The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

How can you manage a successful Kickstarter campaign without burning out? How can you expand into multiple streams of income? Bryan Cohen talks about crowdfunding, changes in his business model, and more. In the intro, 10th year of double-digit audiobook growth [Publishing Perspectives]; Spotify's plans for audiobook expansion [Spotify]; Free webinars for audiobook month [FindawayVoices]; Val Kilmer's AI voice in Top Gun Maverick [Fortune]; Transitions, Endings, and New Beginnings [Ask ALLi]; The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.  Bryan Cohen is the author of non-fiction and superhero fiction, and the co-host of the ‘Sell More Books Show.' He's also the founder of Best Page Forward, which writes book descriptions for authors, and he teaches authors how to use Amazon ads more effectively. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Advantages of Kickstarter — for fans and your bank accountChallenges and lessons learned from Bryan's first Kickstarter — and what he'll do differently next timeIdeas for backer rewards and extrasTiming issues for fulfillment and managing backer expectationsWhy indies are moving toward selling direct, before publishing to storesHow Bryan went from books into multiple streams of incomeScaling a business and tips for hiring freelancersHow podcasting plays a part in his business You can find links to everything Bryan does at BryanCohen.com and his next Kickstarter campaign at KickYourEmail.com and on Twitter @bryancohenbooks Transcript of Interview with Bryan Cohen Joanna: Bryan Cohen is the author of non-fiction and superhero fiction, and the co-host of the ‘Sell More Books Show.' He's also the founder of Best Page Forward, which writes book descriptions for authors, and he teaches authors how to use Amazon ads more effectively. Welcome back to the show, Bryan. Bryan: Thank you for having me, Jo. I was looking. It's been five years, and I'm happy to be back. Joanna: Time flies, doesn't it? Bryan: It does. Joanna: Today we're going to focus on your multiple streams of income, because I definitely think you are an author-entrepreneur, and I want to talk about a lot of that. Let's start with the Kickstarter. I hit you up with an email and was like, ‘I need to know about your Kickstarter.' So, we're going to talk about that first. You did this Kickstarter. It was on self-publishing with Amazon ads, which funded at over $20,000, amazing, and over 600 backers. Tell us about the project, and why did you go with Kickstarter? Bryan: I've always really liked Kickstarter as a backer. I've funded multiple projects, multiple books, entertainment projects, and I've just really liked this idea that you can throw in perks, because I think that, as authors, we really get focused on this $2.99, $3.99 book, and yes, we can sell enough copies of that to live on, but we need to sell a lot of copies. This opportunity to reward your readers by giving them these extras is a really fun opportunity, first and foremost, but it also allows you, hey, to maybe pocket a little extra cash than you would have when you are just launching a low-priced book. From a money-in-money-out perspective, it's really nice to, within the end of the funding of a Kickstarter, a week or two, you actually have some money, rather than waiting 60 days and change for Amazon and the other retailers to pay you. Joanna: Right. So, that's one, the money side, and, two, you can give something extra. You can come up with extras. How did the project go? What were your lessons learned? Bryan: There is a lot that goes into a Kickstarter, and I know you've spoken with Monica Leonelle (episode 614), I think, and Russell Nohelty about the Kickstarters, and there's just a lot of planning. There's a lot of marketing that goes into this. And even though I knew it would be a lot, even though I knew there would be hours and hours of time that I needed to pour into this, I did not really budget for it. And I think you and I have that in common sometimes, of just, we leap before we look, and then, oh, my goodness. One of the biggest issues was just a lot of time had to go into making it the right kind of campaign at the beginning, and then at the end, and we're still kind of in the end, is actually fulfilling all of those things that you promised to the backers. There's a lot of work on the front end, a lot of work on the back end, and then, of course, in the middle, you have to get people to actually back the project. Joanna: Let's talk about two specific things then. First of all, these extras that you use in the campaign as the different reward levels. What are some of the things that you did in those extras? And why did that add time as well? Bryan: One of the things that you know about from your early days of publishing is you've got to print out some books on your own, through a fulfillment service of some kind, rather than Amazon. You don't have to do that, certainly. I wanted to make sure my backers received a book before anybody else in the world could. And so, you could certainly get it printed on KDP Print or Ingram. I ended up going with a smaller company, Mixam, that was recommended to me by Monica. And they've been really great. It's my first time ever printing out things from not from a fulfillment, not from a retailer, but from an actual printer. And so, there were time constraints to think about in there. I also offered an audiobook, and I know you. This is all just the, ‘I should have listened to Jo and thought about episodes of “The Creative Penn,” and said, “Oh, maybe I shouldn't record my own audiobook. Oh, maybe I should plan more ahead.”‘ [Note from Joanna: I narrate my own audiobooks! Lots more tips in Audio for Authors] Audiobook, the printing, there are all these personal rewards I kind of threw in there, like phone call with Bryan, or a video from Bryan. And I thought that just by saying, ‘I'm going to give these to these people' that it would give me the extra motivation to pull it off, but I'm already busy and already tired, so, it was a struggle. It has been a struggle to get everything out to the people, with all of those bonuses. I think every Kickstarter creator should consider these things when setting up the campaign initially. Joanna: That's the thing, that special print run, it's both a really special thing, because it's a special print run, but equally, like you said, we haven't really done it before. I was looking to work with a partner on that, but, in the end, I just felt like the amount of work was too much for me. I also didn't want to do this spike marketing thing, which I'm uncomfortable with. So I wanted to ask you about that too. There is this period, there's the pre-marketing. You have to tell people you're going to do a Kickstarter, and get them to sign up for this pre-launch page. And then you have the campaign. What were the things that you did during that spike marketing phase? Bryan: I didn't even think that that was what it was called, but it absolutely is a spike marketing phase. So, I definitely let my email list know about it. I created a Facebook group related to the campaign, and all of the channels that I already do have on social media, on Facebook, on TikTok, I certainly let them all know about it. I think a lot of it does come back to email, since that's the percentage…you're going to get the best bang for your buck letting your email list know about it. I let both my email list know about it, and I made sure to run some targeted Facebook ads, where I was targeting my own email list. And a lot of that was the build-up to the campaign. But I always made sure to go back to what has always worked best for me. I am a performer by nature, former improv comedian, and so I made sure to do a couple of webinars. And I did a big webinar to kick everything off. I didn't push the actual launch campaign button until the moment I launched the campaign on the webinar, so that it could get people excited while they were talking to me, while they were listening to me, and get them to actually take the action. So, I made sure there was something that fit with my strengths, in order to get folks in the door. Joanna: I know you can really bring the energy when you're up for it. Bryan: Exactly. Joanna: Like you said, that's your performance side of things. You can bring it. I see your videos sometimes. I'm like, ‘Well, Bryan is so good at that stuff.' Bryan: Thank you. Joanna: And again, that's something I'm definitely not strong on. And, of course, people can do it in different ways. We're not saying that people have to do it your way or Monica's way. You can do it however you like, but obviously, that project is over, but you're going to do another one. So, presumably, it wasn't that bad. Tell us about the next one. What will you do differently next time, or how will you improve your experience of it? Bryan: I definitely did learn a lot. And despite all of the craziness, yes, I did decide to do another one, launching on June 2nd. And so it's already launched by this point, the magic of podcasting. It is a new book for authors, called Self-Publishing and Email Marketing. It is essentially the book and the training on the email side of things, on how to build up that email list, grow subscribers, get more reviewers from that. And so, the campaign, I definitely didn't want to do certain things from the first time. I almost treated the first campaign as, ‘Hey, I have these disparate things. I have the ad training for Amazon ads. I have sales page improvements for Best Page Forward and Best Page Forward Plus. Let's just throw all of that in there at different levels.' One of the things I learned from Monica and Russell was that if I was going to be promoting this thing based around a certain topic, it made sense for not just one funding level, not just a few funding levels, but all funding levels, to actually fit with that theme. So one thing I'm doing differently this time is every level is related to email. I'm not throwing in things related to the Amazon ads. I'm not throwing in things related to the other stuff I do. It's totally focused on email, and the theme is pervasive throughout. So, that's absolutely one of the major things that I'm doing. Joanna: One of the fears, and I have heard from several people that their projects, they didn't even make money. Maybe they broke even. Sometimes they were even out of pocket. And so this is another question. Did you find anything cost much more than you expected? Because those print books, right? You can't do the print run until you've finalized the project or sold out of that reward level. And that's costing that we don't really understand, and then there's shipping, which can change. There's a whole load of costs that are not under your control. Obviously, your time is your time, but you just keep working more. Were there any costs that ended up being higher than you expected? Bryan: I do think that the monetary costs, when it comes to print, when it comes to hardcover, I did expect that going in. I knew that it wasn't going to be like getting a proof from KDP Print, where it might work out to a few dollars each. I knew it was going to be higher than that. I think my actual printing costs ended up being for, I think we printed 250 books for paperback, and it was about $8.33 for each one, which I thought wasn't terrible. And the shipping, we actually did not include shipping. People had to enter an additional amount if they wanted to do the paperback or hardcovers. So, if you plan ahead, if you have that people can pay for shipping up front, because you can do it so people don't pay for shipping until after the project, but then people feel blindsided with this extra cost. I don't think you want to do that to people. You want to be very upfront with it. But I really think, beyond any monetary thing, the time and energy costs involved with the campaign, like recording my first audiobook, which I honestly just finished yesterday, and I'm very happy with it, but it was a lot of energy, and then, certain things that I had a lot of trouble getting fit into my schedule, those were the hardest parts. If you are as busy as me or Jo, you definitely need to think about how can you conserve your energy? How can you give a lot of value in your funding levels, but also make it easier on you? And that is something I would definitely consider whenever creating a campaign. Joanna: You have to say when is this expected, don't you? I wonder if the answer is to just move your… You think, ‘Oh, I can do this by next month. If it's launching in June, July, I'll deliver in August.' And that's kind of how we're used to doing things as indie authors, because we're like, ‘Oh, well, I'll just upload the book and it's available tomorrow,' or, ‘The e-book's available now.' I almost wonder whether with these Kickstarters it's better to add on a month or even two months, to make sure that you've got enough time to deliver things according to people's expectations. I've funded projects that haven't arrived for a year. Bryan: Right. And a lot of backers expect that at this point, Kickstarter-specific folks. They know they're not necessarily going to get things right away. It's readers who you're introducing to the platform, who might think differently. I think the advice that Russell Nohelty gave me, that I'm following this time, is to have the book finished before you launch the campaign. And this time around, I'm 11 out of 12 chapters in, as we're recording this, but by the time we launch the campaign, the book will be finished, and I'm going to put it in the hands of folks right at the conclusion. Even though we ran our campaign in November 2021, and I said, ‘We will deliver the book by February,' I still did not meet that. I ended up having to email everyone and say, ‘Sorry. It's going to be an extra month.' And it was only an extra month, for the e-book. I had always said the paperback wasn't going to be until a couple months later. I knew because of paper shortages that not everything was going to be in my control. But nobody minded. In fact, and my team really helped me out with this, they said, ‘Bryan, if you say that you were tired and tried your best and didn't quite get the deadline, these wonderful authors who follow you will empathize.' And they did. Joanna: Oh, yeah. I backed it. And as far as I'm concerned, that happens generally anyway, so I think that's really good that you just gave yourself permission to do that, and will do it differently next time. What I love about this model, and I may do one at some point, but I love the fact that you've now done this, but it's not the end. You now have another asset. What happens with the book next? Are you just going to publish everywhere else now? Bryan: You're absolutely right. I think this is what people are missing, is that, okay, let's say I put a book out on Kickstarter, and you make a modest amount, like, $300. Well, that's probably more than you would have gotten in 60 days if you'd launched it just onto Amazon or onto Amazon and the other retailers, but now you get to sell it to other people afterwards. So, you bank that $300, and you get to sell it elsewhere. And not just on the other retailers. I am very, very interested in the direct sales model. I've been really studying some folks and what they've been doing with platforms like Shopify, and I am starting to wonder, and this is, you know, kind of me spilling the beans on what I've been thinking about lately. You do a Kickstarter, you launch the book and all these extras, and you have to create these extras, but once they're made, they're made, and then you certainly launch the book on Amazon, Apple, Kobo, etc. But now you have all these extras, and you can use Kickstarter's platform. Well, it's a Kickstarter… I can't think of the right words. Joanna: Accessory. Bryan: Accessory. Yes. A Kickstarter accessory Backer Kit, where you can actually sell those extras after the Kickstarter is over, but then you could also sell those extras, and the book directly, on your website or on your Shopify store. So, it's almost like Kickstarter ends up being this almost loan. It's almost like you're getting investor seed money at the beginning, to sell a project that you can sell significantly more copies of later on. Joanna: I'm totally with you. I've been selling digitally direct, since 2008, courses and e-books and audio, but I'm also looking at Shopify for the print, because they have these plugins, with Lulu and other printers, where you can do print direct. I'm thinking of moving there. And similarly to you, I'm starting to think about doing standalone audio… I don't want to call them lectures, but just standalone audio things on different topics that I would put up and sell as… It would be no book. It would just be a sort of audio extra, me talking about particular topics, and, not a course, but just back to the days of when we used to do this audio-only product. And so, yeah, I feel the same way. And actually, I'm planning on releasing mine without the Kickstarter, but selling direct only, for maybe two weeks or even a month before I put it anywhere else as well, in order to get upfront sales. I think we're all starting to change our mindset, aren't we? To sort of, ‘Let's take the chunk of sales ourselves before we put it out onto the stores.' Bryan: Right. I think what people also don't realize is, let's say you're planning to sell the book exclusively on Kindle Unlimited. If you do what you're doing, Jo, and you sell it direct before anywhere else, you might be able to bank some wide-ish sales by having it sell directly on any platform, Amazon-agnostic, and then you eventually do launch it on Kindle Direct. You can have both. You can have everything. You can have your cake and eat it too. It's a really great opportunity for people. Joanna: I really think that's where we're going. And it's funny, because when I first came into this space, and you were only a few years behind me, but when I started with the blogging in 2008, 2007, this is what people were doing. This was before KDP, so that's what we did. We all sold PDFs and everything like that direct from our websites. And then, of course, Amazon and Kobo and Apple, and they all launched their bookstores, and then people started buying. But that brought down the price so much, whereas before those stores, we actually sold for decent amounts. It is interesting that that's coming round again these days. As you said, we could have our cake and eat it too, but there is a little bit of the cake that I think might be impacted. You teach Amazon ads, and you understand how the algorithms work. One of the things we do is we talk about the also-boughts, and we talk about how it's important to target your books to people who buy other books like yours. And in that way, it helps the algorithm know who your readers are and all of that. If we are creaming off a percentage of our existing readers, our target audience, how will that impact Amazon ads, for example, if we've taken away this bulk of initial sales? Bryan: That is definitely something that needs to be considered. I think that when you do skim off the top a little bit with these other sales methods, it is something that you will not have, that flood of initial buyers from your email list first, your own followers, and then eventually, the people who just find out about it in launch week, you won't necessarily have that, which could affect your also-boughts, which could affect things initially. But, at the same time, we cannot just assume Amazon is going to solve all of our problems. I like Amazon. I'm glad that we've had all these wonderful opportunities through the KDP platform, and through Amazon ads, but we have to be open to the future, as you're always talking about, the future of this industry. I think that it is not necessarily going to be just selling the bulk of our books on one platform. In order to make sure you still get the most out of your Amazon ads, you just need to get all your ducks in a row, sales page, the cover, the title, the book description, subtitle, everything, needs to be very clear. Yes, this is for this particular sub-genre. If you read this sub-genre, you'll like it, and you want to do everything you can with your seven KDP keywords, the categories you choose, and you can still ask your readers to go and leave a review on the book on Amazon when it launches, even if they happen to read it not on Amazon. So, you still have some things in your control to steer the algorithm in your direction. Joanna: At the end of the day, to me, it's like you mentioned briefly. When we sell direct, when I sell direct, even right now, the money's in my bank account within minutes. I much prefer money in my bank account within minutes than anything I do with the algorithm later. So, I think the selling direct is, in these times of inflation and we all need the cash flow. Who knows how much that money will be worth in 60 to 90 days? Bryan: Exactly. Joanna: Let's talk about some of your other streams of income. We met almost a decade ago. It must have been around then, and you've pivoted a number of times along the way, and you had a daughter as well, which kept you busy, for sure. What I think's important, so often, there's a discussion in the author community about books being the main thing and the only thing. But, of course, many of us choose other things. So, like, this podcast, for me, is an income stream as well as book marketing. Tell us about some of the other aspects of your business, and why you decided to expand beyond books. Bryan: In the beginning, like you said, it was pretty much just books. I had my non-fiction books and some fiction books, and I really did think that maybe this could be enough, but the ups and downs of book sales, even back in 2012, 2013, it made me realize there had to be other options. So, originally, I was doing freelance. I was doing freelance on the side. I even scored a fun gig doing freelance, pretending to be ghost writing these CEO articles for ‘Forbes,' and ‘Fast Company' and whatnot, and that was a lot of fun. But that eventually pivoted into something where I had more control over it. So, that became the Best Page Forward book description business, as we talked about back in 2015 on this show. And that business turned into helping authors with other service areas. Service is definitely one thing you can provide. We were writing book descriptions. Now we're also doing the category and keyword research, the metadata, and book covers. We're doing all of that now with Best Page Forward Plus. That's the service side. There's also the course side. You can have a course. And long ago, I had the course ‘Selling for Authors,' which was great and covered a lot of different things, but ended up niching down to the Amazon ads, and now we have the Author Ad School, teaching ads. And so, we have the course side of things. If you know how to do something well, you can create a course around it. Number three is the coaching. I think that these are the three main areas I tend to think of as side income. Coaching allows you to, one-on-one or you to a group of people, to teach even deeper, and to help guide people through challenges they might not have been able to do on their own. We have this ongoing, every quarter, Mastermind that we do through the Author Ad School. Originally, it was all me. Eventually, I did hire three wonderful folks to take over the coaching side for me. And that was really hard, to give that up, because I really do love coaching, but it was time for money. That is one of the challenges with all of this stuff is can you make it so that you aren't just working for $10 an hour, $20 an hour, $30 an hour? Can you have some things where you are not spending all of your time to make them work? And a lot of that has to do with hiring and outsourcing and delegating, and that is a huge part of having multiple streams of income, so that you aren't watching each individual one like a hawk. Joanna: I know that you've struggled with this over the years, and I've struggled with it and have stepped back from it. You've struggled with it and stepped into it. Bryan: Yes. Joanna: So, basically, you have scaled your businesses. You have a team of copywriters at Best Page Forward as well, right? You don't personally write everyone's descriptions. Bryan: I used to. Joanna: I know you did. I guess this is my question, and I really do have this question because I have failed at it, which is, if we want to scale our income, as you say, past a certain point, you have to hire people. What were some of your biggest challenges with hiring, and finding the right people? How did you make it through those initial feelings of, ‘Oh, I can just do it better?' Bryan: Absolutely. At first, I hired friends, and I think there were positives and negatives to that. A couple of those friends are still with my company four or five years later, so, it certainly wasn't all bad. I didn't follow the advice of never hire your friends, because it actually did work out, and being kind to them and being understanding to them is always a good way of making that work. Then I did start to try to hire people who I was not familiar with. I accepted resumes, and did interviews, and asked questions, and I definitely got it, not wrong per se, but I didn't find the perfect fit at first with that process, because I had to get better at it. I had to get better at hiring. You're not automatically going to be able to hire someone who is an expert and who fits perfectly with you. You need to work on it. I actually think that one of my levels for the email marketing Kickstarter is going to be specifically about hiring someone to run your emails, because that is something that I think every author wants, and very few authors know how to do. A lot of that comes down to not just asking people questions and hoping you're a good fit. I've had people do personality tests, Myers-Briggs, and the Clifton StrengthsFinder. I've had people do sample tasks before I hire. I will have multiple people do a sample task, so that I can see their work in action. And before I did that, it was just hoping for the best. But once I started to really refine my hiring process, it became a lot easier. The last thing I want to put out here, and this one I don't hear talked about very often, but I have really loved this idea of looking at my fans, and my people who are advocates for me, and folks who just really love the courses and services I offer, and maybe have bought those courses and services in the past, asking them if they want to work with me. And that has been my best option. The people who are already on board with the message and the mission of the business, because they're a part of it from the customer side, they have loved being a part of the actual business, and I think that people who I've hired through that way… I've had an 80% to 90% retention rate on those folks for years, and I love working with them, and we have a great time, and then they learn, actually, even better by being on the inside. So, that, I think, is my best tip. Joanna: Yes. That's how I found Alexandra Amor, who's my virtual assistant, and has been for, goodness eight years or something at this point. Bryan: Nice. Joanna: I totally agree there. Are these people on your payroll, or is it freelance? Bryan: All freelance right now. Everyone is a part-time person, part-time contractor, and there's definitely labor laws that you need to follow, making sure that people are paid for meetings. You need to certainly make sure everything is done right with your accountant. I did not always have an accountant. I'm glad that I got one for this sort of thing. And you just need to make sure everything is above board, and that you're doing everything the right way. I don't think I worried about it as much when I had one person, but now that I have about 25 people, I do need to pay attention to making sure I'm doing everything correct on that side. Joanna: And then, of course, you're also the co-host of the ‘Sell More Books Show,' but you're the primary host, really, because you did it with Jim Kukral since 2014. Claire Taylor is your co-host now. Bryan: Yes. Joanna: So, you've got the podcast, and you're still weekly. You do a great job. Podcasting takes a lot of time, and it's obviously great for marketing. You mentioned there building a community, and it's great for community, and it can be for income as well. What part does the Sell More Books Show podcast play for you in your business? Bryan: We did have a Patreon. I think I might have followed the lead of you and Mark Dawson and some other folks wading into Patreon. And it was going well for us. We were paying for our show notes person, Roland. We were paying him through the Patreon, and everything was going well with it. But we didn't feel like everyone was getting as much value as I really want to be able to give. And I didn't feel like we were able to work it into me and Claire's schedule to help the patrons. I know that you do your Q&As, and you give these wonderful things to your patrons. I didn't feel great about it. So, that was the main direct way we were making money from ‘Sell More Books Show,' and we took it down. I'm pleased with that decision, because I feel really good about now, I don't have this thing where people have bought a thing from me and aren't getting value. The value thing is very, very important to me. Now, the ways that we get value out of the podcast are all indirect. New people finding out about us, people finding out about if Claire has a new offer for some of her craft writing stuff through her company, FFS Media. And if I have a new thing or a new webinar, I can talk about it on the show. And for our show, we don't really do ad reads very long. We just say, ‘Hey, we have a thing,' and then we move into the content. But I think that we don't always have to get the direct actual ads from the show. I think you certainly can, certainly if you have a large enough audience, but it's totally okay to just get the indirect benefits from something as well, to have something that it makes you present in the community. For me it would be easy to just be in my high tower, as CEO of Best Page Forward, and not pay attention to what's going on in the industry. ‘Sell More Books Show' forces me, every week, to know what's going on, so that I am able to be in touch with the struggles that beginner authors are facing, and that value, that intangible value of the knowledge, is huge for me. Joanna: It's also our interest, isn't it? Because I'm the same. I just like knowing what's going on, and I'm interested in the news and things, although I don't cover the news that you do, because I feel like we serve a similar niche, but I cover a different angle. I wanted to circle back to your fiction and your comedy, because I feel like the Bryan I first met a decade ago, I don't think you were married. You certainly didn't have a baby, who's now a child, and you've moved house, I think. You moved across the country. There's been a lot of change in your personal life, and I feel like you kind of had to accelerate your business because you had a lot of life going on as well. Bryan: Yes. Joanna: So, that fiction side of you, the comedy side of you, I almost feel like you've put that aside for a lot of the business stuff. How are you still serving that part of you, or is it put aside for now, and it's something you're going to come back to? Bryan: One of the ways I've tried to still use this, and I think it's been a few years, certainly, since I've really done any specific comedy, but the ways I'm trying to scratch that itch, I decided, early on in the process for that ‘Self-Publishing and Amazon Ads' book, and now that's kind of part of a series with these self-publishing books, I decided they weren't just going to be like one of my old books, where I just had a little bit of comedy mixed in with the education. I decided I was going to use half of the book to tell an almost allegorical story, in fiction style, a narrative style, with essentially me working with a student, helping them through the challenges. I have that in ‘Self-Publishing with Amazon Ads.' I have that in the new ‘Self-Publishing and Email Marketing' book, where I'm working with a student, and I get to have fun conversations with this student as the author, and I get a lot of comedy out of that. In the first book, the student thinks I'm full of crap. It's really fun to have that kind of banter in this, yes, non-fiction book. I get to scratch that comedy itch that way. And then the other way, it's silly, but TikTok @bryancohen. I'm doing TikToks. I'm recording them. Joanna: That's perfect for you, though. Bryan: I know. Joanna: That's perfect. Bryan: I'm doing the edutainment, of the education and the entertainment there on TikTok, doing about three a day while we're recording this one. And so, I do have my fun a little bit with that. Joanna: Oh, that's good. And it does really suit you as a platform, and with the comedy and the performance side. It totally does not suit me at all, so I just haven't got anywhere near it, but it was made for you. So, that's brilliant. I'm not going to have a look, because I don't even have TikTok, but I'm sure lots of other people will. Bryan: Fair enough. Joanna: Tell us where can people find you and everything you do, including the new Kickstarter? Bryan: The new Kickstarter, it will be at kickyouremail.com. So, if you go to kickyouremail.com prior to June 30th 2022, you will be able to back the campaign and get the self-publishing and email marketing book, with all of the really fun extra perks that go in there, including an email challenge, because I love challenges. And so, that is the Kickstarter. You can certainly listen to me and Claire every week for the ‘Sell More Books Show' podcast at sellmorebooksshow.com and wherever you listen to that sort of stuff. And I've still got my quarterly ad challenges for Amazon ads over at authorsadvertise.com. And you can check that out. The next one will be in July 2022. And so, lot of stuff going on, but thank you again, Jo. I hope it's not another five years, but if it is, that's okay. I'm very happy to be on your show. Joanna: Thanks so much, Bryan. That was great.The post Kickstarter And Multiple Streams Of Non-Fiction Income With Bryan Cohen first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you make your self-published books available to libraries in every format? How can you pitch librarians so they are interested in ordering your books? Eric Otis Simmons explains how he successfully pitches and sells to libraries throughout the USA. In the intro, Books2Read is useful for sharing wide links; Lindsay Buroker gives long term career advice [Twitter thread]; Pics from Rhodes, Instagram @jfpennauthor; Into The Briny Deep, short stories set in the sea with all kinds of monsters, includes my short story, The Dark Queen; Abba Voyage with the augmented reality Abba-tars; Thoughts on visiting the USA again post-pandemic [Books and Travel] Today's show is sponsored by IngramSpark, who I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 39,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries and more. It's your content—do more with it through IngramSpark.com. Eric Otis Simmons is the author of the memoir, Not Far From The Tree, and books for authors, including Getting Your Book Into Libraries. He's the CEO of ESE, Inc., which builds custom websites, and he's also a speaker on diversity, equity, and inclusion. