, I always say to people, oh, well, you could buy a Charles Dickens eBook—well, you don't even need to have to buy it—you can get a Charles Dickens eBook for free right now on your Kindle or your Kobo or whatever. Or you could go and buy a first edition print copy, and that's going to cost you I don't even know how much, thousands of pounds. And so that's kind of what we're saying, right? We all value our digital world and our digital life. Like my website, your website, these don't physically ‘exist' in the physical world, but yet they're worth money. Why shouldn't digital assets be worth money? I mean, it almost feels to me like authors are forgetting that digital things are worth something. Steve: Yes, absolutely, but I feel like it'll be almost like anything else. It'll seem to most people that it never has a chance until it's just a part of everyday life. And then it will seem like it was always an inevitability. Like it's this weird kind of social phenomenon that happens where it's hard for people to project into the future and to understand conceptually what a thing might become until it's already become that. And then it feels like it's always been there, just like the sunrise or your furniture. You know what I mean? I think we're on that kind of trajectory with these things. And I think it will be not but a couple more years before they're much more mainstream. Joanna: I agree. And I mean, you mentioned earlier that you're a musician. And in terms of looking into the future, the music industry is always ahead of the publishing industry, the book publishing industry.  Is there anything else you see out of the music industry that might be reflected in the author industry over the next few years? Steve: I think so. I think, like you say, the music industry is a harder business, by far, than the book business. And the book business is not easy, as we all know. So there are a lot of really motivated, intelligent, scrappy people in the music world who are looking for innovative new ways. I certainly have my own ideas and I'm in the beginnings of a project that feels quite ambitious now, but hopefully will be a marriage of the best of music, and storytelling, and video production using AI art in the videos. Now, that's another topic entirely, but there's really amazing things happening right now. As you know, Jo, in the AI art world, where AIs are generating really incredible graphics. So that's exciting. The idea is to create an asset worth having, and something that people want to collect and can enjoy or get some utility out of in the process of collecting them. So it'll be interesting to see where all of this lands, and it'll be interesting to see how the technology develops. These are really, really exciting times. Even if this kind of stuff is not really up your alley, you know, technically, I think it's still worthwhile to start getting an idea, conceptually, of what's happening. Because I do think it will be a major economic force here, certainly in the next decade, probably in the next five years. What are your thoughts on it? I know you've spoken about this in the past in the updates. Joanna: Well, it's funny. I mean, one of the reasons I went with Shopify—and you know, it was quite a big deal for me, I had a lot of different products. And I mean, it's almost easier to start a Shopify store when you've only got a couple of books. And it took me a lot of building, but one of the reasons I did it was because of NFTs and cryptocurrency, because Shopify has this functionality in beta right now, this token-gated commerce. And I'm encouraged that they enable a lot of things that I think are not mainstream right now, but are going to be mainstream. So I can really see that I'll sell my NFT editions, next to my special hardback, next to my audio book, and next to a mug, you know, a journal. And so that's how I see it, it's that selling direct can be all kinds of digital collectibles and physical products and everything. And I guess that's why it's so great to talk to you, because I feel like you have that vision too. The author is the brand, right? In the future—I mean, it should be already, but by controlling your ecommerce site that is much more truly a brand and a business than it is now. Instead of having all these different things, I mean, we'll still have all the different things, but we'll also have our hub. Steve: Yes, absolutely. Very, very well said, I think the doors are really wide open for all sorts of opportunities. And when you have a brand, rather than just a series of products, it really allows you to increase your profit margin. It allows you to sell more things to your fans and superfans. And it's a virtuous cycle where you can have a more profitable and enjoyable business, and you can deliver a lot more value to the people who really value what you produce. Joanna: Fantastic. Where can people find you and your books and everything you do online? Steve: Thank you. If you want to check out the thrillers, I'll say they're a little edgy and not for everybody, but you can do that at Lars.buzz. I don't know what you'll see when you get there because I'm constantly testing new configurations, but the best deal available at any moment is at Lars.buzz. And if you are interested in checking out what we're doing in the direct sales department, that website is AMMOauthor.com. Joanna: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Steve. That was great. Steve: Thank you so much, such a pleasure. And thanks for all that you do for us as indie authors.The post The Empowerment Of Selling Books Direct To Your Readers With Steve Pieper first appeared on The Creative Penn.

What do you need to consider when writing travel memoir? How fear of judgment and fear of failure are real issues even for established authors, and more in these selected excerpts from interviews with J.F. Penn around Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways. In this episode, I talk about: How Pilgrimage fits across several sub-categories of the travel genre and the perils of writing cross-genre  Fear of sharing personal aspects in the memoir, fear of launch, fear of failure, fear of judgment, and being terrified of doing a Kickstarter (recorded several days before the launch) How journals can be the basis of writing a travel memoir, structuring a book around theme, and why you have to think of the reader Jo Frances Penn with Pilgrimage I have a Kickstarter running as this goes out for my new travel memoir / solo walking book, Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways, and I’ve been doing interviews on the topic on various shows, so I wanted to share some snippets. It might also introduce you to new shows that you might enjoy and you can find them all on your podcast app, wherever you’re listening to this. The clips are from Travel Writing World, Wish I’d Known Then, and Sacred Steps, and I was also on Into the Woods. I’ve included different clips on my Books and Travel Podcast, more about the walking than the writing side, so you can also listen there.  I also wanted to let you know that we reached the stretch goal — even though I was scared of not making it! All backers will get an extra audio with a transcript on how I turned hundreds of pages of hand-written journal entries and hundreds of photos into a finished travel memoir. This will only go to backers, so even if you’re not that interested in pilgrimage, you might want my tips on writing travel memoir, and you can back the campaign with just a few pounds.  Just go to JFPenn.com/pilgrimage and that will redirect to the Kickstarter until 5 Feb, after which it will take you to where the book will be available later in the year. So let’s get into it.  In this clip from the Travel Writing World podcast with Jeremy Bassetti, I talk about how Pilgrimage is sits across different sub-genres of the travel niche.  J.F. Penn – Pilgrimage and Perspective Transcript of the clip from Travel Writing World Jeremy Bassetti: You'd mentioned your journal and leaning into your journal while writing this book. It has kind of this memoir or travelogue component, it has an account of your pilgrimages, but it's also kind of like a guidebook, if I may, for the idea of going on a pilgrimage itself.  So, it does many things this book, but I was wondering how would you describe it? Jo Frances Penn: Well, you know how difficult this is!  Originally I thought I would write travel guides to the routes. I thought I would just have three travelogue-type books. And then I thought I would do a travel memoir about all the travels of my life.  And then I realized after I finished the Camino that I did have a personal arc, a character arc. Memoir, I think is defined by some kind of transformational arc in the person.  So, I mean, you can go on a trip like your photography trip to Bolivia, for example. It doesn't have to change the direction of your life. It can just be a trip for taking photos and whatever.  In terms of how I would describe the book, it's kind of a travel memoir, so it is a personal, emotional, spiritual transformation, but it's also a self-help guide for people who want to do solo walking. And I put in the appendices some very practical things, including accommodation and gear and stuff like that.  So, I feel like it can do both, but of course, that makes it very difficult in terms of a particular genre. I guess it falls through the gaps of so many sub-genres, but I hope it's both useful to people who consider the idea of pilgrimage, but also those who practically want help. Jeremy Bassetti: You mentioned that you originally set out to write travel guides and also like a memoir, so I was wondering if the evolution of the idea of the book happened as you were writing it, or did that happen in the earlier stages when you were trying to figure out what it was exactly you were going to write? Jo Frances Penn: It really happened right at the end there, once I came back from the Camino. I mean, I had over a hundred thousand words in a Scrivener project. And like yourself, I've read very many travel books over decades. And so I had a lot of quotes and I had a lot of musings, and I just didn't know what the book was going to be until I returned from the Camino and I realized that I had discovered home, for example, which is something I really hadn't felt before, which is quite weird. But I think many travelers feel this, like, where is my home? And I did kind of discover that.  I also had the sort of midlife realizations around things. I had so much material, and this is the problem with writing travel books. Of course you can end up with so much material but when I read it, so much was repetitive. And this is a danger of the travelogue, I think. I mean, if you are walking pilgrimage routes or any multi-day walking, every day is the same. So I ended up just doing one small chapter on the pilgrim's day, but it's a very simple life, right? The bigger question is — what is the transformation? So yes, I really didn't know until the end. And in fact, even my book cover. My audience thought they wanted this particular cover, sort of a commercial travel guide cover with blue skies and sun.  And I ended up choosing one of my own pictures from the St. Cuthbert’s Way, which is one of my photos of a hill to climb and stormy skies, which is far more of what pilgrimage is to me, and for probably most people. It’s more truthful. So yes, pilgrimage is a challenge and writing a book about it is certainly a challenge.  My discussion with Jeremy continues into why walk a pilgrimage when I am not religious, why walking is healing and pilgrimage in particular can heal deeper wounds of the soul, how the gifts of pilgrimage come with hindsight, why we travel, and how to figure out what kind of travel book to write.  You can listen to the rest of the episode on Travel Writing World on your favourite podcast app. Jeremy also has interviews with travel writers like Pico Iyer, Colin Thubron, and many more on his show, or check out his website TravelWritingWorld.com  Jeremy has also been on this podcast talking about the different sub-genres of travel writing, tackling imposter syndrome, and more.  In this next clip, I’m on the Wish I’d Known Then Podcast with Sara Rosett and Jami Albright, and we’ve known each other for years so we have a great in-depth chat. In this excerpt we talk about fear — fear of sharing personal aspects in the memoir, fear of launch, fear of failure, fear of judgment, oh my goodness, so many fears going into this, for sure!  Transcript of the clip from Wish I'd Known Then Jami: Speaking of things being scary, was it scary to write a lot of personal things? I mean, I'm an oversharer, so for me that would not be that hard. But I know you're not. Jo Frances Penn: It's interesting because of course we all have our boundaries, right? We have all our lines and of course I do share, I share a lot and have done since I was online in 2008.  And also in my fiction, I share a lot of my thoughts on like religion through my characters. So Morgan Sierra particularly in my ARKANE thriller series has thoughts about religion and various things that come from my own experience or some of my travel experiences are fictionalized in other books. But this is the first memoir where it's like, this is actually me and it's not fictionalized and so it is really kind of emotionally revealing. To me anyway, I feel the book is emotionally revealing in a way that I haven't been before, and that's scary.  It's also the fear of judgment. I always have fear of judgment about any book. I don't know what I'm scared of, but I'm really scared!  I mean, I almost feel now that the book is done. I cannot change it. And in fact, I only gave it to my husband when it was finished. And I only gave it to my mum when it was finished. And those two people, I was like, I really hope they don't say I can't publish it because it's already done. I actually gave them the hardback.  Sara: Oh wow.  Jo: And yes, because I felt like it's my story, and if they don't want me to publish it, I'm going to have to argue that. Thankfully they both said it was okay. Although my mum was sad because she felt like she didn't know necessarily at the time, what I was going through, but I said to her, and this will be true if anyone's having mental health issues, sometimes when you are going through things, you cannot ask for help because you are in the darkness, right?  Sara: So you don't even realize you're going through things until you look back later and go, oh, that was not a good time sometimes. I'm in self-denial a lot about a lot of things, so I understand that Jo Frances Penn: Right. But that's why journaling is so important. I mean, I read some of the journal entries that I've put in the book and I'm like, I don't even know that person. Sara: Well, speaking of fear, let's talk about the Kickstarter because I totally identify with being a little worried about — a lot worried — about the Kickstarter. Talk to us about the fear around the Kickstarter Or maybe someone may not do a Kickstarter, but they might do a launch — and when I did my Kickstarter, I was like, okay, I remember now. I used to feel this way when I launched a book, and now I'm more in the routine of launching a book, so it's not as scary, right? But the Kickstarter brought it all back. Talk to us about that.  Jo Frances Penn: Well, thank you for your help because I emailed you and you've helped me with various questions like international shipping, which in itself is, which is terrifying, because you realize, like specifically, I had put “Will ship to all countries.” I'd come up with a price for all countries and then I just checked a few things, like, okay, how much to send to Peru or Malawi or Indonesia. And then I was like, okay, then I can't use that!  Sara: Maybe delete that! Jo: Yes, I did. So, essentially we are recording this just a few days before it starts. I've put six main countries and then I've put, please email me if you want me to add your country.  But yes, in terms of the fear. It's so funny you talk about launches because I also realized that I have not properly launched a book for probably eight years.  All I do is finish the book, I do a very short pre-order, sometimes like just a month when it's already finished.  I upload all the formats and then on when it goes out that day, I just send an email, talk about it on the podcast, and that's about it really. I might put a few ads on and so I haven't really launched a book in so long that this feels very, very weird. Like you both, I'm quite low-key. I don't do hard selling, so I’m normally like, here it is, buy it whenever you like. It doesn't matter. It’s very low-key. But the Kickstarter is like, buy it in this two-week period (23 Jan – 5 Feb, 2023).  And you have to I guess tell people more often, like email more than once a month or do some videos and maybe do social media every day and yeah, all this stuff that I haven't done, like probably ever.  So that's one thing, the fear of launch, and also, this is a new genre with travel memoir, and a new format — I’m doing this special hardcover with a fly leaf with color photos inside, which I've never done before. It's got silver foil, I mean, it's really beautiful.  Pilgrimage, my first limited edition hardback with color photos inside It’s also a new platform, Kickstarter. So new genre, new format, new platform. I think if I'd thought about that beforehand, I may not have gone ahead. Jami: Just dive into the deep end! Jo Frances Penn: And it's so funny because last year in 2022, I built my Shopify store, www.CreativePennBooks.com and that was a massive project too, putting my entire backlist onto Shopify and all that. So, yes, I’m afraid of the emotional potential response to the book. I'm afraid of getting something really wrong that affects the money. I'm afraid that I will be very embarrassed because this is not aimed at my target audience. So I may not fund. I've put it really low, so I hope to fund but to be frank, I've got a platform, I’ve got a book on How to Market a Book, so if I can’t fund, I'll be very embarrassed, basically.  So, yes, it does feel like a risk. And yet I was reflecting on this this morning thinking, this is good because I've been publishing since 2008 when I published my first book. It’s good to switch things up and to push your comfort zone. If this was still the same year after year after year, we would be bored and we would go do another job. So that was recorded just a few days before launching the Kickstarter and as I record this the campaign is at almost £14,000 (around US$17K) and my goal was very low at £1000 so thank you to everyone who has bought the book through the campaign and as I record this, I am still scared of the response to the emotional side of the book as it hasn’t gone out yet — but at least I can say the campaign is going well!  In the rest of the discussion with Jami and Sara, we talk about intuitive writing, how Indies can now make beautiful books, direct sales and empowerment, and some futurist things around incorporating AI into our writing.  Joanna Penn on Intuitive Writing for Memoir plus Kickstarter and Direct Sales Tips There are loads of great interviews and discussions on Wish I’d Known Then across a load of genres, as well as writing craft and business tips, plus Sara and Jami are lovely, friendly hosts, so check that out wherever you listen to podcasts.  Sara has also been on this show before talking about structuring and writing series. In this next clip, I’m on the Sacred Steps Podcast with Kevin Donahue, which is a podcast all about pilgrimage. You can listen on your podcast app or watch on YouTube. Kevin is also writing a travel memoir, and we discuss how our journals are the basis of writing a travel memoir and why it might be easier to structure around themes, but also why you have to think of the reader and change your perspective if you want to use your journals in writing.  Using journals in travel writing Kevin: Specifically on the journal side, I found the easiest, the most comfortable way to present this was really around some simple themes. And for me they are faith, hope, and love. What are those elements of my pilgrimage where those have been evident, the lessons learned around them. There are days that brought forth these simple tropes of, this is how I was impacted in these three thematic ways.  