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Why authors should consider having their books in librariesWhat services can you use to reach libraries with ebook, print, and audio?How do libraries find books to buy?How to pitch your book to librariesResources available to assist getting your book into libraries You can find Eric Simmons at www.eseinc1.com/library-marketing-services and on Twitter @eseinc1 Transcript of Interview with Eric Simmons Joanna Penn: Eric Otis Simmons is the author of the memoir, Not Far From The Tree, and books for authors, including Getting Your Book Into Libraries. He's the CEO of ESE, Inc., which builds custom websites, and he's also a speaker on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Welcome to the show, Eric. Eric Simmons: Joanna, thank you so much for having me today. Joanna Penn: I'm excited to talk to you about this. Before we get into libraries, tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. Eric Simmons: It's an interesting story, Joanna. I grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Montgomery, Alabama, which I view as two of the leading civil rights hotbeds here in America. So most of my schooling, I was a year or two away from schools being integrated. In addition to that, when I joined corporate America, where I spent 30 years in sales and sales management for some of the most admired companies in the world, such as IBM, AT&T, GE, and others, I generally was the first black male to work in the positions that I was in. At NCI, I also sold internationally where I closed in Brussels a $1 million sale, in Paris, a $500,000 sale, and in Hong Kong, a $25 million sale. So, when I would share snippets of information with co-workers, and family, and friends about my life, I would constantly get feedback that, ‘Hey, you've gotta write a book.' So after 12 years of procrastination, I finally sat down and wrote my memoir, Not Far From The Tree, and I self-published it. So it was the encouragement of others that led me to get into writing. Joanna Penn: When did you self-publish that? Eric Simmons: I released my memoir in May of 2017. So this is its fifth year anniversary. Joanna Penn: That's brilliant. Do you mind me asking what age bracket you are just so people get that? Eric Simmons: Oh, that's fine. I'm in my early 60s. Joanna Penn: I think just to get the timeframe because you mentioned there being involved in civil rights and obviously, still critically important area, but equally, like you said so many years in corporate America. I said to you before we started recording, you're so organized. One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is because you've been super organized about marketing to libraries and getting your book into libraries and helping authors with that. So, let's get into libraries. First of all, why should authors even consider thinking about getting their books into libraries? Why is it important? Eric Simmons: There are a number of factors, Joanna, that go beyond just the prestige of getting one's book into a library. For me as a self-publisher, getting my book into library serves as validation that I've written a quality piece of work. But in addition to that, because of my corporate background, I'm into numbers, I'm into data that can confirm things for me. When I look at the library market, there are over 2.6 million libraries worldwide, and they spend about $31 billion annually. In addition to that, of that $31 billion, about $1.4 billion is spent on books. So, that represents a significant market for all of us as self-publishing houses and self-publishers. Another area that's important I believe that our listeners should consider is libraries are excellent references for other libraries. What I mean by that, if you're able to get your book into one library and you let another library know about it, your chances go up, I believe dramatically, in terms of being able to get your book into follow on libraries. There's statistics that show that every happy reader of a book in a library tells five other people. That's another consideration. Then when you look at the different age brackets, anywhere from millennials to baby boomers, no matter what age brackets you look at, if you can get your book into a library, there's a good chance that that reader is going to buy that book. And in addition, if you have multiple books as an author in libraries, millennials are more than 70% likely to buy your follow-on books. So, there's just a number of reasons and data supports it, in my opinion, for us to all consider libraries as a very viable market for our self-published works. Joanna Penn: Absolutely. And then I want to add the accessibility angle as well. As we are discussing this in May 2022, there's inflation, the cost of living is increasing. And I think people will be needing libraries more than ever. It's not just print books, is it? It's eBooks, it's audiobooks that people can get from their libraries online, as well as in person. My mum was a single mum and we were on benefits for a while and I grew up in the library. That's where I got books from. So I almost feel like it's important that we pay it forward to people and have our books available to those readers who just can't get them any other way. What do you think about that? Eric Simmons: I totally agree with you. And even with the pandemic, it doesn't look like the library traffic has slowed down. During the height of the pandemic, libraries were still offering services and they began to use tools like Zoom to provide, they call them programming. I view those as just events that are offered by libraries. I totally agree with you wholeheartedly Joanna. Joanna Penn: Actually, that's a really good point because one of the issues that people have with libraries is, oh, they want me to go and do an event in person, but I have to travel and I won't get paid and it will be too expensive. But if you are doing something over Zoom, then actually more authors can probably get involved with those types of programming for different libraries, right? That's what a lot of children's authors are doing too in schools. So probably the same with libraries. Eric Simmons: Right. Actually, when libraries shut down across the globe during the height of the pandemic, one of my strategies was actually reaching out to libraries and say, ‘Hey, as a part of your programming to continue to provide services to your patrons, I'm willing to offer at no charge a Zoom video conference to share how I self-publish my book where I could talk about my memoir.' During the pandemic, I actually did a reading of my memoir. First time I'd ever done one ever. Not even in person had I done one. I did it via Zoom. It went over incredibly well. Then I talked about self-publishing with several other libraries. So I was staying busy with my library marketing during the height of the pandemic. And I was getting my books in the libraries during that time. Joanna Penn: I actually think you probably stand out more than a load of authors who just exist as books because once you are a real person, and they see you, and they listen to you, and they're like, ‘Oh yeah, yeah, I remember that author, I'll recommend the book more,' right? Eric Simmons: That's a great point. You're right. You're absolutely right. And it's so funny during one of my Zoom conferences with a library in Pennsylvania, the librarian told the audience, there were about 20 people on the Zoom conference, and he said, ‘The reason why I bought Eric's book was I noticed another library that I'm familiar with and I figured if they bought it, well, then it's good enough for me.' So libraries make for good references to my earlier point. Joanna Penn: Very good. In that case, librarians, if you are listening, you can get either Eric or me to speak virtually at your library! Eric Simmons: Exactly. Joanna Penn: I think that's a really good point. I hadn't even thought about that. Circling back, you mentioned $1.4 billion spent by librarians on books. So, let's talk about how as self-published authors, we can make our books available to libraries. The librarian doesn't go on Amazon and buy a book, do they? How do they find the different books? Eric Simmons: That's a great point. When I first started marketing to libraries, I couldn't figure out why I wasn't getting my foot into the door. And to your point, not a lot of libraries buy from Amazon. And that surprised me with Amazon being the world's largest online bookstore. What I came to learn, libraries use other sources to acquire their books. One of which, and probably the leading source is Ingram, and Ingram has a platform similar to KDP and it's called IngramSpark. And then there are other distributors that libraries buy from for paperbacks, such as Blurb. Well, Blurb actually distributes through Ingram. So, those are two that I use for my paperbacks, Ingram and Blurb. And then for my eBooks, I've seen librarians buy from Draft2Digital, Smashwords, StreetLib, and PublishDrive. Now, PublishDrive is interesting because they're using a company called Hoopla. And Hoopla is a competitor of OverDrive, which for years has been the primary eBook source for libraries. But what's important about Hoopla, I kind of view them as the Netflix of libraries because they offer video, audio, as well as eBooks. Hoopla uses a different model. They're using something called a pay per checkout model, which means, Joanna, for your listeners, is that let's say your book is selling for $10. Well, instead of the library buying that book at the retail or at a discounted price, they are paying when you check out the book, when one of their patrons checks out the book. So if it's a $10 book, you might get paid one 10th of that or $1 for that checkout. And that counts as a library sale. So they're using a little bit different model, but there are other companies out there that libraries look at much more so than they do Amazon to acquire their books. Joanna Penn: Absolutely. And just to add there, so Draft2Digital also distribute to Hoopla. So there's definitely overlap in all these services. Smashwords is now owned by Draft2Digital, or they merged. OverDrive is also owned by the sister company to Kobo. So if you go direct to Kobo Writing Life, you'll also be in OverDrive. So what I tend to think is just overlap them because… Eric Simmons: Yeah, correct. Joanna Penn: Although if you try and figure out how to just not avoid uploading twice, it doesn't work. I upload to a lot of these services and end up on all of them somehow. But as you say, what happens is…well, how I believe it happens is either the librarian will find out in some way and we'll talk about marketing, but also a library patron can suggest a book and that will be ordered into the ebook catalog or the print catalog or the audio catalog. That's another thing, isn't it, is to ask our readers to request our books in libraries. Eric Simmons: That's a great point, Joanna, because librarians weigh heavily their patrons, in particular books. That's great point that you make. So, you're right. I would encourage us to have patrons recommend our books to libraries. That's a great point. Joanna Penn: And as you mentioned, we still get paid. So the reader gets it for free and we still get paid, either because the library bought it or because they have a pay-per-checkout. To me, it's amazing. So that's eBooks and print books and, of course, authors can get their audiobooks into libraries through Findaway Voices, who also have a similar thing where you can get paid per checkout or the library can buy the audiobooks. Basically, you can get into libraries with all these different formats, but, of course, just because things are available, it doesn't mean that the library does know it exists. What are some ways that you've been pitching libraries with your books? Eric Simmons: Several ways. As I mentioned earlier, Zoom video conferencing, but the primary method, Joanna, I've been using has been email. When I first started out, I was calling libraries by phone. I had a little plan that I had put together and I had my little voice script. And after about three telephone calls, librarians kept telling me, ‘Please send me some information over. Your book sounds great, but I'd like to learn more.' And so that's when I decided to go the email route. One of the things strategically that I knew or I felt would be important was I didn't want to send spam-like emails. I didn't want to send flyers. So what I ended up doing was constructing customized emails where I include not only the librarian's name, but the library, perhaps in the body of the document, and then that email document became what I call sales sheet. It was informational from the standpoint that it had the ISBN of my book or books. It had my book cover. It had a synopsis or a description about the book and it had who you could buy the book from. It was a document, but technically if you peel back the onion, it was really my metadata. I just learned how to construct it in a way that I felt would be reader-friendly that a librarian could pick up and get most of the information that they would need to make an informed decision as to whether or not they wanted to buy the book. I also spent anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes trying to construct my subject line. So I put almost as much time into the subject line to get the librarian to open up the email as I spent developing of the internal email itself. Joanna Penn: Did you send that as like an attachment, because attachments get lost in spam a lot? Or did you put it all in the body? Eric Simmons: Just in the body. I never sent attachments, to your point, because a librarian is getting a strange email and with an attachment. Well, a lot of people might think an attachment would create spam or a virus. So no, I do not use attachments at all. Joanna Penn: I think that's a really good point. So, when you are pitching your book, so it's mainly your memoir, Not Far From The Tree, so what… Eric Simmons: Well, actually, I have four other titles, but I really only pitched the three others. And one would be Getting Your Book Into Libraries, and then I have two other books, one on self-publishing and then a combination book that includes how to get started at self-publishing and then here's a market that you can go to, which are libraries. So, I combined two books into one. When you asked me about my marketing, this was a marketing and a strategic idea that I had. With the pandemic, there was information coming out that librarians' budgets would be cut. And so I said, ‘Well, they might not be able to afford two of my books separately, so why not combine them into one?‘ And that's what I did. Joanna Penn: I think that's really interesting. And so, you are putting all of that in the email and you're putting the name of the librarian and the particular library. So this is where your incredible sales background comes in. How did you find the information on the librarian and the names of people, particularly? Eric Simmons: That's a great question. It was manual. If you were to Google top 100 libraries in the United States, the American Library Association will have a listing. I took that listing, copy and pasted it into an Excel spreadsheet, which became my library contacts database, which now has thousands of librarian contacts. And then I had to go and search each library and try to find what I thought was their highest level decision-makers. In some libraries, if they are very large, I went directly after the CEO. I was mailing to the CEO of the Atlanta Public Library here in Atlanta. And so that's how I went about it. I also discovered there are some states that actually have lists that are in Excel spreadsheets. And so I was able to use those. Most were outdated. So I had to do some updating. And then the third area was some libraries have PDFs of their librarians. And that's more of a nightmare because you're copying and pasting, and it takes forever to do. But honestly, that's how I did it because I was so determined to get my books into libraries, I felt I needed a resource that I could pull from so that I could be able to send custom emails to 100 librarians if I wanted to, or to 300. I never do more than 300 because then it begins to become unwieldly. Subsequently, through the course of a year and email libraries quarterly, and I'm constantly keeping my books in front of librarians and I'm constantly generating sales that way. Joanna Penn: I love that. I think it's so brilliant. We'll talk about your resources in a minute. Obviously, you are in the USA and you are American, but what about international libraries? Because, of course, like we mentioned OverDrive, for example, they have libraries all over the world. Have you thought about the international side? Eric Simmons: Yeah, I actually have, Joanna. I try to incorporate the similar Google search strategy that I did here in the U.S. to look for a list of librarians that I could mail. And when I did that, I didn't know the international market well enough to begin to figure out, okay, how can I do a Google search to maybe find similar lists? But I actually did make that attempt. My thought process is if someone were to use the tools that I've developed and if they were just to spend a little bit of time, I believe something similar can be done in the UK or internationally, but I did make an attempt, but I just wasn't able to replicate internationally what I've been able to do here in the U.S. Joanna Penn: I certainly think this is something that is worth doing, especially coming back to the Zoom programming because when I said to you when we got on the phone, ‘I love your voice.' And part of the reason I love your voice and part of the reason Americans always say to me, ‘Oh, I love your voice' is because they're different from our voices. If you speak to an audience in the UK as an American, you are fundamentally more interesting than someone who's got an accent like mine. And the same, if I speak to a library in Atlanta, for example, I bet you I'm more interesting because they're like, ‘Oh, I love listening to your voice.' Eric Simmons: That's a great point, Joanna. Yeah. So, actually, as I think through that question, if any of your listeners on this podcast would want to try to begin developing library contacts database for international use, I'd be more than willing to invest a little time with that person or persons to see if we can't come up with something similar because it would be beneficial to us all, I believe. Joanna Penn: Tell us about your resources that you have available to people. Eric Simmons: I use a number of resources. And let me tell you what my resources are kind of geared to do. Each library has what's called a collection development policy, and those are the rules and guidelines by which libraries acquire books. So, I'm trying to gear my books towards those interest areas, if you will, that libraries have in their guidelines that patrons will come in and subsequently check out a book on. I'm using resources to support that endeavor. I use very heavily this database, this Excel spreadsheet that I've created called my library contacts database. I also use the methodology that I've written down in my book, Getting Your Book Into Libraries. That's a resource for your podcast listeners. You've also posted two of my articles, ‘How to get your book in the libraries' and ‘Get your book in the libraries.' Those are additional resources for others, but I've used those resources myself because I guess I created them. Other things I do, I use Google to do research on topics that I feel might be of interest to librarians. As an example, I recently did a mailing to promote my self-publishing works and I found some interesting data that self-publishing has grown 275% over the last 5 years. I input little bullet points that I found about the growth of self-publishing into the body of my email to try to create and generate interest. I also use WorldCat as a resource to determine which libraries have purchased my book. WorldCat is the world's largest online catalog where members of a group called the Online Computing Center, which supports WorldCat… These are librarians that when your book goes into a library, they add it. 30% of my library sales are in WorldCat. So I go onto WorldCat, which is www.worldcat.org as a resource. I use libraries' websites as resources to update my database when there's a new head librarian that may come in or one has retired. Another resource that I use are distributor sales reports. I use Amazon, Ingram, and those sales reports to give me ideas about my library sales following one of my email campaigns. What I do is I have an idea about how much I sell through Amazon monthly. I have an idea of what I've got coming through IngramSpark as an example. When I see spikes in sales right after an email campaign, I'm about 80%… 80% of the time they're library sales. I use KDP sales reports as well. So these are just some of the resources that I use to help me in my library marketing endeavors. Joanna Penn: People can buy these resources from you, right? Eric Simmons: That is correct. They can buy them through my website. The books are available through Amazon and over 50 other booksellers, but that is correct, Joanna. Joanna Penn: I think that's amazing. You mentioned there finding things that the librarians would be interested in, news, items about self-publishing, for example, and that to me is exactly what you would do with the press release. One of the fundamental problems with many authors is they think writing a book is news, but it's not. It needs to be related to what the target market wants. What you've done with that pitch email is you haven't just said, ‘Hey, here's my book.' What you've said is, ‘This is why you are interested and my book answers that question,' right? Eric Simmons: That's perfect, Joanna. That's right. The way I view it is before I send out that email, I'm trying to put myself in the librarian's seat. That I think is critical when you're marketing anything to someone that doesn't know you or is unfamiliar with your product. What I'm trying to do, and I read my emails before I send them out, I'm trying to put myself in that librarian's seat. So if it's you, Joanna, when I finish writing this customized email, I'm trying to envision myself as Joanna. And I'm saying, ‘Okay, I'm Joanna, I'm reading this from an unknown person. Let me read this and let me see what he's saying here.' I'm trying to ensure or I'm doing my best to try to cause that reader to want to buy because my saying is, ‘I've got one opportunity to impress and I need my email to be such that the librarian will say yes.' Joanna Penn: How do you pitch your memoir because non-fiction books on a useful topic I feel are much easier to pitch? How are you pitching your memoir? Eric Simmons: That's a great question. What I try to do again, I'm thinking about where the book might fit, either with their patrons or in a library, but particularly with their patrons. So, what I would pitch Not Far From The Tree for is a library's sociology section. And then I may mention diversity and inclusion as my book would be a great resource for that should your patrons have an interest. And then also, Joanna, I also ask for the business in my emails. I would say something like, ‘Miss Penn, it would be a tremendous honor to have Not Far From The Tree added to your library's collection.' And then at the end of my email, I would say, ‘I look forward to your prospective order.‘ Joanna Penn: Oh, nice. Eric Simmons: I do a soft ask for the business. I think that's where a lot of people may miss the mark. They may put together a good document for the librarian to read, but they're not asking for the business. But a soft ask is okay. I don't do a hard ask. I don't say, ‘You absolutely have to buy my book. It's the best in the world.' I don't do that. It's a very soft ask for the business. And I think that's an approach for your audience to consider, ask for the business, but ask for it softly. Joanna Penn: As we said, you have decades of sales experience. So this is all brilliant stuff, actually. I feel like this is one of the issues we have, and I also feel like so much of book marketing now, we're just talking about ads on Amazon and click this link. What you are doing is actually really different to what most people are doing now. Eric Simmons: I'm being proactive, Joanna. I didn't mean to cut you off. I'm being proactive. I did not want to pay $450 for ‘Kirkus Reviews' and libraries like to have reviews if they can find them from ‘Library Journal,' ‘Kirkus,' ‘Publishers Weekly,' and the like. So I really stepped out on a limb because I had so much confidence that I believed I had written a quality piece of work. I felt I could get my foot in the door if I marketed my book professionally to a librarian. I took a chance and the chance paid off. Joanna Penn: And then, of course, as you said, it spills into other sales as readers discover you. Libraries are incredible ecosystems really. I think they're becoming more ecosystems for writers' groups and different readers' groups and crafting things and children's stuff. I think we've got to think far more broadly about what the library is. It's almost like a community hub in a lot of places. To come back to the different types of pitching though because many listeners, including myself as fiction authors, I always feel like with fiction, it's a much harder pitch because, look, let's face it, libraries are going to order the top books from the top-selling authors on ‘The New York Times' list. That's what people are going to pre-order in their library. How do we break through that as independent fiction authors? Eric Simmons: Here's what I did. I picked randomly 10 libraries and I went through and I read their collection development policies. And from that, one of the policies that I kept seeing over and over, must be of interest. And so I said, ‘Okay, how do I prove my book is of interest.' One of the ways I've done that is through library references. I referenced other libraries that have purchased my book. But the other thing that I've done is I include some of my Amazon sales data to show how well my book is doing in the retail market because my thought process there is, ‘Okay, Miss Penn, librarian, you're unfamiliar with me. Here's where I believe my fictional book will fit in your library and would be of interest to your patrons. And in addition, here's how well my book is doing in the retail space with Amazon.' Because that idea is that if my book is doing well on Amazon, they're patrons too. Some of these people may be coming into your library. So I'm trying to make that connection whereby if the book is doing well in this space, I believe it will do well in your library space as well. That's how I'm marketing my nonfiction and that's how I believe you can market your fiction book. Joanna Penn: I think also perhaps we need to pick the nonfiction topics that are in the fiction. So if your YA book talks about bullying, for example, then maybe you say my novel tackles the issues of bullying, or like you mentioned, with civil rights, maybe my novel tackles issues of racism in society, or I've got one, Desecration, which is about the history of anatomy. Well, it's not about it. That's one of the underlying themes. Maybe I could pitch libraries that have more medical books or university libraries, or I don't know, maybe that's another angle. Eric Simmons: That's a great idea. I think it's brilliant, actually, Joanna. And then here's something that a librarian, a college librarian told me, and this was for academic libraries. He said, ‘What you want to do is you want to show the librarian where your book fits in their library. So if it has some sociology orientation, you want to show that.' If it's, to your point, a fiction book, and you've got something in there about bullying, you want to put it in that category. I've actually applied that to both academic and public libraries. I think you touch on a good point, Joanna. If your audience for their fiction books can identify a segment that would be of interest to a librarian, in this case, I'll go back to using bullying as an example, that's what you want to pitch and show it where it would fit in the library. It would be in your fictional area that may deal with books on bullying, or it could be in your sociology book because bullying has to deal with some impacts of sociology. But that's where, I think the author has to try to make some decisions as to how they can align that book with the library's collection development policies because the closer you can make that alignment, the better your chances are of getting in, I feel. Joanna Penn: You're sparking lots of ideas now, for me, certainly. What we're basically talking about now is pitching librarians as an industry. And I presume they have librarian conferences or they have librarian trade journals. Have you considered advertising or speaking at those types of events? Eric Simmons: I haven't, Joanna, because the pandemic interrupted a lot of that and that's starting to ramp back up. But before, I had not seriously considered that, but that is a great way to get in front of a large audience. And that's something that I probably will consider going forward. Joanna Penn: I was just thinking it might be cheaper to put a quarter-page ad in a trade journal for librarians, which there must be such a thing. Eric Simmons: No, you're right. There are. It's just not something that I've considered. One of my big things is I've been trying to get my books to profitability and believe it or not, libraries, and then subsequent offspring business that I've created has helped me to get my books into the black. I'm running at about a 40.2% profitability with my library book business now. So I think in terms of, okay, where can I invest my dollars to get the greatest impact? Early on, advertising was just not a part of my budget, but I'm at a point now where I can begin to consider such, Joanna. Joanna Penn: If you ever think about doing a service for authors, you could have like a pitching service with all the different books that people want to pitch libraries. Eric Simmons: Actually, I have a consulting service available on my website. Joanna Penn: That's brilliant. Eric Simmons: I've actually had people ask me that. And yes, now, I offer that as a part of my library marketing services. And that was the offshoot business that I mentioned. And here's what's interesting about that. I got that idea from you. Joanna Penn: Oh, good. Eric Simmons: Two ideas that I've got from you that have proven big. One was going wide with my books and not being solely reliant on Amazon. The other was looking for ways to enhance your books beyond selling the books directly. I noticed you had begun to do audiobooks. You had expanded in the podcast. And so I asked myself, ‘What could I expand into?' When I wrote Getting Your Book Into Libraries, I said, well, you know, some people might like the book but they may have questions why don't I offer my services for what I feel would be a reasonable fee and I'll get on the phone or a Zoom conference with prospective authors and we can go through how I pitch my books and develop individual strategies for those offers. So, I've created a business off of that. And that's what has caused me to become profitable because I'm helping people either via Zoom video conferencing or helping them develop strategies on how to market their books to libraries. Joanna Penn: That is brilliant. I'm so pleased you're doing that because I feel this is such an underserved niche and yet such an important niche. So I love that you're doing that. We'll link to that obviously in the show notes. Tell everyone where they can find you, and your website, and your books, and everything you do online. Eric Simmons: You can go to www.eseinc1.com/library-marketing-services. And there, all of my services and books are available. Joanna Penn: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Eric. That was great. Eric Simmons: Oh, Joanna, it's been immense pleasure. I hope it's been beneficial to your audience. And it's just been great to finally meet you and to be a part of what you're trying to do to help others in the self-publishing arena.The post How To Get Your Self-Published Book Into Libraries With Eric Otis Simmons first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Why do you need an email list when you can just reach readers with social media? How can you use reader magnets to build your email list? Tammi Labrecque gives beginner and advanced tips for book marketing. In the intro, The state of the Creator Economy report from ConvertKit; and I use and recommend ConvertKit for my email service provider. Also, check out my Instagram @jfpennauthor for Greece pics. Today's podcast sponsor is Findaway Voices, which gives you access to the world's largest network of audiobook sellers and everything you need to create and sell professional audiobooks. Take back your freedom. Choose your price, choose how you sell, choose how you distribute audio. Check it out at FindawayVoices.com. Tammi Labrecque writes urban fantasy, thrillers, and LitRPG under pen names. She's also the author of Newsletter Ninja: How to Become an Author Mailing List Expert, which we discussed a few years ago, back in episode 414. Her latest book is Newsletter Ninja 2: If You Give the Reader a Cookie: Supercharge Your Author Mailing List With the Perfect Reader Magnet, which we are talking about today. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Why do authors need an email list? What is a reader magnet and why do authors need one? On what works well as a reader magnet for non-fiction and fiction Key elements for a ‘convertible cookie’ Tips for building an email list and finding new readers Why finding readers in your specific niche or sub-niche matters Ideas for what to talk to your newsletter subscribers about Why it’s okay if people unsubscribe from your list You can find Tammi Labrecque at NewsletterNinja.net and on Twitter @tammi_ninja Transcript of Interview with Tammi Labrecque Joanna: Tammi Labrecque writes urban fantasy, thrillers, and LitRPG under pen names. She's also the author of Newsletter Ninja: How to Become an Author Mailing List Expert, which we discussed a few years ago, back in episode 414. Her latest book is Newsletter Ninja 2: If You Give the Reader a Cookie: Supercharge Your Author Mailing List With the Perfect Reader Magnet, which we are talking about today. Welcome back to the show, Tammi. Tammi: Hi, it's so good to be back again. Joanna: I'm glad to talk about this new topic. But before we get into ‘Reader Magnet,' I just wanted to play devil's advocate and do some email basics because these days we have social media, we have TikTok, we have Amazon ads. We have loads of ways to reach readers. Why bother with an email list in the first place? Can't we just use social media? Tammi: Well, does every devil need an advocate, Joanna, really? Seriously, though, there's actually two ways to approach this. We repeat a lot of the same reasons over and over. Those of us in the community who like to talk about this stuff, which is a small, probably very boring segment of the author community, but we talk about the same reasons all the time. And they're usually because if you don't have an email list, this terrible thing might happen. For example, we say, don't build your business on someone else's land, digital sharecropping, as I've heard it called, as I've called it myself. And that is true. When you build on someone else's land, it can be taken away from you. And whether that's something relatively minor like Facebook or Instagram being down for a day, which happened not too long ago, you'll recall, or something really major like Facebook taking away your ad account or your entire Facebook account. If your social media situation goes south, you don't have access to any of those friends or followers unless they're on your email list, and that's scary stuff. And there are a few of us who talk about those tried and true reasons a lot. Everybody's heard this by now from me, from you, from David Gaughran, from Mark Dawson. But if we step back just a moment from that, I think a lot of those reasons, while I absolutely believe in them, I think that they come from a place of fear. Maybe it's not as effective to scare people into setting up their email list when there are actually really positive and optimistic reasons to do so. If you'll forgive me using numbers at this hour of the morning, well, it's not morning in England, but I'll tell you what it is here. Rather than grudgingly start your email list in case Facebook bans you, what if I told you that You should nurture your email list because 92% of online adults use email [OptInMonster Email Marketing Stats 2022] And of that 92% of adults who use email, 99% of them check their email every day, Joanna. And that's not me just pulling five-year-old stats out of my butt. That's from a January 7th article from OptinMonster, January 7th of this year. Joanna: Do you mean once a day or you mean once an hour?! Tammi: They actually did have a statistic and it was nuts. It was like sometimes 60 times a day or whatever, and I was like, ‘Listen, even I don't do that.' But 99% of them check their email at least once a day, every single day. That's crazy. A couple other quick stats just from that same article. I know we have a lot of stuff to talk about, but 58% of users check their email first in the day before they get to social media or news or whatever else they're going to do online, 69% of them check their email while they're watching TV, 57% of them check their email in bed, and probably most important for our purposes, 61% of consumers report that they'd rather hear from the brands they like via email, not SMS, not direct messaging, not the phone. I mean, gross, right, who wants to talk on the phone? Joanna: Definitely not! Tammi: No, do not call me. I don't use my phone for that. Now, we're not brands exactly. And I always tell my students and my clients that they should remember that we are very different from most internet marketers. There's a lot of info out there that just doesn't work for us. I imagine we'll talk about a little bit of that later on. What does work for us usually has to be transmuted somehow to account for how different our customers and using air quotes here, ‘products, marketing.' That's all really different for us. Those statistics are relevant to anyone with an email list, 92%, 99%, 61%. Those are big numbers of people who want to hear from you. So, yes, you need to have a mailing list, not just as like a fire stop against something terrible happening on Facebook or whatever, but because that's genuinely where people want to hear from you. Joanna: Absolutely. And I'll add, on the positive side. This is about a long-term relationship with people who opt into your list. And it will be a tiny percentage of potentially your social media followers or people who come to your website, but they're actively choosing to be on your list. We are indie authors. We are independent authors, which means we should try and keep at least some of our stuff in areas we can control. And, of course, I would also say back up your email list. I export people every month. Obviously, we have all the GDPR rules and everything, but these are, I guess, almost business assets or lists of business assets and we look after them and we care for them. To me, it's also part of that long-term independence that I consider to be a critical part of my author business. Tammi: I would agree with that 100%. No matter what happens to you, you can just pick up that spreadsheet and you can start from scratch, and that's amazing. What a relief that is. What's the word I'm looking for? Security. That's the word I'm looking for. That's security in your business because nobody can take that list of names away from you. Joanna: I've had an email list since 2008 and I'm on my third service. I use ConvertKit. And so that's another thing. All of these things change. Everything changes. All the different services change over time, but the people behind the email account, that's the person we are talking to. So, okay. So, we agree we need a list. So, let's get into the new book. Why can't I just have a little box that says, ‘Sign Up for my Newsletter?' What is a ‘Reader Magnet,' and why do I need one? Tammi: You can have a little box that does that, and, in fact, you totally should. Everybody should have a just sign up box, like no magnet newsletter sign up, put a form on the front page of the website above the fold, please. Maybe one of those thin little bars that goes across the top and just have the email field, the first name if you collect that. Don't mention your magnet. You don't have to promise anything except be in the know or get my newsletter or whatever. See how that works out. You'll definitely get some signups from that, and they're probably going to be some of your most engaged subscribers because they sought out a way to keep tabs on you and they didn't need to be bribed. We love those folks. I absolutely love those folks. And, in fact, sometimes I go to a website and I do just want to sign up. I actually don't even care about getting a thing right now. ‘Can I just put my name and my email in somewhere?' And if you can't find that, it could be annoying, to be brutally honest. So, you should have that. Absolutely. That is a really slow way to build your list, that organic process. It begins when someone reads your book and they like it and they happen to have finished it at a moment when they have the time and the ability to head over to the website and find your sign up, right? But if they finish the book like in bed and they've got an e-ink Kindle because those things cannot go on the internet, let me tell you. I actually think they might have, but they might not have browsers anymore, but my old one does but it doesn't work, so that's not relevant. You cannot go on the internet. Maybe they're sleepy. Maybe their urge isn't strong enough to get up and go to the computer. Maybe by morning, they don't care about it anymore. But if the last thing they saw was your back of a book CTA that tells them about this absolutely irresistible reader magnet, that might just be the thing that makes them get up and go to the computer. Or that's asking a lot, maybe they leave their Kindle on the CTA page or they send themselves a quick text. That's the sort of thing I would do so they'll remember in the morning. Don't forget to get that sign-up thing, and they go to bed. Joanna: Just confirm what a CTA is because you used that language. Tammi: Call to action. So, at the back of your book, you're going to have a call to action (CTA) that says, ‘Do you want to find out this or do you want to read about that? Or do you want to hear more about this couple or spaceship?' Or whatever it is that you're writing about. That's the call to action. Click here, sign up for my mailing list, and I'll send you whatever your reader magnet is. And so then, of course, in addition, maybe it bribes somebody who's on the cusp there, there's also the opportunity then to do things like newsletter swaps and group promotions then giveaways that let authors signal boost each other and share subscribers, and that boosts your numbers even further. It's a little bit harder to say to an author, ‘I have a new book out for sale. Can you share it with your list?' And they're like, ‘I don't want to ask them to open their wallets today,' or maybe they have a release in two weeks or whatever. They could have any number of reasons, but saying, ‘Why don't we just get together and you send my cookie to your subscribers and I'll send yours to mine?' And then, of course, that whole situation is more formalized and more organized over at Book Funnel or Story Origin, where people are doing these big group promotion things. And that boosts your numbers really fast because the reason that's important, of course, is that marketing is…and authors hate to be called marketers. I apologize to every listener, but marketing is a numbers game, and it's just a fact that the more eyeballs you have on your marketing, whether that's your newsletter or your Facebook ads or whatever, the more people you'll convert to buyers because conversion rates don't tend to change. If you have a 10% conversion rate on your list, you're probably going to have that no matter how big your list is. People might have higher or lower conversion rates. I'm just terrible at math, so I'm keeping it really simple. If you send a new release to your email list and 10 people open that email and 1 person clicks through and buys, that's a 10% conversion rate. So, that means that 100 openers, if you had them, would mean 10 buyers, and 1,000 openers is 100 buyers, right? If you've got 30,000 people on your list and a 33% open rate, shaking it up now with the 3s, that's 10,000 opens and you're looking at 1,000 buyers. Like I said a minute ago, it's just a numbers game. So, you're just trying to increase that number as much as you can. It's a numbers game but with the caveat that you're trying to make sure that the people that you're attracting are people who read in your genre, in your specific niche. You don't want to cast so wide a net that you've got a bunch of people who wouldn't be interested in your books. That doesn't serve you at all. But if you can find, and you can, and I assure you, however many tens of thousands of people who read in romance or science fiction or whatever, then you've got that big list and those conversion numbers. The raw numbers go up as the percentage stays the same. It's just math, which I hate, but here we are. Joanna: I think it's important. You said it's a numbers game with a caveat, which it isn't just a numbers game. They do have to be quality. When I say quality, I mean people who are actually interested in buying stuff. And so that's important. I've found some of these bigger co-promotions haven't worked so well for me because, for example, I really write cross-genre, and so the authors' promotions will have to be such a good fit in order for people to stick around and want my stuff for the long-term. So, I think that's really important. Tammi: It is. Joanna: I do love that you said just use the newsletter sign-up. I don't do that right now, but you've given me permission to do that because I've been feeling that for a while. I do just want some people to come and have my newsletter. So, that's super useful. I'm so glad you said that. Let's get back to what is a read of magnet? Give us some examples of good reader magnets for fiction and nonfiction Tammi: I'll do nonfiction first because the theory of that at least is easy. I don't know so much about the execution being easy, at least for me, but the best reader magnet for nonfiction is generally considered to be something that educates the people who download it or gives them a tool of some kind. [Note from Joanna: I have my Author Blueprint.] I personally prefer a tool over a lecture any day because I feel like we're all just regurgitating so much of the same information anyway. But, that said, if you have a niche-y market, like you and I are talking to indie authors and that is smaller than say most internet marketers audiences are, an informational lead magnet can actually do very well. I love to download a spreadsheet that tells me it's going to help me calculate this or a workbook that tells me it's going to teach me how to do that or whatever. I love that stuff. But I'm currently finding the most success that I have, and that's very relative, it's just a cheat sheet of, well, it says 10 tips but it's actually 12 tips because I have problems, but it's just 10 tips for writing emails that people want to read. [You can find Tammi's cheatsheet here: https://newsletterninja.net/newsletter/] That's been far more successful in terms of actual conversion to subscribers than previously I had a subscriber avatar worksheet thing that just seemed to confuse people more than help them. So, I do struggle with it. I haven't felt that my reader magnet situation has been entirely effective. I'm actually about to roll out something new. I'm very excited, but it's really complicated. So, I hope it'll be a big hit. I'll let you know how it goes. For fiction, though, I feel like deciding the best reader magnet, I'm going to slip, though. I'm going to call this a cookie sometimes because it's a habit at this point. But just there's a negative chance that I would ever talk about website cookies, like the little tracking cookies. So, if you hear me say cookie, I mean a reader magnet. Figuring out the best reader magnet really starts first with figuring out who the target audience is. The best reader magnet for someone who just finished a specific book of yours isn't necessarily the best reader magnet for someone who's just finished a different book in that series or a book in a different series entirely or, in your case, a different genre entirely. And probably none of those is the best reader magnet for someone who hasn't yet heard of you and you're going into a blind promotion like a book funnel group promo or a story origin swap or whatever. You can write reader magnets for all of those people, but they might not be the same magnet. So, let me just break it down this way. For someone who has just finished a book of yours, the best reader magnet is one which answers a question or closes a loop from that specific book and/or tells them more about the characters or the world of that book because that's the thing they're immersed in, and so that's the thing that when you get to the end and say, ‘Do you want to hear more about this?' They say, ‘Oh, absolutely. Of course, I do.' But if you don't want to write a reader magnet for every single book in your catalog, though, I will tell you I have plenty of romance writer clients who are doing exactly that. Romance writers are amazing. Maybe you have a reader magnet that would work for that book and it would work for the other two or three or seven books in that series. So, a side character's story, someone that appears in several of the books but doesn't have their own book that they're the protagonist of or a prequel or a folk tale. I like to use that as an example if you write some speculative fiction, fantasy, that thing. There may be stories that are told in your world and you can actually write that story. Or somebody's origin story. People love a villain origin story. They love it. Just something like that, something over the world or the characters touch on every book in the series and vice versa so it will appeal to anyone who's reading the series. But you can go broader than that and try to cover a lot of books with a single magnet. Maybe you've got three trilogies set in the same urban fantasy world or military sci-fi or small-town romance or whatever. And you can write one reader magnet that's relevant to anyone who's read any of the three books in the three trilogies. Now, I'm talking about one magnet, nine books, and that maybe sounds crazy, but think of the ‘Star Wars' universe. Rogue One would be a fantastic reader magnet. It's an in-world story that really appeals to people who've seen any of the nine movies in the three main ‘Star Wars' trilogies. Solo, the movie about Han Solo's origin story. That would be great. That'd be a great reader magnet. And what appeals to me about those specific stories is that they also work for people who have not seen any ‘Star Wars' movies. So, now we're moving out of how do you appeal to your exactly specific readers, and into how do you appeal to these people that maybe some friend of yours is just putting your story in front of their audience? Their audience is not going to pick up an epilogue from one of your books because who wants an epilogue for a book they haven't read? So, if you can write something that appeals to your readers but it will also appeal to people who haven't yet heard of you, that's what I call in the book a convertible cookie. I actually said in the book that I couldn't remember where I stole that from, but I have since remembered, so I just want to say it. It was an author named Vered Ehsani, I think is how you say her last name. She's an urban fantasy writer I met at a convention. So, a convertible cookie is, to me, one that appeals to readers who know you and readers who don't. Now, this is a very simple sentence but it's not actually as simple to pull off as it may sound. The key to that is to write a standalone story that does not require knowledge of any of your published books but it does contain fan-favorite characters or elements from your published books. So, it doesn't require that people have read them, but if people have read them, they will recognize these fan favorites. What happens there is that people who have read your book or books, they want the cookie because they want to know more about the character or the world that you've created, but people whose first exposure to you is the cookie we hope will then want to go on and read more about the characters and elements that you introduced in the cookie. It's a little bit lopsided because then that, we'll call it a need, that need to move from the published book to the cookie is going to be greater than the need to move from the cookie to the published book. The people who've read your books are more invested in getting that reader magnet than the reader magnet people will be in moving over. But the thing is if you're putting those fan favorites, the side character that they've been clamoring to hear about, the origin story that they keep asking about, the tale that you've told a little bit of, but everyone's always like, ‘Oh, that sounds funny.' If you're putting those things into the reader magnet, it's pretty safe to say that they will pique interest and spur the people who read the magnet into reading the published books because they have probably become fan favorites for a reason. If you're creating your cookies based on what your readers want more of, you are very naturally and organically creating magnets that contain some of your most compelling stuff. I hope that makes sense. You're just automatically making these stories be about people and events and places that turned out to be really, really exciting to your existing readers so they're probably pretty good. Joanna: Right. So, you've given us loads there, but Let's take it back to basics because I'm sure some people are like, ‘Wow, I thought I was just writing one novel. Now I have to write all these different reader cookies for different occasions?' I want to point out to people, it has to be based on where you are. You mentioned the romance readers being amazing, the romance writers and readers, and you are right. The romance writers are amazing and they mostly have a lot of books as well, the successful ones. I would just say to people you can start out with just ‘sign up for my newsletter'. And then I went from there, for my fiction, I went to here's a free novella, ‘Day of the Vikings,' which does have characters from two of my series, but it's also available for sale. So, that breaks some rules as well. [You can get a free thriller at www.JFPenn.com/free ] But essentially, that has been my cookie, my reader magnet for eight years. And to be honest, I could grow my list faster, but that's the one I've been using and because it has a basic email autoresponder series behind it and I haven't changed it. I know I should, but it carries on and I get signups every day. Just one thing. And that is a good start. It's better than nothing, right? So, if people really just want to start with the basics, is that enough? Tammi: Yes. That actually is 100% my position. I always want to give people permission to do the easiest thing or the least thing that will get the job done. Because if you tell somebody, ‘Got to have a cookie for every series, sorry, I don't make the rules.' That's too hard, especially if they're coming to it late. When I have people come to me for advice before they've really started and they're very close to the beginning of their journey, it's not as hard for them, I say bake it in because that's hilarious to me because I'm a child, but just bake the cookie part in. If you're writing a trilogy, think as you're writing, okay, what's the cookie for this trilogy going to be? And then just whip it off. It's only going to be 10,000 words. Get it done. And then just if you're building them as you go, it's really easy. But if you're looking back at, you know, ‘I've written 12 series at this point,' or for you, in particular, ‘Not only have I written 12 series, but they're not in the same world. They're not even in the same genre,' at that point, it's important to give people permission to do the imperfect thing rather than do nothing at all. I think if you write in multiple genres or fiction and non-fiction, eventually, you're going to have to write at least one cookie for those broadest divisions across which you don't see a lot of reader transference. But if you have to do that, you also don't have to do them all today. You can look at what's coming up next on your release schedule and go, ‘Okay, I'm going to do a cookie for that.' And then maybe next you say, ‘Oh, I'm going to go backwards and I'm going to write a cookie for my series that is the best-selling one. That's the one that gets into the most people's hands, so if I've got a really good cookie in that CTA, it's going to get me the most sign-ups.' There you go. Or you can write one for the series that sells the worst and hope you give it a boost. You do you. But the important thing to remember is that just like with your published books, these are assets you'll have forever. If you only write one or two cookies a year, eventually, you will either catch up with everything you've written or you'll at least have covered the most important parts of your catalog. If you only have one, you only have one. Hey, it's better than zero, and you should leverage it as best you can. If it doesn't quite fit with one of the things that isn't quite in the genre, you just explain to people how they'll like it anyway. ‘Oh, you read this stuff, and here's this one that I wrote in this slightly different genre, but it's got X, Y, and Z that you've come to expect from Joanna'. Give them a reason to make the switch. Honestly, the victory condition is to be Nora Roberts, and it doesn't matter what genre you write in because readers will just follow you anywhere, so go for it, I say. Joanna: I don't know if Nora has a cookie. I follow her blog. Tammi: Oh, goodness, no. Nora is beyond cookies. She is so far beyond even the thought of a cookie. No. Joanna: People say that, don't they? They say things like, ‘Nora Roberts doesn't have an email sign-up. Why should I have one?' Tammi: You're not Nora Roberts, honey. One of the things I hear a lot when I was doing editing, which I, unfortunately, don't do anymore only because it's so time-consuming, it takes up so much time, but I used to do a lot of copy editing and content editing for other indie authors. And sometimes I'd correct somebody's head-hopping. This happens with romance, in particular, and they'd say, ‘Well, Nora Roberts does it all the time,' and I'd be like, ‘Oh, honey, you are not Nora Roberts. You cannot do this. I'm sorry. I don't know what to tell you.' Joanna: That's so funny to say that. Because I do remember reading in Nora Roberts, I think it was ‘Year Zero.' I really liked that series. And I was like, ‘Oh, my goodness. She is head-hopping within a scene and this is not allowed,' and then I was like, ‘Yeah, it doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. She's just so great in so many ways.' But anyway, this is not the Nora Roberts fan club podcast. So, just coming back. Tammi: Absolutely. Joanna: Maybe we should just get back to the subtitle of the book. So, we've talked a bit about reader magnets, which we're calling cookies as well, but the first part is supercharge your author emailing list. So, we've got the super gift, let's call it a gift as well that we're giving the reader in exchange for an email sign-up. How do we supercharge that list? You mentioned a few earlier about newsletter swaps. What are the most effective ways for people to supercharge their email list and get people to that landing page? Tammi: So, there's two basic methods, obviously. There's asking your readers, which you do in your books, on your website, on social media. Those are going to be limited by your natural reach as an author. So, if you're just starting out, you're not going to get a lot. If you launch to number one in the Amazon store every time you release a book, awesome, good for you. And you probably get tons of sign-ups because that's just how it works. Again, a numbers game. So, that's the first method, just ask your readers. Put it in the back of your book. It should be your first CTA if it's the first thing you want people to do. Let me just talk real quickly about CTAs, calls to action. You can put as many calls to action on a sales page or in the back of a book or wherever that you want, but, of course, the conventional wisdom is people are mostly just going to do the first one, so make sure you know what you really want. There's definitely a school of thought, and I think I probably subscribe to it, that your first call to action if there's a next book in the series, is probably get the next book in the series. We're not running a charity here. Go ahead and sell a book. Joanna: Me too. Tammi: So, do it. But when you run out of series, you're either waiting for the next one to come out or it's the end of the series, that first call to action should obviously be join my newsletter on your website. It needs to be above the fold. People need to see it right away as soon as they land. Don't make them look for it. Don't make them hunt for it. Put it on your social media. Pin it to the top of whatever it is that you're doing for social media. If you've got a whole bio situation, make sure that one of the places that that takes you is to a place where they can sign up, all of that. The other method, of course, is seeking out new readers, which is a thing we can do if we have the reader magnet that stands on its own, a standalone novel, a standalone story, a novella or whatever. And we can take that and you can reach out directly to authors that you know or that are in your network and just do a one-on-one newsletter swap, ‘Hey, I've got this free thing. Do you want to send it to your people? I can certainly send your thing to my people.' You can do that over at BookFunnel. They specifically have a setup where you can do one-on-one newsletter swaps or you can do group promotions. You can do what are called BookFunnel bundles, which are a little bit different from the group promotions because those are open to the public and you just go and apply. But you can do like a private Book Funnel bundle where you just reach out to your own network and make a little promotion, which is generally what I prefer. If you're right at the beginning, probably just do one of the public ones. My goodness, beggars can't be choosers. But once you've got any audience to actually work with, it's awesome to reach out and actually network with the people that are at your level. These are the people who are in your also-boughts, the people that you can see are selling at about the same level you are. If you're a romance writer and you launch to whatever, 12,000 in the store, probably you're not going to reach out to Lucy Score today. And that's okay. You look for the people who are in your range. But I also think that doing the bigger swaps or bundles can work really well for people provided, as we were saying earlier, that you don't go too far afield of what it is that you write. The more you can niche down and make sure that the people that you're swapping with are very close to your own books, the better off you'll be with subscribers. Let me just give an example. If you write romance, romance is a very big category, do you write contemporary romance or historical romance? That's a big divide. Do you write paranormal romance or nonparanormal romance? I guess that's contemporary romance. If it's paranormal, is it shifters or is it vampires? You can niche down quite a bit. The closer the other people in the promo are to being in your exact same sort of book, the more vetted those people are as they come onto your newsletter list because you know that they like cowboy small-town romance, not just romance, but small-town cowboys, which is what you write. I'd rather do a swap with four small-town cowboy people than three small-town cowboys and a billionaire. You're going to get a bunch of people that aren't going to be quite right for you. So, you're laughing at the billionaire, aren't you? Joanna: I'm laughing at the book. Three Small-Town Cowboys and a Billionaire. That is a book title. Tammi: Okay. The first person to write that I want to know about it. Joanna: That is a real cross-genre romance. Tammi: I love it. Yes. Okay. But I would rather just keep really tight in my niche. Sometimes if you're a little too niche-y, you might have niche, niche, niche. You might have to reach up a little bit, maybe your specific brand of whatever. You have to just go up a level to find enough people, but you don't want to just throw in with anybody who's even remotely like you. That's my main advice about that is if you're going to go out there in the wide world and just start trying to farm out promos, find the ones that are closest to you. If you write cozies, make sure you're in with the pet cozy people instead of the witch cozy people. Those are different enough that I would try to keep them separate, that sort of thing. But here's the thing. I'm saying that that's what I'm seeing people have a ton of success with right now. I actually have a client right now who came to me before they had published any of their cozy mysteries. They had two of them written. They said, ‘I don't have any idea what to do for a magnet.' We brainstormed something and found a prequel story for them to do. They signed up for BookFunnel. They joined two paranormal cozies. It's a ghost cozy, not a witch cozy, but they joined two promotions with ghosts, with paranormal cozies. And before publishing book one, they had a mailing list of about 600 people. Now, I would rather launch to 600 people than crickets any day. Their books are obviously not taking Amazon by storm, but they didn't sell four books and drop into the phone numbers either. It's just steadily trickling along doing okay, more people are coming in all the time. And that person actually just signed up for a one-on-one promo with another author that seems to perform a little bit better and has a bigger mailing list. But they were fine with it because they could see that that person had subscribers and was managing them well and their books were doing well. So, you can really have some success over there doing that. But it's important to remember that while I'm seeing that right now, we certainly weren't doing BookFunnel bundles in 2014, were we? Tammi: It all changes so fast. Three years ago, that's not what we were doing, and three years from now, who knows what we'll be doing? But there's a whole chapter in the new book about strategies versus tactics, which I frankly almost deleted because there's a lot of talk of traffic lights and honestly, Joanna, it was a really hard time for me, but strategies versus tactics is really important. So, whether we're going to use this software or deliver our reader magnets in this specific way or blah, blah, blah, those parts might change but we will offer you a little bit extra story in exchange for the ability to reach out and let you know when we have new books for you. That's not going to change ever. Joanna: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That's long-term. Now we're almost out of time, but a really important question that people have is all right so I've built this mailing list with my amazing magnet, but what do I email people because I don't know what to say when I send the emails? So, give us some examples. You've mentioned a lot of genres with authors who are releasing regularly. What do we write to people on our email list, especially if we don't release a book very often? Tammi: This is such a pain point for people. I wish it wasn't because if you have enough imagination to write a novel, you can write a newsletter. If you were to go out there into the wide world of internet marketing, which I actually do not recommend, they are just constantly banging on about story, story, story. You have to sell to your subscribers with a story. Wow. The good news is we are already way ahead of the game on that one. If there's one thing that your listeners know how to do it's tell a story. So, I mentioned earlier that a lot of internet marketing techniques have to be transmuted to work for newsletters, right? This is a really good example. This is what I've been talking about lately with people who come to me and say, ‘I don't know what to write about,' is this. One of the things that's really big out there in the internet marketing land is what they call content buckets or what they call them other things too, but I've heard them called content buckets. You have these different types of content or themes that you rotate through as you're sending your newsletters or posting on social media or whatever. So, on Monday, you send a newsletter that shows your authority. Authority is a big thing for marketers. Someplace you've been published or maybe given a talk or something. And then on Tuesday, you post something educational, and then on Wednesday, you post a case study, and so on and so forth. You just rotate through. Oh, it's Friday, it's time for whatever. For us, a lot of the themes that your average internet marketer would have for a content bucket, those are not going to work for us. We're not establishing authority or educating our readers on the industry or whatever. But there's a nugget in there that if you take that concept and you twist it a little, well, you can have content buckets or themes or whatever you want to call them. So, say you send an email every week. And half of your audience just drop dead where they're standing. You don't have to send an email every week. It's okay. But, let's just say you do. If you don't, then awesome because this will last. You can stretch this over a longer period of time if you're only sending every couple of weeks or every month. Let's say you send an email every week. The first week of the month, that's when I do work-in-progress updates. So, a funny bit of dialogue or a little scene I wrote today, or if I were writing romance, I would maybe do some banter between the hero and the heroine that maybe ends with like a moment, a gaze, something like that. That makes people want to keep reading. This is where you would do your cover reveals if you're in a genre that likes cover reveals. I don't think anybody is doing cover reveals in thrillers or whatever, but they're big in romance. They can be big in urban fantasy. It can even just be I'm halfway through, ‘Hey, I got to this word count and I expect the book will be out on time.' Just a little update. Week two could be the week that you talk about yourself and what you're up to, as personal or not personal as you like. ‘I went kayaking,' or, ‘It's almost spring and the dogs are happy to be getting more walks,' or, ‘I took the kids to the museum.' Or if you don't talk about your kids, some people draw that line there, just, ‘I went to the museum. Here's a picture of a stegosaurus, whatever.' Week three could be you talk about other books and media in your genre. So, what romance or sci-fi or urban fantasy are you reading or binging on Netflix right now? I'm out of ideas for week four because I'm a little tired, but there are probably more than three things in your life. So, just take another one and make it week four. And then when you sit down to write your newsletter, you already have a loose idea of what you're going to write about. Oh, it's week four and I write about such and such. Oh, it's week two. What am I watching? That internet marketing idea, the content buckets, and you pick it apart and figure out how it would work for you when you're not selling widgets or courses. Honestly, that's how I think about the entirety of what I'm doing at Newsletter Ninja, whether it's books or courses or the client work I do. I'm just trying to translate all of that stuff that's out there into ideas that work for us in the indie author market. Joanna: Another tip, of course, is to sign up for the mailing list of other authors in your niche, and not just in your niche, other authors who seem to be doing well with newsletters. For example, those romance authors, although they have a different voice. Obviously, the voice is really important of your newsletter, but you can certainly get content ideas, as you say, for your different buckets from signing up for people. And look, most of us don't mind if you sign up for the list, have a look at it, and then unsubscribe. Also, people will unsubscribe all the time, right? We don't need to be scared of that. Never be scared of unsubscribes. Tammi: One hundred percent. Particularly if you're out there doing any aggressive list building, so you go out and you join a BookFunnel promo of some kind and you bring in 1,200 new subscribers in 2 weeks, expect to lose 1/3 of them at least when they come through. And, in fact, I always tell people the first thing that like a stranger subscriber, somebody that has not read any of your books that you've bribed with this wonderful reader magnet, the first thing they should see when they sign up for your books is probably a giant button that says unsubscribe. Hey, if you just signed up for the free book, I get it. No harm, no foul. I love free books. You can click here and you won't hear from me again, and a bunch of them will click it and that's totally okay. Joanna: I did one of these recently and the first email that I got really just did say, ‘Here's the unsubscribe link. You can unsubscribe.' And then there was another one at the bottom going, ‘PS, you're welcome to unsubscribe' because the reality is the more people we have on our list, these are premium, you have to pay for them. So, they have to pay their way, basically. We have to pay the email services. I always encourage unsubscribes, but anyway, we could talk about this forever. Your books have amazing information in and I've signed up for your list. I've got your various spreadsheets and all of that thing. So, people can go do that. Tell us where can people find you and your books and everything online. Tammi: Everything for me starts at newsletterninja.net. So, that's easy to remember. It's the .net, not the .com which somebody is squatting on. There are links there to all the courses. That's all waitlists as we're recording, but I'll probably run the ‘Advanced Automations' course sometime in the summer maybe. And there's links to the books, to the Facebook group, to the social media, and, of course, to my own newsletter. Joanna: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Tammi. That was great. Tammi: Thanks, Joanna. It was wonderful to talk to you.The post Build Your Email List With Reader Magnets With Tammi Labrecque first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How do we decide on the hero for our story? How can we write distinctive — but still believable — characters? Matt Bird talks about aspects of writing character. In the intro, a guide to UBLs, Universal Book Links [Draft2Digital]; Your author brand [Ask ALLi with me and Orna Ross]; The Creator Economy in Bath. Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing, and integration with Scrivener, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 25% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna Matt Bird is an author, screenwriter, podcaster, and blogger. His latest book is The Secrets of Character: Writing a Hero Anyone Will Love. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Matt's journey from indie filmmaking and screenwriting to non-fiction, blogging, and podcastingHow do we decide on the hero of the story — and how readers sometimes choose someone else anywayDeep point of view (POV)Writing distinctive — but still believable — characters Mining real life for character detailsDoes a character have to be likable? You can find Matt Bird at TheSecretsofStory.com. Transcript of Interview with Matt Bird Joanna: Matt Bird is an author, screenwriter, podcaster, and blogger. His latest book is The Secrets of Character: Writing a Hero Anyone Will Love. Welcome, Matt. Matt: Thanks so much for having me on. Joanna: I'm so excited to talk to you. Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. Matt: Oh, I wrote a lot. I was an English major. I always liked writing. I always liked creative writing. I decided to become a filmmaker. I wrote and directed many, I would call them indie films, but what is below indie film, DIY, no money changing hands in any way, shape, or form movies. Then I decided to go ahead and go to film school. I went to Columbia Film School in New York and decided to focus. Very quickly, I realized that I was more of a screenwriter than a director. I focused on screenwriting, got frustrated with the program in various ways. I talk about in my first book, how it was basically a fantasy camp, and you weren't allowed to criticize anybody for anything they had done, well, not even criticize people that sounds bad, but, if were to ever go, you may have to reconceive this then they were like, nobody should ever reconceive anything, you should achieve your vision. Joanna: Very artiste. Matt: I spent a fortune at Columbia, and then it looked like I was going to make a big. When I got out, I got a big-time manager and got a lot of Hollywood meetings, and sold some screenplays, which they never paid me for. I was very frustrated with Hollywood. Then I got cancer and lost a year of my life to that. And then, when I found that all of my career heat was totally gone by the time I came back from chemo, I was frustrated, and I started to blog. At first, it was an underrated movies blog where I watched a movie every day, this was in the heat of blogging back in 2010, I guess. And I watched a movie every day and wrote about it. And then eventually that just became exhausting. I'm like, ‘I gotta come up with another way to blog every day.' And I'm like, ‘I can start doing writing advice to make it easier on myself.' So I started giving writing advice, and that took off. And people really liked my writing advice, and so they said, ‘You should collect this in a book.' I wrote a book called Secrets of Story: Innovative Tools for Perfecting Your Fiction and Captivating Readers. I did not come up with the very wordy subtitle of that book, ‘Writer's Digest' did. That book has been very successful, and I've been very gratified by that success. And then ‘Writer's Digest' was owned up by Penguin Random House, and Penguin Random House asked me to do a new one. So, I've written a brand new book, The Secrets of Character: Writing a Hero Anyone Will Love. Meanwhile, I have a new big writing gig that I can't really talk about very much. But it involves a lot of the things that Joanna talks about on this show. It involves AI. I also have a podcast called ‘The Secret of Story Podcast' with James Kennedy. And I've got a second podcast, which is just for fun, which is called ‘Marvel Reread Club' with my brother, Steve. And that's me. That's what I'm doing. Joanna: Wow. That is great. And, of course, you've gone through all the ups and downs there. Talk about a hero's journey, which I'm sure we'll come back to. You've had the excitement, the highs, potentially, of Hollywood, the downs of, obviously, the difficulties and cancer; that's a big one. So interesting to hear where you are now, which is obviously, blending, writing, technology, podcasting, blogging. I love all that. And I think that's actually important as we come into the topic of the book, which is character. So, let's get into the book. First of all, I want to address the hero. How do we know who should be the hero of the story? Matt: First of all, I should say that hero is gender-neutral and morally neutral, obviously, a hero can be a man or woman. I'm using that term genderless. And it can be totally evil or totally good. I'm not using that term to imply a hero should be a good person, obviously, there are anti-heroes and all sorts of other heroes. In terms of having a hero, so you had asked me in sort of your pre-questions, well, what if your book has lots of heroes? What if your book is a multi-cast novel? And the bad news is that it's up to your reader to determine who your hero is. Your reader will usually pick one character to be their favorite, and sometimes it won't be the main character. And sometimes your audience will be like, ‘Well, you're telling me who the hero is, but I prefer this character. I prefer Han Solo to Luke Skywalker, Luke Skywalker is whiny.” And so, you have to be prepared for that. You have to be prepared for the audience picking a hero. I talked about “Traffic,” where there was Michael Douglas as this struggling DEA secretary, who has a daughter who's doing drugs. And people just saw that movie, and they were like, ‘We do not care about this guy, boo-hoo.' Benicio del Toro played a Mexican cop, and everyone was like, ‘We like that guy. That guy gets the Oscar, Michael Douglas gets no Oscar.' And it's up to the audience to determine who the hero is. Now, in turn, if you have a book that has truly a ton of heroes. So let's look at a book like War and Peace, which has many, many, many heroes. One thing that Tolstoy does in that book is before every scene, one hero gets a prep scene. One person in that scene gets a little prep scene where they establish what their expectations for that scene is, and they become the hero of that scene. So, you've got a huge sprawling novel, it's got maybe, 6 main characters and 10 more fairly major characters. But every scene is one person scene and has its own POV, and that is established beforehand. Even if you've got a ton of heroes, you're generally going to be writing about one POV at a time. You're going to be writing about one hero at a time. You're going to be making people care about and privilege one hero at a time. Joanna: We should say POV is point of view and if people are new writers, that can be complicated. I like the example of George RR Martin with the ‘Game of Thrones' book, because a lot of people might have also seen the TV series as well, because that, to me, is a classic multicast with a lot of different heroes. In terms of the point of view, having read the book as well, he changes the deep point of view for a number of different characters. So, in terms of a technical writing thing, can you explain how we use that deep point of view and, almost, I guess, manipulate the reader into understanding who the hero of the story is? Even number of pages about that character from that character's point of view? Can you explain how we use that deep point of view and, almost, manipulate the reader into understanding who the hero of the story is? Matt: I've talked about how in ‘Game of Thrones,' that you have to skim ahead in ‘Game of Thrones' and see like, okay, the first chapter is from Brans' point of view. So is he actually the hero of the book? Is this a book about a seven-year-old boy? Because Bran is only seven in the books. Then you flip ahead, and you're like, well, every chapter, hopefully in that book, has the name of the POV character at the beginning of the chapter. I think there are seven POV characters, and there's 22 chapters. And you flip ahead, and you're like, ‘Okay, is Bran going to be the main character?' You're like, ‘No.' He only gets like three of the 22 chapters. Eddard is clearly the main character. He gets most of the 22 chapters. And you have to go, ‘Okay, maybe, I'm not supposed to totally bond with Bran right away.' And indeed, Bran is this POV character through whom you're looking at his eyes, and you're more interested in the world around him than you are interested in him. This is what is sometimes called a POV character, a character who we are meeting the world through his eyes, but he is not the main character. And we meet all his brothers through his eyes in the first chapter. We can tell that we're choosing between them. It's easy to see that Theon is not going to be the hero because he can't take anything seriously, and he laughs and kicks the severed head around, and we don't like him. But we have a hard time deciding in that chapter. We sort of like Jon and I can't remember his name, the eldest son, and we're like, ‘Oh, they seem like two variations on manhood. They seem like two different versions of appealing manhood.' We can't quite decide, and indeed the books can't quite decide until they abruptly decide at the end of the third book, and or in the middle of the third book. And it's like, oh, okay, I guess the book has finally chosen its own hero. The book series has finally chosen its own hero when one of those two sons abruptly dies. Sorry, spoilers, I try to avoid spoilers. That's a really interesting book. It's very important to Martin that every chapter only have one point of view. Martin eventually wrote some episodes of the TV show. And then he did commentaries on the DVDs on those episodes TV show. And there was one scene with, again, I don't remember his name, the character who became the bodyguard to Tyrion later on. They're preparing for the big siege of Kings landing, and there's a scene between two minor characters. George RR Martin says in the commentary for that episode that he wrote the screenplay of that, ‘Oh, it's so much fun to get to write the scene because I wasn't allowed to write it in the books because neither of these characters were POV characters.' Even though he had so many POV characters, he just knew he couldn't have that many. He couldn't have 20 POV characters. And so, he was not allowed to write that scene because none of his POV characters was in it. And then on TV, it's less strict. POV is less strict on TV. And you can write a scene with two minor characters in it, with none of your major POV characters in it. Joanna: Yes, because we're not inside their heads with TV and film, whereas in the book, we're inside their heads. And this, I guess, we can also use the ‘Game of Thrones' book as a cautionary tale because as we record this, the book's still aren't finished. If you add more characters that you want to write the point of view from, the books become more and more sprawling, right? So, I would say a tip if you are starting out is maybe pick one hero, one point of view. I think a really good example of this is The Hunger Games. I always use that example. If you just write Katniss Everdeen's story, it can become a lot simpler if you just like, ‘Here's the hero and here's the arc,' and there you go, there are other characters. But if you have one, it becomes much easier. Is that a way to simplify a story? Matt: Oh, yeah. That would've been a completely different novel if we'd had just a Haymitch, Peeta scene without Katniss there, or if we had, you know, broken POV with her at all, it's such a strong voice in that novel. Voice is, of course, one of the most important elements of writing, especially of novel writing. And to have her strong voice in every paragraph, in every line of dialogue, well, not every line of dialogue, not when she's talking to somebody else, but to have her strong voice in every line in that book is what makes that book work. That book is so much driven by voice. And even though the book is in third person, I believe, right? Joanna: I think so. Matt: But even books in third person, if they have limited POV, and that book has limited POV, we are only seeing things described in third person that… But is it in third person? I don't know. Joanne: This is interesting because we can't remember off the top of our heads, but we both feel that we know that character, and we know that character's voice in such a way that it, I guess it doesn't matter, so much like a deep third person, a close third person, whatever they call it, point of view, brings that character to life so much more than a much wider point of view, I guess. Matt: Yes. It is first person. I just looked it up. My book begins with The Hunger Games as the main example. I'm quoting from the book so it wasn't hard for me to look up here and see examples of whether or not it's in first person or third person. I think that The Hunger Games is not the greatest novel, it's not an all-time classic of literature, but it is such a good example of how to become a successful novelist. It is such a successful book. It is such a good book to study in terms of how to write, how to learn to be a writer. Because it is so simple. Because it is so powerful. In some ways, cynical, you know, this was a writer who was writing a lot of books about cockroaches talking to each other under the streets of New York. And then she said, ‘I'm tired to write about cockroaches. I want to write a more successful book.' I think she made certain, somewhat cynical decisions when she wrote that book, and they were brilliant decisions. And, in terms of craft, it is unbeatable. Joanna: Absolutely. Right. So getting back to characters, how can we make readers believe in the reality of our characters, make them three-dimensional? Obviously, we can't do that for every single character, it's just not necessary in a book. In terms of our main characters, how do we make them believable, but obviously, still special enough for a story? Matt: In my book, I talk about how you have to do three things right away. You might have the reader believe in the reality of your character. You have to make the reader care about the circumstances of your character. And you have to make your reader invest in…make the reader invest their hopes in this character to solve this problem. Most stories are about the solving of a large problem and we need to invest our hopes in that character to solve that problem. So, I begin the book by talking about The Hunger Games because it does all three right away brilliantly. One of the first ways, as I've said, to get us to believe in a character's voice. If a character has a believable voice, then we love him right away. One of the main ways to determine your voice is how many periods versus how many commas you use. There's a lot of periods in The Hunger Games. Let's just look at the third paragraph of The Hunger Games. I think it's a great example of ‘Believe, Care and Invest,' but it's also a good example of how my advice is sort of the opposite of Save the Cat. Because she almost kills the cat in the first paragraph, and then she does kill a cat two pages later. In the second paragraph, it says, ‘Sitting at Prim's knee guarding her is the world's ugliest cat, mashed-in nose, half of one ear missing, eyes the color of a rotting squash. Prim named him Buttercup, insisting that his muddy yellow coat matched the bright flower. He hates me. Or at least distrusts me.' And then she talks about how she tried to drown him. Right away, she's got very believable voice. She's got very unique circumstances in her world. We care for her right away because she couldn't afford to have a cat. She felt like she had to kill a cat in order to protect their meager way of life. And boy, oh boy, do we invest in Katniss right away, because she is out there bow hunting. What could be more badass than bow hunting? And she does kill a lynx, that another cat, a big cat that has been following her around and she has decided to kill it because it is chasing off game. Then she sells its pelt. Obviously, killing animals is very tricky in books. A lot of people are very upset by it. But in this case, I don't think many people are very upset by it. I don't think many people are like, “Oh, that poor lynx.' I think people think it's pretty awesome when they read that in The Hunger Games. But so there you go. You've gotta ‘Believe, Care, and Invest' right away on the first page. Joanna: It's interesting because, of course, we say about the reality of the character, is it a believable character? But we're writing fiction, does it have to be a believable character or just someone, as you say, that we care and invest in? I've not been in a situation like that where I've been starving so much that I have to go hunting with a bow and arrow, most of us haven't, thankfully, but we still believe it, even though that's not our situation, right? Is it that it has to be believable or just careful in some way? Matt: I get that believability has nothing to do with, oh, this is Superman, he's flying. Heroes can fly, therefore, this isn't a believable character. Believable is more about Superman can fly, but also Superman has to have a job. And he's someone who has friends in the comics. He has friends in the movies. In ‘Man of Steel,' he does not have friends, he has a love interest. But Jimmy Olsen did appear in one of the Snyder Superman movies just to get killed in two seconds after he appeared. He's not Superman's pal, Jimmy Olsen. You need to give your hero a fully flesh-out world. You need to have sensory information. There's plenty of sensory information in The Hunger Games. Sensory information makes the world come to life. Anthropomorphizing nature makes the world come to life. They eat a ton in The Hunger Games. Descriptions of food, audiences love descriptions of food. They have their own unique jargon. They've got just a bizarrely complicated setup. I think a lot of times people are told, ‘Don't have a complicated setup in your book.' But the whole math of the lottery in The Hunger Games is very complex. I think that makes worlds more believable when there's a lot of rules that have to be explained, even though we're told often don't do that. I think that there's all sorts of ways in which The Hunger Games is believable, even though we may think that America will never fall and no one will ever start running a hunger games. That has nothing to do with it. One thing is, I just re-watched this weekend the movie ‘Captain Marvel.' And at one point, Captain Marvel is talking to Nick Fury, and she's like, ‘Prove to me you're not a squirrel.' And so, this is exactly what writers do. We have to have our characters prove to readers that they're not squirrels. Nick Fury is like, ‘Well, let me tell you about my history. Let me tell you about my mom. Let me tell you some interesting biographical details that make me a unique, interesting person.' And then she says, ‘Name one more thing you couldn't possibly have made up about yourself.' That's so much about believability is including details that make the reader go, ‘The writer couldn't possibly have made that up. That's too real.