And as you said, people do pilgrimage for different reasons, but for me, it's been considering what are the questions I should be asking myself about these three elements that are so important in my life, and what are the answers that have been inspired by my experiences or my time to think about these things. So that's really the context for me.  Jo Frances Penn: The other thing about writing a book we should say is that it's also for other people. You can keep your journal as your own experience, but when you write a book, they are for other people to read. So in Pilgrimage, I have a lot of practical tips, for example, about solo walking and gear and other stuff like food. I have a chapter on suffering, my spiritual faith journey, and all of that kind of thing. But I do think that our tips from doing these longer walks can also be useful for others.  I also wanted to comment on Truth (with a capital T ) versus truth (with a little t) because this is important for you writing a novel as well. So Truth is the things that you are going write in fiction, potentially that means love, hope, and whatever, but you will be fictionalizing or concatenating or changing or exaggerating things that didn't happen that way in order to underscore the bigger Truth of pilgrimage.  This is really important to keep in mind when people are reading a travel memoir as well. The writer will sometimes potentially change the truth in order to underscore the Truth. Certainly some of my journal entries that I include in the book are from different points, but I use them in the same chapters around certain elements to underscore the point that I hope will be useful for other pilgrims. So yes, the experience of writing a book is almost a pilgrimage in itself. [NOTE: I have more episodes and book recommendations on writing memoir here, many of which talk about the element of Truth vs truth.] So I hope you found those clips interesting, and you can listen to the complete episodes on the podcast feeds for Travel Writing World with Jeremy Bassetti, Wish I’d Known Then with Sara Rosett and Jami Albright, and Sacred Steps with Kevin Donahue. I was also on Holly Worton’s Into The Woods Podcast.  You can find different clips on my Books and Travel Podcast if you’d like to hear more. As this goes out, Pilgrimage is available on my Kickstarter campaign. Just go to JFPenn.com/pilgrimage and it’s available in a special limited edition signed hardback, as well as a paperback, ebook, audiobook narrated by me, large print edition, and a workbook. It will be on Kickstarter until 5 February 2023, and then you can still visit that link to find it on all the other stores later in the year. The post Writing Travel Memoir, Fear Of Judgment, Fear Of Failure, And Journaling With J.F. Penn first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you use AI tools to ethically and responsibly create in whatever sphere you love? What are some of the tools and why are creative direction, voice, and taste, so important? I discuss these issues and more in a solo introduction and an interview with Oliver Altair. In the first 28 mins of the podcast, I give an extended introduction about the various legal cases around AI and copyright, my thoughts on the best way to approach it for your creative work, and how to use AI tools ethically and responsibly. I've included the transcript below with lots of links and further resources, and you can find more at TheCreativePenn.com/future. If you'd like to learn more, you can get 50% off my ebook and audiobook on Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, and Virtual Worlds if you buy direct, and you can get 50% off my course, The AI-Assisted Author. Just use discount code: FEB23 at checkout for either. Today's show is sponsored by my wonderful patrons who fund my brain so I have time to think about and discuss these futurist topics impacting authors. If you support the show, you also get the extra monthly patron-only Q&A audio. You can support the show at www.patreon.com/thecreativepenn Oliver Altair is a dark fantasy author, a digital artist and creator of the Ravensfield Collection. 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. The interview starts at 28:33 mins. Show Notes The creation of the Ravensfield Collection using AI art How AI art can be used as a marketing tool for authors Available tools for an AI-augmented creative How to write AI prompts to achieve the best results Concerns about intellectual property when training models What are the different kinds of Creative Commons licenses? The importance of creative confidence, voice, and taste, for making art with AI tools Generative writing tools as a brainstorming co-pilot You can find Oliver Altair at OliverAltair.com. You can view the Ravensfield Collection at Ravensfield.art. Header image by Joanna Penn on Midjourney. Transcript of the solo introduction on generative AI with Joanna Penn Before we get into the interview, I just want to add some over-arching comments as I’m getting a lot of emails about generative AI for art and obviously for words. It feels like a lot of people are going through now what I did a few years back when I first heard about all this, so I understand how it feels to be kind of scared, kind of excited, kind of unsure as to what we can do with all this, and of course, you have to spend some time figuring out your position on it all and that’s not helped by the hyperbole, misunderstanding, and rage fuelled by press and social media. There is a real sense of fear and confusion in the media and amongst different kinds of creators.  But instead of jumping into the outrage, take a deep breath and do some research for yourself from different points of view — and of course, I am only one point of view!  As I have talked about many times over the last few years, these generative AI systems are tools, and new technology always enables new forms of creative expression and helps creators of all kinds achieve new things.  Photography didn’t kill painting or drawing, online gaming didn’t kill tabletop games, ebooks didn’t kill beautiful print editions, synthesised music didn’t kill the live concert. In fact, all these things made the personal touch even more important.  Yes, there are many issues with generative AI, I know it’s not all rainbows and unicorns! Tools can also be weapons, to borrow the title of Brad Smith’s book on the promise and peril of the digital age — which was more about the disruption of the internet which has a similar dichotomy — but we can use these tools responsibly and ethically and encourage others to do the same. Let’s first take a step back  These tools are not new, they have just been noticed by people outside the tech industry since ChatGPT was launched in late November 2023. I started commenting about generative AI on the show back in 2016, and have done many interviews on it since then — you can find all the backlist episodes at TheCreativePenn.com/future In July 2019, I did a solo episode on 9 Ways That Artificial Intelligence will Disrupt Authors and the Publishing Industry in the next decade, episode 437 if you want to listen. My very first point was “Non-fiction books, blog posts, and news articles will be written by AI,” which is certainly happening with GPT3, ChatGPT, tools like Jasper, and more. I also said that “Copyright law will be challenged as books are used to train AIs which then produce work in the voice of established authors.”  The first legal cases around copyright law have now been brought by artists as their art is being used to train models that can be used to produce work in the voice of established artists — it’s essentially the same thing as I wrote about.  There are a few legal cases about generative AI right now As ever, I am not a lawyer/attorney, just an author, audiobook narrator and podcaster. I have an interview coming in the next few months with an IP lawyer on all this so we’ll circle back to it as the year progresses. Three artists have filed a class action lawsuit against Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and DreamUp for scraping their images and using their intellectual property without consent.  I recommend listening to the excellent Hard Fork podcast episode from 20 Jan, 2023 which has a segment with artist Sarah Andersen on the lawsuit. She says they are not looking to shut down the technology, but they want consent so artists can opt their images in for training, rather than opt-out as default. They also want credit if their work is used, and compensation for any harm or infringement, and also for licensing data for training. Getty Images are also suing Stable Diffusion for unlawfully scraping images from its site. In an article on The Verge, Getty Images CEO, Craig Peters “compares the current legal landscape in the generative AI scene to the early days of digital music, where companies like Napster offered popular but illegal services before new deals were struck with license holders like music labels. Peters said Getty was not interested in financial damages or stopping the development of AI art tools, but in creating a new legal status quo. There are ways of building generative models that respect intellectual property.” Rights Tech also has an article about the ins and outs of AI art and copyright, noting “While the litigation against image generators may be new, the debate over whether works produced by AI systems trained on copyrighted works should be considered derivative works under copyright law, and for which a license therefore should have been obtained, is not new.” There’s also another class action lawsuit where Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI are being sued around GitHub Co-pilot being “trained on public repositories of code scraped from the web, many of which are published with licenses that require anyone reusing the code to credit its creators. Copilot has been found to regurgitate long sections of licensed code without providing credit — prompting this lawsuit that accuses the companies of violating copyright law on a massive scale.” The Verge  Some people have emailed me suggesting that these cases will end generative AI before it really gets going, but while these cases are interesting and important, none are intended to shut down generative AI tools.  They are intended to ensure creators and owners of intellectual property are fairly compensated for training models. So regardless of the outcome, AI development will continue apace. The genie is truly out of the bottle.  And it’s not just businesses that want AI development to continue. I was part of a submission to the UK government on AI and copyright last year along with the Alliance of Independent Authors, and in reading the associated documents, there was a clear attempt to balance reward for creative work with the need to encourage AI innovation, not stifle it. The US government would presumably be even more keen on ensuring the continuing development of AI. After all, do you really think the US wants another country to be predominant in AI? Read AI SuperPowers by Kai-Fu Lee if you want a glimpse of the stakes. Personally, I think the court cases will probably result in some kind of settlement fund for those artists who can prove damages, a change in copyright law to allow for licensing to train models — or it might even be made part of fair use — and there will be an opt-out for anyone who doesn’t want their art/words/music/whatever to be used in training data or used as a prompt. Fine-tuning models to specific requirements will become much more accessible.  I wrote about this in my book on Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, and Virtual Worlds, where I proposed a new license to train models with our work in copyright where the original creator gets paid, which would definitely fit with what is being discussed. For example, a group of action-adventure thriller writers could get together and train a model with our work and then license it to other writers. I’m up for that as I discussed with Charlene Putney on episode 660.  So AI is not going away. It will only become more pervasive in every industry.  Andrew Ng, professor at Stanford, also worked at Google Brain, Baidu AI, and co-founder of Coursera, said that “AI is the new electricity,” in that it will be incorporated into every industry, and the creative sphere is just one tiny part of the transformation. He also has a great free course on AI for Everyone, which I did a while back, and I recommend if you want to learn more.  In fact, you are also already using AI tools every day — in your car through Google or Apple Maps, if you edit with tools like Grammarly or ProWritingAid, if you publish or shop on Amazon, if you use advertising through Facebook or Amazon, if you use social media on sites like TikTok, YouTube, or Twitter.  Microsoft has also licensed OpenAI’s models for use in their platform and products so these tools are already being incorporated into things you use, and will likely be in MS Word soon, if it’s not already.  You are already AI-assisted. The question is how much do you want to use AI tools in your creative and business practices, as well as in your personal life and work? So if you want to keep an open mind and try some of the tools, here are my thoughts on the best way to approach them. Be curious. Be playful. Experiment. As Oliver and I discuss in the upcoming interview, we are both having a lot of fun with these tools, both image and text tools. They are like a jumpstart for your brain, a crazy co-writer, or co-creator. They spark new ideas and make far more things possible. For the curious creative mind, they are expansive tools.  If you keep a fun, positive, open mindset when you approach AI tools, you may find possibilities you never expected.  As Kevin Kelly says in The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future. “This is not a race against the machines. If we race against them, we lose. This is a race with the machines. You’ll be paid in the future based on how well you work with robots … It is inevitable.” Use AI tools ethically and responsibly  I recommend reading and applying the Alliance of Independent Authors Ethical Guidelines for use of AI.  Some of the key points are:  Use the tools to enhance your creative work, not to infringe on other people’s IP or pass work off as others.  For example, I use Sudowrite (based on GPT3) as a way to help me write better sensory description in my stories, but I do not ask it to “rewrite this text in the style of Stephen King.” As much as I love King’s books, I’m J.F. Penn and I have my voice and my own stories to tell. I want to use AI tools for my creative vision and enhance my own voice. I don’t want to create in the style or tone or voice of someone else — and that is true of all artists in any creative niche. Yes, we read other people’s work, but ultimately we want to create our own thing. If I use any text from Sudowrite or ChatGPT, I edit all generated text to fit my voice and also check it with ProWritingAid’s plagiarism checker, just in case I have mistakenly used someone else’s words. I did this prior to using AI tools anyway, as it’s good practice when you do a lot of research from other books. In the same way, you can ask AI tools like Midjourney to create images without using the name of a living artist as a prompt. You can get plenty of amazing images without infringing on someone else’s art. For example, the image on this post is made on Midjourney with the prompt “a robot holding an artists palette, metallic, colorful, detailed.” “A robot holding an artist's palette, metallic, colorful.” Created by Joanna Penn on Midjourney Then I checked the final image on Google Image Search to make sure it didn’t resemble someone else’s art.  Be honest and upfront about AI usage I include a statement of AI usage at the back of my books and I label my AI-narrated audiobooks as well as when I use AI images on my blog posts or in my books. I have a longer blog post coming in late Feb when I publish my first story with an AI-generated cover, which has also been edited by my cover designer. How will AI tools impact our business models as authors (and artists) As ever, it’s about creating original work that you want to create, with your voice, your creative direction, your emotion, and your life experience.  There will always be people who will use the latest tool to cheat and scam and make a quick buck and generally do all the things humans have always done. Plagiarism and piracy are nothing new, so just get on with creating and connecting with your readers and listeners. Double down on being human, as complex and flawed as you are, and focus on connecting with other humans — however you choose to create — whether that’s with AI tools or without them. This is one of the reasons why I am so excited about Kickstarter and selling direct on Shopify and other stores. It means we can do amazing quality products for our audience, sell directly and control the platform, as well as connect with the people who buy.  It also means I don’t have to compete on the same platform as all the other creators, as well as the scammers who only target the big platforms. I can carve out my own little corner of the internet and create and sell happily over here!  (And yes, as this goes out, my Kickstarter for Pilgrimage is running until 5 Feb 2023!)  Even if AI tools can at some point write an amazing novel, or generate a moving song, or create incredible art — it doesn’t matter.  There are already billions of images, songs, and books that anyone can read.  We already have abundance and there will only be more of it to come. The important thing is creating unique and wonderful stories/art/books/music and connecting with an audience of humans who it resonates with.  It’s about your voice, your angle on the story or topic, your personal experience, your face, your voice. Your personal brand as a creator and controlling your own intellectual property and your platform is more important than ever in this age of AI. Circling back to my 2019 article on how AI would disrupt the industry, I also said, “Humans are innately creative and in this new AI-powered world, we can create even more than we ever dreamed possible.” I’m more excited than ever about it, and as you’ll hear in the interview, Oliver is too, and we’ll get into that interview in a minute. If you’d like to learn more, check out Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain and Virtual Worlds, which has chapters on writing in the age of AI and copyright law, written in 2020, but only now really coming true. As ever, I am early …  I also have a course on The AI-Assisted Author which goes into a lot more detail around attitudes to AI, problems, biases, ethical usage, and more. You can get 50% off the ebook, audiobook, and the course if you buy direct. Use coupon FEB23 at checkout, links in the show notes, valid until March 2023. There are a ton of newsletters and podcasts out there on these topics, and I wade through a lot of them every week!  I recommend The Algorithmic Bridge by Alberto Romero and Ben’s Bites in particular.  For AI-related podcasts, Hard Fork, Grey Matter with Reid Hoffman, A16Z, and Mindsets and Moonshots. And check out my backlist podcast episodes and book list at https://www.thecreativepenn.com/future/  Right, let’s get into the interview.  Transcript of Interview with Oliver Altair Joanna: Oliver Altair is a dark fantasy author, a digital artist, and creator of the Ravensfield Collection. So welcome, Oliver. Oliver: Hey, Joanna. Thank you so much for having me. Joanna: Oh, I'm excited to talk to you today. So first up — Tell us just a bit more about you and how you got into writing and digital art. Oliver: For me, it all goes way back to when I was a little boy. Creativity was very much encouraged in my household. Both of my parents have brilliant creative minds, my father is an artist. So for me, pretty much I spent all my time writing my stories and illustrating my own stories.  Then when I got my first computer, I got like intrigued about digital art. So I carried that with me until my adult life. And professionally, I became a graphic artist pretty much right after college. So I've been doing that for around 15 years. And when it comes to publishing, I wasn't aware of the self-publishing world until 2016/2017, so I was a bit late to the game. 2017 is when I published my first dark fantasy novel. Joanna: Okay, well, no one is late. So you certainly weren't late then. And anyone starting now, you are not late. I mean, I feel like I'm a bit with Amazon on this, every day is day one. There's always something new. And we'll be talking about new stuff today.  