‘ Then Nick Fury says to her, ‘If toast is cut diagonally, I can't eat it.' Then he then realizes that she didn't actually need him say that, that she was already convinced, but she is at this point sort of cracking up because she got him to admit that. But, in fact, she did need him to say it because that is the ultimate way to prove that you're not a squirrel, to prove that your characters are not squirrel, are not imitations of life, imitations of reality. To prove that they're real characters is a detail. Like, “if toast is cut diagonally, I can't eat,” is gold for a writer. That's the sort of thing where you can pull it from your own life and gift it to your characters, and then they come to life. But the audience can tell, oh, that's not made up, that must be from somebody's real life. That must be from the author's real-life, or the author's mother's real-life, or something. Think about it in ‘The Sopranos,' where Tony Soprano's mom won't answer the phone after dark. And you're like, ‘Oh, that has to be real.' And indeed, that was true. In the DVD commentary, David Chase talks about how his own mother would not answer the phone after dark. And he is like, she's like, ‘Somebody called me after dark.' And he is like, ‘Well, who was it?' And she's like, ‘I don't know, I didn't answer the phone, it was after dark.' And he's like, ‘Mom, that doesn't make any sense.' But, of course, these days nobody answers their phone. Joanna: I never answer my phone. Yes, okay. So you've talked there about interesting details, which I totally agree, really important about people's lives about backstories. One of the things that can be overdone are what are called character tags, which might be a scar, or a limp, or something like that distinguishes them physically. But how do we write these sort of character descriptions? How do we distinguish our characters with tags without making them gimmicky or cliche? Matt: I'm rewatching the Marvel movies right now, and you can tell that we're on movie number 20, we just did ‘Captain Marvel.' So many characters have eye patches in this movie. Nick Fury has an eyepatch, Odin has an eyepatch, Thor eventually has an eye patch. Eye patches are done, you cannot do eye patches anymore. Obviously, Harry Potter made it work because they gave him a lightning shape scar, which lots of characters have scars. James Bond has a scar in the books, but not in the movies. But, oh, okay, lightning shape scar makes come to life again. Or characters may have tattoos, but the tattoos in ‘Avatar: The Last Air Bender' are so distinctive and cool. They are really great. Jack Sparrow in ‘Pirates of Caribbean' has a P branded on his arm by the East India Company. Scars and tattoos and disabilities, they do make characters come to life. You're actually marking your character. You're actually giving your character a physical distinction instead of just character distinctions, instead of just more ephemeral distinctions. But, you're right, they can totally be overdone. It's a risk. And, certainly, a character cannot have them and still be a fully fleshed-out believable character. Katniss Everdeen does not have a scar, a tattoo, or a limp. Joanne: I think probably her tag is the bow and arrow because that is both the thing that provides food, it becomes her weapon. Yes, in my mind, that's what springs to mind, of course, in the end, is that the bird and that, I guess some of the actions. There are things when you think of a character, I guess you could say there are associations with that character, that become part of who that character is. I think when you are a new writer, scars are almost the one that happens. Everyone has some kind of scar. The scar also implies backstory, which can also help with character and plot, and certainly, that's what it does in ‘Harry Potter'. You've said mine your own life, but I'm on novel number 18 or something. I definitely find original character tags to be difficult to find. But as you say, maybe Marvel was using them. I haven't used an eye patch. Any tips for coming up with some of these details? Matt: There you go. Keep a journal is the number one thing to do. Every day when you get home, before you go to bed at night, write down… Joanna: What do mean when you get home? We're all at home! Matt: We're all at home all day long. It's true. I work from home. But if you have any way to get out in the world and any way to see or hear anything, or just with your own family at home, then write down interesting things that people did or said. Write down stuff where it's like, you just have to be constantly in the lookout for details like if bread is cut diagonally, I can't eat it. And you may be on your 18th book, but I'll bet you there's more than 18 things in your own life, like, if bread is cut diagonally, I can't eat it, and you just need one per book. You just have to keep mining your life and coming up with more things like that. I give examples in the end of my book about examples from my own life of ‘Believe, Care, and Invest.' In order to come up with those examples, I just check my own sheet where I keep track of details from my life. The believed detail was actually my daughter singing a song from the latest rap musical she had written. My daughter loves Hamilton and writes rap musicals. I just quote the absolutely buck nuts, insane lyrics from her rap musical songs that this 10-year-old girl was writing. And I'm like, ‘That can't be made it up.' It's also something that's very real. We have not really seen this Hamilton generation yet, this generation of 10-year-old girls who have memorized Hamilton on-screen yet or in, I don't know if it's showing up in novels yet. But it's the sort of thing where anyone who knows 10-year-old girls, knows this is true. And this hasn't been done to death yet. And I'm like, ‘That's a perfect believable detail.' Joanna: Interesting. This is something that people struggle with a lot, particularly at this point in history when there's a lot of focus, rightly so on diverse voices. Very important that we have diverse voices writing books. As writers, we also want to write diverse characters. I don't want to just write middle-aged, married white British characters. And in fact, I don't. I rarely write them at all. How can we write effective characters from other cultures, other races, other experiences in a way that is still respectful? Matt: It is one of the hardest things. It is definitely one of the hardest parts of writing. A lot of it is just research. Watch documentaries, transcribe voices of interesting characters, and try to really get these voices down. Obviously, the best thing to do is just get to know a wide variety of people, and write in the voices of people you know, or have gotten to know through transcribing their dialogue from other places, from reality shows, from documentaries, from anything you can. But it's one of the hardest things to do. Joanna: I think research is the key. I write multinational novels with people from all different cultures. And what I do is as you say, I research. For example, I wrote a scene set in an Appalachian snake-handling church in the USA. I am never going to go to one of those churches, although it'd be really cool, where they have serpents and that's part of their worship of God. I found this hour and a half documentary on YouTube, and as you say, I literally transcribed it because the way they spoke during their service was just something I could never make up. By transcribing it and then mentioning that documentary in my author's note, I hoped that I was able to respectfully talk about that culture in the process of writing my fiction, plus also set up my character within that church that explained their later behavior. So that's the sort of cultural and religious difference. I did the same with Destroyer of Worlds, which is almost entirely set in India. So, I think research is a great way. And as you say, it's often documentaries, or memoirs, or books, you know, written by particular people. I don't think we should be afraid of it. I think it's too important to be afraid of. You have to embrace it. Matt: If you look at one of the most beloved TV shows of all time, ‘The Wire,' has a lot of diverse characters in it, and it was written mostly by white people. The creator of that show, David Simon, was a white person, and yet he actually never got in trouble for that show. People absolutely loved these characters. Idris Elba became a star, Michael Jordan became a star. I went ahead and I looked at that show. Like you said, it's dangerous to look at other fiction examples because you're getting a second-generation voice. But when I went ahead and transcribed some dialogue from that show, I realized that, yeah, I talk in both my books about metaphor families, and I realize that everybody on that show has a different metaphor family. They have different well of language that they go to. And I'd remember just everybody cursing up a storm on that show, but Omar never once utters a curse word in any way, shape, or form on that show. His metaphor family was pirate, which is not a metaphor family you would instantly associate with because metaphor family sometimes times comes from a character's background, but sometimes comes from their aspirations. So, he was talking about, we've got a parlay and these words that you sort of associate with ‘Pirates of the Caribbean.' I talk about in my first book, how in the UK version of ‘The Office,' how Gareth's metaphor family was military, even though he works in a paper company. And he, like Omar, had wanted to be something other than what he was. He saw himself in a tradition of people that did not match his immediate surroundings. That's such a great way to get a character to come alive. Such a great way to get a character be believable is have them have one source of language that they are drawing from that might be atypical. If you look at ‘Star Wars,' Obi-Wan's metaphor family is military as well. He is this spiritual hermit, but he uses all of this language out of the military when he talks. And it really gives the character a strong, ironic counterpoint, and baked into his character, and really makes him come to life. Joanna: We're almost out of time, but I want to talk about the subtitle, which is Writing a Hero Anyone Will Love. I've been watching a couple of things recently. So, ‘WeCrashed,' on ‘Apple TV,' which is just brilliant, and you just hate the characters, but they're so compelling to watch. And then also ‘Succession,' about the billionaire media mogul and the family. There are literally no likable characters in both of these TV series, and yet I cannot look away. Do we always need to love characters or do they just have to be compelling in some way? Matt: In preparation for this podcast, because you had said you wanted to talk about ‘WeCrashed,' I went ahead and watched the first three episodes of ‘WeCrashed.' And then I re-watched the first 10 minutes because that's what I'm talking about in my book, is the first 10 pages of a book or the first 10 minutes of a movie or TV show. Almost always, they got us to believe, care, and invest in the first 10 minutes before there's any plot. WeWork is not founded in the first 10 minutes of ‘WeCrashed,' but we totally believe, care, and invest in the first 10 pages, and has nothing to do with being a ‘lovable character' or a likable character. They're not lovable, they're not likable. I'd say that they are lovable. They're not likable, but they are lovable, but they're lovable in a very certain way. So, let's talk about how we believe in the first 10 minutes of ‘WeCrashed.' One of the things that really makes a character believable, it's when they have mottos. And you find this, especially on TV. TV characters have a lot of mottos. I go through my book like the three different mottos that House has, and his pilot in the three different mottos that Grissom has in CSI. Adam in ‘WeCrashed' gets a lot of mottos right away. “Fear is a choice.” “You're a supernova.” These are mottos. I talk about how he's got very distinctive tastes. Everybody loves songs. They love characters who love songs. And he loves the song so much, he makes his assistant desperately run out ahead of him and pump the song into the WeWork speakers before he enters the office. He has distinctive tactics and this is something that makes us believe and invest. The way he steals his neighbor's Chinese food in the first 10 minutes is so distinctive, it so makes his character come to life for us, and so makes us invest in his character. We are investing in him to solve the problem of his life. This a problem in his life is that he's poor, he's not rich, and we need to invest in him to solve that problem. Even if we don't really want him to be rich, even if we don't want there to be more billionaires in the world. Then we see that that is his problem in this show and we want him to solve this problem. In fiction, if we see someone is trying to tackle a big problem, we're going to root for them to solve that problem. And the tradecraft involved, I used the term from spy movies, in how he offers his neighbor a beer, which doesn't exist, and really just as part of this clever plan to steal his neighbor's Chinese food, is so wonderful and so makes it come to life. In terms of caring, they do a very classic trick in WeWork, they jump ahead to the worst thing that happens to him. And they have a flash-forward, and then they jump back to the past. Often the flash-forward is the hero getting a humiliation that is deserved and is outsized. We can tell in the flash-forward, he gets fired from his company. We're not sure that's what's happening, but we're pretty sure. And we can see he deserves it because we see him wake up halfway through the day, and have a servant rush in with a bong for him to smoke before he actually gets out of bed, before his feet touch the floor. So obviously, that's a bad CEO. He should be fired. Another big reason to believe is his distinctive wardrobe. We see him come to work with no shoes. We see him walking the streets of New York and coming into his office with no shoes on. It's like, okay, that's something where you see that's like, that has to be from real life. And indeed it is from real life. That's another reason for him to be fired. But we also find out that he has borrowed $380 million against the shares of the IPO they're about to do that is now going to be canceled. We understand that someone should get fired for smoking from a bong during the day or wearing no shoes to work. But, having to have cost them $380 million, that seems like an outsized humiliation. That seems like a massive humiliation for toking up when they're supposed to be at work, which is something that a lot of people haven't done and haven't been punished to that degree. Joanna: The book is well structured in terms of tips. I appreciate the way you've written in the book, which is basically a succession of tips and examples for each. So, I definitely recommend the book, The Secrets of Character. Tell people where they can find you and your books, and your podcast online. Matt: As of today, you can go to Amazon or your favorite independent book stories website, or even your favorite independent bookstore in person, and buy a copy of The Secrets of Character: Writing a Hero Anyone Will Love. You can also get my previous book, The Secrets of Story, at any of your favorite bookstores. You can find my podcasts on ‘Apple Podcasts,' ‘The Secrets of Story Podcasts,' or ‘Marvel Reread Club.' You and go to my blog, thesecretsofstory.com, or just secretsofstory.com. I've been blogging since January 1st, 2010, and I have a massive amount of content that you can enjoy. I'm redesigning the blog, it'll relaunch soon, redesigned. But the original blogger version is still going strong. And you can also see about 150…I've moved to the top of the sidebar, 150 examples of novels, TV, memoirs, and movies, where I break down ‘Believe, Care, and Invest.' Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Matt. That was great. Matt: That was great. Thank you so much for having me on.The post Writing Characters With Matt Bird first appeared on The Creative Penn.

I've been talking about AI narration for several years now, but it's just starting to go mainstream and I've been getting emails every day recently asking the same questions, so this is a round-up article with the most important information. For context, I am an audiobook narrator. I narrate my own non-fiction and short stories. I absolutely value human narrators, and I have spent tens of thousands of dollars hiring professional narrators for my novels and non-fiction over the last decade. I am also a futurist and I embrace AI tools as part of my creative and business practice. This episode covers: Why are AI-narrated audiobooks an important development? “AI voices are robotic and don't have the right intonation. No one wants to listen to that.” Will AI-narrated audiobooks put real human narrators out of a job? What services can you use to create AI-narrated audiobooks? How much does it cost? Can anyone create an AI-narrated audiobook? What intellectual property rights do you need to hold? Where can you sell AI-narrated audiobooks? Can you just upload them everywhere? What price should an AI narrated audiobook be? How can you make sure that listeners know this is AI-narrated? Why is labeling important? How do you market AI-narrated audiobooks? Where is AI narration heading in the next few years? This episode is sponsored by my patrons at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn. Thank you for enabling me to continue exploring the future of creativity and the author business model. I'd love to know what you think. Please leave a comment here or tweet me @thecreativepenn or email me if it's more personal. Why are AI-narrated audiobooks an important development? Most content in written words is not available in audio format, primarily because it is expensive to produce, and many countries and languages don't have an established audiobook production ecosystem. It's important to have written word content in audio for accessibility reasons, but also because many people choose to consume in audio. It's easier to listen than read with your eyes because you can do other things at the same time, driving, exercising, chores, etc. There is room for all formats and our job is to make sure our books are available in whatever format the customer chooses. Personally, I listen to a lot of non-fiction audiobooks while exercising, cooking, cleaning, and doing chores, as well as when traveling to rest my eyes. My husband listens to epic fantasy audiobooks every evening for relaxation. Audio content also needs to be more diverse. Why do I always have to listen to business books read by a US male voice? Why can't I choose the voice of the narrator? People identify with people who speak like them. Why can't someone choose the accent they prefer as well as the language and gender in the same way we choose the voice of our Google Assistant, Siri, or Alexa? It would be prohibitively expensive to create multiple versions of audiobooks with different voices, but it could be achieved with AI narration. You can listen to Your Author Business Plan narrated by me (British English female). You can also listen to the same audiobook read by Mia from Google Play, an American female voice. “AI voices are robotic and don't have the right intonation or emotion. No one wants to listen to that.” AI narration will never supplant high-quality audiobooks performed by actors and voice artists at the pinnacle of their craft. They will never replace the ‘art' end of the audiobook market. They are not intended to. In fact, the rise of AI narration might even push human narration into even more beautiful forms of audio art, because the ‘mass market content' side can be produced with AI, and narrators can focus on the books they care about. Remember, you are not your audience, and you don't speak for the entire world of potential listeners. Even if you never want to listen to an AI-narrated book, why stop others from listening? Many people would rather have the content in audio in any voice than not at all, especially if their language is under-served in terms of audiobooks. AI voices are also improving all the time. I've included samples here so you can listen to some of mine. I have two versions of A Thousand Fiendish Angels, a short story trilogy. Here's me reading as a British English female with an accent from the South West of England. The following version is digitally narrated with the voice of William Birch, a British male also with a southern English accent, produced by DeepZen Limited. I like the narration, and it's more interesting because it's a male voice. Two of the three stories have male protagonists and I love how different the stories sound from mine. You can buy A Thousand Fiendish Angels here direct from me and listen on the Bookfunnel app. It will also be available on multiple retailers in coming months as it's distributed through DeepZen. Human narration is also variable, as is listener preference. I'm also an audio consumer. I listen to a LOT of audiobooks, almost all non-fiction, and I often wonder if I am listening to an AI, anyway. There are plenty of human narrators who sound expressionless, especially for the more technical or business books I listen to. Plus, I listen at 1.5x speed anyway, so it often doesn't even matter. There are also an increasing number of tools for other voice-first needs, of which audiobooks are perhaps the smallest use case. Gaming has embraced AI tools for years, including AI for voice. Podcasters have been using AI tools for several years now. I created a Voice Double using OverDub through Descript.com, which can be used in the podcast editing process. Mark Leslie Lefebvre and I even had a conversation between our Voice Doubles here. We need to redo it as the technology has moved on in the last 2 years and the voice doubles are so much better now. Will AI-narrated audiobooks put real human narrators out of a job? AI narration will never replace high-quality human performance, or the nuances of an actor's ability to communicate meaning, or narration by the human author. But the time is right for a stratification of audio rights into several streams — the full cast multi-voice audio production, the human single or multi-voice read, and the AI narrated version, of which there might be several versions. In this way, each audiobook is no longer one product, but many, in the same way that we have multiple versions for ebook, paperback, hardback, large print, and other formats. It may change the job for some narrators, but in the same way that the job has changed for many translators with the advent of AI tools like Deepl. Many translators have more work now, as there are more books being translated because of AI. The bulk of the work is done by the AI engine and then the translator brings the art and skill of finessing the translation into a finished product. As voice licensing becomes more common, narrators will license their voices [as Samuel L Jackson did for Alexa), attracting other revenue streams without the workload of narration. They might use this technology to create the ‘first draft' of an audiobook and then finesse the finished audiobook in the same way that AI-augmented translators do. Or authors and creators will be able to license their voices for creating audiobooks themselves. Narrators, check your contracts. Who owns your master recordings and what can they do with them? Could whoever hired you create an AI voice from the recordings and license that? Estate management will also expand to include voice licensing for talent after death. But what do narrators think? You can listen to narrators and voice artists discuss AI narration on the VOBoss Podcast. They have lots of different episodes on the topic, and there are a variety of views from ‘it should not be allowed,' to ‘it all sounds terrible and AI can never communicate like a human,' to ‘we should embrace AI and license our voices and use the tools to spread our personal brand and make more money.' As ever, there are always varied opinions on new tools and technologies. Also, check out VoiceBot.ai which also has a podcast discussing these issues in depth. Publishers Weekly (4 Feb 2022) rounds up a variety of responses to AI narration, with concluding comments as follows. Hillary Huber is a member of the SAG-AFTRA [Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists] Audiobook Steering Committee, and a board member of the Professional Audiobook Narrators Association (PANA.) She says, “AI is coming. We can’t stop it, but hopefully we can be proactive by creating protections and, more importantly, by raising awareness in general so that listeners and authors can make informed choices.” Anthony Goff (previously senior V-P and publisher of Hachette Audio said, “The technology is good and getting better but can never fully replace the art of audiobook creation… With the amazing growth of audio over the past few years, it’s clear that consumers love narration by professionals, and we do not see AI replacing that—rather, we see it supplementing it.” Absolutely. I agree with both of these comments. AI supplements the existing audio market, and education is needed for consumers so they know what they are getting, and for narrators so they can use the technology to expand their creative and business potential, while still retaining the high-end human production values we love so much. There is room for all, especially if we start stratifying audio rights in contracts, and educating listeners about their different options and the impact of each choice. What services can you use to create AI-narrated audiobooks? There are different services with different levels of help and distribution options. Google Play Books is free (as of May 2022). They have an easy-to-use dashboard where you claim your ebook published on their platform, choose the voice, and then review the audio. It generates in a few hours and you can download the files and sell them elsewhere if you like. This is the Dashboard now, so you can see how easy it is to use. Even if you use a different service e.g. PublishDrive to distribute to Google, you can log into the dashboard and claim your books for AI audio. As an independent author, your ebooks have to be wide to access the platform. [You can listen to my discussion with Ryan Dingler from Google Play here, where we discuss AI for audio toward the end. I will have another interview with Google Play Books in the next few months for an update.] DeepZen is a premium service with ethical standards where they pay narrators for voice licensing. They also have distribution to most audiobook services because their quality is so high (excluding Audible). I've produced two audiobooks through DeepZen, which are in their distribution queue at the moment. You can listen to my discussion with Taylan Kamis from DeepZen here, or read the transcript.] There are lots of other AI narration and production services. Check out AI comes to audiobooks, Publishers Weekly, by Thad McIlroy for a list and opinions on AI voice in the traditional publishing industry. PLEASE make sure you read the terms of service before you use any platform. Download a version and keep it as evidence of what you signed at the time, as terms will inevitably change. Can anyone create an AI-narrated audiobook? If you own and control the audiobook rights for specific intellectual property assets (i.e. books or short stories), then you can use AI narration. Some of the services are not available to all countries, but they will likely expand over time. Most are starting with English and some of the most common languages, and again, will hopefully expand this. If you have already licensed your audio rights, you cannot create an AI-narrated version. Have you signed a contract with a publisher or an audio production company? It's likely you have licensed audiobook rights in their entirety, but check your contract to be sure. You can't create an AI version if you have signed an exclusive license with ACX or another service. That exclusive license also covers all audiobook rights. I think we need to start negotiating for the stratification of audio rights in contracts, so consider negotiating specific audio rights, e.g. specify a human narrator, or AI production, depending on the situation. Where can you sell AI-narrated audiobooks? Can you just upload them everywhere? If you create your audiobook with Google Play, you can sell it on Google Play immediately. You can also download it and sell it direct. I currently use Payhip with Bookfunnel integration, but many authors use Shopify, Gumroad, and other services. Audiobook listeners can listen on the Bookfunnel app, which is really easy and Bookfunnel provide customer service for anyone who has issues. Here's my tutorial on using Payhip with Bookfunnel which you can use to deliver audiobooks on their app. DeepZen have distribution to most audiobook services as their quality is so high, but you have to produce and distribute through them to access this, and it is a premium service. You cannot publish AI-narrated audiobooks on ACX or FindawayVoices as of mid-May 2022. This may change in the future, but for now, it's human narration only. What price should an AI narrated audiobook be? It's up to you. However, it is still the same content, which is valuable, so don't make it free, unless it is a promotional price or a first in series. I think it should be cheaper than the human narration, but not free. Is anyone buying the AI-narrated audiobooks? It's early days, and most authors are just trying things out so far. I've sold a few but I tend to push my human narrated audiobooks more heavily, especially as I am the narrator of many of them! Some authors are embracing this technology wholeheartedly. Here's a comment from my YouTube channel from romance author, Alex Anders. “This month I converted 65 of my fiction stories to AI created audiobooks on Google Play. They have outsold my ebooks in territories they are available. It blew my mind when I realized what was happening.” In a subsequent comment, Alex said, “I sold 6 sexy romance AI generated audiobooks yesterday and the only market it is available on is the US Google Play store. I sold 0 ebooks in the same territory. I think we are on the verge of a serious revolution and it blows me away.” Clearly, sales will increase if there is more AI narrated content available, available in more markets, in more languages, and if listeners are educated about their choices. How can you make sure that listeners know this is AI-narrated? Why is labeling important? I think AI-produced audiobooks should be labeled. This is part of the ethical use of AI tools. There's no need to hide the fact an audiobook is AI-narrated, so why not make it obvious? We don't want to mislead customers, and in fact, we want to educate them about their choice. Do you want this audiobook narrated by a human? Or do you want this narrated by an AI voice? There is room for both in the market. I'm using a ‘sticker' on my audiobook covers with Digitally Narrated on them. I hope something like this becomes the industry standard. We can also use something like it to emphasize human narration and make that part of the packaging as well. I'm using a banner for “Narrated by the author” to differentiate the product. How do you market AI-narrated audiobooks? In the same way as you market any other audio or ebook that you sell direct. I have a section on my Payhip store for digitally-narrated audio. Make sure you link to it on your author website, and in email and social media. Tell your readers about it and educate them on why you're using AI for voice. Click here for 16 more ways to market your audiobook. Where is AI narration heading in the next few years? AI narration will become an increasingly accepted part of the audio ecosystem, and services that don't accept AI narrated books now will likely do so in the next few years — unless their point of difference is specifically artistic, human narration. I think Audible will allow AI narrated content at some point. Given they are owned by Amazon which already has AI for voice with Alexa and Polly, they will likely produce their own software-as-a-service in the same way that Google Play has. Spotify bought Findaway in November 2021 and Spotify allows AI-voices for music, and AI-collaborative musicians, so why not allow AI-narrated audiobooks? In the same way that consumers expect an ebook version of every print book, they will also expect an audiobook version of every ebook and written word resource, in every language, and perhaps in varying accents within that language. We can only achieve this with AI narration because there are not enough humans to narrate in every language and every accent. There are already apps that read written content aloud in various voices, and these might acquire licenses to read audiobooks as well as other content. Many countries do not have a developed audiobook production ecosystem, so AI narration will help them produce massive amounts of content in audio. Because of this need and the resistance to AI audio in English, the growth of AI narration will primarily be for markets other than English over the next few years. This will be fantastic for audio-first consumers as all content will be available in audio and in languages they prefer. For creators, rights-holders, and narrators, AI-narrated audio will drive down costs — but it will also drive down revenue. Ubiquitous audio and the rise of subscription models will continue to erode income from audiobooks, some of which may be made up in increased volume, but not all. This digital abundance only increases the importance of personal branding and developing a relationship with readers and listeners, as well as expanding streams of income. This is the heart of the emerging Creator Economy. Don't rely on streaming and subscription services for your audio revenue, in the same way as many of us no longer rely on the big services for the rest of our author income. Sell direct and use your intellectual property assets to create new products and new revenue streams. Readers and listeners love their favorite narrators and authors, and will continue to buy from them, so emphasize high-quality human narration options as well as AI audio. Charge premium prices for the human version in the same way we charge more for a limited edition hardback compared to an ebook borrow on a subscription service. Audiobooks shouldn't be just one product. Create multiple streams of income with your audio by selling on different platforms, not just on the subscription and streaming services. Emerging blockchain and NFT opportunities will enable limited edition collectible digital audio for super-fans, and you can use patron models, crowdfunding, and other revenue streams. Those who embrace AI narration for audio — as well as high-quality human narration — will reach more listeners and expand their market. As Kevin Kelly says in The Inevitable, “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.” Let's figure out how we can work with the robots (AI) in order to create more, serve more customers, and increase the value of our creative businesses as authors, narrators, and rights-holders. Personally, I will continue to narrate my own non-fiction and short stories, and I intend to license my voice when that becomes a possibility. I'll also continue to hire professional human narrators through Findaway Voices, and I will also produce multiple forms of AI-narrated audiobooks. I'm more excited than ever about AI tools for authors, narrators and rights-holders! I'd love to know what you think. Please leave a comment here or tweet me @thecreativepenn or email me if it's more personal. If you found this useful, please consider supporting the show at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn, or you can buy me a coffee (or two) at BuyMeACoffee.com/thecreativepenn You can find out lots more on how AI can help you create and earn more in my course on The AI-Assisted Author. You can find all my courses here on Teachable. The post An Update On AI-Narrated Audiobooks [May 2022] first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Why is writing so important? How can we pursue true independence as authors? How can we stay open to technological change while still focusing on the fundamentals of craft? Derek Sivers talks about these things and more. In the intro, How to know if you are putting too much pressure on yourself [Holly Worton]; Breaking down language barriers with augmented reality [Google]. This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors. Derek Sivers is the author of four non-fiction books, as well as a musician, entrepreneur, and book publisher. His latest book is How to Live: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Why focus on writing? Decentralization and why selling direct is so important for authors who value independence Tips for selling direct — for digital and print Taking the long-term view Thoughts of blockchain, GPT-3, and AI translation Giving everything to one book — and starting again for the next one You can find Derek Sivers at sive.rs and on Twitter @sivers Transcript of Interview with Derek Sivers [Note: Derek provided his notes which have been added to the transcript, so we hope you find them useful!] Joanna: Derek Sivers is the author of four non-fiction books, as well as a musician, entrepreneur, and book publisher. His latest book is How to Live: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion. Welcome to the show, Derek. Derek: Thanks, Joanna. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you today. So, my first question is, you are a multi-passionate creator and your bio says, ‘I'm ambitiously focused on creating.' What part does writing play in your creative life and your business these days? Derek: First, listeners should know I'm not doing any of this for the money.  My cost of living is paid for by past investments, and I give all my profits to charity. So filter my answers accordingly. If you're listening to this wondering how to get rich or something, I will not be giving a formula for how to get rich because I'm doing this for other reasons. So, what part does it play in my life? I'm trying to better understand the world.I want to figure out life.I want to be smarter.I want to learn.I want insights into life.How to work and live more effectively. When I learn or invent an insight that feels USEFUL TO OTHERS, not just me, I feel I SHOULD SHARE IT with the world. It's GENEROSITY.It would be easier to write it in my journal and keep it to myself.But making it public can help other people.So it's for the greater good. It helps RETENTION.Writing and editing for public consumption makes you hone and clarify every idea.Whatever makes an idea easy to spread, also makes it easier to remember.The easier it is to remember, the more likely you are to internalize it, and let it guide your daily actions out in the world. So, I write for my own retention. And I post things publicly because I find that people's feedback can improve my thinking. Like, when I post an idea…and I say idea because I actually…I try to post things in little itty-bitty bite sizes so that we can shine a spotlight on each idea. I'd be happy to talk more about that later, but that's a tangent. Their FEEDBACK can IMPROVE my thinking.When I post an idea, people often reply with improvements.They disagree, and show me where I'm wrong.They point out an angle I hadn't considered. It's an EGO BOOST.We say ego boost like it's a bad thing, but it's fuel!That motivation helps push you through the harder times.You write better if you think many people are going to read it seriously. We say ego boost like it's a bad thing. But guess what? It's fuel. That motivation, helps push you through the harder times. I don't mean hard times, like, laying in a gutter drunk. I just mean harder times, just struggling to squeeze out an idea that's half-formed. It takes work. But the ego boost of doing it, when it's done people going, ‘Oh, my god. You're amazing.' You write better if you think that many people are going to read this. So, posting publicly helps you push through some of the harder aspects of thinking things through, whether that's creatively or even diligent thinking through a life situation. For all of these reasons, I decided to take writing more seriously.Which really means I decided to give it more time.I put aside a few hours each day for nothing but writing for the public. I try to post one idea at a time. When I post an idea, people often reply with improvements. They sometimes will disagree and show me where I'm wrong, or they agree but point out an angle that I hadn't considered. So that improves my own thinking of my own idea. Sometimes I feel like an idea is finished, and I post it to the world and people go, ‘Uh. Uh. Uh.' And I realize it's not finished. So, I also write publicly as an ego boost. It's NETWORKING FOR INTROVERTS.Publishing your ideas instead of keeping them to yourself can help you meet other smart thoughtful people — people interested in the same things you are.Ideally you earn respect from people you respect.I'd rather earn the respect of ten people I admire, than a million people I don't. It's a worthy drive, a worthy goal. So, for all of these reasons, I've just pretty recently decided to take my writing more seriously. You and I met in Oxford two years ago, was it? Joanna: Well, it must have been in 2019, pre-pandemic. Derek: Right. Okay. So, let's say, two-and-a-half years ago, you and I met in Oxford. And I think even at that time, I wasn't too sure. It was kind of one foot in one foot out. I was kind of calling myself an entrepreneur, a programmer. Sometimes I would write and share my thoughts. But I was considering my writing to be on the side. It was on the periphery of what I was really doing. But since then, I've just given it more thought. And for the reasons I just said, I've realized that it's the most worthy pursuit for me. I've decided to take it more seriously, which really just means giving it more time. Turning off other things, and just doing this for a few hours each day. Joanna: I love that. And it's so funny because, of course, you had these previous careers, which I will have talked about before the introduction. But I came to you through your writing, through Seth Godin, through Anything You Want, I think was that book. And so that's how I came to you. As you said, connecting with introverts, I connected with your mind through your writing, and a lot of people, too. And that's almost how I think about it. It's almost telepathy, it's like, this is my thought. And it connects with you through time, through space. We're never going to talk about all the things that we write about, but it's magic. I love that you mentioned ego, too, because I feel this is the difference. Because writing in your journal is one thing, but we publish because we want other people to read our work. Publishing is a fascinating thing. And you've got a really interesting publishing history because you've worked with publishing companies. And then you got the rights back for Anything You Want, I think. And you are doing some really interesting stuff. I think you're pretty much unemployable by anyone else, which probably shapes your decisions. What are your thoughts on publishing these days, having tried different methods? Derek: First, I often think in terms of what's best for the world, for the greater good. De-centralization is good. Amazon should not be the only bookstore. De-centralization will always be an uphill battle, but it's one worth fighting. For some people, they don't feel it's worth fighting. For me, I'm willing to fight the decentralization battle. So, if you're an author that has fans, you should send your fans anywhere but Amazon. Whether that's a small, independent bookshop or selling directly, you can help be the change to help show people that there are other ways to buy books besides Amazon and Audible. In the late 90s there was this revolution in the music business when musicians were enabled to sell and communicate directly with fans.  They had been so screwed-over by the music industry for decades, so it was so empowering and liberating to bypass the entire industry. But here we are 25 years later, and the independent spirit seems to be gone, especially in the book world. Any talk of how to be an independent author seems to focus mostly on how to kiss Amazon's ass. It's a smarter long-term strategy to deal directly with your thousand true fans, instead of blindly selling more units through some platform that captures most of the profits, and doesn't let you communicate with your customers. When I used to run CD Baby, I had some clients that were formerly rock stars. They told me that it meant more to them emotionally to sell a thousand CDs sold through me and get at the direct contact information for their fans, because that's how my old company, CD Baby, used to work. Every time you would sell something through CD Baby, I'd say, ‘Hey, here's who bought your CD today? Here's Joanna Penn in Bath, and here's her email address.' And for each person, I'd say, ‘Here's their name and email address.' And the fans knew this too. They knew that when you bought through CD Baby, that I'm going to ship you the CDs or give you the MP3s, but I'm going to put you directly in contact with the musician. And the musicians would have the direct contact information for all these fans. And these former rock stars would tell me that it was emotionally more rewarding to be in touch with 1,000 people than it was to get some kind of sales report saying that they had sold a million copies. So, I really took that to heart. And I really will just do everything to have direct contact with my fans, or readers, or whatever you want to call them. All that being said…. My first book was written as a favor to Seth Godin.  I had never intended to write a book, but Seth asked me to be the first author on his new publishing company, so I said OK, and wrote him a book in 10 days. He published it a week later. Five years later, he sold his publishing company to Penguin. So that's why my first book is on Penguin. My main contact at Penguin is really sweet. We went out to dinner once. She's wonderful. I like all the people I've encountered there. They paid me fairly, and all was well. They were happy with the sales of my first book, and said they'd be happy to publish any of my future books. But I wanted to sell directly to my fans, and it felt weird that I wasn't allowed to do that. I didn't like not owning the publishing rights to my own words. So I decided I would self-publish all future books.  I contacted Penguin and bought back the rights, or I'm just in the process right now. They say it's going to be done in 10 days, buying back the rights to my first book so that I will have the right to sell absolutely all of my books directly. I think that answers it. I want to do some fun things that regular sellers can't do. Personalize ebooks and audiobooks.Sell at a weird price: $19 for the first one, $4 for each after.Sell $15 for digital access forever, all future formats.Sell autographed books.Say yes to translations.Own the translations. But mostly the decision comes from thinking very long-term.  I want the rights to adapt my past books to new technologies. To do whatever I want with them for all future time. Joanna: Like a loyalty thing. Derek: Yeah. And I like that, encourages people to buy 10, or 20, or 30 copies or… Well, anyway, I like selling my digital files for a flat $15, to say, okay, for 15 bucks, you get access to all digital formats for all future time. Even formats that haven't been invented yet, you got them. You pay me 15 bucks now, all digital files are yours forever. I like to sell autographed books, which is an idea I got from you. I had never considered that. But sitting at a table on a sidewalk in Oxford, you said I should autograph them. And I think I sneered, I thought that sounded horrible. But then I thought about it and thought, ‘Okay, Jo is right. I should do that.' And then I like to say yes to translations. I like to own the translations. But mostly…sorry, I'm giving you very long answers to your questions. Joanna: No, no, it's great. Derek: But mostly the decision comes from thinking very long-term. I want the rights to adapt my past books to new technologies, to do whatever I want with them for all future time. And that to me, at its core, was why self-publishing was just mandatory. Joanna: I think we both prefer the term independent publishing because, again, you said before, maybe the independent spirit is dying a bit. I don't think it is. This show is definitely focused on long-term thinking. It is wide and all of those things. I feel like those of us who really care about what independence actually means, what you're talking about is so true. What I would say, though, is that you are a programmer, and obviously, I bought your books, and I like how I can log on to your website, and there are all the books I've bought. And you've basically hand-coded this whole thing. Most authors are not like you. We're not programmers. So, there are tools that are emerging for this. Any tips for selling direct, if people are not programmers, for people who might want to spin into this as well as selling on the other stores. Derek: First, let's do the one more reason why I think it's so important to try to capture every penny you can, from the sale of your book. I'm not a very money-focused person. I'm not saying this as in any kind of greedy way. But If you're in direct contact with a fan, who already wants to buy your book, then it seems fundamentally wrong to give Amazon a big cut of that sale. I price my digital books at $15. I've made over a half-million dollars selling them directly to fans on my site. If I would have sold those same books through Amazon it would have been about $100,000. So $500,000 versus $100,000 It costs about $2000 to save a life. Charities like the Against Malaria Foundation will save about one life for every $2000 donated. I donate all of my profits, so that means 200 people will live instead of die because I sold my books directly instead of through Amazon. Joanna: That's a good reason. Derek: Yeah. Whenever I would consider like, ‘It'd be so much easier to just do KDP and be done with it.' And I think, ‘Come on. Even if I'm giving it all away, this is like $2,000 is a life that's somebody who dies if you don't donate $2,000.' That in itself is a reason to ask all your fans to buy directly instead on Amazon.  More profits which you can then donate to save people's lives. That said, I will list them on Amazon very soon, but I won't send my fans there.  If Amazon wants to generate new fans for my book, that's fine. As for tips on selling directly…. You tried to scare me away from this because of customer support!But I‘ve found that less than 1% of buyers said they had a problem getting their digital files to work on their device. I wrote a form letter telling people how to get a mobi file on to their Kindle.I wrote a form letter telling people how to open an m4b audiobook file on their phone. Didn't need to be a programmer.  Just walk through it once successfully, and note every step, and write it down. Use Gumroad.  Use PayPal.  Use whatever.  I built my own store but I'm a nerd like that.  For most people just use whatever existing tools out there seem easy and appealing to you. Joanna: Or just to say, and I think that's amazing. But for most of us, that $2,000 might pay the mortgage or our kids' school or whatever. So, what we're saying is making the money yourself is completely valid. However you choose to spend that money, and you've chosen that direction, which is amazing. We're not saying that you have to donate your royalties. Derek: Right. I was just giving all this, I think, maybe I'm being a little extra defensive because I've heard people just sound really greedy when they're, ‘Why should I share?' It's kind of almost like those people that don't want to pay any taxes. It's like, ‘Urgh, come on. Have you not thought this through in the bigger picture. There's reasons to pay taxes.' So, I don't mean to sound like nobody can take any piece of my transaction. I just think for all these reasons I've said, decentralization and all that, I just think it's morally the right thing to do to try to keep as much of the profits from the sale of your sales directly to your fans as possible. Okay. So, that, I just had to get that off my back or whatever you call it, but… Okay. So, tips on selling directly. That's funny. When you and I talked at Oxford, you I want to say tried to scare me away, but you kind of tried to scare me away from selling directly because of the customer support, the tech support. You're like, ‘Derek, Derek, you don't want to be answering tech support from people that don't know how to get a file onto their phone, or don't know how to put a thing onto their Kindle. You don't want to deal with this. You don't want to spend your life with it.' I want you to know how seriously I took your warning. I thought about that for months, and really considered that, and really let it shape some of my decisions because, I look up to you a lot. And you've been there, done that way more than I have. You're way more experienced in this field. So, I really was kind of deferring to your judgment. But I just, I decided for me it was worth the uphill battle again. So, I ended up writing a form letter telling people directly, how to get a Mobi file onto their Kindle. Like, here's the three ways to do it. I took an hour. And I wrote that form letter once so that anytime somebody says, ‘Hey, just bought your book, but how do I read it on my Kindle?' I just hit cut, paste, and here is the well-written form letter telling them exactly how to do it. Same thing with people who buy my audiobook in the M4B audio format, and they don't know how to get it to play in their phone, or their tablet, or their computer. I have a form letter for that, that I took an hour to write. I have this feeling that every time I'm sending somebody that form letter, I'm actually doing a little bit of greater good for the world because now this is a person that hopefully knows how to do this for future use. And one of your other listeners one day will benefit from this as that same person now feels a little bit more comfortable buying something directly from an author using PayPal, or Gumroad, or whatever it may be. So, to me, that was worth the uphill battle. I've been saying that phrase way too many times today. Joanna: You are right because selling direct is an uphill battle. It is easier to just go on KU, whatever. I would say that I'm sure I must have mentioned BookFunnel.com, which does that. But you prefer to control all of your technology, don't you? You actually prefer kind of coding it that way than using a third-party service. Derek: Yeah. It's kind of my favorite hobby. I really enjoy programming. Also, I've already got a really big infrastructure. Basically, I wrote all of the software that built and ran CD Baby. When I sold the company, I got to keep the backend software for my own use because I had written it myself. Like you said, I wrote every line by hand. So, I've got this amazing backend infrastructure that already has the full contact information for a quarter-million people that I've emailed over the past 25 years. Everybody that's ever left a comment on my site, or emailed me, or signed up for one of my things online, it all ties back into this one central database. It just made sense for me to also tie in a bookstore into that same database so that I could say like, ‘Hi, Tracy. I've noticed you've bought my first two books, but not my newest two books.' I know who's bought what, and it helps me talk to people to say like, ‘ You, in the past, said that you really liked this post of mine, and that post of mine turned into this book. And I noticed you haven't bought the book based on this post that you said you liked.' I'm able to communicate with people in a very personal way like that because I've kept everything in one central place. So, to me, it was worth doing that. Joanna: I think the lesson there for everyone is, not that you need to hand-code everything but that long-term view, what you did with all of that is think about future. You designed a system that could be used for the long-term because you were thinking like that. That's kind of your programmer's brain, I think, broke it down that way, which my husband's a programmer. I get that mindset of structuring things so you can do things in different ways. I did want to ask, though, because I feel like in a way the eBook problem, it was easier than the print problem. Because you're also doing special hardbacks and all kinds of things. What about selling the print books direct? Derek: Luckily, one of my best friends is a paper book nerd. Her name is Saeah Lee Wood, and she is brilliant. In fact, you know what? I'm going to straight up give a plug. She is really an independent book producer now. Her first name is Korean. So, it's spelled strangely, it's S-A-E-A-H. If you go to saeah.com, is Saeah's website. And she took care of everything of producing my paper book. She nerds out on binding, on edge pages, about the fabric on the hardcovers, about the spine. All of that stuff fascinates her. She spent so many hours or so many months actually talking to so many different book printers, getting samples, printing samples with them, sending it back saying, ‘Not good enough yet.' After months and months and months of back and forth, she produced the beautiful hardcovers that you can get through me. She has her own warehouse in North Carolina, USA, where she ships all of the books from. She has all of my books in a big barn on the east coast of the U.S. And anybody who orders a paper book through me, it gets a little message sent to Saeah to send them to where. That was worth the effort to me because I really wanted beautiful linen hardcover books. Joanna: They're fantastic. And again, I think it's about systems, but also people. So, you've found the right person to work with. Derek: Yes. Joanna: I'm kind of going this way now. And also there is a dropshipping. You can now sell direct, but then drop shipping a print-on-demand book, which is really emerging now. So you can still sell direct, but you don't have to have a warehouse full. And, of course, the upfront printing cost is often a problem. So, this is what I'm looking at now is, okay, I can sell direct print and dropship at the same time, which is just fantastic. Time moves on and these problems, companies emerge and people emerge to solve these problems, don't they? Because people want to do this. When people want to do something, the answer emerges somehow. Derek: I agree. And sometimes it's worth doing a step backward. I ended up just doing a good old-fashioned, upfront printing 20,000 copies of my hardcover book because I estimated that's how much I think I'll sell. I had to just kind of guess, which I know the more efficient thing would've been to just do them all print-on-demand. But I just found that I could get higher quality by doing this certain kind of, I forget what it's called, it's like not digital printing, but… Joanna: Offset printing? Derek: Offset. Thank you. That's the word. So, they're offset instead of computer printed, or instead of digital. And it was a slightly higher quality. And to me, that was just worth the upfront investment. I had taken a gamble and pay them whatever that was, a few dollars per book for 20,000 copies upfront and warehouse them and all that stuff. A lot of people might not want to do that or might not care so much about the nerding out on the paper quality and font quality and things like that. Joanna: I love that. I love that you've done that because, again, I guess you're known as the sort of digital guy, but you also now have these wonderful print books that your company's done. I want to come back to, you mentioned earlier, decentralization is good. And looking at what the music industry or what's happening in the music industry now, we've got interesting decentralized, if one could call them that, options with blockchain and NFTs to split royalties. And then we've got changes like Spotify getting into Audiobooks. There's a lot happening right now, I think, in music and audio space that we're starting to see emerge for authors. The royalty fractionalization thing is very, very interesting to me and many authors about, wow, this is kind of potentially the future of crowdfunding. There's lots of options. What do you think about some of these emerging opportunities and challenges? I can't emphasize this enough: Nobody knows the future, so focus on what doesn't change. I've been in the music business since 1987.  I've seen a ton of change.  What I've seen in music is this: People always love a memorable melody. You can’t know what instrumentation or production style will be in fashion. So it's best to focus on the craft of making great melodies. People always want an emotional connection. You can’t know what technology will carry that communication. So it's best to focus on the essence of how to connect with an audience. Writing lots of songs increases your chances of writing a hit. You can’t know which song will be a hit. So it's best to write as many songs as you can. Instead of predicting the future, focus your time and energy on the fundamentals. The unpredictable changes around them are just the details. The best investment of your time is on the timeless aspects of your craft. This also drives a majority of the sales.  Yes there's some activity in on the ever-trendy fringe of things, and it might be worth a bit of your effort, but appropriately small. I think that even though it's newsworthy to talk about NFT stuff, and blockchain, and whatever's going on right now, it's interesting to the media because it's new. I think that it's actually driving a minority of the sales. I think the majority of the sales you're ever going to get will come from the fundamental aspects of what you're doing. How great is your story? How memorable are your characters? How insightful is your writing? And yes, there's activity on the ever-trendy fringe of things. And it might be worth it a bit of your effort, but I'd say to proportion it, appropriately small. But all of that being said, I think, whatever fascinates you, you should go do it. And if it doesn't fascinate you, that's kind of what I'm speaking to. If somebody's listening to this feeling like, ‘Blockchain, NFTs. Urgh. It's just, I guess I should be doing this, but I don't want to.' No. Then I guess that's who I'm speaking to. If this doesn't fascinate you, then you could just skip it. It doesn't matter that much. It's the edge of things. And some people are fascinated by it. If you're fascinated with it, then go for it. But I really think that the most strategic use of your time is to focus on the fundamentals that don't change. Joanna: I totally agree with you. And also, most people listening will be rolling their eyes at me asking that question because I am fascinated with it. But I guess I'm thinking about business models of writing. Fifteen years now, I've been in publishing, not as long as you've been in music, but writing and publishing for 15 years. And again, how the business model has changed in 15 years is kind of crazy. I'm looking at another 15 years ahead and thinking, what is my business model going to look like in the next 15 years, into my 60s'? How can I position myself so that I'm ready? I'm often early in adopting new ways of publishing. I think the smart contracts that are emerging with NFTs are really, really interesting for the future of intellectual property. [More on the future of creativity here.] Coming back to what you said earlier, which is when you sell direct you're going to make sure you include the formats of the future. But the problem at the moment is that authors are signing contracts that have a clause in that say something like, ‘All format existing now, and to be created for the life of copyright.' Authors are signing that. It means they can't take advantage of a new opportunity. I'm completely with you, right now is not the time to do NFT books as we record this in April, 2022, but maybe by 2025, if it's now the new thing, the thing that we are doing, if you've signed a contract, that means you can't do it, then you're going to be screwed. That's what I'm thinking of is, yes, it's edge-case now, but what if? Derek: Yeah. And that's a great argument to keep your own rights now, even if it means that you are giving up some sales. By the way, I do just feel that I should give some kind of caveat that everything I'm saying, I realize is just one point of view, and I could argue against it. Joanna: No, that's an interview, Derek. We know that! Derek: Right. And what I'm saying is three of my friends, Tim Ferriss, Mark Manson, and James Clear, a few of my good friends have gone against everything I've said here and done astonishingly well, selling bajillions of books. Joanna: Mark Manson just did the NFT drop as well. Didn't he? Derek: Yeah. Everything I'm describing is just like, this is, you're asking me to talk about the way that I've personally chosen to do it. But I know that it's not the way for everybody. I'm not prescribing it to everybody, but for my temperament, my situation in life, even the very first thing that I started out saying, I'm not doing any of this for the money. If I was to say, what's the best way to make a ton of money selling books, well, then I wouldn't say you should be hand-coding your own website and all that. I do think that trying as much as possible to hold onto your own rights, even if it means losing some sales in the present is a smarter long-term strategy for the future of whatever is happening next. Joanna: Absolutely. So, just staying on the technology side of things, I think we talked about AI translation when we talked in Oxford. I'm really fascinated with GPT-3, and GPT-4 is due out this year, and the kind of tools that we can potentially use as writers with AI. What are your thoughts on how creatives can work with AI rather than fight against it and as a tool, rather than ‘it will write a book for me' type of thing. Derek: I got to know GPT-3 quite well. I have an account with OpenAI, the company behind GPT-3. I wrote some programs to use their API. I worked with a hardcore expert of it for two weeks and he showed me how to do even more with it. But GPT-3, I also really nerded on, I contacted the company that makes it, OpenAI. Joanna: OpenAI. Yeah. Derek: And yet after all that, I don't think it's a threat, and don't find it that interesting. GPT-3 can complete a sentence for you.  It can complete a paragraph for you. But more words was never the point.  To be a great writer, we need more insights, more emotional connection, more wow.  Not more words. You can use GPT-3 to finish sentences when you don't know how to finish it.You can do it multiple times and it will finish it in multiple different ways.So it's like asking strangers on the street.  “How would you finish this thought?”The answers are usually worthless but occasionally might spark an idea. Ideas can come from anywhere.  A song, an advertisement on a bus, an overheard snippet of conversation.  So you can get ideas from GPT-3's auto-generated stuff. Anyone listening to your show has nothing to fear. GPT-3 can replace people churning out crap fodder just to fill search engine results. But those people don't listen to your show. And yet after all that, I don't think it's a threat, and don't find it that interesting. I would plug it into GPT-3, and I'd say, ‘Give me 20 different endings to this sentence or this paragraph.' And I'd say ‘Go.' And it would return 20 different replies. I would read through them for inspiration. Most of them were worthless. But occasionally, I would get an idea from GPT-3's strange completion of my sentence. But it's not that different from asking strangers on the street. How would you finish this thought? Because ideas can come from anywhere. You can get an idea from a song, or an advertisement on a bus, or an overheard snippet of conversation. You can get great ideas from GPT-3's auto-generated stuff. I would highly recommend it for that. If you can get an account with GPT-3 or find some way to use their API to let it complete your sentences or paragraphs that you are stuck on, it's wonderful. But I think anyone listening to your show has nothing to fear from it. It could replace people that were churning out…or it already has replaced people that were churning out crap fodder to fill search engine results. But those people do not listen to this show. Joanna: Hopefully. And also marketing copy. Jasper, I think, is now using that to put out marketing and add text and things like that, which is an interesting use case. Just before we talk about the translation on GTP-3, people listening, I've had Amit from Sudowrite. Sudowrite is a front-end on GPT-3. So, again, to use the API, you have to be quite technical. But Sudowrite is like a front-end. I feel when you said strange, I was like, that's exactly right. I feel that my Sudowrite is like a strange co-pilot that comes up with things actually make me laugh. Sometimes I'm like, ‘That is just ridiculous.' But I don't laugh when I'm…well, sometimes I do sitting on my own writing. But maybe it's like, wow, it just comes up with stuff that makes me think in a different way. I know it's not a mind, but it comes up with things that are different than what I would've come up with. And that's why I like to use it too. But I completely agree with you. It's a massively powerful tool, but you have to drive it. You have to prompt it. That's the key, right? It doesn't just do it on its own. Derek: Yes. I think when I first heard of it, I was more excited for its potential. And then as I actually used it, I thought, ‘Oh, okay, this isn't as interesting as I thought.' Sorry, we didn't even talk about translation at all. I think for translation, it's amazing. And I think that's a perfect use because that is something where there can be something close to a right answer. What was the Picasso quote? ‘Computers are boring, they can only give you answers.' I like that a lot. So, I think translation is a wonderful use of it, at least for the first draft. What I've done for a lot of my books is I have this new service I created, or once again, me making my own tools. I created something called inchword.com that I've been using. It's basically just my tools I've been using to translate my books. I break down all of my books into per sentence. So, every single sentence has its own entry in the database. And then they get merged together into the template to make the layout of the article or the book. I used a service called deepl.com to translate each one of those sentences at a time and return to me the translated sentence. And then I would store the translated sentence in the database. But then I would always hire a human translator to use that as their starting point and improve it from there. They found that it saved them some time that, say, a quarter of the time, deepl.com returned a translated sentence that they felt was good enough as is, like, ‘okay, that's fine as is. So, I could just leave that one.' And then they can focus on tweaking the ones that could be better. I love that use of AI. [Note from Joanna: Here's how I used Deepl for my books in German.] Joanna: Absolutely. And again, tools that we can use to achieve our creative goal. That's, I think, what it comes down to. On your now page, I want to look forward. Now, you say that How to Live is your best book ever. I love that. I love that you're so proud of it. And you were writing it when we spoke in Oxford. I remember then you were like, ‘This is the challenge.' But your face would sort of light up when you talked about it. You say after four years that it's done. And it's clearly been special and challenging. But I know that you don't necessarily sit around going, ‘Hey, look at my amazing book. And I'm done, I'm finished now. That's perfect.' So, what are you doing next? What are you excited about creating next? Or are you just going to rest on your laurels for a while? Derek: Sorry, listeners, I'm not trying to sell you my book. But just saying that How to Live is my book that I think a lot of new parents I've heard have this feeling. When they have a kid, they think, ‘I really want to put everything I've ever learned into a book for my kid so if I die before my kid is old enough, somebody can just give him this book and I can say, ‘This is everything I ever would've told you.” I gave How to Live everything. All of my thoughts. Everything I know. Each insight reduced to a single sentence. So I'm feeling like I've said it all. It's time for me to generate new thoughts.Lateral thinking.Discovery.Learn more.Share more. My book called How to Live is kind of like that. I compressed everything I've ever learned into one book. The first draft of it was like 1,300 pages. And then my challenge is, I spent the next two years editing it down to only 114 pages. I did that by reducing almost everything down to a single sentence. Each idea was reduced to its essence in a single sentence. Then the problem is I wrote this 114-page book that feels like I've now said everything I have to say on Earth. So, even though I haven't, because most of my ideas are just represented with this single sentence. It's put me into a weird position where everything I think of saying now it feels like, ‘Oh, but I already talked about that in How to Live. But I did it in only a sentence, but I already did it.' Here's what I'm thinking. Stand-up comedians usually reuse their old material and slowly introduce some new material, but they keep the old laughs as they keep touring. If you go see them over the years, you'll hear them tell a lot of the same jokes, but some new ones. Just a few of the most brilliant standup comedians challenge themselves to come up with all new material every year. It's a massive challenge, and only a few have ever done it. I want to challenge myself now to say, ‘Okay. Well, I just put everything I know into How to Live so I'm starting from scratch now.‘ It's time for me to generate new thoughts, lateral thinking, discovery, learning more, sharing more, not to just new material for books. The book is not the point, it's really more about new insights into life to say, ‘Okay. Well, everything I've learned before, How to Live, got put into my book called How to Live. And now everything I do next will only be the stuff that I learn after that.' It's really about challenging myself to learn more. Joanna: Didn't you just say that you're now in a hardcore reading phase. Is that on your blog? Derek: I wouldn't say hardcore as much as I stopped reading for a few years of How to Live because of the nature of that book, where I was putting everything I learned into one book. So, it's like, ‘I don't want to learn something new right now. Otherwise, I'm going to have to add it to the book, the book's already long enough.' So, I had kind of stopped reading for a few years. Now I'm reading this backlog. I've got like 120 books queued up on my Kindle, books that I bought from the last few years, but hadn't read yet. I'm reading them all now. I'm putting aside a few hours a day just to reading. Joanna: That to me is the way to get excited about the next thing. I've been listening to, and we've talked about it on the show, it's a book called The Genesis Machine by Amy Webb. I know you don't want book recommendations, but it's about synthetic biology. Now, I have no background in biology, and this book it's a non-fiction book, but it's like science fiction because it's a topic I know nothing about. I'm listening to it going, ‘Oh, my goodness. I didn't know. I didn't know that. That's amazing.' Derek: I love that. Joanna: And it's so funny, and it's just like, ‘Wow,' That just sets off all these fireworks. That's how I feel when I'm excited about a topic is like fireworks in my brain. And then you never know how it's going to pop up again, right? I imagine that's kind of where you are going is, where do the fireworks come up next for me? Derek: Yes. I actually just last night started reading the Essays and Aphorisms of Arnold Schopenhauer, this German philosopher that I've heard of for years. I've never read his stuff. I'm only like 10 pages in, and I'm like, ‘Ooh, this is good.' Today I'm still thinking about the 10 pages I read last night. As for what's next to me, yeah, my challenge is to learn a lot more so I will have more insights into life and maybe have something new to share with the world. Joanna: Brilliant. Where can people find you, and your books, and your blog, and everything you do online? Derek: Oh, just go to Amazon! Sorry. No, my website is sive.rs. It's my last name, but with a dot in it. So, yeah, sive.rs is my website, and everything's there. And really, honestly, part of the reason that I do interviews like this, instead of you and I just talking at a cafe, is I really like the kind of people that listen to your show. So, if you're somebody that listened all the way to the end of this interview, my email address is in a big font on my website. Just send me an email and say hello and introduce yourself. I actually really, really, really love meeting other writers, especially from around the world. There's a reason you're doing this podcast too. It's like meeting other writers. You have so much in common. It's such a great kindred feeling to talk about writing with people. Joanna: Oh, indeed. Derek: Any other writers, please send me an email. Say, hello. Let's connect. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Derek. That was great. Derek: Thanks, Joanna.The post Writing, Independence, And Selling Books Direct With Derek Sivers first appeared on The Creative Penn.