Let's just tell people where you are in the world in case they're wondering what your accent is. It's only very slight, but I think people will be interested. Oliver: Yes. So I'm originally from Spain. I was born in the southwest of Spain, but then I moved to the United States in my early 20s, so I was there for pretty much until I was in my mid to late 30s. So it's been a while, but now I live between the US and Europe with my husband. Right now, today. I'm actually in the Lisbon area in Portugal, which is quite lovely. Joanna: Oh, lovely place. Tell us more about the Ravensfield Collection. What is this? And why did you create it? Oliver: Yes, so I called the Ravensfield Collection my own museum of the weird. So it's an imaginary museum that I created and it has pieces of artwork that go from oil paintings to sculptures to just like objects of art, pretty much, whatever you could find in an eclectic museum. Think for example, the Metropolitan Museum in New York City.  COSMOLOGY FRESCOES, CREATED BY OLIVER ALTAIR & MIDJOURNEY Then each little object has a short story, a bit of text related to the object. And it's usually something in the realm of like weird fiction, which is what I write about. And some of the stories are actually interrelated, so they give you information about that world, about the family that has curated the collection, etc. The one thing that excites me the most is like all of the art pieces I made using an artificial intelligence image generator, which I believe adds a little bit of like weirdness and mysticism, if you will, to the whole project.  About the “why” of I decided to create this, I think there was both a creative reason and also a more practical reason. Creatively, I've always loved anthology projects, things like, you know, The Martian Chronicles, or Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted, or of course, The Twilight Zone. So I decided that this was my chance to create my own. Then at the same time, when I started my publishing journey, I was actually pretty happy with the response of the readers that I could find so far. But I think I felt a bit short when it came to widening my audience a little. And probably some of your listeners will share this feeling with me. If you write something that is a bit hard to position on the bookshelf, it gets really tricky to find the correct readers. So I thought this was a great chance to create a project that would interest the minds that I'm trying to reach, people that are just interested in things that have are a bit out there, a bit weird, a bit in the realms of strange fiction and horror and all that kind of stuff. Joanna: And actually, this is why I'm talking to you. I mean, I've had a lot of pitches around, “let's talk about AI art.” And then I went on your Ravensfield Collection, and I was like, ‘oh, we have a similar mind in that way.' In that, you know, I've got Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities, the book about his house, which is just full of the weirdest stuff. And I have so many very expensive hardback books that are full of weird pictures from weird museums. When I saw yours, I was like, ‘ah, this is a great idea.' And it totally gets into the things that we maybe can't find pictures of either. This is what's so awesome about AI art. And I might have to do something similar for my book Desecration, where just there are no pictures of some of the things I'm writing about. So I love that you're doing this from a creative point of view. You mentioned the readers' response, so what has been the readers' response? Have people been like, “oh, I want to know the story behind that object”? Has it actually led to book sales? Can you tell? Oliver: So when it comes to book sales, right now, I'm in the middle of a huge project because I decided that the story that I wrote in my first few books, I felt the scope was too small. So I decided to actually re-edit both volumes, which is also one of the reasons I decided to put some effort into Ravensfield because that's a project that is going to take me a long time, and I wanted to still be active and be sharing content with readers out there. The response so far has been pretty fantastic. Like people are just very intrigued and also I like surprising people that fall into the Ravensfield Collection because I think the first reaction is a bit confused. Like they don't know what the thing is about, is this a real place. Then they start investigating and digging, and they get more and more into it. And then they message me, and they say, I cannot wait for the next object to drop. Or they actually want to meet the people in the family, or they request that I do images that are actually the portraits of these characters that I'm talking about. So it's opening a lot of really fun interactions with people. And also, it opens the conversations in regards to AI art because that's also something that most people didn't expect. Because to be fair, most people don't know that AI art even exists. So they question like, where did I find those objects, if it's something that was like laying around my house and I decided to write a story about it. And I just have so much fun because like being in that kind of in-between ties so beautifully with the things that I write about. Joanna: And I'm so glad you use the word “fun” there because we're going to get into some serious issues and problems that people have. But when you're creating with these tools, and when I'm creating these tools, I'm having fun. Just before this, I was in Midjourney, I was making some more character pictures, I was making some background pictures, and I love what you're doing there in terms of like, it's fun, and then you're using it to world build. I feel like maybe as professionals, we get to the point of thinking everything we do has to generate income, like that particular thing has to be revenue generating. This almost goes back to what is creatively fun and just part of just the joy, I guess, of creation, which almost takes us back to the beginning of why we did this in the first place. Oliver: Oh, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And also, I probably am not alone in what happened during COVID, like a lot of us felt very creatively drained. And for me, when I discovered this whole new world of AI art, it was like some spark was reignited, in a sense. Joanna: Yeah, I think I was the same. COVID just was not good. It was not good in many ways. But creatively, it was just dead. So I love this. Let's get into some more specifics. Which AI image tools are you using? What other tools are you using as an AI-augmented creative? Oliver: Yes, so I use Midjourney. It's the one that you just mentioned. There are many apps and software when it comes to image generation out there, and I feel like every time I close my eyes there is new one. And they get more and more specific, which is pretty fantastic. Right now, I decided to master just the one and then probably I'll move on because I'm the kind of creative that likes to have like a hefty toolbox, if possible.  This is the one that has given me the best results so far for the goals that I have in mind. Also, like you talked with Derek Murphy about this, so I will tell your listeners to go back and listen to that one because that was a great conversation. And he goes a bit more into depth about the nuances between the different tools. Joanna: So well, let's talk about how you use Midjourney then. I'll tell you how I use it because I am not graphically trained, I'm not a visual artist. I do think they have some kind of visual taste. But on Midjourney, like earlier, I did a “portrait photo of a female combat photographer against the backdrop of burning buildings.” So my prompt has a character type and a background, and I'm using version four, so I use the — v 4. And what I get out of that is pretty blooming good, to be honest. But you're an artist, you're a graphic artist —  What are your prompts like when you're prompting these engines? Oliver: So my prompting varies depending on what I'm trying to achieve. What I do a lot is like — so I would say I like that you brought the word “taste”. There is definitely a taste level that you need to have to get your results to where you want them to be. And also, for me, it's not only taste, it's also a tool that requires a lot of curiosity, and it requires you to be very observant. You need to have a very wide repertoire of references and words that you can use to talk to the machine, to the algorithm. And machines are very precise. INSECTOID CHAIR, CREATED BY OLIVER ALTAIR & MIDJOURNEY So in a sense, it's also like talking a new language from scratch because you cannot talk to Midjourney as we are talking, you and I, because it wouldn't understand you. And for me, you need to find a balance between the result that you have in your head, and then you need to also leave the algorithm a bit of freedom because, usually, the machine is going to surprise you. And in my case, it always surprises you in the right ways, and it opens different pathways and different possibilities that you didn't think about. In my case, what I love to do is mixing things that in our human logical minds maybe wouldn't mix. So for example, I tried to mix a fashion designer with a building. And then the computer does it so beautifully, yet so seamlessly that the results are always so so bizarre. And then I take that into pretty much everything. And then depending on like the mood, then I add a lot of extra information when it comes to lighting, when it comes to color palettes, and when it comes to different mediums or textures, things like that. So the good thing about image generators is the foundation is really accessible. So anyone can go into the tool and start experimenting. And the results, as you said, from the get go is pretty impressive. And then you can iterate and grow from there. But pretty much you have results that are shareable from the very first hours that you're using Midjourney. Joanna: You've raised such great points there. And again, I just want to emphasize to people, when you're prompting, you mentioned a repertoire of references, so fashion designers and buildings. So you're not saying ‘house' and ‘fashion designer,' you're saying specific names around fashion designers and buildings. And then you said lighting, color palette, textures. And the difference in a prompt, like if people haven't seen the difference in prompt — so my husband who's not at all visually artistic, the other day he did a prompt, and it was like ‘cat samurai.' And, I mean, it's a cat samurai, and it has a nice cartoon of a cat. Oliver: Yeah, that's pretty cute. Joanna: Yeah, it is cute, right? It's cute. And the picture that comes up in everyone's head right now is probably enough, but that would never be enough for you. Like you would never put cat samurai, right? You would come up with all kinds of other things. I actually screenshot an artist doing a prompt earlier, and his prompt was like 500 words. You know, so I mean that's the difference, isn't it? When people say, “oh, there's no room for real artists anymore” — but prompting and using the tools is a real art in itself. Oliver: It is. I mean, tool is the keyword for me. Midjourney, it's a tool, like a pencil is a tool. It's not a living being that is trying to take over the world or trying to obliterate artists from the face of the earth. It is a tool that might interest some artists, it might not interest some others. And then it has a learning curve. And then it has a lot of experimenting that you can do. The thing is, like as any other thing, it requires some extra thought if you want to find your own voice. It's pretty much very close to writing, right? Like when you start writing, you're a bit shy, and you try to stick to like a lot of conventions, and then you start breaking free, and then you use things that are a bit more daring. To me, it's pretty much the same mental process. First, you are a bit shy and you do prompts that are a bit less complex. And then when you start finding your footing, you start getting a bit more brave and then a bit more complex. And then your prompts are larger, which by the way, not always means better. Some people confuse and they think that if you write pretty much the Bible as a prompt, you're going to get a better result, which is not always the case. It's like anything else, it depends on what you're trying to achieve. For me, it's a very, very beautiful creative process because it requires a lot of mental clarity. You need to have a very clear picture in your mind of what you want to achieve. And then you need to translate that into a prompt that is useful to the machine. So just that is going to challenge your comfort zone creatively time and again, and I think it's just a very, very good way to keep your mind sharp. Joanna: And so you mentioned ‘voice' there, you mentioned a clear picture of what you want to achieve. We've mentioned taste. I always talk about creative direction, you know, and I talk about having maybe a supercar sitting there outside your house, and the supercar is not just going to do stuff on its own. You have to get in and drive it and take it to where you want it to go, and you're the one in charge.  So I think that this is so important, these tools don't have any agency. I mean, as we're recording this certainly, in January 2023, there is no sentient AI artists that's like, “oh, this is my AI voice. This is what I'm going to create.” And so everything that people are creating is all through the lens of what they want to do. And it's a bit like you can give the same writer a writing prompt, and they will create completely different stories. You and I could have the same idea of something we want to create, but our outputs will be completely different using the same tool. It is a tool. And obviously, we agree on this, but people listening, I think are struggling with this idea. Oliver: Yes, absolutely. And I think there is a whole misconception about what it is and what it does. And I think some people think that when you prompt, pretty much what you're doing is like a Google image search or you're looking for an image on a stock service. Like they think that what the service does is finds an image that kind of matches what you're saying and either gives you that same image or a carbon copy. And that's not even close to being remotely true. You need to think that these tools are trained in billions of images around the world. And what they do is they understand what you're trying to achieve. And they take bits and pieces of all of those images of this information in pixels, and then they give you a series of results that you can each rate. You can then create a whole new image that is going to be completely your own, and it's going to show your personality. Especially, I think it happens to all creators, at some point, things that look too formulaic are not going to be good enough for you because we are very anal when it comes to finding our voices. So that's when I think just by like the nature of being creative, you'll try to push new boundaries. Joanna: Hmm. Yeah, absolutely. I've got some sort of key points of what people are objecting to. First of all, “is AI art really art?” And I mean, my opinion, first up, is there is no true AI art because humans are driving it all.  Also, I think there's a very clear difference between like — and I see it on the Midjourney open stream all the time, people upload a selfie, and then they say, ‘make me into a Pixar character.' This is a common thing. Or make me into a Disney character or something like that. And there is a very, like Pixar, specifically, a very key visual cue that is a Pixar image and people's selfies as Pixar characters. That is not art. I mean, that's just kind of fun. It's what people want to do. But there's a big difference between someone like yourself or people who are actually creating art with these tools, or people who are just using it for fun. So what are your thoughts on this? Is AI art really art? Oliver: Yeah, I mean, I find it really funny because, is X, Y and Z art or not art? It's pretty much a debate that has been happening since art exists. So it's not new. And also I think it's pretty pointless. I mean, is it? Isn't it? I mean, who knows, depends on who you ask. The things that are getting confused here is the novelty of new “toy”, and people that see potential creatively or professionally. Being so new, and I find it really fascinating, some people online are already treating AI art as if it were a mature industry. It's not, by any means. It's still in very, very early stages. So it's, of course, like very common that people see a new and flashy thing, and they want to do silly experiments. And that's totally fine, and they can have their fun. But I think all of those people eventually are going to find their interest somewhere else, and they're going to move on. And then the people that are going to remain are people that see a potential beyond the novelty. You know what I mean? Joanna: Yeah, and I mean, photography is the classic example that people are using, which is when photography came along, early photography, all the painters went, “What are you doing? That's not real art.” And then people started taking photos. And then it went from the old film to digital. And then there's all the tools like Photoshop you can use to manipulate it. And so on every scale — I mean, music, you don't need to play a violin now to make violin music, you know, all of these things have tools. Yes, and it's funny you say that about people getting bored. Like, again, like my husband, for example, he does like occasionally doing like the cat samurai stuff, but he has no reason to use AI visual art in his daily life. And so he will rapidly get bored with it. And you will carry on, I will carry on in a lesser way than you will, but we all try these things and then find a place for them. And if there is no place for them, that's also fine. Oliver: Absolutely. And I think finding the place, that's what people need to think about. If it's a tool that has potential — which I believe AI does for several reasons — it will find its rightful place and then people will use it accordingly. Not only that, like AI art existing probably is also going to open new synergies between AI and other artworks that already exist, in the movie world or even like a traditional name in writing. When photography came to be, or film, also the other arts caught up and created new things that wouldn't exist otherwise. And I think this is going to be pretty much the same thing. I mean, sometimes I wonder if the difference is the speed, right?  This transition is happening so fast that sometimes I think the fear is related to this kind of like vertigo effect because things are just changing so rapidly that you cannot even grasp what they mean, or what the change might be, or if it's good or bad, and then people get just like absolutely stunned. Joanna: Yes, and that is why I like to keep coming back to this because a lot of people actually have emailed me about this show because I've been talking about AI since 2016 on the show. And people are like, oh, I feel a bit more comfortable because I've listened to you talk about it over the years. So hopefully, this conversation will help more people who need to adjust more.  Again, you mentioned film there. I mean, the gaming industry has been using AI generation for a long time. And we're only going to see more of it. Let's just talk about a couple of other issues that people bring up as regards to AI art. So first of all, you did mention that these models are trained with images. And this is one of the sort of things people say, AI art is stealing from creators, they're trained with images that were copyright protected, this should not have happened. What are your thoughts on the AI tools “stealing from creators” by training the models? Oliver: Yes, like, listen, there are a lot of artists that are turning this into such a huge controversy and pretty much into a war of us versus them, and I'm not going to be that person. I think it's natural that creators have concerns about their property. And at the end of the day, it's up to each creator to decide how they want to use their artwork and put it out in the world and license it or not license it. So I understand it's an issue that requires some thought. The problem is like the industry being so quick and so new, there are a lot of question marks. So my problem with this kind of mentality is I think there is a very thin line between being watchful about your property and being egotistical and petty. I think it's important, as a creator, to try to put generosity out there.  