If you want to create, sell, buy, or trade NFTs, you need to understand the financial and tax implications. In this interview, Joe David explains the important aspects of blockchain assets and cryptocurrency. [Disclaimer: This is not financial or legal advice. This is just a conversation based on our interest and experience. Please consult a professional about your situation.] In the intro, I mention the bear market and recommend Unshakeable. Your Financial Freedom Playbook. Creating Peace of Mind in a World of Volatility by Tony Robbins, as well as my list of other money books, plus my NFTs on OpenSea; Future Freedom community; and podcasts I listen to at the moment: Crypto Business; Azeem Azar's Exponential View; Exponential Wisdom. If you're just getting started, listen or read episode 610 on NFTs for Authors, which covers the basics and different types of NFTs. You can also watch the presentation as a video here. This podcast is sponsored by Written Word Media, which makes book marketing a breeze by offering quick, easy and effective ways for authors to promote their books. You can also subscribe to the Written Word Media email newsletter for book marketing tips. Joe David is the founder and managing director of UK-based Nephos Group, which helps businesses with tax, technology, and business planning. Nephos includes Myna Accountants, which is the UK's leading dedicated cryptocurrency accountancy. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes What is an accountant interested in crypto?Is cryptocurrency ‘real' money?Why blockchain transactions are transparent and trackable and how exchanges require KYC (know your customer) setupGlobal vs local rules for cryptocurrencyAre NFT books assets or products and how do we account for them?The types of tax you need to think about: income tax, and capital gains (and loss)Taxable events include ‘disposal' of assets, which can be transferring one currency into another (e.g. ETH to BTC) or from crypto to fiat (e.g. ETH to USD)Where are we in the crypto adoption cycle?What is the future of NFTs? You can find Joe David at MynaAccountants.co and on Twitter @crypjo091 Transcript of Interview with The Crypto Accountant Joanna: Joe David is the founder and managing director of UK-based Nephos Group, which helps businesses with tax, technology, and business planning. Nephos includes Myna Accountants, which is the UK's leading dedicated cryptocurrency accountancy. Welcome to the show, Joe. Joe: Hey, Jo. Thanks for having me. Joanna: I'm really excited to talk to you about this topic. Before we get started, I guess you'd better give a bit of a disclaimer. Joe: Indeed. Basically, everything we discuss in this podcast will be based on either factual information that's been provided to me via the resources available, or my opinion on certain things. None of it is financial advice. None of it is tax advice. If you do want specific tax advice, then please contact me separately. But this is a generic overview for your education only. Joanna: Yes. Brilliant. Absolutely. So, let's get into it. I want to start with a more personal question, because you're an accountant, and yet you are super interested in cryptocurrency. Why are you so interested, especially when the media, and probably a lot of accountants, can be super negative about crypto? Joe: It is a good place to start, because I do get asked that question quite a lot. I think, for me, it comes down to two things. First of all, looking into cryptocurrency over the years, working in the area with a few clients here and there, I just really liked the concept. As soon as I started reading more about it and watching more videos about it, and really understanding the underlying fundamental principles of crypto and blockchain, it really resonates with me how we can have a financial system that isn't reliant on any one person or any third party. There's no single source of failure. You control your own money. All of those bits and pieces fit really nicely, I think, with where we should go with the digital technology we've got these days. The other point is, and it kind of touches on your point of where the media say certain things and other accountants might say certain things is, I've always been very opinionated and very…I call it anti-establishment, but that doesn't mean I hate everything that is said. It means that I like to do things differently, and I like to mix things up, and I like to change things for the better. I think that crypto will create a better financial system for our future generations, and therefore that's my opinion, and that's why I'm so passionate about it. Joanna: I do want to circle back. You said you liked the concept, so you started reading more until you could understand the fundamentals. This is what I feel right now. I feel like I have now spent maybe 60 to 80 hours on reading about cryptocurrencies and blockchain. And that's just sort of the real deep stuff. It's been a year or so for me of learning in discussions like this. But I do feel like there is quite a knowledge gap between people who have opinions on this stuff and people who've actually spent time learning about it. Is it that you have to spend 40 hours on this stuff before you get it? Is that where we are? Joe: I think it depends on what you class as ‘getting it'. You can get a fundamental, basic understanding of it through watching a few videos, reading a book or two here and there. You'll be able to get a basic understanding of some of the common principles within blockchain technology and the cryptocurrencies that are laid on top of that. So, I totally think you can get an understanding fairly quickly. The reason I said it takes ages and what, loads of videos, to read loads of articles and books and things like that is, for me, I wanted to go really deep, and I'm still going deeply. There's still much more that I keep finding. I'm on a group, and just this morning, someone said, ‘It's amazing how you learn something every day in crypto.‘ And it is definitely that feeling of every day, you learn something new or you see something different, so I think it depends on the level that you want to go to. And because I wanted to go so deep and really specialize in it, for me, I spent hours and hours and hours and days and weeks, and months and whatnot researching it. Joanna: I've definitely caught the bug as such, and I'm going down these rabbit holes too. And again, it's following your curiosity and figuring stuff out, and I'm still learning a lot as well, so I'm really glad to talk to you about this. Let's tackle a common misconception, which is that cryptocurrencies are not real money, so we don't have to account for them, we don't have to pay tax on them, and equally, it must be anonymous. Tell us why that's wrong and how we should think of it. Joe: If we start on the first point around it, whether it's kind of, in inverted commas, ‘real money' or not, obviously, the definition, I guess, of money is an exchange of value. I give you money for something and you give me something back in return. So, if somebody is willing to give you a cryptocurrency and you're willing to give them something back in return for that cryptocurrency, then ultimately, you've got a transaction there that you could class as money. I was reading once that there's some island somewhere out in Australasia, or something like that, they trade rocks or something because that's the only kind of commodity they've got there that. So that's not real money. But it is able to trade value between themselves and between other people. So that is, I guess, the concept of whether it is or isn't real money, but it's money if it's perceived to be exchangeable for value. Obviously, at the moment, there are limited ways of spending cryptocurrency in the world, but what I would say is that's only going to get bigger and stronger. I wouldn't say it's not real money, but at the same time, I wouldn't say that it is a currency and therefore should be treated as so, if that makes sense. That's the first part I would say about whether it is or isn't real money. The second point, then, is, if it's not real, or you can't physically see it or hold it, I can understand people then saying, ‘Well, why do I need to tell anybody about it? I'm just going online and effectively I'm gambling with buying some Bitcoin and hoping it goes up, therefore, I shouldn't pay tax on it.' But actually, that couldn't be further from the truth. The tax rules are very complicated, and have a lot of potential issues for some people if not done properly. It is definitely something that you need to be aware of. It's not as simple as just saying, ‘It's not real money, therefore I don't have to report it.' Joanna: And what about the anonymity side of it? Joe: So, it's one of those situations. It's totally anonymous in a sense of, it's done all via a wallet address, not by name or anything like that. But at the same time, it's the most open system that anyone can possibly see ever. That might sound a bit strange, but the reason I say that is for two reasons. Like I say, it's anonymous in the sense of you've got a wallet address, and that wallet address is the identifier to who you are, but, in a lot of circumstances, you don't need to run any kind of KYC [Konw Your Customer] checks on that wallet. And therefore, there is no clear distinction between whose wallet is whose. The other argument to that is, but actually, some exchanges, so, Binance, Coinbase, places like that, they will expect you to KYC. So that the moment that you trade with one of those, you've already linked that to your name. I can understand why people consider it to be anonymous, but actually, 9 times out of 10, it probably isn't. The reason then that I say it's the most open system ever is that, even if you could argue that it's anonymous, let's just say, actually, you can follow the flow of every single transaction. Every single movement of crypto across a blockchain can be tracked and viewed on what's called block explorers on the internet. So, if I knew your wallet address, I could look at your wallet, I could see your transactions, I could see what you were doing, which also actually makes it much easier for us than you might think to do the tax side of it. Joanna: In fact, I've read that people are more worried about transparency than anonymity, and that for very high net worth individuals everything can be seen, and then the tax authorities can see everything. Plus, I've heard of AI-related tools that can essentially track you through other forms of online behavior to your wallet address. I guess why I wanted to start with that is, I still hear comments that relate to what perhaps Bitcoin was back a decade ago, and things have changed a lot. And so, importantly, we are saying that we're going to account for this as we do, let's say I go to a fair and I transact in cash, I will account for that with my accountant in the same way that I will also account for my cryptocurrency. So, you could ‘somehow try and avoid accounting for it', but we're business people, we want to do the right thing. That's essentially what it comes down to. Joe: Totally. And look, I speak to people who have this dilemma ‘all the time', their dilemma of whether they should declare it or not. And my point is always, this is an open system, that anybody can look at, at any point, whenever they want. HMRC (UK tax authority) may not have the capability at the moment in order to be able to find this information, but this is going to stay on the blockchain forever. It's not going to be taken away and no longer viewable or anything like that. So, even if it takes a couple of years for HMRC to be able to get the ability to be able to do it, they are going to have the ability. So, why would you risk, if you like, that, when you know full well that they're going to be able to access publicly available information? And actually, you talk about cash, and actually, it's an interesting point because people suggest that cryptos are used for a lot of illicit activities and things like that. But actually, all of that, in principle, can be tracked, whereas cash can't be tracked. If I drive to where you are now and I hand you a bag of cash, and then I drive away again, who's to ever say what happened to that? And if you then go and use that for illicit activities, for example, even if I didn't, there's no way of tracking that. Whereas with crypto, if I send you crypto, and then you send that to an illicit activity, I can find that out. So, actually, when people talk about that, you've got to think about actually, well, how much illicit activity is used in the current financial system that can't be followed or tracked? Joanna: Absolutely. So, just a couple of acronyms there, KYC, which is Know Your Customer, for people listening. Joe: Know Your Customer. Joanna: That's when you upload your driver's license and your name and address and what country you're in. And then also, you mentioned HMRC, which is the tax authority here in the UK. When you're talking about things, is this UK-specific or, given that this is all kind of global, how is it global and how is it not? Joe: It's a really interesting point, again, because we do now get a lot of inquiries internationally, and we do work internationally, more so on the business side of things than the personal tax side of things. But we do work internationally on personal tax as well, because there are accountants around the world that don't know how to deal with crypto. We're talking to a guy in the U.S. at the moment where we're going to reconcile all his crypto stuff, and then send that over to his U.S. accountant, who will file it. Ultimately, the rules are different, in a sense, in every country. There are more tax-friendly jurisdictions for crypto, and there are less friendly jurisdictions for crypto. The rules are different in each country, but a lot of the principles are very similar. [From Joanna: For country-specific accounting and tax info, check out Koinly tax guides per country] Joanna: Absolutely. Right, let's get into some specifics. The listeners are authors, and we sell books, mainly, and there are companies emerging that will help us sell eBooks as NFTs. So, let's call them NFT books, which are essentially an EPUB file on a specific blockchain, with a smart contract attached in some way, and a buyer can read, collect, and/or sell those NFT books. Is an NFT book a product? Is it an asset? Is it a collectible? Because I believe these are treated differently for tax purposes. Joe: I should say this, we're going kinda specific, but also, I just want to reiterate the point around, whilst this is a specific subject, we're not actually talking about specific scenarios, so please do get in touch if this relates to you. Ultimately an NFT can be multiple different things these days, and people look at NFTs and say, ‘Oh, it's just digital art or what have you.' But actually, the use cases for NFTs are going to be mind-blowing, I think, in the future. For the first thing to establish is what NFT you are actually creating, or using, or selling, or buying, or what have you. Ultimately, what I do is to try and tie it back to what the kind of traditional underlying asset might be, and what the intention is of what you're doing. If, for example, you're a creator, so you're a book author, and you create your book as an NFT and you sell that, then, to be honest, you're likely to be taxed under the same kind of rules, if you like, as if your book was another copy. So, if you sell that book for 0.1 Ethereum or whatever it might be, then you will be taxed on the value of that at the point of sale. That's the first, fairly kind of, again, broad brush, but fairly simple approach. If you're a buyer, obviously you're not going to pay tax on purchasing, but if you then resell that, then there is a tax on reselling of that NFT. So, where that might be different is if you were buying a book, you're in the kind of normal kind of world, you went to a book store, you bought the book, and then you saw your friend the next day, because you read it really quickly, and you said, ‘Here you go. Here's this book. Gimme a pound back for it,' and they gave you a pound, that probably wouldn't ever be declared. Whereas, with the blockchain, NFTs, at the moment, are not split between a book, a piece of art, a ticket. They're all put under one banner, if you like, as NFTs. So, I think at the moment, there'll be a real challenge between saying that NFT purchase and sale shouldn't be taxed, because ultimately, HMRC would say an NFT's an NFT, therefore there should be tax on that. The last example is, you will have collectors. So, you will have people who purchase NFTs, or traditional books, to collect. Now, obviously there's a slightly different regime for that under the current tax guidance as well. Unfortunately, we're in a position where we've got a whole new world, which is opening up to a kind of really large audience, which is fantastic. But unfortunately, the guidance doesn't necessarily follow every single kind of avenue that's been opened. So, in this case, with books and publishers and authors, there is no specific guidance. That is definitely something that needs to be considered when you're doing this, and to get specific advice on the exact scenario. Like I say, intention's really important, why you're doing it? What would be the implications if you were doing it in the traditional way, and kind of taking it from there. But like I say, it does need to be specific to your scenario. Joanna: Absolutely. And as you say, intention, and also best endeavors, like, I really tried, and I came to you with these questions, because I want to do the right thing, and I'm going to make decisions about my business based on trying to abide by what the rules are. Maybe I'll write a company minute about what I'm doing, and I will just really, really try hard to do this the right way. But, as you say, there are no rules yet, so we have to just make it up as we go along, but in the best way, the most appropriate way, that will enable us to run a business, but also, will stay within what the tax authorities want. Joe: Absolutely. And like I say, that's the trickiest part now, is the fact that there is no specific guidance, and you've got to guess in some sense as what the tax authorities may or may not want you to do. As we discussed, when we've spoken, it's all around intention. It's all around the kind of backing paperwork that you've got covering your back. If you've made a decision, why have you made it? And here's the reasoning why I did it. Because if they do change the rules in the future, at least you can say, ‘Look, at the time, these were the rules that were in place, and this is why I made that decision.' You're much more likely to be looked upon positively than if you just said, ‘Oh, I didn't know, so I didn't do anything.' They do say that naivety is not the answer, if that makes sense. Joanna: Ignorance doesn't count. Joe: Exactly. Joanna: You have to try. You have to at least try and find out these things. Let's go back to, I'm a creator and I sell my book for the 0.1 ETH, as we discussed. And obviously, I'm going to pay income tax on that, completely fine, but also what happens when I sell an eBook right now is, depending on where the customer is, so, some EU countries, for example, Australia, Japan, have a digital sales tax, or a digital VAT, which, at the moment, is covered by the services like Amazon and Apple and Kobo, and they pay those taxes, and then I just get the profit afterwards, which I would pay income tax on. If we're looking at selling NFT books, and again, we don't know the answer, but what we might think will happen: Do we have to do this kind of digital VAT, or digital sales tax, on NFT books? Joe: This is a really hot topic at the moment, not just for VAT on cryptocurrency and NFTs, because it's a similar sort of situation with digital art and tickets, and many kinds of NFTs is, where is your customer? And especially in crypto world, a lot of people like to try and stay as anonymous as they can. You very rarely get someone tell you their first name straightaway, because it's a space where people are very cautious about their details, security, and things like that. So, you'll quite often find that people aren't being honest, and people will also use VPNs, which, again, earlier I said, acronyms that didn't necessarily mean anything. A VPN effectively changes the location of your computer. So, if your computer is based in the UK, you can get a VPN which you can route to, I don't know, France. And then, as far as the computer is concerned, you're in France. People like Netflix and people like that will block, for example, if you've got a subscription in the UK, you can't use it if you're on a computer outside of the UK. So a lot of people will use VPNs to trick the computer to think that it's in the UK, so they can use Netflix and things like that. Same concept here in crypto, where people will quite often say, ‘I might be sat in the UK, but actually, I want this security and this anonymity etc., so therefore, I'm going to put my IP address to be somewhere else.' So, it's a really difficult question, because ultimately, who's responsible for that, and HMRC would say you as the seller, you're responsible for finding out where your customer is. But practically, and in reality, that's significantly harder than it might seem. Ultimately, like I said, the rules at the moment are very, very, very general. And it's the same as the VAT as it is for income tax and capitals gain tax around NFT. So, there is no specific answer to say, ‘If you're an author, and you sell books to the EU, and that country has a digital sales tax, and therefore you'd have to pay that tax.' The answer at the moment is, again, going back to that point I made earlier, you've got to relate it back to the real-world asset, if you were to sell that. So, at the moment, what we're advising clients is, if you are selling into a country, and you would normally have reported that sales tax under the VAT MOSS regime, then you should continue to do that. Again, best endeavors with your NFTs. HMRC have said to us that you should track an IP address, the IP address being the computer's location. As I just said, that can be different, but if you've tracked it, and you've got an idea of where people are, whether that's right or not is not your fault, you're not expected to then investigate whether someone's IP address is in the right place. So, there are certain things you can do. You and I spoke about, could you take an assumption? Let's say currently you sell 50% of your books in the UK and 50% in the U.S. Again, reasonably say, ‘Look, I took a reasonable assumption that 50% of my books were in the UK, therefore 50% of them I charge VAT on, and, or pay VAT on, and 50% I don't.' There are a lot of assumptions, as you've probably gathered, but what I'm trying to get at is as long as you've got reasoning and justifiable basis for what you're doing, you can't be penalized for doing your best with what's in front of you, is what I'm trying to say. It is a bit of a game, and you've got to try and work out the best way to play it. But that's what people like me are here for, to talk through your specific scenario, and really give you a bit more comfort on it. Joanna: I have been trying to encourage the NFT book platforms, which are just emerging, to give us some kind of report on their best endeavors on which countries people are buying from. So, to put the onus on them, to give us a report that says, ‘Here's your country breakdown as best as we can do it.' If they at least provide that, then at least that gives me something to go on. So, they're definitely listening, but as you say, this is still all emerging, so it's actually quite, I want to say fun. This is fun for us. We love all this stuff. Joe: If you're sad like me, then it's fun, but… Joanna: Oh, no, it's sad like me too. If anyone's still listening, it's fun for them as well! Joe: Yeah. True. Joanna: You mentioned capital gains tax, and I feel like capital gains is something that, as authors, we really have not had to think about before. It literally, it has not come up any time in my business of over a decade as an author, is capital gains tax, as it relates to books specifically. Explain why we need to think about capital gains as authors selling NFTs. Joe: Really good point. And again, sometimes I forget that actually, you're right, this would probably never really come up in your business or whatnot before. Quickly on what capital gains tax is. Capital gains tax is a tax on any capital gains. So, the simplistic way to explain it is, if you buy a property, which is an investment property, and you buy it for £100,000, and then two years later you sell it for £200,000, you would pay capital gains tax on the increase in value of that property. In that example, there'd be capital gains tax on the £100,000. I'm not going to go into the rates, because it depends and all those sorts of things. So, the second concept here, so, let's just say you accept, and I'm going to call it 1 ETH, it would be great to sell a book for an ETH, I'm sure, which is about $3500 at the moment, but, or $3000 maybe, but, depending when this goes out. But yeah, so, let's just say it's for 1 ETH, and let's just say that when you receive that 1 ETH, you keep that in Ethereum, you don't sell it, and therefore, you're holding that Ethereum. If, in a week's time, again, what a scenario this would be, that 1 ETH was worth double, so now it's worth, well, let's just call it it's $3000 for one, it's now $6,000 for one, you've now made a $3,000 gain, of which you will pay capital gains tax on. When I talk about capital gains tax, I'm talking about the increase in the value of an asset that you're holding, that you then subsequently sell. So, like I said, Ethereum is received at a value. If that goes up when you sell it, and you sell it for a higher value, you will pay tax on the difference between what you sold it for and what you paid for it when you received it. Hopefully that explains it in a fairly non-complex way. Joanna: Yes. And I think, again, people might have to think about this again and again, or listen several times. I had to think about this quite a lot, and I made a mistake. When we call things taxable events, that's the time at which things become taxable. So, like you said, if someone bought my book, and let's say it's a first edition, why wouldn't it be 1 ETH? Joe: There you go. Yeah. Joanna: Sort of, like, the first edition, Charles Dicken's first edition print book is way more than that. The 1 ETH I got when they bought the book, and so that is income taxable, because that was a purchase that they bought, and I received that at that point, so that's a taxable event. But then, as you said, if I wait a week and then I turn that ETH into pounds or dollars, that makes it a taxable event. If I keep it in ETH, then it just stays there. I don't have to turn it into fiat currency, or pounds, or dollars, or currency in my bank account. I can just leave it there in ETH, and then I don't pay capital gains or loss, because, let's remember, there can be loss as well. I don't have to think about that unless I do something, like I turn that into money in my bank account, or, if I exchange that ETH for, let's say, Bitcoin, if I exchange it, that's a taxable event, or if I download the money, essentially, that's also a taxable event. Joe: Correct. You've hit the nail on the head there, so maybe you want a job?! It's a case of a disposal. A taxable event is a disposal of some kind. Now, in some circumstances, a disposal, like you say, is selling of the asset. It might also be using that to purchase something. For example, you might receive an ETH for your NFT book, and you might use that 1 ETH to then buy an NFT piece of art, or an NFT ticket, or something like that. Any kind of disposal, if you like, of any kind. You're right to point out, because some people do sometimes get a bit concerned and anxious about this. ETH was to increase tenfold overnight, you would only pay tax if you sold it or disposed of it, and realized that gain. If you don't realize it by disposing it, then there is no tax to pay. Joanna: I think that's really important. And so, what I did was, I was like, ‘Oh, well. I'll turn this into something else.' I didn't realize that that would trigger a capital gains event in that case. If I had known that, I would've maybe done it at a different point, or just held it there, instead of going, ‘Oh, I should put that in my GBP bank account, because that's a good idea.' I think it just gives us more to consider. This is a big mindset shift, and so I hope people listening are still with us. When we do an NFT book, there are different blockchains that we could transact on — and we have to choose carefully. So, you've mentioned Ethereum, which has the currency ETH, and that is, at the moment, it's expensive to mint. But equally, it's quite stable as a coin. By holding ETH, I think, probably it'll go up and down, but it will be quite stable. But there are other services being built on blockchains that are newer, that might have a coin that few have heard of before. I guess what I'm saying is, what do you think about how we can assess risk in terms of which blockchains and which services to use when we're thinking about a longer-term thing? You said earlier that you think it's mind-blowing as to what the future might hold for NFTs, but many of these blockchains and coins are going to disappear. They're going to go to zero, in the same way that many of the .com boom companies disappeared. So, what do you think about that? I know it's totally your opinion, by the way. What do you think about how we can assess risk in terms of which blockchains and which services to use when we're thinking about the long-term? Joe: You're right. And it's so hard, because you read the white paper which is the pitch deck, if you like, the reason why their product is better than everybody else's, why you should buy it, and whatnot. And it's very easy to get sold on them and think this is the next big thing. But actually, like you say, a lot of these will very quickly go to zero, and it's really hard to know which ones will and which ones won't, and in fact, probably nigh impossible. So, what we've got to do is look at blockchain and look at cryptocurrency for what the underlying principles and technologies are that we're looking at, and the blockchains that you're building on, and how many other projects are on there, how much money is on that. You can look at what's called a ‘total value locked,' which is basically the money that's locked on the platform in one way, shape, or form, which shows you the use. You can also look at the volume that's gone through, the trade volume that's gone through the platform, to see how high or maybe low that is. There is research that you can do, and it's impossible for me to say which ones are going to be good and which ones are going to be bad. But naturally, if something like Bitcoin and Ethereum has been able, Bitcoin more so, but has been able to be around for as long as it has, and yes, the value's gone up, and yes, the value's gone down, but actually now, there's a fairly good range, say, for Bitcoin to 35K to 45K dollars is pretty much the range, I think, for now. Ethereum's pretty much $2,700, $2,800 to, like, $3,500, something like that. So, there is that range now, and if you look today, the market's down today, Ethereum's down a couple of percent, different lower-cap coins are down 9%, 10%, 15%, 20%. So, it shows in that, that you can see which ones are the more secure. You've got to do research, and as we said at the start this is not financial advice and all that sort of stuff. You've got to do your own research and you've got to look into each project, and really just not be sold on what it says on the tin, and really look at the underlying assets. Because the biggest thing in crypto is effective because it's peer-to-peer, effectively. I sell my crypto, you will have to buy my crypto. Do you know what I mean? It's not like a bookie, where you say, ‘Look, I'm going to put a bet on,' and the bookie backs that bet. This is a situation where I've got to want to sell and you've got to want to buy, effectively. So, what that means is there isn't a lot of liquidity, so if it's a small-cap token, where there's not a lot of liquidity, you might actually find that if you receive money in that, you can't actually sell it. And not because it's a scam, but because there just isn't enough liquidity to sell that at that moment. You've just got to be conscious and careful around what you're receiving, why you're receiving it, and really do some research before you accept anything that is outside of the kind of top two. Joanna: Absolutely. And right at the beginning, you said this is a financial system. And that's, I think, the big difference between the whole Web 2.0, we were still using normal ‘money.' We didn't have to think about a financial system, really, on the internet, and I feel like this is another step, that I didn't actually realize until I minted my first NFT. And then I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, I've just earned this thing, some ETH. What does that mean?‘ When I started questioning, ‘What does it mean? What does it mean?' that's how I ended up thinking about this. But, to come to the risk again, how early do you think we are? Obviously Bitcoin's been around what is, 14 years or something? Could crypto fail completely? Is the NFT bubble bursting? Or are we looking at, we're just moving into a new phase, where we're going to have the regulators coming in, we're going to have the central banks coming in, and things are changing? Where do you think we are in the blockchain and cryptocurrency adoption cycle? Joe: I still think we're very early. If you look at, and I haven't got the numbers to hand, but if you look at the amount of people adopting cryptocurrency today compared to the amount of people there are in the world, that gives you a slight indication as to where it could go. There's also a chart out there, it actually shows the adoption curve of the internet, and then the adoption curve of crypto, and crypto is actually ahead of that adoption curve at the same period of time as the internet was. So, it doesn't mean that it will be in the future, but I think it is more accessible to more people, because you can deal with crypto on a mobile phone, you don't need a hard-wired internet connection, you can access crypto on your phone. This chart is awesome!!! Acording to Coinbase, #crypto to hit 1 billion users within 5 years from a current 200 million! pic.twitter.com/4aYXOlIikV— Lark Davis (@TheCryptoLark) December 17, 2021 Lots of people don't have bank accounts in third world countries and things like that. They don't actually need a bank account for crypto. They can hold it in their own wallet. So, personally, I think it is still very early, and I think there's still a huge increase in what crypto will do, and what blockchain will do. The same, in a sense, for NFTs. Personally, I think we're past the phase of spending millions of dollars on one-time images. I think that boom has probably gone out. And I'm not saying we never will see that again, but I think that clearly is a boom-and-bust type scenario. You don't spend, every week, you don't spend millions on on digital art. It's just not sustainable. I do think that NFTs are here forever, and that's because I think that the utility that an NFT can provide is more important than the image that's portrayed on it, if that makes sense. So, books being an example, but also, we're looking at launching an NFT for artwork, so we are going to launch an NFT. We're just finalizing the details. We'll hopefully be able to announce it in the next couple of weeks, where we're going to be able to do some quite interesting things with our business, and a lot of that will be locked, if you like, behind an NFT. So, if you own one of our NFTs, you'll get access to certain things, and if you don't own an NFT, you wouldn't get access to it, for example. I think what NFTs have is a huge future, being able to trade products and services between people, legitimately. Ticketing is a perfect example. If you go to a sports game, a football game, or the races, or something like that, you're going to speak to someone, no doubt, who says, ‘Do you want to buy a ticket, please?' Or, ‘Do you want to sell a ticket?' The ticket house, because there's a huge black market for selling, you know, tickets. And some of those are legit, some of them won't be. [From Joanna: You can watch or listen to my presentation on NFTs for Authors here.] Whereas with NFTs, you've got that whole market on a secure, legitimate blockchain. So, if I want to sell my ticket to you, I can sell it and you know it's legit. You don't need to know who I am. I know people that have got season tickets to football clubs, and they've got a little card. If they were to sell it to someone randomly, they'd have to give them that card and trust that they'd get it back. With the blockchain, you don't need to do that. You just transfer the right to that game to that person. They go. The ability to do things like that, I think, is phenomenal, but I don't think that there will be a huge market for million-dollar pictures of apes. Joanna: It's changing. That's what we're saying, it's changing. And again, the media likes all the hypey-hypey stories, but behind the hype are your business, my business. We're looking at what we're going to do for the next couple of decades in terms of really interesting business models. I'm excited to see what you're going to do. Now, many people listening will be like, ‘Oh my goodness, I just don't know where to start.' Tell us about you and your team, and everything you do online. Joe: Our focus is, as you said in the intro, one of our brands is solely focused on crypto. And that isn't just the kind of accounting and taxation side. It is an educational side as well, and I talked briefly a second ago about an NFT that we're considering. I don't know how we're going to launch it. We do want to build in some educational content around that as well, because we are really passionate about crypto and the future of it. So, definitely do kind of follow us and check us out, because especially with my kind of social media and things like that, I am trying to be educational, as well as tax-related things and stuff like that. So, do check us out. We want to be able to bring mainstream adoption to crypto in the professional services area. We want to be a leader in professional services and how you deal with crypto and blockchain technology within your business or your personal life. So, that's our focus and our goal, and we're doing well so far, but there's a long way to go. Reach out to us, and we're more than happy to help. So, our website is mynaaccountants.co, and my Twitter is @crypjo091. I'm fairly active every day. And @mynaaccountants is our business Twitter as well. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Joe. That was great. Joe: No worries. Thanks for having me.The post Financial And Tax Implications Of NFTs With Joe David, Crypto Accountant first appeared on The Creative Penn.

In this inspirational interview, crime writer Angela Marsons talks about how she overcame years of rejection and broke out of societal expectations to reach writing and publishing success. She also talks about tips for writing a long-running crime series, and how she weaves her home of the Black Country into her stories. In the intro, pics from Arizona, Dear Writer, Are You Intuitive? by Becca Syme and Susan Bischoff and 5 Key Tips for Profitable Book Marketing webinar, 18 May, 2022. Today's show is sponsored by IngramSpark, who I use to print and distribute my print-on-demand books to 39,000 retailers including independent bookstores, schools and universities, libraries and more. It's your content – do more with it through IngramSpark.com. Angela Marsons is the Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of crime thrillers with over 5 million books sold and translations into 29 different languages. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes The long journey to publication — with plenty of rejection and difficulties along the wayOvercoming the mindset of ‘writing isn't for people like me'Tips on writing a long-running book series with characters that readers want to return toDiscovery writing by following your curiosityWriting darker themesWorking with a digital-first publisher You can find Angela Marsons at AngelaMarsons-books.com and on Twitter @WriteAngie Transcript of Interview with Angela Marsons Joanna: Angela Marsons is the ‘Wall Street Journal' and ‘USA Today' bestselling author of crime thrillers with over 5 million books sold and translations into 29 different languages. Welcome to the show, Angela. Angela: Thank you very much. I'm so pleased to be here. I've listened to the podcast many times, it's fabulous. So, I'm absolutely thrilled to get the chance to have a chat. Joanna: Oh, brilliant. First up, tell us a bit about you and how you got into writing. Angela: I always loved writing at school. I used to love the feel of a pencil on paper and just getting the ideas down, and exploring my feelings, and that kind of thing. I wasn't really good a lot at school. Then my English teacher, and when I was about 12, 13, asked if she could bring in a couple of books that were above my reading age, and they were Andrea Newman books. I read them and they got me totally hooked on exploring emotions, and frailties, and just people, in general. That was when I realized that, as well as loving reading, I wanted to be the person telling some stories as well. I wanted to be writing these things. And from that point on, and I just used to write down everything. I used to explore different situations. I would pretend that my dad had left us, and then I would explore how I felt about it. I'd write all these feelings down, and I'd been in absolute bits by the end of it. And he'd only gone to the pub. But at the time, I made it feel real so I could explore how I felt about it. Then I started writing short stories, and I would submit them to magazines. Never actually got one accepted, but then I moved on to novels and started submitting those as well. And that was a very, very long process until Bookouture gave ‘Silent Scream' a chance in 2014, I think it was that they signed me. So, it was a long journey, but I wouldn't change anything about it. Joanna: What else did you do for your day jobs along the way? Have day jobs featured in your books in any way? Angela: Oh, they certainly have. I started out in admin because when I was at school, the best thing you could do was learn to type because it was assumed that you would be in an office job when you left school. You weren't really taught to aspire to anything like writing. That was not for people like me. And so I did all the things I was supposed to do, the typing, the office practice. I spent quite a few years, just generally going from office job to office job. And then I somehow ended up in security and security management. I spent 19 years at a shopping center managing a team of 72, which has given me a great deal of fodder for the books. Shopping centers are featured, security officers are featured. I like to think that everything is ammunition, it's all inspiration for people and situations. So, it was mainly security management that I spent my working life doing. Joanna: You said that “writing books was not for people like you,” maybe explain what you mean by that because, obviously, we've got listeners from all over the place, but I feel like we do have quite a class system in the UK. Why did you feel like writing wasn't for ‘people like you'? And how did you change that to be something else? Angela: I think it was just our environment, very working class. And it was considered that you'd done well, if you did manage to end up in an office, it was just the way it was. I don't think there's anybody to blame, but teachers kind of, like, that was your target, that was to work in an office and get a nice, solid stable job. The really intelligent people were encouraged to go into banking, and that kind of thing. Our options of subjects that we could take, there was never anything in creative writing. I took, obviously, English literature and English language, but there was nothing else that you could take or do to head you in that direction. It was all office-based. Although, I am glad to learn to type now. Typing is coming very, very useful for this second draft and the third draft. So, you were guided in that direction, you were guided towards office work. And the boys were guided towards woodwork and metal work. There weren't many opportunities around that. Joanna: Because some people, I think, feel hemmed in by societal attitudes to what they should do, but obviously, you have broken out of that. How did you break out of that attitude? Angela: I think it was just because I loved writing so much, I did it in my spare time. I didn't go to college. I didn't have any formal training. I just read books, looked for inspiration, read how-to books. There weren't podcasts around, then it was literally just getting books from the bookshop. Even Amazon, wasn't a thing then, oh, dear me. I'm showing my age now. So, it was a case of buying books, and reading them, and gaining inspiration, and then sitting down and just writing. I think the best way of learning the craft is to just keep doing it, just keep writing. I do firmly believe that nothing is wasted, everything that we write. Even if we then look at it and think, ‘Oh my goodness, that's rubbish. I'm never going to let anybody see that.' I still believe that we learned something through everything that we write. So I just kept doing the in and around day jobs to get up early and write, and then stay up late and do some more writing and started to submit. I started to submit short stories, first of all, to ‘Writing Magazine' and ‘Writers' News.' The first time I actually got shortlisted was the very first validation I ever had that actually, I've got something. I don't know what it is, but I've been shortlisted for a competition. And that must have kept me going for about 10 years because that's the worst thing is, certainly, when you've not really had any education, you think, ‘I'm just chasing a dream.' While chasing the dream, you're doing something that you love and that you really enjoy, and that you would be doing anyway. If the passion is there, the passion is there, you're going to write, whether you're getting published or not, because you just can't help yourself. You see a pencil, you see a notepad, and that's it. You put those together, and you're going to start writing something. So I think it was just a case of keep trying and keep trying. But my partner, Julie, we've been together 35 years. She's been on this journey every step of the way. And she would just constantly encourage me. Sometimes I'd have five, six, seven rejections come back in one day. I felt sorry for the postman because he was logging these three chapters and synopsis about, and then bringing them back to me. Julie would always say, ‘It's their loss, it will happen. It's their loss, it will happen.' And she kept the faith far more than I did, but I never stopped writing. Sometimes I would stop submitting for a few months and just concentrate on the writing. And it eventually did happen. She was right. But it took a while. It took a while. Joanna: I love that you've had such a supportive partner, and I know that's hard for some people who don't have that. And I love that you got there eventually. I wanted to also bring up something else. So, listeners, again, we have listeners from over 200 countries in the world. And you have quite a particular accent, which I think we should talk about because your books are also set in a particular area. Tell us a bit about the Black Country, and what's so special about your area? Angela: Well, the thing is I spent many years writing books that I thought that publishers would like using characters that, again, I thought that they would like. I avoided my local area, the Black Country thinking, ‘Well, that's not sexy, that's not appealing. Good books are always set in London, or Liverpool, or Manchester, big city where you can really explore the culture and the diversity.' I thought, ‘Well, nobody's going to want to read about the Black Country.' And then, of course, year-on-year rejection on rejection. ‘Silent Scream,' the first book in the ‘Kim Stone' series was a bit of a rebellion, and it was a case of, ‘Okay. I'm going to write about the character that's been in my head for a very long time. And I'm going to set it in an area that I know. Yes, it's dark. Yes, it's industrial, but so is my main character. She's quite dark.' And so, actually, they could work quite well together. ‘Silent Scream' was kind of my rebellion book. And it was my first crack at a crime book. I fully expected to get to 40,000 words and hit a wall. And I think, ‘Oh, well, at least okay crime a try.' But it just kept coming. It's almost like the character took control of the pencil. And I started having to rewrite ideas because, I thought, ‘No, she wouldn't do that.' And I just explored the area and thought, ‘Now, this works, this character in my local area that I know and understand works well.' And that was it. Then, it was like, ‘Okay. She's always going to be in the Black Country because that's what works.' So, I think that even if people don't know the Black Country, they can identify with an area that's rich in industry, or was in years gone by in coal, in steel. And I think they can identify with that kind of area and that kind of community. Joanna: And, of course, for you, it's authenticity in voice as well, isn't it? Because that is your area and your characters there. How much of you is in your character, Kim Stone? Angela: I often say to people, and I get lots of people who say, ‘What would Kim do?' She's probably a good representation of what I'd like to be, but with better social skills, because she's very determined, and she's very focused, and diligent, and tenacious. I'd love like some more of those qualities, but I think there's not too much of me. I think there's a lot of qualities that I wish I had more of. But note, the voice had just been in my head for a long time and I never actually let it out because I didn't like it myself. I didn't like the sound of her. So, it was, if I don't like her because the readers aren't going to like her very much, so let's just keep her in there. Joanna: Oh, well, no, I love it. Now, just coming back to the sense of place. So, the Black Country is basically the West Midlands of the UK, people can have a look on a map. But it's not actually a massive area. It's not like a whole country, it's an area in the country. You've got 16 books in this series. How do you plot and plan these books while still keeping them in the same area? Do you use the same places over and over again, for example? Angela: Sometimes. Sometimes I use areas that are very familiar to people and then do sometimes make some areas or some locations, or if I can't think of somewhere that fits exactly what I want, but I'll model it on something similar in the area, and just give it different name. But now there's this sort of like plenty of small areas of the Black Country to explore. And because the West Midlands police forces, I think, it's the second-largest in the country. Second to the Met, it does cover quite a vast area. And although in the books, Kim covers Halesowen, under the Dudley and Halesowen policing unit. We can have a bit of license and send her elsewhere around the border because she's a bit nosy and she would get involved in areas that don't really concern. So, we do have the scope to use the entire West Midlands really. Joanna: That's brilliant. Now, as I mentioned, though, there are 16 books in the series so far, and many listeners want to write a long-running series. But it can be difficult writing. What are your tips for writing a long-running episodic series? Angela: I think, definitely, start off with characters that you yourself feel strongly about and that you want to explore. I deliberately made Kim in a work relationship with a happily married man, because I didn't want the reader to constantly be thinking, ‘Well, they won't. It's a very clear, no, they won't.' That gives me the opportunity to introduce quite a bit of banter between, because Kim hasn't really got any friends except for Brian, her work partner. And so we have quite a lot of banter there. So, although there's no romance between Kim and other characters, I soften the darkness with the humor rather than the romance, because that's not how I want to write the character. There's plenty of opportunities for humor. All of the characters that are in the core team, there's lots that I want to explore about their characters, but also I bring in different characters on a consultancy basis to just mix it up a little bit, give another dynamic. Also it's important to know when a character has served their time. I did do something in Book 8, which has caused a lot of bloggers and reviewers to say that they'll never ever forgive me. I won't say what it is, but it is important to know if there's nothing more about a character that you've got to say that will interest the reader. And it's a tough decision. I cried writing certain scenes. But to try and keep it fresh, you have to let certain ones go. But also I think it's creating characters that readers can identify with. And that's one of the things that always comes up in reviews about the books. The books are often referred to as a pair of old slippers, which I take is a huge compliment because people will say they open the book and joining the characters, again, is like putting on a pair of old slippers. There's that comfort in knowing the characters and content in that space, they know how the characters are going to act, how they're going to respond in certain situations. And so I think they don't always have to be completely likable. Kim isn't completely likable, but she does have redeeming features. She's quite rude, but she's passionate. So, always give the reader a reason to like the character, if you want them to like them, to hate them if you don't, and give a good cross-section of personalities. Joanna: Did you set out to plan a long-running series? Because 16 books, I mean, did you think that far ahead? How did you do the plotting and the planning right at the beginning? Angela: No, I had no idea. By the time Bookouture signed me, three books were already written because I had been with a London Agent for two years, which ended really rather badly. And that was the worst time of, certainly, mine and Julie's time because I'd given not work to try and give the writing thing a go. I'd taken voluntary redundancy after 19 years. And suddenly, we were selling our possessions to pay the mortgage, and that went on for a few months. I finally got a job of working night shifts, 12-hour night shifts. And then the reader that I'd worked with at the agency, she'd sent the ‘Silent Scream' to Bookouture without me really knowing. She let me know, and I was like, ‘Oh, that's nice.' I couldn't really get excited about it because I absolutely knew that the response was going to be, ‘We like it. We just don't love it.' Which is the response I'd had for over 20 years. But then when they did respond, which was a few days later, there was no book. And it was, like, ‘What other books have you written? What other ideas have you got?' So I've got three books written, and they wanted to sign me initially for four. I didn't really have a plan beyond those four because I just thought, ‘Well, you know, it'd be nice if 500 people read ‘Silent Scream', see what happens. I didn't have any expectations. There wasn't really a long-term plan at all. I always knew that there would be a lot of stories that I could explore with Kim. I don't plan. I'm a complete pantser. I tend to write the books around a subject that interests me or intrigues me. And then I build a plot outwards from that subject. And that's how I plot. I tend to know how I'm going to start, how I'm going to finish. And the in-between is a complete and utter blur. I allow it to happen organically. Once I start writing, that's when I get ideas for other characters and other storylines I'll be writing. And then I'll be making notes on another piece of paper saying, ‘Oh, and when she goes here, she'll meet this person. And then this person's going to have this story.' I do find that my best ideas come once I'm actually writing the book. As long as I know the first two or three chapters, I can then get on a roll, and then the bite comes. I always call it the bite. I don't want to put the pencil down, I want to be in my room every minute of the day, just getting this story down on paper. Joanna: That's so lovely to hear about that. And coming back on, because I'm similar to you, I'm like, ‘Oh, this subject really intrigues me.' The history of anatomy, my book Desecration. I went to an Anatomy Museum in London and I'm like, ‘Whoa, body parts in jars. That's interesting. Who are these people? And how did they get there? And what if there's a murder in the Anatomy Museum?' Then I looked at that. Tell us about some of the subjects that have intrigued you that have spun off into stories? Angela: In ‘Lost Girls,' that was Book 3, it remains my favorite. I wanted to explore the dynamics of a friendship when both children were kidnapped. I just wanted to explore what that would do to a friendship, what that would do to the parents. It was such a horrific situation to be in, how do you try and save the life of your own child while knowingly sacrificing another child that you know almost as well as your own? That was just an idea that built-in. And that remains my favorite book. Book 4, ‘Play Dead.' I wanted to explore very similar to what you were just saying, a body farm. I wanted to explore what kind of experiments that they do on a body farm. I did have many, many emails after ‘Play Dead' saying, ‘Does this facility actually exist in the West Midlands?' I was like, ‘No, it's completely fictional. We don't have a body farm.' But the research that goes into looking into these things is I love it because then I'm learning. I love to learn about new subjects. I wanted to write about hate crimes, which I did in Book 6. I wanted to write about cults and the methods that they use for pulling you, in which I did in, I think it was Book 12. Most of the books, or all of the books, come from either subject that interests me, or an idea that I just want to explore and then build a crime story out from that. So, I suppose the crime story comes second to the interest in the subject. Joanna: Yes, totally. The same for me. I really love that you say that because that's how I start. I feel like everybody starts in different places in terms of how the idea starts. And then we all end up in the same place, which is, we all have a finished book with the same types of things in character, and plot, and theme, and all of that. But we can all come from it from different angles, right? It doesn't matter where you start, as long as you finish with a book. Angela: Definitely. I think you can get caught up in what is the right and wrong way to do it because once I was lucky enough to do this for a living. I started to think, ‘I'm doing it all wrong. Now, I'm not planning. I'm not plotting. I'm not doing chapter outlines. I'm not writing out character profiles.' You can get caught in thinking the one-size-fits-all, and that everybody must do it a certain way.' I did try that with a book. I got to about chapter 7 and I was bored because there was no so surprise in it for me, I knew exactly what was going to happen from start to finish. And so there wasn't that organic surprise of, ‘Oh, here's a new idea. I know what I can do with that character.' It went in the bin. I learned from that, I thought, ‘It may not be everybody's way of doing it, but it's my way of doing it.' And I'll keep doing it until it doesn't work anymore. Luckily, it continues to work. I always breathe a sigh of relief when I get to the end of the first draft of a new book. And it's like, ‘Oh, I got there.' It's never a given. But I do think that we can become embroiled in what is the right and wrong way to do something. What's right is what works for you. Joanna: Totally agree. And it's interesting, you mentioned the body farm there. I get fascinated with these things, too. Do you think there's something in the darker crime writes? We don't know each other. We've never met before. And you come across as a very happy bubbly person and people say the same about me, and yet, we write these darker books. What role does writing darker things play in our lives? And how do you deal with some of what I'm sure people say about you in the same way they say about me? Angel: They do. I do have messages in the nicest possible way saying, ‘How do you sleep at night?' But I don't have any trouble sleeping at all, to be honest, because I think, all I write about is probably what I'd like to read about. And if I don't find it interesting, I don't think anybody else will find it interesting. So, I think a lot of the things is you can explore, and I've always said there's not any subject that I wouldn't explore, however horrific, as long as it's handled sensitively. I think that's where you have to be careful is how much detail you include because we don't want to be sensationalist about any subject. I don't want any headline-grabbing lines that cause people to feel revolted or real negative emotion because, at the end of the day, we're entertaining. So, for example, when I read a lot about body farms and researched it. There was an awful lot left out because it wasn't necessary for the story. I probably take it on what I want to read, the level of detail that I'd like to read. And in the case, in the books over the time, I've explored child abuse and child cruelty, but I've tried to do it sensitively so that people get a picture of what I'm writing. But I don't need to spell it out. I don't need to put people in that kind of position of feeling uncomfortable or don't want to trigger anybody. So, I think you can write about subjects, but you just have to try and do it sensitively. Joanna: Yes. And I think if people are reading crime thrillers, they know what they're going to get. Don't they? That it's part of the genre. Angela: It is. But surprisingly, the amount of emails I get with saying, ‘I didn't realize that this was involved.' I've looked back and I thought, ‘But it was on the blurb.' And you respond as politely as you can because you don't want anybody to be upset after reading any of the books or any portion of the books. Unfortunately, you can't list everything that everybody might be offended by because we're all offended by different things. I personally can't read anything to do with animal cruelty. I can have serial killers murdering as many people as you like, but I can't read anything about animal cruelty because it stays with me, and the pictures I can't get out of my head afterwards. So, it affects me quite negatively. It's a fine line of trying to do the story in your head justice but trying not to offend anybody. I'll get emails saying about the use of language, which I do. I do try and keep bad language to a minimum, but then I get messages saying, ‘Taking the Lord's name in vain.' And it's like, these are police officers. They have to show their frustration, and horror, and disgust somehow. And ‘Oh my golly, gosh,' isn't going to cut for it time every. Sometimes we need something a little bit stronger. Joanna: Yes. And these are all decisions we have to make as authors. It's funny on the swearing because the very first couple of novels I wrote had some swear words in that Americans consider swear words, and some British people don't consider swear words. In the end, I just took them all out. I was like, ‘You know, you're fine with the murder and the explosions and all of that, but not the swear words.' So, as you said, we are entertainers. We write the books we want to read, but also there are some lines that we do have to set up for our own writing. And then, look, if people don't want to read your books, they're not going to read your books, right? They make their own choice. Angela: That's the way you have to look at it in the end. When you've made a mistake, and I made a mistake in a recent book, and it was my own fault. I had a lady contact me to say that she was most upset by my use of the term ‘committed suicide' and not realizing what I'd done. Obviously, I went and had a look, and I sent back a totally apologetic email explaining that was my fault, my ignorance, I should have known better about the term being now offensive. And it's not a mistake I will ever make again. Readers letting you know how they felt about something actually can be quite a good thing. And I think when you've made a mistake, you just take it on the chin, and you admit it, and you apologize, and you just don't do it again. Joanna: Yes. And we should just say the term ‘died by suicide,' I believe is the correct term. Angela: Exactly. Joanna: Yes. And that's just partly to do with our age as well, I think, it's that we are brought up with a certain term. Angela: It is. I never thought of the word ‘committed' as being in relation to a crime. So, it was a complete and utter revelation to me because it was just a term that I'd grown up with. And being told it was an outdated term, it was an education for me. But I was thankful to be suitably advised, if you know what I mean, because I learned from it. And I won't do it again because I would hate to cause any offense to a family that's been through such a tragedy by me just not knowing the correct phraseology. We do make mistakes, and we just have to hold our hands up. I did on this occasion just said, ‘I am so sorry. And it will not happen again.' Joanna: And as you mentioned toward the beginning, a lot of this is about learning. And we put our learning in things and then we change them later if necessary. And that's life. You can't be right all the time on every single thing. Angela: Absolutely right. Joanna: I do want to just ask you about publishing, because you mentioned earlier that you had a bad experience with an agent that you'd got to a point where you were selling your possessions because you'd been laid off and you were doing these night shifts. And it sounds an absolute nightmare. Tell us about because Bookouture. Some people might know, some people don't, but it's a digital-first imprint. What is the difference between digital-first publishers and other types of publishers? Angela: I think one of the main differences, and certainly, for me, works is the schedule. I write two books a year, and everything in digital publishing is so immediate, there'll be a cover reveal. And then a little bit later, the book will go on NetGalley and then you'll have a publication day. And then before you know it, you've got a cover reveal for the next one and NetGalley. Lots of things happen throughout the year, which, obviously, with traditional publishing, it's a lot slower and longer process than that. So, I absolutely love the pace of the digital marketing. The books have been on shelves in the supermarket. And obviously, when I was writing all those years, the dream was absolutely to see the books on shelves in supermarkets and bookshops. And I have to say, it was lovely. But as I say to people, the books in the bookshops might pay for the electric, but the eBooks pay the mortgage. For me, being with a digital-first publisher works perfectly. I wouldn't want to be with anybody else. I continue to sign more deals with Bookouture. And I have told them, they'll have to get security to throw me out when they eventually don't want to publish the books anymore. They're happy with that. I'm happy with that, but there is nothing that any other publisher could give me that Bookouture don't. I don't have an agent. Everything is transparent with me, and my editor, and the marketing team. Because when I joined Bookouture, it was four people, which was Oliver who founded it. There was Kim, the publicity manager. There was Claire, the publishing director. And then Keshini, who had brought me on board. She then joined the team as my editor. She was my editor for the first eight books. So, it was a very small team. And it's a much bigger team now, but it's still is transparent. I can send anybody an email or have a chat with anybody on the phone any time at all. Everyone is accessible. There's no cause at all for me to want to be published by anybody else. And ultimately, I'm a hugely loyal person. And after all those years and a very bad experience, Bookouture gave the books a try. They gave me and Kim Stone a chance. That will never, ever be forgotten because if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now. I do still pinch myself every day that I am lucky enough to call something that I love doing, a job, and that never gets old. Every single day, I realize how lucky I am. And so there is nothing any other publisher could do for me that Bookouture don't. So, now I'm not moving. They're stuck with me. Joanna: I love that you are so positive and grateful about your publisher because many authors, obviously, have disappointing experiences, but it sounds like you had all your disappointment before you got your publisher and now you are happy. We should point out that you joined in 2014, as you mentioned, it was very early. And I think, I'm just checking 2017, Bookouture was bought by Hachette. And so is no longer the, I know you said it still has the same feeling for you, but it is quite different now. I don't want to give the impression to people listening that it's the same, it's not even the same company anymore, basically, it has changed. But obviously, your experience is amazing. So, those relationships have obviously kept you going through the whole time. In turn, let's just talk about marketing for a minute, because you mentioned marketing there. And many people joining a publisher think that they never have to do marketing again because the publisher does that. What kind of marketing things do you have to do? And what does Bookouture do? Angela: I'm really not very good at it. But what I try and do is the publisher marketing team, they are fabulous and they know what I'm comfortable with because I'm a huge social anxiety sufferer. So, in-person things is not something I'm very good at doing. I think COVID got me able to do podcasts and Facebook Lives and interviews. I'm a huge anxiety sufferer. So, these bigger things tend to paralyze me. Listeners with anxiety will completely get what I'm talking about. What I try and do is stay accessible. Kim, Noelle, Ellen, Sarah, and the rest of the team, they are looking for opportunities where we can advertise the books, or just get some coverage, or run publication days and that kind of thing. And what I try and do is to interact as much as I possibly can on social media, on Twitter, on Facebook. I've got to be honest, I can't get my head around Instagram. I've tried. TikTok is a complete unknown quantity to me. I've got my also page on Facebook and the website. And I just try and interact in the book groups, the book clubs online and that kind thing, and respond to all the messages. When there's a new book out, that takes over the day job because it's suddenly, it's like this woosh of attention, which is fabulous. I am allowed to spend publication day completely on social media and do nothing else. So, that's what I try and do. And then whatever it is that Kim, Sarah, and Noelle told me to do. Joanna: That's great. I think, as you say, you are open to their suggestions, but then you are participating in a very positive way, like being on this show. Your publicist did approach me, but your participation is wholehearted. You mentioned anxiety, I also have the same thing, maybe not as bad. But going to London Book Fair last week, it was an absolute nightmare. I was so scared. And I sometimes get on the phone like this and my heart is pounding. And so that doesn't necessarily go away. But as you say, you kind of just have to go, ‘Well, this is my dream job, and I have to do this.' Right? You have to talk yourself into it. Angela: Well, now doing things like this, now I just see them as having a chat. And Julie put that in my head. She was like, ‘Look, you're in your own home, you're in your own environment where you feel comfortable. You're just going to chat with people.' A couple of years ago, it wouldn't have been as easy as it is now because doing this, I would be conscious of my accent and I would be trying to cover it. And I would think that I'm just going to say the wrong thing. And all these things are going on in your head while you're trying to talk. Julie would just keep saying to me, ‘Just be yourself, speak like yourself. People know you come from the Black Country. It doesn't matter how you try to hide it, it's going to come through, and just be yourself.' So, now, it's just, I'm going online to have a chat, and that's it. It's far more enjoyable than it used to be when I think, ‘Oh god, I'm going to say these wrong. I'm this wrong. I'm going to mess this up. I'm not going to say this.' And now I just don't think about it. I just roll with it now, which is a lot less stressful. Joanna: Indeed, and you are a fantastic interviewee by the way. I love your accent. And I think people listening will love your accent. We judge ourselves by standards that other people might not judge us by. Angela: It's true. It's true because I had this delivery guy the other day anyway because we just got out of the Black Country, Worcestershire. And he delivered some soil, and he went, ‘Oh, that's a Brummy accent.' I went, ‘No, it isn't, it's Black Country. And you could get killed for saying things like that.' That's the thing. It's always an association with a Brummy accent, which I think is viewed quite negatively. Brummy and Black Country, we like to keep the difference. Joanna: I think it's brilliant. Tell people where they can find you and your books online. Angela: Definitely on Amazon, on iBooks, on Kobo. So, they're all out there. The paperbacks are available. The audio is available. So, yet, I think they're pretty much spread across all of the online mediums. Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Angela. That was great. Angela: No, it's been brilliant. It's been lovely to have a chat. It's flown by.The post Writing A Successful Crime Thriller Series With Angela Marsons first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you make more money without growing the size of your business? What systems and mindset do you need to focus on in order to leverage your limited time? Elaine Pofeldt talks about Tiny Business, Big Money in this interview. In the intro, Google Play Books opens up their AI narration for audiobooks; thoughts on Twitter and Elon Musk [PR Newswire], and Imaginable: How to see the future coming and be ready for anything, by Jane McGonigal. Plus, limited time: Writing Craft and Business ebook and course bundle [Storybundle.com/writing]; and Self Publishing 101 by Mark Dawson course (affiliate link). Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, where you can get free ebook formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Get your free Author Marketing Guide at www.draft2digital.com/penn Elaine Pofeldt is an independent journalist specializing in small business and entrepreneurship, as well as an author, editor, and ghostwriter. Elaine was previously on the show in 2020 talking about her previous book The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business. Today we're talking about her latest book Tiny Business, Big Money, Strategies for Creating a High-Revenue Microbusiness. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes The definition of a microbusiness, and how that applies to solopreneursHow successful microbusinesses survived the pandemic by diversifyingWhy we need to separate the ‘writer' from the ‘business owner' and work out what's really importantTools and strategies of successful microbusinessesThe importance of long-term thinking and building relationshipsBreaking through the ‘low price' barrier to sell higher value productsWhat works for marketing non-fiction books? You can find Elaine Pofeldt at TinyBusinessBigMoney.com and on Twitter @ElainePofeldt Transcript of Interview with Elaine Pofeldt Jo: Elaine Pofeldt is an independent journalist specializing in small business and entrepreneurship, as well as an author, editor, and ghostwriter. Elaine was previously on the show in 2020 talking about her previous book The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business. Today we're talking about her latest book Tiny Business, Big Money, Strategies for Creating a High-Revenue Microbusiness. Welcome back to the show, Elaine. Elaine: Thank you so much, Joanna, it's great to be here. Jo: I'm excited to talk about this. So, let's start with your definition. What is your definition of a tiny business or a micro business? Elaine: For the purposes of this book, I looked at businesses that were 20 employees or less, but, generally speaking, they were 5 employees or less. And some of them didn't have employees, they just had a recurring team of contractors. What was different from the first book is that, if they did use contractors, it wasn't the random contractor here and there, this was a team. And the owner of the business had to act as a leader of a team, which is a big transition for a lot of solopreneurs. Jo: I think this is why I wanted to talk to you because this is exactly what most authors listening have. My business is a tiny business, I'm the only employee, but I have a team of freelancers and I manage it all. What was it that made you want to write this book after the last one? What is it about micro businesses that made you go, ‘Yes, I need to write another book on this'? Elaine: What got me interested in micro businesses was, as a business journalist, I noticed that almost all of the coverage on small businesses was about startups that were hoping to scale into the next unicorn. There was very little about the type of business that most people actually aspire to run, which is the solo business. A lot of people are looking for a lifestyle business that allows them to replace their income from a corporate job but not have the stress. They don't necessarily want to scale, they like to keep their business small. What I found was, after I did the first business, a number of the businesses said, ‘Elaine, we're really sorry but we hired someone,' and I would say, ‘that's awesome. You don't have to apologize to me for hiring somebody. I'm not against growing a business.' What I think the challenge was for a lot of them was the leadership part of it. When you start transitioning from being a writer to being a writer with a team, you need to communicate more. And even though communication may be your forte, it's a different type of communication as to what is expected of people on the team, when are the deliverables due, what does good look like, and that sort of thing. You can lose the little bit of freedom if you don't get it right because you're then always having to put out fires. So, I thought, ‘What can I find out from entrepreneurs who are a step or two ahead of these entrepreneurs in terms of growing their business past the one-person stage that will help them to avoid those pitfalls and keep their great lifestyle?' And that is what this new book is about. Jo: So much to unpack there, but I do want to just come back to you, the timeline of this. Because 2020, when we talked last time, to now, which is we're recording this in April, 2022, well, of course we've had 2 years of a global pandemic, which is still going on in a lot of places. How has the pandemic impacted tiny businesses? Elaine: It's had a huge effect. A lot of them closed, here in the U.S., and I'm sure that's true around the world. What I found in keeping up with the entrepreneurs in the first book and in learning the stories of the entrepreneurs in the second book was the ones that survived were very diversified. They didn't have just one sales channel. For instance, if they were a brick-and-mortar business that did service, maybe they also had a product. I think writers did pretty well overall because we do digital work, to some extent, our whole careers are online. But even so there was some disruption for people in terms of their client base. Maybe some of their clients weren't digitally-based and took a hit and, therefore, didn't need the services that they once did, or couldn't afford it. It behooved everybody, I think, to diversify, find new customer pools, and really make sure they were optimizing their business so that there was not a lot of waste in it. And that's what the key to survival was, I think, for many of them. Jo: You mentioned lifestyle and a lifestyle business, which is what I have. I'm one of those people also, I don't want to scale in terms of the number of employees. I do want to scale in terms of money, which is why I like, that you say, a high-revenue micro business. But in terms of the lifestyle, we've also heard a lot about the issues with working from home and, obviously, people have had childcare. Is lifestyle business, or freedom you also mentioned, is that actually false? Does running your own micro business really give you these things or do you actually end up just working all the time? Elaine: A lot depends on the systems that you put in place. A lifestyle business can take over your life and be your lifestyle if you're not careful. But that's where being very conscious is important. Sometimes I know I've made the mistake of taking on clients who take far too much time, they're not a good fit for the business. And that can cut into your time with your children or your pets or your hobbies or the other things that matter to you. You have to be very mindful, I think, in terms of which clients are the right ones for you, which types of products are the most efficient for you, and also setting limits as to when you work and where you work. You can literally work all the time, if you're a writer, but that doesn't mean you should. And part of this goes into planning, just looking at your schedule every week and saying, ‘What time will I block out that is only for fun or only for my family or only for the other things in life?' and that forces you to be disciplined and contain the work into other time slots so that it doesn't take over. Jo: That is something that I find very hard, and I think a lot of people listening probably find hard too. Because everything in life for a writer becomes fodder for the next book, right? If you're writing fiction, it's like, ‘Oh, look, there's an interesting character,' or, ‘that setting might go well in my book.' And it's really hard to ever turn the brain off. What are your tips for writers in particular in terms of the separation between practitioner and business owner? Elaine: Oh, you're so right about that occupational hazard, Joanna. I remember, as a teenager, my English teacher sent me to a writing conference. I wish I knew who said this, it was one of the speakers, she said, ‘When you're a writer, nothing is ever wasted.' I think we go into life thinking everything will make a good story and things can take up a lot of our time that maybe we shouldn't be spending it on if we want to also have a business. So, I think part of it is really having a purpose in your business. I know I work with a business coach, his name is Doug Wick, and he's been a great coach for me, he works with middle-market companies. And the reason I worked with him even though my business is much smaller than a middle-market company was he had survived a cancer diagnosis where he had a 2%, less than a 2% chance to live. He's very focused on what's important. And I thought, ‘My life is totally different from his. I'm a mother with four children, now that my oldest are teenagers, and for me that's a priority. So, saying yes to them means saying no to other things.' No one understands that better than someone who has been basically told their life is over. Luckily, he had a stem-cell transplant, he survived and now, more than 10 years later, he's fine. I think keeping that in mind. None of us has unlimited time and we really have to make decisions. If we say yes to one thing, that means we're saying no to doing other things in that time. I find that's a kind of simple tool to use every time you say yes to things. Sometimes they're worthy, it might be volunteering to do something, but is that a cause that really matters to you or are you saying no to a cause that does because you're just randomly doing this thing because it sounds nice to do? That's the kind of thinking you need, I think, to have a balanced life and not let everything take over. Jo: I find this is part of the problem though is that a lot of people coming into, say, ‘the author life,' they think that their job is writing full time. And those of us who are full-time writers, will hear things like, ‘Well, you're not a real full-time writer because you don't write all the time.' I feel like it's almost a misnomer to say that one is a full-time anything. You have a lot of different titles as well but we all have to do different things when we're running a business that is different to the work of the products that go into the business, I suppose. It is important, it does have a priority, right? How can we reframe the ‘work' of the business? Elaine: You need some time to write but I think getting caught up in what other people think about you, as a writer, is a trap. The proof is in the output really. So, if something took you 80 hours to write or took you 1 hour, it doesn't really matter. Reminding yourself of that is important because there are so many tools to be more efficient that, maybe if your work is taking an inordinate amount of time, that's just because you're not using the best tools. For instance, transcriptions, there are all kinds of tools out there that you can use for transcriptions. Or you can transcribe yourself, that will add hours to your business and make it full time. But should you be doing that? Or would you be better served by going on a walk in the woods and just letting your mind wander and letting your creativity flow? I think it's almost an industrial-era perspective where you were punching a clock and, if you didn't work 37.5 hours a week, you weren't really working. But I think we all need to work on throwing that out the window because we're in the digital age where a lot of things can be done quickly. That said, it is important to have a regular writing practice or you won't get the results. I'm a really big believer that practices like martial arts and yoga, two things that I actually really enjoy, are a good model for a writing practice. Interestingly, in the book Tiny Business, Big Money, I did a survey of the seven-figure entrepreneurs. I think it was 88% exercise and the top exercise was yoga. I think what these practices teach you is the value of showing up. You could sit down and write something day after day and nothing good will happen, you just throw it out, delete the file, and etc. Then, one day, somehow, as a result of all that work, the magic happens and it all comes together and you solve the writing problem. If you didn't keep showing up and just showed up on that day, I don't think it would've happened. This is just my belief. Because this is what I see with yoga. I have some moves I've been working on for years, and then there's one called ‘the crow' where you're… Jo: Oh yeah, I know that one. Elaine: The crow, right, you're perched on your hands and then you put your knees on your elbows. I used to face plant for two years, I couldn't do it. Then, one day, suddenly, I came and I could do it. Now I can do it going into a headstand, going back into it, shooting my feet out, doing all these crazy yoga tricks. I never would've believed that I could do it, and I think the reason I can do it is during the pandemic it was really the only form of exercise with a group that was available to me, living in the New York area, my school met outside. So, I just went to it more than I usually did. And that was when I really got the results. I think the same is true with writing. The more you do it over and over again, the more proficient you get. But I don't think it matters exactly how many hours, it's more that, even if you have just one hour a day, that you're really present and you really put your best effort forward. That I think is what really helps. Jo: I love that, I think that's so important too, having a practice. I love that you also mentioned the industrial-era perspective. I still struggle with this, or I guess we can also call it the Protestant work ethic. The fact that, if you are not putting in 10 hours a day or 12 hours a day, then, clearly, you're not working hard enough. I definitely struggle with this. My husband is very good at changing processes so things are more efficient, which is what you mentioned. You do have tools and things in the book, and you mentioned transcription. What are some of the other tools that you found that people are using in these tiny businesses? Elaine: One thing that might be helpful to your listeners would be an exercise that I actually did with my coach, which was to take an Excel spreadsheet or a Google sheet and put in all the hours of the day and actually map out what you're doing. Because that will help you to identify time that might be wasted or better spent on something else in the business. I found that tremendously helpful. Even if it's not business-related, for instance, if you feel like seeing friends would actually make you happier and, therefore, you'd bring your best self, for lack of a better phrase, to your business, and you seem to have no time for friends, you might identify that you're spending a certain amount of time at the laundromat, or something like that, and you should send your laundry out and, therefore, you would have time for friends. It helps you identify things like that that you're probably not aware of just because you get into habits and routines. Or you can spot things that you're doing out of obligation that maybe no longer serve you and that you could drop and free time for other things. When my children were younger, sometimes it's hard to run a business when you have small children, you might find that, by not doing one other thing, you'll have the time to spend in your business and make more money. The other thing I would recommend is setting income goals because that can free you from some of the constraints of that industrial-era thinking. If you say, ‘I need to make $2,000 a week,' I'm just throwing that number out there hypothetically, and you've hit the $2,000, then you'll feel less pressure to log the hours because you've already achieved the income goal. So, shifting your goals to a monetary goal. Or it could be an aspirational goal like getting into a certain publication. If I write an article for the economist, I pitch it successfully and get it published this month, that will be one of my goals. If you set goals like that that really matter to you, you'll have the sense of progress you need in the business, assuming you're also bringing in income from other things and meeting your income goals, that can free you also from that. It's really an employee mindset. That's one of the things I talked about in one of the earlier chapters of the book was the mindset to be an entrepreneur. A lot of us have been trained to be employees, pretty much most of us, by our schools, by our parents, by every influence that has surrounded us until we entered the work world. So, it's no wonder we think that way, and I don't think anyone should beat themselves up for thinking that way. But you almost have to unlearn it and really think about just results. What are the results? And if I can get them quickly, why do I have to follow the rules of doing things that I learned in a corporate job? Because I'm not in one anymore. I'll give you an example. I do a lot of different projects for different clients. When I do a project for a corporate client, just to pitch a blog, I would have to create a PowerPoint maybe involving the art department, to pitch it to the client. It could take 9 months for the blog to get published, 19 people could weigh in on it. It will take that much effort because it might be for a big organization where those people all are stakeholders. But you don't have to do all those things, there's no point in doing a PowerPoint about a blog if you're doing it one-on-one for a client. So, if you think about the processes that you follow, they might be suited for a different business environment than you're now working in, as a freelancer. And the more you can weed those out and just focus directly on the work, the better off you'll be. That is part of mindset, it's letting go of this feeling, like, ‘I have to be the perfect employee,' and just saying, ‘I have to be the perfect entrepreneur for me and do things my own way.' There's a writer in the book, Brian Dean, who founded Backlinko, and I actually just reconnected with him. He sold the business to SEMrush and he had created a course, it came out of an article he wrote about search-engine optimization. He's an introvert, he does not like meetings, and he managed the whole business on Notion. And he was able to sell business to a publicly traded company. So, if he can do that, then why do we have to follow all the rules, right? Jo: It's interesting. Many of my audience are independent authors. And people often say, ‘Oh, well, in traditional publishing, there are these types of rules.' And then what's happened in the 15 years that I've been in independent publishing is we've ended up making our own rules for a so-called independent movement, which now has these rules, in inverted commas, like you must put the book on Amazon and do this on launch week and blah-blah-blah. And, of course, there are best practices, but how can we use best practices but, at the same time, not be an employee in that way and just, like, ‘Well, that's the rule, so, we have to follow it.'? There's this tension between best practices and rules. Do we need to break out of that? Elaine: I think we do. One way to do it is to reverse engineer your own successes. If you look back at your own greatest hits, say, you got an article in a prestigious publication or you sold a book to a publisher or your self-published book was a big hit, if you think about the things that led up to that, you'll start to identify your own best practices, and they may be very different from what you did in corporate. One example might be pitching a project. Somebody who has never pitched a project in an industry will get a book on pitches or find an article on pitches and try to mirror other people's successful pitches and try to use the same subject lines that they use and all that other stuff. But if you've started to build relationships in the industry, maybe the best way to pitch a project is you go out with one of your friends from the industry for a drink and you start talking about work, or whatever, and then it just flows naturally into the conversation that you've been wanting to do this article. Then your friend's like, ‘Oh, we need an article on that,' and they hire you. That's not a formal pitch but it might've been very effective for you. And what was really effective was that you've taken the time to build relationships in your industry to the point you're really friendly with your clients and you're both helping each other. So, if that really is what has worked for you, then doing those other types of pitches is probably a waste of time and you really need to be doubling down your efforts going to industry events or making time for coffee with your friends or phone catch-ups. Whatever is feasible, whatever state of the pandemic we're in. It's that type of thing that will be a reality check for you to say, ‘Hey, wait a minute, I didn't do any of those things that I was told I was supposed to do, and yet, this was my biggest placement ever. So, I'm going to stick with what actually worked for me.' I think that's kind of what Brian Dean did was he found that using Notion, a tech platform, worked really well for him with project management and scaling his business. There was no need to go on a Zoom meeting or other things that he “should” be doing. That didn't work for him. He didn't want to do it, he dreaded it, and he was just going to throw it out the window, and he found a new way to do it. Jo: And like you said, he's an introvert. I know a lot of people listening are introverts. I'm an introvert and I just was thinking about relationships there. You and I, this is the second time we've talked on the phone, and I think I actually think I pitched you for the first time because I saw your book come out and I was like, ‘this looks really amazing,' or, I heard you on another show. And then this time you reached out to me because we got on last time. Right? So, you could say we have an acquaintance-style relationship. But just from one conversation and a friendly email we have developed what is happily a nice conversation and also content marketing for us and, hopefully, useful for the listeners. I feel like long-term relationships are really important. And also this kind of connection, rather than a relationship, can also be really good. Right? Elaine: Oh, absolutely. I think it's really important, whether you're an introvert or an extrovert, to find ways to get to know the people that you work with beyond just the transaction. I think some of us have been taught to focus on every hour that we work to make sure we're getting the most out of each hour in terms of productivity, but I have found, I love talking with people, I don't know if I'm an introvert or an extrovert, I can't really tell, but I enjoy chatting. I really enjoyed our conversation. I remembered it and I thought of you immediately when I had a new book because I just felt like we enjoyed talking about the last one. But I think we ran over too because we had a lot to talk about, giving yourself that extra little window to chat with someone and get to know them, and maybe I hear about something that might be useful to you six months from now or make an introduction or whatever, doing those things you really don't know where they're going to lead. But if you're in an industry where you enjoy the people, it makes it a lot easier. So, it might be, as a writer, if you find a niche where that's happening for you more, where you just find yourself running over, talking to the people or chatting back and forth, if you prefer text messaging or other types of chatting over talking, that will help you grow your business. It's not necessarily for that reason. I've made a lot of great friends through my work that I'm friends with outside of anything to do with freelance writing, now we do all kinds of things, I just like them as people, but part of it is placing yourself in a niche within your industry where that will happen, that makes it easier. But then giving yourself that little breathing room to really get to know real human beings and develop more of a, whatever you want to call it, relationship or whatever it is, just two human beings connecting around a shared passion, there's a lot of power and energy in that. Jo: I agree. You talk quite a lot about mindset, and I think another thing is this long-term thinking, and relationships would also come under that. As you say, you might meet someone at a conference and then, two years later, something might come up and you can reconnect again. I feel also that with growing a small business in every aspect, your craft, relationships, the clients, all of this takes time. When you were looking at the common mindset issues, how was long-term thinking part of that? And also, if people struggle with that, what are your tips for developing that long-term thinking? Elaine: One thing that allows you to do the long-term thinking is putting the right financial foundation in place for your business. I know that seems removed, but what I've seen time and time again with any type of small business, it could be a writing practice or something else, is, if people run out of money, they can't think long term, they can't think about the big picture projects they'd like to do. You do books, books are a long-term project. You can't possibly do a book on a book advance or if you're self-publishing. Unless you get a really, really big advance, you need some other form of income. So, maybe you have a day job, maybe you're doing bread-and-butter editing or something like that to fund the other stuff, maybe you live in a really small apartment, so, you have the freedom to write, but if you don't have those pieces in place, you just will never have the luxury of getting out of scarcity mode, emergency mode, crisis mode. You'll never have the mental space to be a big-picture thinker. So, I think that's really important. It's also very important to have a peer group to support you. It's very easy to feel alienated if you're only surrounded by people who have traditional jobs because they're following a different life path and maybe they're planning to retire with a pension or they've had a big 401k or things that are harder for writers to have. If you surround yourself with successful writers who are navigating those issues too, you'll have other people who are on this journey with you, so, you don't abandon the long-term thinking, they find ways. A friend of mine is finding a way to take the summer off to work on a novel, and she's been wanting to do this for a really long time, but, finally, she got all the financial pieces lined up. And that's really inspiring to me to think, ‘Well, wow, we've been doing the same type of work all these years.' She's taking the summer off, something that I have not been able to do with four kids, two of whom are heading to college this year, but it inspired me. I think that's important too is if you can find, even if it's just one friend who's doing the same type of career as you are, it really adds a lot. Jo: I totally agree with you. I've blogged every year since I've gone full time, which is coming up for 12 years now, I've blogged my lessons learned from that year. And my lessons learned from year one were exactly that, which was, ‘I need some structure,' ‘I need a community,' ‘I don't know anyone,' ‘this is really hard,' ‘I want to run back to the day job.' It was meeting other people who were independent authors and who I could talk to, just have a coffee with, and go, ‘This is really hard, why is it so hard?' That really helped me in that first couple of years. And that's what I almost say to people now, ‘That first six months is a bit kind of white knuckle in that you don't know what you're doing, you're just trying to figure it out.' As you say, having other forms of income is really important. I feel like we undervalue that community. You almost just have to reach out in some way, don't you, to find those people? Elaine: You definitely do, and you have to make yourself a little bit vulnerable. But the way I look at it is, if somebody doesn't take you up on going out for coffee or a phone call, you have no idea why that is. It could be that they have a personal issue going on, it could be that they're ill. Who knows what their situation is? You can't take it personally. Although maybe it is kind of a personal overture, reaching out in friendship. And the more you reach out, the more comfortable you'll get with it and the more great relationships you'll have. Making time every week to do that, it might just be reaching out to help people. If you see someone put something on LinkedIn and they need a connection for an article that they're writing, that can be the start of something more to find that community of other people like you. I think it's really important to have people in your network of all ages too. I think one thing is we tend to self-select our own demographic in terms of networking. But as a writer, one thing that I think is important is to see the new ways things are being done. Having younger friends who grew up with different technologies is really a great asset. I literally just, a few minutes ago, learned about a few different technologies from a friend of mine who's really tech-savvy. I'm going to add that I have to test them out and add them to my repertoire. Same thing with older friends because they may have deep industry knowledge that you don't have about something or a different network than you have or just a different perspective. I think that's an important thing for any writer also. Any entrepreneur really for that matter. Jo: Let's talk a bit more about money because I wanted to share a quote from the book. The difference between a tiny business that makes big money and one that makes average money is often in finding a way to charge premium prices by delivering unusual value. This is a fantastic quote, but the problem with most authors listening, and you as well, you write a book and there is a very clear price range for a book, for example. Any tips on turning things into big money for authors and writers? Elaine: A [non-fiction] book is often a calling card but it may not be the way that you make the six-figure or seven-figure income. For most people it won't be because, I think, we both know a lot of writers, how many really do just from the book alone? If you really strike it hot and get lucky or if you have a number of books and you're starting to get royalties every year, you have self-published books, and, as a group, they start bringing in that kind of revenue, that's more achievable. One area to look at is other ancillary products. For instance, you could do a course. One of the writers in the book, her name is Laura Belgray, you may know her, she's a copywriter, she's very funny, and she was actually making $1,450 per hour for her services. Which is probably 10 times what most people would make. And she found it to be a lot of pressure because, when people are paying you that kind of money, you really have to perform in that hour. So, she decided to create…well, she had some two PDF courses about copywriting, one of them was about how to create your About Us page. And she wasn't really marketing them very heavily. So, she worked with a business coach and he said, ‘What if you sent out your email newsletter three times a week and promoted these more?' And she already had created them, she hired a designer to make them look nice but they were very low-tech. Then she also started a mastermind about copywriting and she made it a point to include people from different industries. So, there was really interesting chemistry in this mastermind and it was a combination of everything that brought her to seven figures. And then she wound up very rarely doing the hourly work anymore, even though it paid well, it was just too stressful. And that's where she is now. Actually, the last time I spoke with her, she was working on a book which sounded really funny. I think she's got a really good model. Another entrepreneur in the book, he's also a copywriter, Dana Derricks. He lives on a goat farm, it seems like it's more of a hobby-type farm in Wisconsin, and children visit it and that sort of thing, but he has this copywriting business and he actually scaled it to the point where he had employees. He didn't like having employees because of all the compliance and then he went back to more of a freelance team. But what he does is high ticket books where he sells books to his clients related to copywriting but he prices them based on the value of the information. He started with a $400 book and he sold over a 1,000 copies of that, and then he kept upping the ante a little bit. And it seemed that he maybe topped out at $1,500 per book. And then there was a point of diminishing returns. I thought that was an interesting mindset to think about, ‘Well, wow, if they applied all the information in this book, it would be worth at least $400.' And he had takers. So, that might be something else to think about is there a convention in your industry that makes no sense to you about how things are priced. There is the reality of what the market will bear. If you're doing copy editing, I don't think you can charge $2,000 an hour for that but maybe you could do a copy-editing course or, how to become a copywriter in a weekend retreat at your nice apartment somewhere. There are a lot of examples of this in the book of people taking their knowledge and turning it into a product. It's not an overnight thing, all of these things require product development, but when you had mentioned about long-term thinking, Joanna, it's so important. That will allow you to say, ‘Okay, I want to introduce my PDF course on whatever this year, so, I need to have every Friday off to work on it. Therefore, I'm going to take on this really high-paying bread-and-butter work to finance that, even though I'm not going to be taking in any money from it the first year.' Doing it one step at a time instead of trying to do nine things at once seems to be the way that a lot of these folks work, by the way. Because otherwise you spread yourself too thin and then nothing gets done. And there's sort of a negative energy I think that comes from having unfinished products, projects, and this gives you those wins so that you feel there is momentum. And you also learn. If you release a product or mastermind and nobody signs up, maybe your pricing is wrong or you've named it the wrong thing or you released it the wrong time of year. You have an opportunity to learn from the first one and then use that to make the next one better. Jo: I think so much there it's learning about yourself, it's learning about the product. And then, of course, your life changes. I've been doing this for 15 years, and my business model has changed multiple times because things change. You decide to pivot into a new way and you try something else. I think that's probably another long-term thing is to have a business for the long term. It doesn't mean you set up a business and it just stays like that until you die. Things change, right? Elaine: Yes, the whole market might change, the demand for certain things. In my business, I started out just doing freelance journalism, and then there was a demand for content writing that started taking off, and I added that on. And then, in the great recession, some of the journalism dried up and I got more heavily into copywriting and marketing. Then when things came back, then I was really busy but I realized it made sense to switch to adding some retainer clients to have more of a steady income instead of project by project. So, then I emphasized those clients, some of whom became book clients. We would do the content and then that kind of morphed into books. Now probably the majority of my income comes from ghostwriting books. And interestingly, it's not intentional but the fact that I write books attracts the right type of clients to me because they like my writing style in my own books and they can very easily see if we have a similar mindset or not just by reading the books. That's been kind of an interesting thing that's happened that I didn't expect. I don't know, you may have found that too for you. Jo: I don't do any ghostwriting but it is interesting how we pivot over time. We're almost out of time ourselves, and I did want to ask you because you do have two non-fiction books under your own name. And in terms of book marketing, because people are always interested, like, ‘How do you market a book?' What have you found works best for marketing your non-fiction books? Elaine: For me personally, I have found podcasting to be a really great engine for meeting people that are genuinely interested in the types of things that I write about. Because podcasts are so niche that people won't listen to a podcast if they're really not interested in the topic. They also have to self-select the topic. If they see ‘Tiny Business, Big Money' and they have no interest in running a business, they won't even listen to it. So, it brings to me a lot of the types of people that will enjoy my books, and a lot of them become friends. Also, live events have been really helpful for me. With my first book, I did a lot of live events where I would do panel discussions with the entrepreneurs that I profiled in the book. I found that was so powerful, I couldn't believe how powerful it was sometimes. I would do events at the New York Public Library and there would be people out the door, like over 200 people, coming to these free events on a Thursday night to talk to the actual entrepreneurs. I think it's because they're regular people, just like anyone else, and yet they've achieved these great results. People actually want to see them and talk to them and hear from them. And they can say it better than I ever can because they're talking about their own lives. So, that was very effective, and I think I will be resuming that again now that the weather is a little warmer and we can do meetings safely. I've been holding off a little bit with the pandemic, I'm in the New York area, but I think the timing is right to get people back together. For folks that are in a part of the world where that's feasible right now, that might be another option. Zoom events and things like that can also be helpful in terms of reaching a more global audience, and I do do a lot of Zoom events but I feel like, at this point in the pandemic, a lot of people are screened out. They don't want to look at another Zoom call. So, I do it sparingly, only if I feel like the event will really reach people that are genuinely interested in what I write about. Jo: Brilliant. Where can people find you and your books online? Elaine: They can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook under my full name Elaine Pofeldt. And that's in the show notes, the spelling. Or on Instagram @milliondollaronepersonbusiness. I do write back, it makes me a better journalist to know what you're curious about or to know your story. Sometimes I end up covering people that I hear from in that way. The book is available on major bookstores Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all the other major bookstores. I have a website tinybusinessbigmoney.com that has links to the bookstores that carry it. So, do reach out, I hope to hear from you. And I really appreciate that the listeners have tuned in. Jo: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Elaine, that was great. Elaine: Thank you so much, I really appreciate the show. You do so much for the writing community, so, thank you.The post Tiny Business, Big Money With Elaine Pofeldt first appeared on The Creative Penn.