Some people are very close to the idea of someone mimicking their style. To me, personally, that's a compliment. If someone wants to mimic your style, I would guess to learn, or because they think you're so wonderful that they want to be you, take the compliment. That said, there are always going to be bad actors out there. There is a difference between a person using you as a reference to grow and learn and someone that is trying to pass their work as their own and profiting from it. Joanna: Yeah, I mean, that passing off, it's very difficult because these tools don't technically plagiarize, as in the image is not exactly the same image, it will have differences, whatever it is. But like you said, some of the tools are now allowing artists to remove their names from prompts. [Ars Technica on Stability AI] It's funny, I mean, again, I agree with you totally, I think people have a choice to use it or not, but personally, I think if you get your name removed from what may be whatever the next form of some kind of visual internet, then isn't that going to hurt you in the long run. Do you then become invisible?  So I've been thinking about this a long time, and I also feel like I have utilitarianism, where the greater benefit to the whole is more important. Obviously, I have a lot of intellectual property in words, and I know it's all in the models. Of course, it's all in the models. All of our work is available somehow online. And it's like, well, again, if people want to train their word models with J.F. Penn or Joanna Penn, then isn't that a good thing?  This is where I think personal brand and connection with readers and viewers is so important. I control my relationship with my audience. And so that, I think will become even more important as we go on. It's like, how can you prove to your audience that you're human? Even though you use all these AI tools, they're connecting with you, the human behind that art. So I'm not particularly worried about that myself, either. Oliver: Yeah, also, I think this is an issue that as soon as the dust settles a little, it's going to disappear. Things are very turmoil-y, because we are in a moment that we are not there yet. But as soon as there is a better understanding of these tools, I think these fears are going to just naturally disappear. So for me, it's just important to remember, as you were saying, as a creator, like an AI tool, it's not a clone of your head. So you can mimic a person all you want, but at the end of the day, the creator is the creator. As a creator, you need to be confident that the content that you're putting out there is coming from your mind, and that's what is creating the connection with your audience. You need to remember, if you're doing content that is connecting, and it's causing a reaction, and your audience is reacting favorably to it, they don't care if you use AI to make it, or if it's an old painting, or if you're writing with a goose feather or with a typewriter. What they like is that connection that you're putting effort into nurturing. And that's something that AI cannot copy. Joanna: Yeah, I do think this is more and more important over time. So we've talked there about the inputs into the tool. So the training data that's gone into the tools, clearly, some of that is copyrighted. But the output is another interesting thing, and there is no legal stand on this right now. Although again, as you say, I think this year, 2023, things will start shaking out in terms of the legal side. Midjourney, and I went and checked again, I've read their terms of service, and they do basically say that what comes out of Midjourney is yours, the creators, but that people can remix it, they can do whatever. If you're creating in public, which I do, people can just do that. You've put your images under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. So can you talk about that? What is that? And why did you decide to go that way? Oliver: Yes, so Creative Commons is a nonprofit that helps create or make these licenses that pretty much say, it's a way that you're telling the whole world that you welcome people to interact with your content, but then there is some conditions that need to be met. This is especially useful if you're a creator that puts a lot of content online. So in my case, because also I want to monetize my content in the future, I made this license that it's a bit more restrictive. I'll go one by one, so people can understand. When you say attribution, that means that everybody is welcome to use my art, to share it or to do derivative work, but they have to let the world know that it comes from me. So they have to mention your name. When you say that something is noncommercial, that just means that they cannot profit from that piece of work. And when you say it is sharealike, it means that they need to use that same license, use those same conditions, with their new art piece. So this would be pretty much as if you're granting the world a fan art service, in a way. You're just encouraging people to share your work, to have fun with it, but you don't want them to take your money or your credit from you. When it comes to Creative Commons, what I like the most is it's a way to encourage both that generosity that I was talking about, and also network effect. You're telling creators and people around the world, please play with my material, but also you're giving yourself a little bit of protection because if people are completely disrespecting your licenses, you can talk to them and say, “Listen, like, I'm very glad that you're playing with my artwork, but you need to follow these steps.” Those licenses are also very interesting if you're trying to build something like a multiverse these days because you can remove the noncommercial and then what you're telling people is, this is my world, and then you're free to play with it, and you can profit, but also you need to share it alike, meaning like there are certain conditions that need to be met. It's just another way that creators use to pretty much like state how they want people to react to the world, to interact with your material, and grant those extra licenses and be a bit more clear about what your intention is online. Joanna: Yeah, and I certainly think copyright law in general is going to be much discussed— Oliver: Oh my goodness. Joanna: I know, it's very, very difficult to really know what's going on. And I have the same kind of attitude, which is I'm treating the pictures I create on Midjourney as essentially Creative Commons. And I'm still doing it in public on the Midjourney newbie stream, and then other people can just take it and do whatever they want with it. And that doesn't bother me, but art is not my business. So this is interesting because you are a graphic artist in that you also have a job this way. So if people listening, if there are people who are artists who want to make money and use AI in their arts — and I mean we've got things like Adobe and other commonly used tools are all incorporating AI now into the design tools. So is it just a line between, say, if you generate an image with Midjourney, but then you use Photoshop to edit that and change things, then that's copyright and then you can sell it?  What do you think about where the line is around getting paid for AI images? Oliver: So that's the thing, you just raise a very good point. What happens when you put an image in Photoshop?  Can you copyright it right now, and then monetize it? I wish things were a bit less blurry in regards to that right now. The only thing I would say is monetization, when it comes to artwork, is a decision that creators need to do before they put content online. Because if not, it's going to be very messy if you have to make that decision afterwards. So you need to be very clear about what your goals are, and what part of your artwork is going to be monetizable, and what you're willing to share for free, and then make the decisions accordingly. Because then that's going to help you decide the service that you want to use, and then what licenses that you're going to look for, and then you can build from there. I wouldn't recommend just starting putting tons and tons and tons of content online and then getting surprises about someone using it and profiting because you weren't clear enough. When it comes to copyright, I think from my understanding what is happening today, and again, like as you said, it is such a mess, because I mean, copyright is messy no matter what, and AI is not making it any easier. I think the difference lies in like when you can demonstrate that you are using this as a tool and there is a lot of human work behind it. So it's also very tricky to prove that, but some creators are actually going through that route and talking to the registry office and saying, “Listen, like this is my project. This is how I used an AI tool. And this is the steps that I took, etc, etc.” And sometimes they get the registration and nothing happens. So, I mean, I don't know. I mean, I tell people just be careful and be watchful out there. Make sure that you're making the right decision so that you're protecting your company and your property enough, but don't be losing sleep over it every night. So some point there is like nothing that you can do. Just be flexible and be willing to do as much as you can, and pretty much that's it. Also, seriously, I don't think there is anything else. And maybe I'm missing something, but I don't think there is anything else you can do, at least at this stage. Joanna: I mean, I feel like this is nothing new either. I've been putting stuff online now since 2008. Every single blog post, podcast, video, book, everything I have ever made has been plagiarized, put up on another site or pirated (and by humans, not AI.) And sometimes I get notified straightaway. I'll get pingbacks, on like this interview, I will get pingbacks from websites that are just scraping and posting. Sometimes I will go about trying to take them down, and a lot of the times I'm just like, oh, my goodness, I just can't keep up with it all. That's why I emphasize the relationship with my audience because the people listening to this or reading the transcript here with us, they're our audience. And I'm just not going to worry about the rest of it because scammers and spammers, and whatever, will never stop. AI will supercharge it for sure, but if there are billions — well, there already are millions and millions of books and millions of millions of art out in the world, so it still comes down to the connection between the creator and the consumer, the reader, the viewer. And that's something that we have to find as individual creators, I guess. And the AI is not going to do that. And the people who just scam other people's work or plagiarize other people's work, steal other people's work, they are not going about it in the same way. They’re not building that relationship. Oliver: Oh, of course not. Of course not. And at the end of the day, it's great that you're pointing this, Joanna, because like I think there is something that also creators tend to misunderstand. You cannot think about monetizing when you have nothing to monetize, which means that you need an audience. You cannot like start selling products left and right if you have no one to sell those products to.  I think the mistake that a lot of people get into, and you mentioned this before, and it's because like it's really easy for us, as human beings, to get very caught into that making a profit mentality, and then we forget that that depends, as creatives, completely on having a healthy audience and interest with you. If you don't have it, you can forget about it. And that's the way it is. Scammers don't care because they're going to use whatever is available, and then they're going to move on. One thing that I keep telling people that also ties to what you just said, is like if you're lucky, you might get a ping and you might find out. Most likely, you will never find out. So you might as well just go and enjoy your day. Joanna: Absolutely. Now, you mentioned earlier about this sort of war going on in the community. And I mean, this is starting to happen in the writing community too, as people find out about AI writing tools, which we might come back to in a minute. But in terms of what people think, you mentioned earlier right at the beginning that your father is an artist. What does your father think about this? How do you talk to people that you want to convince that what you're doing is real? Oliver: Oh, not at all. My father loved it. I mean, he's not interested himself. He's also in his 70s, and he mostly does oil painting and these very intricate ink drawings. And he's not interested in using it himself, but when I explained what it does, and I showed him a lot of examples, like he was just intrigued and excited and he saw a lot of potential. He encouraged me to just keep exploring and be better at it. Like for him, like he didn't see it as like a threat or anything else. Quite the opposite. So yeah, the conversation, for me, Joanna, went very well, so I would encourage you to maybe like open it and see what happens. I think, I mean, from my perspective, like this conversation goes wrong when you're talking with people that lack a bit of confidence as creators. And that can go both ways, it can be like both the AI artist and the traditional artists. So it becomes a battle of like, who's better? And that's a mess because that's not what the discussion is. Like, you don't need to be convincing me that you're better than me, that's absolutely pointless. So I think it's just like, I don't know, for me this is like everything else in the online world. Just be gracious, be understanding and listen to other people. And instead of shrieking and insulting, because that's already happening. So that happened really fast in AI art, there's already like this battle of insults, which, by the way, are very creative. So I would encourage those people to put that effort into doing images. For me, it's just about confidence. If you're a creator, you need to be 100% confident that what you're putting out there is good and is resonating with people. And if it's not, then it's up to you to be flexible enough to change course and try something new. You cannot blame a new tool or technology or other person that is doing things better than you for your lack of success. Because the only thing that you're doing is driving yourself completely insane. You're blocking yourself creatively, you're not evolving, and you're just being bitter. And what's the point? Joanna: That kind of circles back to what we said at the beginning, around the fun side, the creative side. People listening, if you haven't tried any of these tools, please just try them. I feel like a lot of people criticize before they have tried it. And once you try something, I think the fear goes out of it. Given that most of our audience are writers more than visual artists, let's just mention a writing tool that they might have tried it. And we were talking about this before the recording, which is ChatGPT or some of the other writing tools. So you've been using this as well — Tell us what you're using generative writing tools for. Oliver: So I think ChatGPT, specifically, and probably the other ones out there, are great brainstorming companions. They're not going to write the book for you because I don't think that's a thing, to be honest. I think books have way too many moving pieces for a machine to do it to the level that you're going to ask from it. It's great if you want to bounce ideas, and very quickly. Also again, because it's a machine it always surprises you. So I've been using it when I feel a bit blocked or like the direction that I am going is not giving me the results that I want. Both for fiction and for generating art, I just go to ChatGPT and start asking questions about like, can you give me a synopsis for this? And then I'm like, maybe make it more Gothic, maybe make it more cyberpunk, maybe add this to the mix. And then those results helped me tremendously to unblock because it's pretty much like you're bouncing ideas back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth. Again, really fun, so I highly recommend it. It also pushes your imagination a lot, and also it helps you relax. And it will definitely show you ideas that didn't cross your mind before. Joanna: Absolutely. And this is why I talk about being AI-augmented, or AI-assisted creatives. Because again, like you said, it's a tool that helps us think in different directions. And it's like having just a ton of different brains that you can access that spark ideas for your own creative journey. I love that you mentioned creative confidence, because again, even if you can just click a button and output a perfect image or click a button and output a perfect book first go, that doesn't matter. Because it comes back to what we've talked about, it's what you want to create, and then it's about your connection with other humans. Like we said, there are already too many books in the world, there are too many images in the world for any person to ever read or look at or listen to music. So there will just be more and more and more content. But that's not the thing, right? We're going to keep creating because we are creative people, and this is just going to expand the possibilities. It just comes down to what do you want to create and who do you want to connect with. Oliver: Yes, absolutely. And for me, it's just a beautiful exercise of the imagination. I think if you are an author, we also have an advantage that is that we live in the world of ideas pretty much 24/7. So now we have a tool that makes those ideas manifest into the world really quickly. So for me, that's just a huge advantage. You need to think that like, specifically with images, it's limitless. So you can go as small as designing a pebble on a beach, and then grow all the way to designing the map of your whole universe, and everything in between. To me, that just fills me with so much excitement because I see so much potential.  Also, it opens the realms of possibilities for people that maybe are afraid that their ideas are too out there. You know, we all share that fear. I think it happens to all of us. Sometimes you write something and you think, oh, this is just too strange, this is not going anywhere. And then, well, maybe it will. Maybe you just need to explore it a bit further. And I think those tools just push you to take that journey to do more exploring, to find new ways to express yourself. Just for the mere fact that that's a thing, I would just recommend people go ahead and try them. And then if they're not interested, that's absolutely fine, but I think they're just going to see a lot of potential just like we did. Joanna: I'm so glad you're excited. I am too. So where can people find you and everything you do online? Oliver: So the best way to connect with me is through my website. That's OliverAltair.com. There you can find a contact form, so please, anyone that has a question about AI or fiction or just wants to say hello, feel free to shoot me a message. Then from there, you can also find the links to my social media and to the Ravensfield Collection. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Oliver. That was great. Oliver: Thank you so much, Joanna.The post The Importance Of Confident Creative Direction, Voice, And Taste, In Generative AI Art With Oliver Altair first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can small, daily habits make you more successful as an author? How can you use the 80/20 rule in your author business? How can you create multiple streams of income when you sell mostly print? Marc Reklau shares his tips in the interview. In the intro, my Kickstarter for Pilgrimage is live!; Spotify's promotion codes [The Hotsheet, FindawayVoices]; publishing 2023 [Carly Watters]; Writer Beware round-up; Hitting bestseller lists [Reedsy; my USA Today breakdown]; Nick Thacker's dictation course; 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. Marc Reklau is the best-selling author of 13 books on habits, productivity and happiness. He's also a speaker, consultant and coach. 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 consistency to reach your goals Different streams of income as a nonfiction author Creating a series from your nonfiction books to increase sales How to make money in foreign language markets Taking your books wide to expand your income streams Why successful authors sell more books than struggling authors You can find Marc at MarcReklau.com Transcript of Interview with Mark Reklau Joanna: Marc Reklau is the best-selling author of 13 books on habits, productivity and happiness. He's also a speaker, consultant and coach. So welcome to the show, Marc. Marc: Hello. It's such a pleasure to be on your show, Joanna. Joanna: Oh, I'm excited to talk to you. So first up — Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. Marc: Yeah, that's a good story. Because actually, I never had it in my life plan to become a writer. But nine years ago, I was fired from my job, and I also had done a life coach training, so I was very naive, and I said, “Yes, I'm going to be a coach now and a consultant, and I will have many clients.” But it didn't work out as I wanted. At the same time, in my coaching training, I noticed that there are many, many exercises, that if you do them, they really work. It's just nobody does them, like 98% of the people don't do them. And it's like goal setting, or meditation or practice gratitude. Then the idea of the book came up and I said, I want to give people the tools at least to have a happy life and to have a productive life. And it's really so obvious that you only have to do the exercises. Although doing the exercises and doing them constantly is more difficult than one thinks because we like to distract ourselves or something. So that was the idea of my book, 30 Days: Change your habits, Change your life, which was actually going under the working title 101 Things You Can Do While You're Waiting to Win the Lottery because all the people I met, I lived in Spain in that time, and it was the end of the financial crisis, and all the conversations were like, “Oh, well, yeah, everything is bad. But well, now it's Friday, maybe I win the lottery.” And of course, most people never win the lottery. So I was like, if you would do for one year, any exercise, or mix, like getting up early, writing 1000 words a day, do goal setting, I'm sure in one year, you will be in a better place than you are now, or in an even better place if you're already in a good place. So that was the idea. That's how I started. And then thanks to three straight BookBub deals, it did pretty well, this book. And then it happened to me, what happens probably to most of us, so we will finish one book and you already have the idea for the next book. And that's how the last nine years went by. Joanna: I love that. I want to come back on the waiting to win the lottery thing because I feel that that actually has a parallel in publishing, in that people are like, oh, well, this one book, if I just get the agent, if I just get the book deal, if I just get the film deal, or the TV deal, I will make a million, and I can retire. And yet, as you said, it's actually the daily exercise of writing, finding readers, publishing. Have you used that positive, consistent mindset as an indie author? Marc: Exactly the way you said it, right. So my goal was never to sell 600,000 books or become an international bestseller or sign a publishing deal in Japan. My goal was write 1000 words a day or write 2000 words a day. And I also have to admit that Amazon ads was a huge game changer for me. Because before, I was, I would like to call it a poor author, nearly getting by, burning away my savings, burning away a life insurance. But then with the rise of Amazon ads, suddenly, I could multiply my sales by 20. And it was the same thing, really Joanna, since four and a half years, I do one hour a day of an Amazon ads. But I do that hour every day, which is like managing ads and making new ads. And this brought the huge book sales that I have now. So now I'm a six figure author, multiple six figure author, but it really started four and a half years ago when I said, okay, this mindset, do something every day. Even if it's an hour or two hours, it will multiply with time. Joanna: It's interesting, like you said, the exercises. And to me, it's also including physical movement. I wear an Apple Watch, and I actually really love closing my rings on my Apple watch every day. And there's one for exercise, one for movement and one for standing. And when you actually track these things, you realize sometimes even just standing up once an hour is something that unless you have reminders about, it can be difficult. So like you say, these kinds of daily practices, these daily exercises, can make all the difference. Why do we find it so hard to do things consistently? Marc: I think it's because we want short-term gratification. We don't look far along ahead. It's the same thing, like, we say, okay, now I'm going to walk 10 kilometres or 15 kilometers a day, but after three days, our legs hurt, everything hurts, and we say, okay, I'll wait until next year for the New Year's Eve to make a new goal. But actually maybe walking two miles a day would be easier on us, but if we do it for a year, at the end, we have walked more. And this works like everything else. Also, like, we say, okay, I will save 300 pounds this month of money. And then the end of the month comes and you see, oh, no, it's not real, this month, it won't happen, so it will be next month, and then it never happens. But if you would say, I save one pound a day, then it's 30 pounds a month. It's not as spectacular as 300, but you actually have it. And then in a year, it's 360 pounds. You understand what I want to say? So this little by little, it works everywhere. It's really amazing. And it's so sad that we don't get it because our brains are probably wired the other way. But once you get it, it works everywhere. It works with a diet, it works with gym, it works with writing books, so not writing one this one big book, but write 2000 words a day, and in a year, you probably have three books. I probably have because I write very short books. Joanna: Yes, well, let's come to your business model. Because like you said, you write short books, you write these habit books, productivity books. And you don't have to write long books when you have a niche in nonfiction. And of course, for fiction too, there are models where people write shorter books. But tell us about your different streams of income. How does your business work together with all the things you do right now? Marc: Yeah, I'm kind of a strange guy because normally nonfiction authors, especially coaches or consultants, they write a couple of books, and the books bring them clients for their business. And for me, this never happened. So I tried everything. I tried the online courses, I tried coaching, consulting, conferences, speaking, but it never was enough to have a good life. And then when I was burning away my savings and my life insurance, I said, okay, and I went really, really, really deep. And I thought what do I really, really, really want to do? And then the answer was: I want to sell many books, I want to live off book sales. And then I got kind of obsessed with it. I studied people who sell lots of books, which mostly are fiction writers, not nonfiction writers. I found our friend Mark Dawson, did the advertising course, and suddenly, I sold many books. And now I do a little bit of speaking, I do a little bit of consulting, but it's like 10% of my business. I can really afford to say no many times. And then the fun thing is, because of multiple income streams, you wouldn't think that about 93% of my income comes from IP. Amazon is about 50 – 60%, IngramSpark for the paperback distribution, audiobooks is growing every year. I have international rights that I was lucky to secure, like over 30 international publishing deals. And also direct sales, little by little the direct sales. So it's like atypical for nonfiction person that still 90 – 95% come from my books. But it's okay with me. Joanna: That's brilliant. Well, let's then address why your books do sell. Now, you've mentioned the ads. But we all know that ads don't make a difference if you don't have a good product. So what are the things that you did to make sure your products, your books, sell when you do ads? What are the things you would recommend for nonfiction authors who want to follow the same model? Marc: Actually, I copied Mark Dawson. Very easy. So I took everything he teaches as a fiction writer, I could apply it 100% on nonfiction, and it works. So of course, you need as always, as you talked many times on this podcast, you need a good book cover, you need a good proofreader, a good book. And then basically for me, everything that was taught about ads by fiction authors works for nonfiction too. I was lucky also that most of my income comes from the Spanish market, strangely. So I translated my books to Spanish. And when Spain started with the Amazon ads, it was a lot easier than in the US because there was not so much competition. Then another game changer was me advertising my Spanish books in the US, and that's right now where most of my income comes from. A nonfiction author can buy any course of a fiction author and copy. Copy is not literally copyright, but you copy. Like I looked at what does Mark Dawson do, and I did the same thing for my nonfiction. Like also with the newsletter, of course, the autoresponder, but really, most comes from ads. And I'm doing my ads like without text or something in Amazon, so just the easiest way. Just like sponsored ads, 100 keywords that of course I research, and run it. [Check out Mark Dawson's course, Ads for Authors, here.] Joanna: Well, there are so many interesting things there. I do want to add that you're writing in a series and writing in a niche. So all your books are really aimed at the same people, right? So you put them in a series. Marc: That's also great that you said it because even that I copied. Because I thought I have 10 different books because one is about self-esteem, one is about people relations, one is about habits, one is about productivity. But exactly, the series is perfect. So I just put them all together in the Change Your Habits, Change Your Life series, got a nice series page for them, and there are now 10 books on it, and that helps. So if you are a nonfiction author, I'm sure you can find one common denominator. Probably it will be self-development series or personal growth series. But it's important, as you said, if you can put it in a series or two series, it will be even better because what we always say, one book sells the other. And what for us, for nonfiction writers, is even an advantage is that when fiction writers always they run ads only to the number one in the series and then go with a read through. Who will read book number one, who will go to book two, three, four, five. For me, it's like in my series, you can enter everywhere, so I'm running ads to all my books.  Then the fun thing is, so for example, if you have a Middle Eastern man that probably wouldn't be like tempted to read a book on self-esteem, right? But maybe you wrote a book on habits, and he liked it, and then he says, “oh, this guy also has a book on self-esteem. Well, I'm going to read it.” And that's how, for me, readers come in from everywhere. So I'm sure, and I'm just guessing that, but still sure. I don't know if you can guess something and be sure. Based on experience, people come in and read a productivity book and then buy all my other books. But they would never have entered with the habits book or with a self-esteem book, or maybe they say I get along with people, I don't need to read a book about personal relationships. But once they get in and they see, oh, this guy has ten more books in this series, then they start reading the other books. Joanna: Absolutely. And I mean, that's true for me too, my Books for Writers series. And once you start in a niche, and again, it doesn't have to be self-help, like, for example, my book on Pilgrimage originally, I thought I was going to do multiple books about different types of walking. And I may still do that, I may still do other books that hit that travel niche. And for people listening, you can use a series name, and it doesn't need to be like fiction, right? In fiction, it's like, okay, this is my ARKANE thriller series. But with nonfiction, like my series name is just Books for Writers. So it's just something that groups stuff together on the retailers. That's important. But I want to come back to you said the Spanish market in US and elsewhere is one of your biggest earners. Now you're German, so do you speak Spanish?  How did you decide to do Spanish translations? Marc: I speak Spanish. So for me, the fun thing is that I speak English like I speak English, and I speak Spanish more or less the same. And the thing is, I write the books. So I write the books in English because most of my input comes in English. But of course, I then need very good editors and proofreaders to make it nice. In Spanish, it's the same thing. So I would translate the book nearly literally, and then I give it to Spanish proofreaders. And the editing is already done because my process is I write it in English, I get a book polished in English, then I translate it to Spanish, so I usually don't need an editor because it's already edited. So I just need a Spanish proofreader editor, just to get the typos. And it works. It's funny, in English and Spanish it works 100% with more or less literal translation or with a feeling for the language that I have because I lived there for 17 years. But for example, I'm German. My German books are an absolute failure. They're not selling. Joanna: That makes me laugh. Do you know why? Maybe it's because you're actually not very German. Marc: Probably, first this one. Secondly, I think my German, of course, is 20 years, because I've lived away for 20 years. So I probably maybe speak another German, and I speak this happy positivity. I think it's also another thing that sells in Germany, they are more serious people. And they think they are the smartest people in the world, so why do they need to read a book on improving themselves, right? Things like that. Also, the German market is, also, for self-help and personal development, I think it's difficult. So when I translate the title, nearly literally, from English to Spanish, it worked. I did this in German, it doesn't work. But I also don't want to change it anymore because I'm like, no, I'm not going to put any more work in my German series because it's like 2% of my sales. And the funny thing is those Germans, they are really strange because they buy my English books. So I sell a lot of English books in Germany, but I don't sell German books in Germany. Joanna: I love this because I feel like some people think it's, ‘oh, it's all over for me because indies been around so long, there's so many books.' But in these other language markets, it's like 2008/2009, all over again. And there are so few books in these other languages, in digital, in audiobooks, for example, that this is a growth market. So I mean, I guess it's difficult, though. You speak Spanish, so you do have an advantage there. But how did you get those other deals? You mentioned 30 international rights deals. How did they come to you? Marc: That really came to me, because if you are long enough on top in the Amazon charts, they will notice you. So that also took a lot. So I was on top of the US charts in sales already in 2015, and then in 2017 and 2018, the first international deals rolled in. I also had two agents, but it didn't end well. I'm just too freedom loving. I'm a very bad client because when I am in charge, everything goes fast. And then suddenly, my international publishers that I already had, and then I had to go through an agent, they said, “Marc, it's all taking so long, what's going on with you?” Then oftentimes, I like to pay to an agent 25% when they bring me a new client, but if the new client already comes to me, then I don't like to share 25%. But of course, if you sign the contract that you will share, then you share. And also another reason, I think 80% of my money that I made in international rights also I made myself. So I said, okay, I don't need an agent. And I just let it go. At the end, I will always concentrate on, in this case, on Amazon, of course, or even I don't know, because I'm wide just with eBooks since a couple of months. But surely, when you are in the Apple charts app, or in the Kobo, or whatever, they will find you. And it's really not like that anymore. So in foreign countries, like Japan, or China or whatever, they never cared that I'm an indie, right? In Germany, for example, they still look very like if he is self-published, he doesn't write good books. Maybe in Spain also they think that, but I didn't get that from Japan. And it was really they discovered me and they were discovered by book in the Amazon charts and then reached out. Another thing that I want to say to international publishing deals, is it's amazing, but 80% are disappointments. They never take off. Like, it happens sometimes. But the 20% I have Japan, India, and Thailand, they cure the pain of the other 80% because they bring me lots of money. The others, they bring me headaches. So I would always say to every author, I mean, do your due diligence, Google those people that contact you, and then say yes. Also what I want to say, I license the rights of my languages that I can't control. So Spanish, German, English, Italian, French, will always be mine, because I can control them on Amazon with Amazon ads. But all the other languages, I don't care. I sell them and then it's also like a lottery ticket, right? So you get paid a little advance, and sometimes you never earn it back and sometimes it takes off. So in Japan, for example, I have 90,000 copies sold. So that's fantastic. But I have at least 20 markets where I never outearned my advance. Joanna: I think you're so right. This is another difference between countries, hilariously. I mean, we hate cultural stereotypes, right? We don't like the stereotypes, and yet there is some truth in stereotypes. You mentioned India there for the self-help and Japan for self-help. These genres do really well, and others don't. And for me, too, self-help books do well in certain markets and not in others. But we don't learn these things unless we try. I do want to ask you because English is not your first language, obviously. Your English is amazing. Marc: How dare you! (laughs) Joanna: I love your accent. But a lot of people listen to this show for whom English is not their first language. And I often get emails from listeners who say, “Spanish is my first language,” or “Portuguese is my first language,” or whatever, “and I want to break into the English language market.” And I often reply to them and say, “That's great, but how about you focus on your language market because that's probably only starting now.” So what would you say to those people for whom English is not their first language? Should they start self-publishing in their own language? Or should they also try and break into the English language? Marc: It depends. So for example, if they're Polish, Norwegian, Swedish, or whatever, and speak like me, go for it in English. But for example, I get a lot of emails from Spanish authors that want to translate to English, and I say, “No, don't do it. Concentrate on your Spanish books.” I mean, Spain is still el dorado right now. It's like incredible. As I told you, most of my money comes from Spanish books.  