How can you hook readers into your story by using universal human desires and motivations? How can you write what you love, run your author business your way, and still maintain the ambition for a 7-figure author business? Theodora Taylor gives her thoughts in this interview. In the intro, self-publishing predictions for the 2020s [ALLi]; The Unexpected Road to an Unconventional Life [Books and Travel]; Craft and business of writing limited-time bundle available now! [Storybundle.com/writing] Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with Scrivener, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 25% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna Theodora Taylor is the best-selling author of over 50 books across contemporary, sci-fi, shifter, and interracial romance. She's also the author of 7 Figure Fiction: How to Use Universal Fantasy to Sell Your Books to Anyone, under T. Taylor. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes From traditional publishing to indie — and discovering the joy of being a one-person independent business as an authorWhy romance authors are always ahead of the curveWhat are universal fantasies and how are they different from tropes?Your market may be bigger than you thinkConsistency and time as the pillars of a successful author careerEmbracing our author ambitionCreating assets that bring in multiple streams of income for the long term You can find Theodora Taylor at 7FigureFiction.com and on Twitter @Theodorawrites Transcript of Interview with Theodora Taylor Joanna: Theodora Taylor is the best-selling author of over 50 books across contemporary, sci-fi, shifter, and interracial romance. She's also the author of 7 Figure Fiction: How to Use Universal Fantasy to Sell Your Books to Anyone, under T. Taylor. Welcome Theodora. Theodora: Thank you for having me, Joanna. Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you about this. I bought the book, I think it was last year. And I was like, ‘This is amazing. I want everyone to read this.' Tell us a bit more about you and your writing journey, and also how you transitioned from traditional to indie publishing. Theodora: The short version is that I was a writer. I spent two years pouring my heart and soul into a book, a women's fiction novel. And it sold in a somewhat splashy deal to a traditional publisher. And the movie rights sold before it was published, and it was really kind of set up to do great things, and then it just flopped. The movie deal went away. Everything went away. I had a contract to write a second book. I spent another two years writing that, and promoting the first book, doing things like signings and readings, and all that kind of stuff they used to have before indie really kind of changed what releasing a book was. I wrote a second book. I sent it to my editor. She sent me back this scathing letter, with all the things that were wrong with the book. It was really crushing. I called my best friend, and I said, ‘Oh, she hated everything except for the sex scenes. I might as well become a romance writer.' But then that became, ‘Wait a minute. Maybe I should become a romance writer.' So I did my first of what I could now consider many, many experiments throughout my writing career. My agent said, ‘Okay, we're going to send this around to other publishers.' I did have a contract for a non-fiction book at that point, but it wasn't due till February, so of course, you can't start it ahead of time. You got to push that to the last minute. I decided that I'd write a book, a romance novel, while she was shopping the novel, the second book, under my real name. And by the time she sold it and I got paid from the publisher who had picked up the second book, I had written four indie books, and paid way more money than the advance that I was getting. It was, oh, this is where I belong. It was really one of those wonderful things, because, at that point in my writing career, I thought I had hit rock bottom, that I was a complete failure, that basically, my career was over. Theodora Taylor kind of introduced me to this new side of writing. I liked being Theodora Taylor, one-person business, way more than I liked working with a traditional publisher. So I went with Theodora Taylor. I did do two books for Harlequin, but that taught me that I really prefer to be a indie publisher. Joanna: It's so great to hear that you enjoy being a one-person business. And we're going to come back to that. You said, ‘I might as well be a romance writer,' which is just one of those comments that people say when they don't understand what the romance genre is like, and how incredible the business people are in the romance genre. How can we change this stigma of romance, and make people understand how important the genre is? Theodora: I wish you could see me right now, because I nodded along with every thing you said. I absolutely did view it in a dismissive way. I think that's because I did not understand how much work this is, and how important it is, what an important role we serve in the reading community. It's one of those difficult things, because we know that we provide escape, we provide a way for people to explore some of their fantasies that they might not want to explore in real life. We provide all of these things to our readers, and our readers really, really love us for it. But the perception of romance by people who aren't, unfortunately, in the romance community can be dismissive, in some cases, insulting. I wish that more people were into romance, because it teaches you important lessons about loving and being loved. I could go on about this forever, but I'm a rambler, so I'll stop myself right there. I'll just say I wish that more people did understand romance and what it really brings to the table, as far as the reading experience goes. Joanna: I also think, in terms of the indie community, the romance writers, and of course, the erotica writers, have been well ahead of most of the rest of the genres. Theodora: Yes. We're early adopters, not that it matters, but we make so much money. It's one of these things that, too, so easily that some people so easily dismiss us. It's infuriating. Just infuriating. Joanna: Totally. And look, to be fair, I remember back in 2010-ish, I also was quite dismissive of romance writers. Then I met some, and I realized that they were the smartest business people around, and it completely changed my perception. I do think that is changing over time. Obviously, you're one of those very smart business people. Let's get into the book, 7 Figure Fiction. You talk about universal fantasy, which I think needs explaining because some people might think that's kind of elves and things. What do you mean by ‘universal fantasy?' Theodora: Thank you for giving me that opportunity. Because one of the biggest misconceptions are people saying, ‘Oh, can people who don't write fantasy…' I really did not understand about the fantasy genre before I wrote this book, or I might have called it something else. Universal fantasy is basically those fantasies that we have, I would call it universally. But it doesn't have to be completely universal. It just has to be a fantasy that a lot of other people share. There's some, like, big, big, big fantasies that everybody from a 3-year-old to a 70-year-old, or an older adult share. Those are fantasies like people appreciating you, being seen, getting attention. Those are kind of universal fantasies. Having somebody who's really worthy fall in love with you, things like that. Those are universal fantasies. Joanna: How is that different to tropes? We talk about tropes a lot more in the fiction space. Give us some examples of a trope compared to a universal fantasy. Theodora: The difference between tropes and universal fantasies is that trope is the umbrella, and universal fantasy is what makes that trope so, so, so delicious. A great example that I just watched with my own kids is ‘Turning Red.' I don't know if you've seen that movie, or if it's released in the UK. Joanna: No, I haven't seen it yet. Theodora: It's the latest Disney cartoon. And it's this great mother-daughter film. When we say, ‘Oh, hey, it's a mother-daughter film,' what do we mean by that? It could be anything. That's a huge trope, mother-daughter stuff. We could all name a mother-daughter film, a mother-daughter book, a mother-daughter television show. So, what do we mean with ‘Turning Red?' What did ‘Turning Red' do for the mother-daughter trope that…what universal fantasies made this mother-daughter film really land with audiences? We have universal fantasies within ‘Turning Red,' like learning your parents' secret, helping your mother in some way, proving yourself as an adult, which, my middle schooler, my middle school person in my house is always trying to get us to give her more responsibility, to treat her like a fellow adult, even though she's 12. So, that kind of idea that you get to make your own choices, that you do have what it takes to make your own decisions. That's a universal fantasy for a lot of us. Another one that I really loved from that film was making your mother see you as an adult, getting to decide for yourself, and freedom from your mother. What that film is ultimately about is someone getting the freedom to live life on her terms. There are a lot of mother-daughter films that have these universal fantasies, but this is what made ‘Turning Red,' these particular fantasies, were what made ‘Turning Red' a particularly great mother-daughter film. Joanna: Let's unpack that more, because I think, and I wish you'd used another word as well, because, again, fantasy in the romance genre can mean kind of sexual fantasy. And that's not what you're talking about at all. To me, it's almost like a psychological, emotional aspect of story that make each of us go, ‘Yes, I feel something about that.' Some of those things, you were saying, obviously, I have a mother, it's Mother's Day here in the UK yesterday. And there are the good mother-daughter things and the difficult mother-daughter things that are kind of inevitable. But just to pick, let's pick another genre, to help people. I write action-adventure thrillers, and I watch a lot of those types of movies as well, a sort of Lara Croft thing. So, an example of a trope might be finding an ancient relic in a tomb, right? That makes all the action-adventure people go, ‘Yay, let's find a relic in a tomb.' But the emotional side of it might be good overcoming evil, like Indiana Jones beating the Nazis to the Ark of the Covenant. Is that another example, or have I got that wrong? Theodora: I think action-adventure is so interesting, because a lot of action-adventures, like you say, is about finding the thing that will solve everything, right. And really, the fantasy there is you are the one who solves everything by finding the thing. I talk a lot about characters being avatars for the reader, but that your avatar finds this thing, and solves some problem. Some big problem. Joanna: I like the characters are avatars for the reader. And of course, I write my character, Morgan Sierra, as my alter ego. What we're saying is that I want to save the world, and thus I write a character who saves the world. Theodora: Who can save the world. Yes. But I guess with further breakdowns it's always great to go over real examples, because what will saving the world do for you? What will it do for your character? What fantasy will it complete, if you will? So if you save the world and that means that your father is proud of you, finally… Joanna: Oh, no. I'm going to cry! Theodora: Right. That's a fantasy that saving the world realizes. Saving the world, it's a trope. But within that saving the world trope, you can put in a lot of universal fantasies that will make that trope way better. I think we've all watched action-adventure films where it's like, ‘Oh, we must get the thing. Car chase, car chase, car chase. There is an obstacle to getting the thing. Car chase, car chase, car chase.' And we found the thing, and the credits are rolling, and we feel nothing. Whereas an action film where some big evil is overcome, like seeing Nazis melt, their face melt, that's very satisfying for a lot of people, right? And so, it's just kind of like, I didn't just vanquish an enemy. I vanquished the Nazis, in this kind of roundabout way. Vanquishing a huge enemy, that's a huge universal butter to do it that well, where it's just like, oh, I melted their faces. We all remember how these particular Nazis died. And what's interesting is, throughout our movie history, lots and lots of Nazis have been killed, but we all remember how those particular Nazis died. So I think they did a really good job of not only tapping in to that universal fantasy of really vanquishing a big enemy, but having them die horribly. Joanna: What I love about your book, because there's a lot of writing books, but I do feel like you have tapped into this emotional side of things that I definitely struggle with, as in I'm much happier writing plot and theme and setting. Theodora: Same. Joanna: Okay, well, that's interesting. Because I kind of thought, well, maybe you're just naturally empathetic. How did you learn to see these universal fantasies behind the tropes? Is there something you did, or have you just literally gone deeper and deeper for years? Theodora: One of the most wonderful fan notes that I get from authors is, this is all stuff I'd knew. It feels like you broke something, that you turned on a light in a room I didn't know I had. I knew this. I just didn't know I'd know this. It's making writing easier, because I think in the back of our minds, a lot of us are just kind of like, ‘Okay, I'm writing a good plot. I'm writing a good trope, all the elements are there. But there's something missing. There's a disconnect with audience, or I don't know that an audience is going to like this.' So, in the book, I explain what happened. I paid for a really expensive…not really expensive. It's worth every penny. But, for me, at the time, where I was as an author, I paid for what I felt was an expensive class. And I realized that I would have to advertise this to an audience beyond my original target audience. I write interracial romance, so my target audience is a pretty easy audience to pick out. It's Black women who are either in interracial relationships or want to read interracial romance. But in this case, I went through the Facebook settings. And this, it was really bad. They don't even have an author in my genre that I could target. They only had these huge, mostly traditional authors that you could target. And so, we're getting all this advice for this class. And I just realized that, oh, I had to figure out why people like the book. I was trying to advertise on a universal level. As opposed to, hey, target audience, this is a book you like, interracial romance. This is an interracial romance book. You will probably like this book. Once I realized, oh, there are universal fantasy elements to every novel, or every piece of entertainment that works, or has a lot of love, that appeals to audience. When I figured that out, it was easier to write books, it was easier to market my books. And it was easier to connect with an audience when I thought about it in terms of, oh, you're telling a story around a fire. What will keep that audience engaged? What will make that audience come to the fire when you say, ‘Hey, I've got a story about so and so?' Because there's a difference between calling an audience to the fire with ‘Oh, hey, I've got…' if we're, like, say we're cavemen, ‘Oh, hey, I've got a story about today's hunt.' Versus saying to the audience, ‘I've got a story about today's hunt, in which our greatest warrior would have died if not for the efforts of our weakest warrior.' Then all the people are coming to the fire to hear this story, because you've just given them some universal fantasy. It's like, ‘Wait, the strongest warrior almost died, and he would have died if not for the weakest warrior intervening, and I'm weak in some way.' The weak person turns out to be the hero. This has just tapped into a universal fantasy. Yes, I will come listen to your story around the fire.' So, that's what universal fantasy is. Joanna: I read the book on Kindle, and I've bought a hard copy. People listening, if you feel this way, I feel like I need to read it over and over again. Because I totally get what you're saying, and yet I cannot figure out, in my own books, what they are and what I need. And, because we write the books we need and we watch the things that satisfy us in some way. So, I think it's almost like know yourself, but also know your reader. And I want to come back on the interracial romance thing, because I love that you basically discovered that your audience is not just people in mixed-race marriages or whatever. It's also just people who like stories. ‘Bridgerton' is a great example. Have you seen the latest series of ‘Bridgerton?' Theodora: I'm watching it right now. I'm on episode four. Joanna: It's so good. Theodora: I'm very upset right now. I think I'm meant to be, but I'm going to keep on going, even though I'm upset at things that have happened in episode four. That's all. Joanna: What's so funny is my husband's far more romantic than I am. But we ended up yesterday, we binge-watched five hours because we couldn't stop watching, because we were like, ‘No, stop doing that. No, stop doing that.' Just incredible storytelling, but of course, ‘Bridgerton,' if people don't know, people listening, it is an entirely multiracial cast. It's really quite super diverse. We're there for the story, not the differences between people. And of course, that is important as well. But I love that you went, you know what? It's not just about this thing. It could be much, much bigger. So often, we get trapped in demographics. ‘Women between 45 and 65 like this type of book.' And it's not true, right? Readers cross much more diversity. Theodora: I always say both are true. Women between 40 and 55 really like your book about witches, middle-aged witches. They just love it, right? But at the same time, maybe women who are younger than that will love your book about middle-aged witches because A, it's about women overcoming something society have put up on them. Or maybe they'll be interested because something happens on a universal level that speaks to a fantasy within themselves and the like. Really, what this book is saying is that your audience is much bigger than you think it is. I think one of the things people do is they'll say something like, ‘I write romance, so men won't be interested in it. This person won't be interested in it, this person won't be interested in it.' In actuality, if you say, ‘I write about werewolves. And these big things are happening in their village, within their path. And there's intrigue, and there's this, this and this universal fantasy, then a lot of different…' It opens up your audience, and it says to your audience, ‘Yes, this is for me.' But at the same time, one of the things that ‘Bridgerton' does so well is they're saying, ‘If you've ever wanted to take part in a regency romance, all of you are represented in this regency romance,' which is something I had not seen before. They obviously understand that representation does matter. But they also know that everyone will watch, because we're all in it for this fantastic story that kind of appeals to us on a universal level. Joanna: Yes. I actually think ‘Bridgerton' is hugely important. And in fact, talking of books and acceptance, I live in Bath, in the southwest of England, where ‘Bridgerton' is filmed. A lot of it is filmed here. Theodora: Oh, wow. Joanna: Because we have all the Georgian architecture. But what's so funny, it's a very literary town, and they're quite snobby, really, about books. But the local bookstore, the window is full of Julia Quinn's ‘Bridgerton' books. Theodora: Of course. And it's so interesting with that kind of stuff, because the show's kind of like, ‘Oh, towns like to be represented. They're probably very proud that it's their town in this movie.' A lot more people will pick that up, because it's that. Joanna: Exactly. It's really funny. I want to change tack a little bit, because I wanted to come back on the business side. You mentioned in the beginning that you enjoy being a one-person business. What I love is that the book is called ‘7 Figure Fiction.' And your confidence just jumps off the page. I love it. I love reading confidence around business as well as writing. You said at the beginning that you had failure at the beginning. How do authors get to this level of confidence that they can make a business work? How have you grown into that attitude, or did you always have that attitude? Theodora: With authors, one of the main things they don't give themselves is time. One of the things I really loved about your book is that you broke down how you entered the business, how you studied the business. Your book on non-fiction. And it was in how you transitioned into the business. It wasn't like, ‘I decided to become a writer. And then the next day, I just knew everything there was to become a writer.' They're often called ‘Baby Authors.' They'll ask me for advice that I feel is a matter of time. ‘How do you get all these people to read your book?' and a lot of that is just learning to consistently turn out books, to develop the audience. It's kind of boring, because my best business advice is to do the business, and to learn, and to fail, and to just keep on going no matter what. Just keep going. I don't think that I'm particularly confident. I have learned what I've learned. And I just keep on going. That's the main thing that I know, just statistically, if I keep on going, and I stay consistent, and by consistent, I mean, just put out. Because I'm not that consistent of a writer, but I do try to put out a series every year, and things like that. So, if I keep on doing that, I will eventually reach my goal. I might do it sooner than projected. But eventually I will, if I just keep on going. It's interesting with the keep on going thing or the keep on swimming, means, because really, that's the hardest part. I don't know if you've ever been discouraged within your writing career. But the keep on going piece, it's three words, but it's the hardest part of this business. I think every writer has woken up, and they're supposed to write this book, and they suddenly suspect that they've forgotten how to write. Even though they've written 10 or 20 books, they're just suspicious that they're not a good writer, that this has somehow all been a fluke, and things like that. And that's hard with that, when you're dealing with something like that, to keep on writing, and to put out books anyway, even if you're not confident. So, again, I fall into another ramble, but that's my point, keep on going. Joanna: I love that. And I agree with you. Someone said to me the other day, ‘Well, you know a lot more than you realize that you know,' because the longer you're in this game. We read so many books, we listen to people, and sometimes we don't realize we know what we know, and we just take it for granted what we're doing after so many years. People look at us and say, ‘How do you do that?' And it's like, ‘Well, I just learned, like you will learn.' Theodora: Right. I think the big thing is not valuing what we know. So, one of the things was on universal fantasy. It was this kind of funny situation, because I had this group, back when I lived in California, a group of my fellow California writers, and I would meet in November or December, right before the big holiday break. And we would basically spend four days in a beach house, and we would say, ‘Okay, everybody has to teach something. They have to teach something that they know.' This first year, I did one little class. And the second year, I was just like I don't really have much that I know. And there were some big hitters coming to the conference, because we always invited people outside of our group to come, just teach us for an hour, one thing you know. Do one workshop. And I was like, ‘I do know how to sell books to people outside of my audience.' And so, I presented it, and it was this kind of crazy thing, where it juggernauted in the RWA chapter which was just kind of like, ‘Could you come present that to us?' And so I did. And then people kept on hearing it. It's this thing that I know, but I wouldn't have necessarily put value on it until I started teaching other people this thing that I know. I think a lot of women in general do that. You're good at business, but they don't necessarily give themselves the credit. Joanna: Absolutely. Really looking at what we know, and making sure we're using that. I also wanted to ask, back to the 7 Figure Fiction and you do say in the beginning of the book, ‘I'm not a seven figure author.' But you're a multi-six-figure author, as am I. You clearly have this aspiration for seven figures, which I also do, and I love talking about ambition because people often shy away from it. They won't admit to it. But I actually think most authors have some kind of ambition. Theodora: That's the best thing about being an indie romance writer. It's interesting, because I have a lot of friends who are outside this business, and so many of them are not okay with ambition. If you're ambitious, and you want to find another group of women who are also ambitious, it's romance writers. It's amazing. Joanna: That's really encouraging. I'm one of those women, but I don't write romance. I think, in the thriller niches, a lot more traditionally-published authors, so it's a bit different. I did want to ask you, because I feel like your business, like my businesses, is a mature business, let's say. We've been around a while. And I feel like there's a step up between a multi-six-figure business and a seven-figure business. Are you doing something different or planning to do something different, or is it, as you said earlier, is it just keep on keeping on? What are you doing to take your author business to the next level? Theodora: Okay, so this should come with a caveat. This is what I'm doing. This is not a suggestion for what other people should do. I was very, very privileged last year to come to a precipice of the limits of what I could do with what I had, if you will. I made it to number 10 in the Amazon store, with a KU book. And so, I said to myself, ‘Okay, I'm looking at all the other people who are around me right now, and they are spending serious, serious bank on ads.' But here's the other thing. I have two other books due in this series, and I really immediately need to be writing. And also, I am just more of a writer than I am an ad person, or something like that. So I was just kind of like, you could do a huge spend on ads, and you could really level yourself up, because that's literally the difference. Once you start getting into the really low numbers, there's just a ton of action going on. Or, you can really, really, really, really think about the organic ways that other non-KU authors reached that seven-figure platform, that might be more in line with how you do business. The way I do business is that I write a book, I market a book for maybe a few days, and then I'm back to writing a book. And almost nobody who's really great at marketing would suggest that you do business that way, but that's where I'm at. I decided that I would need to, in order to hit my goals, is to go wide, first of all. Just be in more places, do more long-term investment, things like audiobooks, German, and basically have a lot of different income streams going. And that's been really interesting, because it's the money I would have invested in ads, say, are now going into just making sure that I have money coming in from all these different places. It really adds up. I'm really liking it. I'm not at my goal yet, but I'm doing pretty well so far this year. I think I'll hit this goal, this seven-figure goal in one year. To be clear, I have made seven figures over the course of my author career, but I think I'll hit a seven-figure year in the next year or two, by making sure that my audiobook program is great, my German program is great, that I'm translating, that I'm doing all of these things to establish my author career, establish myself in other places. I'm reading this book by my really good friend, Maggie Marr. It's called Books to Film, and it's a great guide that I'm excited to blurb, about how authors can get their books to film. And her main thing, like, the first thing she says is, ‘There is no one way to get your book to film.' And then she proceeds to show you all the different ways that authors have gotten their books to film. That's how I feel about the whole seven-figure goal. There are authors who really just kill it on ads, and have hit seven-figures. And what's interesting to me is some authors are just like, ‘Oh, man, I learned Facebook ads, and I became a seven-figure author.' Some authors are like, ‘Oh, man, I just kill it on Amazon ads, and I became a seven-figure author.' And then, I took this one author's class, where she was just kind of like, ‘Well, I just figured the more income streams I have, the better. So I just really invested in self.' I was like, ‘I think that's the path I want to take.' It's whatever resonates with you. Saying, ‘Oh, hey, I'm mostly a writer. I would rather be writing most of the time. That's where I feel most comfortable.' For me, having my writing in more places is going to work for me. But there are other authors who are just great at ads, have the attention span for ads, and stuff like that. And that's where they should be. So that's why this is what I decided to do, versus who knows what whoever is listening to this should do. But really, think about it for yourself, and have a goal and have a plan. So, whatever plan you come up with is better than no plan, or just being like, ‘I hope one day.' Joanna: I get that. That is brilliant. I'm actually thrilled you said that, because I talk about multiple streams of income, and basically, what you're doing is creating assets that bring you money for the long term, rather than spending that money on ads. So, assets, not ads is what you do, but you're right. It's up to the individual. So, as ever, this is just a discussion, rather than direct advice. Theodora: Please don't say Theodora and Joanna told you to do this. Joanna: Exactly. This has been brilliant. Where can people find you and your books, and everything you do online? Theodora: theodorataylor.com for my fiction stuff, and 7figurefiction.com for everything ‘7 Figure Fiction' in this book. You can also find me on Facebook, or on Instagram, and TikTok. DM me if you have any questions. I'm always glad to hear from people. Thank you ahead of time if you get in contact. Joanna: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Theodora. That was great. Theodora: Oh, thank you, Joanna. You do so much for the community, so I cannot express to you what an honor it was to be on the show. Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me.The post 7 Figure Fiction With Theodora Taylor first appeared on The Creative Penn.