But anyway, any author should never limit themselves because if a guy who talks like me, and I write about the same way, can make it, everybody can make it. It depends also on your proofreader and editor, they will make it fine. Even in German, when I send out my German manuscript, they came back red because it's just not my strong point to write without typos. But I also see the profession of the editor or proofreader, that's what I have them for, to make my books nice. So if you're Spanish, go for a Spanish market. Italian, French, probably the same. And once you earn money with those books, because it's exactly what you say. I think Italian books in Italy, French books in France, Spanish books in Spain and the US go very well. French books in Canada also do well. So do the first step before you invest more money in translations. That is one great thing that a friend of mine told me, because I translated one book to Italian and one book to French, and then I was whining to him, I was like, “I don't sell.” And he said, “Marc, translate at least four books.” Because while everybody knows, we all know that in Amazon, or wherever in the English speaking market, one book is very difficult to become rich and sell many books. Four or five books looks already better, right? And why do we think that if we know that we need four, five, six, seven books in the US, why do we think that we can make a fortune with one book in France or Italy? So I said, “Yeah, you are right.” And then I am now translating more books to have at least four or five books for those markets. And then I can see if the same effect comes. In Spain, where I have all my books, I can see that the sales get better and better. Joanna: Absolutely right. And I'm the same, I have five books in German. And when I did one in Spanish, one in Italian — but now I've licensed my Italian. So there's loads of ways to do this. And for people listening, the point is double down on your strengths. For you, obviously Spanish was already a strength, so that's fantastic. The other thing is with nonfiction that's brilliant with translation, it is easier, and short books as well, right? Because if you pay an editor or pay a translator, word count is the thing. How long are your most of your books? Marc: So the first two were like 40,000 words, and now I write between 20,000 and 25,000 books, and I even have a couple with only 15,000 words. So 20,000 to 25,000 words, 15,000 words. So a long time ago, I wrote my last book with 40,000 words. So yeah, I'm now between 20,000 and 25,000 words. Joanna: Which is brilliant. I've only got a couple of books that short. Your Author Business Plan is around that. I've really got only a couple that are that short, even of my nonfiction. So I hope people listening are encouraged because I think it's just brilliant. So let's talk about some other things, talking about wide print. Now you emailed me last year to talk about an experience you had and — Why did you take your print books wide? Marc: Blessed be you, Joanna. I always wanted to tell you, I told you in person in London, thanks to you. Because in your talk, you talked about Ingram Spark, and I was always thinking about it, but I never did it. And then you just gave such a fantastic presentation that I said, okay, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do what Joanna says. It still took six months, but thanks to you, I have made now in England 40,000 euros in the last two years. Plus, when I contacted you, that was when Amazon closed my account, I think, of course by mistake. But when that happened, I was so happy that I had my expanded distribution on Ingram because I didn't fall back from, let's say, 10,000 to 20,000 euros to zero, I fell back to 4000, which is what I earned with Ingram, audiobooks, and international rights. So yeah, it's like a safety net. If I would have had all my eggs in one basket, I would have gotten very sad and depressed very quickly, and very hopeless. But in that time, because it was like two days, at least I was a little less hysterical because I knew this. So Ingram is now a pillar of my income. Let's be real, like before I got my big break on Amazon, in my old jobs, in my nine to five job, I never made 4000 euros in a month. So I knew I can be fine with 4000 euros in a month. Of course, 10 or 15 is even nicer. And yeah, I did what you said, so expanded distribution is now made by Ingram. So I guess I get paid like double per book, which is fantastic. And I'm a little bit more independent of Amazon. Joanna: So a lot of people, I mean, me as well, to be honest, I don't make 4000 euro a month on Ingram. Lots of people would love to know how to sell more books through IngramSpark. So how are you driving those sales? Or is it just because people are buying those at bookstores and things? Marc: So I have to say the 4000 is — So Ingram is 2500. There's 1000 on audiobooks and 500, on average of the whole year, of international reads. And I have no idea, they just took off. So what I did is when I went on Ingram, I wrote to my newsletter, I have about 25,000 subscribers, and I told them, “Look, I listened to you. I know that many of you don't like to buy on Amazon. So I signed a new distribution deal with Ingram, and now you should be able to buy my book in any bookstore or have it in a library.“ Again, it took a bit. So it started with making 300, and then 400. So it was again, it was a span of two years, but you can literally see the buildup. So I don't know how it works, probably when the bookstores order it, probably also word of mouth. And of course, probably also, I was running a lot of ads on Amazon. And I also have to say 80% of my books are paperback sales. So I'm sure many people also bought the Ingram version or whatever, but I can only guess how it took off like this. Joanna: I mean, I think you're right. And this is what's so difficult for people who decide to go wide, whether it's with eBooks, audiobooks, print books, is it's not immediate. You don't go like, ‘oh, I'll turn on my wide distribution,' and next week I'm making the same amount of money. It does take time to grow all these other platforms. I mean, as we're recording this at the beginning of 2023, and — Therehave been a lot of authors who have lost their accounts, whether that's for a few days or a few weeks. Most of the authors, like yourself, get their accounts back. But the stress. Marc: It's incredible, really. Yeah. Joanna: Yeah, you think it's all over, right? I mean, it's the end of the world. Marc: And it's still a stress for me, although I have now one strike. When it happened, I was nearly relieved because I was always fearing it. And then when it finally happens, then that's it, it happened. For me, it changed my business model. You know, I told you before, I was investing 10,000 to 12,000 euros in Amazon ads every month. So that's pretty risky because we know that if you lose your account, they probably don't pay you your royalty. So at any point of time, Amazon was owing me like 50,000 – 60,000 euros while I was paying happily 10,000 – 12,000 every month, and that was just too much. And then I turned off 80% of my ads. And now I'm only spending 4000 a month on Amazon ads, and I'm actually having better net results, which is amazing. But something has happened because I wanted to depend less on them, but now I still depend on them because I've got a great safety net. But on the other hand, I say okay, 4000, that's okay. Because when I turn off my ads, and I just don't pay the 4000, it doesn't hurt as much as 12,000, for example.  It shouldn't be like this that I have to have this thoughts. But I guess that's the way it is, you know. So that's why I also want to become more independent because it's not nice when you make — you shouldn't do it — but I make decisions not based on fear. Because the closure of my account was so far unbelievable that I was like, okay, what do I do now? Because it was like, “Yeah, you, Marc Reklau, you are trying to imitate Marc Reklau.” And I said, “No, no, I am Marc Reklau. I am Marc Reklau.” There is only one Marc Reklau in the world, although they are two, but okay. And then that was it. So that was probably that the guy had a bad day. I sent them passport copy and everything, but it was just not nice. And because when they get you for something, so you copy something, it's more understandable, but if they just say, “So, Joanna Penn, we will close your account now because you are impersonating Joanna Penn.” I mean, that's crazy. Joanna: Yeah, and I mean, for people listening, it's nothing new on this show. I've been saying for years that you should have multiple streams of income. And that means different retailers, as well as more than one book. And then if you do depend on one retailer, put money away so that if something happens — and look, it's not if something happens, it's when something happens. And that might not be a closure of account, it might be COVID, that hit me really badly. It might be life happens. Something's going to happen at some point, right. Marc: Yeah. And I was so happy because the thing was, when it happened, it was in August, I went to your podcast, and I copied and pasted every podcast where you ever in the last two years talked about going wide, I copied it in a Word document. And every morning I was doing my walks along the Danube in Budapest listening to your podcast, and then like already thinking my next steps. And then saying, okay, I have to go wide, and I know already what will be the next thing because you are always two years or more ahead. So surely in one to two years, I will also go selling direct. For now I'm concentrating on going wide, but that will be the next step. So thank you for being, how do you say, a beacon or a guide for the rest of us. Joanna: Well, thank you. I appreciate people who listen to the show and take action. And you're one of those people. You mentioned Mark Dawson's Ads course, taking action on what he does. And that's the reality of what we do, right. I've always listened to people and watched other people and taken action. And it will be different for different people.  I started this show in 2009 because a guy I followed, Yaro Starak, he had a podcast and he was a full-time creator. And I was like, you know what, I can do that too. And people listening to you, I'm listening to you, going, “Hmm, I wonder. I think I should probably be doing better with some of my books.” So thank you for inspiring people. But let's talk about money as well, because one of your books is Rich author, Poor author: 50 reasons why successful authors sell more books than struggling authors. So even though there are 50 reasons in that book, I wanted you to give us a couple of tips on how to be a more successful author. Marc: Well, I think the number one reason, and you mentioned it many times on the show, is the mindset. Business mindset, but also, simply mindset. What do I want to say? Look, just recently, I had an email conversation with a Spanish author. And she was like, “Yeah, I have a novel. But I think I won't sell because I'm sure you with your nonfiction, you're doing better. It's easier to sell nonfiction.” I said, “No. Actually, the richest authors in the community of the indies are fiction authors who sell romance or whatever.” So, okay, then she accepted that. And then she was like, “Yes, but I don't want to sacrifice my values. I want to write what I want.” And I said, “You don't have to compromise on that.” But I also noticed that on every reason I give you to go for it, you give me three reasons why you won't make it. So I said to her, “Look, first of all, I believe that you can earn money with books because I've seen it.” Even before they said, oh, with poetry you can't sell many books. Well, there are many people selling many poetry books. So first of all, you have to believe that you can do it. So that's mindset. And then the business mindset. So what I see from people who write to me, they think there's this urban legend that you can sell 100,000 books with a cover made by yourself. And that's not true. So you need to invest money to make money. For me, it was very funny because all the good things that came in my career as a writer was always when I did investments and investments that hurt. So my first BookBub deal, I was jobless, and I got 800 euros of jobless welfare every month. And I took 500 euros of those and got my BookBub deal, which was fantastic. I sold 1000s of books. Well, I gave away 40,000 for free, and afterwards, I sold many books. Mark Dawson's Ads course, which is, for me, a life changer and a game changer, I couldn't even buy it. I couldn't even buy it at once, I took the 12 month plan, you know. But these are actions to say, okay, I have to invest something in my career so that something comes back. Yeah, there's urban legends that you can reach great success with no sacrifice. No, you can't. In my opinion, in my experience, all the people that I know have gone through times of pain also, until they finally believed enough in their project, or in the book, and write more books. And then with a fifth or sixth book came the success. So this is one thing I see is that people just do not have the business mindset, or the mindset, or they think they don't have to invest in a cover. Oh my, so many reasons, but now I can't come up with any new. But those are the ones I see most. Joanna: Yeah, I think you're right. And it was the same for me. We can't expect to have a thriving business without spending some money and some time. And so as you say, again, it's coming back to that lottery ticket. A lot of people think that it is one book, sell the book, make a million, retire. And I remember thinking like that back when I wrote my first book, you know, 2006, 2007, that's how I thought it was. But, I also say to people, that you can't control the lightning strike, you can't control the lottery ticket, but what we can control is these practices that help us progress month after month. And eventually you can control having a business, basically, by the work that you do. Marc: Absolutely. So let's say, now, I was thinking goals, right? We make goals. Now, it's beginning of 2023. I make goals, I make goals for one year, I even have 10 years goals. But the goals for me that I look at everyday are my daily goals. Because if I don't do my daily goals, I will never reach those other goals. So this year, I want to write three books, and we're coming back to the same thing that I have to write 2000 words every day. If I don't write 2000 words until February, it will get a lot more difficult to get these three books then. So the most important is these daily goals and really work every day. So in my self-help books, I really say, I dare to say, it goes for everybody, if you do the three most important things every day, if you say, “Okay, what are my three most important tasks every day to bring my business and my author career to advance it?” If you would do these three things for a year, in one year, you would be in a fantastic state. And those who listening to us, they can try to do it, and if they do it, I can nearly promise it.  The difficult thing is then to know which are those three things, right? So that's where comes in the focus, or also I like a lot the 80/20 rule because it's like this is one of the best rules in everything. I see it everywhere, and it's really also a good rule to not do unnecessary work. So usually it's like, okay, 20%, or let's say 80% of your sales come from 20% of your activities. So, which are those activities? For me, it's also I can see that 80% of my income comes from 20% of my books. 80% of my ad money goes into 20% of my ads. So this 80/20 is fascinating, and you can use it to save time. So look at the same, 20% of the markets bring me 80% of my income. So where I'm really concentrating on is the US market and the Spanish market. Those are my bringers. So it's a whole new thing. Also, in matter of time, having time, if I just check my Spanish and English ads every day, or if I also check the Canadian, French, German, UK, whatever, so you can find a lot of time with this tool. Joanna: No, that's fantastic. And we could talk for ages. I love talking to you. But we are out of time. Where can people find you and your books online? Marc: Now, thanks to you, they can find me everywhere. I'm wide now with eBooks, with paperback, with audiobooks I was always wide because I liked the wide idea too. And it was actually you who, again, inspired me because we share the values of independence and freedom. And I'm like, yeah, why am I in KDP Select if those are my key values? Well, because the money was good, right. But now I'm independent. I'm free. And you can find me everywhere. And as I said, I mean, I like to say there's only one Marc Reklau because there's such a nice song I learned in England 20 years ago, when there was only one Alan Shearer. So there's one Marc Reklau, but actually there are two, one with a K, and the one with a C, and if you Google me, yeah, it's all me now. The poor guy disappeared because now there's so much stuff. I remember when I googled myself in 2009, there were like 20 results on Google, and now there are hundreds of 1000s from Marc Reklau. You put it in Google, I show up. You put it in LinkedIn, I show up. Social media, I show up. I have to say, my preferred way of communication is email: Marc@MarcReklau.com because I'm always like with one and a half feet away from social media. I really am because, for me, it's a time waste. I'm still there because I think I will start with Facebook ads this year and see if I can make a little bit more money. But the best way to get in touch with me is email or LinkedIn. I will never go far from LinkedIn because my girlfriend manages it for me. Joanna: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Marc. That was great. Marc: Thank you, Joanna. It was fantastic.The post Multi-Six Figure Book Sales And The Power Of Daily Habits With Marc Reklau first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Do you sometimes just ‘know' when a story is right? Does something ‘click' during the writing process and suddenly things make sense? Do you lean into your curiosity and emotion when it comes to writing and marketing? If yes, you might be an intuitive writer, as Becca Syme explains in this interview. In the intro, Chokepoint Capitalism [Decoder]; Direct sales [Kris Rusch]; Amazon Ads for Authors by Ricardo Fayet; Ads for Authors course; Why I Ignored Target Reader Feedback for my Book Cover Design; ChatGPT for teachers [Hard Fork]; Pilgrimage Kickstarter. 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. You can find my books for authors and my fiction here on Kobo. Becca Syme is an author, coach, and creator of the Better-Faster Academy. She is a USA Today bestselling author of small-town romance and cozy mystery and also writes the ‘Dear Writer' series of non-fiction 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 How a writer knows if they are intuitive The data-gathering process of intuitive writers Learning to apply feedback while trusting your intuition Knowing when it's the right time to write your book Standing out in a crowded market by using your intuition Tips for avoiding burnout to have a sustainable author career Why we make decisions based on fear — and how to stop You can find Becca at BetterFasterAcademy.com or on her QuitCast on YouTube Image generated by Joanna Penn on Midjourney. Transcript of Interview with Becca Syme Joanna: Becca Syme is an author, coach, and creator of the Better-Faster Academy. She is a USA Today bestselling author of small-town romance and cozy mystery and also writes the ‘Dear Writer' series of non-fiction books. Today we're talking about Dear Writer, Are You Intuitive? co-written with Susan Bischoff, which was one of my books of the year in 2022. So welcome back to the show, Becca. Becca:  Thank you so much for having me. And I'm so excited to talk about this topic. I'm so glad you picked this. Joanna: Me too. As I said, I love the book. And I was reading it going, ‘oh, this is just me, this is so me.' And I wanted to bring it to my audience. We're just going to jump straight into the intuitive topic today. So let's start. What do you mean by intuition? How does a writer know they might be intuitive when it comes to their writing? Becca:  So a lot of us who are intuitive — I'm also intuitive — we know things without knowing how we know them. And a lot of that gets attributed to things like emotion or assumption, right? So if I walk into a room, and I think, “oh, everyone in here is very uncertain.” Like, I just know that and I can't point to certain data pieces of what it is that I used. And a lot of people will say that you're just making an assumption, that you don't know that is true. But what we found about intuition — and this is strengths related, but I'm not going to use any of the language because I want it to be more accessible to everyone — but there are certain behavior patterns that you have that allow you to gather data without knowing that you're gathering data. And they allow you to make connections between the data. So like when I assume that someone is feeling something, and I am actually an intuitive, and this is something I do all the time, I'm reading things, I just don't know that they're there. Usually with intuitives, you can wait a couple of hours, and then kind of deconstruct what you were thinking in the moment, and say, “oh, yeah, I saw this, and this, and this about your body language, etc.” And this isn't just emotional intuition, because of course, in the book, there are several. There are several types. But in general, intuition is the ability to know something based on data that you've taken in, that you do not have the ability in the moment to point to how you know that.  Almost always we say things like, “well, I just knew,” or “I didn't know why I made that assumption. I don't know why I made that choice.” And that can feel extremely uncertain to people who are intuitive because people who are not intuitive will try to deconstruct that and prove us wrong, or say we don't know what we're talking about, or we're making assumptions, or we're being emotional.  So I think it's really important for intuitive authors to know that is not what that means. You not being able to prove something right away in the moment doesn't mean you don't know it, or you didn't base it on data. It just means it's happening subconsciously. And then, of course, that affects storytelling. It affects marketing decisions. It affects ad running. It just affects every part of our author life. Joanna: Let's just unpack a few of these things there. So it's so funny, you use language like gathering data and deconstruct, and I feel like these are almost logical words. Like I don't associate gathering data with being intuitive. Now I know what you mean — Give us some examples of how an intuitive might gather data from the world. Becca: So let's use a writing example, just because I think some of the behavioral examples are not true for everyone. But a lot of intuitives who are writers will have watched movies, read books, listened to oral storytellers who are extremely proficient at storytelling, and they will have naturally intuited the connections between plot points, and then they will write their books according to that intuition. So do I need to know what a black moment is in order to write one? No, I don't, if I'm intuitive, because I'm intuiting, or again, I'm reading the data patterns. So like, let's look on a micro level at me listening to you tell a story. My intuition is saying, “Oh, you dropped your voice here. You changed your cadence there. And that produced this emotion in your audience.” So if I want to do that, and this is how people who are not intuitive — and I hesitate to use the word logical, because a lot of intuitives have latched onto the word, ‘I am logical' as a way to fight against that natural criticism we get about not thinking about what we do. But a lot of people who are not intuitive will consciously say those things to themselves. “Oh, you did this” or “you did that,” or “here's that device that they use.” And they can often break it apart and tell you what they're doing. Whereas most intuitives can't, unless they've acquired that skill as a defense mechanism. And almost always, they have to do it in retrospect, anyway. But like, you'll be watching a movie, and you'll see the flavor of a particular line of dialogue that produced an emotion in you, and then you'll know once you've seen that 10 or 15 times, you will know how to utilize that device in your own writing, but you could not describe to me how you do it.  I think this is the most important part for writers, is that because — We make decisions according to intuition, but those decisions are actually based on previous data gathering that we were not aware we were doing. They are actually sound decisions, we just don't realize that they are because we couldn't say, “oh, yeah, 10% I have to do this thing.” It just naturally happens when intuitives are storytelling because, again, they've assimilated that data on such a subconscious — I would argue unconscious — level because it's usually inaccessible to them.  It makes them, or us, mistrust our storytelling capacity because we hear people who can explain the mechanics behind why they make the decisions that they make. And again, the certainty and correctness axis, we assume that because they're so certain about what they do, and they're doing it correctly, that we have to be similarly certain and logical and intentional about what we do, instead of trusting that our intuition is already being intentional for us. Joanna: And it's funny, because there are psychological studies that show humans will make up a reason why we did something, even though that might not actually be the reason. So we might say, “oh, yeah, I wrote this because I know that at 10% I have to put in this, whatever, due to Save The Cat or whatever.” And yet, that might not actually be the reason. So I guess it doesn't really matter which way, but part of this interview is really talking about trusting that intuition. So from the book, I wanted to read one of the lines, which says, “Writing with intentional plot structure is not necessary for the story to be compelling.” And that comes to a bit about what you just said there. I mean, that gave me a great sigh of relief, and I'm a discovery writer. So how can we avoid forcing ourselves into a plotting box when most of the writing advice around us wants us to have this intentional plot structure? Becca: Right, the crazy part about an intuitive brain is that if you try to do it intentionally, it will not work the same way. So you, Joanna, if you sit down with a plot structure that has been given to you as though this is the exact way to do it, and then you sit down and try to write that plot structure, it is not going to have the same compelling nature that your natural storytelling would have. There are a lot of reasons for that, not the least of which is, please, if you do not believe me, read Aristotle, like read the poetics. The data samples that were used to define a lot of what we think about three act structure are so variable. Like the inciting incident, we nail it down to 10% because that is what we have been taught. But the reality is, the plays that he was using to make some of these — and again, he didn't use the word inciting incident, but that's what's been made out of his theory. It could be 5%, it could be 20%, like the graph of compelling story is a wider graph than we think it is. But so many of us who are intuitive, we don't trust the fact that we could write a compelling story without that. And so how do we do that? I think some of it is that you have to allow yourself to do what your intuition is guiding you to do. Whether it's write with a tiny bit of structure and a lot of discovery, or write with a lot of discovery and no structure. Whatever it is, we have to learn how to trust the fact that we have gathered this storytelling capacity through the same process. It's just happened subconsciously instead of consciously. Intention will not help us if we are wired this way. And you might have to test that on your own in order to believe me, or you could just believe me. Joanna: When I read the book, I recognized myself in it. Some people won't, and probably they've stopped listening already! Becca: And that's totally okay. Because what I want to say about the people who are not intuitive, is the reason people tell us you can't write without intention is because they can't. So the people who are doing this, like who are teaching this stuff, have come about their theories honestly. Not everyone is an intuitive writer. And so of course, there should be a complete guide to not being an intuitive writer, which there is. There's plenty of them, we don't need another one. Like, there's a lot. What we need is more information about how to be a good discovery writer. Not how to use plotting techniques to correct a behavior that is not incorrect, but how to be a good discovery writer. How to use tools and tactics to get unstuck consistently, things like that, so that we're not putting undue stress on ourselves. But also, we need to learn how to trust the intuitive storytelling mechanism that's inside. Joanna: And it's funny, I think maybe I didn't write my book on How to Write a Novel for many years because, as you say, like 95% of the books out there on story are for those who can understand a structure and use it versus the intuitive approach. So I guess everyone who writes intuitively has at least a percentage that is discovery writing. Becca: Yeah, yeah. Joanna: So let's just come back on this word, trust. You and I have been doing this a long time, and I feel like I do trust my creative process. And yet, I know that this would be very hard for someone just starting out because I feel like for fiction, particularly, finding your creative voice is very hard. And you might think, oh, you know, intuitively, I want to write it this way. And then maybe you get your first edit, and it's like, well, you screwed this up, and this is wrong. Or maybe you made it all the way to publication, and the book just didn't sell, or it got bad reviews. When we talk about trusting our intuition, how do we combine that with editing feedback in order to become better at the craft? Where's the line? Becca: I think you've nailed it in terms of the earlier you are in the process, the more you want to be at least questioning the premise of, “should I fully trust my intuition or not?” Because there's a difference between, “I don't want to get edits,” which is valid, and also can be really dangerous. There's a difference between that level of rebellion against the system and the intuition of, “no, this is what I think is the most compelling way to tell this story.”  Again, whether you're intuitive or not, I think you should always be developing your craft, period. But what I would do when you're getting edits, or when you're getting feedback on your story, is I would be asking about the quality. Does the quality of the edit match my personal storytelling preference? Because if the editor is telling you, “Hey, you waited too long for the inciting incident,” and when you ask them about it, they say, “well, because it has to happen at 10%,” then they are not the right editor for you. Like they're just not. Because the questions that you need to ask are things like, “Is there non-compelling stuff before this that I need to take out? Or am I one of those writers who writes a little bit differently?”  I have a particular client whose inciting incidents are usually around 30%. And she sells bonkers [numbers of] books. And every editor she's ever had has told her, “You have to move up your inciting incident. You have to move up your inciting incident.” And then she said, “Well, the numbers say differently.” Right? Like the number of readers who are buying my books say differently. I don't need to move up my inciting incidents. But when you read her books, they're compelling from start to finish. I think that's the difference is, we're asking questions about structure instead of questions about intuition and storytelling. Am I learning how to tell a more compelling story? Which means if I'm going to include real life, or backstory, or whatever it is, before the inciting incident, is it serving the forward motion of the story of the readers interest or not? And that's the kind of editorial feedback you want to look for. And of course, there are intuitive editors, in the same way that there are intuitive writers. And so I would always be on the lookout for someone who is going to ask the right questions of your books, and not someone who is going to only ask structural questions. And I say this in the book, and I'll just say it again — If structure was the only thing that made stories compelling, then you would never see a bad movie out of Hollywood, ever. Because there is nowhere that structure is more important than in Hollywood. In fact, if you've ever been edited by producers or studio execs, you know, your screenplays, they will literally say, “No, this is page 10. You have to have this here.” And they get very dogged about it, and then they make you change things, right? So there's this sense of, well, structure is so important, why isn't everything that is structured well selling? Because structure is not righteous, I guess is the right word. “Is the story compelling?” is the right question to ask. And I would say, so how do we get there if we're newer? I would always try to follow the intuition that you have about the way you want to write the story. And then check your intuition against someone who will tell you if the story is compelling or not. I wouldn't trend towards trying to outline first, unless you literally can't think of anything else to do, or your intuition is like, “no, I need to know what the structure is,” and then I would listen to that.  Of course, there are intuitive writers who are 75% discovery, and then there are intuitive writers who are 20% discovery, because they have different types of intuition that aren't just emotional. So it's possible that you need to experiment. But I would also always listen to your own intuition first, before you listen to teachers, period. Joanna: Yes, because I guess part of our voice as a writer comes from that place that is just us. And that has to come with trusting who we are and putting it out there. But I was just thinking as you were talking, like let's even wind it back, and this is true for nonfiction as well, I think. So I've got my next book that's coming out, it's called Pilgrimage. Becca: Which I'm so excited about, by the way. Joanna: Oh, thank you. And it's so funny, because I think one of the questions people ask is, “how do you know which book to write, when?” And, like, I thought I would write this book when I walked my first pilgrimage, and it didn't happen. And then even like How to Write a Novel, which is a completely different type of book, it is a nonfiction self-help book, like you write as well for writers. And yet, it was always like, I felt an intuitive sense of, okay, this book's time has come. And I put things off like ‘the shadow book,' about the darker side of ourselves. Again, I haven't felt right writing that for years. It's been kind of ticking away and ticking away. And some people, I guess, would say that this is the muse. I have so many more ideas than what I can write. But yet — At some point, something in me just says, “right now is the time.” Can you explain that? Becca: Yes. So from your particular perspective because you have a future forward personality, like that's one of your strengths, right? That is part of what I would consider to be like spatial intuition, for instance, which is: how do all these things fit together and how does everything move in a direction that is correct, that feels like it has alignment? And there are some personality traits that would produce something like that. And again, because I'm a strengths coach, my tendency is to go very granular, like to look at the future forward part, particularly, because I can explain how I do it, I have a very similar type of intuition. And what happens is, I know that I'm gathering data from listening to a writer's talk, because of course, I coach writers all day, every day. So like, I'm listening to writers talk, and I'm watching the patterns, and I'm seeing, oh, this is consistently coming up. And then at some point, it sort of just clicks with me that this is a meaningful pattern, and I need to do something with this right now. What's been happening in the background is that I've been gathering data over the course of the years and seeing the patterns come together. And then finally, the pattern becomes significant in a way that my intuition knows, but Becca doesn't. I couldn't explain to you why I wrote the burnout book when I did or why I wrote the Dear Writer book when I did. But I knew in the moment that it was like everything had come together and aligned, and the book just came out. And that is, again, it's the result of having gathered a whole bunch of data, watched a whole bunch of patterns and seen everything come together in that alignment moment where I just felt like, okay, now is the time. I don't necessarily think that it's a predictive thing, like that because I did that, that that means it's somehow going to be more successful than if I hadn't listened. It's more like, whatever purpose this book was going to serve in my life and in the lives of the people who would read it, this was the time in needed to happen. Whether it was successful or not as a different metric that we can't control.  I do think there is an alignment to timing that is very intuitive and is based on, you know, who you are in the moment and where the world is. And of course, you're a future dominant personality, you're also looking at what's coming and what are we going to need to hear three years, five years from now, things like that, because your future dominant is so strong. Like you're always ahead of everybody, and that's not a surprise to you. But the timing piece, I think, is a combination of different types of intuition, recognizing patterns, basically, and gathering data. You just don't know when. Joanna: I think you're right there, it's like you don't know it. But what I felt with the Pilgrimage book — so you know, I had like 120,000 words or something of this book, and sitting on that, it was really hard. And yet, as you say, there was just some feeling that it wasn't the right time. And it may not be the right time now. But hey, a book on pilgrimage, it's hardly going to hit the top of the charts! But as you say, sometimes it's about us. And I love that you say that because so much of the indie space, particularly, and the traditional publishing space, is about making the sales. And that's important, making money is important, marketing the book is important. But yet, sometimes our intuition might tell us to write a book or publish a book that doesn't hit big. And I guess we have to trust that too, right? Becca: Yes, because you don't ever know that. Like anybody who tells you that they know 100% is either lying to you or lying to themselves, like one of the two. But no one knows 100% how a book is going to do because this industry is run by Loki, the god of chaos. And it is not run by Captain America, the god of logic. I know Captain America is not a god, but like, I mean, you could make an argument. But that's not how the industry works. It is not predictable in that way. So no one really knows what's going to happen. And again, the famous quote from the Random House trial is like, that's literally why they named Random House, random house because they knew it was random. And they were going to throw money at it because they thought that they could make good on investments in publishing. Yes, that turns out to be absolutely true. It is random. I mean, when we think it's predictable, like when we see something that we're like, oh, yeah, I knew that would take off, then we're like, oh, it must be 100% predictable. No, it's not. It's chaos. So sometimes it's predictable, and sometimes it isn't.  I do think that's important to know, that when we do things in the timing that our intuition is telling us, there are things our intuition doesn't know. It doesn't know whether or not — like to use your example, the pilgrimage book — is this the perfect time right now and not a year from now? Your intuition does not know that for sure. But what it does know is this is better timing than it was a year ago, or two years ago. It's better timing than it was 10 years ago, because it's you who's writing it, right? So you can never take yourself out of the equation, first of all. If a book won't leave you alone, sometimes you have to write it. And if it will leave you alone, sometimes you have to leave it alone. And I think we make strategic intentional decision making, we worship it like it somehow is God. But that's because we all think Captain America's in charge of the industry, and he isn't. So if we acknowledge that there is some level of unpredictability and chance to this experience, regardless of what everyone who is successful wants to tell us, then we acknowledge that sometimes intuition is the best thing to follow because there is no predictable outcome that just because I make the smartest strategic decision intentionally that I can make, that it is going to have the outcome that I want it to have. Because that's just not how the publishing industry works. Joanna: So interesting. You did actually say near the beginning, that intuition can come into things like marketing. And yet that then does involve things like money, which is more specific than stories and ideas and muse and all of that kind of thing. How can we both use our intuition in marketing and business, yet, also be a bit more pragmatic about it? Becca: I love that question because I think it gets to the risk involved, right? Like, I always think that it's important to be as cautious with risk as we can when we are risk averse. Because a portion of the population is extremely risk averse and so they may be less likely to take risks with their money than they would be with writing a story. And that's valid, I want to acknowledge that it's okay to be that way. But I always want people to test their assumptions, and then live by the data that you get. So if you continually try everything that every expert tells you, and it does not work, and you're ignoring your intuition about marketing and money in order to do that, then stop listening and listen to your intuition instead. Because the intuition is trying to tell us something about ourselves. So for instance, in marketing, there is a segment of people who are really excellent at social media, they have intuition about how to connect with people, and they can utilize it and they can grow social media platforms very quickly. And then there are the — I'm just going to throw a number out that's an assumption on my part — 85% of us who are not great at it. So we're only ever going to get middling results. And then we want to ask ourselves the question, “Is this actually worth my time?“ And if I'm watching for the results, and I've given it a good try, and I've done everything that I should do for long enough to expect results, and I'm still not seeing results or I can't tell the difference, and I always say, if you can't tell the difference, then it's not making a difference. So that is actually the answer itself. Some of us are so committed to doing things the “smart, strategic way,” that we're ignoring both the results that we're getting, and also our own intuition, in order to do what we're being told we should do, and I think that's actually riskier. From an objective perspective, if you have an intuition that is really talking to you loudly and you are ignoring it, I think that's riskier than spending $10,000 trying to learn how to do Facebook ads in a way that you are completely not wired to do. Like, I think it's a bigger risk to not listen to your intuition. We do talk about intuitive ads, like running ads as an intuitive author, and what we're trying to help authors realize is that you do not have to look at data all the time in order to make decisions, regardless of what you have been told. If you are an intuitive author, there are certain questions that you need to learn how to ask yourself, and they're often the questions you're intuitively thinking to ask anyway. Things like, is it making me money, right? Very easy, big picture questions, but you're trying to follow a system that someone else has told you is the correct system. And so you're ignoring your own intuition at your peril. So again, I think it's riskier in marketing to not trust your intuition than it is to sometimes trust what is the “correct” thing to do, that isn't actually working for you or delivering results. Joanna: Coming back to emotion, you talked about it a number of times, but at the beginning, talking about the emotions around intuition. And if I hate something, then of course, I mean, either I hate it because my intuition is telling me I hate it, or that's not how I want to spend my time, you know, with something I hate. And I think ads is a great example because I do ads, but I have a lot of outsourcing. So I don't have to do it myself. But talking about podcasting, I didn't know I would love podcasting back in 2009 when I started this show. I just thought, oh, this is interesting. Lots of authors don't know how to use any kind of tech stuff, and back in 2009, you had to use tech stuff more than we do now. And so it was like, well, I could maybe make some friends because I didn't have any author friends. So I went into podcasting with this sort of intuition to try it. And then I guess over the years I've just kept leaning in and leaning into this as my primary marketing thing. Do you think that podcasting for me has been an intuitive process that I've done through emotion? Becca:  Yep. In fact, I think that is often how it works. And I think you've nailed the word hate, which I'm always using this example in trying to talk to authors about marketing. Like if you hate social media, you're not going to be good at it. So either find someone to do it who is better at it than you are or find a way to do it that you can live with, whatever that is. And that might take some experimentation.  Then on the flip side, when you are a curious person, and you naturally want to try everything out, and your intuition is hey, let me try this thing, then often that emotion of interest or of curiosity is exactly the thing you should be following. So those people who I coached who were into TikTok really early because they love new technology and it interested them, all strategic signs pointed to, at the time before BookTok became a thing, pointed to the fact that this was a waste of their time. But their intuition was, no, this interests me, I like it, I want to try it out. And then they ended up being among the first early adopters of BookTok. So when you think about what your intuition is guiding you towards, often that interest or curiosity is either guiding you towards something that will actually be successful for you, because again, our instincts are often the things that guide our intuition and your instincts for, first of all, like the deep thinking that you do, that is something that not everyone can do for themselves. So having a resource to be able to listen to where someone has deeply thought through all of these topics in the author world and can find experts to give us, like that is a huge gold mine resource for authors. And because you're naturally good at that, it's a good alignment for your personality to do something like that, especially as early as you did it.  So that intuition wasn't something you could have known in the moment. But the emotional interest that you had was the intuition that you should have listened to, and did, thankfully, because we all appreciate that you did that so early. Just being able to know that Joanna will think about this, and I will be able to go and listen to her think about this, or the outcome of her having thought about this deeply, because we know we can trust you to do that. Like that is a voice in the industry that needs to be heard. And because you did it, you responded to your intuition, it was successful.  I wish more of us would have that level of trust of our intuition because there are so many times when I sit across from someone in coaching, and they'll say, “oh, I want to do this thing.” And I'm like, oh, that's such a good fit for you, like it's so perfect. But they keep questioning it because, oh no, everybody says I'm supposed to do TikTok or everybody says I'm supposed to do this. And I'm like, everyone is wrong. Just do what your intuition is telling you to do. Joanna: Thank you for your kind words, I appreciate that. And yet, I would also say to people — I have certainly not always been this confident in what I'm talking about. You know, I've had all the fears that everyone has. When I started out, it was about nine months before anyone even listened to this show. It was years before I made any decent money from my books. And so I guess it's not like, oh, you follow your intuition, and next week you're a bestseller. Becca:  Exactly. Like you have to know, on some level, that you're willing to take the risk that your intuition will be wrong. In terms of like, my intuition, especially things like the adoption curve of podcasting, where you got into podcasting, it's much more likely that your intuition was going to pay off than it is in 2023 when podcasting has been around for two decades. You know what I mean? Like, it's a different question, when you're looking at: is it naturally going to lead me to success? But what I have seen is that you will be more successful following your intuition than you will not following it. So the people who are doing things that are against their intuition, that are only because someone else says they're supposed to do it and are not seeing results. And those results make sense, right? Because I don't like it. I'm not good at it. It's not something I think is valuable. I don't see the value. And yet I'm being told I should do it, and so I'm doing it. That's the kind of question that I want us to question the premise of. Like, should you really be doing this thing? Because what everyone says in terms of, you know, should you be doing X, Y, or Z, like, whatever it is, if you are not good at it, then no, you should not be doing it. Because there's too much to do. Like there's too many potential things to do for us to do everything. In a crowded marketplace, we have to be able to stand out at what we're doing in order to be able to use it as a selling tool. It's so crowded, like the Gold Rush is over. Everything is crowded, everything is saturated. So the rules change when there's no more blue water. When the sharks are there, we have to be better in order to get food. And that's the downside of a crowded marketplace. But the upside is there's still plenty of food around, so just like narrow down and listen to your intuition and be willing to be better at a few things rather than trying to be half-good at everything. Those are gold rush rules. Joanna: There's a lot of blue water in pilgrimage! Becca: I'm so excited. It's so funny because when you were talking about timing, I was like, oh, I can see it, though. Like, I can see why this is the right time for something like that, because we're all coming out of sort of the burnout era where everyone is finally listening about burnout. Like when I was talking about it, you know, four years ago, nobody wanted to hear about it. Because they're all like, “We're fine. We're fine. We're not going to burn out.” And I'm like, oh, just wait for it. Wait for it, wait for it, and now. Now, I'm getting calls from publishers about like, “can we please buy this book from you?” And I'm like, now everybody's listening, right? But four or five years ago, they weren't. And that's why I'm like, oh, this book is going to be so good for us. Because what we need is, if I'm not going to burn out, again, like if I've been through it, I'm recovering, and I want to not do that again, what am I going to do instead to make sure that I don't go down that road again? And how am I going to realign myself? So things like sustainability and deeper connection and what we call like making energy pennies, where you're intentionally trying to create energy for yourself in order to sustain a long life and a long career, those are going to be the topics of the next three to five years. And so you're essentially sort of like kicking that off, right? Which is, again, totally normal if you're futuristic. Like, I love that. Joanna: I'm pleased you think that, and you're right. And you're talking about making energy pennies, I think all of us, you know, exercise and being out in nature, and walking, these are kind of human things. And also, I was narrating my audiobook earlier, so it's all in my head. But this sense that as writers, we're just in our heads all the time, it's almost like we forget our physical bodies exist. I mean, even you and I, right now, we're talking through the ether, and it's two brains connecting, but we're not physically with each other. We're not looking at each other, it's an audio only. It's like we're two brains connecting through voice, and yet we have physical bodies, and those physical bodies carry our brains.  So in terms of sustainability, just before we finish, let's talk about that. You coach writers every day, you see writers on every spectrum of every personality type, and people who write differently and release differently and publish differently. So what do you see as your recommendations or, I guess, commonalities for authors who want this sustainable career as a writer for the long term in order not to burn out? What are you seeing in terms of the best way to be sustainable in a creative career? Becca: Conquering the fear that we have that we're not going to get what we want out of the career, like 100%. Because the fear is the thing that's driving us to burn ourselves out. The fear that if I don't do it this way, I'm not going to make money. If I don't do it this way, I'm not going to have a long career. I'm going to miss out on something if I don't do absolutely everything. And then I think the most important knowledge that we can have is that everyone in this industry who's a nonfiction person, including me, is giving you a perspective on how author life can be done. Every single one of us, not the perspective on how it should be done in order to have success. And if we could just change our expectations of how we look at the people who are helping us who are being good, helpful people who are very sure that their way is the correct way and who should be, again, because like all experts, they've had success doing what they are doing. But the downside is from someone whose job is to sit with authors for 45 minutes at a time, all day, every day, I see the outcome of the people who have tried to “do it all,” in quotes, with capital letters, and who are burned out because they were doing everything out of a fear place. And I think one of the best things that can happen in our — and what burnout often does is it forces us to reckon with the fact that we were doing all of this because we were afraid. My book isn't going to sell, I'm not going to be able to do this, I have this dream that I'm holding on to and what happens if it doesn't manifest itself. Then we make a lot of our decisions about how much to take on based on fear, and we don't know it. Because we don't realize that our brains are wired for survival, and so anytime fear kicks in, your brain is like, well, we have to do that because if you're afraid of it, then that must mean that we need it in order to survive. And we don't. We will survive if our books don't sell. We will survive if we don't have a long term career. And I mean that unfortunately, like, there are a lot of us who will not have long term careers because the industry cannot support 2 million authors having six figure careers. It is not possible for that to happen. And so the unfortunate essential pain, as we call it, is that not everybody will be able to do this. But that doesn't mean you, in particular, can't do it. And that fear that you might not be able to do it or that if you don't do this, then you won't have it, that is a manipulation tactic that your brain is using to try to keep you alive. We have to calm that fear and answer the question. Like, what will happen if in five years, I have not sold more than $1,000 on every book that I am writing? Like if each of the individual books that I write have not made more than $1,000. And I have to reckon with what might happen if that happens, because if I don't, that fear is going to drive me to burnout over and over and over and over again. That is why we're making so many of our decisions, including: do I pay for this class or conference? Do I pay for this book? Do I spend money on this advertising? Do I hire this expert consultant? So many of us are making those choices out of fear and we don't realize it. And that's why when we do our public live coaching, and whenever I'm at a conference, I'm always listening for, “but what are you afraid is not going to happen? Or what are you afraid is going to happen?” Because if we don't deconstruct that part of yourself and calm your survival mechanism down, you're going to continue over and over again to make those decisions out of fear. Then you're going to not listen to your intuition because you think it's risky to listen to it. And so I really think, and some of this might include therapy for some of us, I'm just going to acknowledge some of us have trauma around not getting what we want or around not actualizing our desires, and we can't just talk ourselves into letting the fear go. But some of us do just need to consistently confront the fear and make a plan for what happens and then act in spite of that fear because we are not making good decisions when we are in survival mode. Joanna: Oh, you are very wise. Becca: It helps that I coach people so much because I just see it literally every hour of every day. It's like, I feel like all I do, somebody joked that you're the pastor, right? Because all you're doing is like addressing these existential issues. And I'm like, because that's what's making us act this way. Sometimes we actually need spirit care because our spirit is the place where the tension is. And we're disconnected from ourselves because we're so caught up in fear, and that is literally what we need, is somebody to sit with us and remind us, “but it's going to be okay, though,” like, “but you're going to survive this,” or “it will be okay,” or “but you can do this,” and “but you have all the tools you need.” Because that is often what we need to hear when we can't produce it for ourselves. Like, we just need someone else to remind us what's true. Joanna: Absolutely. And that's why I keep reading your books, and you have a fantastic Patreon. So tell us where people can find you and everything you do online. Becca: So the QuitCast is the easiest place to find me on YouTube. And we consistently talk about these kinds of topics there. And it's also free, because everything else that I do, other than the once-a-month public coaching is not free, because of course, like I need to make a living. But the QuitCast, I try to do as much content delivery there as I can. That's the free channel. And then beyond that, I would read the books, like read the intuitive book if you're resonating with this information because so much of how we act has to do with whether we trust other people more than we trust ourselves. I think my goal in writing that book, and in doing a lot of the work I do, is to help us learn how to trust the intuition that we have because so much of our intuition is magical. Like I joke about this in the book, every single time in my life I have tried to do something intentionally smart and strategic, it has bombed. Every time. There isn't a single example of something that I did intentionally with a plan that has gone successfully. But every time I do the thing that's in front of me to do that my intuition pings about, every time. Like I just moved across the country because I showed up somewhere to do research for a book and my intuition was like, you need to move here right now. And I applied for an apartment like the next day and moved in the day after that. And it has been the best decision that I've ever made. And yeah, it was super risky, but I've learned about myself that my intentions are always off, and my intuition is always on, for me. Like it's not always the most monetarily easy thing to do, but it is on, for me.  So my goal, I think, in this book was to help people learn how to develop that level of trust. Because for those of us who are intuitive, that's where the magic is. That's where our happiest moments are going to be. It's where our success is going to be. Not listening to your intuition is the riskiest thing you can ever do if you are intuitive because it's the only thing that's going to lead you where you need to go. Joanna: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Becca. That was great. Becca: It was so great to be here. And honestly, thank you for asking me. I love this show, and I love your style of interview. It's such an honor to be here.The post Intuitive Writing And Book Marketing With Becca Syme first appeared on The Creative Penn.